The Traralgon Neighbourhood Learning House has set its sights on the ageing Victorian Railways Institute hall on Queens Parade to establish a community shed.But it needs more than $30,000 to replace the building’s roof and is asking for the public’s help.
The organisation has turned to website pozible.com to the raise funds.
Using the crowdfunding model, the website is set up as place where members of the community can donate and pool their money for various projects and causes.
”People are saying they want to help out in some way, so I thought it would just be a good way to make it simple for people,” project manager Joh Lyons said.
The neighbourhood house operates out of the Kath Teychenne Centre on Breed Street and earlier this year secured land on Hickox Street provided by disability support service Cooinda Hill for the community shed.
It cannot yet fully fund construction of the building, but is eager to get activities started at the hall in the interim.
”The Rotary Club of Traralgon have drawn up big plans, but that’s going to take time and we’ve got lots of people who are ready to do things now,” Ms Lyons said.
”We now have to do lots of classes off campus and if we had a larger space, we could do all sorts of things.”Ms Lyons sees the VRI hall as a perfect location to attract people from across the Latrobe Valley.
She hopes to use the space to expand neighbourhood house classes, establish recycling, construction and gardening projects and run performances.It would also house the already underway ‘digital shed’ program, which taps into the technological savvy of high-school students to provide short lessons in email, social media and digital photography for anybody who wishes to ‘drop in’.
”Apart from our interest, I think the VRI hall is a great building that needs to be used,” Ms Lyons said.
