Helping our youth drive towards a brighter future
Affordable, quality lessons offer a direct route to independence and freedom that starts with learning new skills in a familiar environment.
We recognise the importance of driving training for all young Tasmanians, not just those who live close to our stores. Thanks to our partnerships with organisations including the Tasman Council and Workskills Tasmania, we’ve been able to trial offering our services to regional areas across the state, providing comprehensive training to communities including Nubeena, Bridgewater and Glenorchy.
These affordable, quality lessons are about more than just driving knowledge; they offer an essential service for future road users – and a direct route to independence and freedom that starts with learning new skills in a familiar environment. The Workskills partnership puts young people one step closer to employment, and gives them a route to get to and from those jobs. As part of the partnership, our instructors underwent neurodiversity and trauma-informed training with Troublesmiths to make sure we can support all learners.
“One of the big parts of that was learning how to communicate with people who have a history of trauma, to allow us to do our jobs better and in a safer way as well,” says Matt Anders, Driver Training Team Leader (South).
“We make a lot of contact with young people who are from disadvantaged backgrounds so having more tools in our arsenal means that we are able to help these young people a lot better; we can sit and connect with them, and we can use our emotional intelligence to understand what they need and how we can deliver it.”
What started as one site once a month has blossomed to two days a month each at Glenorchy and Bridgewater as well as one day a month at New Norfolk.
“We’re helping people in their local area and it’s not as difficult for them to get to us,” Matt says. “We’ve been able to help more people than we were before and it just keeps growing.”
We’ve also expanded our Driving School offering, with sessions available at our Kingston and Eastlands stores, giving more community members access to road safety skills where they are, when they need us. September saw Driving School recording its highest number of lessons delivered since May 2023.
“This is where we want to take Driving School. We want to be more accessible across the community,” says Chief Mobility Officer Dean Harris. “We’re meeting our customers where they are, which helps us truly meet our purpose."
Driving School sessions can now be gifted between family members, too, so they can be used even if one family member has earned their Ps. Soon, that will expand to the opportunity to donate excess lessons to a community pool, where we can gift them to young learners in need.