Our impact

Key Impacts

Currently, our contribution helps support 80 local rangers working in The Bukit Tigapuluh Landscape which equates to:

• 38,000 hectares of rainforest protected
• 1,600 Orangutans protected
• Every ranger protects 10km² of rainforest and 20 Orangutans. Protecting Orangutans in their natural environment costs 12 times less than rehabilitating and reintroducing into the wild. It also preserves many other species at the same time like Tigers and Elephants.

The WPU program is also an important community engagement activity, providing employment opportunities for locals who would otherwise be employed in logging and palm oil plantations. The rangers receive extensive training in emergency response first aid, wildlife crime investigation, surveying techniques and report writing.

Wildlife Protection Unit's

We have been supporting The Orangutan Project since 2014 by helping fund their Wildlife Protection Units (WPU) and Ecosystem Monitoring Units, which work to train locally-staffed ranger teams, monitor wildlife using camera traps, support Orangutan monitoring teams and conduct anti-poaching patrols.

WPU’s work in the most important areas across The Bukit Tigapuluh, particularly across critical buffer zones surrounding the landscape, where more challenging activities happen. The Bukit Tigapuluh (BTP) Landscape encompasses one of the largest remaining lowland forests in Sumatra.

Key Impacts

Since 2014, our four years of support have contributed to help Free to Shine grow to:

• Enrol 743 girls in schooling (up from 200 in 2013)
• Deliver 600+ bikes,
• Supply 500+ water filters, Teach 100+ community classes
• Build 15+ houses
• Develop 50+ new village partnerships
• Employ 15+ staff (made up of education officers and social workers)

The culminating impact of all this work is that 743 girls have now been protected from sex trafficking. Furthermore, many girls and their families are now thriving, building stronger, more resilient futures for themselvesand their communities.

Free to Shine: 743 girls protected

We have been supporting Free to Shine since 2014 and have seen an amazing organisation grow and thrive. Free to Shine is a human rights organisation working in collaboration with communities and local governments in Cambodia to enable girls to grow into empowered female leaders.

They believe children should be in schools, not brothels. Through our community grants, we have supported the core work of Free to Shine, which focuses on helping keep young rural girls, at risk of sex trafficking, in school. This is achieved by supporting educational expenses, providing wrap around family support (through social workers and education officers), delivering community education programs, building new homes, distributing water filters and developing more village partnerships.

Key Impacts

• Australian plant-based start-ups have doubled in 2019, from 5 – 10, as a result of facilitated connections between plant-based and cell-based start ups to relevant support and advice partners.
• Provided strategic advice, business ideas and introductions over 70 meetings to 6 Australian plant-based meat ventures and 2 Australian cell-based meat start-ups, as well as several others in New Zealand and Singapore, and two European start-ups looking to launch in Australia and New Zealand.  
• Organised and hosted the first ever Australian investor pitch event for plant-based and cell-based meat start-ups in July, 2019.
• Tripled the size of it’s investor network, connecting more start-ups with potential investors. 
• Developed first of their kind industry research reports:
  • Meat the Alternative 
  • Meat Reimagined
  • Market Research with Life Health Foods and Colmar Brunton

Theory of Change: Reducing the demand for animal suffering

According to Project Drawdown¹, shifting to a plant-based diet is the 4th most effective demand-side solution to impacting climate change. Livestock's significant carbon emmissions derive from things such as methane emissions and corollary carbon impacts from deforestation practices for grazing. Traditional forms of livestock agriculture not only pose a great threat to the climate, but inflict immense amounts of animal suffering - particularly through factory farming. 

Given a signifcant proportion of animal meat proteins are supplied through factory farming - and factory farming is the leading form of animal suffering - supporting the acceleration towards plant-based and cell-based meats as replacement proteins will reduce animal suffering. 

We’re funding Food Frontier, Australia and New Zealand’s think tank and industry accelerator for plant-based meat alternatives and cell-based meat alternatives. Specifically, our funding will focus on working with start-ups, investors, manufacturers, retailers and government to accelerate the industy and develop a thriving alternative proteins market.

^{1 Project Drawdown: https://www.drawdown.org/solutions}

One Girl's LaunchPad Program

One Girl’s mission is to harness the power of education to drive change for girls and their communities. In 2018, we supported One Girl’s LaunchPad program in Sierra Leone through our community grants program. 

One Girl’s LaunchPad program aims to overcome the barriers girls face in attending and succeeding in school due to lack of safe water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) facilities, and adequate education about WASH and menstrual hygiene management (MHM).

The program has 3 focus areas:

1. Make sure women and girls in Sierra Leone have access to affordable, hygienic sanitary products;
2. Educate communities on menstrual hygiene management, and dispel the myths that cause girls and women to live in shame and silence; and
3. Empower local women —LaunchPad Champions — to run the program themselves, giving them a source of income and the ability to lead the change within their communities².

^{1 One Girl 2018 Annual Report: https://www.onegirl.org.au/annual-report-2018}

^{2 One Girl LaunchPad Evaluation: https://www.onegirl.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Were_Talking_Periods_ReportSMALL.pdf}