11 November launch

SENATOR THE HON URSULA STEPHENS
PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY FOR SOCIAL INCLUSION AND THE VOLUNTARY SECTOR

LAUNCH OF UNITED WAY AUSTRALIA COMMUNITY IMPACT STRATEGY AND 25TH ANNIVERSARY OF UNITED WAY SYDNEY

11 NOVEMBER 2009

Acknowledgements
- Dr Peter Shergold, Macquarie Group Foundation, Centre for Social Impact
- Catherine Hunter, Director Corporate Citizenship, KPMG
- Teresa Hall Bartels, Senior Vice President, United Way Worldwide
- Mr Doug Taylor, CEO, United Way Australia

Before I begin, I wish to acknowledge the traditional owners of this land, the Cadigal people, and pay my respects to their Elders, both past and present.

It’s a pleasure to be here again at the United Way Australia conference. Yesterday I had the chance to speak with United Way staff about the transformational changes taking place across the sector. And so it’s lovely to be back here again to celebrate 25 years of commitment by United Way Sydney to supporting grassroots activity in its community.

But today also marks another important occasion – Remembrance Day. A day to acknowledge the men and women who died during the First World War and all wars.

So today we reflect a little on our past, which serves to remind us that the freedom we enjoy today came at a cost. And to remember how all Australians pulled together to support each other during those times of adversity.

We have seen some of this generosity of spirit just this year in the overwhelming outpouring of public support for fellow Australians caught up in the tragedy of floods and fires.

The image of a flood affected Queenslander mailing off their disaster recovery payment cheque to the Australian Bushfire Fund is a poignant picture of our innate desire to help out others who are doing it tougher than us.

And this deeply human need to help, is at the heart of the government’s social inclusion agenda.

This agenda is about making a real difference in the lives of people who are struggling to get by and who feel little hope for the future.

It’s about creating a community where everyone has the right and the opportunity to seek to fulfil their potential – whether that be through learning, working in paid employment or participation in the life of the community, and most importantly of all, having their voice heard.

These seem like such basic needs that it should be easy enough to ensure are met. And yet, despite so much effort over so many years, we still don’t seem to have broken the back of deep disadvantage. The work of Professor Tony Vinson in revealing that just 1.7 per cent of postcodes and communities across Australia account for more than seven times their share of intergenerational poverty, made that strikingly clear.

So all of us working in this space have to face up to the reality that many of the approaches we’ve tried in the past simply haven’t worked. Despite the good intentions, the dollars spent and the effort invested, people remain excluded from community life.

This is humbling stuff, and so I take my hat off to United Way for its decision to invest in research and reflective thinking to reassess the approaches of the past, and to come up with better ways to achieve a real community impact.

I understand that the late Mark Lyons assisted in preparing The Common Cause report which led to the development of your Community Impact Strategy. So I would like to acknowledge this contribution and the many other contributions he made to the sector. Mark’s gift of knowledge to the sector was so important because it has helped the sector to understand itself. I know that all of us who work in this space will be deeply saddened by this loss.

Mark also contributed significantly to the government’s thinking around how we engage with the sector and work together towards our vision of a more inclusive Australia.

We have also sought the advice and counsel of other Australian experts in social policy and praxis. Soon after coming to government, the Prime Minister appointed the Australian Social Inclusion Board to help guide the government’s new approach to tackling entrenched disadvantage.

The board developed a new approach to social policy-making that focused on the need to build partnerships across and between governments, and with the communities and organisations on the ground. It advocated the need for evidence-based policy – finding out what programs and services work well and understanding why, so you can share good ideas. And there was also a strong focus on using locational approaches and developing tailored services so that each person’s individual needs could be met.

A lot of this will seem oddly familiar if you’ve read United Way’s Community Impact Strategy!

The interesting thing is that individually, we have arrived at a similar destination. Which of course is comforting given the old adage “great minds think alike.”

We have both come to the conclusion that innovative approaches, based on evidence and carried out in partnership, are the best way to make a positive community impact.

So what might this look like?

Last month I had the pleasure of being part of a vibrant, buzzy world forum on social enterprise in Melbourne, where I chaired a session about demonstrating the value of social enterprise. Session panellists explored ways of expanding the traditional reporting framework to take into account the environmental and social impact of an organisation.

What struck me as I listened to their presentations was the multiple benefits of being able to gather triple-bottom-line evidence. Not only does building such an evidence-base improve the organisation’s chances of securing investment but it also enables practitioners themselves to determine whether the social enterprise is succeeding in its mission. And it enables channelling of increased resources into programs that work.

The Social Enterprise World Forum also provided some good case studies of innovative approaches made possible through cross-sector partnerships.

The UK’s “Spark Challenge” is one of my favourite examples of a perhaps slightly audacious approach to using private-public-community partnerships to build social enterprise.

Spark’s ultimate mission is to enable others to develop viable businesses that will create a sustainable route out of homelessness. And it is a formal partner with the UK government’s homelessness strategy, ‘No One Left Out’, which aims to bring an end to rough sleeping by 2012.

Spark works by facilitating support to a wide variety of organisations – such as charities, housing associations and small business – and individuals, who may be homeless or at risk of homelessness, to develop viable businesses that will create a sustainable route out of homelessness.

The support comes in two forms – a financial grant and business mentoring from a corporate team allocated to help them grow the business. Together, the social enterprise and corporate team take a combined commercial and social approach to maximise the impact of the financial grant received.

This is an example of clever collaboration across the public, private and third sectors, building on the strengths of each to make a true community impact.

The social enterprise movement is clearly very much at the forefront of innovation. And so the Australian Government is keenly interested in further exploring its potential for providing opportunities for participation to people who would otherwise find it difficult to engage with the working world.

Already we have supported 75 social enterprises under the first round of the $650 Jobs Fund and $41 million Innovation Fund. The second round of the Jobs Fund opened just last week with an even greater focus on funding social enterprises, and we are currently exploring ways that the government can provide further support to these enterprises.

Yet, whilst we focus on strategic approaches and innovative solutions, it is very important that we never lose sight of the people at the centre of our efforts.

Generating a positive community impact requires a “yes we can” kind of attitude – that is, a refusal to accept that entrenched disadvantage is just a part of life. But, some people at various stages in their lives can struggle to even say “yes, I can” – they can feel as if they have nothing to offer, no contribution to make.

Social inclusion – or community impact, if you prefer – is about challenging this belief: helping people identify their own skills and interests, creating opportunities and building within them the capacity to make the most of them.

So as we collaborate, innovate and work from a sound evidence base, we must never forget the human dimension, the person who is at the centre of it all.

Only then will we be able to make a community impact that ends exclusion and creates the kind of inclusive fairer Australia we all want to live in.

In its Community Impact Strategy, United Way is mapping out the way it intends to contribute to this vision. I congratulate United Way on this important piece of strategic work and it’s with great pleasure that I launch The Common Good: United Way Australia’s Community Impact Statement.