Coonamble Youth Centre – helping kids stay on the right track

The Coonamble Youth Centre provides a safe and fun place for up to 70 local youth a day.

Supported by the Australian Government through Murdi Paaki Regional Enterprise Corporation, the centre is particularly popular with the large Indigenous community of Coonamble, a small town in north western New South Wales.

Centre youth worker Kayne Fernando said that the activities the youth centre provides help to keep the kids on the right track and stay focused on their school work.

“Here at the youth centre we have afterschool programs and holiday programs to keep the kids off the street and to keep them out of crime and school suspension,” Kayne said.

“If the school doesn’t want to send [suspended students] home then they come to us and we make sure they are doing their homework here and not just staying at home doing nothing.

“We have also started a midnight basketball program which targets domestic violence, and we have people coming in to do health talks,” Kayne said.

Kayne said that he has seen positive changes in the kids who go to the youth centre.

“At the start, the kids are usually shy and don’t want to open up but then after a while they build their confidence and they start doing the right things at school and start making the right decisions,” Kayne said.

“When I was younger I was going down the wrong track and it wasn’t until my boss Adam from the youth centre came along, and got me on the right track that I started to get my grades up at school.

“I had an opportunity to go to boarding school and see outside of Coonamble and then realised that I wanted to come back and help others like Adam helped me,” Kayne said.