Our CREWY team recently hosted a fantastic amazing race activity on Phillip Island for our latest group of Hand Brake Turn students.
Held on the last day of class for students from our Dandenong and Braybrook sites, it created an opportunity for them to celebrate all they’ve achieved and have fun with their Hand Brake Turn trainers and the CREWY team.
CREWY, or ‘Creating Real Experiences With Youth’, was established before the pandemic and emerged as a cool initiative of our youth workers to provide fun excursions and activities for young people that they would otherwise be unable to access.
Once we arrived at Phillip Island our 20 particpants were broken into teams, each led by a Hand Brake Turn trainer in full costume (which they had to wear for the whole day!). All of the young people had a great time galloping around the island achieving different tasks and challenges.
There was lots of laughter across the day, which finished with a beach barbecue, followed by busloads of sleeping young people making their way home. “The whole day was exhaustingly fun,” said Jonathan Sugumar from the Hand Brake Turn team. “We all had such a great time. Hopefully we can do more days like this for our students.
“I loved the trip to Phillip Island! The Amazing Race was competitive, and really fun! I’ve never done anything like it before. ” Max, HBT student
“It was a great way to explore the island, I got to see places I haven’t seen before! I really enjoyed the day and hanging out with the CREWY team.” AJ, HBT student
This outing was a pilot approach to expanding the CREWY concept to Hand Brake Turn students, most of whom are coming from at-risk or disadvantaged backgrounds.
When the pandemic emerged, the CREWY team worked together to come up with a rolling series of creative, often hilarious challenges and competitions to keep the young people and Live-In Mentors in our Inside Out homes engaged and positive. With Victoria going back into lockdown, the CREWY team is stepping up again to support people in our homes. Stay tuned for more news about this soon!
The Hand Brake Turn team are also a creative bunch. During the last lockdown they adapted creative ways of keeping students engaged online, and they’re back at it this time around too. Find out more about the approach in this story from August last year.
