Social workers, teachers and youth service providers will relish an opportunity to refine their storytelling skills to combat youth unemployment.
Hoping to improve Gippsland’s youth unemployment rate, Duke of Edinburgh Victoria will host a free capacity building workshop.
The workshop is designed to combat Gippsland youth disengagement and unemployment, and for all youth service providers in the area to work on ways to engage youth in their quest for post-school employment.
“They’ll come out with a variety of strategies to work out how they can better support young people,” Duke of Edinburgh program manager Indigo James said.
“A lot of it is looking at how we can involve story telling to develop the skills and confidence, we’ll be talking to people about what a possible story about themselves is that they could use to help a young person.”
While Gippsland’s unemployment rate currently sits at 10.1 per cent and marginally better than other regional centres, Ms James believed the workshop could help Gippsland maintain its better-than-average record.
“We’ve identified that there are three key challenges: disengagement from education, employability and social inclusion,” she said.
“We also understand while it is 10.1 at the moment and that’s not terrible in comparison, there absolutely is the opportunity for it to deteriorate, but we’d like to get in before that happens and help provide people with the skills so that it doesn’t.”
Berry Street, Headspace and Latrobe Community Health Service workers will attend the event to be held in Warragul on Wednesday, 8 October.
If you work with youth and would like to attend, register by visiting www.eventbrite.com.au and search for capacity building workshop before close of business tomorrow.
