Mastering Skills at the Tetra Woodworking Shop in Vancouver

Tetra Woodworking is a 620-square-foot, fully accessible shop where anyone with a disability of any kind can come to learn woodworking using adapted tools, under the tutelage of a team of skilled and enthusiastic carvers and woodworkers. It is located in the sub-basement of Vancouver’s Blusson Spinal Cord Centre.

Ruby Ng, Executive Director of the Disability Foundation, said Tetra is celebrating its 30th anniversary and will be honouring volunteers who have been innovating adaptive technology to help the disabled. To celebrate its 30 years of helping others, Tetra is showing a gallery of videos at http://tetranation.org/video/page/2/ that showcase some of the innovative solutions Tetra volunteers and participants have come up with, such as a bocce ball launcher, a collapsible shoe horn, an extended toenail clipper, and a portable travel wheelchair ramp.

Most of all, the Tetra shop enables individuals a place to learn a new skill while they get out in the community socializing and having fun. This has made it a place where many individuals look at Tetra Shop as a place where they look forward going to every week.

What Tetra Shop desperately needs is more volunteers who can help out in the shop. The wood shop functions best when they have an instructor-client ratio that is one to one or one to two. More woodworkers are needed as instructors and volunteers. They could also use a wood sponsor, but for now clients pay a $10 drop-in fee, which covers the cost of basic woods to create coffee tables, step-stools, birdcages, Adirondack chairs.

If you are skilled in woodworking, want to help out or simply want to learn more about the Tetra workshop in Vancouver, click here.