Growing Futures: Workforce Development

Centrefarm's training and employment strategy is underpinned by the: Growing Futures - Workforce Development structural process. This process has been specifically designed to give Indigenous Job Seekers the capacity to participate in mainstream employment and has been established to cater for the needs of employers.

Growing Futures is the crux of what Centrefarm has been set up to do. Along with economic development through the establishment of commercial horticultural operations on Indigenous land: there must be employment outcomes for Indigenous people that value adds to joint ventures and partnerships with private enterprise.

Whilst we are about the business of growing agribusiness, we are also very much in the business of growing capacity, economies and developing a sustainable labour market on Aboriginal Communities through Workforce Development.

 
In a couple of sentences, how would you describe the Centrefarm project?

Centrefarm is calling the new training centre Growing Futures: Workforce Development and have built a structure that will develop the capacity of local Indigenous people to participate in the local economy.

What is the project aim or purpose?

The purpose of the project is to develop a structural and systemic pathway for Indigenous people at Ali-Curung and Murray Downs to participate in long term employment. This includes supporting people past their entry level employment and into more senior roles as this will free up entry level positions and therefore create a more viable labour market for Indigenous people.

This will be done by employing an Indigenous Engagement Officer to work with Service Providers to bring together the whole range of Govt programs into a coordinated and collaborative process that provides a visual pathway for Community Members to follow into employment.

The Engagement Officer will work with families to encourage support for working people and facilitate engagement in activities such as: training, work readiness and work experience, traineeships and employment.

Centrefarm have the management agreement on the training centre that is currently being installed at Ali-Curung so the Engagement Officer would be attached to the training centre and work with all service providers to ensure that the training centre is effective in producing results for the Community.

How will we do this project?

The methodology will be through the establishment of a local service provider's action group who will work across a range of industry to develop the capacity of Indigenous Job Seekers to a standard that is acceptable to Employers. The process will involve a five step training program that will enable participants to enter at their level of capacity.

The five step process will include input from employers and the coordination of existing services such as: CDEP and Job Services Australia. The program is intended to engage whole families or individuals and is based on the premise that people need to organise their lives around being at work if they are to participate in the workforce as the first step.

The five steps are as follows:

 STEP 1: Labour Market Induction
 STEP 2: Generic Pre-Employment Training
 STEP 3: Pre-Vocational Work Skills Training
 STEP 4: Work Skills Training and Work Experience on CDEP
 STEP 5: Apprenticeships and Traineeships

What advantages to Indigenous people will arise from this project?

Indigenous people will have a systemic pathway to employment that currently does not exist given that the Job Services Australia provider does not have a permanent presence at Ali-Curung.

By setting up a training structure that allows people to enter at their own capacity and work their way forward, people will be able to fail and try again. For example: if someone decides to go travelling with family for a few months, they can re-enter where they left off and try again.

There are currently 118 jobs in Ali-Curung and Murray Downs with only a small percentage of these being filled by local people. The training structure is designed to support employers and employees past any 26 week outcome set by the Commonwealth and should therefore allow people to move past entry level employment and thus free up those positions. Significant employment outcomes should result over the next 5 years. (please see attached labour market spreadsheet for employment market details)

What will the project add to knowledge about Indigenous employment?

If the project is successful then it will prove that just giving people a job does not make them employees. That there needs to be an holistic approach taken to reaching long term employment outcomes and that this can only be done by working with families to ensure that people's lives are organised around being at work, or school or at their designated activity.

In the longer term we believe that people who get up in the morning send their kids to school and this is the key issue for the future.

Note: This project is funded under the Indigenous Training for Employment Program, a partnership between the Northern Territory Government Department of Business and Employment (DBE) and the Australian Government Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations (DEEWR). Additional financial support has been provided by the Indigenous Land Corporation.

The Indigenous Land Corporation (ILC) is a statutory authority set up under the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Act 2005. The ILC's purpose is to assist Indigenous people with land acquisition and land management to achieve economic, environmental, social and cultural benefits.