Rotorua hospitality programme helping end unemployment

Eight weeks ago, Carly Parkinson hit "rock bottom".

She was homeless, her 16-year-old son was committing crimes and had just been arrested.

Parkinson "put him in the car".

They left Ōpōtiki for Rotorua, where some of her wider whānau lived.

New hospitality graduates Carly Parkinson, left, and Katrina Sime. Photo / Ben Fraser

During a tense meeting at Work and Income the following week, her case manager threw a folder on the table.

A flyer fell out, advertising AccorHotels' Fast Track Partnership Programme, a five-week hospitality training and on-site-experience scheme for the unemployed.

"Get me on that please, I want to do that," Parkinson said.

She was told there were no spaces, but when the manager called to double check, Parkinson was told she could start a fortnight later.

Yesterday she graduated with 26 classmates at Novotel Rotorua, where she now has an employment contract.

New hospitality graduates at Novotel. Photo / Rotorua Daily Post

"The programme has changed my life," she told the Rotorua Daily Post.

"I have always known I had a good work ethic, but finding someone that would believe in me too, that was hard."

Parkinson had not had financial security in "a long time".

"I have had other jobs but they ended up being dead-ends."

She said the support of her classmates, all with similar stories of unemployment, had made a "great" difference.

Her son has also started training, at the NZ Welding School at Whakarewarewa, and "he's loving it".

"We have been able to bounce the positive vibes off each other."

Rotorua mother Katrina Sime landed her first job at age 34, through the programme.

"I had been looking for years. I hadn't got anything until I came to this course. It sucked."

She is now working at Sudima as a room attendant.

Sime thanked Building Futures project manager Nicolette van Lieshout for turning her life around.

"Without her, I would never have got this far."

Van Lieshout has been leading the programme for eight months.

She describes her role as "the best job in the world" but she is modest about her own input.

"I am just giving them a helping hand," van Lieshout said at the group's graduation ceremony yesterday..

"The whole perception of what you think about for MSD clients is absolutely different in reality."

She said she would love to see the model used in other industries to fill skills shortages.

It started nine years ago in Auckland after the Minister for Social Development Minister and AccorHotels' director of talent and culture sat beside each other at a business event.

Bay of Plenty Labour List MP Angie Warren-Clarke presented the graduation certificates.

The recipients cheered, laughed, hugged, kissed and cried as they were called up to the stage one by one.

Twenty-four of them start work next week.

AccorHotels' senior vice president for New Zealand, Fiji and French Polynesia, Gillian Millar was one of many hotel representatives who congratulated the group.

She said the programme was "about breaking cycles".

It is run in collaboration with MSD, Tourism Industry Aotearoa and partnering hotel companies such as Rydges and Millenium.

Minister for Social Development Carmel Sepuloni was on her way to attend yesterdaybut her flight was cancelled because of fog.

She announced yesterday the programme would expand to Christchurch, following Rotorua's success.

"The results speak for themselves," Sepuloni said.