Young boys at Cobham Youth Justice Centre have been gifted a new car to enhance their trade skills.
Last month, retired teacher Francis Dooley attended the Werrington-based justice centre to gift her 18-year-old Ford Focus to the facility’s trade centre.
Dooley said she first got the idea after seeing Cobham featured on the news.
“I was watching the news, going back a few months actually and there was a little piece on Kevin Dowse… he’s like an assistant manager of the place but he runs a trade centre at Cobham,” Dooley said.
“He was on the news talking about the boys [and how] they are trying to teach them stuff about cars, but they really just had an engine bolted to the floor that they were doing stuff with.
“I’d been planning to sell my car, it’s an 18-year-old car, so don’t picture something brand-new or anything! I just thought ‘Oh, I bet they could use that car’ because I don’t think I would have got an awful lot for it, and I just thought that would be great if they could put that to use.
“So, I quickly took down his name and then looked up the number, but I took weeks to call him.
“We went back and forth a bit and then it suddenly came together, and he sort of went ‘Oh my God yes we’d love the car’. So, last Wednesday I drove it over there and handed it over.”
Dooley was excited to know that the car was going to be used, so the boys can learn practical skills in the trade centre.
“They were excited,” Dooley said.
“I was very lucky I got to meet four of the boys… the boys were lovely, and they told me about the trade centre… they showed me other things like they have a little coffee shop that they run in there and other things.
“They were very excited about the car, and they actually ended up being able to bring it into a section that the boys could access… and they jumped in it and touched everything, tried everything and we opened the bonnet and all that sort of stuff.
“They seemed very excited, and it will give them plenty of opportunities like I say to practice panel beating, spray painting and a bit of mechanics.”
Dooley said she enjoyed the experience of meeting the boys and gifting them her car.
“It did actually make me really happy because they looked genuinely pleased and excited about it all and I would never normally get to access… the centre,” she said.
“It was a very very positive experience for me.”
Emily Chate
Emily Chate joined The Western Weekender in 2024, and covers local news - primarily courts and politics. A graduate of the University of Wollongong, Emily has contributed to The Daily Telegraph and worked as a freelance journalist.