Sowing seeds of change

Change is in the air at Ngulla Training and Community Centre as manager Peter Bird continues to develop his vision of creating a vibrant community hub.

The centre, which has operated in Casuarina for eight years, grows and sells native plants and helps to generate employment and work-based training opportunities for young people and adults through environmental programs.

Mr Bird said the centre, formerly known as Ngulla Community Nursery, was moving away from the commercial focus and back to its core focus — community training.

“It was never meant to be a commercial nursery and we are finally getting the focus back on our core business which is community, environment, training and enterprise,” he said.

“We need to upskill a lot of our young people, who have never grown anything in their life.”

After approval from the centre’s board in August, Mr Bird began making changes and has since built two new training rooms, started renovating old sheds for training, spearheaded a new enterprise, began planning a permaculture area and planned to put accommodation on site to cater to corporate and educational trainers.

“We have built new training rooms, funded by Lotterywest, we are going to put some computers in shortly, so we will have additional training rooms that will be open to anyone in the community who would like to use them for a small charge,” he said.

“I want this place bubbling; I want people using the facilities.”

Mr Bird said putting accommodation on site would allow more programs to be co-ordinated closer to the city, beach and wildlife reserves.

He said the centre’s latest enterprise was in green waste management.

“What we want to do and what we are doing is offering a service to offices and some residential — if they separate their green waste we will give them bins and then we will pick it up and bring it back here and run it through the earth worm farms we have built,” he said.

Mr Bird said he hoped the centre would become an integral part of the community offering diverse training programs, employment opportunities and somewhere for community members to enjoy.