In 2009, Fighting Chance was founded by siblings Laura and Jordan O’Reilly. They were inspired by the experience of their brother, Shane, who had cerebral palsy and a moderate intellectual disability, and who was let down by a society which defined him by his disability.

When Shane finished school, his options were limited compared to his siblings’. At his day program, he couldn’t choose how he spent his days and he didn’t have the option of purposeful work or support for his business idea. Laura and Jordan saw the power of social enterprise to address these gaps in opportunity for people with disability and create a truly inclusive economy

Since then, Fighting Chance has grown from siblings working on the start of an idea in the garage of their family home, to a leader in the Australian disability sector. It has launched five social enterprises across 14 locations in 4 states, which impact the lives of nearly 1500 people with disability. It exists to build and empower social enterprises to create limitless opportunity, dignity and prosperity for people with disability as part of a truly inclusive economy, with enterprises including:

• Avenue: empowering microbusiness, skill-building and community participation activities for people with profound and severe disability
• Jigsaw: a “prepare for work, through work” pathway to mainstream employment, outperforming current government-funded approaches to disability employment
• Base Housing Collective: reimagining supported independent living
• Plus: building Australia’s leading integrated program for people with complex behaviors and high support needs
• A support coordination and NDIS access business.

Paul Brown, CEO of Fighting Chance social enterprise Jigsaw, said that in addition to creating significant social impact, Fighting Chance has a commitment to social enterprise as the medium for creating opportunity.

“One of Fighting Chance’s fundamental values is “a hand up, not a handout”. What this means is that people with disability don’t need charity. They simply have the right to the same opportunities that society affords the mainstream,” he said.

“A social enterprise model looks at the ways in which traditional structures, attitudes and workflows prohibit people’s participation, and redesigns them. For Fighting Chance, this offers a mechanism to empower people with opportunities to contribute, generate revenue, create value for business and individual customers, build their skills and find purpose and fulfillment.”

“This therefore creates alternative pathways to social and economic inclusion, so that people of all abilities can make a contribution to the best of their ability,” Brown said.

In the disability sector in Australia, Fighting Chance believes conditions are ripe for new and disruptive players to thrive. The National Disability Insurance Scheme, introduced in 2013, represents a real opportunity to bring new approaches to traditional service models for Australians with disability.

“The NDIS introduced a competitive market into an area which used to be entirely dominated by government tenders. However, despite ripe conditions for innovation and entrepreneurship, there is a limited number of transformative new service models which have made their way into the sector in the last few years. There are some exceptions to this statement of course, but that does not change the broad reality that for many thousands of people with disability right across Australia, and years after the roll out of the NDIS nationally, the services on offer today for most people are little changed since before 2013,” Brown said.

“We encourage service providers, government decision makers, and existing or emerging social entrepreneurs to think differently and support the emergence of a vibrant services landscape for people with disability – one which brings variety, quality and specialisation into frontline service design, and which facilitates lives of unbridled opportunity for all,” he said.

Social enterprise can truly thrive in the disability space, and Fighting Chance and its enterprises are an example of how an entrepreneurial approach can successfully tackle key societal and economic challenges.

Related resources: 

– Blog: Disability is ripe for innovation – so why isn’t there more?

– Blog: A father’s love: Weekend Australian Magazine

 

Avenue is a social enterprise of Fighting Chance, which was created in 2011 in direct response to the experiences so many young people with a disability face coming out of the school system and into their adult lives, who struggle to find quality opportunities for work and continued skill development beyond the classroom.

This was certainly the experience of my own brother, Shane O’Reilly, who left school in 2009. Despite Shane’s many skills and talents, the world he graduated into in his late teens saw him only in the context of his profound physical disability. As a consequence, the opportunities Shane was afforded as a young adult were limited to a handful of recreational pursuits, with no meaningful opportunity to work or to grow his talents, particularly around his computer skills.

For Shane, a life without contribution was a life without purpose.

Avenue was launched back in 2011, as an antidote to this lack of opportunity in the post-school lives of young people with a significant disability. Originally conceived as a retail business selling a range of ethical products through community markets and e-commerce, the goal of Avenue was to give people with a disability the opportunity to work, build skills in an experiential setting, and foster social relationships in the context of a professional environment.

While this narrow retail model worked well in Avenue’s first few years, the rollout of the NDIS from late 2016 caused our community to grow rapidly, with participant numbers more than tripling in recent years. As more and more people joined us, the retail model came under increased scrutiny, as people interested to pursue different kinds of work in the economy looked to get involved.

Based on the feedback of our community, the Fighting Chance team has been working hard over recent months to evolve Avenue’s approach, to maintain key aspects of the original vision – and particularly the emphasis on meaningful work and skill development – while broadening the types of opportunities the enterprise can offer to the team.

That evolution is now complete, and I am pleased to announce the new Avenue model today.

Avenue is a co-working space, which makes work accessible to all.

At Avenue, we focus on creating the environment – a “co-working space” – to enable people with disability to come together, to work, and to thrive in collaboration with peers. The key features of the Avenue co-working space include:

• Each Avenue co-working space is made up of a number of working teams, which participants can join based on skills and interests, creating opportunities to work in a variety of micro-enterprises or via online platforms such as AirTasker.
• Business guidance available to assist entrepreneurs to get their own ideas up and running.
• Experienced support workers on hand to meet the needs of all Avenue participants while they are at work – including with personal care, behavior support, mealtime assistance, learning and work participation support so that anyone can be supported to reach their potential.
• A working environment harnessing accessibility features and design to make the space accessible to all.

To further support Avenue participants to participate fully in the economy and the community, Avenue co-working spaces also offer:

Avenue Skills Program: An individualised skill development plan for every participant, overseen by the Avenue Learning Manager and Skills Coordinator, to ensure everyone is getting the most learning and development from their work.

Avenue Social Program: Working is not just about work – it is also about building relationships and connection to the community. Avenue’s social program supports participants to enjoy their downtime away from the office and get into social life in the community.

We are extremely excited about the new Avenue model, and believe it is a game changer for many tens of thousands of adults with a disability in Australia who want to fully participate in the working world.

We look forward to moving forward from here, and to rolling out our vision for Avenue in coming years.

 

Laura O’Reilly

CEO | Fighting Chance Australia