Funding Stream: Improving Financial Fairness

Queer Food is a queer and gender-diverse-led catering and food retail social enterprise. It increases queer and trans representation in the food industry and historical narratives by creating meals and products that share queer and trans stories.

Queer Food aims to increase representation, create meaningful employment opportunities and directly support LGBTQIA+ people through its social impact fund.

Led by Andy de Groot, a transmasculine person, Queer Food seeks to build on its catering operations in Canberra and expand into Sydney and Melbourne, while also growing its retail range to share stories from across Australia.

Funding Stream: Female-led Businesses

2022 AMP Foundation Tomorrow Maker

Challenge The Label (CTL) is a social enterprise speaker agency dedicated to amplifying the voices of diverse women.

Founded by Carla Raynes, CTL connects social entrepreneurs, leaders, and disruptors, many with personal complex life experiences including homelessness to share their stories, challenge societal labels, and inspire change.

Beyond a speaker agency, CTL is a movement that unites women through storytelling and conversation. Their merchandise further spreads this message, sparking conversations about resilience, leadership, and breaking stereotypes.

Funding Stream: Female-led Businesses

BLD Engineers delivers specialised engineering services across the railway, energy, roads, and construction sectors, with a focus on simplifying complex infrastructure projects. The team provides seamless, end-to-end support—from early development through to construction and final commissioning.

As a certified social enterprise, BLD Engineers is deeply committed to fostering inclusivity and diversity within the industry. The company creates career pathways for women, migrant, and refugee engineers, helping to break down systemic barriers and build a more representative workforce.

Already established in Victoria, Diana is now seeking to expand this model to other states. Through BLD Engineers, she is passionate about driving lasting industry transformation by extending opportunity, building talent, and creating systems where equity is built into every project.

Funding Stream: First Nations People

Knowledge Weaver is a knowing place - a digital learning space for learners to develop the understanding, skills and responsibilities to become good treaty partners. The platform aims to deliver critical literacy and civic education through both self-directed and community-led learning journeys.

Founded by Hayley McQuire, a proud Darumbal and South Sea Islander woman from Rockhampton, Central Queensland, and a passionate advocate for Indigenous social justice and First Nations-led education, Knowledge Weaver aims to weave Indigenous theory and scholarship with learners' lived experience to support their agency to question, shape and learn with purpose towards a fair and a just treaty futures.

Funding Stream: Female-led Businesses

CandleXchange is a circular economy social enterprise transforming the home fragrance industry by reducing waste, extending the life of candle containers, and supporting communities in need. Founded by Hayley Clarke and Karen Platt, CandleXchange demonstrates that sustainability and social impact can go hand in hand.

By partnering with eco-conscious individuals and businesses, CandleXchange has created a closed-loop system that keeps candle containers in use and out of landfill. In addition to the Return and Swap model, the UpCandle program collects containers from other candle brands, refills them, and donates to charities supporting domestic violence survivors as they move into their new homes.

CandleXchange aims to expand its reach by broadening return and swap operations, increasing collection points for UpCandle, and creating a culture of reuse. Each reused candle is a tangible reminder that circular design and community impact can start with simple actions

Funding Stream: Improving Financial Fairness

Boas Language Academy is a for-purpose language school, teaching English and other languages to children and adults in the Albury Wodonga region. Boas provides teacher training and employment pathways to migrant and refugees with native speaker proficiency, supporting them to become language teachers.

Born from Kristie's passion for regional development and inclusive communities, Boas' social mission is to turn language from a barrier to a connector. Kristie's vision is to make language learning accessible, enjoyable and impactful.

Based on the principles of inclusivity and cultural appreciation, Boas Language Academy aims to bring the community together and showcase the great value and potential of multilingualism in Australia.

Funding Stream: Female-led businesses

With over 25 years of experience in public space design, Obelia is focused on improving public spaces to be more inclusive and responsive to the needs of diverse communities.

Her social enterprise centres on improving spaces by better understanding the needs of those often overlooked in their design and management.

By equipping stakeholders with the right tools and insights, she helps them to recognise and respond to the needs of all public space users. The goal is to create healthier, more resilient communities where everyone, especially women and girls, can thrive.

Funding Stream: Improving Financial Fairness

Worthy Cause is a social enterprise that employs and empowers marginalised individuals who face complex barriers to employment. Through its cafés and cookie manufacturing initiative, Worthy Cause offers a structured six-month program designed to provide stable income, training, and counselling.

Founded by Rick, the enterprise is built on the belief that everyone deserves the opportunity to build a better future. Having overcome his own hardships, he created Worthy Cause to help others create the life they deserve.

Funding Stream: Female-led Businesses

WHO CARES – Mental Health Resilience Program aims to deliver paid wellbeing and mental health resilience programs to corporate and emergency service organisations, aligning with their mental health strategies.

Founded by Ronnie Benbow OAM, CEO of The Carers Foundation, the program draws on her team's expertise in resilience-building, stress management, and wellbeing education to develop high-quality programs tailored for businesses.

The social enterprise goal is to provide programs that include evidence-based, practical strategies to support employee mental health, while also helping organisations meet their corporate social responsibility objectives. It will also ensure that every paid session directly funds free wellbeing programs and workshops for unpaid carers through The Carers Foundation.

Funding Stream: Female-led businesses

The social enterprise idea is a mental health app tailored for primary and secondary school students.

The concept emerged from the growing mental health crisis among adolescents. As psychologists, Sarah and Karyn have firsthand experience in managing children's mental health and have witnessed the continued decline and resulting concern from parents and teachers.

The ultimate goal is to reduce youth suicide rates and improve the overall mental health of young Australians. They aim to proactively build coping skills and resilience in all children, including those without immediate mental health concerns.

Funding Stream: Improving Financial Fairness

Split the Profit is a social enterprise borne out of Sharin's extensive and diverse experience across sport, health promotion and as a professional athlete for a decade who attributes community sport as critical to her wellbeing when she was growing up with intersecting barriers around her identity.

Her mission is to ensure that everyone can participate in and benefit from grassroots sports, fostering a healthier, more connected society. With experience in the custom apparel industry servicing sports and corporate clients, Split the Profit plans to reinvest profits back into community grassroots sports through its social enterprise model to change the game; for good.

Sharin is driven to create meaningful change by lowering barriers so more Australians can access and participate in community sport.

Funding Stream: First Nations People

Project:herBEAUTY is a social enterprise founded by Tahlia Isaac, inspired by her own lived experience of incarceration and seeing firsthand how women struggle to find employment after release and continued training in hairdressing after release.

The social enterprise is a beauty salon designed to provide continuity of employment and training for First Nations women who have been incarcerated, from custody to the community. The salon will employ and empower women to reintegrate into their communities and rebuild their economic stability after release, contributing to a reduction in recidivism.

Project:herBEAUTY is committed to embracing transformative and restorative justice practices within the salon by repairing relationships, breaking down stigma and stereotypes, and strengthening community bonds through connection and yarns.