[Sub ID 4513] Volunteer patrolling and child care minding for South Sudanese Australians from the priority groups (South Sudanese Community Association in Victoria Inc.)

Submission ID: 4513
Organisation name: South Sudanese Community Association in Victoria Inc.
Contact name: Mr Kot Monoah
State: VIC
Contact email: kot.ma@icloud.com

Which priority group of the Try, Test and Learn Fund does your idea support?
Young parents, Young students at risk of long-term unemployment

What need or issue are you trying to address?
South Sudanese Australians are a distanced group due to many barriers to work force participation. Training and workforce experience is one such factor. There is a need therefore for a community led initiative to get young parents and young students into workplace training to get skills such youth outreach work experience, drug and alcohol training, First Aid training etc. to prepare them for workforce participation.

There are a lot of young parents who have little support in getting child minding. Child care is also very expensive as well and this does encourage workforce participation or motivation. As such having community members who can be paid affordable modest fee to mind children as baby sitters can motivate young parents to look for work without worrying. Many young parents from this community do not have parents or grandparents here due to migration and settlement experience whereby they have been arriving in the last 10 to 15 years and during without extended relatives.

There are many students as well who need support to take up apprenticeship and or job ready participation skills. Many young people from newly arrived community groups need support with up skilling via workforce or workplace participation. There is a need to initiate community employment programs and volunteering like in security work and youth work for entry level work experience.

What is your idea?
We have at the moment started a patrolling work. This initiative is currently voluntary and it is already making a huge difference as a crime deterrence for young people. We can support young parents and young students to participate in this job. Centrelink will need to work with young parents and young students on payments to try and talk to them and make it obligatory to participate.

The patrolling is a already a job in itself. It is work done by committed people. We need to encourage more young parents and young students to be encouraged to join it. This acts as a opportunity to get youth training in drugs and alcohol, mentoring young people, drug and alcohol training and also volunteers whether paid or unpaid being supported to have first aid training, obtain working with children checks will build a foundation and preparation for the job market. The volunteers can also have security training to handle crowd of youth. This will be part of the process of skilling young parents and young students.

There wil also be a need to have child care minding which can be used to also train young parents and young students to jointly co-mind children of other young parents or students on patrolling for the volunteers.

The patrolling in itself is a great opportunity for many people to disrupt youth criminal activities, support youth on the streets who themselves will end up becoming young parents and also risk being on long term unemployment or social welfare.