Celebrating a Year of Purposeful Progress at Fresh Hope Communities Awards

There was an atmosphere of gratitude as Fresh Hope Communities staff gathered in downtown Sydney under warm skies for our 3rd annual Fresh Hope Communities Awards celebration last week. 

Representatives and award finalists from across our Residential Care, Retirement Living, Affordable Housing, Outdoor Experiences and Support Services, as well as members of Fresh Hope Communities Board, came together to celebrate the outstanding collective work and achievements and a year of ‘purposeful progress’ over the course of 2024. 

Staff were encouraged to nominate colleagues throughout the year and covered areas such as Values ambassadors, Community Contributor, Hospitality, Wellbeing, Emerging Leadership, Exceptional Customer Service and Team Collaboration. 

In his opening address, CEO Dan Dwyer remarked, “Beyond sharing my personal thanks and gratitude I’d really like to say that you should all be really proud of yourselves; proud of everything you have brought to Fresh Hope Communities these 12 months. It’s easy for us to get caught up in the busyness of our everyday roles, serving our residents, tenants, guests, and their friends and families and we forget to take stock of what we have achieved collectively and individually. 

“We are here today to focus on what brings us together and we are here to celebrate one another and our achievements in the past year because they deserve to be celebrated. You deserve to be celebrated.” 

Board Chair of Fresh Hope Communities Raewyn Williams, expressed her appreciation to the staff, “All of us in leadership positions here at Fresh Hope Communities, we do stand on the shoulders of all of you who are giants, who are heroes and leaders in your way, and to the extent that we do a great job, it’s because we are lifted up and so inspired by everything that you do.” 

We also took a few moments to honour CEO Dan Dwyer and thank him for his outstanding leadership in what has been a challenging yet tremendous year of achievement with new developments commissioned—Green Hills Residential Care Service in East Maitland, Cedar on Collins Retirement Community in Kiama and Nightingale Marrickville, our Affordable Housing project.  

None of these came without challenges and coming out of the COVID years, Dan’s steady leadership and focus on providing high quality care and hospitality across all our services has been front and centre. 

Sam Buckerfield, General Manager of Corporate Communications gave a moving tribute saying, “You have transformed the culture from compliance to kindness and chartered new waters which has led to industry recognition, awards, seats at tables we’ve never had, media attention and the eyes and ears of industry and state and federal leaders. That is an extraordinary feat and a reflection of your great leadership…Your courageous and servant-hearted leadership has brought us to this point.” 

Raewyn Williams also added her thanks and gratitude, “I’ve worked with a lot of leaders in my time and there are the leaders that you have to follow…but the really good leaders are the ones you want to follow and then very occasionally you get a great leader, a truly great leader, who is someone that just brings you joy to follow them. And so, the way that I would express it is that we have been really blessed to do our best because we have a CEO that brings the best out in us and leads by example.” 

Thank you to all those who travelled long distances to be there and a special thanks must also go to our People & Culture team, the supporting staff from the Rhodes Office administrative staff, ICT and Communications teams for their tireless efforts in organising the event. 

Our Awards celebration would also not be possible without the generous support of our sponsors: Guardian, Diadem, Uniformity, Gow Gates, Makinson D’Apice Lawyers, PJ Recruitment, Virtu, James Agency, CDC Construction Group, BUNZL, Howard Recruitment, Programmed Property Services, EWH Food Services, HESTA, ICON, Kerfoot, Meyer Food and co, Pearman, Crowd Strike and Alpha LifeCare. 

Finally, congratulations to all our deserving Award recipients.