Sarah Gun On Social Business Solutions And Misconceptions About Homelessness
Sarah Gun is an international award-winning social innovator, and a crusader for an equitable and just economy.
Sarah is renowned for her leadership in the social enterprise and social business sector, and for cultivating ecosystems for socially and environmentally sustainable businesses in South Australia.
Sarah is Founder and Director of GOGO Events, a jobs-focused social enterprise that employs women at-risk of homeless and those with complex barriers to employment. She is founder and CEO of the GOGO Foundation, a charity creating pathways to long-term safe stable employment for women at risk, and co-founder of Collab4Good, an intermediary that builds the capacity and capability across sectors to deliver positive social impact.
Sarah is Westpac Social Change Fellow, a SHEEO Venture and Activator, a SA Woman of the Year, and a founding board member of the South Australian Social Enterprise Council.
Sarah discusses the broader movements impacting Australia and how misconceptions about homelessness can be addressed through social business.
Highlights from the interview (listen to the podcast for full details)
[Indio Myles] - Sarah, can you please share a bit about your background and what led to your work in social enterprise?
[Sarah Gun] - I started GOGO Events in the year 2000 from my home office while raising two small children. It went swimmingly for about the first 12 years, and we had great events, amazing clients and developed a solid reputation for excellence in event management. In 2012, I reached a point where I thought, "what am I really doing here, what is my purpose?"
I became aware of the fact that we were not creating a lot of positive social or environmental impacts when we ran events, and good event managers leave nothing behind.
I was really beginning to feel that the work I was doing was vacuous and really had no positive long-term outcomes. At that point I did some soul searching and thought perhaps I could employ people in the business, and we could give them a hand up if they were facing significant barriers to employment. I also realised that the business itself was a really powerful tool for creating more impact than I could have done just on my own through volunteering or something personal. I made a decision that we would employ only people with significant barriers to the workforce in our business.
In order to do that, I developed relationships with homeless service providers in the city of Adelaide, and we started recruiting. We were able to do that because we were blessed to have some really strong relationships with our clients that were large corporations, associations, and government bodies in South Australia. I worked with them to create pathways into GOGO Events. That pathway was asking people if they would like to come and work on a GOGO event for a day or a week, and all they needed was a pair of shoes where their toes were covered up.
What we did was we brought people into the business, invited them to find their strengths, and worked with them to make them a valuable member of our team and contribute to putting together an event.
We could start with a big empty room at the Adelaide Convention Centre and within six or seven hours have set up something really stunning and spectacular for a thousand people at a big award ceremony. What we observed during that time was that just through that simple process of being valued, having their skills recognised, and being part of a team, they were able to re-identify their strengths and for short period of time put aside the troubles and the issues that they were facing in their day-to-day lives. This help them feel better about themselves, build confidence and capabilities.
At that time, I didn't actually know the term social enterprise. I read about it nearly six months after I'd started this new chapter. Of course, then what happened was the world of social enterprise opened up to me and I found common language that I could use to describe what we were doing and the impact that we were having. Between 2012 and 2018, we worked with 85 people that were facing homelessness and we were able to help them shift themselves, their mindset and the way they felt about themselves in order to set them on a pathway to financial stability through finding a job that suits them and their needs. The original business I changed became a regenerative business rather than an extractive business. We developed an environmental and social policy within the business.
We were able to reduce, reuse, repurpose and resource whatever we could from other social businesses and not-for-profit organisations. We donate back anything that is in excess, including food waste for example. Now, rather than leaving what I felt was nothing behind (because I felt that all I was doing was taking away through the business), we were able to give something back to the community. We were able to give back jobs while supporting our event clients by letting them know that the money they were spending on their events was doing something significant for society.
You have mentioned that the primary people that GOGO Events provide support to are women and people experiencing homelessness. What common misconceptions are there about people experiencing homelessness and the obstacles that they face in their daily lives?
There are so many misconceptions, but I think the most profound is that people facing homelessness are uneducated. That is absolutely not our experience, 63% of the women we worked with in the first few years at GOGO Events had tertiary qualifications. There are other assumptions people make, that homeless people are not resilient, they're weak or just not capable. These points are also untrue. I find that the people we have worked with are the most resilient.
They are really the survivors of often systems that have excluded them, worked against them, or that they'd been unable to override in their lives often from a very young age.
Or, they've fallen victim to circumstances outside of their control and that has led them on a pathway where they have no power. There are also assumptions around drug and alcohol issues. Occasionally they are present, but it is a very small percentage that have drug and alcohol abuse issues. There are very sad social assumptions around people experiencing homelessness being dirty, unclean or disruptive, and those assumptions have come about because what people are faced with in terms of homelessness is often what they see in the streets. I think people need to put their feet into other people's shoes and think, "if you're sleeping rough for more than one or two nights, it becomes very hard to stay clean." It's very difficult to stay well dressed and presented. I think society has all these assumptions that are totally incorrect around people experiencing homelessness.
It's so unfortunate to hear about those assumptions that are made by society. Throughout the COVID-19 lockdowns and with GOGO Events being focused on event management, how did you pivot effectively and identify opportunities to continue to operate?
