By Mikayla Van Loon
A joint project between the Rotary Club of Lilydale and Yarra View Nursery has finally had its grand opening after nearly two years in the making.
On Tuesday 20 April, both employees at the nursery and members of the rotary club unveiled a brand new shelter and pathway at Yarra View Nursery in Mount Evelyn.
Knoxbrooke’s general manager of social enterprises Scott Buckland said Yarra View Nursery had a desire to create a safe entrance into the work site of the nursery.
“Up until recently people came through the carpark, which is a shared carpark and a lot of people would come by taxi, with traffic moving,” he said.
“A lot of people with disability, trying to walk through there and at peak times, people were sometimes putting their life on the line.”
In addition, Mr Buckland said the nursery wanted to create a shelter for their employees who either arrive early to work or have to wait after finishing.
Through an employee that works at the nursery and is also a member of the Lilydale Rotary Club, soon a partnership was forming and rotary members offered their services to build the shelter.
“Rotary has a commitment to serving in the community and as a social enterprise organisation, the nursery is an ideal venue for us to support,” Rotary Club of Lilydale president Madalyn Parlett said.
Having started the process of getting designs drawn up in 2019 and then waiting for permits to be approved, Covid-19 hit before much of the works had begun.
Ramping up at the end of last year, Mr Buckland said the rotary club were fantastic in getting donations of time, equipment and tradespeople to get the project underway.
“When you look at it, it’s a shelter but it’s a pretty impressive shelter,” he said.
“Every trade you can think of, whether it be an excavation company or concreting company, a builder, a roofer, a plumber, electricians, everyone’s been involved and rotary have been amazing in putting that together.”
Ms Parlett said many organisations were generous enough to offer materials and equipment at either cost price, reduced price or perhaps even free.
“It’s wonderful for [the employees] to know that people in the community care, that people will come along and do the work that was required to do to get something like that shelter built,” she said.
“Many of the young people at the shelter said they really appreciated that so many had contributed to the development of the shelter.”
Mr Buckland said even though it is quite a rare event for Yarra View Nursery to receive help from another community group, it has been a great joint effort between the two organisations.
“This is the first time something like this has happened in a long time, where we’ve had this joining together of two community organisations and getting a relatively small but really important project done.”
