This year we celebrate Refugee Week from Sunday 18 to Saturday 24 June, with the theme Finding Freedom – as every day, millions of people across the world embark on dangerous journeys for the sole purpose of finding safety and freedom.
We also celebrate the wealth of experience and skills they bring to our workplaces. Working on our Keon Parade level crossing removal project, Hesham Al-Sharafi is a Civil Engineer employed through our Engineering Pathways Industry Cadetship (EPIC).
EPIC is an 18-month program for refugee and asylum seeker engineers working on major transport infrastructure projects. The industry-first program aims to bridge the gap faced by new Australians in matching their international qualifications to Australian workforce requirements.
Hesham is from Yemen, a country in the Middle East with a population of around 34 million people.
Hesham couldn’t stay in Yemen due to the civil war, so he travelled to Malaysia to finish his studies in Engineering. Arriving in Sydney 4 years ago, Hesham took various jobs which weren’t in his preferred field of civil engineering, then applied for the EPIC program in Melbourne.
He joined the program in January this year and has since been working on the Keon Parade level crossing removal project in Melbourne’s north.
Living locally, he says he loves the job and the team:
“Working with the team at Keon Parade is a very nice environment. People are very helpful here, it’s an amazing team. I will continue working, learning and getting more experience and just continue the same path as an engineer.”
The future is now looking brighter for Hesham as he hopes to soon reunite his family in Australia.
“My family are still there in Yemen and I’m trying to apply for them to come here too.”
EPIC employees receive on-the-job training, support and mentoring and also complete a postgraduate Graduate Certificate in Infrastructure Engineering Management through Swinburne University.
For more information, visit the EPIC program page. Applications for this year’s program are currently closed but will re-open in 2024.
