Van life: Wash, rinse, connect, chat and repeat

Shayne, how did you land at Orange Sky?

I started at Deloitte in strategy and operations consulting, and then moved into banking. I was about to have my first daughter, which was a nice reminder that I really want to be happy in the work I do. For me, that was finding something with purpose and also where my true self could be, so that’s how I stumbled into Orange Sky, in a skilled volunteer role. In 2020, Nick and Lucas, the co-founders, were setting off on their 2025 corporate strategy, and I was volunteering, so I helped facilitate that strategy, and what that would look like. About a year later, we picked up some conversations, and I fell into a role shortly after that.

Why Orange Sky?

I’d always played in the innovation space, and I think what I love about Orange Sky is there’s a real purpose, but ultimately it started from a simple but crazy idea of trying to put washing machines into a mobile asset. To join a place where innovation’s really ingrained in that culture, and you could use this innovation to be able to drive purpose and drive good in a meaningful way, rather than innovation to help a bank make money, was really, really compelling. I love that it’s got purpose but is still fun. Orange Sky is still able to move quickly and be agile, which isn’t necessarily the case across all the for-purpose organisations, unfortunately.

What’s your role? What do you do?

I’m director of operations. I have the privilege to be able to work with all of our teams that looks after our impact in Aotearoa (New Zealand), in Australia, and including all our remote Indigenous communities as well. That’s looking after all of our assets, all of our vans. We have about 3000 active volunteers, and we’ll show up at 400 different locations every single week all across the country. Our volunteering model is you sign up for a local location and you show up at that same place every week or every fortnight, so really it’s the 3000 volunteers that do that hard work, week in and week out. My job’s more to support those volunteers so if the vans break we can fix them, and also identify where there are new communities that need our help that we can show up.

Orange Sky’s vans have inbuilt washing machines. What’s so important about having laundry done?

I think it’s more than laundry, but there’s obviously a really practical element of going, if you’re someone who’s sleeping rough, to be able to actually get those clothes clean. If you are living with difficulties, if you have got an apartment but your washing machine’s broken and you’ve still got a job that you’re trying to maintain, or you’re in a remote community where you can get scabies through the household and that can have flow-on complications of rheumatic heart disease … there’s a really practical health benefit from the hygiene element.

But a big part that emerged through our model was also that doing the laundry takes an hour, so then you’ve got an hour to actually sit down and engage with someone from this community, who maybe is experiencing illness or hardship and who’s often overlooked. We say it started off with laundry and hot showers, but actually evolved more into this connection and authentic conversation, which obviously the volunteers get just as much out of as the “friends” of the service who turn up to use the service. You can build those relationships and it’s important because there might be people who’ve lost trust with the broader system and accessing services. With us, they know they’ve got a place they can talk to, where really they only need to share a name, and someone’s going to treat them with respect and dignity, and not probe into why they’re here or bring up stuff that might be feeling a bit traumatic for them.

What’s the path forward for Orange Sky?

We’ve recognised that our unique proposition is our low barrier-to-entry sort of offering for people. We can actually empower these 3000 volunteers all around the country to be these amazing connectors into other support systems and stuff like that. There’s real value in being able to play that role, ultimately.

How do you personally relax, away from the work?

I live in north Brisbane and have two little girls so I spend a lot of weekends in parks and playgrounds As someone in their late thirties, I haven’t done triathlon, so it’s the marathon pathway for me.

You’re training for marathons?

I just did one in Brisbane. It was a pretty typical first marathon experience, to be honest, I reckon. I’m alive. It was two laps of a course, and my second lap was 20 minutes slower than the first.

That seems very reasonable. Do you get stressed by the job?

That’s where I’m always a better person if I run. I think Orange Sky’s really good at going, well, how can you design your life and curate that life in a really intentional way to make it work for you? I know it works well for me to leave work at about quarter to five. I can get home, I can help the kids get in the bath, have dinnertime and do that, and have the kids asleep by 7.30. If there is more work to do, I can tackle it then, so it’s about really for me about designing that life, about embracing that flexibility to make it work. Then, running always makes it better.

You’re working in a very difficult space.

In that homelessness space or hardship space, it’s so easy to get caught up in negativity, like, oh my God, it’s so sad, it’s so desperate! I think at Orange Sky, we don’t want to project that feeling or emotion onto people, so I think, naturally, we focus on highlighting the positive stories of people interacting with us and how it’s been able to transform them and what that looks like. I think it is nice that work isn’t as stressful, because there is this positive, hopeful bent within it, rather than going, oh my God, it’s so dire and we’re never going to overcome it. Instead, we’re like, hey, actually we’ve really helped this person and that’s really special and isn’t that an amazing, amazing story?

MORE INFORMATION

To learn more about Orange Sky, head to orangesky.org.au. If you would like to make a donation to support those doing it tough, by helping to provide access to free laundry services, a safe, hot shower, and most importantly genuine, non-judgemental connection, head to orangesky.org.au/donate/.