From creating jobs for refugees to providing career pathways for Indigenous Australians in remote areas, Westpac Foundation has dedicated millions of dollars to supporting those in need.
Since starting as a fund to help families of bank employees suffering financial hardship in 1879, the foundation expanded in 1999 to include help for the wider community.
Its current aim is to create a brighter future for disadvantaged Australians, and among its grants are $1.5 million given to supporting social enterprises across the country this year. In addition, the Foundation provides skilled volunteering and mentoring to help nurture their growth and ensure their sustainability over the long run.
“Our support for social enterprise is at the heart of what we do,” Westpac Foundation executive officer Lisa Waldron says. “We provide funding and non-financial support to help start up and nurture innovative social enterprises that tackle tough social issues, targeting homelessness, and youth at risk, people living with disability, Indigenous Australians and people from refugee backgrounds building a new life in Australia.”
Waldron cites the Women’s Subscription Enterprise (WSE), a spin-off from The Big Issue magazine, itself one of the world’s best-known social enterprise, as a particularly powerful program.
Since its establishment in 2010, the WSE has employed more than 100 women in Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide to pack issues of the fortnightly magazine for subscribers. It plans to open in Perth using $240,000 funded over three years from the Westpac Foundation and Westpac Women’s Markets.
After the initial funding period, the Perth WSE is designed to be self-sustaining, and provide 12 roles for disadvantaged women as well as three jobs for professional staff.
Waldron says social projects like these are helping to meet today’s societal challenges: “Their leaders think outside the square to deliver solutions that change the lives of Australia’s disadvantaged while also delivering viable businesses that are sustainable over the long term.”
For Sydney grandmother Judy, the WSE has been life-changing. The experience has restored the self-esteem that had disappeared after more than a decade living in refuges and temporary housing.
“I wasn’t useless like I thought I was,” she says today. “I walked out a different person. Instead of being depressed and lying around at home I have something to do, something to look forward to.”
Another notable initiative is Australia’s first social enterprise bakery, The Bread & Butter Project, which emerged from Sydney’s successful Bourke Street Bakery.
The project started after an orphanage in Thailand near to the Burmese border reached out to Bourke Street Bakery founder Paul Allam asking for help running their bread oven.
Allam’s experiences there, teaching Burmese women how to bake and importantly how to set up their own small business, were enough to bring home plans for an Australian bakery that would provide training and employment opportunities to communities in need.
Today the Bread & Butter Project focuses on refugees and asylum seekers, providing participants not only with great baking skills, but also education about Australian workplace standards and culture - and, of course, there’s the delicious artisan bread.
Allam says it was “tough going” setting up a wholesale bakery on a tight budget initially, which was where help from Westpac came in.
“Grants from the Westpac Foundation meant that The Bread & Butter Project could set up a great production facility with high quality equipment while providing a positive environment for our trainees,” Allam says.
He is particularly proud of the program’s first three trainees - Ma, Somprasong and Chantelle - who have graduated from the TAFE-accredited, 12-month paid traineeship after foundation help. There are another seven trainees currently working their way through with Westpac’s support.
Looking further north, for young Indigenous Australians living in Queensland’s Cape York, Bama Services provides industry-based employment in areas including building and landscaping.
Working with clients from both the private and public sectors, and specialising in complex jobs in remote regions, Bama Services has a 76% Indigenous-employee base and is 100% Indigenous-owned.
The business currently boasts apprentices and trainees in carpentry, landscape construction, horticulture, parks and gardens, land conservation and business administration. Trainees walk away with a formal trade qualification and are encouraged to continue with Bama - three of the six current supervisors have been promoted within the business.
One of its biggest success stories is young mum Kayla Mallie who left high school early to have her first child. She now has the employment, training and support to reach her full potential. Mallie has recently completed her Certificate III in Business Administration, and works full time within Bama across operations, support and wellbeing.
She is a participant in the Cape York Leaders Program and has also been nominated for ATSI Student of the Year and Trainee of the Year at this year’s regional training awards. She is also preparing to start further training in Community Service Work.