Project Booyah supporting at-risk teens has started up in Toowoomba

An initiative aimed at supporting at-risk teens with adventure-based learning and police mentoring has kicked off in Toowoomba, after incredible success across the state. Here’s how it works.

Christine Schindler and Kevin Farmer

2 min read

March 12, 2024 - 7:01PM

Toowoomba Chronicle

Toowoomba

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On a Tuesday morning, nine teenage girls work together to cross over a small yard in Toowoomba’s Denise Kable Education Centre using only mat squares.

If the mat failed to be held or stood on by one of them, a mentor jumped in, flying a bright orange flag and removing the square.

A first few squares disappeared quickly and taught the girls the rules.

Project Booyah youth program participants (from left) Hanna, Kadisha and Holly work on a team building problem solving exercise in Toowoomba at Denise Kable Youth Services Centre, Tuesday, March 12, 2024. Picture: Kevin Farmer

The next few squares taught them how to work together and how to communicate.

The last few tested their final resolve in making sure the whole team made it to the end.

The teens involved in this exercise – Hanna, Kadisha and Holly – are three of nine teenagers chosen from about 200 applicants for the first intake of Toowoomba’s Project Booyah.

It teaches teens between the ages of 14-17 resilience, respect and life and vocational skills through adventure-based learning and police mentorship.

Project Booyah youth program participants Kadisha (left) and Holly on a team building problem solving exercise in Toowoomba at Denise Kable Youth Services Centre, Tuesday, March 12, 2024. Picture: Kevin Farmer

While the activities include canoeing and mountain-biking, they also include more practical skills.

Hanna, 14, proudly showed off a pizza she cooked the other night in the centre and was looking forward to learning how to make coffee with a barista next week.

Kadisha, 16, said she was looking forward to celebrating her birthday in the next couple of weeks.

Holly said she was enjoying getting to know new people and working together to become one big team.

“The skills I take from this are taken to my future life,” she said.

Toowoomba will be the project’s 11th location in the state, which has seen 2000 participants go through the program since 2016.

According the Queensland Police Service’s Michael Volk, more than half of the young people who complete the program do not reoffend again.

“We make sure we have the right program and we make sure we have the right people and staff and mentors, both QPS and PCYC to deliver this program,” he said.

Bringing the program to Toowoomba was also important after a community forum in February 2023 “highlighted the way the community was feeling about crime in Toowoomba”, Darling Downs District Officer Superintendent Doug McDonald said.

Project Booyah was one of a wide range of initiatives that has since been implemented to deal with youth offending, he said.

“Not only does it steer them away from that type of offending, but it actually builds a better life for those people in our community,” Superintendent McDonald.

Project Booyah youth program participants (from left) Kadisha, Holly and Hanna on a team building problem solving exercise in Toowoomba at Denise Kable Youth Services Centre, Tuesday, March 12, 2024. Picture: Kevin Farmer

Police Minister Mark Ryan said the “gold-standard intervention program” was part of funding and investment in all forms of intervention in the criminal justice system.

The first intake for the Toowoomba region started in February 2024 and once participants graduate, a follow up program is in place to continue to support participants until they are 18.

Find out more about Project Booyah at www.projectbooyah.com.au.