Posted by Helen Nodrum on Dec 12, 2021
Through our club’s partnership with “stride education” and “in2life organisation” we once again were delighted to be the major sponsor for the VCAL, SBAT, VET awards 2021.
Just over 40 nominations from schools in the Glen Eira and Kingston areas were received.
Along with the awards to students, nominations were also received for teachers who demonstrate a high degree of support and involvement in these programs.
From the 10 award categories the following schools achieved awards, Westall Secondary College, Mentone Girls Grammar, Parkdale Secondary College and Our Lady of the Sacred Heart (OLSH) Bentleigh.
Again, this year, due to Covid, it was necessary for the awards to be presented “online”.
Hopefully as we continue to navigate Covid we will get back to face to face presentations with members from our club attending each of the schools for these presentations.
As an offshoot of the ALA awards this year, the careers advisory team at Westall Secondary College conducted an in person “Speed Careers” morning. Our club was invited to attend and firstly take part in the careers discussion and secondly to present 5 awards to Employers
who had demonstrated exemplary support in this vocational training pathway.
Speed Careering is an activity designed to build student awareness of the various roles/work options available in our community, including the fact that there are just as many individual career pathways as there are roles.
Business/employer recipients of the awards as follows:
Renee Frahamer and Gerard Webb – REECE
Glen Cooper and Paul Campbell       - U train
Sam Switalla                                          - Spring Valley Golf Club’
Andrew Barstow                                   - Volkservice
Lou Zaffiro                                              - Accident Repair Centre, McKinnon
Margaret Lucas and I were very pleased to be able to attend and represent our club. We were made most welcome by all members of the Westall Secondary College teaching team and indeed the students. The event was conducted in their Sports Arena Complex. All the community businesses attending were spaced out around the perimeter of the complex. Year levels 8, 9 and 10 each attended for an hour and walked around in groups of five talking with the business and community organisation representatives. Whilst Rotary does not provide a financial career pathway, we were pleased to enlighten over 200 students with an overview of the work that Rotary does and information for volunteer opportunities either whilst still at school or later in life.
Ian Ballantine kindly attended during the morning and his folio of pictures from this event demonstrate very clearly the success of the day.