Ms Caroline Casey:

I wish to thank the committee for holding this session. I apologise for being late, but I am a social entrepreneur and I was speaking at a sponsorship conference because I am chasing money.

I have been asked to tell the committee about our work and some of the key changes that we would like to see happening. There was a great quote from the Minister of State with responsibility for disability in Haiti recently. He said that in rebuilding Haiti, we cannot ignore the tiniest particle of intelligence or the smallest particle of potential.

What he is saying is that for us to rebuild Haiti, we need to have the contribution and power of every individual released. Kanchi's mission is to unleash the power of the 1 billion people in the world with a disability. We have over 400,000 people with disabilities living in Ireland and that figure is growing consistently. Kanchi's solution for this is business. It has been critical in driving solutions across a myriad of social issues but, oddly, it has not engaged in the issue around disability. One of the key problems, one with which the Government would agree, is that disability has been framed as something of need, sympathy and charity, as well as been medically model-based. Actually, when one looks at the opportunity from a business perspective of engaging these people as consumers, talents, members of the community and our market, we can reframe that thinking. We still have a situation where the employment figures are tiny of those with disabilities who want and are able to work. We have never been able to manage a switch from that because of the way we are framed.

As business is pervasive in all of our society, Kanchi believes that if we can change the thinking and behaviours of business, then society will become more inclusive. Essentially, we are trying to create a global business movement, beginning in Ireland, of inclusive business. We are looking at the global spending power of the disability community, its contribution and talent, and of retaining people who acquire disabilities in organisations that have already invested in them. It must be remembered that 85% of people acquire a disability during their working lifetime. We are looking at how we market and create reputation around our companies. Essentially, what Kanchi has done has been to bring in one of the greatest catalysts for change and merged leadership from business, media and government in a multi-stakeholder approach to reframe this. We have created models and methodologies which are simple for business to use, and which create mass awareness around the economic case for people with disabilities in business, and which really engender leadership.

One of our most significant programmes to date is the O2 Ability Awards programme. It was sponsored by O2 and was run for four years in Ireland. The results from it saw it touch 22% of the working population. Up to 67% of the companies we work with through independent research have evidence to prove that they started to change their practices, policies and procedures. They began to serve people with disabilities as customers as well as employing them. When I started this off, people thought I was insane, so I certainly did not tell them I wanted to take it global. A great piece of silver lining happened when Telefonica bought O2. The president of Telefonica said he wanted to replicate the awards in Spain. In 2008, we did a unique and distinct social franchise - the very first social franchise out of Ireland - where Telefonica paid a significant amount of money to license the ability awards in Spain. We have just finished the second cycle of the ability awards there. The Queen of Spain was the ambassador and chair of it and we reached 67 million people in our campaign. We had over 450 entries from the corporate world. This form of engagement is unheard of. What is more exciting is that we are creating leadership from a multi-stakeholder group, case studies which can be replicated and role models that can be emulated, and we are beginning a massive conversation that reframes disability. We want to bring the ability awards programme to ten countries in five years. That is ten Heads of State and 1,000 ability companies, and that will be the trigger point for where one creates a movement.

The reason I am in this position is that I was the first Irish Ashoka fellow in 2006. Ashoka helped us dream of bringing this idea and making it a systems changer across the world. Without Ashoka, I could not have done that, not because I did not have the vision but because I needed the expertise and it gave us that beginning funding which was critical.

We are at this point where we have this extraordinary opportunity for change. However, I got a telephone call two days ago which threatens the future of my business. We are growing the ability awards programme across the world, bringing it to Brazil, Germany, Sweden and Austria in the next year. We also have the Kanchi Network in Ireland, which is a chamber of commerce-based model which engages with 20 key businesses and chief executive officers in an area where nobody has engaged before. One of the key points that Ms Deirdre Mortell spoke about is that we do not have growth capital. If I were running a business right now, I would sell the shares because I have a track record, an open market and know what works. However, I cannot get funding for Kanchi. Here we are with one of the most extraordinary opportunities for change and this company has everything it needs to go but it does not have capital. We need risk capital and scaling capital in this sector. We are so good at funding people at the beginning, then they become successful and then we seem to just jump off a cliff. I ask Members to find a way for securing risky growth capital.

We need to be very careful not to be personality leadership driven but system leadership driven. Due to this country being small, I think we are so much about the personality, which weakens our business. That is why I have decided to step down as chief executive officer of Kanchi, a hard thing to do, but it was affecting our business because people wanted to give Caroline, the blind girl, money. The business is so solid that we need to take it away from personality and invest in the business solution.

I would also like if we were more cognisant of whom we are funding. The Kanchi Network has engaged with 20 chief executive officers but we are seeing funding of new projects which Kanchi could help. Where is that money coming from? Are we double-funding? Should we start looking to social entrepreneurs first before we start refunding or recreating the wheel? Can we please map our sector? I believe there are great opportunities for mergers that could make us more powerful. We have so little cash that there must be a way for us to join people together in a far more powerful way.

Organisations such as Ashoka and Social Entrepreneurs Ireland are important when one is beginning. Kanchi never had funding from a foundation. Initially, when we set up the ability awards programme, we had Government funding which, subsequently and understandably, had to be removed. Our engagement simply relies on business. We have had to turn our business into a social business to avoid the fund-raising trap which exists to date.

I have just come from a conference on global disability in Vienna where Senator Conway was with me. Ireland was extraordinarily represented at it. Ireland shone at this. We are the innovators. We have extraordinary interpersonal skills. We have something that we should really capture. If anyone had seen our participation at this conference, one would know we have something powerful on which we need to expand and invest in our creators and innovators.

I now employ a group of 14 people. As the ability awards grow and if I can get out of our fund-raising problem, we will be trebling that employment. One of our employees, Amie Fitzpatrick, who is legally blind or visually impaired, has just received a place on the Social Entrepreneurs Ireland wave change programme. She is 22 years old and thought she would never get through school. She got through school because of the work we did with her. She is now a wave changer participant and wants to look at the transparency of legislation. That shows the legacy of special entrepreneurship.