Wellness for Homeless

Massage and wellbeing for good!

Feeling inspired to change the world? Are you in the health and wellness sector and want to share your amazing skills for good? Joining Hands wants you to be part of our growing ‘Wellness for Homeless’ movement!

As massage therapists, you have an incredible opportunity to provide access to healing for homeless and vulnerable young people with a positive personal and social impact by becoming a Joining Hands GiveBack Ambassador.

Joining Hands is a social enterprise that provides access to health and wellbeing services for homeless and vulnerable young people. As a social enterprise, our business model focuses on creating change and addressing issues in the community rather than generating profits for shareholders. Our work is about getting thousands of businesses to be active and reliable contributors to innovatively improve the health and wellbeing of homeless and vulnerable people.

There are many reasons why young people find themselves without a permanent, safe and secure place to call home. Homeless and vulnerable young people may have felt the impact of domestic and family violence, family breakdown, trauma, racism, bigotry, mental health, drugs and alcohol, neglect and abuse. What is for sure is that there are often deep wounds that require healing.

We believe that everybody has the right to live a life filled with joy, health and purpose.  With our wealth of experience working with homeless and vulnerable young people we have seen first-hand the impact of trauma and abuse on their mental and physical health. Joining Hands provides health and wellbeing services to young people providing them another way to heal and recover.

You know the phenomenal healing potential of bodywork, you see it every day. When we’re providing treatments to homeless and vulnerable young people we see amazing changes and hear feedback that gets us straight in the heart: the young pregnant woman who experiences relief after a massage that worked on her back and feet; the young man with self-harm scars on his arms has one of our team members provide a treatment on the part of his body he knows other people can’t even look at, let alone touch; the young people who don’t have the words to describe the sensation of being loose and relaxed after a massage because they’ve never experienced that feeling before. For so many homeless and vulnerable young people, they have no memory of having been touched in a gentle, healing and positive way.

Joining Hands • Our Story

Kylie Lowe, Founder and Director of Joining Hands is an energised short haired cancer survivor and thriver; a mother to 2 beautiful daughters; mad surfer and Nia dancer; wildly passionate about social justice, youth homelessness, healing, health and wellbeing for all. She is equally as passionate about living a life with purpose and joy inspiring and ensuring others have the opportunity to do the same along the way!

The Joining Hands vision started with a simple conversation about the need to provide access for all to the benefits of health and wellness services. By October 2011, founding members Kylie Lowe, Jill McKay & Mark Teis started a business discussion to make this dream a reality.

We saw an unmet need in the community… so bridged it!

With over 17 years experience in the youth homelessness sector we saw an unmet need and created our amazing social enterprise Joining Hands. We believe that everybody has the right to live a life filled with joy, health and purpose. With our wealth of experience working with homeless and vulnerable young people we have seen firsthand the impact of trauma and abuse on their mental and physical health. Joining Hands provides access to health and wellbeing services to young people providing them another way to heal and recover.

Every night in Australia over 44 000 young people are homeless. These young people have often experienced trauma and abuse and are more likely to suffer from poor physical and mental health as a result including depression and anxiety. They face many barriers to access natural health services that research indicates assists on a path to mental health recovery and overall wellbeing. Our aim is to provide a bridge for vulnerable and homeless young people to access health and wellness services and live a life filled with health, joy and purpose.

Feel twice as good knowing you helped change the world with us.

We partner with the largest youth services in both Brisbane and on the Gold Coast, Brisbane Youth Service and Gold Coast Youth Service. These organisations value and understand the services we offer their young people. We currently run 2 monthly clinics for young people to access Massage and Bowen Therapy. We receive profound feedback such as “that was the first time I have been touched in a healthy and non violent way”. Headspace, who are Australia’s National Youth Mental Health  Foundation with over 60 centres in Australia, have also engaged our services for their young people.

We have a growing tribe of GiveBack Ambassadors who support our vision through their monthly subscription. You can learn more about joining our tribe here and read the story of just one of our inspiring changemakers here.

Choose Joining Hands and become part of our vision: to connect everyone through wellbeing.