Scaffolding through Sisterhood

The low participation rates of Māori and Pacific wāhine in the construction and infrastructure industry was a key driver to launch the Scaffolding through Sisterhood work experience programme.

The programme focuses on increasing the awareness and knowledge of the diverse career pathways into our industry by providing wāhine with work-based experience and matching them with a Link Alliance Mentor.

During the April and July school holidays, eight wāhine joined the Link Alliance whānau for the five-day programme. They came from Auckland Girls Grammar School, Papakura High School, Manurewa High School, Auckland Seventh Day Adventist School, Avondale College, and Glenfield College.

Thank you Ara Education Charitable Trust (AECT) and Jobs and Skills Hub for helping match students with our programme. Both organisations partner with industry, and Auckland high schools to create employment and training opportunities for their respective students. The benefit of working in this type of partnership is the established relationships, pastoral, and wrap-a-round support is already in place for the students they refer.

Many of the wāhine told us that being a part of this programme reaffirmed their aspirations to work in the industry, for others it has made them assess and reset.

Career pathways: Stories that inspire

In September we launched our first series of Career Pathways: Stories that inspire at an event with Project Director Francois Dudouit and guest speaker Auckland Councillor Josephine Bartley.

Councillor Bartley gave a fitting address that acknowledged the challenges and bravery of women, in particular Māori and Pasifika in male-dominated careers.

The idea behind documenting and sharing these stories came from feedback we received during LEEP engagements. Visiting schools told us that they thought a lot of the presentations should be shared with a wider audience. www.learnz.org.nz/ futurejourneys212 www.youtube.com/ watch?v=FbqU87mncec www.youtube.com/ watch?v=fRGLqE6ifKw

Career Pathways: Stories that inspire, is a video resource that has been shared with schools, communities and industry.

We then chose four wāhine from the project and videoed them speaking about their personal journeys to become engineers.

Together with LEARNZ, we showcased some of the places, people, ideas and initiatives through a virtual field trip.

Veronica www.youtube.com/ watch?v=FbqU87mncec www.youtube.com/ watch?v=CkybZbLiimg&t=95s

"If I can do it – you can too.” That’s the encouragement and support from Veronica Lui, Link Alliance’s Owner Verifier - Rail Systems. We are proud to have strong leaders like Veronica in our team. Veronica’s interest in engineering started in high school, where she describes not having seen anyone that looked like her in the industry – a woman, let alone a Pasifika woman. Since becoming an engineer, Veronica advocates for and supports others who can see themselves in her journey.