Laverton Cycling Project Update June 2024

The June Update from our Laverton Cycling Project Coordinator: Sabine Bird!

A massive thank you to WestCycle in particular for their support on this trip!

This month was different, as we stayed in Laverton and battled some downpours! The CDF was invited to a fun-filled End of Term Mystery Night organised by the School. This Night was mainly to celebrate the attendance rate of high schoolers and was a quiz night that saw youths and adult invitees guess, dance, sing, scratch their heads and being served a proper 4-course meal! Bonus points were given for good manners at the table and when dealing with personal waiters and waitresses, kindly impersonated by “Teach Learn Grow”- students from Perth! The main prizes (obviously won by the high schoolers) were bikes for everyone on the 5-man team! Yes, brand new bikes, that were handed out by the school, but serviced and made road-worthy by us – the CDF….The CDF also proudly blew up 40 balloons by mouth, just to show our contribution to the night 😉.

Whilst bike riding was limited, we utilised WestCycle’s funds to run a little skills course behind the youth centre, though chaos was more prevalent than order. Teaching and going over basic skills with the kids was quickly practiced on their own terms and with a lot of creativity. 18 children were part of this group, a huge number on day 1, when riding was still possible. During the upcoming downpours, we continued on at the youth centre, and are just happy to have the centre running again as a side option, for chatting, playing games and providing a social support environment.

Behind the scenes, we can also announce here that both, the Shire and the School, have kindly agreed to help fund the CDF’s work in Laverton. A formal press release is yet to come later in July, but we can already share the news to our supporters. The Shire has developed great trust in us, and made a solid statement to underline their support for us. Something that we will ensure to honour accordingly.

NM-TAFE students have presented CDF’s Laverton Project to the public as part of their assessment for Certificate III Event students and 2nd stage Event Diploma students. The stands were part of the official NAIDOC celebrations and therefore, had to relate to indigenous organisations or charities, and were held at Joondalup campus this year. Students presented a raft of photos from the CDF’s Laverton work, displayed some artwork with our PLCC-jerseys, and a painting of one of the local artists; they created a quiz around identifying the bush banana fruit (gagula) and more. All this was in a public space and attracted an audience despite the unfortunate weather. A success for the students, and TAFE would like to repeat this type of event around the CDF’s Laverton work again next year.

Wesley College have kindly donated multiple bikes to the Laverton project. The college is running a bike fixing program that one of the teachers initiated 6 years ago. The school kids – mostly of middle school age – would learn the basic mechanics and help fix up donated bikes from the community. Many of these bikes will then be passed on to organisations, such as “Bikes for Humanity”. When they heard about the Laverton Cycling Project, they saw an opportunity to send kids bikes away to us, which we happily accepted. Declan H (the teacher leading the program) has expressed interest in making this a continuing partnership between Wesley and the CDF.