By Mayor Annette Burke, Palmerston City Council
Last April, we had a fundraising auction and launch of the Beacon Foundation process in Palmerston, located 20 km south of Darwin. As Mayor, I am very interested in youth issues and with a population of 25,500, of which over 30 per cent are under 15 years, there is a real need to address youth unemployment and training and education issues.
Palmerston City Council organised the auction and we had tremendous support, raising $30,000 on one night!From there, I formed a Beacon Board comprising 17 leading business people and educators, including the President of the Law Society, a director of KPMG, the founder of a huge IT company and Marilynne Paspaley from Paspaley Pearls.
My idea was to get as much expertise in-house to set up a youth enterprise, as was done in St Helens, Tasmania, by the founding Beacon Board. One year later, we have come a long way. We have narrowed down our enterprise ideas to two. We will write business plans for each and decide which is the more viable.
This decision will be based on the following criteria.
- It is unique to the Northern Territory so that employment is not simply being shifted around.
- It provides opportunities for training so the young people can gain qualifications, already organised through the Education Department.
- It is labour intensive so we employ at least 10 to 15 young people.
- Profit making will fall between five and seven per cent.
Our $30,000, plus other funds (we have great interest from a number of different corporate sponsors here) will go towards infrastructure for the business venture.
A major leap forward was when Palmerston High School came on board with the Beacon program. The school is establishing the ‘No Dole’ program that originated at Brooks High School in Launceston. Beacon is trying to set up eight different ‘No Dole’ sites across regional areas of Australia. Rockhampton was the first, Echuca the second and, I am proud to say, Palmerston is the third in the nation to come on board!
Palmerston High School has changed the name of the program to the very positive and proactive ‘Palmerston Futures’. This ensures not only the future of our young people but also that of businesses and the community in general. I think it is a great name, and we are the only ones to change the name to date.
Currently there is a committee comprising myself, the school Principal and Deputy and other teachers, that meet at 7.30am every Tuesday to get the program moving. We have sent letters to parents and businesses and I have spoken at a Year 10 assembly.
We already have over 40 businesses offering their time to be mentors to classes, groups or individuals and this number is growing daily. We are matching businesses and classes, and making up a package of information for the students to take to their Work Experience later in the year.
I am delighted to report that Australian Cricketer, Darren Lehmann, launched the charter signing on 5 August. This was when the entire Year 10 class, witnessed by mentors, family and peers, signed a huge charter to say they will seek further education, training or employment but will not go on the Dole!
I went to a launch last year, hosted by AFL star Dermot Brereton, at Brooks High School, which was very moving. Brooks High has been signing its charter for seven years, and it has now spread right through the school and is an entrenched idea in the community. This school originally had an alarming rate of students going on the dole from Year 10 approaching 40 per cent!This was cut down to 20 per cent in the first year and then to zero for every following year!
I am passionate about this project and have invested a lot of my time into it. I am very keen that the two arms work together – that is the youth enterprise and the change of mindset from reliance on allowances to independence and further training or employment – in other words, Palmerston Futures.
The Beacon Board is providing mentoring to school students, and we are going to begin having our meetings in the school to merge the two concepts as they support each other extremely well.
