Challenge Southern Highlands: Adapting care, work and community for a changing climate

By combining compassion, community and meaningful work, Challenge Southern Highlands is transforming the disability-employment model into a life-first approach that strengthens regional climate resilience. 

‘We just want to be great people for people living with disabilities. Quality of life will always be our focus.”

Aaron Malouf, General Manager, Challenge Southern Highlands

The challenge

For over half a century, Challenge Southern Highlands (CSH) has been part of the region’s social and economic fabric. Through its well-known Welby Garden Centre, the organisation created meaningful work and community for people living with disability long before ‘social enterprise’ was a recognised term.

But changing times have brought new pressures. Rising compliance and administrative costs under the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS), combined with increasing climate extremes – drought, fires, floods and heat – have stretched both the business and the people it serves.

For CSH General Manager Aaron Malouf, these challenges aren’t just financial or operational – they go to the heart of how care, inclusion and meaningful work can remain viable in a changing world. 

The response: A new model for sustainable care and work

Guided by a 10-year strategy anchored in quality of life, CSH is reimagining the disability enterprise model for a new era – one where compassion, community and meaningful work are not separate streams but a single, interconnected ecosystem.

The organisation has evolved into a network of four integrated enterprises:

• Welby Garden Centre: A 52-year-old horticultural enterprise employing people with disability in nursery production, education and retail.
• Commercial services: Providing reliable contract labour and light manufacturing for local industries such as Tyree and Dux.
• Garden maintenance crews: Supporting public and private landscapes across the Highlands while promoting native revegetation.
• A new paddock-to-plate café (in development): A hospitality venture where supported employees will grow, cook and serve food sourced from local farms and CSH’s own nursery. 

This diversification has turned CSH into a model of adaptive resilience. When a neighbouring disability service collapsed, CSH absorbed 45 new supported employees – a 50% increase in its workforce. Aaron says ‘we didn’t wait for perfect conditions, we just worked together to make it happen.’  

Today, CSH employs 190 people, including 102 supported employees and 89 supporting staff. This makes it one of the largest employers in the Southern Highlands.  

But CSH’s impact runs deeper than job creation. It is also changing how the region thinks about resilience.

• Health and wellbeing: CSH is integrating allied health and a registered nurse directly into its operations, ensuring holistic care ‘inside the gate’ rather than relying solely on fragmented external providers.
• Housing and independence: The organisation has registered as a Community Housing Provider, planning to build affordable, sustainable housing so people with disability can live independently while remaining part of their community.
• Ecological adaptation: Through its garden and landscaping operations, CSH propagates 15,000 native plants annually, supplies local councils, and restores biodiversity across public spaces – building the region’s living green infrastructure.
• Community regeneration: With 10,000 customers and a loyal network of volunteers, the Welby Garden Centre acts as a social hub, strengthening trust and inclusion. Parents are being re-engaged through co-design forums, reintroducing a shared sense of ownership and local voice.

The result is a regenerative business ecosystem – one where economic activity, care and climate resilience reinforce each other.

Building capital across multiple dimensions

Regional businesses often play an outsized role in driving transformational adaptation, responding to the needs of place and creating value that extends far beyond jobs or profit. Much of this impact is often invisible or unacknowledged, but applying the Eight Forms of Capital framework reveals how Challenge Southern Highlands is contributing to the vitality of its region. 

• Redefine care as climate work: Compassion and inclusion can drive regional resilience and wellbeing.
• Agility builds adaptation capacity: Diversified social enterprises can absorb shocks and turn crises into growth.
• Integration over fragmentation: Bringing health, housing and work under one roof strengthens both people and systems.
• Local procurement matters: Policy and buyer awareness can amplify regional impact through fair, place-based supply chains. 

Looking ahead

CSH participated in the Highlands Homegrown Economy Opportunity Mapping and Collaboration Workshop and is now exploring new partnerships and turning connections into impact.  

Over the coming decade, CSH plans to reduce its reliance on NDIS funding by strengthening its enterprises and attracting patient, values-aligned investment. Its vision is a fully integrated regenerative campus where housing, health, work and learning co-exist, demonstrating what a truly inclusive and climate-ready business can be.

“52 years ago, a group of parents in the Highlands came together because their common cause… was support for their children living with disabilities. Welby Garden Centre has persisted through those 52 years. It’s now the heavy anchor of our social enterprise.”

Aaron Malouf, General Manager, Challenge Southern Highlands

This case study is part of a series sharing inspiring examples of regional enterprise and their positive impacts across multiple dimensions, using the Eight Forms of Capital framework.