BTG has always had a very strong Youth Focus in the programmes delivered.
BTG designed and delivered a pilot Get Set For Work project which assisted young people disengaged from formal education. It provided much needed literacy and numeracy and generally achieved 50% work outcomes with additional numbers of young people returning to formal education.
The program was so successful that it expanded to three programs which serviced from central Gold Coast to as far north as Oxenford.
BTG was also one of the original providers of the Federal Governments Work For the Dole programme and developed and ran a number of innovative projects, ranging from music production to events management to fund raising activities for the Light For Life foundation, an organization set up to support parents of children who had committed suicide.
Landscaping projects were created by BTG to assist the Gold Coast City Council to clear fire trails on the spit and in parts of the hinterland. BTG, assisted by Career Employment Australia (CEA), also successfully completed numerous regeneration projects from Labrador to the Southport Spit to restore the vegetation on sand dunes to prevent erosion.
In the late 90’s BTG made an arrangement with Career Employment Australia Inc. to share resources and personnel to create a larger, stronger organization. This partnership enabled BTG to continue to deliver Work for the Dole projects and take advantage of programmes available from the Queensland Government.
The introduction of the Queensland Government funded Community Jobs Plan (CJP), now called Skilling Queenslanders for Work (SQW) enabled BTG to begin a series of building and construction type activities which provided paid “on the Job” experience for a large number of Gold Coast unemployed.
Many CJP projects targeted young people.
Projects such as developing digital city Hubs, creating a music company and even releasing a record provided diverse skills that allowed young people to break into cutting edge technology positions and marketing jobs and into jobs in the recording industry.