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ATLAS Geraldton CEO Zane D’Mello wins national award for connecting people with disability to services

Jessica MoroneyGeraldton Guardian
ATLAS CEO Zane D'Mello and wife and operations manager Christine Kerr accepting the Most Outstanding Contributor to Social Connectedness award.
Camera IconATLAS CEO Zane D'Mello and wife and operations manager Christine Kerr accepting the Most Outstanding Contributor to Social Connectedness award. Credit: Supplied

A Geraldton disability support advocate has won a national award last week for his work ensuring access and inclusion regardless of a person’s level of mobility.

Last Friday, ATLAS Geraldton CEO Zane D’Mello was awarded the most outstanding contributor to social connectedness at the 2022 Enablement Awards in Sydney, recognised for his efforts to advance the lives of people with disability.

Mr D’Mello said he was surprised at the acknowledgment but proud of the organisation’s tireless work to ensure inclusivity for everyone in the region.

“It’s a Geraldton-owned organisation in a tiny little town and it’s a national award so I’m quite thankful and proud,” he said.

Through collaboration with profit-driven local businesses, Mr D’Mello said people with disability can access leisure items without second-party assistance.

“ATLAS does some pretty unique work to get people with disability involved in what’s happening in the community. Our approach is fairly unusual, I don’t know of other organisations in Australia that I’ve come across that approaches work in the way we do,” he said.

Mr D’Mello explained aside from personal assistance, ATLAS was collaborating with about 10 profit-making businesses across Geraldton to ensure people with disability can receive their services, expanding their market and driving inclusivity.

One example is the Access All Areas service to assist event organisers to make an event or venue inclusive for everyone based on the experience of a person with disability.

Through a partnership with sole bike-hire business Revolutions Geraldton, Mr D’Mello said people with disability are able to hire out adaptive bicycles directly from the outlet.

“We apply what we know about disability to allow them to serve that target group,” he said.

“That seamless integration into the community is probably the core of the systemic stuff we do, and it’s fun too.”

Mr D’Mello said the next step forward for ATLAS was entering the inclusive tourism market and to invent new devices to ensure inclusion right throughout Geraldton.

“We’re now partnering with tour operators and that leads us on to building some equipment that doesn’t exist,” he said.

“So we’re now in the invention space as well, we just recently built a passenger lift for light aircrafts and a few other things in the process of building.

“We think tourism is a massive opportunity . . . there’s some really nice research that’s been done in Europe and now Australia about the economic opportunity in that,” he said.

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