Community Partnership Brokers aim to initiate, develop, coordinate and review long term, strategic partnerships between four key stakeholder partners: Education institutions; Community Organisations; Parents; and Industry.
What Community Partnership Brokers do:
As Partnerships Brokers we work to develop and deliver programmes that are supporting young people across Northern Sydney to either remain engaged in school or transition to employment.
We facilitate partner programmes by bringing together relevant stakeholders, to develop mutually beneficial programmes, that benefit the transitional outcomes for young people by:
- Developing a large network of local, national, and multinational companies who wish to invest in the development of young people.
- Working closely with these companies to develop an interesting, relevant, and unique initiative that will provide opportunities for learning beyond the classroom.
- Working with schools, tertiary education providers, community groups, and parent organisations to discover the best way to integrate this initiative into each individual landscape.
- Developing a framework and encourage stakeholder ownership of each initiative to ensure sustainability.
Our young people have amazing skills, abilities and ideas however they may struggle to match these to career pathways. By providing these students with direct real world experience we provide them with a clearer picture of work. This helps them recognise the choices they have in life, increases their employability skills and helps them to make decisions about their future career.
We give our thanks to all of our Partners, mentors and programme participants who give their time so generously and provide incredible support to our young students. Please see our partners, patrons, ambassadors for a list of our incredibly generous partners …
Examples of our Community Partnerships Programmes include:
Dream Big, Love What You Do
A mindset shift in girls can be achieved by closing the gap between the success they see or have heard of, and the ideas that they hold about themselves. Female role models are a very powerful and positive image to implant into young girls’ psyches.
Research shows that students who are motivated to learn have higher achievement, show better understanding of the concepts they are taught, are more satisfied with school, and have lower dropout rates. Who wouldn’t want this?
The aim of our “Dream Big. Love What You Do” series is to inspire young women. We are inviting inspiring women whom work and reside in the Northern Beaches region to volunteer to share their personal life story and in particular their journey to a rewarding career during a 1 hour guest speaker opportunity. Thanks to our amazing mentors to date including Melinda Gainsford Taylor (Olympian), Laura Andon (Pro-Surfer), Melissa Stevens (Editor Manly Daily) and many more inspiring women. The feedback from the students about these speakers has been phenomenal and was picked up by Channel 9 where they interviewed the students about the positive impact of the program. See the interview here.
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Career Mentoring
Our team helped facilitate an innovative new mentoring program at Narrabeen Sports High with a focus on mentoring some Year 11 students to make some informed Career decisions. We invited RAISE foundation to partner with the school to run the pilot, as RAISE excel in youth mentoring programs. As part of the program Year 11 students had the opportunity to connect with mentors from the local community and our industry partners to assist in choosing a rewarding career. The role of a mentor is invaluable to develop and engage students. Mentoring brings together people who have experienced life, education and business (mentors) with students (mentees). Mentors journey with their mentee as they experience the ups and downs of their preliminary HSC year in Year 11.
We are delighted to report that the 2014 program is a success, and we are now currently recruiting for volunteer mentors who can commit to commit 1-2 hours a month from February to October 2015 to take part in this amazing and rewarding journey with these students.
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Pacific Islander Maori Mentoring in the Community
The Northern Beaches area has a large and growing Pacific Islander and Maori community and juvenile crime statistics are rising. Research and consultation through various channels determined these nationality groups need greater access and support networks to improve youth opportunities and educational outcomes.
It became evident that the elders/guardians from Pacific Islander and Maori required education in mentoring and further skills to foster and improve the educational and life outcomes for the youths.
A partnership has been established to meet the prevalent and growing need with the aim to train volunteers that are selected to participate from Pacific Islander and Maori community groups to be able to provide sound advice and sound decision making for the benefit of the youths.
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Hospitality Challenge at the Manly Food & Wine Festival
Hospitality is a major employer for our region and we were witnessing a decline in students choosing this career path, together with our community and industry partners, BEN facilitated a Partnership to help raise the profile of the industry for high school students.
