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If I was talking to someone about getting involved with the Community Work Program and
the benefits of that, I'd be talking about how easy it is to run and maintain, and the
benefits it gives to the entire organisation. The community work team are great to deal
with, the offenders are great to work with on site, and the productivity you get out
of the program, and being involved with the community work program, is just absolutely
amazing.
The Community Work Program is a program designed to assist non-profit organisations in the
community. The idea is that we are able to send out people who are ordered by the courts
to perform community work. Some of our projects are achieving great results where we are achieving
outcomes that potentially wouldn't be achieved without our assistance. We are also assisting
with reintegration of offenders back into the community, so we are making a difference
within the community.
The Community Work Program project that we are involved with is the A Gesture program,
so what we do is we have offenders come out to our site, they participate in education
and training, and sort through our food for us and participate in our food programs. A
lot of the agencies we give to range from school programs so kids who aren't getting
breakfast in the morning, we are providing food to lots of local schools, to people who
are under mortgage stress and things like that.
So we find a lot of the certificates and qualifications and work experience that they gain here actually
really do help them in the community. So a lot of the offenders we've had on the program
have gone out to get jobs and work in wharehouses based on the skills they've got here.
I facilitate the Soft Toy program, and we have a bunch of women who come along every
week who hand stitch soft toys. And I think just the fact that all the toys that the women
make are going to really worthy causes it just encourages the women to try just that
little bit harder because they feel really good that the work they're doing is going
back into the community. They're actually taking responsibility and learning about responsibility
in itself so they're becoming better members of society because they're contributing. Another
beautiful thing about the soft toy program is the women learn so many new skills. They're
learning those skills that necessary for them to become job ready and I think as a result
of that the community becomes a safer place. The main benefit of getting involved with
Corrections as a community partner is that you might have some really good ideas but
they'll help you to put those ideas into place. You've actually got a whole structured organisation
behind you all the way so as you are setting up, as you are actually running your program
there's always people to talk to.
The types of projects that are suitable for community work partners or potential partners
are projects like litter removal, graffiti removal, projects like refurbishing bicycles
to donate to the community, there's a lot of different projects and varying ideas that
potentially we could work on with potential partners.
If we didn't have the community workers from the community work program we would not have
got through the work that we've done. They do a wonderful job and they're very relaxed
after they've been with us a few weeks. I think that helps them as they realise we're
trying to help them move on in their life. And they're very good workers, they do such
a good job. I'd recommend them to anybody.
The main benefits from the program, I find, is that the offenders are getting practical
skills whilst being able to contribute back to the community. The offenders are able to
develop bike skills, practical hands on skills which can also be applied to various areas
such as automotive repair. And as the weeks are progressing we're finding that a lof of
them are developing quite an aptitude for the different skills, and also these bikes
are previously abandoned bikes so it avoids these bikes going into waste.
If you are interested in partnering with the community work program all you have to do
is give us a call, we'll arange a time to come out and have a chat with you about the
project and hopefully make any idea or potential project a reality.