About Us
Our Story or The amazing people, mission and vision behind our community
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Our Mission
We honour our crafting heritage by coming together in a safe and supportive community space for women to share their knowledge and skills to create and produce handmade items using reclaimed resources.
Our Impact
Australians are creating more waste than ever, so we need to reduce both the rubbish that enters our environment and the waste we send to landfill.
Our Haberdashery Thrift Shop has saved over 64 tonnes of craft resources from ending up in landfill. We have sold enough reclaimed fabric in our Haberdashery to stretch from Brisbane to Toowoomba. We have delivered over 800 workshops to teach women how to embrace handmade living to upcycle these resources and thus begun to educate future generations of an alternative to the cycle of consumerism.
In society we see many women of all ages feeling isolated and lacking social connections. In our younger girls we recognise the impact that COVID-19, online learning, family instability, and difficulties at school have had on their mental health and emotional wellbeing. We also recognise the high rates of self-harm and suicide in our younger generation, with 35% of young deaths being attributed to suicide ( source Australian Institute of Health & Welfare) . Generational unemployment and homelessness also have an impact on youth. For these reasons, we believe the mentoring in our safe space gives the students the opportunity to grow and break the cycle.
In the past eight years:
- we have created 332,500 hours of social connection between women.
- we have delivered 800 workshops to teach over 4,000 women how to embrace handmade living and upcycle reclaimed resources. This begins to educate future generations in an alternative to the cycle of consumerism and fast fashion and instils lifelong practices to support health and wellbeing.
- over 100 students have participated in The Exchange Project.
As well, ten young people have joined the Junior Volunteer Program as at the end of 2022. These Junior Volunteers are learning the benefits of volunteering for themselves and their community.
Our History
Our Board
The Nest Community board comprises five genuinely talented women who are focused on the strategic growth of our community’s social enterprises. The common thread between these women is that they have built their careers and enterprises with sheer determination in the face of adversity. These women bring to the table a diverse range of business and leadership acumen, together with the skills and capability to advance our core values through our programs, services, and charity partners. And most importantly of all, they are passionate about making a positive difference for women through connecting with creativity and community.
Roz Foley Fenson
Chief Executive Officer / Co Founder
Margot McLay
Lisa Wilkinson
Secretary
Trish Holliday
Treasurer
Mary-Ann Strelow
Our Operations Team
Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success.
The backbone of our organisation is an extraordinary group of women who volunteer to work together to coordinate the massive machine that is required to manage our volunteer workforce. Their combined handmade living skills, leadership qualities and professional backgrounds make them essential leaders within our social enterprises and valuable facilitators in the delivery of our workshop programs. There are so many but here are just a few.
Toni Holt
Chair
Joining The Nest in 2020, Toni has been instrumental in the significant growth of our Haberdashery Shop. Toni’s extensive and innate retailing knowledge from marketing and merchandising to systems and processes, combined with her acute financial analysis has contributed enormously to the development and immense financial success growth of the haberdashery shop. Originally more of a simple craft shop, the Haberdashery is now a major part of our social enterprise with customers travelling long distances to buy up craft and sewing treasures.
Toni has spent the majority of her life working in the fashion industry and in 2001 as a single mother of two, she founded Adorne, a leading women’s fashion wholesaler and retailer. Adorne encapsulates Toni’s passion for making women feel beautiful, individual and empowered.
As Chair of our Management committee, Toni leads with the same passion and acumen that helped build her own successful company. She is pivotal in driving The Nest’s business development strategy remaining critically focused on balancing the growth of financial resources with the delivery of affordable services to nurture and connect women in the community.
Meanwhile……Toni’s elderly mum also supports The Nest Community knitting all sorts of treasures for the craft stall.
Lisa Wilkinson
Secretary
Degree qualified in Built Environment and Industrial Design, with supplementary qualifications in clothing production, data analysis and interior design, Lisa makes an immense contribution to the growth and development of The Nest Community with her intelligent and informed strategic advice.
In particular, her career background in design and communications has played a large part in how The Nest has developed its brand and social media strategy and sourced opportunities for government grants and tenders. Lisa’s unique knowledge of the ‘how to’ and ‘where to’ in understanding the ramifications of government service opportunities has made a huge difference in how The Nest advances funding opportunities to diversify their services.
Lisa now works as an interior designer for Concepts Unlimited Design, a premium residential design company. Since 2016, she has worked tirelessly behind the scenes for the Nest Community balancing study, full time work and volunteering her time on weekends and late at night to deliver administration and marketing support.
As Secretary and the youngest serving member of our Nest management committee, Lisa’s dedication and contribution combined with her passion for sustainability contributes meaningfully to the diversity and knowledge of our management committee.
Lisa is also a keen craftswoman and lover of handmade living, with an ever-growing collection of beautiful handmade treasures.
