I arrived in Bendigo in 2010.
When I was little, I lived with my parents.
After my parents passed away,
my sister married her husband and went to the Thailand
refugee camp, and then we followed.
It's difficult well the whole town's suffering
I think with employment. I think even McDonald's announced the other day
they're giving out incentives to get people.
I have been trying to work with Spotless and heard
that they had some really big issues in their entry level positions.
They were losing staff. Staff were going off sick.
And so I brokered the idea of creating an opportunity with the GROW programme.
And then because I have relationships with LCMS and said,
"let's get a programme running."
So I went to the hospital and met with Petra
and some Spotless representatives and they just told me
what their plans were and asked me if I could help them to create a course
that would have those educational pathways with bringing community members
into the hospital as cleaners.
And they gave me all of the information that they needed
on what their non-negotiables were with regards to training
that was required to work within the hospital sector as a cleaner.
So they have a whole onboarding and training process once
they're onboarded into Spotless.
But to work within the hospital sector itself,
there's a whole heap of hospital specific cleaning knowledge requirements.
So I was able to implement those into the training programme.
Their interaction was pretty minimal.
Once they set what they needed;
what was their minimum requirements, especially from an English perspective.
Then I worked with LCMS about, how do we bring this to life now?
Well, the differences are their first day when they arrive,
they've done all their training online.
When you come into the hospital, you know a little bit what's going on,
they're more comfortable and I think they have more confidence
when they turn up for their first day.
They're in their uniform and off they go.
My favourite teacher, her name is Robyn.
Every day if I need help, I go to see her.
And she would help me with study.
If I were to go study, she would help me there.
So Than's great, Than has been in my classes for
since I started here at LCMS about four years ago, so she was coming
weekly to the women's English classes with her daughter when she was younger.
And yeah, she got to a point where she decided she wanted to work,
so she worked her way up through the training to become a specialised cleaner.
So she works in the pharmacy.
Than I suppose was on the front foot when she first came.
Easy to get along with, easy to speak to.
Even, you know, with your language barriers, that still isn't an issue.
The beauty of the programme is that the people that come to us,
they're people that want to work.
I think Learn Local is just an amazing sector.
It is unique to Victoria.
It gives us the flexibility to be able to tailor make
education to community members.
From a community perspective, this model has become the exemplar model.
Other hiring organisations are looking at this saying, "where
can we implement a version of this?" And so that's been the delight
of the programme.
Their staff turnover rate has stabilised now to the point where we're not looking
to run our next batch until probably September-October this year.
Even though we have a very long waitlist.
With the hospital, we're in 24/7.
There's a job for you somewhere.
If you want to sleep through the day and work at night.
I've got a job for you.
Well I think Learn Local at its core is about community
and it's about keeping community at the centre of everything you do.
For employers looking to employ people in the multicultural space.
There is so many amazing people out there who can give so much to the organisation.
It's just about finding ways to remove those barriers to employment.
So Learn Locals can work together with you to help bridge that gap.
This is my first job and I really like it,
and I'm very happy with this job.
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