A journey to sustainability through innovation and enterprise

Turning education into jobs!

youthconnections.com.au helps young people aged 13-19 on the Central Coast access employment, education, training and recreational opportunities so they can reach their full potential.

youthconnections.com.auUnit 6/1 Reliance DriveTuggerah NSW 2259

Green CentralGate 1, Kangoo RoadKariong NSW 2250

T: (02) 4350 2600F: (02) 4350 2601E: admin@youthconnections.com.au

www.youthconnections.com.auwww.facebook.com/youthconnections.com.auwww.ycindustrylink.com.auwww.ycmedia.com.au

Words: Jessica OldfieldDesign and illustration: Erin RitchensEditing: Madelaine Dickie

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Green Central was funded under the Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations Jobs Fund to create employment opportunities for young people on the Central Coast during the global financial crisis. The site was retrofitted and refurbished using apprentices and trainees under mentorship from skilled tradesmen, and became a space for social enterprises, a sustainable house, Indigenous Skills Centre, Media Centre, horticulture facility and classrooms.

Organisation ChartStaffGreen Central timelineCEO Report Chair ReportGreen Central

Green Central: Roll Call

YC Industry LinkTransition to Work

Case Study: Mark Albani

Youth Connections Programme igreen

Apprentice Profile: Ashley Gassman

ConnectorsStructured Workplace LearningThe Big Noise OrchestraKoori Connect

Apprentice Profile: Tyler Bathurst

yG enterprisePartnership Brokers Indigenous Skills CentrePaCECommunity Enterprise Project

Apprentice Profile: Aaron Gibson

ALESCOFreedom Ride 2011

Case Study: Stuart & Liam

YC MediaTradeStartSkool’s OutT-TeamIndigenous Employment Programme

Apprentice Profile: Luke Browne

Green Central: Testimonials

annual report 2010/ 2011Contents

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Maggie MacFie

Aboriginal Advisory Committee

Aboriginal ProgrammesDenise Markham

Koori ConnectKylie Cassidy

PaCEBobbi Murray

Indigenous Skills CentreDenise Markham

Indigenous Employment ProgrammeWayne Cook

Indigenous Cultural Advisor & TourismGavi Duncan

Indigenous RadioJoey Grauner

TransitionsAdvisory Committee

TransitionsMeredith Milne

Disability ProgrammesAshley McGeorge

Skool’s OutSue Groves Sharon Poulos

TTWUlrike Trappe

T-TeamRonojoy FleissgartenErin Meyer Grant Hickman Graydon Gorst

YC ProgrammeLinda Thomas Rick Corderoy Cassie HamiltonMitch Adams Rebecca PerinoDaniel Smith

Independent Employment AdvisorDeb HetheringtonMaria Kelly

Industry LinkAdvisory Committee

PartnershipsAdvisory Committee

Youth Reference Group

PartnershipsMarcus Watson

Social EnterpriseBrendan Ritchens

yG enterpriseBrendan Ritchens

Admin Andrea Cingi Ron Bell

Construction Karl Wallace Mark Albani

Horticulture Tony WellsDaniel McGlynn

Mechanical Repairs Paul Carey

Car Cleaning Aaron Ross

The Coolamon on GC Alison Preece Cheryl YoungAngela SmithMargaret CassidySharyn ColemanMelissa Thomas

yG Graphic DesignErin Ritchens

YC Media Margaret MeehanSarah WebbJessica Oldfield Reagan Campbell Duncan McFarlane

Executive Committee

Managers

Partnership BrokerageMarcus Watson

PBs Lyn CooperSuzanne Atteridge Denise Markham Claire Balken

YCILKatrinna MaddenNareeda TinnockTash Eagle Nick HumphreysKhai Tucker

Structured Workplace LearningDeb ThompsonJosh Banister Charlotte DickieJenny RobertsCriselee StevensJoey Grauner

CEO

org ChairDavid Abrahams

DirectorNiels Jacobsen

TreasurerRichard Cooke

Deputy ChairDavid Ella

Board

Finance Committee

FinanceJulie Penney

FinanceJulie Penney

AdministrationClaudia DaviesRebecca Slatyer

YC, YCIL, yG & BISEEKerry Harper

Human ResourcesMelanie Law

SecretaryPatrick Lewis

MemberSharryn Brownlee

MemberDavid Beattie

MemberMarj Kong

members of the organisation

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Aaron Ross • Andrea Cingi • Ashley McGeorge • Bobbi Murray • Brendan Ritchens • Cassie Hamilton • Charlotte Dickie • Claire Balken • Claudia Davies • Criselee Stevens • Daniel Smith • Deborah Hetherington • Debbie Thompson • Denise Markham • Duncan McFarlane • Erin Meyer • Erin Ritchens • Gavi Duncan • Jenny Roberts • Jessica Oldfield • Joey Grauner • Josh Banister • Julie Penney • Karl Wallace •Katrinna Madden • Kerry Harper • Khai Tucker • Kylie Cassidy • Linda Thomas • Lyn Cooper • Maggie MacFie • Marcus Watson • Margaret Meehan • Maria Kelly • Mel Law • Melissa Thomas • Meredith Milne • Mitch Adams • Nareeda Tinnock • Natasha Lamont • Nick Humphreys • Paul Carey • Reagan Campbell • Rebecca Perino • Rebecca Slatyer • Rick Corderoy • Ron Bell • Ronojoy Fleissgarten • Sarah Webb • Sharon Poulos • Sue Groves • Suzanne Atteridge • Tony Wells • Tash Eagle • Ulrike Trappe • Wayne Cook staff

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t imelineNov09

YC Industry Link apprentices onsiteYC Media site photography begins

dec09Demolition of buildings, clean up of site and repairs to existing buildings

jan10Transition To Work

Mark Albani gets his traineeship

march10igreen

feb10Youth Connections Programme client begins Horticulture School-based Traineeship

April10Connectors – Brick and Blocklaying course

may10Structured Workplace Learning students onsite

june10Big Noise Orchestra performance

july10Koori Connect – Certificate II Conservation

& Land Management courseaug10yG enterprise Car Cleaning service begins

sept10Partnership Brokers – Horticulture Try‘aTrade

nov10Community Enterprise Projects

Central Coast Regional Enterprise Strategy

jan11ALESCO year 10 campus, Term 1

april11YC Media move to Media Centre

March11Youth Tunes

feb11Freedom Ride departs

dec10YCIL Christmas party

may11Youth Booth visits TradeStart

june11Can Do Day

aug/sept11Indigenous Employment Programme – tourism students onsite

oct10Construction of the Indigenous Skills Centre PaCE

july11NAIDOC Week inaugural flag raising ceremony

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reportCEOWe’re starting with the endI’d like to see a fully-blown horticulture shed and I’d have that garden pumping and corporate food boxes of fresh veggies rolling out the gate on little trolleys. There’d be cars lined up and down the road waiting for a service and clean. The film and television school would be cranking music out the windows and producing soaps. Our Indigenous Skills Centre would be firmly established as a place of vocational learning, cultural activity and would be the heart of reconciliation on the Central Coast.

Green Central is to become an Australian model of the Danish production schools, ‘production’ meaning the young people on site have the capacity to be earnin’ and learnin’. These young people are our most vulnerable: disengaged from education and community. The earnin’ and learnin’ model is based around supporting them. They earn through engagement in social enterprise – so they’ll be picking and selling the veggies, manufacturing products in the metals and engineering shed, running the car cleaning enterprise, digging ditches with the construction team – and they learn through an alternate education school.

