A group of 32 Avondale School StormCo team members arrived in Cobar on July 13 for their 20th annual trip to the Cobar community.
The team was made up of leader Jonathan ‘Jono’ Christian who was making his seventh trip with the group along with 18 students from the Avondale school, two teachers, a cook, and 10 former students and a leader.
StormCo stands for Service to Others Really Matters Company, and challenges senior high school students to serve a rural community without the expectation of anything in return.
“It also helps them develop leadership skills,” Jono said.
“A feature of the Cobar program is mentoring Cobar youth who join the StormCo team for the week.
“This trip 10 Cobar young people joined the team, along with another five who returned to Cobar especially for StormCo.”
Activities for the week kicked off on Saturday with a free windscreen wash of all the cars in the main street during the morning and visiting the residents of the Lilliane Brady Village nursing home in the afternoon for a sing along.
On Sunday, the team members visited the local community churches and set up for the Kid’s Club which was conducted at the Cobar Primary School hall.
Activities included music, drama, puppetry, games, face painting and crafts and focused on the theme of ‘celebration’.
Each afternoon, the whole team was involved in community projects which ranged from moving mulch for the primary school, to “Pick a Street” randomly cleaning and gardening for Cobar residents free of charge.
The team gathered at the Youthie on Thursday for a pancake feed and helped to create 20th anniversary StormCo handprint wall.
Cobar Mayor Lilliane Brady, youth worker Narelle Kriz and former StormCo leader, Mel Lemke lined up to add their handprint to the wall.
