Tony Smith (Casey, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Last Friday I had the pleasure of attending and speaking at the official opening of the refurbished Youth Enterprise Shed in Mount Evelyn in the Casey electorate. The Lead On Mount Evelyn Youth Enterprise Shed project was initiated by Morrison House in conjunction with the Mount Evelyn branch of the Bendigo Bank, the Shire of Yarra Ranges and Adult Community and Further Education. It was a real community partnership. Morrison House, through its chief executive, the very hardworking and capable Jan Simmons, is a very focused community group. It has developed into an adult learning centre which helps many people throughout the Mount Evelyn community and the wider Casey electorate. It offers the local community a diverse range of courses that enable personal development and career building. It obviously saw a great opportunity and a great need to work together with the community groups within the Mount Evelyn area to develop a youth equivalent and a focal point for youth in the Mount Evelyn township.

The shed, which has been refurbished, will host the Lead On development project that has operated successfully in other parts of Victoria. This project offers young people opportunities to participate in work experience, training and leadership development activities; make a significant contribution to their local community and the community as a whole; assist in the building of new relationships within the community—which has so many benefits; provide future career opportunities and focus; as well as, most importantly, build the confidence and the sense of camaraderie within that community and particularly within its youth. The project is the design very much of the community itself. Their first initiative will be to create a youth newspaper, which they will fully design and produce themselves, specifically reporting on youth issues in the Mount Evelyn area.

This very worthwhile activity is possible because of community partnerships and a government contribution. For the government’s part, we contributed some $27,000 through the Regional Partnerships program. Financial commitments also came from the Shire of Yarra Ranges, the Bendigo Bank and some other key partners. This is a highly successful program. The reason for that, which is often not understood in circles beyond the community and around Australia, is that the Regional Partnerships program provides much needed funding. However, it does much more than that. It provides funding to groups who themselves determine their priorities and exactly how particular projects will run. It does not say from Canberra, ‘Here is how your community project will be run,’ and it does not try to manage it from afar. Instead it recognises fundamentally that the expertise and the initiative are in the local community, which lends a helping hand. This has helped to make this very worthwhile project take off in Mount Evelyn, and it is a project that will make a major contribution to the Mount Evelyn community.

Specific thanks need to go to the staff at the area consultative committee, but I particularly want to thank those people in the Mount Evelyn community who have worked so hard to bring this to fruition. I have mentioned Jan Simmons already. I want to make mention of Chris DeAraugo. He is the CEO of the Lead On project I spoke of earlier. I want to mention Phil Stenhouse, the irrepressible manager of the project who the youth of Mount Evelyn enjoy working with so much. I also want to make particular mention of Bree Tucker, one of the participants, who spoke so well at the opening and who will be part of the project. Finally, I want to mention Paul Moxham, who officially cut the ribbon to declare open the youth enterprise shed last Friday.