When I was around 16 years old,
and then I stopped school because of war.
My background, I come from Sudan, particularly.
And I married my wife and from there, I got two kids and then
decided to come out of the country.
We've been waiting for a visa for quite a couple of years.
At the end, we received a visa to come to Australia.
We're very excited to come to Australia,
they told us there's huge opportunity in Australia.
You can get a job, your kids can go to school
and enjoy life in Australia.
I did some courses to learn English.
The last one I did with PRACE because PRACE was well known to us
because we live nearby.
From there, I found out that there're courses for jobs.
The Learn Local part of what we do at PRACE is really who we are.
It's the part where we get to walk into a community,
work with that community, build courses from the ground up and work
with businesses to make sure people actually go from studying into work.
So it's local courses for local people to try and get into local jobs.
We're finding that everyone who's finished the course has been offered work,
which is really dynamic, it's really exciting.
The first thing I've learned
is about English,
English communication and that's, I think for me, it was a barrier.
And then from there I can learn more skills about jobs.
This is what PRACE come up with and help us and support us.
And from there, after I finish, I got employed by Winslow.
It shakes out to be about nine days worth of training
before they would have their first day on site.
And, you know, typically, if somebody who's not coming through that
process, their first day of training is that induction with me.
We're only a couple of groups in, but already
producing some really good results and excited to be able to look back in a years
time, two years time and say, well, this is the difference.
And hopefully the numbers are in a position where it's like,
this is what we should be doing everywhere.
I applied to work with the traffic control and traffic management.
The most important thing I've learned is about safety
and how I can control the cars and protect the workers on the road.
You need to be very clear with the words to communicate with your partner at work.
For most new labourers that
join our business, this is their first job in the industry.
They don't really know what to expect when they get out to the field
and it's probably going to be a medium term or a short term job.
For Winslow, the focus is on
how do we bring people on the journey for the long term?
How do we invest in them and retain them?
Programmes like this really sort of help realign that from the outset.
It might be you're a labourer, you might be coming through
and being traffic control, but that's that's
your first step into the industry and this is what the steps
after that looks like. It's been a really good experience.
With the construction course, we've now delivered four courses.
We're coming up to our fifth.
Every group's been different and had different needs and
the beauty is the teacher has been able to tailor that to those students.
We love building the practical in as well as the classroom learning.
Probably one of the most powerful things about the fact that this is all going
through Learn Local, is their tie back through to the community.
Winslow is very much and a big supporter of live local work local.
So it's all just ducks in a row it makes sense for us.
I think the best part of his story is
that he's come to PRACE several times.
He's come back to PRACE when he's needed additional ideas or additional support
to take the next step.
Felimon is a leader in his community, and to be able to show his success
means that he can demonstrate that to his community that there's pathways.
That's a huge area, I'm
still going through that, what's called slang words.
And I'm still learning in that the area.
Slang words...
G'day mate.
Since I get some hours, I'm excited to support my family.
It's changed my life.
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