Page 3842 - Week 09 - Wednesday, 24 August 2011
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CDCA acts as a lobby group for relevant government departments and other organisations on behalf of deaf and hearing-impaired children, their parents and their families. Membership is open to parents, relatives and friends of deaf and hearing-impaired children and is $20 yearly. Members are sent regular email updates. They also hold social and educational events. The CDCA can also link newly diagnosed families to other families in similar situations. For further information and membership applications, people can contact telephone number 02 6284 8143 or visit the website, www.canberradeafkids.org.au.
Paperworks
DR BOURKE (Ginninderra) (7.11): On Friday, 12 August I was invited to open an art exhibition at the Belconnen Arts Centre which was organised by a group called Paperworks. Paperworks aims to engage in activities that will increase the participation of socially marginalised people in our community. These people may be marginalised due to a disability or social disadvantage.
Paperworks facilitates several activities, including an artisan studio which is run as part of a social enterprise to create handmade and other paper-craft products for sale. It also offers paper-making workshops to schools, community organisations and the wider community. Participants in Paperworks are encouraged to become more independent, to develop their skills, to foster new friendships and to interact with the wider community and art organisations.
I want to congratulate Paperworks on this year achieving one of its important goals—to employ artisans from socially marginalised groups in Canberra. At the moment, Paperworks-employed artisans have part-time rotational employment. Paperworks is looking at other ways of increasing employment and training opportunities for socially marginalised people in the Canberra community.
Paperworks is a good, local example of a social business. Social business, as the term is commonly used, was first defined by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Professor Muhammad Yunus. In Yunus’s definition, a social business is a non-loss, non-dividend company designed to address a social objective within the highly regulated marketplace of today. It is distinct from a not-for-profit organisation because the business should seek to generate a modest profit, but this profit is used to expand the company’s reach or improve the product or service as a way of subsidising the social mission. You could describe a social business as any business which has a social rather than a purely financial objective.
The ACT government is very happy to see the progress being made by Paperworks, which has been made possible by funding provided through Disability ACT.
Paperworks also runs two socially inclusive paper-making sessions on Fridays at Belconnen Arts Centre. The purpose is to use craft and art as a tool to improve social engagement.
The exhibition that I opened was called Transience. It was a collaboration of the Paperworks-employed artisans and the participants in the Friday morning and
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