There are certain people in this world that are just inspirational. They don’t necessarily have to be Olympic athletes or groundbreaking neurosurgeons, sometimes they can be your local apprentice baker.
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Jamie Clarke is an apprentice at Tanks Bakery in Yass and on Friday September 5 he was awarded a $5000 scholarship designed to support apprentices who have demonstrated hardship in their personal circumstances and aptitude for vocational education and training.
Education and Communities State Training Services Advisor, Joanne Davies, said that there couldn't have been a more deserving candidate for the scholarship.
“I am so happy to present this to Jamie, he should be so very proud of his efforts and who he is,” Joanne said.
What is inspiring is not that Jamie is dedicated and a hard worker, even though these are qualities that he possess, it’s that despite the many hardships in Jamie’s life, he has never given up.
“I was a part of the Foster care system from when I was five years old until I was eleven. I was in and out of my mums care and foster care for years, until my mum went off the rails and I went to live with my foster family, I was eleven and a half,” Jamie explains.
“I was a wreck when my foster family got me, they had to teach me everything. I was shattered, emotional and had absolutely no self-esteem. I wasn’t medicated but I just had no control over what was going on. They had to teach me all the basics, I just knew nothing.”
Employer Tony ‘Tank’ Hawker is very proud of Jamie and expressed just what Jamie’s foster family did for him, “They gave him the most important thing, they showed him that he had a future.”
“I hadn’t had any contact with my mum for six years. She past away three years ago,” Jamie said.
But as many kids prepared for the end of their schooling years with parties and travel, with no immediate plans for the future, Jamie stepped off his last day at school on the Friday and plunged straight into the hard work of his apprenticeship on Saturday.
“A lot of it has to do with the hard work and dedication of Tank, it has been invaluable that he has taken the time to teach me,” Jamie recognised.
Tony is proud at how far Jamie has come already.
“He gets up at 3am each morning and is already ahead of the game, I can trust him with all the mixing, I just know he is so reliable and quick to learn these skills. He is definitely someone worth investing in,” he said.
Jamie attends Tech in Canberra, two blocks a year, three weeks in each block. For the future, Jamie plans on just taking things as they come