National Reconciliation Week (NRW) is a time for all Australians to come together and celebrate our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, histories, and rich culture. This is also a good time to reflect and acknowledge the Australian historical impacts of truth-telling for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
This year is particularly significant, as it marks the 20 year anniversary since 2000 people joined in the reconciliation walks. These walks are to symbolise Australians support for Reconciliation, where Australian people and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people came together to walk on roads and bridges.
Paul Keating (Australia’s past Prime Minister, 1992) stated in his ‘Redfern Speech’ 28 years ago “To bring the dispossessed out of the shadows, to recognise that they are a part of us, and that we cannot give Indigenous Australians up without giving up many of our own identity and our own humanity”. This quote from Keating highlights the work that we need to do for our Nation.
Protech Group is Australia’s largest technical recruitment and flexible workforce solution business with a dedicated focus on technical and skilled personnel. It was established in 2006 with the purpose to be a ‘Positive Influence’ in people’s lives and over the past few years they have worked exceptionally hard to realise that purpose. Protechs core values of Respect, Integrity, Accountability and Commitment is front and centre in not only what they practice but in how they live and breathe these values in everyday actions across their business.
The Protech team has worked tirelessly in recent times to create a platform, underpinned by their values, where they can provide employment, education, training and development opportunities to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. This is where the partnership of Protech and Dreampath began.
Dreampath is an Indigenous business and its purpose is to create socio-economic benefits for First Nations People across Australia. Supporting companies to achieve their Corporate Social Responsibility and inclusion and diversity aspirations. Dreampaths Indigenous Executive Managers, Kyra Galante and Richard Fleming, have a national footprint providing a range of solutions for clients across various industries in employment, training and development.
Our vision is to be ‘First Choice’ for our Indigenous people, community, and clients as a company that is committed to the ‘Reconciliation’ journey. We work with our key stakeholders to establish joint objectives and source Indigenous employees for their projects or business. We support the business leaders and management with mentoring and coaching so they can ensure the retention of their Indigenous employees.
This partnership approach is unique with Protech providing Dreampath with the resources needed to grow the business across the country.
An Indigenous business with this level of support will increase the employment, education, training and development opportunities for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people nationally.
The journey that we are all on to ‘Close the Gap’ in Indigenous disadvantage across many focus key areas is important, and we know that many different companies and businesses all play a role with delivering services to our communities that address these key areas. The areas that Dreampath can have an impact in is education, employment, and training, as these are core services of the business.
We know that there are many barriers for Indigenous Australians to have access to the roles, meet the requirements of the role and industries, and be able to pass the medical that is mandatory to be successfully placed in employment.
Once placed in employment the social impact on the individual is important as having a financial income increases better health, education, housing and life expectancy of our Indigenous people. This then flows onto the Indigenous employee’s family and community.
This is what we call ‘Generational Change’ and this needs to be where we focus our time and energy of seeing the positive social benefit to our most vulnerable people: our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities.
This is what true Reconciliation is and looks like in action. So ask yourself today what you can do to be a part of the journey of being ‘In This Together’ with us.