Information for Learners
What is the Yapang Initiative?
Yapang translates as ‘pathway’ from the Dunghutti language belonging to the First Australian peoples from the Macleay Valley of New South Wales.
The program is just that – a pathway for people from a range of diverse backgrounds (such as First Australians, women or veterans) who might not otherwise get the opportunity to start a career in digital technology.
Through the Yapang Initiative, learners will be provided with a world-class foundation for that journey with education, training, employment and career support.
The Program has been developed to address the two sets of interrelated needs:
- People that need the latest and most relevant digital skills to perform technology roles so that they can participate and thrive in the burgeoning digital economy.
- Organisations that have adopted (or are in the process of adopting) technologies but have found that demand for people with technology skills exceeds the supply, and this is hampering their organisational initiatives or objectives.
Who can participate in the Yapang Initiative?
The Program is designed to provide a pathway for people that may not ordinarily have the opportunity to enter the technology field. It seeks to give them all the information and skills development needed to gain a solid foundation to go on and be successful in that field.
We anticipate that all learners will have a passion and aptitude that will allow them to embrace every aspect of the program.
The Yapang Initiative is both comprehensive and intense – the selection criteria and enrolment processes that are applied to learners will ensure that the people seeking to join the Program have a clear commitment to the program’s objectives and the anticipated outcomes.
Learners will be expected to have appropriate levels of language, literacy and numeracy and interest in gaining technology skills.
The Yapang team are in contact with a range of organisations to assist in the identification and attraction of candidates. We will be contacting Local Aboriginal Land Councils, Job Network Providers, contracted recruitment companies, not-for-profit community-based organisations, State and Federal Affirmative Measures agencies, e.g. National Indigenous Australians Agency, Veteran organisations, Women in STEM organisations, and other sources.
When will the Yapang AWS re/Start run?
Each Yapang Initiative cohort generally run over a 12-week period as a virtual, full-time, classroom style development and training program.
Cohorts are running continuously. Contact us to find out when the next one starts.
What roles will Yapang Initiative graduates be suitable for?
The training addresses a range of technologies and digital skills that would typically be highly relevant to entry-level roles in the following fields:
- Cloud Operations
- DevOps
- Site reliability
- Cloud platforms and infrastructure support.
The Program is not only focussed on ‘hard-skills’ relating to the use, development and management of technology, it also has a strong focus on providing the learners with a solid appreciation of what it takes to be a valuable team member in contemporary workplace settings with leading Australian organisations.
Has Yapang Initiative been successful before?
The current intake for the Yapang Initiative is offering program learners a program based on the successful Amazon Web Services (AWS) initiative known as ‘AWS re/Start’ which has been successfully run in five countries across the globe with hundreds of people having made a successful start in a new technology career, and employers have been thrilled to have a well-structured new source of skilled talent premised on the idea of building a pipeline for entry-level cloud roles.
Goanna Education – an Australian Indigenous-owned technology education business – is responsible for the Yapang Initiative. Goanna Education has been selected to collaborate with AWS to launch and deliver ‘AWS re/Start’ in Australia.
Goanna Education is a part of Goanna Solutions, which is a majority Indigenous-owned technology solutions company that possesses extensive experience in technology services and products, as well as human resources, recruitment. Our services include personal and professional ‘soft skills’ training. The Goanna Education and Solutions’ team have built and maintained strong partnerships within Government, industry, academia and publicly funded research agencies, and works in partnership to tackle complex projects and achieve strategic goals.
What will the learners of the Yapang Initiative be studying?
The learners enrolled in the Yapang Initiative’s ‘AWS re/Start’ course will study a curriculum that teaches AWS Cloud fundamentals, as well as other relevant skills such as Linux, Python, networking, cybersecurity, and relational databases.
Goanna Education works with a range of major technology firms and will offer future Yapang Initiative programs that address technologies other than the AWS re/Start program. For more information on these as they are announced, please register your interest with us.
Professional mentors and accredited trainers will support the learners. The material that they will cover addresses training that includes a variety of approaches to suit most learning styles, including scenario-based learning, hands-on labs, and coursework.
