Rebecca Scott

Bec determined her professional path by flipping a coin to decide if she should study science or visual arts at Newcastle Uni. Although science won, it only took her a couple of years in the lab to realise she was way better at talking about science and drawing her microscopic specimens than being stuck behind a lab bench. So in 1994 she ran away and joined the Shell Questacon Science Circus as the Slime Queen. Later she joined the CSIRO, Australia’s premier science research organisation, as a Science Communicator where she worked for a decade in roles including National Coordinator of CSIRO’s Double Helix Club, Manager of Internal Communications and Corporate Social Responsibility and Ethics Manager.

Over the years Rebecca’s spare time has been split between undertaking international development or arts projects. These include development projects in Vanuatu and Vietnam, founding the Scinema international film festival, helping establish the ACT Film Makers’ Network and being on the Board of the Australian Choreographic Centre. In 2005 she was awarded a Vincent Fairfax Fellowship for ethical leadership.

It was working in Vietnam that Rebecca discovered KOTO, a street youth café in Hanoi, and the wonderful world of social enterprise. So she finally left the CSIRO to study a Masters in international development and work for KOTO as their Vice-President for a couple of years. After working at KOTO she decided to build a scalable social enterprise model that could be based anywhere on the planet. STREAT is the result and she’s its founding CEO.

Can you give us some insight into the inspiration behind STREAT?

Although I grew up in the country and spent my early years hiking and climbing mountains, I feel most alive when I’m on the streets of big, sprawling cities and swimming in an ocean of people. It’s what reminds me that I’m human.

If I scour back through the pages of my little black books I can see that STREAT is the product of realisations and epiphanies on streets across the planet. The streets of Hanoi, Calcutta and Siem Reap in Cambodia really got under my skin because of the scale of poverty and youth homelessness. The streets of Bangkok, Paris and New York gave me ideas about the joys of street food. The streets of San Francisco gave me ideas about how to simultaneously combine street food with youth development. And my love affair with Melbourne’s streets started in March 2009 when my partner and I bit the bullet and moved from Canberra to start STREAT. And the timing seems amazing because there’s a bunch of very progressive people in this city not just thinking about how to build thriving and socially-inclusive public spaces and streets, but putting it into action.

In addition to lots of youth and travel and food my last three years have been filled with researching, meetings, business planning and fundraising that have all culminated in the birth of a new fledgling organisation. And like any proud mum I think my baby is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen (actually it’s second only to my two year old son Will).

What is the business objective for STREAT?

STREAT’s a hybrid organisation – or social enterprise – which uses the open marketplace to bring about social change. So our mission is a social one about providing youth with skills and livelihoods, but we achieve it through our market-focused business model. So we take the notion of welfare and turn it on its head. We’re not expecting our governments or charities to solve our social and environmental issues alone, we figure we can start solving them on a bigger scale through the buying and selling of goods and services. So we’re creating a platform for our customers to address youth homelessness by eating great food and engaging in street culture.

As far as our business model goes, it’s kind of experimental. Over time it will become a fleet of street-based micro-enterprises that operates across a city (initially selling street food from around the planet but over time it could be other stuff too). The Holy Grail in the field of social enterprise is scaling and replicating, and we’re hoping we build something that could exist anywhere on the planet, not just downtown Melbourne. So we’re attempting something pretty interesting at the nexus of charity, business, micro-enterprise and potentially social franchising.

What's your most memorable meal?

It was an Indian last supper we held to farewell my (then) partner’s mother, Clare. Clare died suddenly and after her death we discovered she had a freezer full of Indian meals she’d recently cooked. We decided that eating the feast she’d prepared was a fitting way to celebrate her life. We gathered around her kitchen table, put on some Bob Dylan, ate her amazing cooking, and told stories about her over some good red wine. It was one of those bitter sweet moments – lots of tears, lots of laughter.

What are your personal interests?

As a former adrenalin junky my life now sounds pretty lame. My paraglider is currently up for sale in Canberra and instead I now spend my spare time with my partner Kate and our son Will. I can’t remember the last movie Kate and I saw but we’ve recently introduced Will to organic veggie gardening. I’m also drawing a bit, planning a bit of street art and I’ve usually got a couple of photography projects on the go. I’ve also got a few new crazy ideas keeping me awake at the moment and maybe we’ll get to explore them with STREAT in the future.

What's a high point in your life?

Making eye contact with Will for the first time after he was born a couple of years ago. And recently he spontaneously said ‘Luff you Mama’. Getting the 6am phone call from Denmark from our philanthropists who had decided to fund STREAT. And as far as adrenalin highs go you can’t beat jumping off a bloody big cliff with a paraglider strapped to your back.

Any notable lows?

The day my immune system finally crashed after I’d totally burnt out in a previous job. I was eating a beetroot salad in a Sydney cafe about five years ago and ended up being rushed to the RPA with anaphylaxis. I had about two years where all I could eat where raw or boiled celery, potato, choko, pear and rice. Today I can eat most fruit and vegetables, eggs and a couple of fresh herbs. But there isn’t a single meal being sold in this foodie’s city that I could eat and I sure as hell won’t be able to eat any of STREAT’s meals. I find that a bit of a bugger.

If you were a street food dish what would you be?

I love the way that a lot of Asian dishes simultaneously play with sweet, salty, sour and spicy. In Vietnam you can buy this little powder mix of sugar, salt, lemon and chilli flakes which you dip pieces of green mango or really sweet pineapple into it. It’s such a simple street food dish but I love it’s complexity and the fact that initially you get the summery sweetness but it’s then followed by a zing of sourness and then the slow lasting burn of chilli. I love summer, I’m pretty high energy, and I hope I’m a bit multidimensional like the dish.

Where do you call home?

Wherever Kate and Will are. I’ve always been a pretty restless person and don’t get too attached to stuff or places. But nowhere on the planet could feel like home if Kate and Will weren’t there.

When you’re walking down the street you like to….

See the innate beauty that often goes hidden or unnoticed. I love discovering the beauty in discarded things – cigarette butts, plastic bags, flaking paint. I also love discovering plant life where you wouldn’t expect it – moss and tiny plants surviving in the cracks of concrete or even in the bitumen cracks on the road. I love the way a tiny seed can grow over time and crumble whole buildings or empires. It’s a bit like playing Paper, Scissors, Rock but also with plants. Plants always win. That’s why they rock (once a plant biologist, always…).

Share a three minute inspiring story with us

The world’s largest social enterprise is BRAC that operates in Bangladesh. It was started by an amazing guy called Fazel Abed who employs 100,000 staff in his organisation. BRAC earns 80% of its $224 million revenue from its own commercial enterprises and has impacted the lives of tens of millions of Bangladeshis.

The world is littered with global charities and global businesses, but there’s pretty much no global social enterprises. BRAC is my beacon showing what’s possible if we harness the marketplace to alleviate poverty and disadvantage. It’s my beacon that shows what’s possible if we decide we can structure society a different way and insist we put some soul back into capitalism and the way we transact with each other.

What's a quote you live by?

Undoubtedly Mahatma Gandhi’s quote ‘Whenever you are in doubt, apply the following test: recall the face of the poorest and weakest person you may have seen and ask yourself if the step you contemplate is going to be of any use to them.’