December 16 2021

Community Wellbeing grants December 2021

By The Ian Potter Foundation

Students doing ultrasound on dog
Tomorrow Today faciliates annual Careers Days to provide local students with the opportunity to learn about study options, careers and career pathways. For these young people, experiencing work at a veterinary surgery up close was one of the highlights of the 2021 Careers Day. Image courtesy of Tomorrow Today.

In Round 3, 2021, three Community Wellbeing grants totalling $530,000 were awarded.

Feraliser Ltd
Feraliser
$300,000 over 3 years

Feraliser Ltd is a new innovative social enterprise within the White Box Enterprises portfolio established to meet the challenge of feral animal control within Indigenous lands and at the same time create employment in remote and regional Australia.

The business produces a new, eco-friendly biostimulant (Feraliser) for agricultural and garden markets by harvesting feral pigs. The animals are harvested by licensee Indigenous groups on their traditional lands.

Feraliser Ltd will work with Traditional Owners (Kalan Enterprises in Coen, QLD) to establish a processing facility on Indigenous lands and concurrently build a national marketing/distribution hub in Cairns, QLD.

The Feraliser product also addresses the environmental impact of feral animals in North Queensland and provides a solution to reduce fertilizer run-off from farms to the Great Barrier Reef. Feraliser is a bio- stimulate which reduces the amount of fertilizer needed by about 30%.

As a model, Feraliser has the potential to be adopted by other remote communities around Australia. This employment model which engages local people – likely on a seasonal casual basis – managed by local organisations is a viable model for remote Australia and can be attached to other successful programs already in place, such as the government-funded Indigenous Rangers land management program. Feraliser is set to be the same: protecting country while drawing a tangible economic return and opening employment pathways.

Tomorrow Today Education Foundation Ltd
Future Work – Improving Employment and Life Outcomes for Benalla's young people
$200,000 over 2 years

This grant extends the Foundation’s long-term support for the Education Benalla Program (EBP) for an additional two years.

The Education Benalla Program is a place-based initiative that works across three key learning environments: the family, school and community. The program consists of multiple, coordinated, and complementary projects and activities supported by highly productive partnerships across the Benalla community. The long-term aim of EBP is that the Year 12 completion rates for Benalla's children will equal or exceed the State average.

Over the past ten years, Education Benalla has measurably improved healthy child development, raised the community's aspirations for its young people, and significantly increased transition to work or study post-school. In addition, the outcomes of the most recent grant provided by The Ian Potter Foundation for the Future Work program (pathways onto employment) have been excellent in the last three years. However, the good progress made to date is not yet sufficiently embedded in the Benalla community to withstand the impact of the pandemic.

To ensure improvements made to date do not slip away, Tomorrow Today is planning a major re-focus on youth wellbeing and school engagement/re-engagement with two new programs: 'Full Impact' (community-wide) and 'AVID' (in-school with community support). These new initiatives will be embedded in and build on the successes of the Future Work program over the last three years to achieve measurable and sustained population impact.

White Box Enterprises Ltd
Social Enterprise World Forum 2022
$30,000

White Box Enterprises will be hosting the Social Enterprise World Forum (SEWF) 2022 (Brisbane, 26–30 September 2022). This is only the second time in its history that the Forum will be held in Australia. This grant supports White Box Enterprises to plan and deliver the Forum.

The Forum will bring a high-level international event (and delegates) to Australia and connect the Australian social enterprise community with best international practice by developing linkages at all levels. It will be a hybrid event with an in-person event and an online presence for those unable to travel to Australia. This will allow for a larger audience, with over 10,000 people attending online from all over the world.