What is your name?
Strengthening Colac Communities

How old are you?
I’m 1.5  years old

Who funds you?
Australian Federal Government Department of Health and Ageing

What kind of mentoring program are you?
One-to-one mentoring arrangement is encouraged mainly through participation in monthly group activities.

Who are your young people
My young people are male and female students between 14 and 17 years from Colac and Lavers Hill.

What do you try to do for your young people?
I aim to reconnect the young, isolated people from the Colac area with their wider community through the use of inspirational community mentors who will work with them mainly during exciting monthly activities to identify goals and work towards achieving these goals. I also offer my young people access to drug and alcohol training.

Where do you operate?
I operate in the communities of Colac and Lavers Hill, but I do like to get out and about with my mentors and mentees.

How many young people and mentors do you support right now?
I currently support 11 young people and 11 enthusiastic mentors.

What’s so exciting about you?
After a year of involvement in the program, my young people are now more noticeably engaged in school and community based activities, they have formed positive relationship skills and the rate of school absenteeism has dropped significantly. 

How are you different to other mentoring programs?
I’m not afraid to try new things- swimming with the dolphins, African drumming etc. in order to instill skills and confidence in my young people and strengthen their relationships with mentors.

Do you have any partners to help you out? How do they help?
I have a Memorandum of Understanding with Colac Adult and Community Education (ACE) Inc.  Colac ACE is responsible for taking care of my mentors and mentees and arranging monthly activities.  They also offer their facilities for regular meetings.

What have you learnt from your journey so far?
Mentors need to have a firm understanding of their program related commitments and should be offered ongoing support.

What has been your biggest challenge?
Scoping new, interesting and worthwhile monthly mentoring activities to introduce to the group.

How have you dealt with this challenge?
Networking with other program managers and VYMA representatives, seeking suggestions from the mentors, mentees and community reference group, brainstorming with Colac ACE and by considering what types of activities worked well in the past. 

What’s the best thing you’ve done so far?
I have encouraged my mentees to become more active in the various school and community-based outside of the program.