Each Monday at 12.30pm, a group of enthusiastic students from the Awatapu College Special Needs Department, attend  “Job Club”. The Job Club is a foundation skills opportunity for students with physical and cognitive difficulties, to undertake real-world “jobs” in the security of their familiar school environment.

The hour-long sessions are designed to prepare students for work placements in the community. Here they learn skills that will help them fit into and thrive in the workplace, including organisation, working independently, attentiveness, and for those with capability, leadership. By partaking in meaningful work, students are included and contributing to society.

At each session, with direction of the teacher, Anne Lynch, and the Occupational Therapist, Lynsey Taylor, students are provided with a small number of jobs.

Two of these jobs undertaken on a regular voluntary basis are for Environment Network Manawatū (ENM), with both having a significant positive impact on the Manawatū community and environment.

The first job for students is to break-down bulk seed amounts donated by businesses, organisations and individuals, into many small packets, using a spoon. The type of seed and harvest date is written on each packet and then sorted into their various seed types. The packets are then collected from Awatapu College by ENM and used to restock the 5 seed libraries in Palmerston North; at the ENM Office, PN City Library, Te Patikitiki Library, Awapuni Library, and Roslyn Library. The public are invited to take free seeds from the seed libraries to grow food in their own gardens, and to donate seed if they are able. This initiative is designed to support food resilience, food security and food sovereignty in the community.

For the second job, students collect plastic bottle lids and sort them into the various plastic types according to their identification number i.e. 2, 4, 5. Once sorted, ENM collects the lids and sends them to local business Aotearoa NZ Made to be upcycled into plastic bags. These bottle lids would otherwise end up in landfill, as they cannot be recycled as part of the PNCC’s kerbside collection as the recycling centre’s machinery is not equipped to sort these small items.

Environment Network Manawatū is very appreciative of the teachers and students at Job Club for undertaking tasks each week that may otherwise not be done. Not only does the completion of these tasks have an immediate positive impact on the community and environment, the workplace skills taught by the teachers and Occupational Therapist at Job Club have life-changing implications for the students. Once students have acquired the skills and behaviours required for the workplace, they will transition to part-time work at community businesses and organisations for further work experience opportunities.

Photo is Teacher Anne Lynch (background) and student Cooper Castell-Spence.