WA Social Enterprise Funding Grants

The Western Australia Government has delivered the first round of grants from its $10million Social Enterprise Fund.

WA Premier Colin Barnett has announced that six organisations would share in the first round of funding of $239,000 to set up social enterprise programs, designed to create social value through a trading business.

The Association for the Blind of WA will take the first steps to establish a pool of consultants to advise organisations on the accessibility of their services for people with disabilities, using funding from the Social Enterprise Fund.

The association will get $50,000 to start planning a business to employ visually impaired ‘usability consultants’ to work with organisations to identify and eliminate the barriers people with a disability may face when accessing services.

The Social Enterprise Fund was launched in April to support Not for Profit organisations to undertake new own enterprises to benefit Western Australian communities or to provide financial support to strengthen their existing social enterprise businesses. 

Other successful applicants include:

• Befriend Inc for the eFriends Project, encouraging participants to overcome isolation
• Dismantle for a project re-assembling recycled bicycles
• Bridging the Gap for the Cleaning Up Clearing Out project to employ socially disadvantaged people in a commercial cleaning business
• CASE for Refugees to establish a commercial legal and migration service
• Wunan Foundation to offer business support to Aboriginal organisations

Further information available from Department for Communities website.