When Ntwaling Aruje Kelly (better known as Kelly Mouse) heard IntoJobs was offering a program in collaboration with Melbourne City Football Club, he signed up on the spot. Having been football-obsessed while growing up in Kenya, the Dandenong local needed little convincing.
“If it involves football, I want to go,” Kelly said.
Kicking Goals is a six-week program, delivered through a partnership between IntoJobs and City in the Community (the community arm of Melbourne City Football Club), which uses sport as a vehicle to develop skills that can translate into employment; including communication, teamwork, leadership, resilience and confidence.
Participants in the program attended weekly sessions with mentors and coaches before putting the skills they had learnt into practice by hosting a football tournament at a five-a-side pitch in Dandenong.
Born in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Kelly spent much of his early life as a refugee before moving to Australia in 2024. While his uncle and sister live in Sydney, Kelly has been establishing a life of his own in Melbourne and looking at where his interests and abilities might lead him next.
“I love the social skills we got to learn. Leadership skills, confidence, teamwork and team building,” Kelly said. “When we started this program, none of us knew we would host a tournament like this. Look at all these people, they’re having so much fun!”
Sunil Menon, Head of Community at Melbourne City Football Club, said football provided a natural way to engage young people and create the relationships needed to build employment-ready skills.
“Sport and football build confidence, teamwork, resilience – all those sorts of things,” he said. “I think in this region we’ve got so many different cultures and backgrounds and people come from all walks of life, but football is such a connecting, uniting force.”
Participants also visited Melbourne City’s City Football Academy at Casey Fields, where they gained a behind-the-scenes look at the club, the roles involved in its operations and potential career pathways. Sunil said opportunities could also emerge for participants to become involved in future Melbourne City programs and match-day activities.
IntoJobs Employment Consultant Abhi Bansal, who led the program, said confidence could be a significant barrier for jobseekers, particularly when speaking to employers or handling interviews.
“I’ve watched them over the course of the program build that ability to interact, collaborate and feel much surer within themselves,” Abhi Bansal said. “While the intended outcome of the program isn’t necessarily finding work straight away, it certainly gives them skills they can implement in the workplace.”
Those skills are already translating into opportunities, with four of the 14 participants moving into work and two having already started new jobs.
The change was also evident to Kelly, who had watched his fellow participants grow in confidence over the six weeks. “If you interviewed some of these guys before the course, they wouldn’t have been able to speak on a mic,” he said. “But now they’ve given it a go and done it much better than they would have six weeks ago.”
For Kelly himself, the future is still deliberately open. He hopes to keep football and community at the centre of whatever comes next.
“I love hanging out with people. I love being in spaces where people are there because they want to be there. I’ll never stop playing soccer. I’ll never stop coaching small kids. Anything that brings the community together will always be my thing,” he said.