The Hospitality Challenge has evolved since the its inaugural year in 2011 and is now a program that involves Hospitality students being mentored by industry chefs, from local businesses, in school for a period of 6 weeks. Students then pair up to compete in front of a live audience at the infamous Manly Food, Wine and Sustainability Festival: Taste of Manly. Manly Council are a founding partner and have taken great pride in showcasing the talent of our local youth. The partnership is a fantastic youth mentoring initiative which has now reached over 500 school hospitality students since 2011. Our partners and patrons for this event include Mike Baird, Layne Beachley, Hayden Quinn, Guy Leech (BEN Ambassador), Manly Council, International College of Management (Manly) and Australian Culinary Federation.
Click here to view an NAB Work Inspiration video.
Cyber Safety
NSW Police Dee Why LAC had identified a significant increase in cases of cyber-bullying being report to them, involving both primary and high school children. This trend had also been mirrored in reports to BEN by senior executive staff members of schools, across all sectors, within our region. The goal was to recruit a cyber-safety subject matter expert to deliver information sessions to parents to educate them about safety online as a prevention tool to ensure their children aren’t hurt as a result of their online activities.
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PACTS (Parent As Career Transition Support)
PACTS is a series of workshops and resources developed to provide parents with up-to-date information about career transition, that enables them to support their children effectively when they’re making career transition decisions. These free workshops aim to provide basic information to bridge the gap between what parents did when they left school and what happens when you leave school now. They are delivered directly to parents, either in a community or school setting, across a number of workshops.
BEN have a team of trained facilitators available to deliver these workshops and have also hosted training for 12+ facilitators in our region to expand the delivery of the service. We are happy to connect you with one of these facilitators if you are interested in hosting a workshop in your organisation, school or community group.
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Industry Partner ‘Work Inspiration’
Partners include: NAB, Fossil, Westfield Warringah Mall, Stockland, CPA
BEN & NAB Work Inspiration included students from 6 of our local Northern Sydney Beaches High Schools. These Students visited NAB Sydney offices to gain real insight into the world of work. The aim was to ensure that a young persons first contact with the working world is meaningful and inspiring. As a major employer in Australia, NAB wants to help prepare young people for success in their working lives. Students got to gain true insight into their personal strengths and match this to careers within the bank industry. They toured both offices of Sydney and got to job shadow various careers. For quite a number of the students who participated it was an invaluable tool as they don’t have career role models in their immediate social circle.
Collaborating with the founding partners, the Community Partnership Brokers continue to support the expansion of Work inspiration by establishing new partnerships between local employers and schools. BEN would love to hear from you if you are keen to invite students into your workplace. We can tailor experiences from a few hours to a few days. The experience is extremely rewarding and motivating for all staff involved –
- NAB
- Col Crawford Motors
- Stockland
- Fossil Australia
- Westfield (Warringah Mall)
- Warringah Council
BEN would love to hear from you if you are keen to invite students into your workplace. We can tailor experiences from a few hours to a few days. The experience is extremely rewarding and motivating for all staff involved.
Click here to view an NAB Work Inspiration video.
Connect Interagency Expo
The quality of connections and conversations happening at the inaugural inter-agency expo at The Beach School on Nov 27th was fantastic. We witnessed keen interest from close to 50 agencies and service providers from across various spectrums to meet with representatives from Welfare, Careers and School Executives from all Northern Sydney Region public schools. Issues discusses ranged from Early Intervention, Autism, Counselling, Mentoring, Local Councils, Mental Health, Legal Advice, Accommodation, Police & Justice, Employment and Careers and Youth Outreach services. The Beach School delivered a great expo, as part of the ‘Every School Every Student’ Department of Education initiative. As Partnership Brokers we were delighted to be able to facilitate the introduction of more agencies service providers to the mix. We are excited about some budding partnerships as a result of the conversations that were started at this event.
Regional Bullying Strategy (REACH)
Information coming soon.
BEN facilitate many other Community Development Partnership programmes across Northern Sydney and would be more than happy to discuss these programmes with you at any time.
Please contact: Samantha King
Executive Officer
M: 0417 678 499
