Ren Fernando
Co-Founder of ReLove, Australia
An architect turned social entrepreneur, Ren co-founded ReLove to tackle two crises at once: waste and housing insecurity. The organisation rescues high quality furniture from landfill and furnishes homes for women and families starting again after violence, homelessness or incarceration, restoring dignity and choice at a critical moment. Its social enterprise arm, ReStory, resells designer pieces to the public, generating income that helps fund ReLove’s mission and proving that circular solutions can deliver both social impact and environmental change.
When we started ReLove we were two people in a shed and look at the scale of it now. We have really only been doing this at scale for about four and a half years and what we are seeing is real change. The power of what we do well at ReLove is collaboration with agencies, with charities, with corporates. When you connect authentically with people who want to make change we become more powerful together as a community. others through language.
We are way more than just a charity at ReLove, we are a movement. Shelter is a human right, but a home is more than a roof. In my background being trained as an architect, we were taught that shelter is important, shelter is a human right. But thinking more deeply about what a home means, it is all those things that happen under the roof. Comfort, safety, stability. They need to happen with a safe bed, a place to cook, a sofa you can sit on, a table you can eat around with your children. These are important human interactions.
The way we have designed ReLove is to give people choice in how they want their home to look for themselves. It is not just a sofa or a bed. It is cushions sewn by a community group, artwork, candles. Those things matter. They help people feel heard, respected and worthy. The best thing we can do is ask people what they need. Finally arriving at the point of getting housing is so hard. If we are going to make it successful we have to listen and give people choice. Choice really matters because it means people feel heard. By the time people have walked through the homewares section somebody is hugging, somebody is smiling. A good night’s sleep matters. Cooking a meal at home matters. Sitting around a table matters. What we get out of bed to do here every day is to help people move into housing with as much dignity, care, respect, joy and love as possible.
There is simplicity to what we do, putting excess and need together. But what we are really doing is the power of people moving this mountain together. It is our community volunteers who turn up, our partners who believe in us, the people who take extra chances and extra time and cost to prove that it is worth it. Now we are talking to hotel groups, corporate relocation firms, big industry players. We could not do ReStory without incredible furniture donated to us, without partners who believe we can keep this service free for people. Everybody is playing their part of the puzzle.
ReLove sits at the intersection of housing insecurity and waste. What excites me is that people now know who we are. We are talking to ministers. We have our first government funding. We are bedding down a model that could roll out nationally. At the same time we know landfill in Sydney is full in five years and furniture is the second largest problem.
The environment is a huge part of what we are doing. It is exciting to know we are on track to furnish 1,000 homes and there is more we can be doing. The need is huge. The future is about making sure this model has longevity so that it is still here helping people, and helping the planet, for decades to come.
