GeekAbility

GeekAbility is a social enterprise that provides life and digital skills training to young people with disabilities to improve their quality of life and prospects for paid employment.

GeekAbility uses technology to empower young people with disabilities to increase their digital literacy, no matter what their initial level of confidence or ability.

By working closely with corporate partners, GeekAbility will identify which skills are in demand and build an individual training plan around each student’s strengths and ambitions to prepare them for the workforce and give them the social skills and confidence to integrate into teams in the workplace.

GeekAbility will also provide support to employers to do get their workplaces disability-ready through audits and funded modifications to allow young people with a range of disabilities to work for them. Trainees and their families who can’t afford or don’t have access to the technology or connectivity they need to learn or access the internet will be assisted to acquire what they need to remove those barriers to learning and independent living.

The content and resources created by GeekAbility’s team of training specialists, support workers and trainees will be made available to international agencies to improve the lives of young people with disabilities across the globe, especially in developing countries where social safety nets are not available to the most vulnerable citizens and their families.

According to the Australian Digital Inclusion Index, more than 1 million people with disabilities in Australia do not have access to the internet, and over 85% of people with disabilities never find work in their lifetimes. This is a staggering statistic in a country with a population of only 24 million and where people with disabilities have much more support than in less-privileged countries.

GeekAbility aims to change this by training and connecting young people with disabilities with companies and organisations willing to give them a chance to put their skills to use.

GeekAbility is a Woodville Alliance social enterprise. With over 25 years of experience as a highly-respected provider of disability services, we see every day how much potential our clients have and how keen they are to have a purpose and make a contribution to working life.

Government agency Job Access has compelling evidence that people with disabilities are more productive, reliable and have lower recruitment costs and superior safety records than other workers.

GeekAbility provides solutions to employers to make their workplaces disability-ready and then gives them workers trained with the specific skills they need for their businesses.

Young people with disabilities will learn practical digital skills that will enable them to manage their daily lives more independently and increase the proportion that secure paid employment. This will build their confidence, give them a sense of purpose, relieve pressure on their families and carers, create more fulfilling and inclusive workplaces and reduce inequality.

The program will be delivered by trainers and support workers in GeekAbility learning centres and online, in the field through travel training and life skills, in workplaces through internships and mentoring and via accredited training with registered providers like TAFE.

Track registrations in the digital and vocational pathways - Register a pilot cohort of up to 40 students

Secure contracts for document digitisation and laptop recovery - Launch business services enterprise program

Completion of workplace engagement by full cohort - Work experience placements for all trainees

Most disability services have historically focussed on recreational activities and day care programs where clients are kept busy from 9am-3pm. GeekAbility will combine early intervention and the tailored use of technology to develop individual plans for all students that focus on incremental progress toward achieving their personal and professional goals.

Unlike general activity-based programs, GeekAbility will secure commercial work agreements that will set high expectations and deadlines that will need to be met by vocational teams supported by trainers. Processes will be broken down to component tasks that can be performed discreetly by students with high needs.

GeekAbility acknowledges that everyone is different and even though each student has an individual plan and goals, we can all learn from each other as we learn together.

Young people with disabilities are amongst the most vulnerable and disadvantaged in our community and this is why we want to create employment opportunities for them that will give them authentic commercial experience that will show prospective employers what they’re capable of. 

GeekAbility will employ suitable graduates as trainers, support workers and corporate consultants to audit and educate workplaces how to become disability–ready.

The GeekAbility pilot will be a full-time day program in south western Sydney, combined with field trips, online tutorials, expert workshops, 1-to-1 mentoring and workplace internships.

Costs to the students will be covered by the Australian government’s National Disability Insurance Scheme’s (NDIS) School Leaver Employment Supports, Finding and Keeping a Job and Smart and Skilled funding streams, including the fees charged by registered training organisations for accredited training for GeekAbility students.

Learning support teachers at high schools, disability employment services, government agencies making referrals and parents and carers attending expos have already been targeted to recruit our first cohort.

Woodville Alliance Ltd is a Deductible Gift Recipient not-for-profit community organisation that has been providing essential disability, community and child care services in the Greater Western Sydney region for over twenty five years. As a wholly-owned subsidiary, GeekAbility will operate as a standalone social enterprise but will be able to draw on centralised corporate services to keep overheads as low as possible.

Funding to cover student fees is available from the NDIS and this will provide the main source of funding until the enterprise projects become profitable.

Additional grant and philanthropic funding will also be sought to enable the enterprise to scale as fast as possible to help as many young people with disabilities to gain skills that will enable them to improve the quality of their lives and become more independent.

The National Disability Insurance Scheme was launched in mid-2016 and there are still implementation challenges as the scheme rolls out nationally. Woodville was one of the first organisations to participate in the scheme and there is increasing pressure to deliver more with less, so funding and policy uncertainty are the biggest risk factors at the moment.

The NDIS also gives clients greater freedom to manage their own plans and choose their own service providers, and although we believe this is a good thing, price competition from unscrupulous operators may also be a risk factor in the short term.

https://www.facebook.com/search/top/?q=woodville%20alliance

https://www.woodville.org.au/

https://www.woodville.org.au/disability-services/the-earth-centre/

Our Enterprise Project Manager has collaborated with a range of corporate partners as a foundation team member of the product philanthropy social enterprise Good360 Australia Ltd, including listed property groups like Goodman, retail giants like Woolworths, wholesalers like L’Oreal and technology companies like Atlassian.

This has demonstrated the potential for GeekAbility to draw on a range of experts and corporate resources to leverage their professional expertise, products, supply chains and philanthropic giving to reach critical mass faster and thereby help disadvantaged communities at a scale that makes a real difference.

We are in discussion with Fighting Chance to license their Jigsaw document scanning program as one of GeekAbility's enterprise projects.

We have successfully trialled an accredited introductory training course in Basic Computing developed in partnership with TAFE NSW.

Several other corporate partnerships are in advanced discussions.

The Junction Works; AFFORD; Creating Links; Disability Services Australia; My Home; Share Care