Safeguarding a microenterprise for the future

So, yeah, thank you, everybody, for joining us in Room 3.

I know it's always hard when there are sessions at the same time and have to decide, so I'm hoping that this will still be a really worthwhile amount of time that you spend with us today.

Something I'm super passionate about, microenterprise, and if you don't know me, as Arosha said, I work for Community Living Projects, and for the last four years, I've been I've been the project lead of this IOC grant project, which is Discover Microenterprise, Exploring Possibilities.

Yeah, so Microenterprise.

So down the bottom, as I said, that's the project that I've been leading.

And unfortunately, all good things come to an end.

And this project itself will be finishing 30 June as well.

Having said that, very fortunate in South Australia that Community Living Project actually operate the Markway Enterprise Project anyway, which will continue.

That's a paid service.

What hopefully will happen is that the work that we've done over the last four years, we've built some resources, we've built a lot of videos, 12 videos.

One I'm about to show you, which is very exciting because it's just been released.

So there will be a lasting legacy from the project.

But the reason I'm also very passionate about this is that you might know that my son, Tom, who's 26, has a microenterprise himself, has for seven and a half years.

And to say it's changed his and our life is an understatement.

So it's something that I get really excited about.

The worst thing you can do to me socially is ask me about microenterprise because once I get started, there's no stopping.

It was great when I spoke to Jan and she said that employment was going to be, you know, part of this conference as safeguarding because I believe it plays a very large role in keeping people safe, having meaningful work embedded in community.

So we've called this microenterprise as a safeguard for people with disability that needs to be safeguarded.

So there's going to be two points sort of really about why it's a safeguard and then how we keep it safe.

Now I'm assuming if you're here, you're probably already a little bit on the way to knowing about microenterprise.

You might have current involvement or thinking about it.

But just to make sure that we're all on that same page, this is really our definition of microenterprise.

So it's a small business of a service or product which is created based around a person's interests, gifts and talents and available resources.

It's a form of customised employment and it starts with the person first, then a job role is crafted, not the other way around.

And I believe, you know, that's the key to success with customised employment is the fact we're starting always with that person first, one person at a time, getting to deeply discover what their skills, interests and passions are, and then crafting a role around that.