Over the past few months, our team has had the opportunity to spend time with students at the University of Wollongong through the UOW200 program, delivered as part of the iAccelerate initiative. It’s one of those experiences that stays with you, re-energising how you think about the work ahead.
iAccelerate brings students, industry, and community together around real world challenges. It creates space for curiosity, new thinking and practical problem solving. For UOW200, that meant students working directly with organisations to take on complex issues and develop grounded, considered responses.
The challenge we set was simple to ask, but harder to answer in practice. How do we respond to the Illawarra housing crisis in a way that improves access to safe, affordable homes today, while also delivering housing that will hold up over time.
Students were asked to step into our shoes and sit with the same realities we work through every day, balancing trade offs, long term responsibility, and the growing complexity of housing need across our region.
What stood out most, especially on pitch night, was the willingness to engage with that complexity. There was no rush to simplify the problem. Instead, students leaned into it, bringing thoughtful, grounded ideas that reflected both care and curiosity.
For our team, the experience was genuinely energising. It’s not often we get the chance to step back from the day to day and see these challenges through a different lens. Hearing new perspectives, being asked difficult questions, and watching ideas take shape in real time reminded us why this work matters.
We were also struck by how housing was framed throughout the course as a ‘wicked problem.’ It’s a description that resonates deeply with our work, and one that clearly created space for students to engage in a way that was both grounded and ambitious.
Partnerships like this matter. Housing is not something any one organisation can solve alone. It takes shared thinking, new ideas and a willingness to sit with complexity together.
We’re grateful to Dr Sheridan Gho, the iAccelerate and UOW teams, and most importantly, every student who brought such openness and insight to the experience.
It reinforced something we already know. The best responses tend to emerge when we work through these challenges together.