The site’s centrepiece is The Coolamon. A café that’s not a café but a training centre. It’s here that government officials rub shoulders with the young people at risk; where the budding media mavens and moguls chat with the mechanics and carpenters. The Coolamon is run by Aboriginal women and they’re currently teaching our disengaged youth the intricacies of the coffee machine and food preparation. The vision, is for the veggies and chooks in the garden outside, to land on your plate for lunch. For the young people to be preparing food and making cappuccinos for each other and customers.

We’re close to having a fully sustainable model that can be replicated throughout the Central Coast, the state, the country. Of course this will only become a reality through the continued hard work, innovation, creativity and energy of the most talented employees any organisation could possibly hope for. Not to mention the wise but trusting Board of Directors who have given permission for youthconnections.com.au and its subsidiary companies to develop and promote a culture of earnin’ and learnin’. Seeya at The Coolamon for a cuppa and a yarn!

Maggie MacFie

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reportChairSpirit of Enterprise

The spirit of enterprise has taken hold at youthconnections.com.au and looks to be one of our driving forces into the future. Like the famous ‘Starship Enterprise’ in the hugely popular Star Trek film and TV series, we too are visiting new worlds and learning from them.

Our Green Central project site at Mt Penang Parklands helped focus our minds and hands on the importance of enterprise and production as a guiding light to our collective futures. This guiding light continues to inspire us, and importantly many others—just look around the once derelict site that is now Green Central.

youthconnections.com.au is now a positive force to many in the region and indeed around the country. We are involved at many levels of our community and are increasingly visible in the landscape. Like little space shuttles our buses and cars criss-cross the Central Coast, northern and western Sydney, the Hunter and beyond. Our ‘missions’ into education, business, art, urban renewal and culture are becoming a hallmark of our organisation.

Among all our ‘missions’ one in particular stands out this year. That of course, was last summer’s Freedom Ride 2011, organised by Koori Connect. This re-enactment of the hugely significant 1965 Freedom Ride, led by the late Charlie Perkins and his Sydney University mates, visited 21 rural and urban Aboriginal communities across New South Wales and southern Queensland, highlighting Aboriginal exclusion and isolation. This tour is often cited as the catalyst for the successful 1967 referendum that proposed to include Aboriginal people in the census.

The Koori Connect team, together with the youthful and wise participants of this year’s Freedom Ride, has a similar ambition, to change our Constitution and to bring about some very real reconciliation outcomes. We all must support them grow this ambition into reality!

This year’s Annual General Meeting (AGM) falls in the spring. This was a pragmatic decision from the board to harmonise our reporting and audit work with the financial year. It’s also a symbolic time of year; in spring new life sprouts forth. Flowers, trees and shrubs establish themselves, and the birds and animals of the sky and bush and waterways return to their busy ways of creation.

It is of great pleasure to formally present this year’s Annual Report. It points not only to our social and environmental outcomes but also to the financial success and quality programme management that is the enduring backbone of our sustainable organisation. Our hard-won corporate structure has been a point of pride for me personally. This has given us the flexibility and financial wherewithal to grow businesses and programmes that generate surpluses that in turn help complement our government delivery contracts.

On behalf of the board of youthconnections.com.au I’d like to thank our CEO Maggie and the staff of YC for their enthusiasm and commitment to creating opportunities for young people to become great and enterprising young citizens—citizens that will go on to sustain their own ideas and those of the coming generations.

Yours from the bridge of the good ship “YC Enterprise.” :-)David Abrahams

green centralDeepest respect to the Darkinjung people past and present on whose land we live and enjoy – from the Deerabun, the Hawkesbury River to the Awaba, Lake Macquarie, Mt Yengo to the sea.

We acknowledge youth because they are our future. They are shadows of a new time that is coming. But what of youth of the past? Penang Mountain as it was once known has long fathered youth. The rivers, creeks, wattles and angophoras of this sandstone country were home to the Darkinjung people for thousands of years. Its seasons provided plentiful sources of food to sustain them and were an ever-changing classroom in which to educate their young about the ways of the land and about themselves – to sing fish from the river and the lakes and tread softly on the earth. And then a time of tension sent these belonged families adrift and in search of new ground, bringing with it many more youth of a different past.

To all the youth of this land who made shelters from its trees and rock and cast their hopes to its horizon. To the boys who became men on its mountain; who made peace with themselves and society whilst working with their hands; who were taught and were teachers; and lived with time and the scars of its hardships.

An ode to the youth of Penang Mountain

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industry linkycI’m not a man I’m a mountainIt was like a scene out of Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, so many young men on a rooftop, hammers in hand. One wall rose up after another, the house frame silhouetted and skeletal like a rise of matchsticks. The construction stage of Green Central was a barn dance without the beards and the fiddle player. It was a buzz of youth productivity. The hollow sound of tools beating into wood continuously echoed through the eucalypts. If it takes a village to raise a child, perhaps it takes a brotherhood to teach a young person their trade? Or a Group Training Company that’s willing to put its back out.

“I don’t think any Group Training Company (GTC) has as high level of pastoral care as what we have. I think we can hang our hat on that and be very proud that we go the extra mile to make sure kids stay on track,” says YC Industry Link manager Meredith Milne. In 2010 YC Industry Link (YCIL) not only put its name on the map as a preferred GTC among Central Coast employers, it was the year it did something ground-breaking and something the region, with its phenomenal 42% youth unemployment rate, desperately needed: hired a lot of local young people.

When YCIL took on 42 extra School-based Apprentices and Trainees (SBATs), five part-time workers, nine full-time workers and up to 12 tradesmen for the Green Central project, it had over 100 employees on its books. SBATs was the ideal model to maximise job numbers for local young people in a variety of traditional trades – including electrical, plumbing, horticulture, metals and engineering, carpentry and bricklaying – SBATs generally complete one day at work, one day at TAFE and three days at school.

But YCIL has never been about size. Since it started in 2008, YCIL realised school doesn’t prepare kids for work. It just doesn’t. In fact work is a massive jump for many. So the concept of Green Central was to act as a smaller step in the transition to work, particularly for those who weren’t ready. Green Central also became a passage into adulthood for many young people across the Coast. It was a safe place to make mistakes and a conduit to flow from school out into the working world.

“It was also about knowing how to get to work on time and how to finish your TAFE work and communicating with adults if you’re having trouble,” says Meredith, reflecting on the year gone.

What is known as Green Central – a sustainable wonderland boasting an education centre, sustainable house, Media Centre, alternative education school, greenhouse, Indigenous Skills Centre and several sprouting enterprises – started out as a four-acre derelict site long forgotten by society.

Clearing of the site started in November of 2009 and so began an era, 10 or so months of chilly, frost bitten mornings on the mountain and an eventual brotherhood; boys from all different schools, homes and suburbs, with different pasts, lunches and skills united by their job and learning space. Many labourers, mentors and site managers turned uncles and aunts that year, passing on their trade and knowledge patiently, unlike your average work site where second chances and mistakes are too expensive to allow. So where are they now? Six months on since the construction phase of the site was completed, 21 found full-time employment, 14 continued in their School-based Apprenticeship or Traineeship and seven found labouring work or continued at school. Green Central wasn’t a mountain of men. It was a place where young men found confidence in themselves and became mountains.

Established: 2008 • Apprentices and Trainees on the books as at 2011: 120 • SBATS: 42 • Part-time workers: 5 • Full-time workers: 9 • Contract tradespeople: 12 • Prevocational courses run onsite: White Card

Training Course, START Building Brick and Block Laying ACCESS Course (participants built BBQ area), + Australian Bureau of Statistics, Gosford-Wyong Labour Force Figures, 2009

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START Building Concreting Course, Certificate II in Horticulture (Wholesale Nursery), Statement of Attainment in Certificate III in Bricklaying (participants built brick-enclosed outdoor dining area for The Coolamon), Certificate II in General Construction,

Certificate II & III in Conservation and Land Management, Cooking with Cultures, Food Handling - Hygiene, Certificate III in Indigenous Tourism, Certificate III in Hospitality

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worktransition to

TTW clients 2010/2011: 12 • 2010/2011 TTW clients in a job/training or further study: 10 Funding: Family and Community Services – Ageing, Disability and Homecare13

The family dinner table can often be the first encounter of a society for many of us in that it has rules—no elbows on the table please; moral expectations—who farted? It teaches economy—one scoop, two scoop; and job roles—who’s washing, who’s drying?

