For eighteen-year-old Renita, who loves children and enjoys developing the young people in her community, a new employment program offering paid work experience with a local childcare provider was too good an opportunity to pass up.
Renita and her host employer, the Weipa Community Care Association (WCCA), were among the first in the Western Cape region to take up Kuku’nathi Services new Paid Work Experience Program. Renita has been working ten hours each week with Cape Youth Connect, helping the team there provide school holiday care for the families of Weipa through the summer holidays. With the school year beginning again earlier this month, the service shifts to providing outside-of-school-hours care. Renita will continue to help provide this activity and play-based care for the remainder of her three-month work experience trial.
With a year-round demand for their services and needing to keep growing their nurturing and caring team to support the children in their care, WCCA CEO Josephine Tait is always looking for ways for her organisation to involve and offer employment opportunities to the local communities. The new program ticked lots of boxes, and she was pleasantly surprised at how easy getting involved has been.
“These programs sometimes sound like they will be heavy with paperwork, but I have found the Paid Work Experience Program to be an easy and comfortable process,” she said.
“I would not hesitate to urge any other employer in the region to consider taking part.”
Ms Tait was also impressed by how well the Kuku’nathi Services team matched her role with such a great participant. Renita was assisted to get the accreditations required to begin working straight away and was identified for this opportunity specifically because of her interest in working with children. As the eldest child in a large family, she has no shortage of experience with young children and has taken to the role brilliantly.
“I love looking after and getting to know the kids and the team at WCCA, they are all keeping me motivated and progressing towards my goals.”
Being paid to undertake work experience is feeding into her shorter-term goals “I’m loving earning my first wage and I am already saving for my first car.”
“Having a car would allow me to keep progressing towards my ultimate goal to get full-time work, maybe even right here at Cape Youth Connect?” she said.
For more information about the new employment program Paid Work Experience, please speak to your nearest Kuku’nathi Services hub staff.