I don’t really like doing school stuff but the Test & Tag training was really good, and I like doing the (Test & Tag) jobs. You are making places like schools and kindergartens safer.
As is the case for any job seeker, the key to success is arming yourself with skills that set you apart from the market.
This has been a key area of focus at TRY Work – arming young people experiencing barriers to employment with skills that not only prepare them for the wider workforce, but also address unmet needs in the market.
So, when TRY Australia was awarded a Vulnerable Victorian’s Program Grant in 2018, delivering four years of crucial funding to support training and expansion, one of the many actions we took was to scale-up our capabilities with the establishment of our Test & Tag offering.
Employment for vulnerable Victorians is an area of focus for the William Buckland Foundation. We were very pleased to support TRY Work, as an organisation that is tackling this issue head-on for young people facing barriers to employment.
Through our support, it has been exciting to see TRY Work evolve and expand their offering into service areas like Test & Tag, which will go on to support the creation of more jobs and training opportunities for other young people.
Through previous work with our existing customer base, we had identified that they had a need for more nationally accredited Test & Tag providers.
Test & Tag is an important industry service, particularly in factory environments, as it ensures that electrical equipment meets legislative safety requirements and helps to avoid electrical faults in the workplace.
Using part of the grant from The William Buckland Foundation, we were able to help four of our young workers get their Test & Tag Certification and establish a nationally accredited Test & Tag service as part of the TRY Work offering.
Test & Tag not only expands our capabilities but it also helps us generate future revenue to support more vulnerable young people to overcome long-term youth unemployment. This ability to continuously generate revenue is particularly important, as it allows us to maintain a successful and impact-driven social enterprise to support our program’s continuation in the long term.
Plus, if reports from our workers are anything to go by, our Test & Tag offering has also helped uncover a career path that is both fulfilling and rewarding.
Cases like this demonstrate the ability of TRY Work to extract maximum value from the support we receive by tailoring our approach to both the needs of the individual and the market, resulting in better outcomes for vulnerable young people.
As we continue to attract crucial funding, such as that from The William Buckland Foundation, TRY Work will be able to further address the systemic social issues of youth unemployment, particularly through our focus on delivering training and paid work experience to drive long-term employment outcomes for vulnerable young people.
16 June 2022
