What we did was we brought people into the business, invited them to find their strengths, and worked with them to make them a valuable member of our team and contribute to putting together an event.

We could start with a big empty room at the Adelaide Convention Centre and within six or seven hours have set up something really stunning and spectacular for a thousand people at a big award ceremony. What we observed during that time was that just through that simple process of being valued, having their skills recognised, and being part of a team, they were able to re-identify their strengths and for short period of time put aside the troubles and the issues that they were facing in their day-to-day lives. This help them feel better about themselves, build confidence and capabilities.

At that time, I didn’t actually know the term social enterprise. I read about it nearly six months after I’d started this new chapter. Of course, then what happened was the world of social enterprise opened up to me and I found common language that I could use to describe what we were doing and the impact that we were having. Between 2012 and 2018, we worked with 85 people that were facing homelessness and we were able to help them shift themselves, their mindset and the way they felt about themselves in order to set them on a pathway to financial stability through finding a job that suits them and their needs. The original business I changed became a regenerative business rather than an extractive business. We developed an environmental and social policy within the business.

We were able to reduce, reuse, repurpose and resource whatever we could from other social businesses and not-for-profit organisations. We donate back anything that is in excess, including food waste for example. Now, rather than leaving what I felt was nothing behind (because I felt that all I was doing was taking away through the business), we were able to give something back to the community. We were able to give back jobs while supporting our event clients by letting them know that the money they were spending on their events was doing something significant for society.

You have mentioned that the primary people that GOGO Events provide support to are women and people experiencing homelessness. What common misconceptions are there about people experiencing homelessness and the obstacles that they face in their daily lives?

There are so many misconceptions, but I think the most profound is that people facing homelessness are uneducated. That is absolutely not our experience, 63% of the women we worked with in the first few years at GOGO Events had tertiary qualifications. There are other assumptions people make, that homeless people are not resilient, they’re weak or just not capable. These points are also untrue. I find that the people we have worked with are the most resilient.

They are really the survivors of often systems that have excluded them, worked against them, or that they’d been unable to override in their lives often from a very young age.

Or, they’ve fallen victim to circumstances outside of their control and that has led them on a pathway where they have no power. There are also assumptions around drug and alcohol issues. Occasionally they are present, but it is a very small percentage that have drug and alcohol abuse issues. There are very sad social assumptions around people experiencing homelessness being dirty, unclean or disruptive, and those assumptions have come about because what people are faced with in terms of homelessness is often what they see in the streets. I think people need to put their feet into other people’s shoes and think, “if you’re sleeping rough for more than one or two nights, it becomes very hard to stay clean.” It’s very difficult to stay well dressed and presented. I think society has all these assumptions that are totally incorrect around people experiencing homelessness.

Also, we’ve applied to the Federal Government and the Office for Women, and we have secured funding to run that program four more times, which is really incredibly exciting. That will allow us to bring approximately 70 women through the program in the next two years. We’ve developed relationships with universities to help us be sure we are collecting the right data and also other social enterprises to partner with. From the event perspective, we had to look up what it might look like to operate events online, and we’ve been able to move several of our events online. What we were aware of is that once everything went online, we were unable to create job opportunities for the people that we were really in the business to serve. We have been able instead to focus on developing a new income stream for GOGO Events.

Next year we will launch a new work integrated social enterprise in the circular economy where we can create long-term jobs in addition to keeping our events going.

We really needed to find another solution to creating permanent, part-time or full-time positions for people. Those jobs are also for general employment, but also it will be a way of bringing people through the Inclusive Work Program and providing them with a job for the first six to twelve months to get some really robust work experience onto their CV’s. We’ve used our time creatively, and the one other thing we did was we picked up on one other particular social issue that we had been working on as a bit of a side project, which was menstrual poverty. We were able to get some funding, and we ran Australia’s first period summit earlier this year. That was to bring about equality and start conversations around a future where menstruation was accepted by all. A future that allows anyone who menstruates to be able to speak about it and have their rights supported through access to products and also a safe workplace removed of any taboo. We were able to run that earlier this year, so we feel we have used that time quite wisely!

Sarah, as a co-founder of the social enterprise intermediary Collab4Good, how important do you believe robust networks for supporting impact led organisations?

I think that I can speak firsthand here and say having a network of other social enterprises and purpose-driven businesses is the key to being able to do good business yourself.

If you’re operating as a social enterprise alone without an ecosystem, it’s really hard to ensure that your procurement channels and clients are socially and environmentally sound.

You become a bit like a voice in the wilderness, and with what I’ve seen happen in South Australia over the last several years as an emerging social enterprise economy, we’ve still got a lot of work to do. The more opportunity we have to buy goods and services from other social enterprises, not-for-profits or community led organisations like Men’s Sheds, the more we can ensure that the money we spend is doing good.

Therefore, we can ensure our clients who often have a much bigger turnover than we do that their money is being spent in order to ensure protection of the environment and also social good. For me, it’s really about social procurement, but it’s also that we can trust collaboration because in social businesses,

I find when you put collaboration ahead of competition, you start to drive and amplify change.

The B-Corp, Social Traders or SheEO community are all businesses where you’re in some way aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals, or you’re really putting the social or environmental purpose aligned with, but not ahead of profit.

I think there are movements afoot that are really driving change across Australia and globally. I would have to say that the most significant of those movements that I really feel strongly about now is the racial justice and equity movement, particularly in Australia. Globally, the focus and importance of investing and cultivating Indigenous organisations, Indigenous leaders and organisations founded by minorities and people of colour is a game changer.

It’s about supporting regenerative businesses rather than extractive businesses, and funding models that are focusing on reparations to amend where wrongs have been done by paying forwards and backwards to make change for future generations.

That’s probably the most significant movement, but I think others around female and minority funding with organisations like SheEO creating new systems supporting businesses to increase their turnover, growth and support are amazing also. The other things that excite me are the development of the Alliance of Social Enterprise Networks of Australia (ASENA) and state-based organisations, because I think together, we have a much more powerful voice to both state and federal governments and we become more visible. This is really important work; we need to see those successes and collaborate together. Then of course, there is the environment and global warming.

I really allocate book reading to pleasure, because otherwise I’d never stop reading! I would say anything that friends tag me in on LinkedIn generally has significant merit and is totally worth reading. The SheEO podcast is always a source of great inspiration for me as it is about women who are working on the worlds to do list. Also Impact Boom is great, because being able to make the Australian leaders in the social enterprise and innovation sector visible is inspirational.