The AWS re/Start course material offers a blended curriculum addressing a range of areas to ensure learners are not only provided in-depth understanding of the technical aspects of the roles they will take in the future, but also material that address the soft-skills and perspectives they can adopt to thrive in those roles.
A profile of the AWS re/Start course outline is provided below:
All courses are delivered in person over video-conference style e-learning by highly experienced and certified AWS instructors using course materials developed by AWS.
The Program covers subjects from both a theoretical and practical manner including hands-on laboratories that ensure learners can apply their new know-how for a deeper understanding.
Learners will also undertake assessments on the skills they have acquired, and their progress will be recognised along the way, as well as at completion.
The AWS re/Start Program curriculum comprises the following topics:
IT Fundamentals
This category provides a foundational understanding of key IT concepts and practices needed to learn and use cloud technology. It broadly covers:
- Cloud Foundations
- Linux Fundamentals
- Networking Fundamentals
- Security Fundamentals
- Python Fundamentals
- Databases Fundamentals
AWS Fundamentals
This category introduces core AWS Cloud tools and services providing the learner with a working knowledge of the concepts behind cloud computing, AWS Cloud offerings, and the AWS environment. It broadly covers:
- Cloud Concepts: What is Cloud Computing?
- Cloud Concepts: Cloud Economics
- Cloud Concepts: AWS Global Infrastructure
- AWS Core Services: Storage Services
- AWS Core Services: Compute Services
- AWS Core Services: Database Services
- AWS Core Services: Networking, Elastic Load Balancing, Amazon CloudWatch, Auto Scaling
- AWS Cloud Security
- Cloud Architecting
- Cloud Support Services
AWS System Operations
This category introduces the use of AWS technology as a system operations team member. It broadly covers:
- Understanding AWS Systems Ops
- Tooling and Automation
- Computing Servers
- Computing Scaling and Name Resolution
- Computing Containers and Serverless
- Computing Database Services
- Monitoring and Security
- Managing Resource Consumption
All the material delivered in the AWS re/Start program provides learners with skills that align with globally recognised ‘AWS Certifications’ – read more about them here.
How does the Yapang Initiative work with employers?
As stated above, the skills and capabilities that are part of the Yapang Initiative are those that are in demand in the employment marketplace. So, typically a wide range of employers are interested in our programs because they deliver a pipeline of people that are well-positioned to start their career.
The Goanna Education team has access to a network of employers to ensure that learners in the Yapang Initiative have the best prospects of being employed in a relevant position to put their newly acquired skills into practice at the end of each program.
Employers may be invited to meet with the learners during and at the end of each program. Goanna Education and the Yapang Initiative encourage this and will continue to work with the learner and the employer to make sure that the relationship is successful – this includes ongoing liaison, mentoring and career planning support.
Goanna requires that people employed at the conclusion of the program by participating employers that the terms and conditions of their employment are in keeping with the Australian Fair Work regulations.
What support does a learner have in the Yapang Initiative?
Upon enrolment in the Yapang Initiative each learner will be provided with enrolment information and details about their cohort.
In the period leading up the cohort start date the learner will be engaged in the Yapang Initiative Orientation. This process will allow the learner to:
- See who they will be on the program with, both fellow learners and the cohort’s program leaders.
- Contact information
- Be provided with the details of the online tools we are using, along with an opportunity to establish how arrangements for communications for the program are to be handled.
What obligations does a learner have in the Yapang Initiative?
The course is provided to learners at NO COST; their contribution will be in the form of the time and effort they spend committed to their own success in completing the program to the best of their ability.
Learners need to recognise that they are participating in a program designed to achieve something that may not have been possible otherwise. That comes with an expectation that the opportunity is taken to the fullest extent possible.
The practicalities around ensuring attendance and punctuality for the full 12-week period is addressed during the selection process. We recognise that other life responsibilities can make it challenging to ensure that levels of attendance and punctuality are kept up throughout the entire course however, project learners need to overcome these challenges through careful pre-planning and by making appropriate arrangements to deal with circumstances that may arise during the 12 week period, because the intensity of the course does not provide space for catching up on missed course work.
How do I join the course?
Please register your interest and we will be in touch when enrolments are open.