New starts: A new partnership is creating job opportunities for the indigenous community. Here are site supervisor Richard Burrell, Jarrad Shepherd, Robert Millgate, Sam Doyle and project manager Tim Withers. Picture: Luke Fuda
INDIGENOUS inmates and school-leavers can start afresh thanks to a new project providing job opportunities.
Western Sydney Parklands and Muru Mittigar are partners in the project, launched at the parklands in Abbotsbury on Thursday.
Muru Mittigar is an Aboriginal education-and-training organisation and will provide experience and training for 50 clients.
The parklands trust is investing $250,000 as part of its Bringing Back the Bush program.
Participants will regenerate 20 hectares at the parklands over the next two years. Muru Mittigar general manager Peter Chia said the project would pave a new career path for the clients.
"We're providing support without discrimination or judgments about their past and allowing them to start afresh," he said.
"Especially for young inmates, this will hopefully break the cycle of re-offending and give them a cultural perspective as most of them are misled and confused about who they are."
Environment Minister Robyn Parker, who was at the launch, said the program would help clients facing barriers to employment, "including people transitioning from pre-release and post-release corrective services as well as indigenous school leavers".
Parklands trust director Suellen Fitzgerald said the partnership would be the first of many involving western-Sydney indigenous organisation.