2004 AWARD FOR EXCELLENT SERVICE
TO PUBLIC EDUCATION AND TRAINING

Left: Award Recipients Lynne Smith & Barbara Lachlan ACE North Coast recieving their award from the Director - General of Education and Training Mr Andrew Cappie-Wood

On 8 December 2004 Lynne Smith and Barbara Lachlan were presented with the 2004 Award for Excellent Service to Public Education and Training by Mr Andrew Cappie-Wood, Director-General of Education and Training.

Adult and Community Education (ACE) North Coast has made a strong commitment to ensuring that there is access to ACE for the local Aboriginal community. It is staff like Lynne Smith & Barbara Lachlan that have ensured that this commitment has translated into successful learning opportunities for the Aboriginal community. In turn Barbara and Lynne credit Jim Nicholls, Principal, ACE North Coast for his initial foresight and continued support of the work they do.

Lynne & Barbara work closely as a team to provide learning opportunities to over 100 local Aboriginal people from the Casino and Tabulum communities. The Casino and Tabulum programs provide for second chance learning to adults and younger learners (from 15 years of age) who have had poor experiences with education and learning in the past.

By providing a drop-in environment for the whole family the ACE Centre attracts people first by providing a welcoming non-judgemental environment where many start with getting informal assistance on a wide range of issues, trust is built and opportunities for learning are offered. Learning may take the form of informal literacy support by helping fill in forms and then slowly move into reading and writing assistance. Commonly this leads to more formal assistance such as providing the Certificate 1 in General Education for Adults or accredited vocational courses. Most popular of these courses are in business, information technology and accredited arts and crafts.

So successful has been the arts and crafts courses that the students are now supplying Aboriginal crafts to local businesses, child care centres and tourist outlets. Negotiations are also underway for a contract to supply Aboriginal arts overseas. Many of the students involved in this venture, came to the Casino Centre with poor literacy skills. With the encouragement of Lynne and Barbara they are now gaining new skills and establishing exciting new business opportunities.

Just some of the successes can be measured by the number of people undertaking further education, from young people being supported through homework centres to stay on at school to year 11 and 12, young mothers going onto university and the return or entry into the workforce by people who have developed their skills and confidence at the centre.

Lynne is the longest serving employee of ACE North Coast, having moved from working with TAFE as an Outreach worker 13.5 years ago. It was Lynne's commitment to the local Aboriginal community at Tabulum, near Casino, that initiated a targeted ACE program for the community in 1997.

At the same time Barbara was running the ACE program for the general community at Casino. Barbara has over 20 years experience in education, the last 9 in the ACE sector. Before ACE Barbara was a high school teacher in the public school system and so she came to ACE with a clear commitment to, and understanding of, the learning needs of young people and the type of environment for learning that was needed for those who hadn't found success in education.

As Barbara and Lynne worked more closely together, they developed skills and contacts within the local Aboriginal community that started paying dividends in drawing more and more Aboriginal people into learning with ACE North Coast. Whilst the ACE program at Casino remains open to everyone, the success of Lynne and Barbara in gaining the trust of the local Aboriginal community means that the majority of students at this centre are Aboriginal. In just over 4 years of targeted programming in Casino the Aboriginal student population has gone from a handful of students to over 100 participants at any one time.

The ACE Centre at Casino is a second home for many and past students regularly return to maintain contact with Barbara and Lynne. The impact these women have had on so many lives is recognised by the local community and their passion for passing on a learning culture to the people they work with is the reason that these women are eminent winners of the 2004 Award for Excellent Service to Public Education and Training.