Meet our 2021 Community Customer Grant recipients.
Bower Reuse and Repair Centre
Bower Reuse & Repair Centres is an environmental not-for profit with a strong and ambitious social agenda: To divert items from landfill to be reused, repaired and help individuals who are facing social and financial inequality; those living with disabilities, mental illness or are socially and economically disadvantaged.
Climate for change
Climate for Change supports local climate organisations to empower their community to act on climate change. Climate for Change train communities and their volunteers to hold climate conversations across Australia, converting fear about climate change into hope, action and community. Their grant will fund Big Climate Conversations, a series of events held around Australia and online, train new volunteers and volunteer leaders and establish partnerships to help target focus communities.
Creative Recovery Network
Creative Recovery Network are the team behind Creative Responders, a podcast that explores the unique power of the arts and creativity in disaster management. Each episode features stories and insights from artists, emergency management experts, creative leaders and impacted communities across Australia as they prepare, respond and recover from natural disasters, sharing how the arts can be harnessed to build more connected communities.
End Street Sleeping Collaboration
No-one in our communities should sleep rough. End Street Sleeping Collaboration aims to end street sleeping in NSW by 2030 by collaborating with governments, non-government organisations, philanthropists, business, and the community. With our grant, the End Street Sleeping Collaboration will collect stories of people who are homeless and implement the 'By-Name List' homelessness case management tool.
Environment Victoria
Environment Victoria is creating a platform for the Latrobe Valley to come together, unite their voices and influence decision-makers on a future beyond coal. An independent charity, founded in 1969, Environment Victoria are the leading voice for the environment in Victoria. Environment Victoria will use our grant to put together the Latrobe Valley Summit, a community-led event planned for Autumn 2022.
Ethni
Ethni supports young women from diverse cultural backgrounds to navigate life’s challenges and drive meaningful change in their communities together. That’s why they’re receiving a grant this year, so they can run their Future Female Changemakers program again! This is a leadership program for young women from refugee and asylum seeker backgrounds with the premise that young women have unique skills, strengths and lived experiences that can address the complex challenges facing the world today and be influential changemakers in their schools, workplaces and communities.
For Wild Places
For Wild Places exists to make trail running a meaningful expression of environmental activism, so that together, each of us can help our wild places survive and thrive. Each trail race and campaign will support local non-profits working to protect a wild place through fundraising, increased awareness, media exposure, and support local communities affected by climate change. That’s what our grant is going towards, scaling up each campaign, helping this organisation to raise money and involve more outdoor enthusiasts.
Free to Feed
Free to Feed is a social enterprise providing empowering employment to people seeking asylum and refugees through the delivery of shared food experiences. With the support of this grant, Free to Feed will deliver a series of professional development workshops to support people seeking asylum and refugees to enhance their leadership and communication skills.
Gippsland Climate Change Network
The Gippsland Climate Change Network are a Gippsland-wide organisation focussed on climate change awareness and solutions. With the support of our grant, they’re going to establish the Renewable Energy Fund. Why? Going solar makes sense for the planet and for reducing energy bills but community groups often find it a challenge to find the funding for it. The Renewable Energy Fund will allow groups to install solar panels while reducing their carbon emissions.
Gippsland Disability Advocacy
Gippsland Disability Advocacy’s mission is to advocate, promote and be responsive to the welfare, rights and interests of people with disabilities and to build a more inclusive community. With their grant, they will be partnering with Disability Self-Advocates across Gippsland to deliver engaging community education sessions exploring “Knowing Your Rights”. The projects aim is to increase connection, knowledge, information sharing and partnerships for people with disabilities across the Gippsland Region.
Independent Community Living Australia
House Mates is a capacity building program that will support people with a mental health condition or psychosocial disability to access the information and skills they need secure and maintain a tenancy. With our grant, the program will facilitate skill development sessions focusing on the key information and skills need to access and maintain a tenancy.
Kensington Neighbourhood House
Kensington Neighbourhood House is a place where everyone can participate in community and education programs. With the support of our grant, they’ll be running the Kensington Study Support Program. By recruiting and training support coordinators and volunteer tutors and hosting study support sessions, the program will provide high quality study assistance to students of all ages living in the public housing estate. With the impacts of COVID-19 still being felt, it’s specifically focused on making up lost ground due to school closures in 2020.
