2010 Shortlist

It was a difficult choice for our judges out of the 258 applications put forward for the Bold Ideas Better Lives Challenge. There were applications from every state and territory in Australia (and some from overseas as well). There were also applications addressing an incredibly diverse range of issues in many different ways. That made it a challenge for our judges - how to compare apples with apples when there were so many different fruit in the mix.

In the end, as they worked through the applications a number of key themes came to the fore and the final 12 applications shortlisted through to Stage 2 reflect or address these themes in a variety of ways.

Social enterprise was a key theme with a lot of projects put forward based on an enterprise model with positive and in some cases profound social impacts. Tjungu Learning Country demonstrated that not only did they have a focus on social enterprise but that the idea went beyond one single enterprise to a whole approach to social entrepreneurship and opportunities for communities on the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) lands in northern South Australia. The Anangu elders, in partnership with UniSA and UnitingCare Wesley, are driving a social entrepreneurship project that not only focusses on building community capacity for innovative Anangu social enterprises but also addresses their desire for greater community and government engagement to 'walk with them' on their journey to sustain culture and regain quality of life.

Still at the social enterprise end of the spectrum but with a very different issue and approach, Who Gives A Crap (TM) will sell non-profit environmentally sustainable toilet paper with 100% of profits going to environmental projects in Australia and water sanitation projects in the developing world.

The environment and, particularly, energy use and adaptations to address climate change were high on Challenge applicants agendas and one project, Green Choice, took a broad and ambitious view to addressing the uptake of green energy by the general public.

A strong theme emerged around ageing society and projects within this theme ranged from imagining the future of digital integration in aged care facilities like the Aged Care Digital Lifestyles project through to the national roll out of the Recharge Scheme, a simple and effective means of ensuring that people who use an electric scooter or wheelchair can travel without the fear of being stranded by a flat battery. This project has impacts for both the aged and disability sectors.

The team from italk have prototyped an idea in Central Australia that can communicate with any group of people, no matter their language or literacy level. A visual and spoken medium for presenting information and sharing stories, italk is ready to scale up their project and is partnering with BeyondBlue, the national depression initiative, to test applications of their prototype in culturally and linguistically diverse residents.

Still within the theme of inclusive communication, Employment Pathways for Deaf Students, is an exciting project aiming to develop work places tools and software to remove barriers that exist around employment of deaf people springing from the work being done by the Victorian College for the Deaf in partnership with Madcap Cafe.

Those projects also came under the social isolation theme which was one of the strongest issue areas to emerge out of the Challenge. There was strong representation from projects looking for digital reponses to social isolation and connecting communities as well and two of the best of these, Aroundyou.com.au and Streetcloud, are through to the shortlist with different models and approaches but a similar end goal of impacting positively on social isolation.

Changing spaces to encourage greater community was another popular approach to dealing with issues of social isolation, social exclusion and community building. The judges were particularly impressed by Renew Australia who will be developing a practical tool set for communities to use the Renew model. The Renew model has already been successfully implemented in Newcastle with new pilots now running in Townsville and Adelaide and fledgling pilots getting off the ground in more than 10 other cities and towns around Australia.

Storytelling and story exchange as both social inclusion and behavioural change models were also strongly represented in the applications for the Challenge, especially in the form of websites. Hello Sunday Morning was one of the best of these applications using existing social media connected with a hub site to address the culture of binge-drinking in Australia.

And last, but not least, there was a key theme about donations and giving and particularly how to make giving your spare change to organisations doing good work with communities a simpler, easier, 'no brainer' option. Micro Donations believe that most consumers are willing to give small change either by 'rounding up' bills or adding a small donation to purchases and they want to explore using online technology platforms to collect micro donations from the public that can be directed into communities to improve lives.

It wasn't easy choosing 12 to take through to the shortlist stage and there were so many great ideas put forward - if you'd like to see the pitches (the 1-3 minute media files) of this year's applicants, you can check them out on our TACSI Challenge Vimeo channel.