Our Story

The Friendship Circle

Friendship Circle creates inclusive friendships between people with and without disabilities through ridiculously fun opportunities. We’re bringing the awesomeness of friendship to amazing humans.

Established in Sydney in 2007, Friendship Circle is a highly successful initiative which pairs young people in the community with children, teens and young adults with disabilities. Volunteers provide friendship and assistance, and in return, they gain social and organisational skills, self-confidence and learn to understand and embrace differences, thus completing the friendship circle.

Our organisation continues to operate successfully, and has now expanded to over 20 programs within the community, with a participant base of over 500 people.

Realising the need for the next step

As our Friendship Circle participants grew up and graduated from high school, we began to realise that there are painfully few options available for people with disabilities to engage in meaningful work. We saw an urgent need to help prepare these young adults for life and give them an opportunity to develop skills which could help them gain employment in the future.

We know that employment - and everything that comes along with being part of the workforce - is critical to living a full life, enjoying good mental health and reduced reliance on others.

An innovative idea was born: to set up a working bakery in the heart of the community where young people with disabilities can learn valuable skills on the job.

Tackling the employment challenge for people with disabilities

When we started the Friendship Bakery four years ago, we were focused on providing meaningful employment for young adults with disabilities. However, the employment challenge for people with disabilities was larger than we imagined. Gaps in areas such as skills, confidence, experience and employer attitudes needed to be filled to assist our aspiring bakers and baristas on their path towards employment.

We have refined and developed our model to focus on creating the most empowering skills development and work experience program ever!

The Friendship Bakery is a unique place where aspiring bakers and baristas with disabilities will build incredible confidence and achievements by using fresh skills to engage and connect with our amazing community of volunteers and customers.

Making a real difference in the community