Driving change to make the world a better place should be easy. After all, the goal of contributing to the greater good and leaving a positive impact on people and the planet seems like an appealing and worthy aspiration.
But the reality is that impactful and meaningful social impact is darn hard work, often requiring relentless effort, vision, discipline, commitment, and perseverance. And too often, even the most well-intentioned and innovative ideas fall short of realising their full potential to have the impact or scalability necessary to create lasting and systemic change.
Successful social change - when good intention delivers tangible, scalable, sustainable, and measurable outcomes, requires an understanding of the intricate web of social, economic, and environmental dynamics and the role of each to influence the success of any change initiative.
If we have any hope of tackling some of the challenges the world is facing, a monumental collective effort is imperative. The collective voice of many is always going to be louder than that of a single organisation and fostering cross-sector and industry collaborations is not just beneficial but essential to drive impactful and meaningful change.
Too often, great ideas that are briming with potential, fail to consider or engage these intricate networks or appreciate the necessity for collaboration. From inception, through to execution, the complex network of stakeholders requires careful consideration, inclusion, and strategic planning to create a collective ecosystem of government, industry, corporate and consumer partners.
And like any healthy long-term relationship, an equitable value exchange is required. An exchange where all participants receive a benefit that is beyond the performative commitment to social purpose that generates short-term rewards or headlines and feel-good social-media posts.
However, creating an infrastructure of collaborative networks is often easier said than done. Essentially it requires a mindset shift away from short-term individual actions to collective action that can drive initiatives with sustainable and tangible solutions. It is also time consuming and resource intense, requiring countless hours to build, grow, and establish partnerships. Furthermore, it calls for creative thinking and negotiation skills to craft value propositions that ensure all partners receive due recognition, appreciation, and acknowledgment for their collective contributions.
Which is why Saveful, a unique and innovative new digital tool to empower and enable Australians to put more food on their tables by wasting less, is also an innovative business model that is demonstrating the power of collective action to drive change.
Our journey through Thankful4Farmers, spanning the entire food supply chain from farm gate to dinner table, revealed the pressing issue of food waste. We embraced the opportunity to do something about it. Extensive research, both locally and globally, illuminated the scale and magnitude of the problem.
Household food waste costs the average Australian family about $2,700 per year in food we buy and don’t consume, staggeringly 70% of food binned by Australians is perfectly edible, costing the Australian economy about $36.6 billion each year. Coupled with the growing urgency of climate action and the rising cost of living, which exacerbates food insecurity, there is an unmistakable and urgent need for a tangible and scalable tool to alleviate stress and make family meals more sustainable.
Saveful's intuitive platform empowers Australians to save money, food and time. Empowering home cooks to trust their gut in the kitchen to cook more at home with what they already have by giving them access to flexible meal frameworks, tools, tips and hacks. Providing users with a personalised experience and tailoring content to suit a household’s specific needs. It also enables people to track and measure their household food waste and money saved.
The Saveful app is free to all Australians and launched in November. Launching with an impressive network of partners, we have forged meaningful collaborations, across all levels of Government, industry associations, thought leaders and major corporate partners from multiple industry sectors.
Recognising the enormity of the challenge and the necessity for collective effort to drive disruptive and impactful change, we have created an ecosystem of partners - Bega Group, Birds Eye, Goodman Fielder, Nestle, Qantas, Rabobank, Shadowboxer, AORA, Australian Food and Grocery Council, Eat Well Tasmania, End Food Waste Australia, Love Food Hate Waste, National Retail Association, Queensland Government, South Australian Government, and federal government who are committed to being part of the solution, aiming to help Australia reduce food waste by 50% by 2030, aligning with the National Food Waste Strategy and UN SDG targets.
While some might say we are biting off more than we can chew, we say we are just getting started!
We are demonstrating the power of collective action and continuing to build meaningful partnerships. We are calling on all Australian businesses, governments, communities and individuals to be part of the Saveful ecosystem to help drive positive behavior change and collective action.
Because the world will only truly change when we work together to do the hard work of changing it, not in the moment, but for the long term.
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