June 23, 2023

Congratulations to the 2023 A2ELP Alumni

An amazing cohort of young social entrepreneurs from across Australia and South East Asia have completed A2ELP 2023. We offer our huge congratulations and thanks for their energy, passion, dedication and presence in the program.

Infrequently are public diplomacy and foreign policy goals achieved overnight. They are often the result of long-term engagement, the building of peer-to-peer and institutional links across years and a diversity of sectors, communities and interests, and are the result of on-going, deliberate programs and activities to bring people and nations together.

The 2023 program saw participants represent positive social change in their communities and countries in areas including: disability employment and communication (through sign language), empowerment for women in at-risk situations, education and support for school students, mental health support for workplaces, recycling and upcycling natural resources, connecting farmers with customers and finance, giving children access to toys and reducing waste, connecting fibre makers with fashion designers, enabling people with mobility issues to get around, empowering and connecting indigenous people to business opportunities, and telling the stories of the ‘unseen and unheard’ members of communities.

We are so proud to have been able to hear these participants stories, and bring them together for a week of inspiration and heartfelt relationship building. Our participants reported increased skills, connections, abilities, regional knowledge and social enterprise knowledge after participating in A2ELP. They all speak to significant short-term impact, but also importantly, medium and longer term impacts that make this A2ELP program truly so special and needed as a foreign policy and public diplomacy tool.

As one participant noted, “I have made some friendships and connections that will never leave me and I’m genuinely honored to be a part of this cohort and feature amongst a group of people who are quite literally changing the word in spaces such as climate change, mental health, domestic violence, disability and more.”

Sponsored by the Australian Government’s Australia-ASEAN Council, and run by Social Good Outpost, A2ELP brings together 15 young entrepreneurs from Australia and ASEAN for skills building, collaboration and networking with the region’s thought-leaders, social entrepreneurs, and alumni from previous A2ELP programs.

Contact the A2ELP curators and team: team@ausaseanleaders.com.au