We've just finished our final week of the first program of the year! We had a great week celebrating the successes of all our students and we hope they're proud of everything they've achieved. Wednesday morning the students finished working on their journals, a task where they recounted their experience and feelings towards a range of activities on the program. These were done to a great standard and were quite insightful. Following this we spent the afternoon with a group of students from the Collingwood English Language School. You may remember a few weeks ago our students spent the morning repairing donated bikes, and today they donated them to these students. Along with the bikes our stu

We're very close to the end of the Newstart program and this week was definitely one of our busiest and most productive. We started off with a visit to Collingwood Children's Farm as a part of our community focus. Our students helped out with a range of tasks around the farm and in the garden, before visiting and feeding the goats and pigs. We value being able to give back to a great resource the local area has to offer. After the farm we headed back to Yarr Youth Services for our final session here. We worked again with Brody to finish off our art boards and the end result was amazing. Check out the photos below. The rest of the week was spent out on our last camp, the expedition. This was

We started off Week 5 of the program with a visit to our local Bunnings! This was a valuable hands on experience as we have a number of students interested in gaining part time work as well as working in trades once they leave school. We were well looked after down at Bunnings Collingwood and after a great tour of the store there was plenty of time to test out some of the latest electric tools. From here we headed back to school to spend some time working on journals. Reflection is an important part of program as it gives purpose and context to each of our activities. Our students have been working on writing reflections around their favourite activities, focusing on their thoughts and feeli

We're now halfway through the program and have had another busy week. We started off with a bang at the Collingwood Leisure Centre, powering through a circuit workout that put everyone through their paces. It was a great way to start the morning as it definitely woke everyone up and gave us energy. From the gym we did our shopping for camp this week before heading over to Yarra Youth Services for our first of two art workshops. Here we met great local artist Brody who showed us some of his own work before we got started on our own pieces. The students had plenty of time to plan a design for their large board before having a go at the spray paints and air gun, with Brody showing some new tech

What a great local week the third week of the program was! We started off at Yarra Youth Services doing a music workshop with Motley. Motley is a really fabulous rap artist and producer who as well as writing and performing his own music and touring around the world, spends a lot of time working with young people to give them a taste of what it's like to write and record your own songs. Our workshop started out learning the basics of hip hop, the structure of the beat and how to make a solid rhyming verse. After we knew all of this the students had a go at writing their own verses. We were incredibly impressed how quickly they were able to do this, with everyone writing quite a few lines abo