In this edition: Sydney Women's Fund Research, Tender Funerals, Deadly Heart Trek
APRIL 2024
Dear Friends and Colleagues,
We're thinking of all those impacted by Saturday's horrific events in Bondi Junction, Westfield and gratitude to the courageous first responders.
As the second quarter of the year leaps ahead, here's a look at some of the work going on here at the Foundation.
We've released our 2023 Annual Report, following an inspiring and challenging year.
International Women's Day/Week was spent alongside partners Sydney Women's Fund at several events, launching the Portrait V Women of Greater Sydney Research which delves into the issues and trends impacting women in Sydney, highlighting challenges around economic security, housing affordability, family violence and women's safety. Our partnership with Sydney Women's Fund is a core component of our commitment to women, with gender equity and a gender lens embedded in our culture, processes and systems.
Expressions of interest for our major grant round, the Canberra Foundations Collaborative, increased to 173 from 143 last year, with most requests for assisting mental health, strengthening belonging and, disadvantage. These numbers truly tell the story of need in the community. Also from Canberra, Tender Funerals will soon have a home through our joint partnership with Capital Airport Group, to enable more personal, meaningful and economical funerals. We're thrilled to help offer a respectful and dignified opportunity for people to farewell their loved ones.
In late February the Deadly Heart Trek was invited to return to Mparntwe (Alice Springs), to provide critical early diagnoses, education and treatment for rheumatic heart disease (RHD) in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. Aboriginal leaders, health professionals and some of our team worked together with the local health workers and met thousands of amazing young children and families, supplementing current health services which are underfunded and under-resourced.
Our work continues with many social entrepreneurs, showcasing a number of them at the recent Impact Investment Summit where they shared their social return opportunity and pitched for investment.
We're excited with the growth of our team and welcome Jimyong Brenton Um (Brenton) and Scarlett Gaffey. Brenton joined us in October as our Medical Advisor, contributing to our RHD strategy. My sister Scarlett is a Snow Foundation Board director and runs her own speech pathology business - she now joins the Canberra team leading our focus on Literacy.
Finally – what a beautiful evening at the recent Philanthropy Australia Awards – filled with incredible people doing incredible work! A call out to recognise all the wonderful winners, finalists and nominees at the Awards, including some of our partners and our very own Terry and Ginette Snow who received the Leadership Award in recognition of their visionary and transformative philanthropy.
Best wishes,
THE SNOW FOUNDATION 2023 ANNUAL REPORT
Speakers at the Sydney Women's Fund IWD breakfast event at Philanthropy Australia: Jack Heath - former CEO Philanthropy Australia, Candice Van Doosselaere- Judith Neilson Foundation, Angelica Ojinnaka - global youth affairs leader, Georgina Byron - The Snow Foundation, Karen Iles - VioletCo Legal & Consulting, Lisa Grinham - Sydney Women's Fund.
SYDNEY WOMEN'S FUND PORTRAIT V WOMEN OF GREATER SYDNEY RESEARCH
The latest and 5th Portrait Women of Greater Sydney Research launched across 11 Sydney Women's Fund International Women's Day events. It paints a concerning picture with the majority of Sydney women experiencing financial insecurity.
Some key highlights:
- More than 3 in 10 Sydney women (34%) want to work more, but can't due to lack of opportunities, or flexibility or caring for others.
- 78% say the cost of living crisis is their most pressing concern, followed by housing insecurity, improving our health system, climate change, family violence, and closing the gender pay gap.
- Underpinning part of the economic stress is the fact that 41% of women surveyed earn less than $34k annually, or $650 a week and median weekly rent is $745 - making daily living tough.
- In terms of personal safety, nearly half of Sydney women are concerned, especially when using public transport at night or renting alone.
- Positively, 60% are feeling more financially stable than 10 years ago.
DEADLY HEART TREK INVITED BACK TO ALICE SPRINGS
The Deadly Heart Trek to Alice Springs ran for two weeks. Paediatric cardiologists Dr Gavin Wheaton and Dr Bo Remenyi together with our Aboriginal guides led the two teams of nine multi-disciplinary doctors, health workers, nurses from Congress and team members from Snow Foundation and Heart Foundation.
We were fortunate to be invited to visit 13 schools, 7 town camps, 2 youth centres and 6 Congress clinics. Over 3000 children and families were educated on RHD and skin health. Survey results post-visit: 100% responded to 'would you like the Trek to return’ and 'would recommend the program to other communities'. In total:
- 1205 Children's hearts screened
- 1157 healthy hearts
- 19 New RHD cases diagnosed and treated, and skin infections over 16%
Of the Aboriginal children/youth: 836 hearts were screened, 820 healthy hearts, 16 new RHD cases diagnosed and treated, 12 known cases. This resulted in 3.3% with RHD. Anything over 1% of RHD diagnoses in a community is considered a high burden, though positively the rate is lower than previous Treks to remote communities.
Jessica Mendoza-Roth - Social Impact Hub, Pia Clinton-Tarestad - Clean Slate Clinic, Geoff Smith - Australian Spatial Analytics, Bhanvi Anand - The Snow Foundation, Joel Anderson - Foremind, Melanie Greblo - Scriibed, Maryanne Harris - RoboFit, Summer Petrosius - Kindship, Alex Lagelee-Kean and Georgina Byron - The Snow Foundation.
IMPACT INVESTMENT SUMMIT & SNOW ENTREPRENEURS
Capital has the power to transform! Wonderful to hear more on innovation, values-centred investment and a stronger presence of First Nations fund opportunities.
At the sold-out breakfast discussion on catalytic capital, our CEO Georgina Byron
and Ben Smith from Paul Ramsay Foundation shared insights, learnings and examples of their growing catalytic investments. Alongside were some of our inspiring investees: Snow Entrepreneurs Pia Clinton-Tarestad from Clean Slate Clinic and Geoffrey Smith from Australian Spatial Analytics, and Matthew Tominc from Conscious Investment Management.
Later at the Opportunities Showcase, five of our social entrepreneurs presented their current and upcoming catalytic investment opportunities: Melissa Reader - The Violet Initiative and Snow Entrepreneurs Joel Anderson - Foremind, Melanie Greblo - Scriibed, Maryanne Harris - RoboFit, Summer Petrosius - Kindship.
If you are interested in learning more about these investment opportunities, please contact Bhanvi - b.anand@snowfoundation.org.au - we are so excited to be backing these amazing leaders.
IMPROVING LITERACY EDUCATION
We continue to focus on improving literacy education following the Equity Economics report, revealing that a significant number of students in the ACT are struggling to meet benchmarks.
We are advocating for greater adoption of high-quality research-based literacy instruction and have:
- made submissions to the ACT Inquiry into Literacy and Numeracy,
- contributed to media coverage, including the Op Ed in The Canberra Times by Scarlett Gaffey, and
- continued to have meetings with government and education leaders and academics
TENDER FUNERALS COMING TO CANBERRA
Tender Funerals Australia is set to open a new facility in Fairbairn ACT, supported by our $1m commitment and a significant partnership with Capital Airport Group.
Tender is renowned for their commitment to offering affordable and meaningful funeral services, this is an opportunity to address the needs of grieving Canberrans in personal and caring ways.
We provided the initial seed funding for a feasibility study three years ago and have worked alongside Tender to find a suitable site. Capital Airport Group have provided the new location and are project managing the fit-out for specific requirements.
