Image: UWA Bachelor of Business student, Rain Leung, on-site to help Good Sammy Enterprises with community engagement as an Event Management Intern.
Through a partnership between Good Sammy Enterprises and the McCusker Centre for Citizenship at UWA (the Centre), UWA students are gaining insights into disability employment as they get hands-on experience working with the impactful social enterprise.
Kane Blackman, CEO of Good Sammy since February 2022, said he was excited to be a part of the Centre’s internship program this year and into the future.
“We regard the McCusker Centre for Citizenship’s internship program as an outstanding option for students considering pathways to employment. We are delighted to partner with the Centre and excited to give UWA student interns opportunities to work with people with disability and gain exposure to disability employment, and to increase their awareness of disability issues in the community,” Mr Blackman said.
Seven students have undertaken an internship at Good Sammy so far this year across a variety of roles, including research, volunteer and event coordination as well as HR, policy and governance support. Another five students commenced Semester 2 internship roles with Good Sammy last week.
“Good Sammy is an iconic WA not-for-profit social enterprise. We have a workforce of almost 700 people; of those, there are almost 400 employees with disability,” Mr Kane said.
“In WA we have an unemployment rate of 3.5%, however 10% of Western Australians of working age with disability are unemployed, and 20% with intellectual disability are unemployed. This means that there are 100,000 Western Australians with a disability of working age not in a job – we have this talent pool hiding in plain sight.
“Good Sammy had several UWA students join us over the recent winter internship round; the program allowed them to gain insight into a for-purpose organisation that was focused on improving economic and social participation of people with disability. Importantly, the students saw the importance of how prudent commercial management can also deliver positive social outcomes,” he said.
The most well-known of the Good Sammy businesses are their 27 retail stores that see over 25,000 people visit every week, however the organisation also runs a logistics social enterprise, with 15 trucks and drivers with disability, gardening and hospitality social enterprises, a training academy, an open employment transition team, an ecommerce store, and a container recycling business with three drive through locations and over 450 community collection points options that that recycles hundreds of thousands of containers a week.
Mr Blackman said that internships with Good Sammy gave students opportunities to contribute to the circular economy, in addition to the chance to make meaningful contributions to increase employment options for members of the WA community with disability.
“We have been delighted with the calibre of interns coming through the program and look forward to continuing the partnership.
“These leaders of tomorrow will take their recently acquired visibility of disability to improve the inclusion and accessibility of the workplaces that they will lead in the future.”