Our Story
Our founder Katie experienced both a redundancy and job loss during her accounting career – the latter which led to her two-month long camping trip in Africa and also time in a 110 hectare garbage dump in Jakarta.
These pivotal moments changed her life. She rediscovered her passions which she’d lost in the corporate world; immersing herself in research, volunteering and trying to understand life. Not of her own, but the lives of those less fortunate and so in 2017, The Underground Collaborative was born.
Ground+Co
Our first major project was our employment cafe Ground+Co, nestled within the State Library of WA. Like TUC Cleaning Co, our cafe operates as a Work Integrated Social Enterprise, training and employing people who are experiencing or at risk of homelessness.
Like TUC Cleaning Co, 100% of Ground+Co’s profits are reinvested back into training and employing people experiencing, or at-risk of homelessness.
The Underground Collaborative
Our vision for the future is to support, uplift and cultivate systemic change to break the cycles of homelessness through employment and long-term housing solutions to empower women and young people in WA.
Our guiding principles are to educate, empower and employ through which we believe together, will lead to ripples and waves of change to help break the cycles of homelessness.