During vulnerable times, it’s not always easy to seek support. We can feel alienated, isolated, or ashamed, and turn away from those who might be able to help us.
From providing support when people leave prison to empowering at-risk youth through education and music, these social enterprises are finding innovative new ways to offer their services, connect with the community and give people the tools they need to change their lives.
Helping young people connect through their passions
Mark Robertson has plenty of strings to his bow. As well as being the founder of One Vision Productions and MPOWER, he’s a hip-hop artist, filmmaker and secondary school teacher. After growing up living on the streets, Robertson now helps young people find connection and community for lasting change.
Engaging teenagers in mental health support is tricky, he says: “A lot of kids don’t know how to access mental health, and then when they do, they feel alienated by the system because it’s not innovative.”
Robertson created One Vision Productions, a mental health organisation that uses music and film to empower youth. “For over a decade, we’ve been doing workshops, using culture, music, circle environments, making songs and film clips to give youth a platform for their passion,” he says.
From there, he and his team created MPOWER, a digital toolkit designed specifically for the mental health needs of young people. “It’s a massive online platform,” he says.
MPOWER offers about 250 videos, made by everyone from famous artists to Indigenous knowledge keepers to mental health specialists to pioneers in music and dance. “Really, it’s to support the kids’ passions and teach them how to connect.”
There is also an accompanying school curriculum, which Robertson says gives power to teachers in a school system that offers limited mental health education.
Now, with support from Westpac Foundation, MPOWER is creating an app that will take the connections even further. “The kids will be able to rap or sing on it, they’ll be able to challenge their friends,” Robertson says. “It’s geared towards their passions, and the artists and people they look up to, while at the same time offering guidance and connectivity to support their mental health.
“We want to use innovation so kids can connect and talk freely about what’s going on. And we want them to learn these skills as early as possible.”
Helping women find safety and happiness
On the NSW-Victoria border, there’s an organisation that offers comprehensive help for women experiencing domestic violence, sexual assault and mental illness. With general manager Marge Nichol at the helm, the Women’s Centre for Health and Wellbeing Albury-Wodonga helps more than 3,000 women every year – and its support is expanding.
During Covid-19, social distancing forced some of the centre’s services online. For Nichol, this was an opportunity to offer a new type of support to women. “We’ve got Zoom and face-to-face counselling,” she says. “If they can’t make it into our centre, they know there will be someone on video or phone to talk to them. Our service has been able to reach a lot more women, and more regularly.”
The foundation believes supporting innovation in small community organisations is a critical part of tackling disadvantage and unemployment.
With these online services now familiar to many of its clients, the centre plans to expand its offering, incorporating new programs based on feedback it had not previously been able to gather. “In the next year or so, we’re looking at things like, what is mindfulness? What is depression? We’re looking at the needs of these women and improving what we offer so we’re actually meeting more of them down the track.”
As it looks to the future, the centre plans to build more partner relationships and community connections to provide even more of the services most needed at the border.
“It makes a difference to know that you can do it and you can make a difference,” Nichol says. “You can see women start to feel good about themselves, even if just to be a mum or a friend again. We see them be who they want to be, not who they’ve been told to be.”
Creating new futures for people leaving prison
Australia’s prison recidivism rates are growing. According to the most recent figures, almost half of NSW prisoners returned to jail within two years of their release. It’s a figure made even more confronting by the fact that Australia also has one of the highest per prisoner annual costs in the world: a total of more than $4.6bn a year.
Prisoners Aid NSW was established in 1901 with the goal of providing practical help to inmates, ex-inmates and their families. Tim Laporte is chair of both the organisation and its recently created social enterprise, Mates on the Move. The latter provides work experience and training pathways for people who have come out of prison, through commercial waste collection and recycling.
Mates On The Move provides work experience and training.
While Prisoners Aid is one of Australia’s oldest nonprofits, Mates on the Move is proud to innovate. One of its current projects is transforming its IT systems to create an interconnected, centralised and scalable platform to run operations and training programs.
“My vision is to build the IT system we need for our team to become much more productive and allow interactive and responsive learning,” Laporte says. “This will allow our managers to spend less time on admin and focus on what they are good at: social work, caring for and supporting people.
“Our new training program, Mates for Life, is designed to seamlessly engage with people leaving prison so they can develop the life skills they need for when they re-enter society, and ultimately lower the stigma that comes with serving time in prison.”
Westpac Foundation Community Grants make social innovation possible
Each of these organisations has achieved goals with backing from Westpac Foundation Community Grants, and they all say the support goes far beyond financial.
“Westpac has been amazing,” Laporte says. “We had a very successful gala fundraising dinner with the Premier and lots of well-known people, and they hosted it for us.”
Nichol agrees. “The grant has enabled our job readiness program, and through that … women achieve their goals,” she says.
Robertson says the foundation’s support has been vital in the development of MPOWER. “It’s enabled us to get an app and take this to the next level,” he says. “Without that support, the next part of this crucial process just would not be able to happen.”
The foundation believes supporting innovation in small community organisations is a critical part of tackling disadvantage and unemployment.
Ross Miller, chief customer engagement officer at Westpac, says: “Westpac Foundation supports local communities across Australia by partnering with small organisations and social enterprises doing important work that has a big impact.
“Employment can be a powerful pathway out of disadvantage and helps to build stronger, more inclusive communities – so we want to do everything we can to support these organisations.”
