This youth-led project aims to support local young women at the start of their careers, in the wake of COVID-19, to find well-paid and secure work. The program will consist of three parts:

• An art for well-being and team building day,
• A series of workshops, and
• A paid opportunity to deliver a community project.

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The project will be designed flexibly to respond to the needs of the group. However, it aims to include integrating the following topics:

• Barriers to secure and meaningful employment
• Work rights
• Navigating male dominated industries
• TAFE Mount Barker - pathways, programs, student well-being and support
• Navigating the welfare system as a young job seeker.
• Gender equality: what are your rights regarding sexual harassment and gender discrimination?
• Having your voice heard: a workshop with local MPs about issues facing young women.
• Self-care in a recession: dealing with the stress of looking for work and stressful workplaces.
  Parenting and returning to work.

At the end of the workshops, participants will be provided with an opportunity to undertake a paid placement with the Mount Barker Community Centre. This will include the planning and delivery of a community program. This will give the participants the opportunity to use and apply their learnings from the program.

Project Achievements

This project provided a series of workshops to young women looking for work in the District on the following topics:

• looking for and applying for jobs
• upskilling
• navigating the welfare system
• job interviews
• confidence and self-care
• advocacy.

Arranged visits by experts and guest speakers from the following organisations:

• SALT (Supporting & Linking Tradeswomen)
• Working Women’s Centre SA
• Uniting Communities
• TAFE
• Headspace
• Rebekha Sharkie MP
• Dan Cregan MP

Increased the knowledge, skills and wellbeing of young women who are looking for work in the district.

• Developed a new program of workshops that can be used in further projects.
• Delivered presentations about the above topics to 100 high school students
• Connected young women in with existing support services
• Provided a paid work placement opportunity at the Mt Barker Community Centre for 4 young women to assist with community projects and gain valuable skills

Project outcomes

Mt Barker condensed and adjusted the workshop program and pushed out the start date by one week. 

In consultation with the participants, the paid placement was also extended over a longer period of time. This enabled the participants to maintain a connection to the community centre for a longer time and to design a bigger and more complex community program than was first anticipated. The program that the participants decided to work on was: Establish a Bike Kitchen in Mount Barker.

The young person leading the project delivered a presentation and a series of workshops for a local high school year 11 Career Day. This enabled the project to connect with an additional 100 young people and build their knowledge and awareness of the topics covered in the workshop series. The school workshops also included skill development opportunities in knowing what is a 'good job and what's not, how to apply for jobs and to build skills in creating a quality resume and application.

Pre-start survey

The participant pre-start survey responses indicated strongly that a lack of confidence and connections were the two key reasons they felt they were unable to secure employment. Respondents also indicated that disability was a barrier to their employment and that if they did have employment prior to Covid, that Covid negatively impacted their employment situation through loss of job or reduction in hours.

The employment goal of survey respondents was strongly in favour of finding stable and secure employment close to home rather than having a the goal of having a specific job, such as teacher, nurse, aged care worker, etc.

Post-completion survey

The participant post-completion survey responses indicated that they have developed confidence, skills and connections that they believe will help them find employment into the future. One participant has secured stable employment during her engagement with the program.  

All participants were able to identify areas that they wanted to improve in and find opportunities in the project to build on these areas. For example: talking to strangers, writing professionally, project planning and delivery.

Outcome 1: Improve individual/community social and emotional wellbeing

Through the program, the registered participants expanded their social connections significantly. They did this by meeting presenters at the weekly workshops, making friends with the other participants who are in a similar situation (age, geographical location, under or unemployed with barriers to employment such as disability) and undertaking a paid placement at the Community Centre where they learnt about the social programs that they can participate in.  

During their paid placement the participants had to manage a project collaboratively (design a community program – Mt Barker Bike Kitchen) which involved them working together and doing things they had previously not done before. This included approaching organisations, talking to new people, creating a project plan and budget, working with others to resolve conflict, researching and reporting. Collectively this experience enabled them to build social skills and resilience that otherwise they may not have learnt.  

The school presentation and workshops delivered to a local high school contributed to individual social and emotional wellbeing and resilience by reinforcing the message with students that looking for a good job can be hard, describing some of the common negative feelings people experience while looking for work and what strategies can be used to manage the negative feelings associated with job-seeking.

Outcome 2: Improve individual/community economic wellbeing and resilience

Through the program, the registered participants were able to elect to go on to do a paid placement with Mount Barker Community Centre, of which three participants did. This paid placement not only provided them with the short term economic outcome of paid employment but also helped them to build their knowledge, skills and attributes to achieve their goal of paid and secure employment. Some of the knowledge, skills and attributes developed included:

• Project management and budgeting,
• Time management,
• Working independently and as part of a team,
• Understanding different work styles
• Written and verbal communication,
• Working in a busy community centre with a wide range of people coming from many walks of life, and
• Undertaking research and writing reports with recommendations.

One of the participants, during the program, was able to secure employment in her chosen field. We hope that through other grant-funded opportunities our project group has been successful in, that we will be able to offer additional employment opportunities to the participants.
The participants now also have the benefit of having referees from paid employment that can go on their resumes.

Outcome 3: Reduce social isolation and increase the participation of priority groups in the local community

The program enabled three young women to connect to local social and employment activities that they were previously unaware existed in their community.  

The program facilitated the formation of new friendships and the further development of their social skills so that in future they will find it easier to make friends and social connections.

Ongoing Learning and collaborations

The learnings from this project have enabled us to develop a formula for successful partnerships which is efficient with limited resources and reduces unnecessary service duplication and competition in our region.  

In this sense, Mt Barker continues to seek new partners, and to build upon the successful partnerships already established, to apply for new funding and opportunities to deliver outcomes for young people in this district.  

Mt Barker has also developed a good knowledge of how to engage with young people and will use this going forward.

This project has enabled the Working Women's Centre to design a range of workshop material to present to young women facing barriers to employment.

Mount Barker Community Centre, Adelaide Hills Council and Mount Barker District Council have also managed to received grant funding to  develop a Local Drug Action Team targeting young people in our region. The LDAT grant will build on the work done in through the Youth-led recovery grant and has really set us up well for success. In fact, we hope to employ at least one of the young participants to support us in the delivery of this grant program because of the skills they have learnt in designing community programs within this grant opportunity.  

Through this program, Mt Barker has strengthened connections with local high schools, local employment agencies and job support providers.

This project has received funding from the Department of Human Services Youth-led COVID-19 Recovery Grants and administered by the Local Government Association of South Australia.

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