Laneway Learning
Laneway Learning exists to give entertaining, affordable and accessible classes in anything and everything. Laneway Learning know that LGBTQIA+ folk have a higher risk of mental illness and social isolation. That’s why they’re launching Laneway Learning & Unicorn: Queer Social with their community customer grant. It’s a space of casual, social interaction via learning, which is a powerful mental wellbeing and self care tool.
Lifeline Central Victoria & Mallee
Lifeline Central Victoria & Mallee has been operating for 26 years helping over 9000 people with mental health challenges through their call centre. With our support, Lifeline Central Victoria & Mallee are going to provide free mental health first aid training to nearly 100 people in remote regions and the small towns of Loddon and Mallee areas. This project will provide participants with the skills and capabilities to help others within the community who are experiencing poor mental health.
Road to Refuge
Road to Refuge are changing the narrative around refugees and people seeking asylum. Through their In My Own Words program, they’re equipping people with lived experience with the skills and opportunities they need to tell their stories and have them heard on their terms.
Scarf Community Organisation
Love to eat? Eat for good with Scarf. Scarf is a not-for-profit social enterprise which runs hospitality training, mentoring and paid work experience programs. That’s why we’ve given them another grant this year. They’re going to run three Scarf Seasonal Programs in restaurants throughout Melbourne. Each program will provide eight new trainee places for young people seeking asylum and from refugee and migrant backgrounds who are experiencing long-term unemployment.
Seabin
Seabin wants to take litter out of the ocean. A Seabin is a rubbish bin installed in the water, acting like a pool skimmer filtering the surface water from marine debris such as plastics and pollutants. With our support, they will set up the Citizen Science program, creating a database through the help of passionate community members who do an audit of Seabin catches, which in turns provides a tool for policy changes and litter prevention strategies.
For Change Co.
For Change Co. are the brains behind the home.plate program. The home.plate program provides paid education, training and employment for young people at risk of or experiencing homelessness. By providing a pathway to employment, For Change Co. are also providing young people with housing, education, community and confidence. You’ll find For Change Co. in 5 hospitality-based social enterprises where they invest 100% of profits into their impact model whilst creating employment and training opportunities across our ventures.
The Footpath Library
The Footpath Library aims to enrich the lives of people experiencing homelessness by providing free excellent quality books and reading glasses via our mobile library services in Sydney, Melbourne and Perth. With our support, The Footpath Library will provide a space for collaborators in the homelessness sector to gather and help people experiencing homelessness with books and glasses, as well as legal aid and counselling, in Sydney. They will operate the Hub monthly in Sydney CBD or Sydney’s inner west.
Forktree Project
The team behind the Forktree Project are passionate about ecology, biodiversity, indigenous heritage and sustainability education. With their Community Customer Grant, they’re going to rewild former pastoral property in the Fleurieu Peninsula in South Australia. This will include 20,000 native trees and shrubs creating valuable habitat for native fauna and sequestering tens of thousands of tonnes of CO2. The project will also establish a rare native seed orchard and seed nursery as well as educational outreach for schools and the wider community.
Her Kitchen Table
Her Kitchen Table (HKT) is a food social enterprise that connects food lovers to authentic and culturally diverse foods from all over the world, made by Canberra’s best home cooks (also known as meal artists!).The initiative is an online food delivery platform where culturally and linguistically diverse women prepare and sell their delicious and diverse home-made style cuisine to paying customers. HKT aims to promote social inclusion, financial independence and community cohesion. HKT is a beautiful blend of sharing foods, values, exchange of love and embracing the talents of multicultural women. On the one hand, this platform empowers culturally and linguistically diverse women to turn their passion into a profession while on the other hand, it focuses on connecting the broader community with the spirit of exchange and love. HKT was developed in The Social Outcomes Lab, in partnership with Canberra based NGOs, academia and private sector.
Zoe Support Australia
Zoe Support, operating in Mildura, exists to support young mothers. With the support of a Community Customer Grant, their project will equip Zoe Support Australia staff members with the skills and training needed to better support young mothers. This includes cultural awareness training and youth mental health first aid training and will also provide a culturally safe environment for clients.
