Students pay it forward

Katrina Reynen from Skyline Education Foundation has spent enough time around students to realise one vital thing. “The students themselves are their own best role models,” she says. “They know that if they can see it, they can be it.”

The community organisation provides intensive financial, educational, emotional, and practical support to gifted and academically talented students, whose potential to complete VCE, transition to tertiary education or employment is compromised by entrenched disadvantage. They also run tutoring programs run by alumni who have become mentors to their younger peers.

“Our biggest recourse is the students themselves,” Katrina says. “They talk about meeting each other in the program and they are so inspired and motivated by each other.

“We’re now having previous students paying it forward and I know they are the reason new students are still in school and in the program.”

Barwon South West has lower than state average educational outcomes across Early years, Secondary and Tertiary education. Only 46% of students complete Year 12 or equivalent.

“That’s where we come in,” Katrina says. Skyline Education Foundation recently received a $25,000 grant from the Geelong Community Foundation to help employ Skyline alumni as tutors, offering weekly tutoring needs to 30 vulnerable VCE students participating in the Geelong Region program.

Education deficiencies is a priority need area for the Geelong Community Foundation. This grant was one of 54 grants distributed this year, totalling over $1 million to community organisations across the region. The Geelong Community Foundation’s grant program has been achieved by donations, gifts in wills and our investment performance.