Our History

BUSY Inc. was founded by President Martin Punch who set out to assist homeless youth on the Gold Coast. His initial vision to simply 'help' has expanded into a leading Queensland organisation that employs close to 200 staff in 15 locations.

BUSY At Work was established in 1977 to deliver training and employment programs to homeless youth on the Gold Coast. BUSY stands for Backing Unemployed Southport/Surfers Youth and is a not-for-profit incorporated community association. 

Known originally as BUSY Inc, BUSY's breakthrough initiative was obtaining funding to run a program for young people under the Australian Government’s Community Youth Support Scheme (CYSS).  BUSY was then chosen by the Australian Government to trial Job Club and successfully ran this service for a number of years. BUSY also delivered the SkillShare program for ten years. 

In May 1998, BUSY successfully tendered for the Australian Government's Apprenticeships Support Services and became known as BUSY At Work. Since then, BUSY At Work has provided Apprenticeship Support Services to more than 35,000 businesses across Queensland and is the largest provider of these services in the State.

Wanting to get back to where it all began, BUSY At Work established a Community Services arm and looked at ways to again give back and reinvest in initiatives to help the disadvantaged. These initiatives included becoming a member of the Australian Government's Indigenous Employment Panel in 2009 to provide pre-employment training, mentoring and job placement projects to Indigenous Australians. In addition to this project, in January 2010 BUSY At Work was successful in obtaining funding through the Queensland Government to run the Get Set For Work program to help disengaged young people into work or study. The program continues to be run today from Southport and Ipswich.  

In April 2010 BUSY launched Busy Beat, a social enterprise centre in Ipswich through the Australian Government's social inclusion programs. Busy Beat aims to help socially excluded people re-engage with the labour market through a diverse network of businesses. It encompasses a café, catering services, recording studio and training rooms. 

Over the years BUSY At Work has expanded its role and reach to deliver a broader group of services to a larger section of the community. BUSY At Work now has five key service divisions, these are:

• BUSY At Work Apprenticeships Services
• BUSY At Work Employment Solutions 
• BUSY At Work Managed People Services
• BUSY At Work Indigenous Employment Services
• BUSY At Work Community Services

Today, BUSY At Work has expanded its services well beyond Southport and Surfers Paradise but our commitment to helping Queensland communities remains unchanged.