Updates from Beacon Foundation August 2020

“I’ve seen kids give up because they don’t know how to get a job in different industries”
We sat down with Charlotte to hear why she decided to join Beacon’s inaugural Youth Advisory Committee. Charlotte is 17 years old and lives in George Town. She is a student at the Port Dalrymple School, part of the Collective ed. network. This is her story.

Beacon launches a new pilot program in Tasmania
Beacon has commenced a new pilot project in partnership with Tasmania’s Department of Education called Vocational Placement Pilot Project (VPPP). The project will explore the benefit an intermediary organisation like Beacon can provide to support the arrangement and completion of vocational placements for students undertaking VET courses in Tasmania. We will be working closely with a selection of secondary schools and colleges across north and north-western Tasmania. The project will support employers across all sectors to assist young people on their critical journey through education and training and onto meaningful employment. To learn more about the project, reach out to Nick Probert from Beacon Foundation directly.

“Finding their place” – calling on business to offer VET placements to help students finish Y12
Beacon are proud to be working alongside Burnie Works, North-West Industry Training Hub and business in Tasmania’s North West and on the Central Coast to deliver ‘Finding their Place’. This outcome focused campaign is call to industry to offer VET placements to local year 11/12 students who will need to undertake a VET placement to complete year 12. We want to reach as many businesses as possible across the Central Coast, Burnie, Waratah- Wynyard, Circular Head and West Coast council areas to ensure that students in the Hellyer Regional Collective will have the best opportunity to complete their training in what has been a very disrupted year for all of our young people. More information here.

Work Readiness Program is back on the ground in Tasmania and Queensland

After a long wait, Beacon is back to running our face-to-face programs in Tasmanian and Queensland schools. We recently ran a Work Readiness Program for 39 Year, 10 students, at Woodbridge School. The students identified their transferable skills and created their own elevator pitch. The highlight of the day was the mentors, a group of industry professionals volunteering their time to share personal work experiences and answer the students’ questions. The day finished with mock interviews, run by the mentors to help students practice their pitches.

Beacon Foundation is moving to a .org.au URL and email address 
As of August 31st Beacon Foundation will also update its URL to www.beaconfoundation.org.au along with updating all our email addresses the same firstname.lastname@beaconfoundation.org.au. As a visitor to our site, you do not need to do anything different. I encourage you to save our new www.beaconfoundation.org.au to your favourites and even if you by habit type in our old URL, it will auto direct you to our new URL. When reaching out to us, our old e-mails will still be working, however, you will see us reply from our new contact details. The change to a .org.au is made to better reflect our status as a not for profit. This is because a .org.au URL is reserved for non-commercial organisation and not for profits like Beacon Foundation. You can read more here.

Endless Opportunities, Endless Education Campaign launched on the Central Coast

Collective ed. Central Coast and Ulverstone Secondary College have been working together on a project to improve the community aspiration in the Central Coast around the value of completing Year 12 and promoting the importance to never stop learning. The campaign was co-designed with the students and the final product is now visible on the local busses, driving the streets across town inspiring young people to complete year 12 because through education “you open up a world of possibilities” Watch the launch here.

Survey shows that Tasmanians most concerned about jobs and supporting young people
Federal Group have released the results of the third survey of the Tasmanian population regarding views and actions in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, undertaken by EMRS. Tasmanians considered career training packages in emerging industries for high school students as most important to combat youth unemployment followed by programs to keep young people engaged in work. Beacon Foundation was asked to comment on the findings saying with chief executive Scott Harris said the challenges young people faced with employment during the coronavirus recovery period was concerning. Read the Examiner story here.

When COVID-19 opens up learning opportunities, rather than closing them down
Collective ed. was invited to speak as part of a youth work lecture series on Community Development hosted by the Australian Pacific Training Coalition, which was born out of a partnership between DFAT, Solomon Islands Government and Queensland TAFE. Sorell students Riley & Emma represented their school.

 

 

Beacon Foundation launches a Youth Advisory Committee (YAC)
Students in year 10-12 from across Tasmania are encouraged to apply to join Beacon’s Youth Advisory Committee (YAC).  We are recruiting 7 members for our YAC to ensure we continue doing our work with the voice of young people at the centre. YAC will make sure our programs and service delivery meet the need of young people and stay relevant. To learn more about the group and ways to apply, click here.

 

Beacon helps students to connect during lockdown. 

This month, MyRoad online mentor sessions have seen four Victorian high schools participate with their students logging in from home to have a chat with their mentors. This is part of Beacon’s ongoing commitment to support schools and communities through the COVID-19 arrangements.

Mentors in these sessions were from all over Australia. One mentor who is a marketing manager based in Darwin in the NT said: “every new session I do just keeps getting better: I learn more about these students and their lives and how they feel about the future, and it’s great being able to share advice with them on school, university and careers.” One of Beacon’s long-term mentors who is a doctor in a Melbourne hospital said: “It was a first-time running zoom with the students at home, and the girls attending were fantastic with their level of participation and engagement.” 

“Students were very engaged. Great kids, very enthusiastic,” said another long-term mentor who has mentored more than 40 groups of students.

Whilst one of the students said “The most important thing I learnt from my mentor is how much resilience we need to get to where we want to be”. Other students’ comments included:

“My favourite thing about today’s session was how well my mentor guided me through my dream career.”

“It was good being able to talk to someone I don’t know about different careers and get an outside point of view on different jobs, careers and just life in general.”

“My favourite thing about today’s session was being able to talk to someone new and learn more about different careers and advice in life.”

MyRoad sessions are running throughout 2020 and can be delivered to students at home or at school and can be booked here. If you or your organisation is interested in becoming MyRoad mentors, learn more and register here.

MyRoad mentors share their experience
“The best part of the program is definitely speaking to the students and hearing their stories and sharing your own experiences. When a student tells you at the end of a session that you’ve been able to broaden their horizon in terms of their career choices or even simply having helped them work out their strengths, it really does leave you with a good feeling” – Jo Healy, Fox Sports News Journalist. Jo Healy, Fox Sports News Journalist explains why she decided to become a MyRoad mentor and why she thinks students benefit from the opportunity.