Category: Action4Youth

Social change is driven by technology not people

Most social changes don’t involve people changing. People’s hopes, wants and motivations stay pretty much the same. Instead, what drives change is the way technologies, systems and practices gradually evolve to become easier, quicker, smaller, hipper, more powerful and more useful. Martin Cohen

Today,  July 15 is the United Nations World Youth Skills Day – a day to celebrate the strategic importance of equipping young people with skills for employment, decent work and entrepreneurship.

The 2023 theme is “Skilling teachers, trainers and youth for a transformative future.”

Does this sound familiar?

For over 15 years Action4Agriculture has been equipping young people with the skills to thrive in the 21st century and we have long been known for developing the four Cs of critical thinking, creativity, collaboration and communication. Building on our cornerstone programs of Young Farming Champions, The Archibull Prize and Kreative Koalas we were thrilled to add two new programs to the stable in 2023 in Young Environmental Champions and Action4Youth to further explore these skills.

The Young Environmental Champions invited students to research the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and choose a global problem from which to derive a local solution for their school and community.

“Over 10 weeks, these young minds dedicated themselves to creating a social impact project that will bring about positive change in their communities and contribute towards achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals,” Action4Agriculture director Lynne Strong says. “Our young people are reshaping, rewiring and reimaging the future; a future where they will be the leaders.”

Action4Youth is a purpose-driven program to support young people from all backgrounds and experiences to thrive in a career in agriculture by:

  • Increased employer engagement in work-based learning pathways.
  • Improved learning and skills development experienced by young people.
  • Increased entry-level jobs offered to young people.

“It is widely recognised that the education and training systems we have in Australia aren’t fit for purpose and Action4Agriculture we are working with a dedicated group of people to address that. We were committed to ensuring the right people were at the table as part of our Action4Youth program and we were very excited to be able to identify those people from the Illawarra and South Coast of NSW and share that information with others so they can follow in our footsteps and replicate and scale our work and value add to their outcomes,” Lynne says.

All participants in Action4Agriculture programs have access to workshops facilitated by Josh Farr from Campus Consultancy covering 21st century topics including building teams, design thinking, developing stake-holder relationships, communication and agile project management.

“The benefits of participating in an Action4Agriculture initiative is the authenticity of learning and the development of real world skills. It enables young people to engage in real world systems, to understand constraints and structures on real world problems and to engage with experts in the field.

From each stage of the program students are encouraged to extend themselves and develop their skills. This is supported by their belief in their solutions and their passion to make a difference.” Secondary School Principal

 

According to the United Nations “technological advancements and shifting labour market dynamics increasingly call for agile and adaptable skill sets. It is crucial that we empower young people to navigate these changes effectively. Technical and vocational education and training (TVET) is well placed to meet these demands by reducing access barriers to the world of work, ensuring that skills gained are relevant, recognized and certified, promoting green skills and practices, and offering skills development opportunities for youth who are not in education, employment and training.

“On World Youth Skills Day, let us unite in recognizing the potential of young people as catalysts for change and commit to providing them with the skills and opportunities they need to build a prosperous and sustainable world for all. Together, we can shape a brighter future where no young person is left behind.”

This is an ethos enshrined in Action4Agriculture and we are proud to promote World Youth Skills Day and our role within the movement.

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#action4Agriculture

#careerswithpurpose

#creatingabetterworldtogether

Identifying the solutions – AUSTRALIAN SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS HAVE UNIVERSAL ACCESS TO HIGH-QUALITY WORK-BASED LEARNING

As the Action4Agriculture team puts the finishing touches on reporting what we learnt from the delivery of our project “ACTION4YOUTH – Explore-Connect-Support”  funded by the National Careers Institute we are collating the information and sharing it far and wide to encourage others to share their learnings.

One of the things we learnt was Australian students DO NOT have universal access to high quality work based learning.

To find the solutions to this barrier we went on a journey interviewing specialists in their field to find out what success would like for schools, students, school staff and employers.

