The name of the game when you are running a youth program designed to uplift and upskill disadvantaged young people in Lismore is funding. The more funding you can access, the longer the doors are open, the more troubled kids you can work with, and better results will be achieved, which benefits the community.

Former realtor and now Director of North Tracks Works Patrick Higgins hosted NSW Minister for Police and Counter-terrorism Yasmin Catley and NSW Minister for Emergency Services Jihad Dib to explain what North Tracks Works does and how it is helping our disadvantaged youth.

Member for Lismore Janelle Saffin was at the shed on Norco Lane as was Lismore Mayor Steve Krieg.

Ms Saffin has been involved in the project since it began in 2022 and was responsible for helping set it up along with Richmond Police District Superintendent Scott Tanner and Patrick Higgins, as well as getting a $33,000 government grant. She is now helping Patrick and North Tracks Works, along with Lismore City Council, to transfer the shed, which was utilised by Lismore Men's Shed, into their name and to enlarge the program.

North Tracks Works says it measures the success of participants through "the daily transformation of each young person changing the way they see themselves and the world around them. Experienced Youth Workers guide the young people through the programs."

Patrick explained that North Tracks Worls has four pillars that everyone lives by, called the Circle of Courage.

1. SENSE OF BELONGING/SENSE OF PURPOSE
2. SKILLS
3. DECISION MAKING
4. GENEROSITY

SENSE OF BELONGING

"Without that sense of belonging, that sense of purpose, you've got nothing. The kids are not going to come. We've got to create that sense of purpose, sense of belonging. And we do that through the environment we have here in the programs that we're running.

SKILLS

"If you want to improve someone's self-image, you teach them a new skill. If you learn a new skill, you change the way you see yourself.

"I always tell people that we don't have a youth problem in this country. What we have is a self-image problem. So, the way the kids see themselves, the way they see themselves and the way they act out.

"What we're here to do is to change that self-image. So, by teaching them skills, it changes and gives them confidence. We see it happening with these kids. As soon as you do anything with them and teach them a new skill, bang, they change.

DECISION MAKING

"The third one is helping these kids make good decisions. We don't have rules in here; we have agreements. One of the agreements is, 'if you *%$k it, you fix it'. This is their language, okay. That means if you put a hole in the wall, you take responsibility and you fix it. If you have an argument with someone and you cause a problem, you fix it.

"Another ones is 'leave your shit at the gate'. We don't want them to bring their crap in here. You can't get kicked out of here, by the way. No one gets kicked out of North Tracks. But we have agreements. We have respect for each other.

GENEROSITY

"We've got to be generous.

(Minister Dib, Minister Catley, Patrick Higgins, Janelle Saffin and Steve Krieg in discussion yesterday)

Patrick described the projects that the kids got involved in during the last two and a half years.

"We were given wooden pallets and pulling them apart, and we were making displays for the OP shops that had been affected by the flood. And then from that, we went on to Lismore Resilience, and we went out and did the two-rooms project.

"There was one kid, Jordan, he was huge. Jordan was known to the cops. He was a kid in trouble.

"At the time when he first came to us, he wore a black tracksuit and a gold chain, and he was doing drugs on the street. He came to us, and within a very short period of time, he swapped them for his hi-vis shirts and pants, and he started working in this group.

"We watched him, and we saw leadership skills in this kid. He's got some pluses here. One day, I took him out to a house we were doing the two-walls project, and we're putting sheets up, and the lady came home in tears after seeing the work we had done. She threw her arms around this kid and told him he was a hero.

"That kid had been called a lot of things but never a hero. He's probably 19 or 20, I've just received a text message from him reaching out to us, thanking us for what we did for him. Man, oh, man, that's just gold."

As well as the mentoring program inside the North Tracks Works shed, Patrick and the team have developed a work-with-the-dogs program.

"It's something new. We're just going to kick it off in the new year. It's a 10-week program where we're going to grab some of the really hard kids that we've got out there, and we're going to do dog training with these kids. We'll run it one day a week, on a Wednesday.

"And then once, we build, again, that attachment, that sense of purpose, that sense of belonging, then we integrate them into here. So, in the past, we try to bring them straight into here. It didn't work. It's not working. You can't chase these kids. The more you chase it, the more they run. You've got to attract them, and you've got to attract them through the youth workers and what you're doing."

Patrick isn't shying away from the difficult task ahead. He has spoken to police about getting the three worst youth offenders they see.

"That's what we want to deal with. Let's work with those kids. Anyone can work with the other ones, it's working with the difficult ones that's the problem."

As the discussion progressed, solutions through collaboration appeared.

Patrick wanted some kids to work on Lismore City Council's Rail Trail, building bird boxes or helping with plant regeneration. Mayor Steve Krieg said that through the NSW Government-funded apprenticeship program that was recently announced for Lismore City Council there is a clear pathway to learning new skills and building a career.

"Whether it's sitting on a ride-on mower or operating a whipper snipper or being a diesel mechanic, we have over 200 different career pathways in council or something like that where we can work potentially with a program like this, through the funding that the state government is giving local government."

Minister Jihad Dib said the state government understands that not all organisations and programs fall into the grant application box and that the Labor government is willing to be more flexible and look at individual cases that have multiple benefits to the community.

"We're trying to change the way that people see and make decisions. How do you count what's valuable and what's good value for money?"

Minister Dib also spoke about kids not being bad kids.

"Their circumstances put them in a situation that makes them do things that maybe people interpret as being bad, and that's not being soft on kids, like saying you did the wrong thing. That's why I love your saying about what happens, and then you fix it."

Jesse Lahne was labelled as one of these 'bad kids'. He used to go to Lismore High but didn't like the school. He found he was sitting at the back of the classroom, being ignored, so he felt like he was the bottom card of a deck of 52. I used to go to a thing called the Accelerate Room, and that's basically the second part of school to get help.

"I just didn't feel like it was right for me. I found another pathway. I went down to the TAFE. I completed my year 10 and 11. I then went to the Op Shop to give my time there, and I saw that Patrick had basically believed in me and I could do stuff. He suggested me to come down here. And I thought that was good.

"This is a safe space. And ever since I've come down here, I've learned quite a lot, and so I've been in association with people. I've learned how to use the tools, I've done archery. I never used to do archery. I go out to the tip shop and find old furniture pieces like this one I'm in the process of refurbishing."

Jesse's older sister, Montanna, has a background in Community Services and wanted to get more involved in North Tracks Works, so she now volunteers her time.

"I've recently done my Diploma of Counseling, and I want to utilise my skills for the younger generation. I'm a helper, I'm a giver, and I've got so many values to share."

There was certainly an air of positivity about yesterday's visit. Patrick Higgins' hope is to attract more funding to move from two days a week to five days a week and help more disadvantaged kids in Lismore.

Another volunteer is former teacher Kevin Bell, who spends a couple of hours a week teaching the kids maths. Something they didn't learn at school.

Patrick is a believer that 'It takes a village to raise a child".

If you would like to contribute to North Coast Works, you'll find them on Norco Lane, South Lismore. They are open Mondays and Tuesdays at this stage of their journey.