Skills NSW

Dapto High School is taking on the Push Up Challenge in support of Lifeline South Coast

What started as a few students at lunch has grown into something really special.

Every day, a growing circle of students and staff are coming together for 10 x 10 push-ups. Somehow, those 100 reps feel a whole lot easier when you're surrounded by good people.

There's never a better time to talk about the real message behind the Push Up Challenge, and Men's Health Week is that time.

You're never alone. Building strength, starting conversations, and showing up for each other, that's what this is all about.

For Max, coming into contact with peer work completely changed how he understood his own experiences.

It gave him a framework, a community, and eventually a career supporting others through theirs.

His story is at the heart of a short film Mental Health Coordinating Council released to mark 10 years of the Certificate IV in Mental Health Peer Work, a nationally recognised qualification built for peer workers, by peer workers.

This Men's Health Week, learn more about what peer work is and how it works in practice. Find out more in the comments

RPL ➡️ Recognition of Prior Learning is how your real-world experience becomes a nationally recognised VET qualification.

If you've been working in a trade, a care role, a construction site, or an office, you've probably been building skills that count toward a qualification already. You just haven't had them recognised yet.

Here's how it works 👉🏻 You gather evidence of what you know and what you've done. That can be work samples, employment records, certificates, a third-party report from a supervisor, or even a self-assessment.

And it doesn't stop there, some universities recognise vocational qualifications as a pathway into higher education.

⚽️🇦🇺

School shoes off, work boots on. 🥾

Six Peel High School students spent a day on the tools at Apollo Engineering, getting a real taste of the metal fabrication trade through the RIEP Launchpad program.

They learned to weld, built a die and finished a fire pit with their own names cut into it.

It works both ways, too. Apollo has taken on two new apprentices since getting involved, proof that a trade can open many doors.