The dinner table is often diverse in gender and can involve lots, or little communication. Even who sits where can define the hierarchy at play. Transition to Work (TTW) shares many meals together, mostly prepared by its young members who, after finishing their HSC, are looking for a job. Similarly to the head of the table, TTW teaches young people with disabilities how to be a part of society and, equally, to be independent of it.

“Over 20% of youth with a disability who sit their HSC in NSW will have poor transitions into a job,” says TTW Programme Manager Ashley McGeorge. So rather than have young people with disabilities left sitting at home once they complete their HSC, TTW teaches them the skills to get a job, keep the job and supports them to achieve long-term employment.

Aside from arranging regular work experience, fun excursions and opportunities to learn necessary life skills, perhaps what TTW is best at when it comes to its young members—and what can often be missing from family meal times—is listening.

CASE STUDY

CASE STUDY

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connections (the programme)youthWhen your underbelly’s exposedAny society, any nation is judged on the basis of how it treats its weakest members—the last, the least, the littlest.

Cardinal Roger Mahony+

It’s hard to write about young peoples’ troubled journeys through school, especially when my experience erred more toward a clunky train ride rather than a complete derailment. I guess I feel like a fraud, like someone else should be writing this. But even if having a tough time in school or growing up in a broken home isn’t everybody’s story, we all know someone who has. So perhaps listening to these stories—day in, day out—could be one of the most important jobs of our time?

‘Caseworker’ is an ugly word and ‘case management’ sounds like you might get a penalty notice if you say you didn’t go to school today. Both words are misleading, I feel, to the down-to-earth approach caseworkers use in assisting youth who have a hard time staying connected at school. For the past six years youthconnections.com.au staff have walked into countless schools, homes, cinemas and skate parks to befriend these young people and empower them to swing their life back around—or to at least take steps in the right direction.

“We found for lots of young people, the move from primary to high school was a trigger for disengagement,” says Youth Connections Programme manager Lyn Cooper. So in 2010 the Youth Connections Programme (not to be confused with the organisation) widened its age bracket—11 to 19 years—in order to support youth through this transition. And although assisting young people to stay connected with education, alternate or mainstream, is high on the programme’s agenda, it is never expected that the outcomes for one person will be the same as another.

“We work with each young person to set outcomes depending on their situation,” says Lyn. For some, removing barriers like homelessness, low self-esteem and alcohol and drug abuse before they reconnect with education is a huge outcome. But in order to know what’s getting in a young person’s way, you have to be a good listener.

“They really listened and tried hard to get to know me,” says Tyler Johnson, a previous Youth Connections client, “So I felt comfortable with being honest about where I was at in life.” You wouldn’t know it but Tyler dropped out of school in year 8—now so confidently spoken and near completion of his first year in a full-time horticulture apprenticeship with McRae’s Gardens.

“School wasn’t working but I knew I didn’t want to be a drop kick on the street,” says Tyler. So after meeting with a Youth Connection’s caseworker, Tyler decided to complete his year 9 and 10 through the alternative education programme POEMs and then began year 11 through Skills Pathway for Youth (SPY). It was during his time at SPY that Tyler met with YC Industry Link and was offered a School-based Traineeship in horticulture at Green Central. This led into a full-time position and sparked Tyler’s dream to run his own landscaping business, which, Tyler assures me, is still the plan.

To have a future plan, you need support in the moment, someone to help when you’re vulnerable; when your underbelly’s exposed and you’ve got no one.

“You lose all your friends when you leave school,” says Tyler, “S o when you’ve got that one person to stay connected with, telling you when different courses are on; it was the only thing keeping me motivated.”

Clients 2010/2011: 730 • Established: 2006 • Funding: Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations+ Obrian. G (ed.). (2011). Intentional connections: learning to grow from children. Indiana: iUniverse15

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igreen

Established: 2009 • Student completion: 18 • Programme partners: Dusseldorp Skills Forum, Steplight Foundation, Tuggerah Lakes Community College

green roomEmerging industries like sustainability have presented countless job opportunities for young people, especially in home sustainability. Not surprisingly, youthconnections.com.au investigated it quick smart and since 2009 has been delivering igreen, a nationally recognised training course and home energy audit programme offering households advice on energy and water efficiency and equipping young people with green skills. In 2010 youthconnections.com.au was able to provide its full-time and School-based Apprentices at Green Central the chance to complete the course onsite in the sustainable house and education centre. These sustainable solutions spaces are green rooms, offering education training

and employment in the industry. The house features a five kilowatt solar power system, a solar hot water

system, a one kilowatt wind turbine, 10,000 litres of water storage, an eco toilet, energy efficient

lighting and appliances and sustainable gardens.

21-year-old onsite carpentry apprentice Blake Wilson was one of the apprentices who completed the accredited Home Sustainability Assessment course through igreen. The course provides young people with training in customer service, OH&S and teaches them to read power meters and give reports on power usage. “People don’t realise that 10% of your annual electricity bill is just from household appliances left on standby,” says Wilson. And with soaring electricity prices Wilson suggests more Central Coast residents and businesses would benefit from having such information. Now completing the second year of his apprenticeship with LL Frame & Truss Pty Ltd in Gosford, Wilson

hopes to unite his trade and recently acquired green skills in the future. “I want to combine

carpentry skills and sustainable design practices, so when I build peoples’

houses they can save money and look after the

environment.”

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connectorsto work with your handsThe satisfactions of manifesting oneself concretely in the world through manual competence have been known to make a man quiet and easy. They seem to relieve him of the felt need to offer chattering interpretations of himself to vindicate his worth. He can simply point: the building stands, the car now runs, the lights are on.

Matthew B. Crawford, an excerpt from the essay Shop Class as Soulcraft: An inquiry into the value of work 2009

Chaise Selwyn is only 16 but he is a craftsman in the making. Sitting inside The Coolamon, we are surrounded by tables he helped build and we stare out the window at a BBQ he, along with others, laid the bricks for. “Each tabletop only took about 30 mins,” Chaise says coolly.

Learning inside a classroom, with no practical application, was never going to be the right environment for Chaise. So when not showing up was becoming a regular pattern, Chaise was introduced to youthconnections.com.au’s Transition to Connectors programme, where he talked over different education options and his career interests. Driven by his passion to get a job in construction, Chaise decided he wanted to complete his School Certificate, and as going back to mainstream schooling wasn’t the best option, Chaise was offered an opportunity to attain it through Connectors, youthconnections.com.au’s alternative education programme for year 9 and 10 students. Connectors also chatted with YC Industry Link and lined up a spot for Chaise in a six-week prevocational Bricklaying Course at Green Central, where he got his white card, and completed work experience with yG enterprise renovating a tourism information centre at The Entrance.

Now Chaise is enrolled in TradeStart doing a year 11 equivalent and, who would have guessed, working towards a Certificate II in Construction at TAFE.

Established: 2006 • Students enrolled in 2010: 6519

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lear ningworkplace

Employers who host students may not realise the integral part they play in a young person’s voyage to becoming work ready. They turn a tightrope journey into a waltz, where, thanks also to the support of schools and the work placement team, youth learn to find their feet in the workplace.

