When his working life in the dairy industry saw Ian Erskine leading Australia’s fastest growing milk franchise, he partnered with a New Zealand company to develop a training platform that would enable the business to keep up with the added workloads the rapid growth demanded.
He told EducationDaily that experience motivated him to launch ACI Global, an ISO-certified Australian quality educational organisation focused on accelerating continuous improvement to equip workforces with adequately trained team members.
“We are one of the very few training providers in the world to be ISO-certified to specific educational standard. And that enables us to train people from secondary school years 10 to 12, (people with) special needs, all the way up into the adult education market for people that want to change careers. We have something like over 200 courses available.”
At this time of year, as school leavers consider their educational and professional future, Erskine wants to raise awareness about the ACI Global ISO Scholarship Connection Program that helps train and place young people into opportunities that could lead into ongoing, full-time employment.
He told EducationDaily that the program aims to help “all people”, by offering scholarship and cadetship opportunities to people experiencing financial hardship, or those with special needs.
“It also helps people that may jump from one organisation to another and are finding it hard financially … or maybe they’ve been retrenched.”
“It basically helps everyone and we look at each one on an as-needs basis. And it’s all developed around existing courses and core structures. So, the cadet is actually put into a specific course relevant to an organisation, the sponsoring organisation.”
Erskine says the delivery of the training has been developed around existing courses and core structures, with the trainee encouraged to take positive action to create their own future.
“We encourage the cadet or the career person that’s trying to better themselves to get an organisation (to work with) and it can even be an organisation that they think in the future that they’re going to work with.”
The sponsoring organizations are pivotal to the program’s success and Erskine is keen to discuss the potential with any company who may be keen to support the employment future of the motivated young people he says ACI Global helps support.
He says ACI Global is also keen to work with more schools – especially those in regional centres – to help support students who may not want to pursue university education and are keen to explore other avenues into training that supports sustainable employment potential.
The program enables the students, in years 10-12, to have a half-day or full-day within the sponsoring organisation, to engage in hands-on learning to help gain the skills, qualifications and competency that is required by the organisation for that student to transition into full-time employment, post-school.
He says that the benefit for employer organisations is “that they have an understanding that the person that is coming on and being employed is being trained by a registered and certified organisation”.
“All our training courses come under our umbrella of our ISO certification,” Erskine says.
Although ACI Global previously promoted offering a minimum of 20 scholarship and cadetship programs each calendar year, Erskine says they no longer put a limit on it and says applying is as simple as visiting their website.
What makes him energised and proud about the work he does in helping young people succeed in their educational and career pathways, says Erskine, is having the “ability to give back”.
“Basically, all our courses have part of my experience and knowledge within them. And as a facilitator and mentor, I can pass on lots of those experiences.”
“We’re with them all the time,” he says, of the support students can expect when they work with ACI Global.
“We’re looking at opportunities for them to improve, opportunities they might bring to us. And we say, right, well, we don’t actually have that course. We will develop that course for you to them to ensure that they are always striving to be high-achievers in the work.”
