Introducing the Socket Pledge

There's a simple idea behind the Pledge 1% movement: giving shouldn't be something a company gets around to once it's successful. Instead, it should be baked in from the beginning as part of how the company operates. Thousands of companies around the world have made a version of this commitment, and today Socket is joining them.

I cut my teeth working in the Top End – in Darwin, Nhulunbuy and Katherine. Emergency medicine confronts you with inequity in many ways, but nowhere is the gap in health outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples more stark, or more impossible to ignore. What a doctor can do about that in a single shift is real, but limited. Ultimately the generational work that actually moves the needle here is being done on country by First Nations-led organisations. Socket can't do that work, but we can support it.

So here is the pledge: Socket will donate 1% of revenue to organisations that empower First Nations people and their cultures. Specifically revenue, because it makes our commitment unconditional. It doesn't shrink in a lean year, and every subscription contributes in a transparent way. Every person who studies with Socket plays a role.

Our first donation: Children's Ground

Our first donation has gone to Children's Ground, a First Nations not-for-profit founded by Arrernte Elder William Tilmouth, working with communities in Central Australia and the Top End.

Their model is both ambitious and humble: a 25-year commitment to walk alongside whole communities, with everything (design, delivery, evaluation) led by First Nations people themselves. Children learn in their first language, on their own country, taught by their own family and cultural educators. Local employment is built in, so kids grow up seeing their own families working in the services that support them. It's a generational strategy – prevention, early intervention and community control – which is exactly what the evidence, and communities themselves, have been calling for.

We're proud to start repaying a real debt the whole system owes. While we're looking at only modest sums today, our hope is that these commitments will compound over time: as Socket grows, so does the pledge – automatically and permanently.

As part of this pledge, we'll report annually on how much was donated and to whom. If you'd like to learn more about Children's Ground, and what they stand for, I'd highly recommend a look at their 2019 documentary In My Blood It Runs – or donate directly.