Meet the advocates: spotlighting our March grant partners
Photo provided courtesy of the Alliance for Gambling Reform.
In March 2024, the Reichstein Foundation supported four organisations working across the social change ecosystem in Australia. Read on to learn more about their critical work and get in touch if you’re interested in supporting their efforts.
Antipoverty Centre
The Antipoverty Centre was established in 2021 and is run by people who rely on social security payments to live. The Centre believes that the experts on poverty and unemployment are the people who live it, and they recognise that the accessibility and adequacy of social security payments disproportionately harms already marginalised communities.
Since its establishment, the Antipoverty Centre has helped to drive a number of critical reforms, including blocking the Coalition’s attempts to make cashless welfare permanent, increasing the JobSeeker rate, and influencing NGOs, think tanks, government departments, academic researchers and other stakeholders to improve how they work with and learn from people with direct experience of poverty. The Antipoverty Centre has yet to receive unrestricted philanthropic support, and with core funding from the Reichstein Foundation the Centre will be able to cover basic operating costs and activities to strengthen their policy development and advocacy efforts.
Common Threads
It’s critical for First Nations advocates across the country to have spaces to connect, learn, build shared strategy and develop pathways forward, while also accessing the resources needed to run winning campaigns. In the absence of a peak body for First Nations advocacy and capacity building, Common Threads is filling a critical gap for First Nations people across Australia.
Led by Larissa Baldwin-Roberts and Millie Telford, together with Dr Jackie Huggins AM, and made possible with backbone support from GetUp and Australian Progress, Common Threads has been designed by First Nations people for First Nations change makers.
In this second pivotal year for the initiative, and with support from the Reichstein Foundation, the Common Threads team will be coordinating a three-day summit in May 2024. The aim of the summit will be to foster lasting connections and provide capacity building support that will help to re-energize First Nations advocacy and build collective power.
Alliance for Gambling Reform
Australians lose over $25 billion each year to gambling, the highest per capita spend in the world. These losses are disproportionately experienced by people on low incomes and drive a number of other social and economic issues.
Alliance for Gambling Reform (AGR) is a national peak body that champions regulations and policies to prevent and reduce gambling harm. It has over 60 members, including local governments, churches, and organisations formed by people affected by gambling.
Over the last year momentum has been building for better law, policy and practice to reduce gambling harm. Unprecedented public debate around gambling reform and a growing appetite for reform was evident in 2023, including throughout the Federal Parliamentary Inquiry into Online Gambling. With the Reichstein Foundation’s continued support in 2024 AGR plans to continue responding to the Inquiry into Online Gambling, advocate for a cashless gambling card at State and Territory level, and campaign to end gambling ads.
Fair Agenda
Fair Agenda is a community of 43,000 Australians campaigning for a fair and gender-equal future. In 2024, Fair Agenda plans to engage with the Australian Law Reform Commission (ALRC) Inquiry into Justice Responses to Sexual Violence.
With the Reichstein Foundation’s support, Fair Agenda will be addressing the barriers to forensic medical examinations, which support victim-survivors collect evidence to help identify the perpetrator. In many parts of the country this service can’t be accessed quickly or locally, meaning someone may be asked to wait or drive hours to another hospital. In the meantime, they will be told not to drink, change, shower or go to the toilet. The problem is particularly acute in remote and regional areas.
Fair Agenda will focus on shaping and securing reform recommendations while building public awareness of the problems and solutions.