Action4Agriculture is proud to be a solutions focused organisation sharing what we learn

 

 

The role of secondary school is to support young people to transition to work and thrive – why are ATARS still front of mind

 

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It is widely acknowledged

  1. the secondary school system’s role is to support young people to successfully transition to work and/or tertiary education and thrive

YET

2. the focus remains on ATARS 

So its fair to say we do not have a fit for purpose secondary school system in Australia 

I recently asked a senior career’s advisor what would success look like for teachers and students for a successful transition to work pathway

This is what they said:

  1. What does success look like for students
  • Students can identify, articulate and apply their skills, strengths and learning styles
  • Students are curious and ambitious to find out more (LMI , Career Exploration e.g. Become Education ) 
  • Students are aware of and talk more about a range of careers beyond the 15  most common occupational expectations (OECD – Dream Jobs)
  • All students have a ‘live’ career plan and goals
  • Students see the benefit in career exploration through work based learning – to confirm career interest or redirect to new career interests/pathways
  • Students are confident in undertaking and engaging with workplace opportunities
  • Students are empowered and become managers of their own career journey
  • All students have multiple opportunities to learn from employers about work and skills that are valued in the workplace (Gatsby Benchmarks)
  • Every student should have had at least one experience of a workplace additional to part time jobs they may have (Gatsby Benchmarks)

2. What does success look like for school staff

  • School staff have the administrative support to coordinate work experience opportunities (SPR process is administratively heavy)
  • School staff have the leadership support to implement career exploration and industry exploration initiatives
  • Industry partnerships with local schools developed and connect with classroom learning (Make learning real, link to curriculum)

Why do you think we don’t have a fit for purpose education system when the solutions have already been identified ?

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How do we promote a more equitable and representative academic landscape, AND enrich our own understanding and perspectives. 

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I recently found myself in an unpleasant situation after suggesting that we ( the agriculture sector)  find ways to ensure that agricultural academic research be more freely available so it can be more widely read and acted upon.  In my case the pushback to this idea was very fierce.

It was wonderful to chat to PhD student and Young Farming Champion  Francesca Earp today. She is a very smart young woman who is hungry for equality . Our discussion led to a lightbulb moment for me helping me identify the root cause of the big challenge we are facing with our Action4Youth Program (too much happening in too short a time ). It was also great to chat to Franny about the challenges of open access to academic research and its power structures. She drew my attention to recent blog article she had published in the LSE ( London School of Economics and Political Sciences ) Impact Blog

Some poignant points she makes resonated with me

The current state of academic publishing reinforces dominant power structures and perpetuates systemic inequalities. It is crucial that we critically examine and address these issues in order to create a more inclusive and diverse academic landscape that accurately reflects the perspectives and experiences of all communities.

As scholars, we have a responsibility to seek out and engage with diverse perspectives and experiences, regardless of our academic discipline. While it is important to work towards a more inclusive and diverse academic landscape, we cannot simply wait for these changes to be made. We must take proactive steps to challenge the status quo and actively seek out the works of non-Western academics. This not only promotes a more equitable and representative academic landscape, but also enriches our own understanding and perspectives. Francesca Earp March 8th 2023

Western voices dominate research in Asian feminist academia – Why?

How awesome is this graphic by Tammy Vora found here   

A heartbreaking reminder of how our school system is NOT fit for purpose

My post today features a school essay written by Lachlan Moss when he was in Year 11 at High School. Lachie is now one of Australia’s up and coming musical theatre stars

  I have known Lachie all his life. He was a star from the day he was born. He featured in many of my early natural resource management promos.

Jaimie Frost and Lachie Moss.  Photo Linda Faiers

Lachie essay is a  heartbreaking reminder of how our school system is NOT fit for purpose

There are 7.6 billion people living on this planet and no two share the same story. In our lives we are all able to take a different journey, see different sights and think in different ways. This level of variety and individuality is something that humanity is gifted with. It creates our society. It lets us grow, create, learn, share and inspire.

This means there are 7.6 billion stories that can be shared. 7.6 billion different pasts being walked upon. This is society. This is natural. This is what enables us to create a brighter future. So why is it with all this variety could be celebrated, we are all pushed along a path, the same path, a path where we are taught that instead of having 7.6 billion different ways to respond, there is one answer, which is either A, B, C or D.

