Organisation Name

High Street Social Club

What does this organisation do?

High Street Social Club provides pathways to skills, confidence, networks and employment, in an environment where young people feel comfortable and encouraged.

Conceived as an integrated employment, social, arts and retail space, with strong links to the street sports community, the Club is now in its first stage. It’s especially designed for those without formal qualifications, who don’t fit comfortably into our existing systems of education, training and job networking.

The rate of underemployment – now at 18% – has become an entrenched feature of the youth labour market, according to the Generation Stalled report, commissioned by the Brotherhood of St Laurence. Almost one-third of Australian young people are unemployed or underemployed, the highest level in 40 years, according to the report.

By integrating training assessments, creating space for young entrepreneurs and building recreational street sport facilities we will be able to offer a unique blend of experience, self-sufficient social enterprise and a more accurate and efficient skills assessment platform.

Since the advent of the new Royal Adelaide Hospital, university and parking facilities situated on North Terrace, Adelaide has unfortunately become one of the only capital cities in the world that is lacking a space for people to ride BMX, Scooters or skateboards in their city. By taking a positive approach to this negative fact we have worked on a system to enable our organisation to help young Adelaideian's take responsibility for their own recreational space by aiding the design and construction of the High Street Social Club facilities with an emphasis on social ownership and sharing.

This coupled with rising youth unemployment and a major shift in business economics from an industrial base of manufacture to a smaller and more modern style workforce we find that there are more barriers to social inclusion and employment than ever before.

We have decided to undertake this kind of activity after looking at young people who are passionate about online media presentation especially in the Street Sports cultures of BMX, Skateboarding and street art. We see that a high percentage of these people are early school leavers who haven’t been through the tertiary system, let alone completing secondary school, and don't always have the organisational skills to seek information on apprenticeships and job networking etc. We will engage members through our Multi Media Hub to help introduce them to online tools and help their ability to research and increase problem solving skills. Many people don’t fit, for whatever reason, into the existing framework of education and job training and need the basic skills of self-organisation and initiative to be able to move forward. We see the lack of these skills reflected in many analysis of youth unemployment and social inclusion.

High Street Social Club realises that with a concerted effort we can combine board and committee members practical experiences in management and small business ownership accompanied by connections with young people through street sports, to create a different kind of skills network in South Australia and seek to work in partnership with existing government departments, job network providers and other not-for-profit organisations working with youth.

We encourage and provide a platform for members to undertake participation in projects ranging from filming short clips for social media, undertaking tasks to improve the back end of websites, online content and stock management. Members will have full access to online tools and the ability to undertake their own projects with help and support from the HSSC Board and Committee along the way.

Combining all of these facilities in an environment where there are real job, training and entrepreneurial opportunities for young South Australians High Street Social Club has it's sight set on an evolution of traditional education and training methods whilst staying close to it's street culture roots.