Creating jobs and linking with community – a long term plan

On Thursday 1 December, the The Hon Peter Hall MLC, Minister for Higher Education and Skills, Minister responsible for the Teaching Profession handed the keys to a new sustainable house at Selandra Rise in Clyde North to a third year apprentice and cut the ribbon launching MEGT’s Greenhouse project.

The house is one of six affordable homes built under a year-long partnership between MEGT, a not-for-profit organisation and one of Australia’s largest employers of apprentices, Stockland and Porter Davis Homes.

“What could be more fitting to mark the completion of this fantastic affordable housing project
than to be handing the keys to one of the people involved in its construction,” Mr Hall said.

Mr Hall praised the involvement of MEGT, Stockland and Porter Davis Homes, saying the project had resulted in employment for 15 trainees and apprentices in roles as varied as finance, real estate, building and construction.

The project also sets a benchmark for affordable environmental advances in housing construction for the future.

“The Victorian Coalition Government through Skills Victoria provided $100,000 in innovation funding to MEGT to build sustainable and affordable housing and to stimulate ongoing employment within the building and construction industry,” Mr Hall said.

“Each of the houses has been built according to environmental best practice through the use of solar hot water, recycled water for gardens, and the fit-out of smart wiring.

In 2010, MEGT partnered with Stocklands and Porter Davis Homes to pilot a model that would generate employment opportunities for apprentices and trainees. This model needed to be able to be scaled up or down to suit different geographic regions.

Six houses were purchased in Clyde North, Victoria on the Selandra Rise Estate. Learning from the problems of infrastructure and services disconnection faced by some other satellite estates, Stocklands planned the Selandra Rise project with community needs in mind. This was exactly the mindset that was synergistic with MEGT’s plans to create sustainable job opportunities for young people in regions right around Australia.

Fifteen apprentices and trainees have been employed by MEGT and placed with KPMG, Middendorp Electrics, Stocklands and Porter Davis Homes; with more trainees still to be employed for the real estate and financial services businesses connected to the Estate. It is the wide range of skills that makes this project scalable.

Estate building projects cycle tradespeople from house to house. That means only a handful of tradespeople are needed in building a large number of houses. It is when you combine all the industries involved in an estate, that employment for locals becomes sustainable after the houses have been built. While initial apprenticeships and traineeships come from the architects through to analysts, finance organisations and real estate agents, landscapers and the traditional building and construction companies; there are even more opportunities when the Estate is populated by retailers, libraries, sports facilities and schools. The sale of the houses in December 2011 will not therefore be the end of the employment opportunities for the community.

MEGT also assisted one of its apprentices, Michael Belli, in purchasing his first home from the estate.

In December, the project partners will sit down together and talk about the way forward. What were the learnings? What could we do better? Where should we take the model next? It’s important to Australian communities and to the Building and Construction industry that these types of schemes don’t stop with one estate and one region. It’s partnerships that will make them happen.

MEGT would like to acknowledge funding assistance from SkillsVic towards the success of this project.

Innovative building project lands apprentice a house

Minister for Higher Education and Skills Peter Hall will this morning hand the keys to a new sustainable house at Selandra Rise in Clyde North to a third year apprentice who helped build it.

The house is one of six affordable homes built under a year-long partnership between MEGT, a not-for-profit organisation and one of Australia’s largest employers of apprentices, Stockland and Porter Davis Homes.

“What could be more fitting to mark the completion of this fantastic affordable housing project than to be handing the keys to one of the people involved in its construction,” Mr Hall said.

“I congratulate Michael Belli on the purchase of his new home. Michael should feel especially proud to have had a hand in this project and the opportunity to demonstrate the future in affordable sustainable home construction.”

Mr Hall praised the involvement of MEGT, Stockland and Porter Davis Homes, saying the project had resulted in employment for 15 trainees and apprentices in roles as varied as finance, real estate, building and construction.

The project also sets a benchmark for affordable environmental advances in housing construction for the future.

“The Victorian Coalition Government through Skills Victoria provided $100,000 in innovation funding to MEGT to build sustainable and affordable housing and to stimulate ongoing employment within the building and construction industry,” Mr Hall said.

“Each of the houses has been built according to environmental best practice through the use of solar hot water, recycled water for gardens, and the fit-out of smart wiring.

“The Victorian Government continues to support the development of new skills through the Victorian Training Guarantee and it has been a phenomenally successful driver for promoting skills development in Victoria.

“Under the guarantee the Victorian Government has provided subsidised training to record numbers of Victorians to help them acquire the skills they need to secure employment or to improve their current skills base,” Mr Hall said.

