2026 Telethon Beneficiaries: Greg Hire - A Stitch In Time

0:00Triple M, Robby and Carly and today, Telethon is actually announcing their 2026 beneficiaries, which is really cool, 147 beneficiaries will be supported this year, 279 grants in total, 199 programs and services, 38 research grants, 3444 pieces of equipment, like these numbers are absolutely huge and this is where we see the true effect of Telethon. Now, former WorldCat Greg Hire has a charity called Stitch in Time and he's one of the beneficiaries this year. He does amazing work. He joins us in the studio right now. Greg, hello, welcome. Thanks for coming in, mate. Oh, my absolute pleasure. I'm looking forward to sharing a little bit the insights that we get to the generosity of Telethon. Yeah, so Teleth's about your charity. If people aren't familiar with it because you do a lot of great work in regional Australia. Yeah, definitely be a bit arrogant here but now we certainly do. We've been fortunate enough to be beneficiaries of Telethon for now three years and it's been a bit of a callous game changer for our organisation.

1:01Yeah, three years ago we were running a number of workshops in schools and since Telethon's sort of support and generosity, that's allowed us to deliver our mental health and self-care workshops into schools. So predominantly we have an incredible team of psychologists that I guess educate facilitators to then get into high schools and primary schools and teach evidence-based practice regarding mental health and self-care, as I've mentioned. So it's special. We delivered to over 200 schools, 40,000 students last year to some of the most local, so most remotely challenged locations around WA. So could be up in the Gibriva road to then delivering in Armadale. So yeah, really, really special is really, really like it's a privilege space to be in when you can impact lives. Yeah. And more so contribute to, yeah, I guess the mental health landscape in WA. We better pull you up straight away. That was far from American, by the way. Yeah, you do really important work.

2:02And it's great that you can talk about it as well. So no, we want to hear more about it, not less, man. It's brilliant. And I think you're catching kids at a pivotal time in their life, right? Because school teaches you about maths, about English, but it doesn't always mentally equip you for life. So I think that's so important that you're getting kids, I guess, when they're at that growing stage of their life, where they are learning about their emotions. Oh, I need to clip that up and use that for it. Yeah. You're exactly right. I think we're saying that not only you, but adults are facing more and more challenges than we've ever done. And the emergence of AI, I think, especially in adolescence has seen a really significant shift. I think what we're seeing is adolescents being more lonely. The lack of play and creativity and expression is being minimized with the emergence of technology, all right? So for us, when we get into schools, we're showing lived experience. And I think that's why we've been really, really successful, is we try and go by your traditional means

3:04of going into a workshop and onto a school and showing a presentation or a slide deck and be like, here you go, two and five, deal with mental health condition. Like, we want to make it conversational. It's a very serious topic, no doubt. But we want to enlighten these kids on that they can do the little small practices every day to be their best version of themselves. And so whether that's reminding them that the importance of sleep or exercise, but in a fun manner, right? And all three of us in this room go, well, that's really basic stuff, but basic stuff is just because it doesn't mean it's easy. So it's just reminding those young minds and you're right, they're consuming so much. So if weekends sort of just shift a little bit to have a behavioral change. So then as they transition to adulthood or some of them already near that way, yeah, you can certainly do that. Love that. And you're always putting this into practice on the ground as well. Like, for example, you're in Broom yesterday. What were you doing there? Yeah, so we're over there. I've just recently brought on a new team about Eric Benning who was a former free man of docker

4:05and Kananara fella. So I was really special to sort of bring him in in. Awesome. And saying like, I was speaking to another stuff in the last night and it was quite emotional. When you're in a workshop, you sort of fixate on a kid that might be that introvert, that sort of just like you know they're observing and they're loving it, but they're not really comfortable enough to share their ways or they're expressing themselves. And consistently each time there were young Indigenous fellas and females that would come up there or cuffed the woods. And that was something that we haven't really had. You know, being obviously not Indigenous myself in that representation. So it felt really special to bring him up there. But yeah, delivered workshops across all the primary schools and high schools in that area, as well as delivering into Gandoa and the Kimberly School spirit program. So for us again, when we try and get up there, we try and engage with other telephone beneficiaries as well on Collaborate. I think Collaboration is a word that gets thrown out so much.

5:05That's a beautiful thing about telephone. Like you know, there's, as you had mentioned, there's so many different moving paths. There's so many different, fantastic organisations doing well. So you know, if you can, there's already conversations we've had the Perth Symphony Orchestra reach out to us or if we can be involved in a program. That's cool. We've done stuff with ocean heroes who do surfing on a spectrum in autism. We've partnered with Fair Game to help deliver equipment to some of those communities as well as delivering our program. So yeah, when we get up to those region on remote locations, brooms a beautiful spot. But again, it's isolated, right? So we're just trying to do what we can do. So if there's anyone listening this morning and they're loving what they're hearing and they know someone that could benefit from your programs, how do they get in touch with you? Yeah, these is why just drop us an open wire like our email, so stitchantime.org.au or even from my socials, like when I was playing, I didn't have a naming right sponsors and my last name's higher. So I had to Greek for high, I was hoping I'd be like, oh yeah, no, that's just something that can come along all the lines.

6:06But yeah, so just drop us an open wire. And again, like I generally get excited when regional locations hit us up because again, we just, that's what Telephone has allowed us to do is to remove any challenges and barriers which might be duty location and traveling. So we try and go up there and stand up a team. And then more so, I think not make it a roadshow, right? Like we're really critical of ourselves of building relationships. I think we want to remove the tokenistic gesture of us going and delivering a school, having a social media post and being like, this is awesome. We ideally want to embed ourselves with what the school does. And so then over time, we can actually see significant behavioral change. One thing you guys were really known for as well is the ball, the stitch in time ball. Are you still doing that? Yeah, not so much just because of the evolution of Telephone. Yeah, yeah. And our priorities have shifted. As anyone that's been listening understands how events work, it is brutal.

7:07Yeah, and expensive, right? Yeah, and I just think our priorities have sort of, I would love to do it. It's just when I think of that. And also, when my wife here, this should go, yeah, I'm happy and I'm going with my wife. She sees Grinch, she's the most incredible. And for us, like it's a celebration, to be honest, in a weird way when you're talking mental health and even suicide prevention, it's like, how do you celebrate that? But I think it's celebrating all those things that are coming with that. So we'd love to do it, but it's just when it turns to a priority area right now. My focus is getting out to the schools and also providing support and resources for my staff so that they don't feel like they're precious as well. So we're small organizations still. So yeah, you just got sometimes an area of vision. Well, you're doing absolutely amazing work and you are very, very deserving beneficiaries. Thank you so much for joining us, Greg. Thank you so much, really appreciate it. WA, you showed up for telephone. Now, see what you made possible. There's a free special 32 page magazine inside the Worcester Trail today celebrating

8:09all the telephone beneficiaries like a stitch in time. Grab a copy today, Triple M, Rubby and Galley.