From strength to strength: Clontarf Foundation Partnership

Now in its third year, our community partnership with the Clontarf Foundation is going from strength to strength, empowering young Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander men across Australia to realise their potential. 

The Clontarf Foundation is a not-for profit organisation dedicated to equipping Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students with life skills to support meaningful employment and opportunities post-school. Targeting male high school students, the foundation achieves this through educational engagement, behaviour change and life skill programs.  

The foundation partners with schools and communities to create ‘Clontarf Academies’ to support the delivery of their programming. 

Thiess is privileged to work with the Clontarf Foundation, enabling work experience, traineeships, mentoring and coaching opportunities for the students, providing valuable insight to available career pathways.   

We share some of the highlights from our partnership from the year so far: 
Queensland 
Mackay Academy Opening  

Mackay State High School supported and partnered with the Clontarf’s Foundation in opening its Mackay Academy. Assets Operations Manager Paul Morrell represented Thiess to support the academy, which currently has 70 Clontarf students enrolled. 

Mackay Rugby League Carnival 

Thiess volunteers supported the Queensland Rugby League Carnival on 1 June in Mackay which hosted 24 Clontarf academies. Our five volunteers - Paul Morrell, Kim Clemesha, Rohan Breayley, Nicole Shibasaki, Karel Shibasaki and Neil Seden - ran water at the event to support the players. 

Townsville Clontarf Employment Forum 

Thiess supported the Townsville Clontarf Employment Forum for approximately 55 year 12 students. The purpose of the forum was to provide relevant information to young ATSI (Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander) men to support opportunities to employment pathways.  

Small groups of students participated in 8-minute round table sessions with partner organisations learning about industry and career pathways. Thiess volunteers, Colin Gray and Robbie Nitz also supported the forum through hosting a stall. 
Western Australia 
Swan View Academy  

Future planning and Good Bunch Lunch 

Earlier this year, Thiess employees Andrew Doyle, Steven Southwell and Nevinia Davenport met with the Clontarf’s Swan View Academy staff to understand more about the boys participating in the program in 2021 and to set priorities, opportunities within an annual plan. The team then joined the Good Bunch Lunch which is a reward for the Clontarf boys who had 100% attendance at school for the week. 

After lunch Andrew, Steve and Nevinia presented to the Year 11 & 12 students to give them a better understanding about Thiess, our operations at Hazelmere and the range of employment opportunities in the mining services industry. 

Training session and breakfast 

Thiess employees Andrew Doyle, Andrew Houlding, Ray Leong, Anita Govich, Amber Gintare and Yasid Cardona joined a game of dodge ball with the year 7-10 boys at Swan View Academy.  

After training the teams shared breakfast, where the boys shared some fun facts about themselves with the team including their favourite and least favourite subjects, favourite sports and what they love about being in the Clontarf program. 

Hazelmere visit 

Andrew Doyle, Hazelmere Facility Manager, hosted five year 10 and 11 Clontarf boys from their local Swan View Clontarf Academy to a site tour of the Hazelmere workshop and logistics hub. 

Kevin Bruce, Swan View Academy Director said, “Thanks again for yesterday’s tour around your facility. The boys really enjoyed it and have continued to ask me questions about mining and what Thiess does today.” 
South Australia 
Port Augusta and Whyalla super training session 

In conjunction with OZ Minerals and other Prominent Hill contractors, Thiess attended a super training session breakfast of the Port Augusta and Whyalla Clontarf Academies. More than 60 Clontarf boys attended and heard from the OZ Minerals Board of Directors.   
New South Wales 
Singleton Clontarf Academy visit  

Clontarf students Zoran Dennis and Jackson Maskey hosted Thiess’ Community, Diversity and Inclusion team at their Singleton academy. The visit spotlighted the importance of supporting these programs with Zoran and Jackson sharing their own personal journey at the academy with our team. Two former Clontarf students from the Singleton academy have secured paid work placements at Thiess’ Mt Owen operation. 

Mt Owen site visit 

Mt Owen welcomed the Singleton and Newcastle Clontarf Academies on-site to experience mining operations first-hand. The students enjoyed touring the workshop and the pit, whilst seeing Clontarf alumni students in action through traineeship and apprenticeship placements.