In December 2017 over 1,300 children with disability, parents, siblings and carers experienced the magic of Victoria’s inaugural Dream Night at the Zoo. The event was organised by The Association for Children with Disability with support from Zoos Victoria and Gandel Foundation, and it was a huge success.

A VICSEG New Futures education program that was seed-funded by Gandel Foundation and then supported through a multi-year grant won the 2017 Victorian Multicultural Commission’s Award for Excellence in Education. This award recognises outstanding educational practice which enhances intercultural understanding and meets the needs of students from diverse communities.

Phoenix Edge is an open access workshop program for young people aged 16 to 25, who live in the Maribyrnong region. The program supports young people to step into leadership roles, share in the decision-making, find their place and tackle the big issues in their community throuogh theatre. Particiapnts do this through a fun and structured creative process of weekly workshops with other emerging artists and mentors.

The YMCA ReBuild program is a social enterprise that provides quality facility maintenance services in Melbourne. Their distinct point of difference is that they employ young people who have been involved in, or who are at risk of being involved in, the criminal justice system, and who are looking to turn their lives around.

The annual Access pop-up Café this year was the centrepiece of the Glen Eira City Council Social Inclusion week and received a huge amount of community support.

Sixteen young people with a disability have been given the opportunity to present their own radio program as part of the Youth Media Diversity Partnerships Program at SYN Media. SYN is a media organisation that offers radio, TV and digital media opportunities in Melbourne, and it strives to provide inclusive media platforms that are open to all young people. For young people with a disability the media industry is still largely inaccessible and SYN decided to develop a 12 month project to help address this issue, with funding support from Gandel Foundation.

The Home STREAT Home crowdfunding campaign, which is hoping to raise $100,000 by mid-July, has already raised over $60,000 with the help of a Community Grant from Gandel Foundation that matched dollar-for-dollar the first $30,000 of donations.

Children living with life-threatening conditions and their families located in Bendigo and the region will now receive much-needed support with the opening of a local Very Special Kids office in May 2016.

MIDY is a mobile-phone based system that is designed to help reduce alcohol consumption by young people. MIDY (Mobile Intervention for Drinking in Young people), provides personalised feedback by way of sending tailored SMS messages to youth while they are drinking alcohol.