End of Term Two

Our staff and students have shown incredible dedication, determination and resilience during our pivot to remote learning. Term two ended last week and Paddy McVeigh, Executive Officer of PRACE, shared his reflections on the journey:

As preparations to return to Merrilands have been put on hold, I take this opportunity to reflect on the incredible energy and investment you have all made to keep our services running remotely.

“Necessity is the mother of invention” they say, and never a truer statement has been made when assessing the remodelling of our programming to meet consumer needs.

We have been using our separation very productively, investigating new platforms for online engagement, developing and delivering workbooks to the front door of our students (“Uber EAL” on call), providing staff to do the heavy lifting 2 days a week at the Darebin Emergency Relief Initiative, establishing casework by correspondence, continuing to tender for new business, supporting each other in our endeavours to meet all the classroom and contract requirements, and still managing the “business as slightly unusual” activity on a daily basis at Merrilands.

This has been a gargantuan effort. It is clear that though our workplace environment has been severely compromised, our commitment to providing the highest quality experience to our service users has not.

I am a firm believer that from great challenge and duress comes wisdom. As an organisation we are more creative than we’ve ever been, more nimble than we ever could have imagined, and as a team, more galvanised in our pursuit of a better quality of life for our community.

I love the following quote from Thomas Edison.

“Opportunity is often missed, because it comes dressed in overalls and looks like work.”

We at PRACE have never shied away from hard work, and as such, have turned this unprecedented challenge into the ideal opportunity to do things better.

This message is from a very proud team member of PRACE.

Keep Fighting the Good Fight
Paddy