People Inspired By Purpose - Purposely Podcast

Episode #48 with Fairshot Café founder Bianca Tavella In her mid twenties Bianca Tavella has overcome significant barriers including funding, COVID-19 and her age to ensure her dream of a social enterprise café becomes a reality and she is almost there having raised thousands of pounds to help launch her enterprise. Fair Shot Cafe is a unique start-up social enterprise cafe that will bring training and future employment to disabled young adults in West London UK in the setting of a high-end stylish coffee shop. Fair Shot cafes offer Traineeships to help young people transition to Apprenticeships and finally to permanent paid employment. The Fair Shot cafe focuses on 16-24 year olds who have mild to moderate learning disabilities. This group are very capable, needing only a little support and are the most likely to find sustainable employment. 50% of the Fair Shot Cafe workforce have disabilities. ‘I would like for people to see our unique employability model and know that they can replicate it elsewhere to help other people with learning disabilities. They get involved in  food prep, there’s working on the till, customer service and food hygiene… all of these skills quite naturally for them.’ https://www.fairshot.co.uk/

Proud Irishman and Radio Host Takes TEDx Talks To The Bottom of the World Leon Hartnett, founder Greenlight Innovations Proud Irishman Leon Hartnett is the founder of the charity Greenlight Innovations, a volunteer led charity focused on bringing people together and encouraging a sense of belonging and community. Leon is also a radio host and an event organiser responsible for starting a St Patrick’s day festival and popular comic book event for local children. You will also hear how he has taken TEDx Talks to one of the very southern parts of the globe, Invercargill, a city he calls home having moved there from Dublin a decade ago with his wife and young family. So what is the purpose of Greenlight Innovations? ‘In simple terms it's focused on connecting people and bringing smiles to people's face - create happiness, share ideas and strengthen the community. Sometimes it's a fairly simple things, isn't it? You know like enjoying a nice day or having an ice cream or jumping in a bouncy castle. Yeah, just the simple things of gathering people together. We are volunteer led and we organise events all focused on community building’ You are responsible for taking TEDx to your home town in Invercargill? ‘Yes that’s right. TEDx actually stands for technology, education design and as a global charity that uses the tagline of ideas worth sharing. I've watched TED talks for many years and I thought it would be really good for the community once again it's  all about connecting people. It's also about sharing ideas, and it's getting people together to contemplate ideas. So I thought it would be really good to get this down here, you know, in a place like Invercargill’ ‘Incredibly our talks have reached 40,000 people worldwide.’ I understand that it was a medical emergency that actually brought you closer to the local community? ‘Yes when my son Finn was three years of age he developed pneumonia and he got to a viral infection at the same time and experienced massive weight loss. He ended up in intensive care. We were really concerned at the time, but one thing I remember is the reaction of local people and we were amazed that people at my work and in the community were just reaching out to check that we were okay’

‘Philanthropy is love for humankind, it’s not just about money’ Chris Belmont joined Purposely Podcast to share his founder story with Youth Philanthropy New Zealand. Originally from the US, he grew up in Queenstown, where he developed a passion for philanthropy. With some friends, and support from the Wakatipu Community Foundation, they established Youth Philanthropy NZ as well as Generation Give a programme focused on providing young people an education in positive philanthropy. Originally modelled after successful Youth Philanthropy programmes in North America and Europe, Generation Give has evolved to serve a uniquely Kiwi audience since 2019. The programme appoints high school students to a simulated non-profit board, and over the course of 20 weeks, they are guided through essential skills required in the philanthropic process. At the end of the programme, Generation Give students will apply these learned skills in the process of giving at least $10,000 away to worthy causes of their choice in their community How did Youth Philanthropy and Generation Give get started? ‘It all begin with this one after school program at high school where we brought 20 students together to cover 20 topics over 20 weeks. They were guided through essential skills required in the philanthropic process. They became qualified to make philanthropic decisions on behalf of the community around them. We actually ended up raising $10,000 and we said give it away to wherever you want’ How much have you raised and donated? ‘We've facilitated giving over $40,000 in the last in the last two years of the program, but what I always like to say is that's actually only 5% of our impact, or even less! The majority of our impact comes from the students we educate….these young people become philanthropists and they have a positive impact on their communities. Positive impact that they're going to have for the rest of their lives and  what we've done essentially is jump started their philanthropic careers, that's our goal from this programme’ Tell us about your past and what motivated you to get involved in Philanthropy? ‘I'm from the States originally and some would say that modern philanthropy comes from comes from the United States. Obviously, New Zealand has a fantastic spin on a lot of stuff that the US does, but there's still some lessons to be learned from from how the US operates. Anyway, wherever we moved my mum always started a Community Foundation and for that reason alone I was always involved with charities and from a very young age.’ www.ypnz.org

