Passport to Work is a pre-employment training program for long-term unemployed job seekers or other job seekers from highly disadvantaged backgrounds. Five days of attitudinal and job search training are combined with a three or four months facilitated mentoring program. Business mentors from partner companies aid the participants in their job search and keep them focussed on achieving their goals.

This program has been run successfully over 30 times in Melbourne, Sydney, Bendigo, Geelong and Ballarat. It achieved an average success rate of 60% of participants gaining employment at the end of the program.

From a community mentoring perspective this program has been run successfully with over 1,000 business mentors from a range of companies including ANZ, BP, IBM, Ford, KPMG, Bendigo Bank, Origin Energy and Lend Lease. It comprises a 2-day training program for mentors, weekly facilitation sessions and a milestone and goal setting process that mentors can use throughout the programme (see Creating Competent Leaders for more details).

Businesses that have taken up our community mentoring programm have consistently reported higher staff morale and significant increases in emotional intelligence and leadership skills. Our program creates a safe space to practice such skills and encourages mutual learning.