Building Schools
Western Influences has worked at multiple levels within the education sector.
This work includes building five literacy and numeracy schools in a remote region in Western Australia. The region had a prevalence of youth suicide as a result of young people believing they had no future, particularly amongst the Indigenous population. The schools were built specifically to improve Indigenous education outcomes, which then opened up opportunities for employment on graduation. Not only were the young people engaged in the schools’ programs, the parents were too. One outstanding success is a mother of six young children who was fearful of entering the school grounds as a result of negative childhood experiences. By the end of the second year of opening, the mother was employed as a teacher’s aide and awarded a scholarship for further study.
Becoming a member of a school Board caused the creation of innovative, environmentally friendly classrooms in a Western Australian primary school. The school was growing beyond its infrastructure capabilities as a result of double-streaming in response to increasing demand for enrolments. The classrooms were designed to harness passive lighting, heating and cooling; minimise noise from a nearby highway; protect the heritage and fit with the existing federation style buildings; and, leverage funding from the Australian Government’s Building the Education Revolution policy. Fundamental to the success of this project was the safety of the children during construction.
We developed an innovative vocational education program for students at risk of disengaging from school. This involved getting two international companies, one in retail furniture and furnishings and one in transport and logistics, to open their systems for use by the students participating in the program. The students created virtual businesses, modelled off the two contributing companies, and learned how to trade with each other. This included setting up systems to manage an entire supply chain, from sourcing input for manufacturing to retail distribution. The students graduated with the capacity to open their own businesses.
