First Nations education initiatives follow on to Indigenous career experience
Over the summer of 2020 Tyrese Carr, a recent graduate of Kinross Wolaroi School and beneficiary of Humanitix’s Indigenous scholarships funding, headed into the Humanitix office for a 5 week paid internship to learn about technology and sales. The Humanitix team was so excited to welcome Tyrese (as you can see in the picture above), as it meant bringing its impact full circle by not only funding education for disadvantaged students in the First Nations community, but also providing career opportunities and training for the graduates of this program.
At the end of the internship, Humanitix asked Tyrese to reflect on his summer internship. Read on to see how he found the experience and his learnings during the few months at Humanitix.
My name is Tyrese Carr, I’m a proud Tubba-Gah man from the Wiradjuri nation and a recent high school graduate. I was lucky enough to start my internship with Humanitix a few days after graduating from Kinross Wolaroi school. I was on the Yalari (Humanitix’s partner) scholarship from Year 7-12, which gave me exposure to living out of home in a boarding house for many years. The scholarship has honestly changed my life, and I can speak on behalf of everyone I know who also graduated from Yalari, that the opportunities it created for us is honestly amazing. To be able to intern with Humanitix (which funds our Indigenous scholarships) and see how a tech-charity operates was a great opportunity and I’m glad I took it – not only am I gaining great experience, the work that I’ve done is for a great social enterprise with an amazing cause.
The first few weeks of working at Humanitix were very interesting and exciting – I got to see firsthand how businesses are operating and handling the pandemic, especially in the event industry. The type of work I have been doing is mostly helping the Sales Team source leads, sitting in on meetings and product demos, and any other tasks that needed to be done (except doing the coffee rounds which they surprisingly didn’t ask me to do!).
Despite the fact that everyone in the office is at least 5-10 years older than me I don’t feel like the outcast – it’s such a positive work environment and it’s quite infectious. Most of the office is trying to keep a healthy lifestyle by going to the gym and eating healthy – it has motivated me to do the same. There were also some challenges that I faced with the working life. The commute from Bankstown to North Sydney wasn’t my favourite. I struggled to adapt to the daily commute – it was a big difference from the boarding house where I only needed to walk downstairs to get to school each day. Time management is something I have identified as one of my biggest weaknesses, and I’m glad I came across it at 18 instead of fresh out of uni, so I can start to work on it now.
Intrinsically, I find helping to contribute to my Indigenous community through the work at Humanitix feels like I’m “paying it forward”, as Waverly Stanley, Yalari’s founder, often said. It’s an awesome life experience and the founders and the team at Humanitix have taken time to sit down with me to give me advice and mentorship. I’ve learnt a lot and had some amazing experiences throughout the internship,on both personal and also professional levels. To have an experience like this while being so young is something I’ll take with me for a long time. I’d like to thank Josh, Adam and the Humanitix team for giving me this opportunity, and also for all they do for the Indigenous community.
– Tyrese Carr (Tubba-Gah, Wiradjuri Nation), Humanitix intern & Indigenous scholarships program graduate.
Ana, Arsalan and Sean (members of the Humanitix team) having lunch with Tyrese (pictured at the back) at a nearby park during his internship.
