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TRANSCRIPT
The simple pleasure of a well-made cup of coffee takes on a different meaning for Jim Mackey.
"I'm the only one armed barista that I know of in Hobart, if not further than that."
He had a stroke at 29 years old, which has affected his memory and movement.
“It robbed me from , it put me in a wheelchair firstly, I was in a wheelchair for a year and it robbed me of any sort of skill of making memories, for two years after my stroke, I didn't, I don't even have memories, it's all just a bit blurred, but my memories progressively gotten better. Working here at Hamlet's definitely helped me achieve that."
He's among more than 700 people trained at social enterprise cafe Hamlet, in Hobart, in almost 10 years.
Hamlet CEO and co-founder Emily Briffa recently celebrated the graduation of 14 more people from the café’s training programs.
“That's kind of representative of what's happening in Tasmania. Tasmania does have the highest rates of people with disability in the country and the lowest employment outcomes for that cohort and there’s also a lot of other factors that can make that situation more challenging, we also have the lowest rates of literacy, lowest digital access, some of the worst transport, all these sort of things that can compound that inability to secure employment outcomes and I think what Hamlet does really beautifully is we do provide that really individualised wrap-around support to participants engaging in our training programs so that they can actually have a really successful time I n the training program itself but also go on to have positive outcomes in their day to day life."
She’s the Tasmanian finalist in the Local Hero Category at the Australian of the Year Awards on Sunday.
She first worked at a social enterprise café when living in Melbourne before setting up Hamlet in Hobart.
“During my time at Kinfolk I really fell in love with the idea of social enterprise, I loved the idea that you could allow people to create social value in the community without changing their daily routine, the simple act of buying a cup of coffee could actually have an impact in the community. That sort of idea that people were doing something they were going to do anyway. They weren't actively making a choice to support a charity.”
The café is also helping to fill gap in the hospitality sector.
“I kept sort of hearing more and more about the issue of unemployment in Tasmania and working in the hospitality industry I also kept hearing about the skill shortage that existed in the tourism and hospitality sector and I guess given my experience in the social enterprise space, I felt like there was an opportunity to create something that could potentially, I guess, solve both of those issues, or be part of the solution to both of those issues."))
The enterprise is going from strength to strength.
“We now have a catering arm, a condiments business, a corporate gifting arm, like we're doing a lot now, and the team has grown as part of that, but also the outcomes that we're having with participants. Yeah, like, so much bigger and, I guess, yeah, like, deeper in terms of the impact that we're having for participants it’s not just about employment outcomes its also about really having conversations with the people who are engaging in our training program and asking them what is the support they need and how can we help them get access to that.”
Jim Mackey has nothing but praise for Emily Briffa.
“She's created a safe workplace for people to come with disability, and they can learn. They can learn, you know, whether it be front of house, whether it be coffee, yeah, it's pretty cool.”
He says working at Hamlet has helped re-build his strength and skills, and “changed his world.”
“When I first came to Hamlet I was working in the kitchen and I was only working 1.5 hours at a time, I was only working on day a week, I think it was a Wednesday or something like that, only working 1.5 hours because that was all I could muster and then I slowly progressed to doing front of house and I was doing that three times a week and the hours progressively got longer and then two years ago, roughly two years ago I started off doing barista work and I’ve absolutely loved that ever since, I wake up every - every day that I wake up here, I'm excited to come to Hamlet.”
Every cup ... a contribution to someone's future.
