Future Minds Network

Creating a world, where every person has an equal opportunity to live, work and play. This starts with empowering people with the skills, mindset, and network to find their dream jobs or create their own.

Future Minds Network deliver innovation & entrepreneurship programs for youth aged 15-25, particularly those in low-SES, and regional areas. This includes skill-building workshops, career expos, industry mentorship and empowering youth to build their own businesses & projects in their local communities.

2025 Pitch

Funds Raised: $66,000

Pitched at Thriving Young People 2025 event for support for their Young Artists Centre—a space where disadvantaged young Australians can create art, develop their own sustainable jobs, and reconnect with their local communities. The funds will provide young artists across Victoria with one year of training, ongoing mentorship, and access to venues and resources. These opportunities will allow them to showcase their talent and create pathways to sustainable employment.

6 Month Impact

12 Month Impact

The funding delivered the Young Artists Centre program, a three-month program supporting 15 young people through workshops, mentoring, microgrants, and real-world opportunities to launch and grow their own creative businesses.

Impact story: Rokayya is 15 years old. When she walked through the door, she was shy, reserved, and barely spoke at all. She had no business idea, no product, and no sense that any of that was possible for someone her age. All she had was origami - something she loved quietly, on her own.

For the first two sessions, she barely said a word. She sat, she listened, and she observed. By the third session, something had shifted. She started volunteering her thoughts, sharing her ideas, and talking about her origami with a passion that had clearly always been there, it had just needed the right space to come out. Over the course of the program, that shift went deeper. Not just in her confidence, in her capability. We worked through how to build a product range, how to price her work, how to talk to a customer and make a sale. For a 15 year old who had barely spoken up in a room weeks earlier, learning to stand behind a stall and sell something she made with her own hands was not a small thing. It was enormous.

She perfected her products. She built an entirely new suite of origami offerings. She set herself a goal - make over $100 from her art - and she didn't just meet it. She sold out on the day. Within six weeks, Rokayya had made hundreds of dollars, attended her first festival, and stood behind a market stall as a business owner. At 15.

In her own words: "When I started it was just a hobby and now that I've finished it's an actual business. This program has given me the perfect support I needed to take that step and launch my business. I wouldn't have been able to do it myself. I probably would have overthought the whole thing and not done it." Rokayya didn't just leave with a business. She left knowing she was capable of building one. At 15, that changes everything about what she believes is possible for the rest of her life.

Learn more about Future Minds Network

https://futuremindsnetwork.org/

Supporting Sustainable Development Goals: