What does our program look like? We aim for our day to day to be exciting and appealing to a young group of males, with a heavy amount of focus on sports and games being offered to our participants. Our home base is full of playstations, Xbox`s, pool tables, table tennis tables and netflix and kayo sports options on the big screen. We find this is an incredibly entertaining space for the individuals we support and it creates a socially inclusive space which promotes connection with others. Although the space we provide is fantastic and offers enough opportunities for engagement with their peers , we ensure our participants get out and about every single day and utilize community recreational spaces to build confidence in the community. This includes going to a park for a BBQ and to kick the footy, going to the movies, bowling, aquatic centers, long walks in a park and fishing. Once a month, our lads are treated to longer day trips to the beach, a sports stadium tour, museum or simply to check out a new rural town. We find this to be vital to offering new and exciting experiences to our participants whilst getting them all out of their comfort zones at a location they have grown up in and are comfortable in.

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How do we help our participants build skills? While we love our program to be recognised as a place which creates friendships and connection to a group of people who have previously struggled to gain this in the past, we also build essential life skills vital to assisting our participants to live as independently as possible. This is seen through many examples, with cooking, cleaning and shopping done each day. Furthermore, Project Growth runs projects throughout the year with the focus of building new skills and finding new passions. In 2022, our participants helped create and develop a business plan for the release of Project Growth merchandise. The lads were involved in all aspects of the design of the merchandise and the decision making of our marketing material. All the lads developed their skills in working in a team and we found it to be such a success that we will do a new project every single year. Our participants were also active in assisting to cook lunch throughout the days, and they would be included in all aspects of the cook from finding the ingredients, learning how to use bank cards to pay, the preparation of the food and the general clean up afterwards. Our participants have also learnt skills like travel training and when we are driving to a location we would often have the boys get us their using their smart phones to put in the location address and direct the driver.