Aboriginals: New Indigenous Traineeship Program First of its Kind
Macquarie University has launched a groundbreaking Indigenous traineeship program, with the inaugural intake of six trainees starting work last month. The University has devoted nearly $1 million over the next four years to the program, which is the first of its kind in the Australian higher education sector.
Directed and managed by the University's Manager, Indigenous Employment, Lindsay Stanford, the program incorporates a range of features designed to combat the particular challenges facing Indigenous Australians entering the workforce.
"Firstly, the program allows for six trainees per year, which is an enormous commitment by the University," Stanford says. "Other organisations employ one trainee at a time to see how it's going to work out, but it often doesn't work out because the trainee is the only Indigenous person in the organisation.
"When you take a 17-year-old from their community and place them on their own in a large organisation, it is very difficult for them to cope. Macquarie's traineeship program gives them the peer support of five other trainees who are in a similar situation."