Sam Stubbs is the founder of non profit KiwiSaver fund Simplicity. A reformed investment banker and stockbroker his career also spans politics, philosophy and technology. His mission is to make the finance industry a force for good as a source of profit which he thinks can be achieved by companies embracing long term thinking, sustainability and full diversity. Sam Stubbs joined Purposely Podcast to share his founder story: What is Simplicity and what is its mission and vision? ‘We're a nonprofit fund manager. If you're overseas you might have heard of Vanguard… the vanguard of New Zealand… wouldn't be too far wrong. Our main aim is to give people dignity in retirement and how we do that is we give them choices. People who have choices in life have dignity. We run as a nonprofit fund manager, which charges the lowest fees and making people richer. Simplicity is a charity, a social enterprise, a nonprofit, a whole lot of things! We give 15% of the fees we do earn to charity. We've been running for almost five years now and we manage about $3 billion on behalf of over 60,000 members, in total we're giving away about $100,000 a month to charity, and making extremely good returns.’ The Kiwisaver scheme was the New Zealand waking up to the fact that its people owed more in debt than they had saved? ‘So it's about 14 years old now and when it started out and they didn't think it was going to be that popular. However it turned out to be wildly popular because the government gave everyone who joined $1,000 straight into their account. The vast majority of the population have now signed up to kiwisaver (voluntary pension scheme). In the first 14 years it's accumulated almost $80 billion, which for New Zealand is a lot of money. It will carry on growing and growing.’ Simplicity appears to run incredibly leanly, tell us about your set-up? ‘Yeah that’s correct, we have what we call a starvation mentality. So we never get used to having very much money because as soon as we are in danger of making money we lower our fees and we keep it really tight. Now that doesn't mean that we go stupid with it but it does mean that we have a really heavy emphasis on technology. So we spend a lot of money on that so we can automate as much as we can. We have 63 volunteers as well, people like lawyers, PR accountants, whole bunch of people who help us out because we're disrupting the financial services industry here. And also, you know, we're giving so much to charity, and we've given away over $2 million in their first five years’

Edward Suttleworth joined Purposely Podcast to share his founder story  With his wife Kate, Ed founded SeeBeyondBorders in 2009. He is committed to providing Cambodian children with access to quality education SeeBeyondBorders’ mission is to help children in Cambodia get to school while improving the teaching and learning that happens there. Their vision is for children in Cambodia to have choices for their future because of a better education and they achieve this by motivating a support base to contribute time, skills and financial resources to initiatives run in collaboration with local communities and with other sponsors. They invite people to see the situation for themselves, participate directly in our programs, and determine how they can continue supporting the people they have visited. Their programs are informed by Millennium Development Goal No 2 and the Royal Cambodian Government's 'Child Friendly Schools' initiative, focusing on accessibility and quality of education. 'Accessibility' considers family needs and school infrastructure, while 'Quality' relates to the continuing professional development of teachers - teacher training and teaching resources. https://www.seebeyondborders.org/

Guillaume Dehan joins Purposely Podcast to share his founder story with fintech for good company, 'Fund A Future'. Guillaume is a French man who lives in New Zealand, from an early age he wanted to explore the world and was not afraid to try new things and exciting places.  This led to a time working in China as well the UK where he worked for almost a decade in asset management. In 2017 he emigrated to New Zealand to be with his children, in this episode he talks about the importance of his culture, ensuring that his children understand their French heritage as well as speaking the language. ‘I refer to my children as friwi’s, they are mixture of French and Kiwi and I make sure we speak French in the home’. In New Zealand he bridged a gap between his asset management career and social entrepreneurship. Guillaume founded 'Fund a Future' in 2019 to help boost generosity globally, he stumbled across the idea while completing an M.A. in Tech (with Tech Futures Lab). ‘Our aim is to increase generosity worldwide. That is the inspiration… we all have in our minds. How far can we go to support organisations and create this long lasting, positive impact’ Utilising tech, 'Fund a Future' is keeping track of individual donations, claiming back any eligable tax rebates. They either provide personal refunds or funnel back the rebate to the individual's chosen charity. Their aim to make this as simple as possible. ‘We could see millions of dollars going unclaimed (from IRD) and in New Zealand we can claim back rebates for the past four years. So quickly we realised the size of the opportunity in front of us… up to a billion dollars of donation tax rebates that have never been claimed.’ ‘So we want to make it as efficient as possible to give an option for these donation tax rebates to go back to the charities in the first place.’ www.fundafuture.co.nz 

