Whitebox creating meaningful jobs

Whitebox Enterprises is breaking down barriers to employment for young long-term unemployed Australians and creating better lives and futures along with meaningful jobs.

Whitebox builds social enterprises that offer industry-focused training and job opportunities, before transitioning participants and their skills and experience to the open labour market.

The pilot initiative is funded by the Department of Employment, Small Business and Training (DESBT) and the Paul Ramsay Foundation. The Commission contributed $200,000 to DESBT to help support the initiative, which aligns with the Better lives focus area of the Shifting minds: Queensland Mental Health, Alcohol and Other Drugs Strategic Plan 2018-2023.

The Whitebox philosophy is that a job is worth much more than just a wage—it gives an individual independence, an improved sense of self-worth and confidence, stronger relationships and improved health and wellbeing. Importantly, a job also creates value for society, reducing contact with justice services and use of health services, and increasing housing security and community connections and support.

Whitebox chief executive Luke Terry says Whitebox creates market-led, large scale, job-focused social enterprises for young people who haven’t had a job in 12 months or more.

“Our goal is to create 100 jobs in the first year and build 15 social enterprises and 5000 jobs by 2030,” Mr Terry said.

“We work with vulnerable young Queenslanders who are at the bottom of the employment ladder, including young people living with mental illness or disability, refugees and asylum seekers, ex-offenders and those needing a pathway out of homelessness.”

The statistics around youth unemployment are stark:

• youth unemployment is double the average Australian unemployment rate
• people with mental illness are almost 20 per cent less likely to have a job than others
• nearly half of all working age Australians with disability don’t have a job (that’s more than one million people)
• less than half all working age Indigenous Australians have a job
• six months after release, almost 70 per cent of ex-offenders in Queensland are unemployed
• only six per cent of refugees have a job six months after they arrive in Australia
• youth under-employment sits at 31 per cent for 15-19 year-olds and 19.8 per cent for 20-24 year-olds.

Current responses to unemployment include Disability Employment Services (DES), which costs $800 million and gets an average 26,680 people into work each year, with about 60 per cent of these people unemployed again just 13 weeks later.

That means our current system spends $29,985 to get someone with a disability a job, and only 40 per cent of those people will still be at work three months later.

“On the flip side, jobs-focused social enterprises pay award wages, and on average have more than 80 per cent still working a year on,” Mr Terry said. “It’s very much about sustainable long-term jobs.”

Whitebox’s focus includes building new social enterprises, supporting existing social enterprises to replicate and grow, creating a social enterprise district in Queensland, and providing capital through a specialised partnership fund.

The project to create a social enterprise district is well under way with a $2 million project to refurbish a disused shed on the Mt Gravatt TAFE campus, in the process training young people and creating 60 real paid jobs.

Other projects supported by Whitebox include Mantua Sewing Studio, which employs women from refugee and migrant backgrounds to provide high-quality design and manufacturing services for Australian clothing labels; and Hotel Housekeeping, an on-demand housekeeper service that has signed two major hotels in Brisbane and has a goal of signing five more in the next six months.

Mr Terry said it was important to put social enterprises together in a supportive ecosystem where they could create valuable connections and thrive.

“Our ultimate goal is to create jobs and change lives by spreading Whitebox’s model right across Australia.

“We know there is a better way than the current system of unemployment benefits and short-term job access schemes. It’s a way that doesn’t cost the system as much and has better outcomes for the people it's supporting.”

More about Whitebox Enterprises