Shoalhaven youth stand to benefit from a $10 million investment designed to help young people to find and keep employment.
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The NSW Government has invested in the Sticking Together Project (STP), a youth employment program run by not-for-profit organisation, SYC Limited.
The Sticking Together Project utilises an intensive coaching model where coaches work closely with the young people to help them develop the confidence and skills needed to enter the workforce – and stay in it.
The program also coaches also work closely with employers to assist the young people and their employers to ‘stick together’ and result in a successful experience for both the young people and their employers.
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Coaching is provided over a 60-week period for every young person who participates.
Almost 900 young people aged 18 to 24 living in the areas of the Southern Highlands and Shoalhaven, the Illawarra and the city and inner south of Sydney, will benefit from the coaching they will receive as participants of Sticking Together Project, which starts in April, 2019 and will run for a period of four years.
Sticking Together Project was developed and co-designed by SYC in 2016 as an outcome of SYC’s My First Job initiative, which developed strategies to address Australia’s persistently high-rate of youth unemployment.
The STP coaching model was piloted in 2017 in Melbourne and Adelaide.
SYC Director of Corporate Strategy, Michael Clark, said STP represented a significant achievement of a milestone that was always designed to be funded by social impact investment.
“We set out right from the beginning to structure and measure Sticking Together Project in a way that would facilitate and enable funding through social impact investments, and it’s incredibly pleasing to see that aim become a reality with this agreement” Mr Clark said.
“Our success in this regard has meant in this instance that nearly 900 young people in NSW will receive a lot of support in their efforts to get a job and a lot of ongoing coaching, for a period of 60 weeks, to remain in work.”
Mr Clark said results of the pilot in Adelaide and Melbourne more than proved the value of the coaching model.
“The results of the pilot were outstanding, with 66 per cent of the young people who participated being completely off welfare benefits at the end of the pilot, due to their stability of employment.”
“This is great news for any young person in Shoalhaven who has struggled to get work and stay in work. They will now have support available to them that was not available previously.”
The Sticking Together Project team will soon begin inviting local referring partners to refer young people who need this kind of assistance.