Many winners from old timber pallets

But now, his teaching skills combined with a passion to help people, Scott is providing training opportunities to help long term unemployed people, disengaged youth and clients with disabilities.

Providing communities with the tools they need to succeed is the slogan for Barefoot Pathways Transitional Training Centre and its focus on community education and social enterprise projects is delivering results.

“These tools can be what changes the lives of the people that live in our community,” Scott said.

Pallet Club Gippsland is just one of the social enterprise projects giving people an opportunity to gain employable skills.

Barefoot Pathways operates at Warragul, Morwell, Wonthaggi and Bairnsdale.

The organisation offers education programs to individuals who are experiencing difficulties returning to the workforce.

Facilitators are based at the four sites across Gippsland to deliver the social enterprise projects and assist with the training and skilling of participants as they make their transition back into paid employment.

Scott, who lives in Warragul, spends much of his time at the Warragul centre but also travels to the other three centres to deliver training for the group’s projects.

The education focus of Barefoot Pathways has been running for seven years as a nationally accredited training centre.

But Scott said a lot of the students were going through courses and not necessarily gaining employment. So they wanted to establish training centres to assist with the transition.

“We wanted to be able to work with people on the dole and try to provide a meaningful project that employment agencies would be keen to go with.

More than 200 participants are currently involved in Barefoot Pathway’s programs and social enterprise projects.

The pallet club has proven to be one of the most successful of the organisation’s projects – and was an initiative that grew from a late night drive trying to get a baby to sleep.

Scott said he always drove the same route – down Normanby St, along Queen St and then a lap up and around past Bunnings. But one night, something caught his attention.

“I was driving around these streets trying to get my son to sleep when I saw piles of timber pallets and I thought about the potential to build with them.

The Pallet Club also includes a “pop-up” retail shop. Participants reuse discarded wooden pallets, collected from industrial premises or and then transformed into saleable items.

Planter boxes, bench seats, spice racks, Christmas decorations are just some of the creations, and then there are the “special made to order requests” they receive.

Scott said it was a win-win – disused pallets are reused, unemployed people learn carpentry skills as well as marketing and business skills and sales help to support the purchase of more tools and equipment.

Before the Pallet Club, the training centre was predominantly administration focussed and upskilling people for business administration.

“But now we have a trade space so we can make sure the people leaving us have new skills and education that means employment is a real option for them.

“A lot of work for the dole activities are gender specific – trades for males and admin roles for females. But we are trying to say, no that’s not how it is in reality.

“We have had a couple of women here that have built all our tables and show the men a few building skills. Often it is the first time these women have been allowed to use tools.

“We are trying to do things differently,” he said.

As well as the Pallet Club, other social enterprise projects include the coffee grounds initiative, community compost and a book collection program.

Scott visits about 20 cafes in Warragul where he collects their food wastes for composting and coffee grounds for composting and turning into burnable coffee logs.

The book collection program helps participants who want to learn social media skills to work online to source unwanted textbooks, which are then distributed to prisons throughout Victoria.

“When I was teaching at Fulham prison I realised the content in their library was out of date. Having the opportunity to read books helps prisoners decide if education is something they want to pursue.

The training centres enables Scott to draw on his teaching background to help participants while his personal training background helps him to mentor and motivate participants.

“They come here for six months and then return to job seeking. But we aim to give them skills. We are trying to provide an environment that’s not slave labour.

“I am quite conscious that we want a social element to what we do,” Scott said.