The work placement team liaises with schools and employers to provide students, studying a vocational subject as part of their HSC, a one-week, unpaid placement in a relevant industry environment.

They undergo it with the professionalism of a top-notch concierge and the efficiency of a chic restaurant kitchen on opening night. Their excellent repute with over 2000 Central Coast businesses comes down to one key factor: they know them. They know what times of the year is best for them to take students, they know whether they prefer the paperwork emailed or faxed, and best of all, they know and promote their business.

But little do employers know that when they decline to take students, not only have they lost an extra set of skilled hands for the week and the opportunity to screen a potential employee, they just missed out on one of the most effective marketing strategies available to boost their business: Deb Thompson.

Whether it’s a stack of business cards in her top draw, putting up advertisements in the staff lunchroom or organising a bunch of friends to try out a local restaurant’s new menu on Friday night, Deb Thompson, manager of Structured Workplace Learning makes it her ambition to support the businesses that support students. And she encourages her team and the rest of the organisation to do the same.

So it was no sweat off the work placement team’s back when Green

Central had over 40 young tradies ready and waiting to find new host employers

to continue their apprenticeship. Work placement knew the businesses to call. They also arranged work placement for 65

structured

Established: 1995 • Central Coast Students placed from January 2010 – July 2011: 4,400 • Sydney students placed from January 2010 – July 2011: 1,920 • Funding: NSW Board of Vocational Education and Training

feet findingconstruction and eight metals & engineering students who worked onsite at Green Central, gaining real, on-the-job experience they never would have gotten on another work site. And don’t forget the overabundance of entertainment students walking through the doors of the new media centre each week. The work placement team are behind that too.

On top of all this, the work placement team, in conjunction with Pathway Advocate Manager Ashley McGeorge, place over 40 students with learning support needs each year. To celebrate these students’ successful completion of 35 hours of on-the-job training, youthconnections.com.au hosts an annual awards evening: The Pathway Advocate Awards. The evening’s success lies in its favoured performances – last year T-Team and Skool’s Out students performed a Welcome, Fruit Picking, Kangaroo and Farewell dance, accompanied by Gavi Duncan on didgeridoo and clapsticks – and the rightful recognition of these young people as proud, employable members of our community.

However, the work placement team doesn’t just further employment options for the Central Coast region. Now they rub shoulders with Sydney employers. Since 2010 youthconnections.com.au has managed work placement for students of the Lower Northern Sydney region. And as way of getting to know other Sydney providers and learning from each other about issues such as, how to best place students with special needs and new ideas to reward employers, youthconnections.com.au’s work placement team hosted its first Structured Workplace Learning meeting for the whole of New South Wales at Green Central.

It’s not uncommon to walk into youthconnections.com.au’s office and see a business services work placement student at reception answering phones or setting up for the next meeting in the boardroom, or an IT student buried behind a pile of computers busily tinkering away. The work placement team doesn’t just encourage other employers to take on students; they arrange them for youthconnections.com.au as well. Deb Thompson makes sure of that.

big noiseorchestra

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Established: March 2010 • Participants: 10 • Funding: Wyong Shire Council, Better Futures, For the Love of Music + Australian Bureau of Statistics, Census of Population and Housing, 2006 21

to play and to fightIn my view, the root cause of all our social problems is exclusion. We must fight to ensure that a large number of people, everyone if that’s possible, have access to this wonderful world. The world of music…

Dr. Jose Antonio Abreu, founder of El Sistema, youth and children’s orchestras of Venezuela

When a young boy living on the streets of Venezuela began picking up his clarinet instead of a gun, El Sistema (the system) proved music was a powerful tool for social change. Initiated by Dr. Jose Antonio Abreu in the violent slums of Venezuela, El Sistema is an orchestral programme giving free music lessons to children who otherwise would have little opportunities in life. Beginning with just 11 children, El Sistema now tutors over 300,000 children in classical music and its National Youth Orchestra, made up of the best musicians, tours worldwide to sell-out crowds.

Deeply moved by the work of El Sistema, youthconnections.com.au, the Central Coast Conservatorium and Wyong Shire Council collaborated to develop The Big Noise, a youth orchestra offering early school leavers free tuition on an instrument of their choice and as a means of encouraging them back into education. A timely pursuit, considering only 31% of Central Coast youth were completing year 12 or equivalent.+

Twins Lydia and Santina Casablanca joined The Big Noise after dropping out of school in year nine. Up until then they’d shared a lot: a womb, a broken family life, bruised self-esteems from education and an ever–growing, intrinsic love of music. Both had never received music lessons until The Big Noise. Santina picked the guitar. Lydia chose the harp. Both admit music has helped them through the tough parts of life.

“It lifts you up when you’re down,” begins Santina.

“And keeps your soul alive,” adds Lydia.

In June 2010, the youth orchestra braved the stage for its inaugural performance.

The twins continue to play music, write songs together and now attend ALESCO at Green Central to attain their year 10 Certificate. And although RnB, namely the Backstreet Boys, is still their music of choice, since joining the orchestra Santina and Lydia haven’t forgotten its classical melodies or how it changed their lives.

“I’ve kept playing what I learnt and I’d like to get more guitar lessons when I can afford it,” says Santina.

“Music is something you live with and through. It really can change you,” states Lydia.

When El Sistema was asked, “Why classical music?” a tutor replied, “Popular music wouldn’t work. These children watch their parents get drunk to this music; see violence on the streets listening to its melodies. Classical music isn’t their past or their present. It teaches them change.” El Sistema’s motto is para jugar y luchar, ‘to play and to fight.’ To fight against the music of your past and play along to a new future.

Clients: 73 • Established: 2008 • Location: Green Central • Funding: Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations • + Lofts, P. (Ed.). (1995). The echidna and the shade tree. Sydney: Scholastic Books

connectkoor i…I had heard the story about this giant river and I think that, from the air, it would look like a tree with roots stretching out.

Mona Green, Djaru Tribe, Halls Creek, Western Australia+

When Gavi Duncan of Koori Connect started teaching a group of Indigenous youth that a weed isn’t necessarily bad, they didn’t understand. “How can something I’ve known my whole life be wrong?” they asked. Sometimes unlearning can be harder than learning. So when Koori Connect teach Aboriginal young people that it’s okay to be Aboriginal, it’s life-changing.

“Everything had a place, in the bush, in the community, even as an individual person,” Gavi tells me, as he pries open a Bunya nut and pulls out a creamy pod. He hands me a bit and continues to talk, “Everything belonged and was viewed as one.” This traditional Aboriginal perspective, of people and nature spiritually coexisting, was taught alongside a European or scientific approach to nature conservation in a six-week Conservation and Land Management course.

“They got the best of both worlds,” says Gavi. By the end of the course, the 10 participating students could identify plants scientifically by name and the shape of their leaves, and also traditionally, by knowing their use medicinally and its seasonal significance. Students also helped create an Aboriginal interpretive walk at Green Central using both principles.

The course also focused on Aboriginal cultural practice. Students made gunyas (traditional houses), spears and clubs as a way of strengthening their identity. Gavi says for some of the young guys, it provided a lot of healing, “All of these boys didn’t go to school anymore and most came from tough family situations, so learning about their culture and how to look after country helped heal their mind, body and spirit.”

At the completion of the course the boys not only received a Statement of Attainment in a Certificate II in Conservation and Land Management, most went on to gain apprenticeships, engaged in further study or even went back to school.

Affirming young Aboriginal men and women in who they are so they can move forward in life is the deeply ingrained philosophy of Koori Connect. They unite young people with their culture through many means including art, music and dance. Now based at Green Central, Koori Connect continues to run its programme through high schools across the Central Coast, together with an additional cultural awareness programme – Deadly Booris (a Wiradjuri word meaning youth) – for Indigenous students in schools to boost their self-esteem and encourage friendship building among peers.