MEGT IATN training facility in Mossman Gorge, Queensland

Winner – 2011 MEGT Group Training Employer of the Year

Prue Leighton, Field Officer MEGT Group Training and Kym Hall, Melbourne Zoo

Recognised as a high quality learning environment, Melbourne Zoo, part of Zoos Victoria, tries to provide as many opportunities it can for entry level horticulture apprentices to learn about the wide variety of plants and plantings that only they can provide.

This would not be possible without the assistance of MEGT Group Training, who rotates the lucky apprentices to other host employers after their year with Melbourne Zoo. It means they receive continuity of employment so they can complete their apprenticeship.

Kym Hall, Melbourne Zoo’s Nursery Manager, accepted the Award at the MEGT Graduation on Tuesday 15th November. “Zoos Victoria has a long relationship with MEGT and is pleased with the service it receives from Prue Leighton and the high standard of their apprentices,” said Mr Hall.

The experience with Melbourne Zoo presents some unique challenges. Plants can be trampled by the enthusiastic public; or annihilated by hungry possums. When you work in an animal enclosure, most of the animals need to be segregated – even a tortoise can give a nip. Irrigations systems have to be set up on the outside of an enclosure because primates are pretty good at disassembling it – hey just like Leggo! And there are the challenges of trying to replicate the environments of other countries and regions, but with plants that will tolerate a Melbourne climate.

This is an experience of a lifetime. The apprentices are trained by professionals with world class knowledge and ideas for gardens and habitats. The apprentices get to work on exciting projects, for example, Mark Dobbie, their most recent apprentice and one who has been kept on for an additional year, was involved from start to finish in the new habitat for the new baboon display.

“I was involved in the earthworks, landscaping, irrigation systems and plantings,’ explains Mark. ‘It’s really great to overhear the public compliment it. And it’s wonderful to see how primates that had been on concrete, now have soil underfoot and plants around them.’ Although the baboons’ enthusiasm for some of the trees has been excessive – to the extent they have ring-barked them, it is a life lesson in problem solving Mark will take with him in the future.

EMILY HODGE WINS THE BAW BAW SHIRE BUSINESS AWARDS – YOUNG ACHIEVER AWARD

Emily Hodge, a school-based trainee from Warragul Regional College, is employed by MEGT Group Training and works on location at Sally J Real Estate in Warragul.

MEGT Group Training is proud to have supported Emily throughout her school-based traineeship. Emily will commence a full time traineeship completing Certificate IV in
Real Estate at the end of the year.

As a Group Training Organisation, MEGT is proud to work with Gippsland businesses in developing their workforce by placing and supporting local people through the traineeship program, whether it be school-based, full-time or part-time.

MEGT Group Training would also like to acknowledge the support of Mike Jungwirth – Workplace Learning Co-ordinator with the Baw Baw LLEN in coordinating the Young Achiever’s Award.

Mission Australia Trainee Awards

Inaugural Mission Australia Trainee Awards night at Melbourne Aquarium on Monday 3rd of October.
The awards to to acknowledge the efforts over more than 100 trainees that Mission has over the last couple of years across 3 different projects.

MEGT GT provided 22 trainees to Build the Vic Urban “POP UP PARK” at Dandenong.  These trainees all have a level of disadvantage in the labour market and were unable to gain work, 2 of our trainees were lucky enough to receive awards.
10 of our original 22 were taken by bus  to the event by Mission Australia and had a fantastic time.

Business links with school

A local business has joined forces with Pakenham Secondary College [and MEGT Group Training] to provide on-the-job training and job opportunities for local students.

Pakenham Secondary College student, Keith Newling, has started a school-based apprenticeship arrangement at Middy’s Pakenham branch, enabling him to comibine his Year II VACaL studies with accredited training and on-the-job experience.

Keith had been working at electrical supplier Middy’s on a casual basis, but was excited about the opportunity to sign up as a school-based apprentice under the pilot scheme.  [MEGT Group Training employs Keith and has placed him with Middy’s.]

“It’s a great opportunity for me to develop new skills and to learn about all aspects of running a business,” Keith said.

Middy’s Pakenham brand manager, Derek Page, said the trial program offered benefits to both local students and the business.

“As a business based in a country town, we like to employ local people,” Mr Page said. “This program gives us the opportunity to support our local students and schools, and get young people involved in meaningful training.”

Middy’s will set up trial placements at its Warragul and Bairnsdale branches following the successful implementation of the Pakenham program.

[Prue Leighton, Industry Employment Consultant with MEGT Group Training has been working closely with the school, Middy’s and students to establish around 10 regional placements for 2012.]

Story courtesy Pakenham Star
Thursday 1 September 2011

Young indigenous mentors connect

Aboriginal trainees are advancing cultural exchange in schools, writes Keeli Cambourne.

