The numbers we refuse to keep accepting
Twenty years after the largest waves of South Sudanese arrivals to Victoria, the data still tells a story that should embarrass a country as wealthy as ours.
Unemployment rate for South Sudan-born Victorians
Humanitarian migrants relying on unemployment payments in first 5 years
Less likely to hold a job than other migrants
Research is now clear that the primary driver is not language, not qualifications, not "work ethic." It is employer discrimination at the point of screening.
Unfortunately, for some communities, the flow-on consequences are written into our youth justice numbers. Culturally and linguistically diverse young people make up around 39 per cent of young people under youth justice supervision in Victoria, with African and Pasifika youth significantly overrepresented. First Nations children are 21 times more likely than their non-Indigenous peers to be in detention.
$2.6 million+ per year — per young person in Victoria
Victoria now spends over $7,100 a day to detain a single young person — the highest cost of any jurisdiction in Australia (Productivity Commission, RoGS 2026). And around 85 per cent of children released from detention return to supervision within twelve months. The issue is not lack of government investment — it is the absence of meaningful job pathways.
The high recidivist rate is not due to lack of government investment. Governments at every level — federal, state, local — alongside the philanthropic community, have poured tens of millions into youth-at-risk programs. For example, the Victorian Youth Crime Prevention Program alone has received over $40 million since 2016. In most cases, these initiatives have shown promising results. However, none have been bold enough, or focused enough on the one variable that actually shifts a young person's trajectory: a real, paid, protected job.
What we learned from what came before
There is a precedent that should have changed Australian policy a decade ago.
Jesuit Social Services × National Australia Bank
The African Australian Inclusion Program placed African Australians into six-month paid corporate work placements. Around 80 per cent of participants moved into ongoing professional employment — at NAB or in their chosen field — within months of completing the program.
We are not building Kazi Konnect to admire that legacy. We are building it because that legacy proved a thesis — that the binding constraint for disadvantaged communities is access, not aptitude — and that thesis still hasn't been acted on at the scale the data demands.
Why labour, and why a union
Most employment programs for marginalised communities start at the wrong end of the income spectrum. They aim, understandably, at white-collar pipelines and tertiary-qualified candidates. That model works for some. It will never work for the young person leaving the Parkville Youth Justice Centre next month, or the newly-arrived twenty-year-old whose English is still emerging, or the father of four who needs to be earning by Friday, not by graduation.
Trades and civil works pay properly from day one — no years of unpaid internships or entry-level dead ends.
Construction and logistics have entrenched skills shortages in Victoria right now — real demand for real workers.
Labour has historically been the first rung onto the Australian economic ladder for every wave of migrants before us.
A young person leaving justice needs income now — not a two-year pathway to a qualification they can't afford.
We are partnering with one of Australia's largest unions because we refuse to repeat the mistakes of programs that delivered people into worksites and then walked away. A young person stepping into their first paid role — particularly one coming out of the youth justice system or out of a refugee resettlement pathway — needs more than a job. They need to be paid award rates. They need workplace protections enforced from day one. They need a delegate on-site who will pick up the phone when something goes wrong.
"The union is not a logo on a brochure for us. It is the structural guarantee that the people we place are not exploited, are not underpaid, and are not the disposable cheap labour that too many 'diversity hiring' pipelines have quietly become."
What "Kazi" means
Across East Africa — Kenya, Tanzania, the borderlands where families waited years for a country to take them in — kazi is the word for the thing that makes a life possible. It is dignity. It is identity. It is the answer to "what are you doing with yourself?"
It is the difference between being a recipient of services and being a citizen with a stake in the country you now call home.
Australia has been remarkably generous in giving humanitarian migrants safety. It has been remarkably slow in giving us kazi.
What we are building
Kazi Konnect is a labour-first, union-backed pathway to real employment for the people Australia's current system has failed most: highly disengaged young people, youth coming out of the justice system, and newly arrived refugees from South Sudanese, broader African, Pasifika and Indigenous backgrounds.
Employers
We work with employers who need workers and are willing to give someone a real chance.
Unions
We work with unions who keep those workers safe, paid fairly, and protected by law.
Community
We work with families, elders, case managers and youth justice staff to make each placement stick.
We are not another mentoring program. We are not another resume workshop. We are an economic on-ramp, built by someone who knows from the inside what it costs to be locked out of one.