For Robert Servine, taking on the role of general manager at Green Connect is a full circle moment.
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After nearly ten years in the youth and community services field in Australia, Mr Servine is once again looking after people and planet.
Prior to moving to Australia from the United States, Mr Servine managed a program called Seattle Youth Garden Works, which hired homeless youth from the streets of Seattle to work on an organic farm, with the produce sold in a local farmers market.
"That was actually my favourite job of all time, and if I hadn't moved from the US, I would probably still be doing that," he said.
Now, Mr Servine manages an organisation that employs young people and refugees, working on a garden in a gully below Warrawong High School.
"When the opportunity came up with Green Connect, it was just too good to be true. I had to jump on it."
Mr Servine takes over from general manager Kylie Flament, who helped to turn a former dumping ground into an internationally awarded social enterprise.
In 2021, the organisation employed 106 young people and former refugees, kept 164 tonnes of waste out of landfill and grew and distributed 52,000 kilograms of food.
Six weeks into the job, Mr Servine said he's been welcomed into the organisation.
"I see that already, great work has been done, but I see potential for so much more, amazing work."
First on the list is to ensure that Green Connect is self-sustainable.
The organisation has five branches, including the farm in Lake Heights, a waste services stream, gardening and landscaping, labour hire arm and the Green Connect Op Shop, with locations in Unanderra and on the University of Wollongong campus.
Currently, the social enterprise generates 80 per cent of its own income, with the remaining 20 per cent coming from grants, foundations and donations. Mr Servine would like to see the organisation covering 100 per cent of its own running costs, with any grants an additional extra.
Mr Servine says this would enable the organisation to have more freedom, without being tied to grant conditions.
"If we do start a project, and we are fully reliant on funding ourselves, we can change directions on that project relatively quickly and easily."
The organisation may need that agility, with a number of headwinds facing the not-for-profit sector.
Despite the lifting of COVID restrictions, volunteer numbers have been slow to come back, and remain below pre-COVID levels. There has been no 'snap back' in the community sector.
"During COVID, in the lockdown, a lot of our businesses were closed, and so we're still rebuilding those just trying to get back to pre COVID numbers."
In addition, sources of grant funding have dried up, meaning organisations have to be more self-reliant, something that Mr Servine said he has witnessed overseas.
"I was in the not for profit world [in the US] around the time of the Global Financial Crisis, and I watched a lot of organisations that were relying on grants disappear, and so I think social enterprise is the way of the future for the charity landscape."
For Green Connect this may include looking at other locations where it can use its model of community farming to regenerate wastelands, or deepening its connections to the Illawarra community.
"We were looking for a new food hub to deliver our veggie boxes in Coledale and only one person we spoke to had actually heard of Green Connect. So I think we have a lot of marketing potential that we haven't tapped into," Mr Servine said.
Managing this growth while retaining to the organisation's principles of equal and fair pay, and doing what's good for the planet will be a challenge, but one that Mr Servine does not shy away from. In fact, Mr Servine is not one to compromise on strongly held principles.
Mr Servine was part of the 1999 Battle of Seattle, an anti-globalisation protest that occurred during the World Trade Organisation conference of 1999. The protest was one of the largest ever against economic globalisation and succeeded in highlighting the negative impact of globalisation while laying the foundation for movements from Occupy Wall Street in 2008 to the Global Climate Strike of 2019.
During the protests, Mr Servine says he was tear gassed nine times.
"I got shot with rubber bullets and pepper sprayed and I just felt so alive to know you're fighting for a good cause."
For a decade after that, Mr Servine moved around the globe in the networks that formed out of the anti-globalisation movement in the late 1990s and early 2000s and said this gives him the grounding for the work that he does today.
"That opened my eyes to the issues of the world, that helped me see the need that was there, for the planet and for people and that the unfair distribution of wealth, the overuse of resources. It made me want to fight for something better," he said.
"That time was a bit of an awakening."
Moving to Australia, Mr Servine found work in the family and youth sector, but said he found ways to connect the communities he was working in to the environment.
"I was working for the NSW Department of Communities and Justice and they were using styrofoam plates for meetings, so I put together a paper, presented it and ended up getting styrofoam banned," he said.
"I've always mixed my passions."
Another ten years on and now Mr Servine is looking forward to putting his principles into action as part of Green Connect.
"My goal in life is to leave the world better than I entered into it. And to do that, you actually have to actively work to improve things," he said.
"I really enjoy the opportunity to help people and the planet."
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