GRANTS: FAIR
Social enterprises JIGSAW GROUP (AUS) LIMITED Creating 1000 traineeships and 600 award-wage jobs to prepare people with disability for mainstream employment
Community Wellbeing
$300,000 over 3 years
Funding Objectives – To create employment pathways for people with disabilities or other vulnerable individuals – To assist individuals and families at risk of or experiencing homelessness and all that goes with it. The Community Wellbeing program area seeks to identify and support those organisations which have well thought out projects that aim to help vulnerable members of the community to overcome the challenging circumstances in which they find themselves. The Foundation’s support extends both to organisations that have demonstrated success and to those seeking to make well-considered innovations. The Foundation favours programs that are preventative in nature and seek to address the root causes of disadvantage. Grants awarded in fiscal 2021 within Community Wellbeing encompass support for established social enterprises looking to consolidate and expand innovative programs fostering growth of social procurement, and philanthropic sector initiatives to collaboratively fund employment programs for vulnerable Australians.
Zac Dallinger, a paid trainee in Brisbane.
Jigsaw is a social enterprise that gives people with disability the opportunity to develop work skills in a real business, join the workforce for the first time, and use those experiences as a springboard into mainstream roles. Central to the Jigsaw model is a fast-growing document management business, providing high-quality business-tobusiness services to over 100 corporate and government clients. This grant contributes to the cost of launching four new sites (Adelaide, Canberra, Melbourne and Perth) and development of the Jigsaw Connect program which is set to become a ‘model’ for the employment of people with disabilities across Australia. CURTIN UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY FACULTY OF HEALTH SCIENCES Virtual platforms for enabling neurodiverse individuals and developing the digital literacy in aboriginal teenagers $154,000 over 3 years This is the Foundation’s second grant to support Curtin University and its collaborators (Autism West, Therapy Focus and AASQA) to develop a pathway to employment for neurodiverse individuals. This project builds on the collaboration’s innovative programs that leverage the unique skills and abilities of neurodiverse individuals to develop highly sought-after skills in the software testing/Information Technology Communication sector. This project aims to move these programs to an online learning platform, grow the ExteND Testing social enterprise into the largest employer of neurodiverse individuals in Australia, and deliver an open-source business model enabling employers to harness the unique skills of neurodiverse individuals. The new online platform will also be used to develop and deliver a digital literacy program for Aboriginal teenagers in partnership with the Wirrpanda Foundation.
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The Ian Potter Foundation Annual Grants Report 2020–21
