Increasingly, major corporations and large businesses are embracing a corporate commitment to social progress. But how far do you go? At what point do you ‘draw the line’? It’s always an enigmatic area and, for the shopping centre industry – one so close to community – it’s particularly relevant. ISPT, owner of several Little Gun centres, has adopted Environmental, Social Governance (ESG) as a fundamental business practice. This article, submitted by Rosemary Condron-Calic, National Portfolio Manager, Retail, ISPT is featured in the latest issue of Shopping Centre News.
Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) is embedded in everything we do at ISPT, as part of our commitment to embrace our responsibility to build a better future for our customers and communities.
As a business, we have a strong ethos around caring for others and delivering value through our retail portfolio of assets, each sitting right at the heart of its local communities. When we invest in properties, we are by default investing in communities. The spread and diversity of our shopping centres across Australia provides us with an excellent opportunity to connect purposefully with a wide range of communities, in a wide variety of ways, at a local level.
COVID has shown how our communities have grown stronger and closer, and how Australians have embraced their local shopping centres as an essential part of their everyday lives. Given the growing prevalence of the concept ‘hyper local’, it is more important than ever to strengthen our intrinsic connection with each of these communities.
We want to embed community engagement as a fundamental way of doing business at ISPT with the ambition of unifying people and places, celebrating local, building strong relationships and supporting local needs and aspirations.
Increased investment of social impact initiatives was a significant achievement of the past 12 months, with ISPT investing and donating a total of $2.2 million towards community programs and community wellbeing across the business.
With 66 retail assets across Australia, our centres hosted more than 800 community initiatives – ranging from large-scale charity fundraisers, community mural and art partnerships, community group partnerships, to pop-up space to donation drives – all working towards the same objective of driving positive social impact.
One such initiative is our community pilot program ‘Youngster.co’, which entered its inaugural year this year across five shopping centres nationally to enhance connection and tackle identified social issues among our local communities.
The Youngster.co Program, Lakelands
The Youngster.co Program
Youngster.co is an inter-generational community program underpinned by ISPT’s commitment to ESG excellence. Our properties are most meaningful when they connect their communities and this was even more evident during the COVID-19 pandemic. After community consultation, we identified a major skills gap for seniors within our centre communities, whom are challenged by smart phone technology, which in turn contributed to feelings of isolation. Many seniors struggled with state government requirements for apps to check in and link vaccination certificates. This was impacting their ability to participate in the simplest of everyday activities such as food shopping and accessing essential services such as health care and appointments, as services and products were increasingly migrating online. Many seniors were left feeling overwhelmed and frustrated and suffering from isolation and loneliness.
After identifying support was needed within its communities, we set out to find a partner to assist. Youngster.co, a certified social enterprise start-up, noticed an alarming trend across Australia in high youth unemployment, lack of community connection and increasing time on socials resulting in youth missing out on life skills.
Based on the challenges both groups identified, a program focused on inter-generational support was built.
Partnering with ISPT, the program set up and implementation was adapted to suit a shopping centre environment and the intergenerational program ‘Youngster.co’ was implemented and piloted at Southgate Sylvania (NSW), Wagga Wagga Marketplace (NSW), Lakelands Shopping Centre (WA), Karingal Hub (VIC) and Bendigo Marketplace (VIC).
As the cornerstone of the community, our retail centres, through the Youngster.co program, not only aimed to support the digital transition for its senior community but also tackle critical social issues such as youth unemployment, disengagement and isolation.
The Youngster.co Program, Southgate
The Youngster.co program also sought to address loneliness for all community generations while providing the vehicle for youngsters and seniors to learn and practice empathy, mindfulness and gratitude, ultimately helping to improve community and youngster resilience.
The results speak for themselves; after only six months a milestone was reached with more than 500 connections achieved with the program supporting over 65 youngsters and over 500 seniors.
Of the seniors attending, 89% had their problems solved on the spot, with 37% of seniors returning the following week to continue their tech-education. The social impact return on investment is estimated at more than $350,000 coupled with meaningful activation of centre mall space clearly benefiting and resonating with each centre’s community. We look forward to this program continuing to thrive across our centres to help achieve the Youngster.co target of one million connections by 2025.
Connecting with the Community Needs – Community Giving
Understanding and listening to the individual needs of our local community partners and local communities is fundamental, especially when many of our centres face varying social issues. Just one of the ways our Little Guns centres in Victoria including Waurn Ponds (Geelong), Karingal Hub (Frankston), Bendigo Marketplace (Bendigo) and Central West (Braybrook) demonstrate this is via our community giving initiatives.
Karingal Hub Life-Gate For the love of giving
In partnership with Geelong Mums, Waurn Pond’s ‘Shop and Drop Donation Drive’ is an initiative where customers are encouraged to donate newly purchased items for local families in need. These donations are distributed to Geelong families experiencing tough times through Geelong Mums’ partnerships with maternal and child health nurses and local social service agencies.
Karingal Hub’s ongoing partnership with Life-Gate Frankston provides a destination for customers to give back to those most in need locally. Life-Gate supports the most vulnerable members of the community whom are dealing with mental health issues, homelessness and hardship. More than 20,000 non-perishable food and personal care items have been donated by the centre and customers to date, providing an example of the community rallying and working together to achieve a common goal of making a significant difference and contribution to thousands of local families’ lives.
In addition to local community giving, Bendigo Marketplace has partnered with Bendigo Foodshare to provide financial support of their program, among other partnership initiatives, throughout the next three years. The support will help provide food relief and much needed supplies to the wider Bendigo community. The centre also provides daily food rescues from Coles and Woolworths as well as running two major food drives annually, where customers can shop and donate directly at the centre to help increase food security and meet the increasing demand for basic necessities such as fresh food and groceries.
The Nourish Project
Food insecurity has affected most communities within our reach and has become a major societal issue for our Central West community, prompting Central West Shopping Centre in Braybrook, Victoria, to coordinate and provide a pop-up space for the Nourish Project to assist with the running of its food relief operations. Operating twice weekly, the space is open to those who are experiencing food poverty by the volunteers of local neighbourhood houses. This space has allowed the Nourish team, in conjunction with the centre, to prepare and distribute hundreds of hampers of pantry items, fresh produce and frozen meals every week, broadening its outreach and ability to support and help the local community.