Heidi Fisher joined Purposely Podcast to share her founder story with Make An Impact CIC Heidi is a multi-award winning specialist in social enterprise and social impact, she is also a successful podcaster. She received an MBE for Services to Innovation in Social Enterprise and Impact Measurement in the 2020 New Year Honours. Heidi has worked with over 2,100 social enterprises from start-ups to those with over £1 billion of income supporting them to become more sustainable, helping to develop their trading income and to better measure, manage and report their impact. Her vision is a world where all businesses are social enterprises that positively impact people and the planet. Heidi is passionate about leaving a positive legacy for her children and society. What would you change about sector you work in? ‘There's so much confusing language around social enterprise and impact measurement designed to make it sound complicated. However in reality it needs to be brought down to a level where we speak in plain English and we enable people to cut through the complexity and focus on doing things.’ You are highly regarded for your impact measurement work, what is your approach? ‘The common myth is that you need to capture data from everybody and everything. Instead, your data needs to be of a much higher quality and it is best to keep it really simple and focus on just measuring two things and measuring them really well.’ Is there one cause or social enterprise that you are most proud of? ‘I could share hundreds. But I really do I love working with a group of creative women entrepreneurs. I just love them because they are so creative. I know it sounds obvious but they are creating bespoke handbags and hair accessories, clothing, textiles and all these kinds of things. And, and it just boggles my mind how clever and they are in terms of the product ideas that they come up with’ ‘Another one is Social Arcs, they're a charity in London and they work with young people to start up social enterprises. The young people use their lived experience to create their social enterprise. There is also a real value put around that lived experience and they become leaders in their own community.’ Where do you see organisations going wrong on impact measurement? ‘Where I always see organizations going wrong… I use this analogy of a brick wall. If you imagine your charity or social enterprises is a brick wall i.e. business planning, your finances, your marketing, your operational activities, everything sits within that brick wall. What everyone tries to do is build another three layers on the top… that is impact measurement. They make it an additional time consuming process. Instead it needs to go into the existing bricks and be part of everything that already sits there. And if you can integrate it into what you already do, it becomes something that happens much more easily and automatically.’ You are also a successful podcaster, what motivated you to start? ‘It was very much about increasing visibility and raising the profile of Making An Impact. So having a podcast with the most amazing and incredible guests just made a lot of sense. I also like talking as you can probably tell and it just made sense. It has introduced me to so many people that perhaps I would never have had the opportunity to speak to.’ What is your vision for the future? ‘It changes every day but the vision is very much about global growth and doing a huge amount in terms of ever a global network of partners. In terms of not just spreading the social enterprise message, but actually supporting people to have the best and strongest types of social enterprises or charities that they possibly can.’

Guy Ryan, founder and CEO of New Zealand charity Inspiring Stories joined Purposely Podcast to share his founder story Guy talked about the challenges faced by the young people they set out to help: ‘We help young people who have lived with or have overcome significant adversity. They face challenges in their communities including drugs, gangs and violence, sometimes multi- generational welfare dependency. There is also the impacts of colonization and unemployment.’ We also talked about the aims of Inspiring Stories: ‘We set up inspiring stories with a big bold vision to see every young New Zealander unleash their potential to change the world.’ As a young person, I started learning about some of the big social and environmental issues in our world. I found that really confronting. The huge inequality that exists in our world, the challenges around climate change. At the same time, I could see all this incredible creativity, passion potential of young people around me, and I just thought, you know, imagine, if every young New Zealander could unleash their potential to change the world, what would it take to make that happen? ‘To be able to feel like change is possible, more than ever…and having relatable examples of role models and people who are demonstrating incredible leadership and actually driving real change in lots of different circles and then pathways to support them’ Guy Ryan grew up in Granity – a tiny town on the West Coast of New Zealand’s South Island. After finishing High School his passion for adventure and surfing took him to Otago University, where he completed a double degree in Commerce and Design, and then a Masters in Science Communication. It was at University he discovered his passion for entrepreneurship – from trying to build tech company, to creating an adventure festival, to co-founding a film production company and winning international awards for filmmaking. In 2010 he co-directed and produced a film called Carving the Future, a 25-minute documentary about four young New Zealanders taking action on climate change and environmental issues. Building on the lessons of previous ventures and the success of the film Carving the Future, Guy founded Inspiring Stories in 2011, initially winning a ‘World of Difference’ scholarship from the Vodafone New Zealand Foundation. The next few years would become a whirlwind adventure of developing and testing programmes, partnerships, and building the organisation into the phenomenal force it is today. However it wasn’t without it’s challenges: ‘I come from a tiny little rural community, I don't come from any wealth and lacked significant credibility. As a young person with a big bold vision I was trying to knock on doors… it was honestly really challenging. People and organizations wouldn't take me seriously, they wouldn't give us the time of day… not even a chance to share what we were thinking. It took a long time to build street cred, you know, which inevitably can lead to a bit of resourcing and support to make things happen.’ What they do today: Their Festival for the Future attracts 1,200+ people annually. Their Future Leaders programme is changing lives for a diverse range of young people in New Zealand’s rural and provincial communities. Through The Impact Awards, they’ve awarded thiusands to support New Zealand’s most driven and inspiring young social entrepreneurs. https://www.inspiringstories.org.nz/

