Source: Northern Territory Police and Fire Services
Left to right: Stepping Stone directors Vanessa Brettell, Belén Rodríguez Chamorro and Hannah Costello.
A new Stepping Stone café is supporting Common Ground Dickson residents to grow their confidence, skills and qualifications to open up employment opportunities.
The new café completes a range of services available to residents of Common Ground Dickson, which opened earlier this year.
Stepping Stone is more than just a café; it operates a sustainable food business while providing hospitality-based employment, on-the-job training, and partnering with registered organisations to offer certified qualifications to women who face multiple barriers when seeking stable employment.
Residents can apply for permanent or casual roles at the café. They gain an income, hands-on experience and skills and qualifications through registered training organisations.
Stepping Stone is designed to be welcoming and supportive for migrant, refugee, and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women. It offers flexible rostering, adaptive training tools, on-the-job training and a menu that reflects the cultural diversity of the staff.
Stepping Stone has employed over 28 women through operating a café at Strathnairn Arts, in Strathnairn.
Eight new employees have been offered work, training, and support for work opportunities at the new Dickson café.
Building skills, confidence and community
“Stepping Stone is a work integration social enterprise. We operate with the main goal of providing inclusive employment and training for opportunities for those who face the most barriers to employment,” Stepping Stone café co-owner Vanessa Brettel said.
“In the Canberra community we have identified this to be migrant and refugee women from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds. Through opening our second café here in Dickson we are continuing to support that group of people as well as the residents living in Common Ground that fit into that group.
“In addition to employment, we also provide training. We do a lot of on-the-job training and will also be offering more certified training courses which will be available to all Common Ground Dickson residents.”
Stepping Stone endeavours to not only build workplace skills and confidence for their employees but also a sense of community and importance.
“One of our Strathnairn employees is in her mid-forties and has low level of English proficiency. We started her in a position where there wasn’t much customer interaction and surrounded her with other employees that spoke the same language who were able support her and assist with translation,” Vanessa said.
“After she worked with us for a few months as a kitchen assistant, we noticed her passion for baking and making desserts, so we made visual recipe guides and pictures for her to use. She now makes all our cakes and sweets at Strathnairn which has given her a great sense of purpose and she has become an integral part of the business.”
Stepping Stone Café is located at Hawdon Place, Dickson and open to the public on Tuesdays – Saturdays, from 8:30am–3pm.
Find out more information about Common Ground Dickson.
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