Alcoa volunteers support Vinnies WA: social licence and project lessons for miners
Reviewed by Joe Ashwell

First reported on Australian Mining Review – News
30 Second Briefing
Alcoa Australia sent 40 employees to volunteer with the St Vincent de Paul Society in Mandurah and Bunbury, handling donation intake, sorting and merchandising at Vinnies op shops that fund emergency relief, accommodation and support programmes. Through the Alcoa Foundation Community Impact Campaign, the company has committed nearly $130,000 to the Vinnies Passages Youth Engagement Hub in Peel, which supported 718 young people across more than 7,600 sessions last year. The 2024 campaign has allocated over $400,000 to charitable initiatives across 27 global locations.
Technical Brief
- Forty Alcoa Australia (ASX: AAI) employees were deployed to Vinnies operations in Mandurah and Bunbury.
- Volunteer tasks focused on intake logistics: receiving, unpacking and categorising donated goods for onward merchandising.
- The Peel Passages Youth Engagement Hub targets vulnerable 12–25-year-olds with walk-in, low-barrier access.
- On-site facilities include food provision, showers, laundry, internet, clothing and phone charging for at-risk youths.
- Over the last year, 718 young people generated more than 7,600 individual engagement sessions at Passages hubs.
- Vinnies WA notes youth comprise about 20% of Western Australia’s homeless population, indicating concentrated service demand.
- Beyond basic needs, the hub delivers structured workshops aimed at social, emotional, mental and physical wellbeing outcomes.
Our Take
Alcoa Australia appears in only a small subset of the 147 Mining stories in our database, and most of those focus on bauxite and alumina operations rather than community programmes, so this Vinnies WA piece highlights the company’s attempt to balance its industrial footprint in WA with visible social investment.
The 27 charitable locations supported globally in 2024 through the Alcoa Foundation Community Impact Campaign suggest a structured, portfolio-style approach to ESG, which can be useful when negotiating social licence for Alcoa’s WA operations in regions such as Peel and Bunbury.
With youths making up 20% of WA’s homeless population and 718 young people accessing Vinnies’ Passages hubs in the past year, Alcoa’s targeted volunteering in Mandurah and Bunbury aligns its workforce presence with areas of acute social need, which can strengthen relationships with local councils and service providers that often intersect with planning and approvals processes.
Prepared by collating external sources, AI-assisted tools, and Geomechanics.io’s proprietary mining database, then reviewed for technical accuracy & edited by our geotechnical team.
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