Opportunity is key to the future of youths in Louise Nobes’ inspired jobs plan

OPPORTUNITY is key to the future of youths in Louise Nobes’ inspired jobs plan.

Louise Nobes. Picture: MATT LOXTON

LOUISE Nobes wants every young, aspiring worker suffering hardship in their life to know they can be as great as any other business owner.

In fact, they can be greater.

It’s the ethos behind InspiredBUY, the social innovation organisation she has been running since 2015. Her career in social work kickstarted it all.

“I had moved up to management for a number of years and was overseeing lots of different programs ... and was disenchanted around how young people were being perceived, that there was only a certain level of potential they could reach,” she says.

“I really needed to stand on my own and do something different to demonstrate there can be a different way of thinking.”

She started InspiredBUY with one big mission: to provide new solutions to the complex issue of youth employment. Put simply, she wanted to nurture disadvantaged youths and help them create their own work; help get them strong enough to lift themselves off the ground, rather than just extend a hand.

Through the organisation – with support from Westfield and the Department of Education and Child Development – she launched workplace training and entrepreneurial program Dream Big, which led to the birth of café Kik Coffee.

Fifteen young people brought that café to Tea Tree Plus, and now there are plans for five new cafes – the latest, to be run by 20 youths aged 18-25, is about to open in Light Square.

All the workers are paid, and several have gone on to create their own businesses.

For Nobes, who admits she had her own “rocky” teen years and redid Year 12 to become a social worker, the success is testament to her belief that anyone coming out of hardship is capable of more than just surviving.

“I say, ‘you’ve come from such hardship, you have these skills, they’re just enhanced in a different way,” she says. “They’re more flexible, agile, and resilient – the key attributes of any entrepreneur.”●

Kik Coffee opens at 9 Light Square, city, on June 13, inspiredbuy.com.au