We aim to provide a positive neighborhood drop-in centre for all Wendouree West youth aged between 11-16 years old. We do have several older and younger members at the moment but large numbers mean turning away 1/3 of our current clientele. There are 50+ youth on the books at the moment with approximately 25 attending per day, supervised by one Youth Worker and 2-3 more volunteers daily.

Goals:  The youth are given the opportunity to take responsibility of the Centre and in the programs that we do. All programs are based upon group work and the necessity of working together in order to achieve an outcome. Recently, we have started renovating the centre with the youth painting the interior in bright and pastel colours. Weather pending, we shall paint the exterior and we are about to landscape the backyard. The renovations are partly due to the local childcare moving to our premises and operating in the mornings, leaving us to operate in the afternoons.

Programs:  The large number of youth mean reassuring the current program (below) into a rotating 2 week schedule with the division of gender being the emphasis. One of our recent successes is our Building Blokes Program, I initially ran it in our centre which proved to be a huge success. The response was so overwhelming that I have 8 Ballarat schools wanting to run it and I have almost finished running it in a local Primary School with 6 of their worst bullies.       Bruce Guest, Youth Worker.

P.A.C.K.S. - Police and Country Kids Football training on Thursdays.

 

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