Mary-Ann Strelow
Mary-Ann has a very impressive leadership and management career in the automotive, mining, civil construction and building industries. As Executive Director and Founder of Fleetcrew, a Brisbane based company supplying commercial vehicles & 4WD’s for short and long term hire, lease services and fleet maintenance solutions throughout Queensland, Mary-Ann is highly tuned and skilled in responding to economic and market changes, ensuring financial and organisational stability for her business.
With over 34 years business experience to her credit, Mary-Ann brings vast wisdom, knowledge, advice and sound counsel to the Nest Community management committee. The management committee are forever grateful to Mary-Ann for her single-handed achievement in navigating the application process to achieve our not-for-profit charity status and strengthening our organisation’s governance.
Mary-Ann has balanced a career with raising a family and is now a dedicated grandmother. She is a humble pocket rocket with a strong philanthropic philosophy to give back her time to several other community initiatives. In addition to working with our community, she is also the Chair of NOW Business Network Inc., the Chair of Everton Park State High School Council, a Committee Member of AWIC (Awesome Women in Construction), a member of Brisbane Women Connecting and a mentor to small business owners.
And, she is a regular customer at our craft stalls buying all her friends and family our handmade products as gifts, which she says are ‘priced ridiculously too low!’
Margot McLay
Margot is a highly experienced and capable business consultant, with over twenty-five years in executive recruitment and business.
With original registered nurse qualifications, she went on to complete a B Commerce and set up Executive People, a boutique Brisbane based executive recruitment consultancy providing talent to the private, public and not for profit sector. In partnering with a truly diverse range of clients, she has been privy to observing how clever organisations grow and develop by engaging and creating positive work opportunities for their people.
As much as Margot feels very much ‘an individual’, it’s her absolute belief in the power of a group of like-minded people coming together which makes little ideas burst into big things happening… “Alone we can do so little, together we can do so much’ – Helen Keller.
It’s that inspiration for Margot which makes participating with the Nest management committee so enjoyable, enabling her to funnel her energies into volunteer recruitment and investigating further revenue opportunities.
At a personal level, Margot is about to take another career change to run a country pub, as well as attempt her 7th marathon and achieve her ’middle years ambition’ and finally stepping onto the winners podium.
Most importantly! Margo loves handmade clothes and has a sewing machine tucked away under her office desk and is currently (and ….patiently) passing her skills to her two daughters.
Trish Holliday
Treasurer
Along with 25 years business experience, both as a principal licensee for her own real estate brand, and now working with Ray White in The Gap, Trish is a natural fit with the Nest Community as she has a long-time history and innate understanding of fabrics and haberdashery having grown up and worked as director in the family textile and clothing businesses.
In her twenties, to gain knowledge of Asian markets to grow the family businesses she completed a degree in Asian Studies and International Trade, however global trading practices changed so she opened a retail fabric and haberdashery store in Ashgrove called The Fabric Merchant; named after ‘The Richest Man in Babylon’. The business proved a local community hub for costumes for pre-school children, mending and sewing projects.
Trish has always contributed to the community through volunteering, from hosting a programme on Radio 4EB called ‘The Women’s Profile’, helping migrant families adjust to life in Australia and running the Marist College uniform shop.
With additional studies in counselling and psychology Trish’s contribution to the Nest Community management committee is considerable. As treasurer she oversees and is hands on with the operational management of finances, contracts and relevant insurances comply and are in place. Additionally, her broad business knowledge, intuitive style and unflappable approach to issues contributes to important decision making as the Nest forges it’s future.
Trish is currently in love with long flowing skirts and is experimenting with patterns and contemplating launching a range.
Roz Fenson
Managing Director & Co Founder
Roz is one of the original founders of The Nest Community and has dedicated the last 10 years to fulfilling her vision of developing an organisation that is financially independent through community managed social enterprise.
She was instrumental in the development of two key initiatives – The Nest Haberdashery, which is now a thriving shop open six days per week, and The Nest Community’s affordable craft workshops, all 100% volunteer managed. This social enterprise plan has not only been instrumental in the community’s unique ability to grow without government funding, but also created an innovative, out-of-the box model within the provision of social networking services to the community.
Roz has a diverse background in the arts, entertainment and charity sectors, as well as experience in creating and growing her own art practice that supplied fashion jewellery accessories to major national and international art galleries. Roz brings insight, energy and creativity to The Nest along with her collaborative approach to leadership and management. She has a unique ability to share her artistic vision and ignite the imagination and creativity amongst those that work with her. The Nest volunteers and the management committee alike share in her capacity to inspire.
Under Roz’s strategic leadership, The Nest happily operates with a team of 60 volunteers rostered over 7 days each week to manage their haberdashery, workshop and garden programmes. Over the last 6 years, this equates to over 240,000 volunteer hours, and together they have touched the lives of over 10,000 women spanning postcodes from the Far North Queensland to the South.