What are the opening hours?

Monday 9am - 4:30pm Tuesday 9am - 4:30pm Wednesday 9am - 4:30pm Thursday 9am - 4:30pm Friday 9am - 4:30pm

Handy Girl Australia

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Australia
Ballarat, VIC
Handy Girl Australia

Handy Girl Australia offers cleaning, gardening and NDIS Service Provision. Property maintenance including painting and plaster repairs round out our team.
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All completed by our trusted Handy Girls!

Address

2/24 Kennedys Dve
Ballarat, VIC
3356

Opening Hours

Monday	9am - 4:30pm
Tuesday	9am - 4:30pm
Wednesday	9am - 4:30pm
Thursday	9am - 4:30pm
Friday	9am - 4:30pm

Website

http://www.handygirlaustralia.com.au/

Alerts

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The Handy Girl story

Handy Girl Australia was dreamed up in 2006 when the CEO, Kim Halbert-Pere was renovating a country property south of Ballarat. She found it hard to find female tradies and also found male tradies simply did not listen.

At the time Kim was lecturing and writing courses part time at the local University and thinking about going back to High School teaching full time. However, she couldn’t shake the dream of a Handy Girl business. Over the summer break she decided to test her theory about this type of business and enrolled in the NEIS program.

Kim put an ad in the Yellow Pages (as you did pre-internet) and the jobs started to flow. However, the realisation this couldn’t be a one-person show sunk in, and the thought of recruiting other Handy Girls to help seemed impossible in a male dominated space. Handy Girl was shelved, for now.

The idea of Handy Girl Australia continued to nag at Kim and so in 2015 it was re-birthed. The aim was to provide women to improve their on tool skills by running small personalized workshops. Kim attracted support from Bosch who supplied a range of tools to help run both one-off and a series of workshops.

Kim created the ‘Box of Confidence’ woodwork short courses, where boxes were made, decorated and also exhibited. Participants built their confidence working with hand and power tools, and also took home other various items like Adirondack chairs, simple tables, and pallet items.

Handy Girl Australia has provided woodwork classes to a group of refugee women through a program run by Women’s Health Grampians. Also trained vulnerable youth through the Federation College, Marist 180 Hammertime Program in Brunswick as well as private clients and various Neighbourhood House short courses.

In 2016 Handy Girl TV was launched, a 20-minute TV pilot promoting inspiring women in the local community. Funding from the Industries Skills Fund was used to create 18 shows which are TV/HD ready. The purpose of the production was to have a show that built confidence by demonstrating women of different ages having the courage to make ‘something’ happen that improved their own family situation/home or impact others outside of their home.

Our feature stories included:

Lou Ridsdale Food is Free journey and story with a short DIY segment in the shed (using basic tools)

Three Chef’s Story - that highlighted the importance of apprenticeships, schools thinking out of the box, pre-employment and supporting a person with a disability to become employable and independent

A same s*x couple wanting to build a cubby-house for their children and discovering that they can build and create and the neighbourhood families children also benefitted from the new creative play space

Introduced The Two Grand Ladies - who represent an older demographic, but who have a willingness to give DIY (or other challenges) a go

As well as the occasional handy hints on why it’s important to nip home maintenance tasks in the butt.

Kim through Handy Girl Australia supports a number of local community groups including:

Food is Free Laneway by providing tools for hands on projects and occasional working bee help

Women’s Health Grampians

Eureka Mums

Established the Ballarat Building and Recycling Buy Swap and Sell page in 2015 which now has over 2000 members

In 2019 Handy Girl Australia has evolved to provide cleaning, gardening and property maintenance services to private clients, NDIS and aged care clients. There are 9 staff at the Ballarat head office including cleaners, gardeners, a bookkeeper and qualified trades.

Handy Girl Australia are members of the following:

The Housing Industry Association (HIA)

CORE (Communities if Respect and Equality)

SALT (Supporting and Linking Tradeswomen)

Commerce Ballarat

Gender Equity Victoria (GenVic)

Handy Girl Australia encourages clients to work alongside us and develop new skills or feel like they can participate in maintaining their home environments.