For our global charity partners, it has been a full year of dealing with the fallout from the COVID pandemic. We’ve remained steadfast throughout this period in an effort to not only help our partners survive, but to rise to the challenge.
Those already most vulnerable in the community were heavily impacted by lockdowns, financial hardship and isolation. Simultaneously, the ability of charities to meet the soaring demand was compromised by a diminishing number of workers, volunteers, regular donors and crucial fundraising opportunities.
For the Goodman Foundation, it was a time to stay the course and hold strong in our support, even if charities decided to re-focus their efforts in new and unanticipated ways.
It was a time to trust that the organisations we’ve partnered with over the years know what their communities need. And to be generous and flexible in how we support them through one of the most challenging years imaginable.
The Goodman Foundation supports charities in three key areas: children and youth, community and community health, and food rescue and the environment.
Our support is offered as:
Cash grants
Funding for projects with defined outcomes over one to three years.
Do good
Goodman people volunteering or fundraising for charities.
Give back
Workplace giving schemes that equally match contributions from Goodman people.
In-kind
Donations of our expertise, space, office furniture, computers and other critical items.
In response to the devastating 2019-2020 bush fires, Goodman made the largest corporate donation ever to the NSW Rural Fire Service (NSW RFS) by pledging a state-of-the-art firefighting helicopter. NSW RFS recently took delivery of the helicopter which has being fitted out with a winch, a belly tank for water bombing and a surveillance camera for use in firefighting and search and rescue operations. The helicopter is now operational and has already been commissioned to use in the NSW foods and is ready to help protect our community for the 2021-22 fire season.
Paralympics Australia
For two years, the Goodman Foundation has supported Paralympics Australia in its quest to achieve its goals in Tokyo by funding vital warehouse space to allow the team’s athletes and support staff to focus on event preparation. When the Tokyo Paralympic Games were postponed in 2020, we provided additional funding to cover the warehouse space for a second consecutive year.
Goodman is proud to support Paralympics Australia and the role of the Paralympic Games in showcasing disability, challenging stigma and creating a more inclusive society.
Our Watch, Australia
Violence against women is a serious problem globally. A worrying social impact of the COVID lockdowns is women’s increased exposure to violent partners at a time of decreased access to services, data from the World Health Organisation states.
In Australia, almost 10 women each day are hospitalised for injuries perpetrated by a spouse or domestic partner. To help to address this urgent issue, the Goodman Foundation engaged with Our Watch, a charity that works to prevent violence against women and their children in Australia.
Our Watch works to embed gender equality and prevent violence where Australians live, learn, work and socialise.
With seed funding from the Goodman Foundation, Our Watch plans to create an institute to empower Australians to stop violence before it starts. Through training and practical tools, individuals and organisations will be equipped to lead prevention work in their own communities and spheres of influence.
Mais Education Program, Brazil
Brazil is the world’s eighth-largest economy yet it has a raft of issues stemming from serious social inequality. Exacerbated by COVID, the unemployment rate in Brazil has soared to 14.7% – the highest in nearly ten years.
The Goodman Foundation wants to help improve access to education in Brazil. There is plenty of scope for change. In 2019, more than 36.5% of Brazilians under 19 didn’t finish high school, while in 2018 almost a third of the country’s 15 to 17 year-olds dropped out of school to earn income for their families.
The Goodman Mais (‘more’) program will combine the specialist expertise of several partners to bring a bespoke education program together. Underprivileged young adults will benefit from high quality technical training and personalised mentoring from Goodman team members.
Thinkers and doers
The Goodman Mais program will select 30 Brazilian young adults (from a pool of approximately 200 applicants) to participate in an 18-month program. They’ll be taught environmental management and personal skills, boosting their chances of success in the labour market.
Another valuable component will be work placements with Goodman, its customers and local property service providers. Each has been carefully selected after showing genuine motivation to help young people in Brazil have a smoother start in a tough and unequal labour market.
