100 Story Building is a creative literacy centre whose mission is to provide opportunities for the most marginalised children and young people in our community to build the literacy skills, confidence and sense of belonging that are fundamental to future success. 100 Story Building is a unique organisation for young writers in Footscray, Melbourne. We use storytelling as a tool to foster imagination, creativity and confidence in children and young people. Our mission is to provide opportunities for the most marginalised children and young people in our community to build the literacy skills, confidence and sense of belonging that are fundamental to future success. We create opportunities for children and young people to expand their imaginations, amplify their voices and become the hero of their own stories.
In the Building, young storytellers create and write their own stories inspired by the strange creatures and peculiar happenings on the 99 levels below the trapdoor. However, like the ever-expanding creative minds of young storytellers, we are not limited by the walls of the building. We travel to classrooms, libraries, community centres, festivals across Victoria – both online and in-person – expanding our impact beyond Footscray and Melbourne’s west.
SVPM & 100 Story Building
100 Story Building was SVPM’s very first Investee partner. We could see the future potential in what they were doing and partnered with them for three years. Our core role was to assist 100 Story Building to create a social enterprise model that could broaden their offering and reduce their reliance on philanthropic funding. Paul Higgins and Susan Keyes- Pearce were the lead partners from SVPM. Paul’s main role was mentoring and coaching the CEO, Lachlann Carter with the assistance of Mark Jankelson. Susan focused on working with the board on governance, business strategy and planning. In addition to this strategic work we also assisted 100 Story building with individual project work such as lease negotiations. Besides the involvement of Paul, Susan and Mark there was involvement from Catherina Toh, Margi Olson and Wayne Saunders.
The funding we provided enable 100 Story building to hire Simon Conlon as a part time program facilitator. This enabled CEO Lachlann Carter to do less program delivery in order to have the time and thinking space to develop new business models for the organisation. Simon is still with 100 Story building and is now their Program Manager.
100 Story Building has been able to impact over 35,000 children and young people since they began. Since SVPM partnered with them in 2014, they have grown from assisting 2781 students in 29 schools to 5000 students and 72 schools in 2019, conducted 386 workshops and created over 9000 stories. We are proud about making a contribution to support this great organisation and great team to achieve these results. Our relationship with them continues, including making a contribution to them transitioning to online models during he COVID-19 Pandemic.
