Volunteering Services Australia (VSA) and International Day of People with Disabilities Social Enterprise Fund (IDPWDSEF) promotes the recognition and celebration of diversity in all its forms through continued active community engagement initiatives. Such initiatives are underpinned by volunteer citizens who champion the celebration of the UN's International Day of People with Disabilities (IDPWD) within and across communities - early learning centres, schools, organisations, NGOs, NFPs and all levels of government. Promotion of IDPWD in this way provides foundations for discourse within and across community stakeholders regarding diversity, inclusion, discrimination, and economic empowerment of people living with a disability.

This initiative: - Creates opportunities for skills development for volunteers in alignment with workforce objectives under Australia's National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS). In effect, this provides a pathway through which future disability services professionals, and people living with a disability in particular, become 'workforce ready' to ultimately invest their skills, resources and attitudes in application to the implementation of the NDIS; - Promotes discourse within and across communities relative to matters of inclusion, diversity, discrimination, the systemic and historic treatment of people with a disability, biopsychosocial paradigms and the ICF, the economic independence and empowerment of people living with a disability, and so on. The active community engagement which underpins this promotion is twofold: 1) educators/ organisations/ NGOs/ NFPs/ government stakeholders are encouraged and supported to use IDPWD as a day of learning and reflection; and 2) volunteers themselves become agents for change within their own communities and social networks. Community engagement undertaken in this way and with these messages is an impactful mechanism for change, and capitalises upon the positive politicisation of disability services as well as corporate social responsibility agendas of organisations; - Promotes the NDIS as a 'once in a lifetime' social revolution which both champions the rights of people living with a disability to be the experts in their own lives, and empowers them to do so. The promoting of the IDPWD Social Enterprise Fund across corporate and social environments builds organic opportunities for people living with a disability and their supporters to seek capital funding and mentoring support to develop, commence or expand their social enterprise initiative. IDPWDSEF funds capital items, start-up costs, growth funding, and business mentorship (including marketing/ business plans, social media platform development, and so on) to cooperatives, social enterprises and microbusinesses which meet the Fund's social objectives. IDPWDSEF mandates the inclusion of social outcomes and social impact evaluations within all supported social enterprises, and utilises partnerships with academic research and evaluation partners to achieve this objective. The fund bears the cost and publication of all evaluative measures. To support the creation of the social enterprises/ microbusinesses, IDPWDSEF engages volunteer business mentors (industry experts), undergraduate and postgraduate business/ allied health students (through tertiary partnerships) to support the development of the initiatives. Additionally, IDPWDSEF funds the establishment of co-design and human-centred design forums and opportunities which feature people with lived experience of disability and their families, carers and supporters.

The growth of social enterprises which exist for the economic empowerment and financial independence of people living with a disability will build the capacity of people living with a disability to enhance skill development across contexts. Such skill development may be supported (i.e. development of enterprises which employ people living with a disability and which align with the IDPWDSEF's social objectives) or may be independent (i.e. people living with a disability who will be business owners/ operators in their own right). A medium to long-term objective of IDPWDSEF is to support people living with a disability to become registered providers of support under the NDIS. Doing so will, in addition to actualising opportunities for self-employment, also create opportunities whereby the richness of lived experiences can be invested into the service delivery landscape of the NDIS. As opportunities for power transferral and knowledge transferral are actualised, it is hypothesised that the fundamental pillars of the NDIS, being choice and control, will be further enabled for people living with a disability, and to a more considerable and sustainable extent. Critically, and as previously discussed, social capital will be built through engagement of volunteers both initially (i.e. through active community engagement initiatives) and throughout (i.e. through business mentoring/ coaching/ consultation, through social outcome/ impact evaluations and through participation in inclusive co-design/ human-centred design groups). In this way, volunteerism is seen to be a pivotal element in the efficacy and sustainability of the initiative. It is at this point that the elements of the initiative converge into order: - Community stakeholders (e.g. schools, corporates, NGOs, NFPs and government) are engaged and supported to actively consider and reflect upon disability, inclusion, discrimination and empowerment within their own contexts; - People living with a disability are materially supported to develop opportunities for self economic empowerment as well as to exert choice and control under the NDIS, and - Social capital is built and utilised through engagement of volunteers who support each of the preceding elements. This social capital is seen to be cyclical given that such volunteers will comprise the future disability services workforce.

Both VSA and IDPWDSEF are registered charities within Australia, and are each governed by independent and volunteer Boards of Directors. Each organisation is regulated under the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) and the Australian Charities and Not For Profits Commission (ACNC). Each organisation maintains DGR endorsement from the Australia Taxation Office (ATO). The IDPWDSEF Board of Directors oversee the Social Enterprise Grant program which exists to fund social enterprises, cooperatives and other initiatives which: - Are owned and operated by people living with a disability, or - Employ >50% of people living with a disability, or - Exist solely to promote the economic independence and financial empowerment of people living with a disability in Australia. Under a formal partnership arrangement, VSA is contracted to IDPWDSEF to undertake community consultation and engagement initiatives which focus both on the Social Enterprise Grants program in addition to promoting celebration of IDPWD within communities, workplaces and schools.

Volunteering Services Australia, International Day of People with Disabilities Social Enterprise Fund