“It’s always there,” says Koori Connect Manager Kylie Cassidy about young peoples’ sense of identity, “I t’s just that each person’s path is different so they need some cultural perspective to help them see it.”

If you saw a river could you see a tree?

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enterpr iseygBuy a young per son a jobSocial enterprise isn’t a business model it’s a state of mind.

The Nottingham Social Enterprise Hub, United Kingdom +

When I pull up in my once-white-now-beige mud-crusted 4WD 21-year-old Aaron “Rossi” Ross smiles politely and directs me where to park. He then proceeds, with clipboard in hand, to look over my vehicle, notes a few scratches and ‘adventure’ dings and has me sign on the dotted line.“The interior and exterior will be finished in 45 minutes,” Rossi says matter-of-factly. He glances at the mud still dripping from the tyres, “To an hour,” he suddenly adds.

Up until that day I’d never paid someone to wash my car, nor seen it so clean as after Rossi was finished with it. Encouraging the community to help stop youth joblessness innovatively through its car wash, concreting, catering, metals and engineering, media and events, horticulture and mechanics business, yout hconnections.com.au is now looking to social enterprises to provide entrepreneurial skills and fill employment gaps for local young people, especially those who are most disadvantaged and vulnerable in our community. As part of the ‘Local Jobs for Local Apprentices’ initiative, youthconnections.com.au began a collective of various social enterprises under the umbrella yG enterprise Pty Ltd. Blurring the lines between public, private and not-for-profit, the model of a social enterprise seeks to make money for a social purpose. All earnings made by yG enterprise Pty Ltd go towards the employment of new apprentices and trainees within each enterprise.

In August of 2010, Rossi was employed to begin yG enterprise Car Cleaning, a waterless car detailing service based at Green Central. Initially cleaning the organisation’s fleet cars and staff vehicles, yG enterprise Car Cleaning now services a wide range of clientele across the Coast, has cleaned the interior and exterior of nearly 100 cars and employed three young people to assist with the business’s growth.

yG enterprise Concrete Services was a springboard for many local young people into further employment or training options. Apart from hiring two apprentices to achieve their Certificate II in Concreting, who successfully found full-time work with new employers, yG enterprise Concrete Services also trained 12 young people who were neither at school or employed, in a prevocational course concreting a public footpath in Wyong. During the four-week course, the participants dug trenches to expose existing services, built the formwork, prepared and poured the concrete and received a Statement of Attainment in a Certificate II in Concreting Services at the completion of the course. “I’m really stoked,” said Al Ives of yG enterprise Concrete Services two weeks into the job, “One third of the boys are recently released inmates and I couldn’t be happier with the progress.” yG enterprise Concrete Services also completed earthmoving for a community garden in Wyoming and concreted several residential driveways and wheelchair access ramps at Green Central.

yG enterprise Pty Ltd and all its entities are located at Green Central, continuing to proudly provide competitive, professional services to the public. Who would of thought the simple act of getting your car washed could affect social change and buy more jobs for local young people.

Established: 2010 • Total SBATs employed + volunteers/workplacement students engaged: 93 • Funded: Self generated funds +William. S. (2011, July 18). Restaurant to employ people with Mental Health Problems. Retrieved from http://sehub.posterous.com25

brokersHow many Partnership Brokers (PBs) does it take to change a light bulb? None – if they’re doing their job right they’ll get community to do it for them. Being a good PB is about bringing the right people and the right resources together and walking away. “Essentially, I do nothing for a living,” PB Manager Marcus Watson says wryly. “It’s all about empowering community to think for itself and work together,” he continues. Despite what Marcus may say, he and his team work extremely hard. They work collectively with community and independently as facilitators. They are dream-catchers and dream-sharers. Foragers of innovation, new alternatives and sifters of fickle time wasters. They are problem solvers. Hunters and gatherers with wide eyes and a keen ear pressed to the ground, ever listening and learning about the needs of the whole community. They are committed to the philosophy that community works best as a fundamentally connected web of relationships, rather than atomistic agents. However, is it too idealistic to think PBs across the country can form ‘partnerships’ of diverse stakeholders, slip away, take none of the glory and the wheels magically keep turning? “It’s a really hard balancing act,” says Marcus. “As a PB you never want to find yourself an integral part of the partnership, in that when it’s time to walk away all the skill, or ability, knowledge and drive remain.” The ultimate aim is for a partnership to be self-sustaining.

So what if a PB was a place rather than a person? If a kind of PB utopia existed without ego, control or pretence, naturally luring and organising community, industry and schools into a driven, team-playing force? Enter Green Central. This regionally accessible site, smack bang between Sydney and Newcastle, was intentionally created not only to provide many apprenticeships and traineeships for local youth but as a resource for the entire community. Its only agenda: extend learning beyond the classroom, increase student engagement and HSC attainment and broadly improve educational outcomes for all youth. Perhaps the partnership most heavily inspired (or ensnared) by Green Central to date is what became known as The Horticulture Advisory Committee. Representatives from Agrifood Skills Australia, Department of Education and Community (DEC), McRae’s Gardens, Nursery and Garden Industry, Ramm Botanicals and youthconnections.com.au make up this highly motivated group who observed that young people weren’t choosing careers in horticulture and that Green Central could be the missing link that the region needed to grow the industry and to gain access to a prime, currently inaccessible labour force: youth.

Since setting foot onsite at Green Central the Horticulture Advisory Committee have been unstoppable. In September of 2010 they organised a Horticulture Try’aTrade day at the Australian Springtime Flora Festival. And it wasn’t just about getting your hands dirty, Bob Wynyard of Nursery and Garden Industry NSW & ACT told me. “We really wanted youth to get an idea of the kinds of things they’d be doing if they chose a trade in the industry,” he said. Over seven schools from the region brought their students to learn about landscape construction, garden maintenance, plant propagation, growing plants, garden design and of course choosing a career. The wheels are already in motion for another Horticulture Try’aTrade at the end of 2011, this time at Green Central. Students will be able to walk through the flourishing greenhouse, pick veggies from the food forest and perhaps get a glimpse of him or herself as a landscaper, gardener, groundskeeper or even a nursery hand.

Green Central as a partnership broker has united many. “It allowed us to bring partners who normally wouldn’t work with each other, around something, and they all got equal value out of it,” says Marcus.Other partnerships onsite included Learning Option Centres running conservation and land management, construction pathways and horticulture courses for young people who weren’t at school, in a job or participating in further study. Much like Green Central, PBs are all about ‘big picture’ stuff; how together with community they can fill gaps or make openings in society’s fabric to create positive change. But what they love even more is when formed partnerships turn to them and say, “We don’t need you any more.”

Established: 2010 • Self-sustaining projects to date: 16 • Funding: Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations 28

Green Cent ral is a better Par tnership Broker than you areschool, business & community

partnership

INDIGEnOUSskills centre

Established: 2011 • Participants: 54 • Funded: Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations+Ford. L (Ed.). (2008). The Fourth Factor: Managing Corporate Culture. Indianapolis: Dog Ear Publishing

Be the change you want to see in the world.

Mohandas Ghandi+

A water ing hole that ’s a wellProtruding like a swollen lump from the body of a tree, a coolamon is an Aboriginal storage vessel that is commonly cut away from stringybarks, bloodwood or mahogany trees, hollowed out and traditionally used by women to gather bushfoods and carry water or a baby. For Green Central, The Coolamon is a place to learn skills, a ‘watering hole’ to grab a coffee and similarly, a place to seek refuge and be carried by another during the tough parts of life.

