SVA currently supports 11 outstanding venture partners who are helping to improve education outcomes and increase employment participation in disadvantaged communities across Australia.
Meet each of the ventures below and learn more about their work.
 Click on name to view further information Australian Indigenous Mentoring Experience (AIME) Beacon Foundation CareerTrackers Catherine House Fair Business Ganbina North Queensland Green Solutions (NQGS) Play for Life STREAT Teach for Australia The Song Room |
Australian Indigenous Mentoring Experience (AIME)
Jack Manning Bancroft, Founder & CEO
AIME provides a dynamic educational Program that gives Indigenous high school students the skills, opportunities, belief and confidence to finish school at the same rate as their peers. AIME has proven to dramatically improve the chances of Indigenous kids finishing school. AIME also connects students with post Year 12 opportunities, including further education and employment.
AIME believes that Indigenous = success and expect all kids in their Program to succeed.
Beacon Foundation
Scott Harris, CEO
The Beacon Foundation (Beacon) aims to influence the attitudes and culture of Australians so that each young person can develop an independent desire to achieve personal success for themselves and their community. The Beacon model has a well defined, measurable ‘whole of community’ intervention program which addresses employment pathways and school-to-work transitions for young people.
Beacon works directly with students in the school environment to either stay in school or to help the students develop the skills and confidence needed to choose a positive pathway to employment, further education or training of their choice.
CareerTrackers
Michael Combs, CEO
CareerTrackers Indigenous Internship Program is a national non-profit social enterprise that creates private sector internship opportunities for Indigenous university students.
CareerTrackers recruits Indigenous university students and creates multi-year internships for them within the private sector, providing coaching, mentoring and support along the way, with the goal of converting into full-time employment upon graduation.
CareerTrackers’ program also provides employers with a unique and innovative avenue to match the need for corporate diversity with a structured, proven and results based program.
Catherine House
Madge MacGuire, CEO
Catherine House is an Adelaide-based organisation providing supported accommodation and a range of innovative programs and services, to around 1,000 single adult women experiencing homelessness each year. A primary strategy in their drive to solve women’s homelessness has been their successful Education and Employment Program.
Catherine House recently established the new social business WorkNext Job Placement Service. WorkNext is a fee-for-service job placement service aimed at securing long-lasting sustainable meaningful jobs for women who have experienced social and economic disadvantage whilst also providing highly motivated, well-trained and reliable staff for employers who take a corporate social responsibility approach to business.
Fair Business
Alex Shead, Founder and CEO
Fair Business exists to provide jobs with real pay for the long-term unemployed or those experiencing significant barriers to employment.
Fair Business addresses long-term unemployment with a unique business model. It buys and grows existing businesses and proactively recruits the long-term unemployed into positions within these businesses, ensuring they receive wraparound support to help them successfully rejoin the workplace. Fair Business also actively manages these businesses to ensure their work environments are integrated and supportive.
Ganbina
Adrian Appo OAM, Executive Officer
Ganbina aims to improve the economic and social well-being of Indigenous people in the Goulburn Valley (and across Australia via Partnership with Indigenous communities) through programs and partnerships focused on developing individuals to reach their full potential.
Through a suite of programs, Ganbina works with young Indigenous people on work readiness, vocational development, careers education and the provision of scholarships. Ganbina has a proven track record of linking education, work experience and employment as a pathway for economic opportunity and personal significance for Indigenous Australians.
North Queensland Green Solutions (NQGS)
Gene Geedrick, CEO
North Queensland Green Solutions (NQGS) is a new community recycling venture, operating near the Herveys Range landfill on the outskirts of Townsville. NQGS serves as an innovative solution to the pressing issue of landfill while at the same time addressing rising unemployment especially for the disadvantaged members of the community. Providing a program to ‘reduce, reuse and recycle’, NQGS diverts domestic waste before entering the landfill and sells reusable items to the public, while at the same time creating jobs and providing training in tip recycling and in the tip shop for those who experience barriers to employment. Jobseekers include Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, people with disability, those with mental health issues, the long-term unemployed and vulnerable young people.
Employees are trained in a variety of skills including customer service at the tip shop, repairs and maintenance of equipment that has been salvaged and sorting of equipment and metals for recycling, providing ongoing employment or pathways to alternative employment.
NQGS was established as a subsidiary of North Queensland Competitive Employment Service (NQCES) located in Townsville. NQCES was established in 1989 as a competitive employment service to support people with a disability into open employment.
Play for Life
Marylou Verberne, CEO
Play for Life is founded on the critical role of lifelong play for all Australians, with a focus on disadvantaged children and young people and the communities they live in. It promotes the space, time and opportunity for creative play, building happier, healthier lives and communities. Play is central to our continued wellbeing, resilience and adaptation to change and our social cohesiveness as a community. Referred to ‘mental health immunisation’, play now sits alongside diet, sleep and exercise as a recognised key ingredient for wellbeing.
Its flagship program, Creating Positive Playgrounds in Primary Schools, utilises modified shipping containers filled with recycled scrap (‘the Play for Life Pod’) to support children’s wellbeing at school as well as assisting in achieving school engagement and improved learning outcomes.
STREAT
Rebecca Scott, CEO
STREAT is a social enterprise providing a supported pathway to employment for homeless and disadvantaged youth. Its innovative model uses food and coffee carts to take youths off the street, providing them with traineeships that help them develop work and life skills.
STREAT provides a tailored, supported pathway from the street to a sustainable livelihood, for youths aged 16-25. Trainees selected for the six month program receive paid work experience and training to achieve certificate II in hospitality through the William Angliss Institute. Holistic support helps them deal with challenges like drug and alcohol dependency, mental illness and legal issues. Assistance in finding employment beyond the program is also provided.
Teach for Australia
Melodie Potts Rosevear, CEO
Teach For Australia is an ambitious social enterprise working to confront educational disadvantage in Australia. Our vision is of an Australia where all children, regardless of background or circumstance, have excellent educational opportunities.
At the heart of our vision is our belief in teaching as leadership, and in the power of exceptional teachers to transform the lives of their students and shape their educational destiny.
To this end, Teach For Australia is attracting some of our country’s most outstanding young individuals – passionate and determined leaders of change who represent all disciplines and career interests – and empowering them to pursue teaching as part of their career journey.
Over time, Teach For Australia is building a lifelong movement of leaders, both in the classroom and beyond, who are passionate, competent, socially aware, and who will remain connected with the mission of confronting educational disadvantage in Australia.
The Song Room
Caroline Aebersold, CEO
The Song Room is a national non-profit organisation that provides free, tailored, long-term music and arts-based programs for children in disadvantaged and high need communities.
The Song Room’s vision is that all Australian children have the opportunity to participate in music and the arts to enhance their education, personal development and community involvement. Programs are based on research and have been demonstrated to improve educational and social outcomes and to help schools sustain their own music and arts programs.
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