Mulberry project – video transcript
Watch how the Mulberry Project is upskilling migrant workers in Toowoomba.
[Louise, Managing Director, The Mulberry Project]
The Mulberry Project is a social enterprise. We work with a wide range of migrant communities in the Toowoomba region connecting people to careers in farming and food. It began like a form of community gardening but always with the intention of creating opportunities for employment.
[Emmanuel, Withcott Seedlings]
The Mulberry Project has helped me to get good life because it helped me to get a job, that's very big.
[Lynetta, Withcott Seedlings]
Before, without them, it was hard for me to look for work and I had to get a job, but you know I met a lot of friends and do lot of things I never learned before, a lot of things I did for my English, and they're really, really nice.
[Louise]
We have community gardening operations where we connect often socially isolated adults to community gardening activities and we operate training programs in collaboration with partners particularly Growcom, as the peak body for horticulture.
[Karen, Projects and Business Development Manager, Growcom]
Because Toowoomba is a humanitarian settlement area, we have a lot of migrants coming into the area that come from rural and farming backgrounds. I linked to the Mulberry Project so that we could get groups of people that wanted to work in agriculture linked to the employers and get them skilled and get them long-term jobs.
[Steven, General Manager of Performance and Culture, Withcott Seedlings]
Diversity in the workplace is especially good for us. It gives different ideas, a different feel and a different inclusive culture within our actual workplace, whether that be from the lunch environment or the working environment.
[Louise]
I just think we've got so much to gain from collaborating and really valuing all the many cultures in our country – we need as many different perspectives as we can get. People coming from a different cultural tradition bring a different way of looking at the world.
[Steven]
Bringing these diverse communities into us is going to help us with growing of our training plans, our connectivity. It is going to improve us in the way that we deliver and talk to people as a business, as a whole.
[Louise]
People who have grown plants, who have a passion for plants in their own country. As soon as you put them in a garden their faces light up. I think there's so much not only pleasure, but healing that can happen in a garden.
I'm really proud of all the people that we've placed in employment that's really really exciting to see people grow and sort of flourish.
[Lynetta]
I'm just really happy that I'm in Queensland and thanks to the Mulberry Project for helping me through to come and be the way I am not.
Watch how the Mulberry Project is upskilling migrant workers in Toowoomba.