Our social enterprise purpose
OUR SOCIAL PURPOSE
Warida Wholistic Wellness exists to heal disconnection and strengthen wellbeing, agency and cultural safety through culturally integrated, trauma informed and relational practice.
As a First Nations and female founded, Badimia (Yamatji) led social enterprise, we work alongside people, families, workplaces and communities to strengthen connection, empowerment, economic participation and systems that support people to heal and move forward on their own terms.
Supply Nation Certified Indigenous Business
Social Traders Certified Social Enterprise
First Nations and female founded, Badimia (Yamatji) led
Social enterprise purpose embedded in our Constitution
Warida does not exist to fix people. We create culturally safe, relational conditions where people can be heard, reconnect with what they already carry, strengthen their inner fire and move forward on their own terms.
Why Warida exists
Warida was founded by Bianca Stawiarski, a Badimia (Yamatji) and Ukrainian woman, with a clear social purpose grounded in lived experience, cultural knowledge, professional practice and a commitment to changing the way wellbeing is understood and supported.
Our social purpose is embedded in Warida’s Constitution. It centres strong and empowered families and communities, culturally safe healing for First Nations people impacted by trauma, and opportunities that contribute to positive mental wellbeing.
That purpose has grown into a broad body of work across counselling, clinical and cultural supervision, workplace wellbeing, women’s empowerment and entrepreneurship, training, facilitation, speaking, research, professional education and community engagement.
What connects these different activities is not a service list. It is the change we are trying to create. We want people to feel heard rather than managed, capable rather than defined by deficit, connected rather than isolated, and able to participate in decisions about their own healing, wellbeing, work and future.
Support people to reconnect with identity, voice, agency, inner wisdom and inner fire through culturally integrated and trauma informed practice.
Strengthen recognition of First Nations knowledges, relational practice, connection to Country and culturally safe ways of working.
Create opportunities for women to strengthen confidence, boundaries, leadership, economic participation and entrepreneurship.
Help workplaces strengthen wellbeing, deep listening, cultural safety, connection and relational ways of working.
Use trade, collaboration, procurement, mentoring and business relationships to strengthen First Nations participation and enterprise.
Contribute research, education and thought leadership that challenges deficit thinking and expands how healing, empowerment and wellbeing are understood.
The Warida Method
The Warida Method recognises that individual wellbeing does not sit in isolation. Reconnection within one person can influence relationships, families, workplaces, communities and systems. Our work therefore holds both individual and collective change at the same time.
Ngardi Guwanda is listening, thinking and feeling deeply. It creates space for people to be heard, reconnect with lived experience and notice what may have been obscured by noise, trauma, pressure or disconnection.
Inner Fire represents agency, identity, purpose and authentic direction. Warida supports people to reconnect with self worth, voice, boundaries and possibility rather than defining them through what has happened to them.
Change can move outwards. When people reconnect with agency and belonging, the effects can be felt across families, teams, organisations and communities. This is why social impact is part of how Warida understands wellbeing.
How we live our purpose
Our 7 Pillars show what underpins everything we do. They are not decorative values. They guide relationships, service design, partnerships, procurement, learning, decision making and how Warida grows.
We are honest, open and ethical. Integrity is the cornerstone of how we work with clients, communities, organisations, collaborators and each other.
We care deeply about the work and the change it can create. We share knowledge, mentor other businesses and contribute where our experience can create wider benefit.
First Nations cultural safety and connection to Country underpin our work. We live Gudu Guduwa, coming together, Ngalimi Yunggudya, giving to each other, and Ngardi Guwanda, listening, thinking and feeling deeply.
We invest in research, reflection, professional development and cultural learning because purpose requires us to keep listening and evolving.
We walk alongside people rather than positioning ourselves as the expert in someone else’s life. We recognise agency, inner wisdom and economic empowerment as part of wellbeing.
We embrace difference and believe First Nations social enterprises have knowledge and experience that can contribute to wider conversations about wellbeing, leadership, systems and social change.
We have the courage to question systems, assumptions and practices that contribute to disconnection, exclusion or deficit based understandings of people and communities. Purpose sometimes requires saying no, asking harder questions and choosing a different way forward.
People and Planet First Global Standards
Warida aligns with the People and Planet First Global Standards across five connected areas: Purpose, Operations, Revenue, Use of Surplus and Structure.
For us, alignment is not about adding another label. It is about being able to show how purpose moves through the business, from why we exist, to how decisions are made, how income is generated, how surplus is used and how purpose is protected over time.
Our Supply Nation certification, Social Traders certification, Constitution, Warida Method and 7 Pillars of Excellence each provide a different layer of accountability. Together, they help connect what Warida says with how Warida operates and the change we are working to create.
Our alignment is guided by the People and Planet First Global Verification Standards, which provide the framework for purpose led enterprises to demonstrate how social and environmental purpose is embedded across their business.
Purpose without operations can become words. Operations without sustainable revenue can become fragile. Revenue without reinvestment can lose its social intent. Purpose without structural protection can disappear through change.
Warida treats these five standards as connected parts of one purpose led business.
PEOPLE AND PLANET FIRST
A purpose led enterprise exists to solve a social or environmental problem. Its purpose is publicly stated, embedded in the organisation and increasingly supported through impact monitoring and reporting.
Warida’s social purpose is both public and embedded in our governing framework. It is expressed through healing disconnection, culturally integrated wellbeing, empowerment, cultural safety, First Nations economic participation and systems change.
Our commitment: Purpose will remain visible, specific and accountable. We will continue developing meaningful ways to understand, measure and communicate Warida’s social impact over time.
PEOPLE AND PLANET FIRST
A purpose led enterprise prioritises people and planet through its day to day operations, decision making and business practices, and increasingly monitors and reports its social and environmental impacts.
At Warida, social purpose does not sit separately from the way the business operates. Financial sustainability matters, but it is not the only lens through which we make decisions.
Our commitment: We will continue developing practical social and environmental measures that are meaningful to Warida’s size, services and impact, and use what we learn to strengthen the way we operate.
PEOPLE AND PLANET FIRST
A social enterprise generates earned income through trading. A sustainable revenue model helps the enterprise pursue its purpose with greater independence, resilience and capacity over time.
Warida is a trading social enterprise. We generate income primarily through professional services and purpose aligned activities that are themselves connected to the social change we are working to create.
Our commitment: Warida will pursue commercial sustainability in ways that strengthen rather than dilute our social purpose. Growth will remain connected to the reason the enterprise exists.
PEOPLE AND PLANET FIRST
A purpose led enterprise directs the majority of its surplus towards advancing its social or environmental purpose rather than maximising private financial benefit.
Warida publicly commits to reinvesting the majority of any financial surplus towards activities that advance our social purpose. Where surplus is available, more than 50 per cent will be retained, reinvested or directed towards purpose related activities.
For Warida, surplus is not simply the endpoint of successful trading. It provides another opportunity to deepen the work, strengthen the enterprise and extend the Ripple Effect.
Our commitment: The majority of available surplus will continue to be retained, reinvested or directed towards activities that advance Warida’s social purpose.
PEOPLE AND PLANET FIRST
A purpose led enterprise protects its social or environmental purpose through governance and structure so that purpose can endure through changes in leadership, ownership and the organisation itself.
Warida’s social enterprise purpose does not rely only upon the intentions of its current leadership. Important protections are already embedded within our Constitution and governance framework.
Our commitment: Warida’s purpose should outlast individual opportunities, contracts and leadership decisions. We will continue strengthening our governance so the reason Warida exists remains protected as the enterprise grows and evolves.
Purpose protection
Approval from members holding 100 per cent of Warida’s issued shares is required to change the Company’s Objects.
This creates an important safeguard around why Warida exists. Our purpose cannot simply be changed through an ordinary management decision, a change in commercial direction or the pursuit of a different opportunity.
Warida is a First Nations and female founded, Badimia led social enterprise.
We have been a Supply Nation Certified Indigenous Business since 6 August 2019 and a Social Traders Certified Social Enterprise since 18 January 2021.
Independent certification provides external recognition of our Indigenous business identity and social enterprise model. Our Constitution provides formal protection around Warida’s social purpose, while our 7 Pillars of Excellence guide how that purpose is lived through everyday relationships, decisions and actions.
Together, these provide different but connected layers of accountability between what Warida says, how Warida operates and the change we exist to create.
Protecting purpose is not about preventing Warida from growing or changing. It is about making sure growth and change remain accountable to the reason Warida exists.
Accountability and impact
Social enterprise is not a label we place on the business. It is something we need to continue demonstrating.
For Warida, accountability means looking beyond how many counselling sessions, programs, workshops, projects or engagements we deliver. We want to understand what changed because the work happened.
Did someone feel heard?
Did they reconnect with their voice, identity or agency?
Did a woman begin to see new possibilities for herself?
Did a workplace begin listening differently?
Did cultural safety become something experienced rather than simply discussed?
Did another First Nations business, practitioner or community benefit through reciprocity, procurement or opportunity?
Did the change within one person begin to ripple into a family, workplace, organisation or community?
Connection, agency and wellbeing
Cultural safety and feeling heard
Women’s empowerment and economic participation
First Nations business participation and reciprocial economic benefit
Workplace wellbeing, connection and relational change
Community benefit and collective wellbeing
The wider Ripple Effect of individual and organisational change
As Warida continues to grow, we are committed to strengthening meaningful ways of monitoring and communicating these outcomes. Our intention is not to measure people for the sake of measurement, but to understand whether our work is contributing to the change we say we exist to create.
These are the kinds of questions that matter to Warida.
Deep listening is part of that accountability. We listen to clients, participants, communities, organisations, collaborators, practitioners, research and lived experience. We reflect on what we hear and allow that learning to influence what we do next.
Financial sustainability matters because it gives Warida the capacity to keep doing the work. It allows us to remain independent, invest in culturally integrated practice, strengthen First Nations participation, undertake research, develop new approaches and respond when communities and organisations need something different.
We do not measure success only by financial performance. We also pay attention to what shifts for people, workplaces and communities because of the work. Sometimes that shift is personal. Someone reconnects with their inner fire, finds their voice again or begins to see possibilities that previously felt out of reach. Sometimes it is relational, with a workplace listening differently or cultural safety moving beyond policy into something people can actually feel.
The impact can also be broader. Opportunities may open for First Nations businesses, practitioners and communities. Indigenous knowledge can be recognised and given greater space to influence how systems work. A change that begins with one person can move outwards into families, workplaces, communities and wider systems.
These changes are not always dramatic, and they do not always happen all at once. Sometimes they begin quietly and grow from there.
That is the kind of social enterprise Warida seeks to be.
Our work is about helping create the conditions where those answers can be heard.
