CareerTrackers building bright future with the Salvos

Late last year, The Salvation Army, in partnership with the CareerTrackers* Indigenous Internship program, offered roles to four interns, for the duration of their university degrees. Those first interns began working within the Human Resources, Alcohol and Other Drugs, Domestic and Family Violence and Enterprise Projects and Strategy Management teams of The Salvation Army.  

In the spirit of the NAIDOC Week 2022 theme – ‘Get up! Stand up! Show up!’ – which speaks to increased empowerment for First Nations peoples and stronger community action – The Salvation Army has launched a pilot program to work with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander interns of excellence for the life of their degree. The program has been funded for the first 12 months through a Salvation Army Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Grant.

Internships generally run over 12 weeks each year (in one or two blocks) for the life of the intern’s university degree. The aim is to eventually convert the internship to a full-time position after graduation. (After the first 12 months, service managers fund any subsequent years of each intern’s time with their service.) 

Salvation Army and Indigenous interns mutually benefitting through project

Coordinator of the project, Stephanie Tasker, Lead HR Advisor, The Salvation Army HR services says: “We recently completed the first block and had great feedback from our managers and our interns.”

The process begins with The Salvation Army team outlining each role available. CareerTrackers then matches a student and provides a profile of one suitable potential intern for each role.

“From there, we receive more information about the intern, including what they are studying and where their career is heading and then work through the usual recruitment process,” Stephanie explains.

“Our goal is to ensure both the student and The Salvation Army service flourish.”

Interns may be in their first year of their degree when they start an internship, or they might be in their final year of university.

“Wherever the intern is at in their university studies and career, our managers commit to internship rotations for the life of the intern’s degree. This highlights that our amazing managers are committed to walking alongside an intern wherever they are in their university journey," Stephanie says.

New experiences and opportunities

Intern Isobel (a Badu, Mabuyag and Boigu Islands woman) studying a Bachelor of Social Work (Hons) at The University of Queensland completed her first block of her CareerTrackers internship earlier this year at The Salvation Army’s Moonyah Recovery Centre in Brisbane.

For Isobel, Alcohol and Other Drugs (AOD) was a completely new area of work to consider and, at first, she was nervous about working in the field.

She says: “I am so happy that I took the leap of faith and accepted the interview invitation. I am even happier and so grateful that I was offered the position as an intern.   

“The internship allowed me to gain skills, knowledge, and insight into AOD, as well as general therapeutic interventions, welfare frameworks, and the systems and structures involved in human services.

“I was able to draw [on] and utilise knowledge and skills learnt during my studies in social work, which was an empowering process, because it connected study and practice, and I will be able to carry this on as an emerging social work practitioner.”  

Isobel has been guided by Harriet Crisp, The Salvation Army State Manager of Alcohol and Other Drugs in Queensland, who explains: “Isobel was our first CareerTrackers intern at Moonyah,.

“She came with such a willingness to learn and to contribute to the centre and our practice.

“The projects Isobel completed during her internship will support our team to better support participants and have better outcomes … We also want to acknowledge Isobel’s positive energy and effect she had on the centre. This is truly a reciprocal exercise … "

Learning from each other

Stephanie says more internships will be offered, but at a pace that ensures the very best experience for current and future interns.  

“We have incredible interns who learn from their line managers, peers and teams about the sector that they are interested in for their careers and so build skills and capability in these areas. It is wonderful to see interns deliver fantastic projects and grow in their own skills and confidence throughout their internship rotations.

Stephanie Tasker, photo supplied

“However, managers and teams also learn from the intern just as much. It has been very much a two-way learning process, as our teams have learnt how to create a culturally safe and welcoming environment and to be open to suggestions and changes based on their intern sharing (if they wish) of their own culture and identity," she says.

“This gives their teams a deeper understanding, respect and desire to learn to even more effectively work alongside Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander colleagues, clients, customers and community members. So, it has a huge flow on effect. When our interns thrive, we all thrive!”

*CareerTrackers is a non-profit organisation, working to help create pathways and support systems for young Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander adults to attend and graduate from university, “with high marks, industry experience and bright professional futures”.