Employees play a key role in our involvement in the community.
Tier Two: Grants of one and up to two years' duration as seed funding for new or relatively new programs or social enterprises
Aboriginal Employment Strategy
The AES School to Work program provides Aboriginal youth with a greater level of opportunity to stay on at school and to look at life in a different setting. The program combines theory with practical based learning which has been demonstrated to be more effective in engaging Aboriginal youth. The program seeks to develop a skill base for Aboriginal students to understand the world of work and assists with the challenges faced by students making the transition from Year 9 to secondary school.
Jesuit Social Services- Artful Dodgers
The Artful Dodgers Studios form part of the Jesuit Social Services Gateway Program, which aims to help young people develop work-readiness skills and also support them to identify and access pathways to education, training and employment. The primary social problems experienced by the community who access the Artful Dodgers Studios are unemployment, substance abuse and mental illness. The Westpac Foundation funded the artfuldodgers.tv website development project which aims to increase marginalised young peoples' access to IT and to teach them web-site development skills, marketing and promotion skills and basic business skills.
BoysTown
BoysTown Enterprises are a set of small scale social enterprises which have been established for the specific purpose of providing highly disadvantaged young people with employability skills, training and paid work opportunities. The goal is to help young people who might otherwise be excluded from the labour market to make a successful transition to full time employment and economic independence. The Westpac Foundation provided support to set up BoysTown Enteprises in the Blacktown and Campbelltown areas of Sydney.
Company B
Company B is a theatre company that provides theatre production workshops and professional development training to teachers across NSW to support access to drama education for rural and remote secondary students. The Westpac Foundation provided support for Company B to take practical theatre workshops to a variety of schools in regional NSW.
Future Employment Opportunties (Tradestart)
TradeStart, in Eaglehawk, Victoria is giving young people who've become disengaged with or left school the opportunity to build skills in a range of trades. A grant from the Westpac Foundation is helping TradeStart become a more sustainable program.
Glendyne Education and Training Centre
Glendyne runs an alternate school program for young people who have been excluded from mainstream schools. The Westpac Foundation provided funding to support the development of a Production Workshop aimed at developing self esteem and work skills, with the goal of those involved being employed within the program as School Based Trainees building trailers and boats on site.
Inspire Foundation
The Inspire Foundation was established in 1996 to prevent youth suicide. It has since broadened its focus to include early intervention, giving young people aged 16-25 the skills and tools to be more confident, connected and comfortable when seeking help. The Westpac Foundation provided support to Inspire, which has helped them implement a national pilot of a new Youth Action Project, encouraging disadvantaged young people to participate and take action in their communities.
Mission Australia (No Limits)
No Limits is a youth led enterprise education program run by Mission Australia. It provides an innovative, alternative education/learning model for young people who are at risk of disengaging or have disengaged from mainstream education. The Westpac Foundation provided seed funding to support the employment of a project officer to develop and run the program, to contribute to infrastructure costs and to create a pot of money to support young people in developing youth led social enterprises.
Odyssey House Victoria
Odyssey House is a major provider of drug and alcohol treatment services. The organisation helps people who have become disconnected from their community because of the misuse of alcohol and other drugs. The Westpac Foundation provided funding to support a two year Financial Counselling project which aims to change the way people recovering from drug problems approach financial issues by providing financial counselling, support and empowerment.
Prison Fellowship Australia
Prison Fellowship Australia works with inmates, ex-inmates and their families as part of an integrated and holistic response to the effects of incarceration. By reaching out to the innocent victims of crime and criminalisation and through building positive relationships to help them to make wiser decisions about life, it is hoped that young people who have a parent in prison will be able to overcome the social pressures that entrap them into a crime cycle. Through programs such as camping, sport and music Prison Fellowship seeks to provide a pathway of intervention and ongoing support for both the young people and the carers of the young people. These form part of Prison Fellowship's strategies to offer support and care for such families.
Reconciliation Australia
Experience through Reconciliation Australia's National Indigenous Money Management Agenda program has shown limited Indigenous cultural awareness among mainstream organisations, including financial institutions, contributes to lack of access to financial services and poor financial literacy among Indigenous People. In an effort to address this, and with the support of the Westpac Foundation, Reconciliation Australia developed an Indigenous Cultural Awareness Training project to provide organisations with easily accessible, cost effective online training materials to enable financial institutions and other organisations to provide introductory Indigenous cultural awareness training to a wide number of staff.