A facet of the Indigenous Skills Centre, The Coolamon is a hospitality training facility for the Central Coast Aboriginal community, allowing them to gain skills and provide work experience opportunities. It remains nestled in the centre of Green Central humming like a heart, as people and communities flow through it daily.

If you were to sit in the back corner of The Coolamon, discreetly observing the jostling vista before you, you would witness: a frenzy of young people—baristas in training—texturing milk, swirling patterns, tampering coffee- cookies and sliding along an ever growing paper train of dockets; a carousel of volunteers circling tables—their joyous kookaburra laughs pausing only to clear, wipe or take an order; the never-ending act of table-tetris to include new or old friends who walk through the doors. But perhaps what is most noticeable, and appealing, about this place is that it’s run by women—beautiful, strong, laughing Aboriginal women.

“Kids come here when they want to learn how to cook or they’re interested in hospitality, but some just know there’s a bunch of us Aunties here that’ll listen to ‘em and give ‘em advice,” says Kelly Godden, proud Dharug woman and volunteer at The Coolamon. Culturally sensitive training is paramount to every vocational course offered at The Indigenous Skills Centre, including The Coolamon, which delivers a Certificate II in Hospitality. To ensure this and by way of opportunity for the Indigenous community to determine their own economic future and further their employment options, The Indigenous Skills Centre is primarily run by Indigenous people.

“I think The Coolamon is going to be part of a network, a hub for all Aboriginal people,” says Alison Preece, a proud Wiradjuri woman and staff member. While they are busy listening and bettering the lives of the Aboriginal community one barista training course at a time, the passion of these women doesn’t stop there, it continues, is effortless, and their sincerity is measureless; like a well with depths so deep, they are fathomless.

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Finding the whole in communityIt’s no surprise this fast-paced programme has the acronym PaCE—Parents and Community Engagement—as its momentum to get more and more Aboriginal parents participating in their child’s education shows no signs of slowing down.

The programme aims to encourage Aboriginal families living on the Peninsula to get involved with their school community by volunteering in the canteen, uniform shop or class reading groups. Parents are also invited to participate in their school’s P&C.

Over the life of the programme, PaCE’s engagement with parents has proved hugely influential to the positive progress of their child’s engagement in school. “Sometimes parents’ own experience of school, especially if it was a negative one, can prevent them from being involved,” says Bobbi Murray, PaCE coordinator. “But I have seen firsthand what it does to some kids behaviour and focus in school when their parent participates in some way.”

PaCE also plans to partner with The Coolamon to offer parents barista training so they can volunteer their time and skills at school cafés, such as the bush tucker café at Brisbane Water Secondary College – Umina Campus, and increase community cohesion.

PaCE is the shoulder for parents and schools to lean on. It’s a strong, unselfish soul that keeps the Peninsula community healthy and whole.

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parent and community engagement

Established: 2010 • Participating families: 10 new parents per school term • Partners: NSW Aboriginal Educational Consultative Group Inc. (AECG), Brisbane Water Learning Community, Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations and

youthconnections.com.au • Participating Schools: Brisbane Water Secondary College – Woy Woy campus, Brisbane Water Secondary – Umina campus, Ettalong Public School, Empire Bay Public School, St John the Baptist School, Umina Public School,

Woy Woy Public School, Woy Woy South Public School

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Established: 2004 • Participants: Eight projects with ten or less per yearFunded: NSW Board of Vocational Education and Training31

POW! THWACK!Battling a virus for four hours or ripping two broken computers apart to construct one that works would bore some to tears, but for VET IT students it’s when heroes—of a technological mind—are born.

Community Enterprise Projects (CEPs) focus on providing Central Coast students, studying a vocational subject at school, such as tourism, IT and event management, with projects to advance their skills and clarify perceptions of their chosen industry.

“Some businesses can’t offer school students the real hands-on stuff,” says Reagan Campbell, coordinator of IT CEPs. “Sometimes they just end up working on excel spreadsheets,” he continues, “But here, students pull things apart, upgrade software, reformat; basically get a solid feel for the job.”

Like superheroes, saving staff computers from deadly viruses by day and changing their friends’ relationship status on Facebook by night; Reagan and his many student side kicks assist community organisations, including youthconnections.com.au, with free computer repairs, setup and support services. And thanks to Computer Bank Hunter, local students can continue their heroic work using the 28 PCs generously donated. YC Media is another proud partner of CEPs, particularly IT, offering their studio facilities at Green Central as a haven to many computer-tinkering students.

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How could someone not fit in? The community was so meticulously ordered, the choices so carefully made.

Lois Lowry+

You learn about perimeters in school – literally and figuratively. Learning that pi is the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter is equally as valuable as finding out Kronic (synthetic marijuana) became illegal in Western Australia this year. It’s the facts. The stuff that’s going on around you. ALESCO – a Latin word meaning to nurture, to grow – leans a little more toward ‘perspective’ rather than ‘prohibitive’ with its classroom philosophy. It’s an alternate learning option for year 9 and 10 students who haven’t found mainstream schooling conducive to learning. ALESCO isn’t a school for dummies, a halfway house or a prison. It builds self-esteem in education. For many it’s a new beginning. I took a seat in one of their classrooms and although no one puts their hand up to ask a question, every one of those students had walked out of a classroom for good once upon a time and now, of their own accord, have walked back in.

A light rail that runs on unicorn dust a short story

Can we make a no smoking rule? Students sit up from their desks to eyeball their classmate. That’s f****d says one. When you’re designing your sustainable city, says the teacher, remember they’re reality land, not fantasy land. We have safe injecting rooms in our cities, the teacher continued. Students keep sketching their birds-eye-view drawings, lifting their heads occasionally to check the list of requirements on the board: sewerage, social justice, recycling, water management, transport and clean power. Someone’s phone rings. The new guy. His ring tone cops a beating from the student-jury. Next time take the call outside says the teacher. A student from the class down the causeway steps into the room. He eyes out his mate. I’m going to Gosford, he says, leaning over his mate. Hands on the back of his chair. Another paper ball lands in the bin and the microwave beeps. Na mate can’t, he responds, I’m stayin’ outta trouble. His pen not leaving the page. The student shifts his weight from his mate’s chair to the wall. See ya then ay, he says, as he steps out the door. You can’t just have mansions and Footlocker stores either, says the teacher. He winks at the student who didn’t walk out with his mate. Why do we have Wally’s World? The teacher asks. Cause you can flog stuff, one student yells. Because it’s cheap, corrected the teacher, you need a balanced economy in your city. A student pulls her meat pie from the microwave. There’s tomato sauce if you want it, says the teacher. The student shakes her head. How’s this? A student holds up his page to the teacher. Where’s your public transport? Asks the teacher. And how are you going to power your city? I don’t want cars, says the student. Good, responds the teacher. I think I want to have a light rail, says the student. But I guess it can’t run on unicorn dust, ay?

year 10 campusalesco

Established: 2011 • Students enrolled (year 10): 34 • Partners: Tuggerah Lakes Community College, youthconnections.com.au+ (1993) The Giver. New York: Houghton Mifflin Company 34

freedom

Participating Schools: Brisbane Water Secondary College – Woy Woy Campus, Cowra High School, Dubbo High School, Gilgandra High School, Gorokan High School, Henry Kendall High School, Kincumber High School, MacKillop Catholic College, St Edward’s

College, Wyong High School • Student Freedom Riders: 24 • Major funding partners: The Australian Heritage Council, NSW Government Department of Planning and Infrastructure, Transdev Shorelink Buses and youthconnections.com.au

We remember the ‘forgotten people’The best solutions are the ones communities come up with themselves.

