Cracking codes

I WAS very interested to read the Geelong Advertiser story and editorial the other week relating to the Northern Bay Challenge, the plan to encourage Geelong people to help all young people in postcode 3214 — Corio, Norlane and North Shore — find a job or a tertiary education place when they leave school.

Northern Bay College is the driving force behind the ambitious program that, according to principal Fred Clarke, has been seven years in the making.

Statistics show the 3214 postcode ranks third lowest in the state across 22 indicators of disadvantage, including internet access, income, education, longterm unemployment and criminal convictions.

Median weekly income is just $828 in the postcode compared with $1615 for the Greater Geelong region, while university and VET participation rate is 5.4 per cent compared with a state average of 17.8 per cent.

A few days after the Addy coverage, well-known Melbourne identity Les Twentyman wrote an opinion piece for the Herald Sun calling for more outreach workers rather than more police to help turn around the lives of disadvantaged young people turning to crime in poorer Melbourne suburbs.

He made the point that for years he has been calling for “experienced outreach workers to be attached to every school in Australia, providing the support kids need to have a bright future.”

The Les Twentyman Foundation was running such a program, called EMBRACE Positive Futures, which was turning the lives of young people around.

“Instead of dropping out of education and finding trouble, these kids want to be doctors, lawyers, accountants and, of course, sports and pop stars,” Mr Twentyman said.

In Geelong, we also have the Ardoch Foundation working in primary and secondary schools in both the 3214 and 3219 postcodes — Whittington too is a disadvantaged area — and again Northern Bay College has led the way.

Both northern and eastern suburbs also have community alliances, Northern Futures and Whittington Works, bringing together business, government, City of Greater Geelong, schools, tertiary education and other Geelong organisations and community volunteers to help eradicate disadvantage through education, creating employment opportunities and economic investment.

Back in June 2014, I gave a talk at a fundraising breakfast for the Ardoch Youth Foundation, at Northern Bay College and a couple of years earlier I’d spoken to Year 9 students at the request of Ardoch, because of my experiences as a boy in East Geelong in the 1940s and 1950s.

I attended Swanston Street State School and Geelong Junior Technical School and it was thought my story — I left school at the end of Form 3 (now Year 9) at the age of 15 to begin a fitting and turning apprenticeship — might have some relevance to the youngsters.

East Geelong was largely a working-class suburb back then and there was no Corio or Norlane, or Whittington or Newcomb in the 1940s, but I digress and I’ll leave Memory Lane for another occasion.

Geelong is one community and Norlane, Corio and Whittington are as much a part of our community as Newtown and Highton. We don’t want postcodes defining who people are! Our community is compassionate and understanding and that is why so many people and organisations have rallied to support Northern Futures, Whittington Works, Ardoch and others involved in helping these suburbs realise their potential. And Northern Bay College is playing a pivotal role in this transition, giving a new and young generation a vision and the skills to realise it. While it may not have the national profile of Geelong Grammar which, ironically, shares the 3214 postcode, its website is worth a visit. Corio-Norlane and, I presume, Whittington are very much the new Australia, with migrant communities from Asia, Africa and the Middle East adapting to our way of life. And this is reflected in the core values of Northern Bay College — Collaboration, Outcomes, Respect and Equity — which the site states quite adamantly staff and students strive to live by!