New aprons, a cookbook, catering and marketing are part of this year’s studies for participants in the Yuille Park Young Parents Program.
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Having taken on a successful cafe venture last year, teacher Renee Vallance said the students were keen to expand their skills and knowledge this year.
About 12 of the program’s 30 participants run the cafe at Ballarat Community Health in Lucas each Thursday, giving them hospitality skills including food preparation, cooking, meal presentation, table service, barista work in addition to other skills and VCAL studies that support their work.
To start the year, the group have made aprons for the cafe, which Ms Vallance said helped build literacy and numeracy in addition to practical skills.
“We are also looking at writing a cookbook, doing more catering, marketing and promotion – lots of little projects within one larger projects that capture’s everyone’s interest,” Ms Vallance said.
The program last week received $10,000 funding through the state government’s Advance 2018 program
“Money from the funding allow us to go out and fund these types of projects and anything related to the cafe, for the use of the cafe and the girls at the cafe – that’s what we spend it on,” Ms Vallance said.
The Yuille Park Young Parents Program supports young parents aged 14 to 21 to continue their education during pregnancy and parenthood. There are four new students in the program this year, who can choose whether to become involved in the cafe project.
“The program is evolving out of people’s interests, how passionate they are, what skills the girls are showing and it’s always changing,” Ms Vallance said.
“The major benefit is they are learning in real life situations and learning real life skills – they are getting opportunities that they don’t otherwise get and it’s so meaningful to them because it’s real, it’s not in a classroom.”
The cafe project was the brainchild of Yuille Park teachers Ms Vallance and Megan Hillas, with the YPP taking over its operation on a Thursday since mid-September.
”There’s nothing like a real-world setting to put the skills they’ve learned in to practice. It’s those skills they can then transfer in to whatever that next step is, whether it’s in to the work environment or in to further training or education,” Ms Hillas said at the launch.
“They’ve had to learn communication skills, do barista training, they’ve done safe food handling, money handling, food preparation and more,” she said.
“They’ve also learned how to work under pressure, how to talk to people and how to stay calm and fix problems when they arise.”