Raise Foundation, Australia
The teenage years can be challenging. One in 10 young people in Australia are disengaged with school or employment, one in four are unhappy with their lives, and three in five experience bullying. Then, there is the devastating fact that suicide is the leading cause of death among young people, yet it is the age group least likely to ask for help.
COVID had a significant impact on young people. With thousands of youth at risk every day, Goodman recently increased our support of Raise to become a major partner.
Raise exists to help young people. They do one thing and they do it well – youth mentoring in high schools across Australia. Support from a mentor during the teenage years can change the course of a young person’s life. Raise provides one-on-one support from people with the time and skills to listen.
Raise recruits, screens and trains volunteers as youth mentors before matching them with students. The organisation’s in-depth surveys indicate that having a caring, independent adult to talk to each week makes an enormous difference to the lives of young people. Raise mentees become more resilient, get better at asking for help, have an increased sense of belonging and, crucially, hope for the future.
Friends and Helpers, USA
California-based charity, Friends and Helpers, supports, educates and encourages domestic violence survivors and their children who have fled to a shelter or group home for safety.
Most women who flee do not leave with much and rely on shelters for basic necessities.
Twice a year for five years, Goodman’s Southern California employees have donated to, and volunteered with, Friends and Helpers’ major back to school and holiday season gift campaigns, with Goodman matching employee donations to double the total purchases.
Responding to soaring demand
When the pandemic hit, Friends and Helpers’ ability to fundraise and hold volunteer drives plummeted just as demand soared due to a rise in domestic violence.
Usually, the back to school backpacks and snack bags would be completed at a Goodman facility. When social distancing requirements ruled that out, Goodman donated funds for 2,500 backpacks and snack bags to be assembled safely at the founder’s home and distributed to 14 shelters.
Meanwhile, Goodman made a special donation to cover the school supplies children needed to do remote learning from group homes or shelters, including stationary, numeracy and literacy flash cards and memory games.
The Bread & Butter Project, Australia
Australia’s first social enterprise bakery, the Bread & Butter Project, provides employment pathways in the baking industry for people seeking refuge and asylum.
The project boosts their prospects of successful resettlement and employment and creates a strong sense of belonging. Since 2013, almost all baker graduates have been sustainably employed and able to discontinue welfare support.
The Bread & Butter Project was hit hard by lockdowns as sales into cafés and restaurants were one of its main income sources. The Goodman Foundation increased its support to ensure the future is bright for the Australia’s next generation of bakers.
OzHarvest, Australia
As a founding partner of OzHarvest since it began in 2004, The Goodman Foundation continues to support Australia’s leading food rescue organisation, which operates from a fit-for-purpose facility in south Sydney, built by Goodman.
The impact of the COVID lockdowns in New South Wales saw the demand for emergency food relief massively increase across western and south western Sydney, where many people experienced food insecurity for the first time.
To help OzHarvest speed up its work to get nutritionally balanced and culturally sensitive food hampers to communities in need, The Goodman Foundation increased its support, funding an additional 4,000 food hampers each week. New warehouse space was also provided to enable OzHarvest to bring in hundreds of volunteers to prepare food hampers.
OzHarvest is now producing more than 12,000 cooked meals a week, which were distributed across greater Sydney’s hardest hit communities, with support from local Councils, police, charity networks, and OzHarvest’s pop-up hubs in Lakemba and Granville.
FareShare Moorabbin Airport Kitchen Garden
FareShare are a Melbourne based Food Rescue organisation. Since it was established in 2016, the FareShare Moorabbin Airport kitchen garden has produced over 25,000 kgs of vegetables, providing 63,322 healthy meals for vulnerable Victorians. Goodman has supported Fareshare by providing the land needed to grow and produce vegetable crops at Moorabbin Airport since 2016.
As businesses adjusted to the pandemic, FareShare received a lot of surplus donated food. Due to COVID, it had to suspend volunteering but support from Goodman and others meant it could operate with experienced hospitality staff. This new workforce, and the abundance of fresh ingredients, enabled FareShare to cook up to 140,000 nutritious meals each week.
