CANOBOLAS Rural Technology High School students can tow a four-wheel drive, find bullet casings after a crime, safely transport injured people and they know how to properly pack and jack up a trailer thanks to State Emergency Service (SES) volunteers.
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For the last school term a group of 19 Year 9 and 10 students have spent every Wednesday learning these types of skills from Orange branch volunteers in the hope they will consider joining up as members.
Cadet co-ordinator Amanda Aitken said the tasks were chosen to help the students learn how to communicate effectively and how to be a good team leader.
“The team building skills they learn would be very helpful when they go off into the workforce,” she said.
“If they can put the cadet course down on their resume then it might help them get a job.”
Student Paige Carter has enjoyed every minute of the program and is looking forward to the activity day planned for Chifley Dam in October, along with students from Bathurst.
She said she benefited most from the team building exercises.
“Mostly how to speak to each other and how to communicate,” she said.
“There so many more details than I thought there would be.”
The students were at the McLachlan Street headquarters on Wednesday to gain hands-on experience with what life is like as an SES volunteer.
They worked in teams to pull a four-wheel drive with cables but no machinery, they searched the paddock across the road for evidence from a crime scene and they worked out how to lift an injured person, carry that person over a distance and manoeuvre the patient up and over obstacles.