Larissa Behrendt, Director of Research at the Jumbunna Indigenous House of Learning at the University of Technology Sydney +

Gamilaroi and Darkinjung man Gavi Duncan and Wiradjuri women Kylie Cassidy and Denise Markham, are the few people I know who could chat about taking a busload of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal school students around New South Wales to retrace the Freedom Ride of 1965 over a cup of tea and then make it happen.

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Project Partners: Catholic Education, NSW Department of Education and Communities, YC Media • Towns visited: Sydney, Orange, Wellington, Dubbo, Gulargambone, Walgett, Collarenebri, Moree, Boggabilla, Warwick, Tenterfield, Glen Innes, Inverell,

Grafton, Lismore, Cabbage Tree Island, Coffs Harbour, Bowraville, Kempsey, Taree, Newcastle + (personal communication at public debate on constitutional recognition of Indigenous Australians, Sydney, March 22, 2011) 36

When the bus full of smiling students vigorously waving flags into a flashing myriad of black, red and yellow, drove through the gates of Green Central and began its 2300km journey, not many in the crowd would have known the preparation that went on in the months leading up to that moment. Koori Connect staff made hundreds of phone calls and sent hundreds of emails to the Aboriginal and wider community of each town to arrange accommodation, meals, community activities and traditional ceremonies. They consulted Elders, sourced funding and rallied government and community support. They even found time to craft a kangaroo-skin petition book and carve a message stick from mulga emblazoned with 21 feet that symbolised the 21 towns of the journey.

But if Gavi, Kylie and Denise (A.K.A Koori Connect) were writing this story, they wouldn’t want you to know that either. Instead they would want you to know that as a result of visiting the same rural and urban towns as Charlie Perkins in ‘65, their journey brought a new sense of hope to a people who needed to know they existed. “We were like the rain on a 20 year drought for some of those places,” says Gavi, “T hey thought they were the forgotten people.” These three would also want you to know that despite the poverty, poor health and housing and loss of culture in some towns, they were welcomed by strong, determined, proud Aboriginal people, and that they saw faces and heard stories they can’t forget. So they’re going back, as the job is not done and the journey is certainly not over.

It has only been four months since they stepped off that bus and the Freedom Riders are doing everything in their power to re-engage with those communities and have many a plan in motion. After making such a strong connection with the community of Collarenebri (and learning how to spell it), the Freedom Riders have invited homegrown youth rap sensation ‘The Colli Crew’ (Youtube it!) to perform during NAIDOC week at Gosford Showground in July. They’ll also camp out at Green Central one night during their stay and enjoy delicious meals thanks to The Coolamon. Then in August, Koori Connect and youthconnections.com.au’s Denise Markham (now Indigenous Partnership Broker) will join Gosford City Council’s Walgett Cultural Exchange trip. This excursion is for Central Coast Aboriginal students from primary schools in the Gosford local government to represent their school in the Ricky Walford Shield rugby league and Jenny Wright Shield netball carnival. Together with these young people, Koori Connect and youthconnections.com.au will spend a week playing sport, running Aboriginal art workshops, re-engaging with members of the Walgett community, sharing the Freedom Ride journey with Walgett High and listening to the community’s Aboriginal Elders and connecting them with their local Partnership Brokers to help them address needs of the area. “We want Walgett to have a bit of what we’ve got up here,” says Kylie.

Then in September the Freedom Riders will meet with FaHCSIA’s entire Expert Panel on constitutional recognition of Indigenous Australians and present them with the kangaroo-skin petition book and message stick containing the views of all 21 communities regarding constitutional change.

In October, the Freedom Riders will also return to Wellington with students from ALESCO to help refurbish a rundown church given to the Wellington Aboriginal community. Once renovated, it will be used as a recreational facility for local youth struggling with drug and alcohol addictions.

The proactive nature of Gavi, Kylie and Denise and their continual efforts to help Aboriginal and wider communities help each other, puts most of us to shame. When Arrernte and Anmatjere woman Rosalie Kunoth-Monks, from Utopia in the Northern Territory, was asked how can people help stop the Northern Territory Intervention, she turned and asked, “What do you think of us? What do you think of Aboriginal people?” Her words were said with warmth and ease, but hit you in the stomach like lead. “Start there,” she added, “A nd see where it takes you.”

Before you go down a path of making change for others you have to change yourself. Because change, real change, happens when we are moved by a deep compassion and humility; when we put ourselves freely in someone else’s place knowing it could have been us instead; when our actions speak so loudly that we never have to utter, “You are not the forgotten people.” That’s what Gavi, Kylie and Denise would really want you to know.

The Freedom Riders extend their deep thanks to all of the communities for their generous hospitality and to the Elders for welcoming them to country; to the many, many people who were a vital part in making it happen. And to all those who followed the journey from home, thank you, you know who you are.

A one-hour documentary of the Freedom Ride 2011, filmed, edited and produced by YC Media, will be launched at Green Central and coincide with the ride’s first year anniversary.

Keep following the journey: www.facebook.com/freedomride2011

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Media beast - everything mediaYou know that student in class who has earphones permanently glued to their eardrums? Or has better use for a pencil playing syncopated rhythms than using it to write with? They also generally have a gift-of-the-gab. Some even manage a smooth, booming voice that somehow skipped the high-pitched hurdles of puberty. The Central Coast seems to produce a gamut of these freakishly talented young people who really were made for the entertainment industry. YC Media, formally known as YC Radio, is a rare beast on the coast hunting out these wayward characters and giving them a good push in the right direction.

Still turning classroom evilness into industry goodness, YC Media is now comfortably nestled in at Green Central with a new recording studio, several editing booths, makeup rooms, a production room, studio floor, a resident artist and a singular focus on multimedia that’s in full force. Oh, and a hunger for more youth-produced radio programmes of course.

But despite enjoying the upgrade and new location, YC Media’s manager Marg, fondly remembers the programme’s humble beginnings. “A lot came out of that little shack at Bateau Bay,” she says, staring down at her watermelon gumboots. “I remember the day my team was in three different places: one was photographing an event, another was doing a first time live feed from a fashion show and another had our OB van out on the road. And I had work placement students back in the studio doing phone interviews on air with CoastFM963. We’d never done that before!”

Last year, YC Radio snapped up the VET in Schools Excellence Award at the 2010 NSW Training Awards, for its ingenuity in offering hundreds of Central Coast Vocational Education & Training (VET) entertainment students industry experience to complete their compulsory 35 hour work placement. To add to this growing list of 2010 accolades, YC Media also mic’ed and recorded The Big Noise Youth Orchestra for their debut performance, shot and edited a feature with custom graphic disks for NAISDA Dance College, did the graphics for a number of events, as well as website design, logos and a handful of annual reports and managed the sound, lighting and filming for many Central Coast events including the third annual Central Coast Cook Off. All with the assistance of entertainment students, busily working behind the scenes. Naturally.

There are big plans ahead with the new studio floor. Who knows, maybe hosting a future ABC Q&A programme isn’t too far off? I do know that YC Media certainly isn’t shying away from offering local youth genuine opportunities to be producers, radio presenters, copywriters, stagehands, techys, event hosts and is ultimately inspiring them to become creative, cutting edge media-makers.

Established: 2009 • Partners: Department of Human Services, NSW Department of Education and Communities, Central Coast schools, CoastFM963, Manufactured Homes Insurance Agency • Work Placement students to date: 500 • Hard-working

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TradeStart out in frontSitting in a circle calling out as many different synonyms for genitalia as possible, would make an instant recluse out of most of us. Not TradeStart students. When Youth Booth, a health screening service aimed at young learners who may be homeless or marginalised in some way, visited students on campus at Green Central, it not only brought them out of their shell, it united them as a group.

