Industry Collaboration Award

Sponsored by Territory Generation

Winner: Batchelor Institute in collaboration with Australian Defence Force

The Army Indigenous Defence Program (AIDP) creates pathways to employment in the Australian Defence Force (ADF) for young Aboriginal Australian adults under a military-structured training strategy. Since 2013, Batchelor Institute of Indigenous Tertiary Education and the ADF have collaborated to deliver the AIDP, which focuses on reading, writing and fitness and is tailored for ADF employment.

Of more than 300 applicants to the AIDP from across Australia, 30 are placed in the five-month intensive residential program, held on the Batchelor campus. There is a significant transition rate from the program into ADF employment, and once accepted into the AIDP, candidates become full-time ADF employees, reflecting the collaboration’s success.

At the end of the program, students gain a minimum of a Certificate II in Skills for Work and Vocational Pathways. The collaboration allows students to learn at Batchelor Institute in a culturally safe, ‘both-ways’ environment and also develop the skills, knowledge and attitude required for full-time careers in the ADF.

Runner up: IE Project in collaboration with Probuild (NT) and Batchelor Institute

IE Project, Probuild NT and Batchelor Institute of Indigenous Tertiary Education came together in mid-2015 to create the Indigenous Construction Training Incubator, an initiative to use the construction of the new Northern Territory Open Education Centre as an incubator for skilled and qualified Aboriginal workers in the construction sector.

The incubator would enable people to develop work skills and confidence as well as a nationally recognised construction qualification - the first step to a real career pathway. The collaboration has been successful, with 15 trainees now qualified and working. A second group of 14 trainees will start the program next.

Of the 15 trainees who started out as unskilled labourers, three are now in apprenticeships with Probuild, two are in apprenticeships with subcontractors, two were taken on under permanent employment and two remain on site through IE Project. The remaining six are managed through IE Project’s mobile Aboriginal labour hire pool.