Victoria’s social enterprises are super-charging their impact in a one-stop shop in iconic location

A group of Victoria’s social enterprises can now be found under one roof in Victoria’s first collaborative social enterprise store front. Lead by the team at Good Cycles, STREAT, and Social Enterprise Network Victoria (SENVIC), you can now find a host of homewares, cookbooks, clothing, foods and other gifts at our new Purpose Precinct, in Melbourne’s Queen Victoria Market.

Social enterprises are socially focused businesses that create greater opportunity, inclusion and impact in their work. And the Purpose Precinct showcases the best of what our sector has to offer, and as Nick Verginis of SENVIC told us, “This is just the start of something much bigger.”

The vision for the Purpose Precinct is to connect more and more social enterprises and grow our social and environmental good through sales at the Queen Victoria Market, a place where hundreds of thousands of tourists and locals visit each year. So when you come and do your weekly shopping, you’re helping us to create more job opportunities for priority job seekers.

As a collective, by working together we will be able to create even more work-readiness training pathways for young people, into areas such as horticulture, bike courier services, retail, and more. This will build on the successes of both STREAT and Good Cycles’ already thriving programs for young people, which provide on-the-job training, wrap-around support and transitions into paid jobs after completing their work-readiness programs.

CEO of Good Cycles, Jaison Hoernel, says the team is thrilled to be part of the Market’s diverse and thriving culture. “We’re excited to call Queen Victoria Market our new home. The Purpose Precinct will create a front door for social enterprises to work together to engage community, and deliver products and services to help people, places and the planet to thrive. Our ambition is to see hundreds Victorian social enterprises represented in the Precinct over the coming years, all working together not only to create better cities, but also meaningful employment opportunities for Victorians,” he said.

Meanwhile, Rebecca Scott, CEO and Co-Founder of STREAT, is excited to show people the size and impact of the social enterprise sector, and to see it grow: “I'm really excited about is creating essentially visibility for the sector, because all of us are dotted across Victoria, and we're often smaller enterprises. We’re here to show the public just kind of how many social enterprises are out there.”

“Across Victoria we employ over 60,000 people, so we're actually quite a big sector but we're scattered everywhere. It's only when you bring us all together that you start to get a sense of the incredible kind of reach and impact of this sector. We can't wait for you all to come and start doing a Christmas shopping here at the Purpose Precinct knowing that everything that you buy does good and green,” she said.

This project wouldn’t be possible without the support of the Victorian Government, and all the hard-working teams that have worked together to make this happen.

The Purpose Precinct is at Shop 04, String Bean Alley, and is currently open on Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday from 9am.­­

Social enterprise brands that are currently on sale in the Purpose Precinct include:

Clothing The Gaps, SisterWorks Inc., HoMie Clothing, Mildura Chocolate Co., STREAT, Deadly Wears, Kenshi Candles, Wilfulkindness, Good Cycles, Kakadu Plum Co., Buzz Earth, UPmovement, Free to Feed, LoveLuvo, Cultivating Community Melbourne, Deadly Wears, Green Collect, Lime & Lemon, Rebuild.