We are constantly being told to  “Think outside the box.”

If this is so important, then why is it we spend most of, if not all, of our childhood being told to fill out only the inside of one of four boxes.

It starts in kindergarten as we color in when we are told to stay inside the line. This concept of finding the answer is the main goal of the public school system. And this used to be okay. We used to live in a world with a simple paradigm, a simple concept.

Go to school, work hard, do well, go to university, get a job and gain some level of success and security.

This simplified linear path is no longer the case and no longer believed by students. The problem that this brings with it is motivation is lost in the eyes of the student. The education system was never designed to inspire the longing for education. It was created to inspire success and now that we live in the environment where this success is harder to achieve, we have a lack of motivated learners. This has to change. A job is no longer defined by a degree, so why learn? Schools should be an environment that celebrate all types of learning and that encourage students to learn in their way.

Not only this, but a teacher should be recognized as one of the most influential roles in this environment. They have the ability to sculpt the minds of these children into our future doctors, lawyers, and presidents. They have the ability to inspire students, making them ask, “Why?” instead of forcing such questions upon them. A teacher should be able to facilitate for all learning styles, as it is these styles of learning that will increase the boundaries of how we perceive the world.

A good teacher will reach the minds of students, but a great teacher can touch a heart.

A great teacher is able to find the genius in everyone. “Everyone is a genius, but if we judge a fish on its ability to climb a tree, it will spend its whole life feeling it’s stupid.” This is a quote from Albert Einstein, a genius in his own right and he is correct. We live in a world that is turning into a fishbowl and we are beginning to drown in questions that we can’t answer. This is because we are teaching the fish, the people capable of seeing the problems in a different light, to fit into our idea of what is normal.

Why? Walk down the path when there’s a river that can take these fish to greatness? Variety and different ways of thinking are our most useful tool. We have the power as a race to look at things from different perspectives. Why are we cutting off the fins of our creative thinkers and forcing them to walk along a path where they’re struggling to breathe. They are losing their maximum learning capacity and more importantly, losing their creativity.

Don’t take my word for it. There was a book released in 1992 called Break Point and Beyond, and inside this book is a test you can take that determines whether or not you are classified as a divergent thinking genius. Of the 1,600 students, children aged between three and five who were tested, 98% showed they could think in divergent or creative ways by the time they were aged eight to ten, 32% could think this way. When the same test was applied to thirteen- to fifteen-year-olds, only 10% could think this way. And when the test was used with 200,000, twenty-five-year-olds, only 2% were classified as divergent thinking geniuses.

We’ve created a system that kills creativity. Ask a sixth grader to draw a bird. They will draw a lower case m, do it in kindergarten and you’ll get 300 drawings that may look completely different, full of that sought after color and creativity.

Imagine a world where instead of being pushed through a bottleneck, we push the boundaries of human knowledge. Instead of feeling stupid, we feel we have the power to change the world through inspiration and the variety we bring. Instead of climbing up a mountain, we swim down a stream.

School is a factory, a world where we’re all forced to sit in lines, put our hands up to speak, listen to a ringing bells and get a small 20 to 40 minute breaks. We don’t learn because we want to learn. We learn because we have to. We specialize education into different sectors of faculties. We still pump out graduates in batches, which we call year groups, and we grade our students with letters and numbers.

This obsession with statistics, grades and quantifying one’s knowledge is so obscure. Where else do we do this? Do we quantify love? Do we quantify sorrow? What number of letter represents your first kiss? How about your first heartbreak? What aspect of humanity is honestly, quantifiable? Sure, he may be bad at writing an essay on World War Two, but he may be able to tell a story that conveys an understanding of the hardships and despair that could put any essay to shame. We give letters and grades of quality to things like produce to the quality of meat, not the contents of one’s mind. We lock these creative thinkers in a box, where in the worst case, creativity is constricted until they are removed from the colors of creativity and met with the shades of grey.

