Boyup Brook Community Mental Health Action Team opens new youth zone

The youth of Boyup Brook have a new space for activities after the Boyup Brook Community Mental Health Action Team opened its youth zone on Friday.

The new Boyup Brook Youth Zone — located on the football grounds — includes a refurbished and repainted donga that serves as a hub for youth to meet, play and attend workshops at.

The opening celebration included mountain biking, laser tag, djembe drumming, Oreo art and other activities for children to enjoy, as well as a sausage sizzle and a tour of the new space.

The group has future plans of developing the space further, including adding furniture and electrical equipment, landscaped gardens and outdoor furniture, a secure storage for mountain bikes purchased specially for the space, a covered veranda with cafe blinds to allow the space to be utilised throughout all seasons, an outdoor movie projector and screen, a ramp for disability access, signage and more.

Youth in the area will be able to access the space in a fortnight, with the reopening of youth zone having two sessions a week, with Mondays for the Year 5 to Year 7 students, and Tuesdays for the Year 8 and older students.

Chair Renee Knapp said the opening was the start of “so much more to come” for the youth space.

“It’s been a long process, but I think for CoMHAT, we finally got that momentum that we needed to get and now it’s about letting that space grow and really seeing how it will do so,” she said.

“It’s been a long and bumpy journey because we had done a lot of work and along the way we had a lot of interruptions, with COVID, and a lot of challenges.”

She said with the team evolving, bringing on youth co-ordinator Fiona Hazelwood and event co-ordinator Shenai Johnston, it was tricky at first to find people during the COVID-19 pandemic to do work.

“But I think what’s been amazing as we found those people was we were able to work together and I think at time we were frustrated but we always knew we wanted to make this happen,” she said.

“We’ve had a close relationship with our Shire councillors and it’s been a really good collaboration to make it happen.”

Ms Knapp also said since having a plan in mind helped with receiving funding from the Boyup Brook Shire.

“Getting funding has been a lot less challenging since we’ve had a community wellbeing plan that we wrote and we’re very fortunate to get our grant writer Kirsten (Skraina) and that has opened the doorway to funding,” she said.

“We’re not doing things on a whim, we’ve got a clear direction and this whole approach is really about having the sectors working together and that plan has really been reflected in the model and I’m hoping to spend the next year or two to share the word.”

Ms Knapp said the main focus of the youth zone was to get the youth in Boyup Brook involved in the development of the space and its facilities.

“We’ve got plans to develop a mountain bike track in town, the kids have actually been collecting cash for containers and they’ve already raised nearly a couple of thousand dollars to put towards that, so we’re hoping to create a space where youth in our town have got something to do and have got a place they can feel is theirs,” Ms Knapp said.

Boyup Brook Shire president Richard Walker said the council had been helping collaborate with CoMHAT to prepare the donga and the youth zone site.

“We’ve worked with CoMHAT for a while, with planning, approval and site preparation and access to power and sewage,” he said.

“We had to put a bit of work scouting the site for the donga and where to put it, and the best position in terms of access and site security as well.”

Mr Walker also commended group for its work and noted their wishes for youth to utilise the space.

“Our local CoMHAT team have done a fantastic job interacting with the local youth and hope the space will be utilised well,” he said.

“As a Shire, we’re very happy with it and it’s a good fit in Boyup Brook.”