Our Story
You know how stories have an introduction, a conflict, a climax and a resolution? Well, ours is nothing like that. There’s certainly no end to our story in sight.
As quite a young organisation, we’re actually a lot more like a person than a story. Since our birth in 2015, we’ve experienced it all: the sleepless nights, the tears, the tantrums, a lot of mess… but thankfully we found our feet and started running.
In leaps and bounds, we have grown from just 16 students on a couple of assessment-based projects in January 2016. We now have an alumni community of over 700 trekkers from around the world, have trained nearly 100 people in team and senior leadership, and have university partners all over Australia. Our projects have also grown across all of our countries of operation, with over half of our ventures returning revenue, including FarmEd, the Rocket Stove, and Everest Recycling Solutions.
We could lie and say that we hired industry pros, or hid in a garage and “just hacked it out”, but that isn’t even close. Our growth and success is a testament to our people: talented, passionate, and dedicated to enabling social change, and as a result, we have built an incredible community around us at home and in country (our second homes).
So what are the next steps for our growing organisation?
The value of our internships is becoming exponentially recognised by universities and organisations alike. We are continuously securing credit, grants and funding for students from a range of unis to seek financial support and academic acknowledgment of their internship experience. Beyond this, companies such as UBER have jumped on board as graduate partners, offering advanced opportunities to our alumni at the point of their graduation.
This year we’ve partnered with Rough Diamonds, a tech-based project incubator working to further develop our ventures through to commercialisation. Whilst we are yet to operate overseas 12 months of the year, our project commercialisation team will work in Australia to support the rate of growth.
With newly accredited avenues for our team leaders, senior leaders, and business development consultants, our training is recognised to count towards certificates in project management and leadership. We continuously develop our training immersions to ensure that our people are best prepared for project and skills beyond their time in country.