Instead of having a set of keys to unlock their true potential, they have one key that opens the box and throws them into a world where they are taught to believe they are stupid, where they are the piece that doesn’t fit and have to change themselves to do so. If given the opportunity, schools can become an environment where all the avenues of education can be explored, when we can step off the forced path and find our own way, allowing new pathways to be followed. This is the only way we can move towards the future because here is a statistic that matters.

There are 1.9 billion children in the world and that is 27% of the world population, but they are 100% of the future.

Lachie is not alone in asking the question if our education system is fit for purpose

Why change the ATAR? The way we recognise learning contributes to the problem

How we recognise learning at the end of secondary schooling is important because it determines post school pathways to further learning and work and has a flow on effect into what we teach (curriculum) and what and how we assess young people at school.

The ATAR is the dominant representation of success in schooling. It was designed in an era where only 11% of the population attended higher education, and then most were from higher socio-economic groups.

Today, only 26% of university entrants actually use an ATAR to pursue further learning. It is not utilised in any other post school pathway.

In spite of this narrow utilisation, the ATAR has a disproportionate impact on secondary schooling curriculum and assessment.  Our school system is geared to ATAR outcomes even if these are not sufficient indicators of a young person’s potential for recruiters and employers. Source 

 

 

Just imagine what we could achieve if we could all figure out how to work together for the greater good

In the last 12 months thanks to the brilliance of Professor Felicity Blackstock ability to write funding applications, Action4Agriculture has had the opportunity to co-design and deliver with our stakeholder partners two new projects to shine a light on the agriculture sector.

We had a budget with the potential to hire experts to do all the work I have been doing pro bono for agriculture for the last 15 years. In some cases we had no idea just how much those people charge and I had to step up and fill some gaps

I am confident the people that get the big bucks never forget the plates for the food. Face palm Lynne, but its not called finger food for nothing is it and when the food is really good no-one seems to mind. Thank you Decadence Nowra, today’s food was divine

Thank you Bomaderry High School, you made us feel so welcome. The  library and careers team went out of their way to make agriculture front and centre.

Thank you Become Education, what a great reminder to agriculture we don’t have to do it alone. There is a whole sector dedicated to careers exploration. We just have to partner with them.

School offices are interesting places. Anyone who visits a school these days will spend quite some time there, the admin team have so much red tape they have to put you through before they can let you into the school

At Bomaderry  High School there are the traditional honour boards and there is this sign. It had me thinking what is my secret sauce

After the last two weeks working with Josh Farr from Campus Consultancy and Liv Pennie and team from Become Education, I think it might be identifying excellence in others.

But it wasn’t just the people at the front of the room, who made it all worth while. In the Hunter last week it was the support team who turned up. The people from council, the people from the NSW Office of Regional Youth, the people from Local Land Services, the people from NSW DPI who popped in to say G’Day, the Tocal team.

Today again people from council, people from Office for Regional Youth, Young Farming Champion Danni Fordham who did an 8 hour round trip, the people from the National Careers Institute, MP Fiona Phillips who shared her story and all the amazing teachers and their support networks.

The only people missing from the room was representatives from the agriculture sector.

 

 

 

 

Young Environmental Champions – empowering young people to be change makers

In an ideal world we would all be active citizens in our communities . 

How do we set young people up to be active and resilient citizens in their communities?

This is a challenge put to the Action4Agriculture team last year, initially by the Vincent Fairfax Family Foundation (VFFF) and also by the Office for Regional Youth.

VFFF commissioned Environmental Leadership Australia and Foundation for Young Australians to understand the issues for young people and make recommendations on how they can best be supported. See research outcomes here

The Office for Regional Youth did similar 

Both organisations have youth advisory bodies and Action4Agriculture has youth representatives on both.

Action4Agriculture has been working with young people in primary, secondary and tertiary education for close to 20 years. We also have extensive insights into this demographic.

Building on our knowledge and insights plus that of our funding partners the Empowering Young Environmental Champions (YEC) program was born.  We are very grateful to insights of Professor Felicity Blackstock and Tanya Jackson Vaughan in developing the model

The YEC are identified young people completing their Australian primary, secondary and tertiary education, who are supported to act on environmental and social issues important to them, their schools and their communities.  Through the YEC project, these young people and their communities are connected with the best minds and ideas in government, education, industry, not for profits and the research sector to sustainably translate complex challenges into concrete problems and feel empowered to solve real world issues at a local, state or national level.

