A Breakfast event recently held at The Vault by the Greater Shepparton Lighthouse Project, in conjunction with construction group Built, aimed to bring awareness to and discuss how we can help local young people secure gainful employment through work experience pathways and how we can work together as a business community.
Built is a national, diversified general contractor and one of Australia’s largest private construction groups. They are the group behind the next phase of the GV Health refurbishment.
Joined by the likes of the member for Northern Victoria, Wendy Lovell, Mayor of Greater Shepparton, Cr Kim O’Keeffe, councillor Greg James and many more leaders and business owners from around town, Greater Shepparton Lighthouse Project and Built were able to put a spotlight on what may be stopping so many young people in our locality from paving a career path and the ways in which we are working towards stopping the cycle of high unemployment.
A discussion of increased work experience capacity within local organisations and greater flexibility to suit different young people’s many circumstances was promising as was Built’s pledge to help 100 local students gain their white card to boost our building and construction industry.
Greater Shepparton Lighthouse Project CEO, Lisa McKenzie, also postulated the ways in which our community’s youth unemployment issues can be addressed from a fundamental perspective.
“Part of helping young people with employment begins with school readiness, which begins at birth,” said Lisa
“Readiness for school is measured on a national level. Our figures in Shepparton aren’t great. We are poorly placed in relation to rest of Australia as a whole, our children are two times more likely to be behind in developmental domains than the national average. Addressing that is a community issue, not just one that rests solely on parents.”
Lisa underlined the connection between well-supported families, early childhood education and employment later on in life.
“Work experience is so important, and so is school readiness. We need to think about the ways we can ensure our children are well supported from day one, a solid educational foundation is vital to their futures and ours.” said Lisa.