The first thing we did was took a break. We had been running events for 20 years at GOGO, and it was a bit of a relief initially to have a break to be honest. Over those eight years of being a social enterprise, we had learnt so much about how much more work there was to do and what were the pressing issues attributing to people being at risk of homelessness. We learnt what the barriers to employment are for the people that we were working with. During the time without face-to-face events, my team was able to focus on those other pressing issues. I've mentioned that in 2018 we established the GOGO Foundation which is a charity that focuses particularly on finding long-term stable employment outcomes for people that have experienced barriers. We had been working on developing what we now call the Inclusive Work Program.
We were able to build out the program, partnerships, content and relationships that we needed to put in place. In fact, we ran this year the pilot of the Inclusive Work Program, which meant we were able to gather together funds.
Also, we've applied to the Federal Government and the Office for Women, and we have secured funding to run that program four more times, which is really incredibly exciting. That will allow us to bring approximately 70 women through the program in the next two years. We've developed relationships with universities to help us be sure we are collecting the right data and also other social enterprises to partner with. From the event perspective, we had to look up what it might look like to operate events online, and we've been able to move several of our events online. What we were aware of is that once everything went online, we were unable to create job opportunities for the people that we were really in the business to serve. We have been able instead to focus on developing a new income stream for GOGO Events.
Next year we will launch a new work integrated social enterprise in the circular economy where we can create long-term jobs in addition to keeping our events going.
We really needed to find another solution to creating permanent, part-time or full-time positions for people. Those jobs are also for general employment, but also it will be a way of bringing people through the Inclusive Work Program and providing them with a job for the first six to twelve months to get some really robust work experience onto their CV's. We've used our time creatively, and the one other thing we did was we picked up on one other particular social issue that we had been working on as a bit of a side project, which was menstrual poverty. We were able to get some funding, and we ran Australia's first period summit earlier this year. That was to bring about equality and start conversations around a future where menstruation was accepted by all. A future that allows anyone who menstruates to be able to speak about it and have their rights supported through access to products and also a safe workplace removed of any taboo. We were able to run that earlier this year, so we feel we have used that time quite wisely!
Sarah, as a co-founder of the social enterprise intermediary Collab4Good, how important do you believe robust networks for supporting impact led organisations?
I think that I can speak firsthand here and say having a network of other social enterprises and purpose-driven businesses is the key to being able to do good business yourself.
If you're operating as a social enterprise alone without an ecosystem, it's really hard to ensure that your procurement channels and clients are socially and environmentally sound.
You become a bit like a voice in the wilderness, and with what I've seen happen in South Australia over the last several years as an emerging social enterprise economy, we've still got a lot of work to do. The more opportunity we have to buy goods and services from other social enterprises, not-for-profits or community led organisations like Men’s Sheds, the more we can ensure that the money we spend is doing good.
Therefore, we can ensure our clients who often have a much bigger turnover than we do that their money is being spent in order to ensure protection of the environment and also social good. For me, it's really about social procurement, but it's also that we can trust collaboration because in social businesses,
I find when you put collaboration ahead of competition, you start to drive and amplify change.
The B-Corp, Social Traders or SheEO community are all businesses where you're in some way aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals, or you're really putting the social or environmental purpose aligned with, but not ahead of profit.
It is also about the strength of that network so that you've got reciprocity and a willingness to collaborate to achieve goals.
When we can see others succeeding in this sector, improbable businesses a bit like GOGO Events, (people thought I was a bit crazy at the beginning, but we have succeeded over the time and enjoyed that), it allows others to believe that their vision is possible. Particularly young people, we are so inspired by kids coming out of high school or in high school that are creating social businesses and teaching us the way that we can do business so much better. To have created the conditions for those organisations to step in, to find customers and to immediately have turnover and create new jobs and thrive is really important.
What inspiring projects or initiatives have you come across recently, which are creating a positive social change?
I think there are movements afoot that are really driving change across Australia and globally. I would have to say that the most significant of those movements that I really feel strongly about now is the racial justice and equity movement, particularly in Australia. Globally, the focus and importance of investing and cultivating Indigenous organisations, Indigenous leaders and organisations founded by minorities and people of colour is a game changer.
It's about supporting regenerative businesses rather than extractive businesses, and funding models that are focusing on reparations to amend where wrongs have been done by paying forwards and backwards to make change for future generations.
That's probably the most significant movement, but I think others around female and minority funding with organisations like SheEO creating new systems supporting businesses to increase their turnover, growth and support are amazing also. The other things that excite me are the development of the Alliance of Social Enterprise Networks of Australia (ASENA) and state-based organisations, because I think together, we have a much more powerful voice to both state and federal governments and we become more visible. This is really important work; we need to see those successes and collaborate together. Then of course, there is the environment and global warming.
Organisations such as Carbon Neutral Adelaide (that we're a founding member of) are bringing together organisations that are taking direct action to reduce our carbon footprint, measure and offset our output.
I think in the absence of much braver federal policy to address global warming, businesses, individuals and organisations can take really serious steps to hopefully offset what is an impending disaster for the planet.
Finally, are there any books or resources that you would recommend?
I really allocate book reading to pleasure, because otherwise I'd never stop reading! I would say anything that friends tag me in on LinkedIn generally has significant merit and is totally worth reading. The SheEO podcast is always a source of great inspiration for me as it is about women who are working on the worlds to do list. Also Impact Boom is great, because being able to make the Australian leaders in the social enterprise and innovation sector visible is inspirational.
