Straight line for finalist – Wayne Collins has been recognised for his dedication. 36531

By Tania Martin
WORKING to keep kids on the straight and narrow is a calling for Wayne Collins.
The ECHO Youth Ministries director and Clematis resident has been nominated as a finalist in the 2009 Regional Achievement and Community Awards for his work with hills youths
He will battle it out next month for the Regional Achiever crown.
But Mr Collins is humble about his achievements and was shocked by the nomination.
“I am not into all this hoop-lah but it’s really nice,” he said.
Mr Collins has been recognised for helping set up ECHO and a male adult riders group.
ECHO is a youth mentoring and outreach service.
Mr Collins first started working with at risk youths more than 25 years ago.
He moved to the area in the early ’80s and saw a desperate need for a youth outreach service.
“I had just started going to St Marks Church and I could see it wasn’t engaging kids and neither was the community,” he said.
“It was that stage in the ’80s when kids were starting to disconnect and I could see in 20 or 30 years time we were going to have a group of kids isolated from the rest of society.
“There was already a sub-culture going and it was just going to get stronger as years went by.”
Mr Collins and his family decided it was a battle worth winning.
His wife and six kids started ECHO in 1982 as volunteers in a bid to keep hills youths out the juvenile justice system.
It gradually grew over the next six years and Mr Collins soon started working at the outreach program part-time.
He also helped set up a youth work course at Melbourne University.
Mr Collins said ECHO now had contact with more than 350 young people.
“We are the largest agency this side of Melbourne specifically working with teenagers,” he said. ECHO runs a chaplaincy program in a number of schools across the hills including Emerald Secondary, Emerald and Belgrave primary schools.
It also works along side local police with its outreach programs.
Mr Collins said one of the programs called Beyond aims to keep young people engaged in school.
“They get paired up with trained mentors and the mentors can help them work through whatever they are dealing with in their lives.”
Mr Collins believes the outreach program has had a massive effect on young people over the past 25 years.
“We don’t have exact research but the rate of juvenile detention is really low here compared to the rest of the hills,” he said.
Mr Collins said it wasn’t all about the young people.
He also set up an adult men’s motorcycle riding group called Hills Riders more than 10 years ago.
The group now has more than 100 men who go on rides once a month and also enjoy trips away.
“Initially, it was meant to be a social outlet for guys my age who tend to get lonely as their friendship groups shrink,” he said. Mr Collins said in a lot of cases men going through a mid life crisis and end up buying a motorcycle and then realise they have no one to ride with.
“It really sucks riding on your own,” he said.
The winners will be at a gala dinner in Ballarat on 10 October.
Mr Collins said winning would be a great boost for ECHO.
It costs more than $500,000 year to run and Mr Collins said winning the award would make it easier to apply for grants. “It says to people that we are not some fly-by-night group and its also good recognition for our teams,” Mr Collins said.