Employment

Support

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Ages 15 – 24

Youth Inspire’s employability programmes help our Rangatahi learn skills that will help them get a job and keep a job.

Developed by COMET, the Youth Employability Programme (YEP) provides learning activities to build the key competencies employers have told us they want their young workers to have.

Youth Inspire runs Employability Programmes for ages 15 to 24
All programmes run 4 days a week Monday - Thursday

Our Employability Programmes

  • EPS Employment Placement Services

    8 Week Programme:

    Job Seekers Programme

    For Ages 18-24

    MSD Referrals | Job Seekers Benefit

    Mondays - Thursdays

    What’s Included:

    Employability Skills: Teamwork, Communication, Positive Attitude,

    Self-Management, Willingness to Learn, Thinking Skills, Resilience

    CV & Cover Letter Creation

    First Aid Certification

    Budgeting & Interview Preparation Workshops

    Interview Clothing

    Snapper Cards for Travel Costs

    Weekly Food Parcels for Your Household

    Daily Food Provided in Class

    Ongoing Support Throughout the Programme

    Job Coaching and job seeking

    2 Weeks work experience

    Site visits

    Advocacy and Activities

  • HPR - He Poutama Rangatahi Programme

    10 Week Programme

    REGISTRATIONS CLOSED.

    Ages 15-21 | Community Clients

    Programme Dates:

    September 15th - November 21st 2025

    Mondays - Thursdays

    What’s Included:

    Employability Skills: Teamwork, Communication, Positive Attitude,

    Self-Management, Willingness to Learn, Thinking Skills, Resilience

    First Aid Certification

    4 Weeks work experience

    6 months pastoral care

    Life skills & confidence building

    Site Visits & Snapper Cards for Travel Costs

    Support after the programme

    Fun activities

    CV, cover letter & interview preparation workshops

    Budgeting & Interview Preparation Workshops

    Interview clothing

    Cultural Identity

REGISTER INTEREST HERE

Employability Skills

Skills are applied in work experience placements. Local businesses provide work experience where new skills are developed, teamwork can be practiced, and references can be added to CVs.

  • Self-management is your ability to regulate behaviors, thoughts, and emotions in a way that better serves you and your work. Developing self management is not easy but it’s worth doing. As you improve your self management skills, you’ll grow naturally as a leader.

  • Willingness to learn is desire, wish or readiness to acquire new knowledge and develop skills. It’s a key behaviour employers love and it shows a person’s commitment to improving their work performance and staying ahead of modern trends.

  • Sometimes the work environment can present unique challenges and difficulities. Resilience is the ability to overcome and recover from these challenges and will equip our young people to more effectively handle stress

  • Critical thinking is the vital skill of questioning, analyzing and evaluating objective information to form reliable judgements and actions. We teach our young people to consider the credibility of evidence to empower them to make better decisions

  • Communication in the work place is not only vital for productivity, collaboration and trust among employees and managers, it is an essential life skill. We teach our young people different communication styles and empower them to actively improve their communication skills.

  • Teamwork is the collaborative effort of a group to achieve a common goal and is an essential employability skill even if the job role is largely independent. Working together as a team helps maintain an enjoyable work environment and build strong employee relationships

  • A positive attitude is a state of mind that focuses on the potential in things, situations and yourself. It means being optimistic, hopeful and creative about finding ways to improve the situation. It’s a cornerstone of willpower - something that is created rather than found.

Gemma - Funding & Relationships Manager at Youth Inspire

“It's an absolute privilege to be able to support our local young people, they deserve as many opportunities as we can provide so they can achieve their goals.”

Other services

As well as helping rangatahi with employability skills and certificates, we work on:

  • CV and cover letter writing

  • Job seeking

  • interview clothing and preparation

  • Support for mental wellbeing

Se also partner with local organisations and individuals to run additional workshops such as:

  • Interview preparation

  • Budgeting

  • Tax / IRD

We can also help arrange PPE as needed, assist in finding your way to work or even enroll you in a barista course!

We also organise volunteer opportunities so rangatahi can feel good about giving back to the community.

  • Jay - From tutor to baker

    Jay completed our programme in August 2022. His passion was music and with the help of the Goodtime Music Academy (GTMA) he completed his work experience which he loved so much he ended up volunteering once his placement had finished. He was super shy to start with but ended up connecting and engaging with the young people on the GTMA programme which helped him hone his social and communication skills.

    He then gained his Barista Certificate with Trade School Kitchen and during the job seeking phase of the Youth Employability Programme was successful in getting offered an apprenticeship as a Baker with Janus Bakery where he is still currently working - nice one Jay!

  • Ronin - Self development

    Ronin was initially very nervous and guarded when he came into the Youth Inspire office to talk about our Learner Driver Licence course. We spoke to him about our Youth Employment Programme and after thinking about this he committed to do it. He very nervous at the start of the course and didn’t want to partake in all the activities but he soon made friends and became comfortable with his classmates and tutors he became a leader amongst the group.

    His work experience was at Carboglass which gave him a huge confidence boost as they got him working on a variety of jobs including disassembling their race car. His tutor Gemma says “this gave him courage, motivation and commitment to push for his dream”

    Job seeking gave him the opportunity to further connect with others during which time he proactively applied to Z and was offered a role. He notes that work has given him more confidence, he loves interacting with customers and has been given more hours at work.

    “I absolutely enjoy everything that’s happened for me this year, thanks Youth Inspire! I am a changed man; I feel brand new.” – Ronin

  • Catherine - business and painting

    Catherine completed the Youth Employability Programme in August 2021 with dreams of someday running her own business. She decided she wanted to learn administration skills and we placed her in work experience with Allied Security to lean all things administration (including some HR processes, accounts etc). Her confidence grew along with her skills as she found this valuable experience.

    During her job seeking phase it became apparent she also wanted to be a painter - so we connected her with one of our other local partners - JSL Renovations who took her on as their only female painter at the time. She has since fallen in love with the job and the company and has been there ever since.