Greenmount man, Trevor Knuckey, has announced his intention to establish an Aboriginal drop-in centre in Midland, and is calling on the Church in Perth to help.
For the past three years, at Moorditj Noongar Community College in Midland, Mr Knuckey has been putting his proverbial money where his mouth is, re-forming the defunct breakfast club as well as establishing several different student clubs and incentive reward programs for behaviour and attendance.
A 2011 recipient of the Prime Minister’s National Volunteer Award, Mr Knuckey said his experience at the school convinced him that more could be achieved through involving parents and changing generational attitudes to the importance of education.
Mr Knuckey first encountered the school after becoming St Vincent de Paul Regional President for Swan in 2010; it was a place that gave him hope that substantive change was worth pursuing.
“I was affected strongly by the Aborigines there because, for 20 years with St Vincent de Paul, I’ve been going into so many Aboriginal homes on visitation to help with utility bills and food,” Mr Knuckey said.
“I have seen how hopeless their situation is and I knew what we were doing was not really helping them. We were helping them to exist but not to get up.”
He said he wanted to change that by instilling self-belief in the children at the school.
“A lot of them don’t realise they can work; they think that when they leave school they’ll go on Centrelink payments [like many of their relatives].”
For around six months, Mr Knuckey has been speaking to people throughout Perth with interest and experience in the area, including Aboriginal elders.
At present, students are often removed from classrooms by their parents for extracurricular activities because of the low importance placed on education.
“That’s [one of the reasons] I want to get a drop-in centre going, to try and break the cycle. For that, they have got to trust me, and they don’t trust white people, so it’s hard work but I think we could get some of that going,” Mr Knuckey said.
The centre will provide a site for Aboriginal adults, young Indigenous people who need work, and Indigenous homeless, to access information technology and referrals for other services.
Mr Knuckey also hopes it could be a meeting place for elders and Indigenous volunteers.
Mr Knuckey traces his enthusiasm for helping others back to his pilgrimage to Medjugorje in 1990, where he says he received a personal epiphany.
The greatest immediate need for the establishment of a Medjugorje drop-in centre in Midland is a site and building (Mr Knuckey can be contacted at 9255 1068).
Mr Knuckey’s incentive rewards programs at Moorditj College have been a big hit with students, particularly his partnership with a helicopter operator which, to date, has taken 12 students for scenic fly-overs of Perth.