Vocational Service Projects
The Vocational Service Committee seeks to showcase Rotarian values in vocational activities. The committee is involved in the following projects and activities:
Victoria Police Leadership Mentoring Program
This program was established by Rotary Central Melbourne in conjunction with Victoria Police and the Business Community. It is a multi-District program involving clubs in all Victorian Districts. The project aims to link senior Victorian police officers to the community and business by providing mentors from the business sector and Rotary for a year. The program is a structured 12-month development opportunity that partners a Police member with a business or Rotary mentor in order to fully develop the members' leadership skills relevant to their role in the Force.
This program was established in 2018 by Rotary Central Melbourne as a partnership between Ambulance Victoria (AV) and Rotary. It is a multi-District Recognised Vocational Service project incorporating Rotary Districts 9800, 9810, 9820, 9790 & 9780. The program is a leadership development opportunity for high performing and high potential leaders at all levels within AV. The mentoring program is designed to bring diverse perspectives and experiences from outside AV to benefit the capability of mentees in meeting these challenges. One of Rotary’s core values is leadership and Rotary’s commitment to vocations and community through volunteerism has led to the invitation to Rotarians to be mentors. The professional and vocational experience of many Rotarians is invaluable to the mentoring relationship.
In the 2020 calendar year the Victorian government issued six challenges to address important social issues. One of these issues was the international student challenge with the objective to ‘strengthen social and community connections for international students studying and living in Victoria’. Rotary Central Melbourne collaborated with Outcome.Life – an organisation that places international students studying in Australia into internships – to respond to this challenge, using a mentoring frame for the program. A new company – Mentor Match – was formed and the collaboration between Rotary and Mentor Match was the successful applicant in the challenge, over 64 other submissions. This program has some important differences to the other mentoring programs outlined above. These include the fact that this program is focused more on ‘socialisation’ of international students than on leadership and as a result, it will have broad appeal to Rotarians of all ages and experience.
More detail of the Rotary mentoring programs can be found at our dedicated website; www.rotarymentors.org.au
NGSE is a customisable service exchange program targeted at university students and young professionals up to age 30. It provides them with opportunities to work with Rotary members to have unique vocational or community service experiences by combining their professional goals with humanitarian projects. NGSE enables participants to make connections with service-minded community leaders in another country, learn another language, build their professional skills and gain international experience and explore new cultures while giving back through service. Rotary Central Melbourne has had incoming and outgoing exchanges with Germany with more planned, but suspended pending resumption of overseas travel.
Vocational Talks
The Vocational Service Committee organises vocational talks by members of the club. These talks can either focus on providing an insight to club members on a vocation or profession or updating members on what is new in their professions.
Vocational Visits
The vocational visit is one of the traditional activities of the Vocational Service Committee. It provides an opportunity to learn on-site more about different vocations combining education, business sector engagement and fellowship into one activity.