The infamous welding room-beginning stages

Students at NPC had a dream at the beginning of their practical block. It was develop a vocational rehabilitation centre... The dream was there and the fire in our hearts was ignited. We wanted this dream to happen. No matter what. Imagine the endless possibilities for the service users at NPC! Substance dependenence can have a very strong influence from lack of employment, or unconstructive use of leisure time. If we could provide the oppurtunity for the service users to develop skills in different areas of work, to develop work habits, to explore leisure oursuits that they have never been exposed to or had the oppurtunity with work with. The project was a great idea but very daunting at the same time. Could we pull it off?? With the encouragement and passion from our supervisor, we have begun the project... And it is finally coming together. Through hours of delibiration, and concept formations on how to get this project going, e-mail after e-mail at all hours of the day, phonecall after phonecall, hours of hard work such as CLEARING OUT AN ENTIRE WORKSHOP ROOM that has not been opened for 10 years!Which brings me to my blog story... The infamous welding room, the beginning stages. One of our stations for the vocational rehabilitation project is a welding room. What we needed ( and thought we did not have at NPC) was a welding room, a welding machine, safety equipment, welding rods and metal. Megan's brother, a mechanic came to our rescue and provided us with a welder, the safety equipment and the welding rods. It was a wish come true!!! Only to come back to NPC, to find a welding machine and equipment. We were mortified, HOWEVER, we took it our stride and saw it as an oppurtunity to have even more equipment AND it was a major positive because all our talk on welding and bringing in a temporary welding machine-it had sparked interest amongst the service users and the old welder re-surfaced. It was encouraging because we had stirred interest in the project. We needed metal, which we hoped to get from selling all the scarp metal in the junkyard. Through numerous attempts, meetings and phonecalls, we were unsuccessful but we will now be able to use the scrap metal to make items in the vocational rehabilitation project. All we needed now was a room... There was a workshop door that had not been opened for ten years. what was behind that door, we did not know. We had to get one of the service users to cut the lock for us because the key had been lost. As Megan opened the door, the sight that net her eyes and the eyes of her service user caused great panic as they quickly tried to close the door before the supervisor got any ideas... they were too late. Our supervisor ran to the door, took one look and proceeded to take out a dust consumed fan, one of anout 100 dust infested fans, and took it out. That was her way of telling us... "Ok let's start clearning."

This was the room before we tackled the cleaning. A saying that rings so true to this whole adventure is... "a journey of a thousand miles begins with one step." We all mustered up the courage and began clearing out this room. It was hard work, we were full of dust, and my sinuses took a beating, but IT WAS SO WORTH IT! We had a room for our welding station. The supervisor, the students and service users worked hard TOGETHER. It was a great afternoon.

And finally... all was cleared out and the room was empty. We could now make it our own. Which is the next part of the project- painting the room and making it a real welding room. To see the end product of the huge project that was the welding room, is going to be so encouraging and heart warming. In a small way, the 3rd year students of 2012 are leaving NPC with a brilliant idea and concept of vocational rehabilitation. I cannot wait for the room to be finsihed!!