Making a difference with a hands on approach, a local Rotary will celebrate the one year anniversary of a free new youth program being delivered in Boronia this week on Wednesday 17 September.
Tucked away in Boronia Heights, the Boronia Rotary Youth Skills Shed has seen local Rotary working with tradies and volunteering their time every term to teach kids everything from plumbing to bricklaying.
This term’s graduates from Boronia Heights Primary, The Basin Primary and Boronia K-12 will finish up with a fun cooking lesson on hamburgers, but were busy learning how to lay bricks on September 10.
Coordinator of the Shed and Boronia Rotary member Ray Siegersma said 32 kids so far have come through the program.
“This term we have kids from 3 schools, Boronia Heights Primary, The Basin Primary and Boronia K-12,” he said.
“To see the benefit that we are able to give the kids, they’re just really excited about having been through the whole program and they get an opportunity to use tools as well.”
Rotary District Governor Peter Behn attended the bricklaying session on 10 September, said what makes Rotary so proud of the program is the fact that the primary school children have an opportunity to learn a skill that they normally wouldn’t come across at school.
“With qualified trades people that are actually getting them to do the work – it’s a great innovation in a whole range of areas,” he said.
“The Bornia Rotarians, particularly Ray, really wanted to do something a little bit different to help the kids.”
Kids from grade four to six attending the shed have had a go at woodworking, plumbing, electrical, metal work, safe tool handling, concreting, brick laying, tiling, various machine operations and more.
Mr Siegersma said he came up with after feeling he needed to do something more in the community and the idea developed into reality after a conversation with a local assistant school principal.
“It came about from a community activity that I wanted to do, from a family in the school and then we just got talking the assistant principal and myself, out of the conversation, we ended up saying, ‘Well, why don’t do a shed? ‘ he said.
“Get the kids involved through trades.”
Children’s mental health and wellbeing is a big driver of the program, especially after the impact of COVID-19 on student mental health and the Youth Skills Shed has come together with the help of the Boronia Rotary Club, collaboration within the schools and sponsorship and grants from the local community, Mr Siegersma an ex-butcher by trade said he did know a lot of tradespeople was able to utilise them.
“My favourite part is when the kids get engaged and ask lots of questions,” he said.
The kids tend to be quite fascinated and excited by making things from scratch, feeling a lot of pride in what they can create in an hour and half session. The curriculum is quite broad and the Rotary members have come up with a number of projects that teach tool use and creates a take home item each week.
“One of them, in electrical, they do a buzzer, a little buzzer board, and they also make a radio which runs on a battery,” said Mr Siegersma.
“One of the girls at the end came out to her mum and said, ‘We made a radio today’, it doesn’t need the internet,” he said.
The shed aims to capture the interest of kids who may not be as interested in mainstream offerings and instead teaches valuable life skills, which could lead to other jobs later down the line.
“’We’ve had two from the first session, which was the last term last year. They’ve now gone on to secondary school, but they’ve come back past the shed and said, ‘We’re going to be plumbers,’ said Mr Siegersma.
“It’s actually going to give lifelong skills that may even arouse their interest in becoming qualified tradespeople,” said Mr Behn.
During the sessions, the kids get to ask the tradies questions and make something to take home, with clean up at the end an important part of the process.
One participant Blake said that the bricklaying lesson was a lot of fun.
“It’s like stacking Lego and icing a cake all together, ” he said.
The Rotary now hopes to keep expanding the program beyond Boronia.
“You’re investing in the most important people in the world, which are our youth,” said Mr Behn.
