Term Four Gets Cranking

We’ve got a hellava term cranking up. In total, we’ve got roughly 130 young people involved in programs this terms.

Here are the nitty gritties. There are:

- Five full BikeRescue programs running, at Cannington Community Education Support Centre, Dianella Secondary College ESC, Kenwick School, Midland Learning Academy and Baldivis Secondary College.

- One Exposure Workshop on at Ashdale Secondary College with 30 young people.

- One five-week half-program at Gilmore College, during which kids will build one bike for themselves.

- One 6-week BikeTherapy program at Headspace Midland.

- One BikeRescue Licensing program coming up in Roebourne, Western Australia with Pilbara Community Services Ltd, where we'll teach indigenous community leaders to run BikeRescue on our behalf, thanks to a grant from Australian Ethical Super. We’re going through the planning right now and should be ready to get up there first thing in 2019.

That's one busy, exciting term 4! We’re stoked to get started.

Working with the legends at WAUC

Consulting services is one thing charities and not-for-profits like Dismantle can rarely afford. All too often, however, we also can’t afford to go without.

Enter WA University Consultants (WAUC). WAUC is a management consultant charity that empowers top university students to provide high quality, pro-bono consulting services to charities and not-for-profits. The service helps organisations to overcome challenges, improve operations, and enhance social impact.

Check out their ‘Meet the Team’ page. It’s like a bunch of the world’s nerdiest superheros have joined forces, and all of their powers are related to academia and business.

WAUC take on six cases a semester, and Dismantle is lucky enough to have been selected as one for semester two. The team are working on our ReNew Properties project, a property maintenance service that will provide vocational opportunities for selected BikeRescue graduates.

Last term, as part of their research to understand better what we do, they attended a BikeRescue session at Youth Futures. They took notes, interviewed participants and really paid attention. Every participant they spoke to said they would be interested in a job opportunity related to property maintenance.

This partnership is a really exciting opportunity to get ReNew Properties up and cranking. We’re stoked to be working with WAUC and can’t wait to get our deliverables at the end of the semester.

We Got the Grant!

Back in July we asked our Facebook followers to vote. We needed support to win an Australian Ethical Community Grant, which we were going to use to bring BikeRescue to the Pilbara.

Thanks to the strength of the proposed program and the support of our followers, Dismantle was one of 19 organisations selected from over 500 applicants.

Australian Ethical is a superannuation company that invests solely in ethical causes and 10% of their profits go towards this grant scheme. Now, $15k of that is all Dismantle’s, and we’re going to use it to extend the reach and impact of BikeRescue in a whole new way.

That new way is licensing. Lately we’ve been working on a program where we train up groups or organisations outside of the Perth metro area, and then offer ongoing remote support and resources to help them deliver BikeRescue in their region.

We applied for the The Australian Ethical funds to help set up a licensing partnership with Pilbara Community Service Ltd (PCSL),  a not-for-profit organisation contracted by the Department of Corrective Services to provide reintegration & rehabilitation services in the Pilbara. We'll be running the program up there in two parts. 50% of the program time will go towards train-the-trainer sessions with indigenous adults, where we’ll teach them how to fix bikes, and about the methodology behind BikeRescue. The other 50% will go towards a demo program, where the trained up adults will run a BikeRescue program for local at-risk kids, under the support and guidance of Dismantle staff.

Roebourne is a town doing it really tough. It has recently carried such unglamorous titles in the media as ‘Town of the Damned’ and has become notorious for drug, alcohol and child abuse. There are a lot of people in that town and the wider region, kids and adults alike,  who will substantially benefit from BikeRescue. Plus, having a delivery partner embedded in the community will allow for some awesome impact. It’s a really effective way of extending Dismantle’s reach in a sustainable way and we’re excited to get started.

Thanks so much to Australian Ethical, to everyone who voted, and to everyone who’s been working on making the project a reality!

Dismantle on the Radio

Dismantle was on the radio! Earlier this month Johno Montgomery, our Programs Director, did a killer interview on the ABC Radio Perth’s Saturday Breakfast Program.

The Meet Me on the Corner segment had a war on waste theme that week. Johno talked about how Dismantle uses old bikes as a really effective tool to engage at-risk kids. Here’s some audio we captured from the interview – it’s not the best quality, but Johno is, so that balances it out.