Muzafar Ali is a former refugee from Afghanistan. He is currently living in Adelaide, where he is a student at the University of South Australia. He is also Program Director at Cisarua Learning. In Afghanistan, Muzafar worked for several United Nations in organisations. His work spanned around disbandment of illegal armed groups and promoting human rights values. It was the nature of his work that took him to remote and unseen parts of Afghanistan, where he saw the authentic beauty, and met villagers where he took most of his photographs. Thus he became one of first generation of you Afghan photographers to show hidden beauty of Afghanistan. His photographs represent vibrance of Afghan people and land. His solo and collaborative photo exhibitions have been organised in Afghanistan, Australia, South Korea, United States, United Kingdom, Indonesia, Canada and Holland. As a refugee, Muzafar co-founded the first refugee-managed school (Cisarua Refugee Learning Centre) in West Java, Indonesia. Muzafar is a passionate refugee advocate. The main area of his work is around 'right and access to education' for refugees. He regularly speaks to Australian communities and institutions, and advocates about refugees and refugee rights. Jolyon has spent much of the last 15 years living and working in Washington DC, Nigeria, Indonesia and Nepal. His latest film, feature documentary 'The Staging Post', helped inspire a refugee-led education revolution in Indonesia and raised over $500,000 to support that community. It was the 13th most successful documentary in Australian cinemas over 2017 and 2018. Other work includes; music videos and a concert film for Thievery Corporation, a one hour documentary for one of the world’s biggest gaming companies, Bethesda Softworks and Aceh - Ten Years After the Tsunami, which is now on permanent display at the Aceh Tsunami Museum. In Nepal, he was on the jury and presented at the Kathmandu International Mountain Film Festival and Nepal International Film Festival. He is the founder of the Australian Charity, Cisarua Learning. cisarualearning.com lightsoundartfilm.com

Lea Milligan, CEO of MQ Mental Health Research, joined Purposely Podcast to share his story. Lea talks about being appointed CEO during the first COVID-19 UK lockdown, this without the opportunity to meet his Board of Trustees or his team. In fact he still hasn’t met them in person although you will hear how this has him stopped him setting a new and exciting path for the organisation including a new strategy and a new office in New York. Lea, a parent of two young children admits ‘home education looked more like home entertainment in my house during lock-down’. He also draws on the inspiration gets from the Irish and Lion’s rugby international Brian O’Driscoll citing how his hard work, dedication and committment to rugby (his craft) set him apart and made him a world leading player. Lea says ‘it’s all about making the very best of your talents’ and that is something he try’s to do himself. Lea is described as a passionate communicator and collaborator and advocates for a whole mind, body and brain approach to mental health research. His current role sounds like a great fit. He has worked in the charity sector for over 15 years, leading teams and organisations supporting people in the secure estate, community education and prior to joining MQ, served for as the CEO of Mercy Ships UK, an international NGO delivering surgery, medical capacity building and infrastructure development across West Africa. He has overseen multimillion pound fundraising and grants programmes supported by philanthropy and a range of government funding. Notable achievements include launching the Global Surgical Evaluation Centre in partnership with Harvard University, public fundraising campaigns in partnership with the Department for International Development and the publication of a British Medical Journal surgical supplement in support of the Lancet Commission’s findings on the global surgical crisis. https://www.mqmentalhealth.org/home/