Sam Donni is an officer who's been with us for about ten years
and he's been attached to the one club here at Glebe
and he's work is outstanding, he's a remarkable YCM,
works very well with all types of kids, in particular, our case manager
offenders and he's just a very very good operator
The PCYC here at Glebe/Leichardt is very challenging,
there's a lot of very challenging kids in this area, you're dealing with kids with very
low inter personal skills, they don't go to school,
they're involved in crime
He's been the instigator of many programs here, one of which is probably the
successful Cafe 2037 barista cooking program
and it's essentially a barista program where he targets specific case managed
young offenders, he brings them in and teaches them right through from start
to finish about
nutrition, healthy preparation of food and, in particular,
coffee making
He puts young offenders through a barista coffee school for a period of time
and they come out with
accredited certificates and we have a successful cafe program here at the
club and these kids are very regularly involved in making coffees and teas and
banana bread and toast for the clientele here at the club
Out of one of the boys, we had a
young fella came here, ten or eleven years old and he started to get into a crime a
little bit older, twelve thirteen, breaking into cars,
robberies, assaults,
now he's an indigenous kid and we got him through school at year ten
and that was a bit of an effort getting him through that, that was part of his core
outcomes and everything and now he's looking at playing under 20's in one
of the NRL teams -Some of these kids don't have many role models and
Sam's been here
for such a long time now, that he has such
rapport with the local community and the likes of the Koori
community, they absolutely love him and
for him to have
an excellent relationship with these kids is amazing and
there's been some amazing results
