At Hireup, we’re in the business of doing good. That’s why we’ve launched Hireup Impact Grants. To further its impact, we’re excited to announce Hireup has partnered with The Achieve Foundation, who have generously matched our grant pool. To tell you more about the partnership, we spoke with Kirsty, The Achieve Foundation’s Executive Director.
Kirsty, can you tell us about The Achieve Foundation?
The Achieve Foundation is a new organisation that aims to increase the social inclusion of people with disability. We want to do three things:
- Increase the resources that are available for people with disability through philanthropy and social impact investing.
- Change Australia's attitude towards disability and people with disability, because those attitudes really affect people with disability and their opportunities for inclusion.
- Build a fit-for-purpose housing system because at the moment, our housing system is really fractured and doesn't meet the needs of people with disability.
Why has The Achieve Foundation decided to partner with Hireup for our inaugural Impact Grants program?
There are two reasons we wanted to partner with Hireup. We like the fact that Hireup is thinking differently about disability and disability services, in ways that meet the needs of people with disability. So that's the first reason. The second reason is that we have a program of work at The Achieve Foundation called Community Connections. So when we saw that the Grant’s theme is Community Connection, it struck our interest. It was really clear that Hireup was interested in deepening social inclusion, and was aware that sometimes the resources needed to make a real difference to both organisations and individuals are quite small. So, that’s why we’re coming to the table, to provide extra resources to make things possible that are often out of reach. That's an amazing opportunity.
Great that you mention ‘Community Connection’ because a quote on your website feels like the perfect description for our Grant theme. It says: ‘A person with disability should enjoy the right to move through a world that welcomes them.’ Why is community important to The Achieve Foundation?
When I was hired to start The Achieve Foundation, I was told, "We are focused on social inclusion." So I said, "What does social inclusion mean?" And there was no clear definition. We're not the only ones who don't have a definition, neither did the Royal Commission for example. But everybody has a sense of what social inclusion means. After having conversations with staff and clients through our partner organisation, Achieve Australia, we came to the conclusion that for us, social inclusion is a sense of belonging. It's really interesting because that sounds like a high-falutin concept. But if you ask anyone what belonging feels like, everybody has a visceral sense of what it feels like. Equally, we all have a visceral sense of what it feels like not to belong. We know that not belonging really does suck. It feels cold and alien. All of us want to belong at some level. So that is the reason we’re interested in the idea of community connections and why it resonated so well with us.
Why is grant making important and what kind of impact do you hope Hireup’s Impact Grants will have on the lives of people with disability?
Grant making is important because there aren't enough resources available for people with disability to live the lives they want. Yes, we have the NDIS, but we know that it doesn't support everyone with disability and that there's also a range of things it doesn't do. So we need investors and philanthropists to provide those resources that can make small but sometimes also life changing impacts. We’re really open on what that impact should look like. It could look like a technical resource that a person with disability needs to participate in society, or somebody fulfilling a dream they’ve always had. Or it could be a resource for an organisation to get to the next stage. All of those would be great. Ultimately we do want to create an impact that makes people feel like something is possible that felt out of reach beforehand.
Find out more about the Hireup Impact Grants program on our website.
