For many years, most of my conversations with this community have been about business: how we grow it, lead it, build stronger teams and create opportunities.
Lately, I’ve been thinking about a slightly different question.
What else becomes possible with what we’ve built?
Over a working life, we accumulate much more than commercial success. We build experience, judgment, relationships and the ability to get things done. We learn how important good foundations are, how the right support can make a big difference, and what can happen when people are truly given the opportunity to develop their potential.
That thinking recently led me somewhere I hadn’t expected and, like many things in my working life, it started through a connection.
I have a respected friend and colleague in a business I know well to thank for introducing me to an organisation I might otherwise never have encountered. Their involvement with a Sydney charity supporting young people experiencing homelessness prompted me to look a little closer.
Initially, I understood its role fairly simply: helping provide young people with somewhere safe to stay when they needed it.
That alone is worthwhile.
But as I learned more, I realised there was much more going on.
What began to stand out to me was not simply the circumstances these young people had come from, but what could happen when they were given stability, support and people who stayed alongside them.
Young people who had experienced uncertainty and disruption were being given the time and support to rebuild confidence, continue their education, find employment, learn practical life skills, reconnect with family where appropriate and begin imagining a future for themselves.
A safe place to live is important. However, it is really the foundation for something much bigger.
This is an organisation prepared to stay alongside a young person for years rather than weeks, supporting them as they move towards independence.
That changed the way I saw the organisation.
It wasn’t simply responding to homelessness. It was helping young people build the foundations from which independence could become possible.
As a father and now a grandfather, the importance of stability and support in a young person’s life is very real to me. But there was also something about this approach that connected strongly with much of what I have believed throughout my career: give people strong foundations, back their potential, provide the right support and give them the opportunity to build something for themselves.
The organisation I am referring to is Stepping Stone House.
The more I understood, the more I wanted to be involved. So I reached out. The timing was right, and after a few conversations, I was privileged to accept an invitation to join the board.
I’m very conscious that I’m stepping into something others have spent many years building. I have enormous respect for the Founders, Max and Joan Connery, who had the vision to begin Stepping Stone House, the board members who carry that responsibility forward and, most importantly, the leadership and care team who support the young people. What exists today is the result of their commitment, persistence and belief in what these young people can become, and I’m fortunate to now play a small part contributing to the organisation.
What I discovered along the way
One of the things that surprised me as I learned more was how incomplete my own picture of youth homelessness had been.
When we hear the word homelessness, many of us probably picture someone sleeping rough.
But that is only a small part of the story.
There are an estimated 45,850 people under the age of 25 experiencing homelessness in Australia, yet only around 2% are living in tents or improvised dwellings.
Many are living in severely crowded accommodation, homelessness services or temporarily with other households.
A great deal of youth homelessness is therefore happening out of sight.
And once I began to understand that, I also began to understand why simply providing a bed is not the answer.
What appeals to me is the focus on what happens next: helping a young person build stability, confidence, skills and relationships, and giving them the time and support to create a future of their own.
Since 1989, Stepping Stone House has directly helped more than 600 young people on their journey towards independence.
What can we bring?
That led me back to you, the community I have worked with and communicated with over many years.
You are people who know how to make things happen.
You have built businesses, created jobs, developed people, led teams, solved problems and built networks of your own.
The question isn’t whether people in our business community care about young people facing circumstances like these.
I think the more interesting question is:
What could happen if we brought some of what we have learned, built and accumulated into helping them?
That might be through financial support, leadership training, mentoring, relationship building or simply the ability to bring other people together around something worthwhile.
I do think there are people in this community who, like me, will be interested in contributing to make a difference.
And perhaps the best place to start is with something we can do together?
Sleep Under the Stars
On Friday 16 October, I’ll be taking part in Sleep Under the Stars, Stepping Stone House’s major annual fundraising event, on the Concert Lawn at Taronga Zoo.
The idea is simple: spend a night under the stars and raise funds to help Stepping Stone House provide long term housing and support for young people who need it.
You can join me at Taronga Zoo as an individual, with family and friends, or bring together a workplace or business team. I’d particularly love to see businesses turn it into something their teams can do together.
If sleeping out isn’t practical for you, you can still contribute by supporting my sleepout and helping raise funds for Stepping Stone House.
It is a tangible way to contribute, raise funds and introduce more people to the work of Stepping Stone House.
For me, it is also a starting point.
If we can use some of what we have built through business to help even one young person establish the foundations for a different future, that seems like a very worthwhile investment.
I hope you’ll join me.
Anthony