The day my message was received

Over many years, I wanted to get a message to our Prime Minister. In May this year, the scene was set with a private, small group of people, expecting and parenting teens amongst our most honoured guests. Mr Morrison was announcing a $6M grant awarded to Brave Foundation, for our work with expecting and parenting teens. On this day, I was finally able to share with Mr Morrison that when he was Social Services Minister 5 years ago, Brave was busy unknowingly changing the course of history, convening a national working group that consisted of over 30 stakeholders nationally. We looked at every organisation or government department that intercepted or assisted an expecting or parenting teens life, across 1000 days from expecting to 2 years of age. We created national human centred policy design and strategy for one of our nation’s most at risk cohorts. 

This positioned us to receive the largest grant in the Try Test and Learn (TTL) fund in 2017, which saw us grow to 21 staff all over our nation. This has been very successful with the vast majority of almost 500 participants, meeting their goals towards happy, healthy, and skilled families.

I came to learn over these years that the TTL fund was in part Mr Morrison’s idea, when he was Social Services Minister. This initiative was a very articulate step, where the government looked to see how we could help those at greatest risk of disadvantage better, reducing long term welfare costs. Brave Foundation called out primary prevention, collaboration and lived expertise as core pillars for this change. We extracted these ingredients at every turn so we could see these young families on a level playing field to their peers and reach their boundless potential. A window of opportunity moment was created.

After quite a rollercoaster (that’s a story for another post!), we now have more funding and my goodness do we need it. We have countless expecting and parenting women knocking on our door – this $6M funding will allow us to open that door and empower over 1000 young women so they can reach their boundless potential, impacting their families and communities. We will double down on our existing footprint, from NT, down the eastern seaboard to Tas. We are also exploring delivery in WA, SA and ACT.

One of the values of Brave Foundation is that we are innovative, we really do find and make a way. It is beyond worthy of the 15-year-over-night-success journey, for every young woman and her child.

I am aware that Brave Foundation often presents an oxymoron. After years of coming eye to eye with stigma and judgement, through my own journey as a teen mum, then founding and pioneering a charity that assists teen parents, I have come to realise that our work with teen parents has created a gift for Australia - for each of us.

Through their journeys, we realised these young people faced many challenges, systemically, socially, and locally. At Brave our incredible team have counted these challenges one by one, and have created pathways to healthy lives through them. What we also learned was that these people, in a time of perceived crisis, are still wanting to discover their purpose. They had high hopes for their dreams, aspirations, families, and careers, but did not know how to connect to them.

Through Brave we are learning what we need to change socially, systemically, and locally. We see young people as a whole, instead of through a series of disconnected transactions. This perspective changes everything.

Due to the incredible generosity of our philanthropic funding partners, we were able to bravely continue on when we needed it most, and we made it to this day.

I made it to the day when I was able to share with our Prime Minister that because of our governments investment and bravery - to look at policy through a human centred and holistic approach - we have seen radical change in our most at risk young people. I believe we need to continue to build this momentum across our government and for purpose sectors, so that we can truly achieve social and economic empowerment for all.

I want to help our governments solve how they can stimulate and support the creation of this type of policy more. I want our nation to have a vision for long term gains, not political ones across cycles. I want to see us valuing our most vulnerable young citizens first.

Without funding our small NFP, we would not be able to bring about deep change, the type of change that sees impact for generations. Because of Brave Foundations work, we now have a guiding light, a blueprint, both socially and economically for young people at risk of disadvantage in Australia. By helping those that need it most, we will see social and economic empowerment for all.