This bespoke program supports young Australians to be agents of change creating a movement to embed sustainability thinking and actions in our way of life.

The program is open to young people in Stage 3 to Stage 5 in primary and secondary schools and TAFE/Uni students  in the following regions in 2023.

You can see how it works here 

What’s involved here 

Support for teachers and students here 

Hierarchy of Intended Outcomes here

What I have learnt is success relies on bringing the right people to the table. I so wish everyone, everywhere had the mindset of the Brotherhood of St Laurence and fostered the communities of practice model  

We believe change can only happen when people work together, which is why partnerships with the broader community and organisations nationally are a cornerstone of BSL. Source

 

 

 

Action4Youth – a vision to create a workforce attraction, support and thrive model that can be scaled and replicated by any industry

Action4Youth is a vision to create a workforce attract, support and thrive model that can be scaled and replicated by any industry

It is the result of 20 years of applied research by many people investigating and trialing frameworks that understand the wants, needs and pain points of the people it aims to serve.

The model has three phases – EXPLORE_CONNECT_SUPPORT

It began with identifying who are the right people to bring to the table to support the vision.

It acknowledges you need place based models with resources for local solutions

The Brotherhood of St Lawrence  Foundational Capability Pathway identified the key components that form the skeleton:

  1. Young people need a breadth of skills
  2. Co-design and co-delivery – the people who directly benefit have ownership
  3. Partnerships and relationships – work with the willing

Research by the Brotherhood of St Laurence has also identified two focus areas post COVID

  1. Building employer capability
  2. Mental Health and Well Being of Young People

What does the current ACTION4YOUTH step by step plan look like

Step One. Bring the Right people to the Table 

Step Two. Follow identified best practice

Step Three. Identify and focus on the Top Three Modes of Influence

Step Four. Co-design a model that is participant ( teachers/career advisors, students, employers) centric

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Step Five. Identify and Engage Vocational Exploration Psychology Organisation to support educators and give them confidence they can support students to identify their values and explore careers

Step 6. EXPLORE . Offer taster opportunities . Awareness becomes Attraction

Step 6. CONNECT students with role models and mentors and employers

Step 7. Provide SUPPORT for students and employers to build their capability

Step 8. Engage Headspace  to support students with mental health, physical health, & managing work and study.

Step 9. Identify great work being done by others we could partner with and leverage

We have pressed the launch button and just when everything was going wonderfully the government in their wisdom moved NAPLAN from May to March 😊The things that you just cant account for in a project risk assessment 😊

Watch this space as we share with you our journey

#Action4Youth

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Big Question – what does meaningful change look like

Over the years I have worked with some extra-ordinary people. One of those is Changeologist Les Robinson
My big question “what does it take to drive meaningful change” starts with a lot of reflection on what meaningful change looks like for you and the people/organisations you are working with and successfully defining the joint vision.
At Action4Agriculture we are disciples of Les’ work in this space. Les is a big believer in keeping it simple.
Another brains trust we love working with at Action4Agriculture is Professor Felicity Blackstock who is a learning and development guru.
Felicity and I were recently discussing the evaluation of our Action4Youth Workforce Roadmap Model project and Felicity asked me the BIG Question – what does meaningful change look like?
 When you are trying to drive change you have to be able to clearly identify the problem. The research is in – Secondary School students need universal access to high quality work based learning and industry has been identified as part of the problem
So what would meaningful impact look like for me
  1. agricultural employers can clearly articulate the ROI for providing work-based learning for school students
  2. agricultural employers are confident they have the skills and knowledge and mentoring capacity to ensure students can use their work based learning time effectively
  3. agricultural employers commit the time and energy into learning how to engage with workplace learning providers and young people

The pièce de résistance for me is having a cohort of facilitators who have the capacity to deliver  workshops for all 12 career management competencies for the Australian Blueprint  for students – how rewarding is that

Superstars like Josh Farr