STUDENTS are being taught the virtues of patience, persistence, punctuality and planning thanks to about 30 volunteer men with an interest in Meccano.

The Meccano Program, part of the School Volunteer Program ACT, is a way of engaging students who often experience difficulty interacting with others, who lack self-esteem and who may not be coping well. It’s managed by volunteer Bob Greeney.

“In 2005, I was approached to start a Meccano program to mentor young students who needed additional adult mentoring, which could be anything from discussion, to the application of thought, to patience and persistence,” he says.

The program operates in McGregor, Latham, Mt Rogers, Macquarie, Evatt and North Ainslie primary schools and the volunteers mostly come from the Belconnen Rotary Club.

“We meet for coffee quite often – always after a session. It’s a way to have a chat and socialise, but also talk about students who might have been difficult.

“We can’t afford to miss a week, so we meet for coffee during the school holidays, too.”

Bob says he gets a lot of satisfaction out of seeing the growth and development of students.

“There’s an old story that says if you want somebody to do something, find a busy person. All of us volunteers are involved in other things and we set aside a couple of hours to do this,” he says.

“Among us are farmers, teachers, engineers, public servants and we’ve got people from all walks of life and there are things we can teach the kids.

“I’m an engineer so this sort of thing comes fairly naturally to me, but you don’t need any special skills to teach Meccano.

“We always try to have 25 per cent more volunteers in the room than students to allow any of the volunteers to get away.”

Meccano, invented in 1901 in England by Frank Hornby, is a model construction system that enables the building of working models and mechanical devices through the use of re-usable metal strips, plates, angle girders, wheels, axles and gears, with nuts and bolts to connect the pieces.

The Meccano Men have more than 50 Meccano sets in the six schools.

“The students get a Mecanno set, which has been packed up and is ready to go, and they typically take eight weeks to finish a model and when they finish it we ask them if they’d like to go to the school assembly and explain what they’ve built,” Bob says.

“When they finish they have to take it all apart and put it back in a box so they have to complete the exercise.

“In seven years, I have only had one or two students out of 300 who haven’t completed the cycle.”

In addition to developing fine motor skills, students benefit from interaction with a mature adult who helps interpret plans, while encouraging patience and persistence in their students.

“They learn that not all adults are there to boss them around. They all learn how to read a diagram and how to follow instructions,” he says.
“Most of us are grandfathers so we do this sort of thing with our own grandchildren was well. My grandson was one when I brought his first Meccano set.”

Macquarie Primary School principal Wendy Cave says students benefit from the interaction with the Meccano Men.

“It’s a a beautiful model of volunteering and we love it because it’s all about the community. We have members of the community coming in, but it’s also the community that is built among the children and the grown ups and the interactions between them,” she says.