Simon Price, a school principal for many years, says one of the most endearing things he has seen was when he walked into a classroom recently and saw two of his students hunkered over an assignment with a teachers’ aide.

What made it special was the mix of those involved.

“There was one of our Aboriginal students, with one of our non-Aboriginal students, working quietly with our Aboriginal teachers’ aide, Mafi Kailahi, on a project together,” he says.

“It was wonderful to see. In many small regional towns like ours, seeing that can be quite unusual but that is beginning to be a more normal occurrence now.”

Price is the principal at St Mary’s Catholic School in Wellington, in the central west of NSW. Two young Aboriginal women have been working in the school as teachers’ aides for the past year as part of a federal government program that places Aboriginal youth as trainees in education support.

Price says the cultural exchange between the trainees and his students has made a world of difference to his school and the community.

“We have had older Aboriginal educational workers on staff, but having people the age of the trainees helps Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal kids across the school,” he says.

”The students look to them as mentors and although they work in classes which have predominantly Aboriginal students, their presence has helped with the whole culture of the school.”

The federal government has invested about $23 million in the Indigenous Remote Service Delivery Traineeships, which, from 2010 to 2013, will place trainees aged 15 to 24 in schools and indigenous childcare services in remote areas.

In NSW, 24 young Aboriginal people are undertaking traineeships in teaching-support roles, mostly in independent schools. Their influence has been far reaching, helping Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal students make a cultural connection, says the national manager of indigenous programs at MEGT Group Training, Debra Nooyen, who places the trainees.

“Mafi Kailahi is focusing on her Aboriginal language and helping the Aboriginal students identify with their language, which in turn helps them with their literacy,” Nooyen says.

Another trainee, Casey Jones Fisher, is working at St Joseph’s Primary School in Eugowra and organised the school’s first NAIDOC Week celebrations this year, with people from her community in Forbes teaching the students dance, language and music.

Nooyen says the presence of trainee Paul Simpson, working at St Patrick’s Primary School in Griffith, ”is a positive representation of Aboriginal males” at the school.

For Kailahi, the traineeship means that she is not only enhancing her own educational skills, but can pass on some of her heritage and knowledge to the younger generation.

“I went to Wellington High School and left in about year 11,” Kailahi says. ”Back then there was not really a lot of support for Aboriginal people in school.

”Working in the school now is a great opportunity for me to help the Aboriginal students get the knowledge about their culture and heritage that I didn’t have and make it easier to combine that with the culture we live in.”

Kailahi says that knowing more about their background helps the students feel proud of their heritage.

“I was raised on a mission and that gave me a lot of cultural background,” she says. ”Teaching the [Wiradjuri] language is also helping me as well.”

She says her presence in the school ”is helping all students see that Aboriginal people can work in the community and, more importantly, in education.”

”I hope I am breaking down the barriers between the students, too, so they learn they should get to a know person rather than just think about their heritage.”

Article courtesy The Sydney Morning Herald
Monday September 12, 2011
Keeli Cambourne
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/national/education/young-indigenous-mentors-connect-20110911-1k409.html#ixzz1Xis2hsP8

Terry Saxby Wins NSW GTA Award

Winner – Group Training Awards 2011 – Trainee of the Year – Disability
Terry is a deaf Aboriginal man who is currently undertaking a traineeship through MEGT Australia’s Indigenous Apprenticeship and Traineeship Network and the Office of Environment and Heritage’s Land Alive Project.

And he has just won the 2011 Group Training Awards  – Trainee of the Year – Disability.

Terry was working at the Batabah Aboriginal Land Council under the CDEP program prior to undertaking his Certificate III in Conservation and Land Management and was very keen to gain skills enabling him fulltime employment.

His traineeship involved him working on Aboriginal land in the Blacksmith and Swansea area while he studied for his qualification.

MEGT’s IATN Department supported him throughout the year to make sure he was able to turn the training into real workplace skills.

Terry believes the example he has set through his traineeship will help to close the gap in education and employment outcomes and create better opportunities for Indigenous people and their communities. His hearing impairment, for an Indigenous man in his 50’s has not stood in the way of pursuing his goals of being an active member of the local community.

Terry LOVES his work and is extremely reliable. He is early every day in order to be ready to get the team started. He is second in charge of the crew and enjoys this responsibilty. He is well liked and respected by the other team members. He is someone who just gets on with the job at hand.

Melbourne Graduation 2011

Celebrate your achievements at the Graduation night

Celebrate this momentous achievement with your family,
employer and/or host employer on

Date: Tuesday, 15 November 2011
Time: 7pm – 9:30pm
Venue: Malvern Town Hall
Address: Cnr Glenferrie Road & High Street
Malvern
(Keep this date free. Please note the change of venue)

Note: Your formal invitation will be sent out in September 2011
Bring: Family, friends and work colleagues