Shake a Leg is an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander employment program with a successful track record in employing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders in both business and government traineeships and apprenticeships.
Throughout the duration of a Shake a Leg apprenticeship or traineeship, participants are assisted by a thorough mentoring program designed to specifically address the needs of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander apprentices and trainees in completing their training and receiving a nationally recognised qualification.
Our Objectives
The program aims to make a positive impact on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander career opportunity by providing a vital link between the community and their career.
The Shake a Leg mentoring program is a crucial strongpoint:
- encouraging, recognising and promoting achievement in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander employment
- working toward a vision of what can be achieved together
- providing one on one mentoring to individual and business
Some of the things we offer
- Practical employment training
- Mentoring and support in the workplace
- Mentoring and support for employers
- Cross-cultural training for workplaces
- Regional strategies
- Development of recruitment and retention plans to employ Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders
- Tailored assistance to meet the needs of large corporate organisations
- Established relationships with industries that are experiencing or forecasting skills shortages
- Workforce strategies in areas of government service delivery
- Cadetships
- Training and mentoring of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders to become apprentices and trainees
- Work focused literacy and numeracy assistance
- Peer role models
- Expanding career guidance and aspiration building programs
- Providing work exposure opportunities
Shake a Leg Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander apprenticeships and traineeships is a non for profit organisation who is all about helping young people achieve their dreams and goals.
Our artwork
The artwork for Shake a Leg was developed by Daren Dunn. Daren Dunn runs Alenarra Art and is an Aboriginal man of the Gamilaroi tribe – Coonabarabran, NSW, Australia. A Koori man with a passion for living, people, art, culture, health and wellbeing, Daren is married to Tania Dunn and has three children, Alexander and Kynarra and their precious newborn Kooriaani.
Daren’s love for life, energy and creativity have been evident since childhood; and have been expressed and captured in his visual art and performance on every field and stage that Daren has put his mind to.
“The painting is about how important it is to gather as one and show honour and respect to our past elders, present elders and the nurturing of the youth today. Also it demonstrates how important it is to gather, live, love and work as one. As you can see the in the painting, I have painted four different tribes representing the areas in which WPC are currently working in. The dots that are leading into the centre represent the colours of the many tribes through out the areas. The circles in the middle represent the meeting and gathering of all the tribes. This is where the youth of today will prosper and become leaders amongst their communities.”
What ‘Shake a Leg’ means to Darren
“I am an international visual and performing artist and at all times when I do this I do the ultimate representation for my culture that is Shake a Leg. Shake a Leg is a traditional dance we do. It means stand proud. Shake a leg has a very important spiritual symbolism in our performances. It is the core to our performances, similar to the New Zealand Maori ‘Haka’. When we sit with our auntys and uncles and someone says “go on have a dance etc.” we don’t say this… we say ‘go on …shake a leg!.'”