On 1 July 2022, ACCIONA signed an Article 23 partnership with CareerSeekers.
CareerSeekers assists humanitarian entrants in two groups: they help those with tertiary qualifications to find work in the fields they trained for back in their home countries, and support university students to complete internships during their study breaks each year.
Through this partnership, we will create at least 24 employment opportunities for new Australians over the next three years while providing a diverse talent pipeline to our business. In fact, we are looking at taking eight interns on this coming summer.
Building a diverse and inclusive culture is a priority for ACCIONA and our SMP2025, and partnering with CareerSeekers gives us access to the varied and, at times, exceptional skills among humanitarian entrants.
About CareerSeekers
CareerSeekers is a non-profit organisation supporting Australia’s humanitarian entrants into professional careers. Their program provides in-depth preparation and support to refugees and people seeking asylum who are either currently studying at university or looking to restart their professional careers in Australia.
Their program supports two distinct groups of asylum seekers and refugees:
Mid-career Professionals – those with tertiary qualifications and professional work experience from their country of origin who strive to re-establish their careers in Australia. These participants undertake paid internships lasting twelve weeks that provide local experience, a local reference, and help them establish a network within their chosen profession.
University students – full-time university students who undertake paid internships during university breaks to link their studies with practical work experience. The CareerSeekers university program aligns with existing corporate internship programs.
We can’t wait to share some of our CareerSeeker success stories with you over the coming months. As an example, Hala Nader, Environmental Coordinator on SPA, has just been nominated for Emerging Leader at the upcoming 2022 Infrastructure Sustainability Council (ISC) Annual Awards.
And check out the following story from 2019 on Raneen Nashi (Yaseen), a Mechanical Site Engineer on our WestConnex M4-M5 Link Tunnels project.
Raneen had just finished the third year of her bachelor’s degree in her home country, Iraq, when she and her family were forced to leave everything behind due to war.
Living under restrictions in a second country, Raneen worked 76 hours a week in unskilled jobs to support her family, but she was proud of her work.
In 2017, Raneen and her family arrived in Sydney on a humanitarian visa. In January 2018, Raneen was finally accepted to complete a Bachelor of Engineering (Honours) at Western Sydney University.
That year, she secured an internship with Lendlease and achieved a distinction in every subject. Raneen won the AAS NSW Division Vibrate Prize for Most Outstanding Student in Dynamics in Mechanical Systems and returned to intern with Lendlease via CareerSeekers. After the acquisition of Lendlease Engineering, Raneen is now an ACCIONA graduate engineer on the WestConnex M4-M5 Link Tunnels project.
This is Raneen’s story (from CareerSeekers Spotlight 2019).
The Article 23 Program
In 1948, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) was ratified as a common standard for all peoples and all nations. It is a milestone document in the history of human rights that set out, for the first time, to universally protect fundamental human rights.
On 10 December 2018, celebrating 70 years since the genesis of the UDHR, CareerSeekers and 21 organisations united to make a bold statement – a measurable, long-term commitment to include humanitarian arrivals in employment strategies.
The partnerships of these 21 organisations with CareerSeekers provide local experience and employment opportunities to humanitarian entrants. They include defined commitments and measurable outcomes that will drive a new wave of social and economic development throughout Australian industries.
These partnerships are named for Article 23 of the UDHR, which forms the baseline of our commitment:
- Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work, and to protection against unemployment.
- Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work.
- Everyone who works has the right to just and favourable remuneration, ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protection.
- Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests.