Pathway helps people make a fresh start. Their twin mantras of ‘saying yes’ and ‘never giving up on people’ inform everything they do.
Pathway is made up of multiple social enterprises, including Oak Tree Devanning and Alloyfold:
Oak Tree Devanning is a professional container devanning company that specialises in unpacking containers, palletising, and preparing goods for distribution.
Alloyfold manufactures 150 commercial seating and furniture products, including stadium and auditorium seating, church, cinema and performance venue seating, as well as hire and rental products.
What problem is Pathway trying to solve?
Pathway exists to deliver positive impact for some of society’s most marginalised people. They work to improve post-release outcomes for people leaving prison, including issues, such as homelessness and barriers to successful reintegration within their communities. Their ultimate goal is to promote a reduction in reoffending. With the cost of every prisoner sitting at around $100,000 annually, the money saved is significant, but the flow-on effects in the lives of former inmates, their families, and the communities they live in, is even more valuable.
What impact is Pathway making?
The social impact of Pathway is spread across three areas: reintegration for prisoners returning to the community, accommodation for vulnerable people in need of a home, and employment for people with barriers to finding a job.
In practice, the community support they provide is delivered through a range of services:
Pathway Supported Employment Service offers employment opportunities for people with barriers to finding work. They do this within Pathway businesses, with external employers, and also the wider labour market.
Pathway Reintegration provides wrap-around reintegration services for those leaving prison, both prior to release and afterwards.
Pathway Accommodation provides short term and longer term accommodation for people in need of a place to call home.
Pathway Retreat is a rural site that hosts He Kete Oranga o te Manawahine, a modified therapeutic community providing assistance for women with alcohol and other drug dependency. Targeting women on bail or paroled from prison, the 16 week programme is complemented by ongoing community reintegration support focussing on restoration and reconciliation with friends, whānau, and employers. He Kete has been fully funded as a 12-month pilot and is a joint venture between Pathway, Odyssey House, and the Department of Corrections.
Pathway Affordable Housing: Whilst in its early stages, Pathway is developing an affordable housing project that helps young families toward home ownership, starting with the construction of four 3-bedroom homes in Christchurch.
Independent research has confirmed that prisoners who engage with the Pathway reintegration programme are 33% less likely to be re-convicted and 43% less likely to be re-imprisoned within 12 months of release. Because of the programme’s success, Pathway has extended it to women who are about to be released from prison or on probation. Compared to ten years ago, there has been a 70% increase of the number of women in prison, which means support is urgently needed.
Alloyfold and Oak Tree provide some of the employment opportunities that are part of Pathway’s social service offering. In this way, Pathway not only runs to generate social impact, the impact of Pathway also helps it to run. In 2017, Pathway partnered with seventeen new employers and helped 54 former prisoners get jobs, 57% of whom stayed in employment for longer than six months.
“Everyone in prison came from the community and most will eventually return to the community. How well they are supported in this transition will have a major impact on how many reoffend and return to prison. This is a choice.”
Carey Ewing, Reintegration Manager
What is Pathway’s business model?
Funding all of this impact activity is serious business. The profit-generating businesses run at Pathway exist to fund the social services that underpin their purpose.
Alloyfold was established in 1998 and has since grown into a multi-million dollar global enterprise. Alloyfold operates in four countries and all profits from the company are directed to the community services provided by Pathway Trust.
Oak Tree Devanning was established in 2002 and runs sites in Auckland and Christchurch that provide employment opportunities to people experiencing barriers to finding a job. Just like Alloyfold, all profits generated by Oak Tree are returned to Pathway Trust.
Where to from here?
As a purpose-driven organisation, Pathway’s priority is delivering their impact. To help with measuring their impact, Pathway have commissioned a research project to assess the efficacy of their reintegration programmes.
Pathway is also currently constructing housing, which will be offered for sale outright or through a staged equity-sharing process to young families with high barriers to conventional homeownership.
Looking ahead, the Pathway team’s sights are set firmly on winning commercial opportunities that will allow them to continue to scale their impact whilst developing and refining the vital services they offer to some of our most marginalised.