“It’s a fun way of getting open discussion happening about important matters relating to sexual health and how they can make safe choices,” says Paul Riviere, clinical nurse consultant of Central Coast Health and coordinator of Youth Booth.

youthconnections.com.au and Central Coast Health have partnered together for the past four years to provide Youth Booth and support youth in making informed choices about their health and wellbeing. On the day, students received information from health care professionals about drugs and alcohol, asthma, mental health, sexual health, dental and immunisation and were offered general checkups.

“We also give them a Medicare card so they can continue receiving health care services,” says Paul. Youth Booth is just one example of the local community banding together to ensure TradeStart students look after themselves. Even Kariong Fire Brigade drops in.

TradeStart is a year 11 learning option offering students the opportunity to attain a certificate II in a vocational area of their choice, such as hairdressing, automotive, metals & engineering, construction and horticulture and have a productive exit point into further work or study at the end of one year.

TradeStart is a partnership between host school Erina High School, NSW Department of Education and Communities, Hunter Institute of TAFE and youthconnections.com.au

Established: 2011 • Students enrolled: 30

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Established: 2009 • Participants per term 2010/11: 46 • Funding: Family and Community Services – Ageing, Disability and Homecare • + (1998). Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom. United Kingdom: HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.

The elegant life of JishThe hunger to belong is not merely a desire to be attached to something. It is rather sensing that great transformation and discovery become possible when belonging is sheltered and true.

John O’Donohue+

Jish displays the kind of devotion to elegance that would put a peacock to shame. His carefully drawn-on beard is without smudge or smear. In a room full of school jumpers and sports jackets with zippers, Jish stands quietly confident in his black vest and collared shirt buttoned to the top. He doesn’t care that no one else is dressed up. Every week he comes to Skool’s Out and adheres to the same aesthetic extravagance—enjoying the sheer pleasure of dressing dandyishly.

Skool’s Out loves Jish and the way he pursues the manner of a gentleman; it is a kind of compass, a light directing others away from sameness in order to find belonging. Skool’s Out sews this philosophy deeply into its after-school care programme. It gives students with learning support needs a fun environment to socialise in—form new friendships—and be free to find themselves.

“There’s no bullying here,” says Serena, who attends every Thursday. “I love it because we’re all the same,” she adds, while smothering glue over a skinny gum leaf and carefully pressing it to her page.

Today everyone is making bush collages (or dancing in the front room). Bags of rocks, leaves, sand and bark are strewn along the table. Eager hands dive into each one, surfacing with fistfuls, dirt falling through their fingers. Somebody snorts but it doesn’t matter here. Jish begins stroking his texta-beard—that once started as just a moustache—and hums to the music as it enters the room.

Soon Skool’s Out students will be able to sing songs to the gum trees and wander along the rock-bordered paths of Green Central, searching for new tiny things to adorn their next page, that is, when they’re not on excursions at Luna Park or Jamberoo Recreation Park of course. Surely Jish will come to notice how well dressed the trees are, their tallness and how they stand so straight with their hands by their sides. Before long, Skool’s Out will call Green Central home. They will be familiar with its green sparkle, the glamour of the landscape and belong in the coolness of the shade.

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Established: 2009 • Participants 2010/11: 18 per term • Funding: NSW Department of Human Services, Ageing, Disability and Homecare • + Adkins. K. P. (ed.) (2007). Twelve Stones. Florida: Xulon Press

Itch/ /ScratchI have a simple philosophy. Fill what’s empty. Empty what’s full. And scratch where it itches.

Alice Roosevelt Longworth+

Finding inner contentment can be a lifetime-itch. So, does living with a disability make contentment harder to find? T-Team doesn’t think so. It invites students with disabilities aged 12 to 18 years, from different Central Coast high schools to come together, to embrace their individuality and revel in their friendships.

Shahni is a T-Team goer and fills, empties and scratches like any other. Her life fits the cast of most teenage girls her age. Boys, Facebook, music, iPhones are the pillars of her world. Break-ups, make-ups, ‘what he said’ and ‘what she was wearing’ are a very real part of living. School’s a drag. Looking forward to getting her L’s. Hanging out with friends after school. T- Team this arvo. Sweet.

“She just walked over to some other kids, sat on a beanbag and asked them what their disability was, then said hers, like it was all a natural part of introductions,” says Erin, a T-Team leader.

For Shahni the existence of T-Team means she can gather with like-minded guys and girls who share the profound understanding of what it is to be a teenager with a disability. It is a place to be. Somewhere to share new experiences. Discover the wonder of people, and choose the pace in which she matures; now carefree and adolescent, now established and strong.

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INDIGEnOUSEMPLOYMENT Programme

To give and to learn If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people to collect wood and don’t assign them

tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the immensity of the sea.

Antoine de Saint-Exupery+

“The will to work is there for these young fellas, but they may not have the skills to get the job,” says proud Anaiwan man Wayne “Cookie” Cook, coordinator of the Indigenous Employment Programme (IEP) for youthconnections.com.au. “Or for some,” Cookie continues, “Long-term unemployment is part of a generational circle that needs to be broken...their grandfather could’ve had a labouring job, but their father and uncle might not work. But that’s where we come in,” he says smiling.

In May this year Cookie organised a month-long bricklaying course for a group of long-term unemployed, young Aboriginal men from Western Sydney. “Thirteen of them started and 12 of them finished,” Cookie says, “and two of them went on to full-time work.”

youthconnections.com.au manages the IEP programmes for Western Sydney, The Hunter Valley and the Central Coast. IEPs link with a range of local industries and services, particularly Job Services Australia, to connect with Indigenous Australians who are out of a job and provide them with employment opportunities, along with support and mentorship to achieve long-term employment goals.

“We really don’t want to set people up to fail, or make the idea of getting a job unachievable,” says Cookie, as he tells me about the job readiness courses they run prior to offering positions in prevocational courses or School-based Apprenticeships. The job readiness courses mainly focus on interview and resume skills. “Kids these days are always slouchin’ in their chairs and runnin’ late. I tell ‘em there’s no such thing as ‘Koori Time’ when you’re going for a job,” laughs Cookie.

Getting a job doesn’t just provide skills for a better future or money to cover living costs, a job can impart a deep sense of pride and even restore self worth, qualities which Cookie personally instils in the programme. So imagine a job where Aboriginal young people were employed to teach others about their culture. Starting in September, ten Aboriginal young people will receive on-the-job training as Aboriginal tour guides, whilst attaining a Certificate III in Tourism (Guiding) and guaranteed long-term employment, thanks to the Central Coast IEP, Koori Connect and Aboriginal tourism enterprise Nyanga Walang.

With intent to provide more jobs for young people in the future, Nyanga Walang, meaning to give and to learn, will train local Aboriginal people, 18 years and up, to conduct tours for schools, the general public and international tourists, across the Central Coast. They will learn and in turn share knowledge of the local Darkinjung history by visiting significant heritage sites, rock engraving sites, middens, lagoons, lakes and wetlands. The Aboriginal young people in training will also gain a Statement of Attainment in National Parks Discovery Training, which focuses on site and stone identification. Incorporated into the tours will also be Green Central’s Cultural Walk, where participants can learn about native bush foods and unique survival skills using traditional tools and weapons.

These jobs will enrich the community with history and knowledge of the local area. History, which is still not taught in schools today. And they will not merely be tour guides, but signposts of a people and a culture to long be remembered; pointing proudly out to sea to a whale as it breaches and dives deep below the surface, saying, “There is the sacred totem of the Darkinjung.”

Established: 2011 • Funded: Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations • Courses: Certificate III in Brick and Blocklaying, Certificate III in Conservation and Land Management, Certificate III in Indigenous Tourism, Certificate III in

Hospitality • + (1939) Terre de Hommes (Wind, sand and stars). London: A Harvest Book, Harcourt, Inc.

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