Eight graduates celebrate Yarpa Ready success

Yarpa has celebrated the latest graduates of its innovative tender readiness program, Yarpa Ready, co-designed and delivered in partnership with Western Sydney University as a certified Micro-credential.

Yarpa Ready has been purposefully designed to address the needs of major buyers that were identified at an Industry Round Table in 2024.

On April 23 Eight participants graduated, presenting their progress to an audience that included corporate, industry, and government leaders.

The event highlighted how participants had, over recent months, focused on the skills and knowledge necessary to tender for opportunities with major buyers.

“We wanted to address the challenges that First Nations businesses had when it comes to tendering on major projects, to do that we needed to understand the needs of the buyers,” Shannon Mallison, Director of Yarpa said.

“Over 30 industry leaders provided insights to ensure this program hit the mark.”

Key Points

Following on from the success of the inaugural cohort in 2025 which has seen several of the participants achieve outcomes already, Ms Mallison said Yarpa Ready continued to go from strength to strength with eight participants graduating in front of a room full of corporate, industry and government leaders.

“This demonstrates how they have grown over the last couple of months honing in on the skills and knowledge necessary to tender for opportunities with major buyers. We are proud of their achievements and are excited to be a part of their business journey.”

“We wanted to address the challenges”

— Shannon Mallison

Yarpa Ready has been delivered through three face-to-face workshops at the Yarpa Hub in Liverpool, NSW with participants also receiving one-on-one sessions with a professional business consultant to support implementation of learning into their business operations.

The organisation will soon launch Yarpa Grow, an innovative business accelerator program that will empower and help grow a strong and prosperous First Nations business sector across NSW.

The Yarpa Grow program is designed to meet the needs of growing First Nations businesses by building capability and confidence to successfully connect participating businesses to the growing pipeline of procurement opportunities across NSW.

Yarpa Ready is positioned as a direct response to market requirements, translating buyer expectations into practical skills development. The certified Micro-credential status, delivered in partnership with Western Sydney University, provides a formalised pathway that recognises competencies aligned with large-scale procurement processes.