A Catholic high school in Sydney, Australia has begun offering its female students lessons in essential car maintenance. While most schools skip over such practical life skills, especially with its female students, Stella Maris College in Manly aims to change the game and get these young women ready for the real world. It’s awesome!
- The Year 11 girls are getting a valuable education. Most of these students will end up driving a car someday, so they’ll need to know how to look after it. In Australia, maintenance of motor vehicles is even more important given how hot and dry the weather can be, which puts extra pressure on cars.
- Car educators Galmatic are giving the lessons. Galmatic is an external company that specializes in breaking down boring stereotypes about women not knowing anything about cars and instead aims to empower them to do maintenance and minor repairs. Galmatic goes the extra mile in “helping Australian women and teenagers feel comfortable behind the wheel through our hands-on car maintenance workshops and online courses.” How cool is that?
- You can’t just ignore a problem and hope it goes away. When something’s up with your car, even a minor issue can become a major one if not dealt with in a timely manner. That’s why knowing how to look after it is so important. As Galmatic instructor Eleni Mitakos told Daily Mail Australia, “We teach up to 100,000 teenagers a year in schools, across all parts of Sydney. The primary aim is for teenagers to feel comfortable behind the wheel. Ultimately they are driving very big vehicles which can be very expensive if not looked after properly. We can’t stress enough to all our students you should never ignore a problem with your car, you need to address it for your own safety.”
- Stella Maris is entirely behind the initiative. As Amy Smith, the assistant principal in charge of well-being at the college, explained, all the girls were intrigued by the class and felt like they’d learned something by the end of the lesson. “We had three groups of roughly 40 girls in what we call an incursion [event on school grounds]. The feedback was very positive, the ladies from Galmatic were very patient and thorough in what they were explaining,” she said. “All the teaching staff and our principal Elizabeth Carnegie felt a workshop like this would be beneficial for many reasons, mainly skills the girls need to learn before they leave school. It was also important to show the girls that they have the capabilities to handle situations themselves once they are on the road, rather than rely on someone else.” Couldn’t agree more!
