Industry visits give students the chance to explore different industries, hear from employers about their careers, recruitment processes, and workplace environments. These visits also help students understand what is expected in the professional world.

Examples of past workplace visits include:

• Parkroyal Hotel

• Bankstown Sports Club

• Sydney Airport

• RKR Engineering

Civics visits aim to enhance students' understanding of Australian culture and workplace practices. These events are typically held at iconic Australian workplaces, inspiring students to think beyond their usual perspectives and engage with experiences that might have once felt unfamiliar or challenging.

Examples of past Civics events include:

• Sydney Zoo

• NSW Parliament

• Field of Mars

• ABC Radio

• NSW Police Recruitment

• Illawarra Council

Brendan Gembitsky: The Ready Arrive Work program is a NSW Department of Education initiative in partnership with Job Quest, and it's a program that we've designed for our schools to assist recently arrived students from overseas, many of who are from a refugee background, to learn more about the world of work. In a fun setting.

Veronique August: the benefits of RAW for the students is that they have an opportunity to engage in work skills that they might not otherwise get. So something like RAW really gives our newly arrived students the opportunity to go have a look at an industry or go have a look at a major Australian iconic venue to be able to see that they can access these places, they can work in these places.

Fiona Keane: Some of the activities that you'll see relate to employment, employability, the Australian culture, the Australian workplace, and all of that's done in a fun and interactive way so that the students that are involved are engaged and enjoying themselves. So the activities that you might see are things like building a tall tower with spaghetti and marshmallows. The students might be. Working on looking at what career goals they have for the future. They might be looking at interview skills. They might be looking at what will happen when they actually go to the world of work. What is a resume? What do I include in a resume? It's a really broad program. It all relates back to the world of work and employment and employability here in Australia for young people.

Kushma Naidu: So this program is actually such a good lead for them to connect and see what's out there for them beyond the school. So school is their first introduction, and the RAW program takes them out to the industry visit, the fruit salad day and then of course meeting the great facilitators here. It just introduces them to the outer community and that's one of the greatest benefit I've noticed. It just increases their confidence and the connection.

Ziad Mutasim: So we are a work placement service provider and we coordinate industry tours for schools that are involved in the role program engages schools, parents, students and industry. So in order for young people to find out what opportunities are available for them, we need to have all these players together and working for the outcome of students getting employment. So essentially where we come in is the schools contact us, let us know how many students. They have for an industry visit. They let us know any industries that they may have an interest in and our role is then to contact the host employers and arrange the industry visits for that particular school. Students, they can go back to mom and dad and say, hey, I was at the hotel today in the city, I really want to work there for year 11 for my vet subject selection. I want to do hospitality because they may then go out and undertake a work placement. And after that they may undertake an apprenticeship as well.

Nadya (student): It has helped me a lot and right now I have confidence to go find a job and I'm looking forward to get one.

Mehdi (student): And we've been doing this activity. We played lots of games like we've been building the house. The steakhouse is basically this shows that how your how your team can work together and it's really fun.

Ashley Clarke: Every school is so different. You get a different bunch of kids with so many different amazing stories. Their vision of how they picture Australia and you know once they finish school is so to these different centres. They all expect that you know Australians, they finish school, they go to university. That is not an expectation here in Australia. So I think we really do push, you know there's. Pathways. There's TAFE, there's, you know, apprenticeship. There's so much more than just going to university. Once you explain that to the kids, you just see their whole personality and their whole attitude of this course change because it's like a big sigh of relief. Once you do have that conversation with every single kid at every different school, they're like, OK, I want to learn everything I can so I can, you know. Work out what I want to do, how I get this job, what steps I'm going to take to reach that. And we really do get some good outcomes from that.

Fiona Keane: Things like the fruit day where they get to actually engage with employers, they get to engage with TAFE and university. They get to see a whole range of people and options. I think that really opens their eyes to what's possible here in Australia, which is really exciting for them. They walk away saying I didn't know that I could do all of that and at the same time they really feel that they're now part of the Australian. culture, which is lovely.

Veronique August: This program should be encouraged in schools because when you come to a new country, besides learning so many new things, you've also got to know your place within that country and how you're going to be able to provide for yourself. One of the main things is getting a career. So, the impact of this is quite large when you're looking at such a large cohort of students who need to be involved in a program like this to get the exposure that they not only need, but they also deserve.

Shakila (student): I'm thinking this is a good opportunity how to get job with and how to behave with the people, how to teamwork with the people and planning, organising, organising.

Ali (student): I want to be a pilot. So, like at first, I didn't know what to wear or what to do, what should I do like I had no idea. And like the RAW programme, they just told me about everything, like what to wear like in an interview and how to talk and like help me also. Write my resume and stuff. Now I can do whatever I want, like because I've got confidence, you know.

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