Community matters made Pozible

Here at somethingyousaid.com, we love a good community project and when it empowers young people, even better.

For the first time, the unique collaboration between Grill’d and Pozible, “Made Pozible with Local Matters Community Collection” is giving three Melbourne-based start-up community projects, all led by young adults, the chance to gain a $2,000 funding boost.

All three finalists are diverse groups led by locals in their twenties, and all with one common goal – with a creative passion and social conscious, they aim to make a positive difference across their local communities.

In brief, I can only give these groups a slice of the write up they deserve in chatting to each of them, but please click on the link at the end of the interview for more information and to pledge your support. Here I go, the three finalists…

HoMie 
Nick Pearce and his team owe their original success to a one-off event, ‘Street Store’ in December, inspiring this bunch of cool cats to turn their vision from a molehill into a mountain so to speak. HoMie is a pop-up shop providing free, first hand quality clothing for Melbourne’s homeless community, as well as workshops for those living on the streets to improve their skills and employability.

They are passionate about their cause in everything they do, from the shop and workshops to a two-day sleep out in April, which allowed them to experience homelessness first hand. Nick said, “It was an incredibly humbling experience and a real physical and mental battle”.

Speaking with these guys it is refreshing to see a fresh, creative approach to what is commonly seen as a bureaucratic issue with ‘big wigs’ talking rather than doing.

HoMie are not just content talking about the issue, but also see it from a real perspective; building rapport with the homeless community and working together with them to make an actual impactive difference that translates directly on the lives of those who sleep on our streets.

Many Hands 
Josh Lynch and friends were inspired when after the typhoon hit Central Philippines they reached out to friends, families and followers through social media channels and asked them to donate to the Red Cross appeal in return for a print of their works. The response was amazing and got them to thinking; through this Many Hands was born.

In speaking with Josh he seems one of those genius types, the ‘unicorns’ as I like to refer to them – creatively expressive but with a business head on his shoulder to harness thoughts into actions. He saw the opportunity to connect emerging and established artists with everyday art fans and local causes; providing a platform for artists to use their skillsets to give back, and buyers to buy art and do good.

What makes these guys a unique commodity is their vision to see art not only as an economic tool to raise funds, but also as the art of communicative inspiration. Josh said, “Many Hands hopes to go on and empower the less fortunate and allow them to express themselves and tell their stories”.

Youth Food Movement Melbourne
Sophie Lamond first stumbled across the Youth Food Movement in Sydney and upon moving to Melbourne thought to herself, heck why are these conversations not happening here, they should be and I’m going to bring it to the table (see what I did there). And we think rightly so, we all eat in a daily basis…some more than others (I’m thinking cake!).

Youth Food Movement is all about making food easy to understand and is committed to fostering a strong desire in people to care about where their food comes from.

Hosting fun and engaging events they hope to make the food system more palatable, encouraging the conversations that ask where food comes from, who is responsible for production and how can we continue to eat for a sustainable future.

Put beautifully simple, Sophie said, “Food should be easy to understand” and with her growing team in Melbourne, working with other young people from teachers and urban horticulturists to garlic farmers, watch this space.

Simon Crowe, Grill’d Founder and MD, says: ‘”We’ve been proudly supporting the community with our Local Matters program for a number of years now… At Grill’d we pride ourselves on doing things a little differently so it’s great to support projects that reflect our love of being unique and giving back.”

Alan Crabbe, Pozible Co-Founder, added: “Our Community category on Pozible grew by 70 per cent last year making it clear that more people, especially youth, are taking pride in their local community and proactively searching for ways to make a positive change.”

It’s hard not to look at initiatives such as these and get inspired. It gets you thinking, if a group of young people can put their heads together and come up with a social movement that makes a difference to this little world of ours then perhaps we can all take a little more pride in our local surroundings – Go on pick up that litter someone else dropped, spare your morning coffee fund for that homeless guy you pass most mornings, buy your Sunday roast rack from a local butcher.

Pay it forward so to speak, and in the meantime again, please pop to www.Pozible.com/made-pozible for more information on making a pledge to get these projects off the ground. Don’t delay, you have less than a day to do so.

Words and pictures by Terri Prior.