Golden Square Kindergarten opens 'New Chum' building for three-year-olds

Maree Edwards MP will officially open the Golden Square Kindergarten's new building on Sunday - with "New Chum" the chosen name for the space for three-year-old students.

A member of the Dja Dja Wurrung community will also perform a Welcome to Country at the kindergarten which has run now for more than 56 years independently.

Centre director Carol O'Bree said the need for extra educators, child toilets, an all-ability toilet, another kitchen and another office for educators was "high priority".

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"This new building provides all of the above plus a new room that allows us to offer a prekindergarten program," she said.

"This increases our capacity to provide kindergarten for 15 hours a week for both pre-kinder and four-year-old kindergarten."

The new build has enabled the centre's to welcome 177 children, up from 111.

The new names - New Chum for the recent building and Old Chum for the older - are a tribute to more than half a century of history.

"Golden Square Kindergarten was firstly built by local families who formed a co-operative to build the first centre and we are on a site that has a rich history of gold mining," Ms O'Bree said.

"When naming our new building we also had to name the current building so we did some research and Donna Spillman, one of our early childhood educators, discovered that there was a mine in our area called the New Chum."

Ms O'Bree, who has worked at the centre for 33 years, said gold is not only a part of the name of the kindergarten but is also "how we value children and the education we provide".

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"At our centre, we intentionally teach our community that we all need to get along," she said.

"Chum refers to friends and we recognise that building strong, secure relationships is fundamental to happiness and long-term future wellbeing.

"Over the past fifty-seven years we have formed so many wonderful friendships and we look forward to meeting the new children and families in the future as they join us at Old Chum and New Chum."

There were some delays to the build due to interruptions from COVID but the team said they were grateful to be hosted by Eaglehawk Primary School for nine months.

State government grants surpassing $994,000 assisted the build and the time spent on the school site in Eaglehawk, alongside the centre's own contributions.

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