Awards For Excellence in   Community Business Partnerships 2007 

NSW Small Business Award

Plunge Diving with National Parks Association of NSW

“HarbourKeepers” is a program of the National Parks Association of NSW (NPA), creating ongoing opportunities for community groups to protect, restore and explore Sydney Harbour, its foreshores and islands. Activities include scientific research, clearing, cleaning and regeneration. Plunge Diving is recognised as “Primary Dive Supporter” with HarbourKeepers and ensures this volunteer effort is sustained. They provide dive equipment, technical advice, and support to the HarbourKeeper divers free of charge.

NSW Small Business Encouragement Award

Ensemble Productions with Vision Australia

Vision Australia and the Ensemble Theatre have been working in partnership since 2000 to provide free Audio Description services to blind or vision-impaired theatre patrons. (Audio Description equipment allows operators stationed off-stage to transmit “real-time” commentary – for example on actors’ gestures, expressions and movements around the stage, stage props, etc – to blind or vision-impaired patrons seated in the audience who wear appropriate receiving equipment.)

ToughLOVE with Demand Flow Intelligence

ToughLOVE (TL) is a crisis intervention group that provides support for parents experiencing difficulties with adolescent behaviour. It is a voluntary organisation. Demand Flow Intelligence (DFI) provides business-to-business marketing execution services, primarily for complex technology providers. This program also provides a range of organisational support to TL. These include, free of charge access for TL to a web-based marketing tool enabling building of an electronic database of Agencies; execution of telemarketing campaigns promoting TL workshops and info evenings; conducting electronic surveys to measure awareness and satisfaction levels; event registration; training in Excel to collect, analyse and report on 1300 phone support enquiries as well as coaching in statistical analysis; coaching in professional marketing and provision of support staff; support for events for example: providing badges, handouts; and provision of vocational re-training to TL clients.

DFI benefits from being able to access short-term casual labour which has allowed parents to retrain and take up permanent employment later on. DFI also gains from business referrals through its connection with TL.

Increased awareness of the services offered through TL has resulted in a greater reach into the community. By helping families “get their lives back together” TL contributes to the reduction in adolescent behavior such as drug and alcohol abuse, less kids on the streets, less petty crime, adults able to return to full time work or becoming more effective in their work life and a return to ‘family values’.

NSW Medium Business Award

Chess Engineering with Canterbury Bankstown Career Connections (CBCC)

The partnership aims to bring the worlds of industry and education together by enabling young people to gain valuable work experience while helping to resolve skill shortages in the engineering sector.

Past and present students aged between 13 and 19 years, from 34 different schools within the Canterbury and Bankstown local government areas, undertake work experience within a general engineering workshop. Here, the students have the opportunity to experience employment in the engineering field while developing the skills they need to gain and maintain employment, including interpersonal skills; practical experience; job interview skills and cultural awareness.

Chess Engineering also benefits through its interaction with these students and their teachers and through its wider exposure to the general community.

Chess Engineering with Canterbury Bankstown Career Connections are 2007 national finalists. A more extended description of the partnership is available in the national finalists section of this publication.

NSW Medium Business Encouragement Award

Create Foundation with Atari Australia Pty Ltd

This partnership aims to improve the long-term employment outcomes of young people who have a care background (long-term out-of-home care) through participation in a workplace learning project and communications campaign.

The project is intended to provide these young people with an introduction to the workplace environment and to the career pathways available within the sales and distribution industries.

Atari contributes training in administration, sales, marketing, warehousing and distribution. It also provides mentoring, staff volunteering, some funding, employment and personal support for the young people.

Create Foundation provides advice on relating to young people with a "care experience", person-hours, mentoring, access to its networks and skill sharing.

The partnership provides excellent opportunities for young people to benefit from their experiences in the workplace.

The goal is to help youths build new connections with a society from which they may feel they are irrevocably alienated.

NSW Large Business Award

ING Foundation with the Spastic Centre

Since 1999, The Spastic Centre and ING have worked together to build futures for children with cerebral palsy and their families. This is a long-term partnership which has served both organisations. Commencing with the ING Centre for Conductive Education, a pioneering method of intervention for children with cerebral palsy, the partnership has broadened in scope and depth. It includes development and maintenance of facilities, fundraising initiatives, and financial planning advice for client families, sexuality education program for teenagers (Chattercamp), and the ING Recreation program. The latest initiative of the partnership is the “Youth Mentoring Program” which aims to build self-esteem and emotional resilience in young people through matching ING staff to teenagers with disabilities.

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