Accessible Arts / arts + disability NSW

Layne Beachley, Ambassador for World of Difference, says the initiative enables participants to quit their ‘day job’ and dedicate themselves to a charity full-time, with the Vodafone Australia Foundation covering their salary and expenses for the year (up to $75,000).

Ross, part of the one in six Australians affected by deafness and hearing difficulties, understands the chronic isolation that can accompany the disability. As a founding member of the dance company Deaf Can Dance, Ross will spend his World of Difference year working with Arts Access to reach out to the deaf community and turn Deaf Can Dance into Australia’s first professional deaf dance company.

Arts Access Victoria is the community organisation in Victoria that provides access to arts and cultural activity for people with disabilities.

Since Deaf Can Dance’s first performances at the 2008 Melbourne International Fringe Festival, it has achieved critical acclaim with an established core group of five dancers and another twenty-two dancers involved in workshops. Ross wants to challenge audiences to look beyond the disability and see how dance can become a powerful vehicle for connecting people and promoting positive mental health.

Carefully selected from a field of more than 800 applicants, Ross is one of five successful applicants given the chance to change their lives and begin working with their chosen charities from May this year.

Wendy Lenton, Chair of the Vodafone Australia Foundation, said that this year’s entries were amongst the highest in number and calibre received in the program’s six year history.

“In tough economic times, it’s good to see that Australians are still willing to put their hand up, take a leap of faith and make a real difference in their community.”

Layne Beachley also said that “Ross has the courage and the passion to offer his time to charity and commit to making a real difference to both the deaf and the wider Melbourne community in the coming year.”

The other four successful applicants are:

Anna Sobczyk, Dreamfit (WA): Dreamfit Foundation is a not-for-profit organisation where engineering student volunteers design and build innovative solutions for people with disabilities, aimed at improving quality of life. Anna will use her skills as a successful business consultant to help Dreamfit Foundation transform its business to support its growth from a small backyard operation to a much larger professional organisation.

Ronni Kahn, OzHarvest (NSW): Ronni Kahn is the founder of OzHarvest, an organisation that provides almost one million meals a year to the hungry and homeless of Sydney. Over the year, she is aiming to raise $1,000,000 for the organisation and impact the lives of the same number of people.

John Parr, St. John’s Ambulance Australia (Qld): John Parr is a training specialist with St. John’s Ambulance Australia, a charitable organisation dedicated to helping people in sickness, distress, suffering or danger through the provision of first aid services and training. John passionately believes every child should know what to do in an emergency and have basic first aid skills. He will spend his World of Difference year teaching vital first aid skills to 50,000 young people in Queensland.

Debbie Colyer, PKU Association of NSW (NSW): Debbie suffers from Phenylketonuria (PKU), a genetic disorder which restricts a person’s ability to produce phenylalanine, an amino acid necessary for central nervous system development. In her World of Difference year, Debbie will develop fundraising initiatives for research into treatment for the disorder, as well as providing support to other families and individuals affected.

Over the past six years, the Vodafone Australia Foundation’s World of Difference program has helped nineteen extraordinary Australians commit over 41,000 hours to a variety of causes, without worrying about financial pressures that can often constrain community investment work. Entries for World of Difference will re-open in January 2010.

For more information, visit the Vodafone ‘World of Difference’ website.