Simon Burnett is the winner of the 2026 Victorian Father of the Year award
Simon Burnett moved to Kyneton in 2015 and saw what a lot of people preferred to look away from. Behind one of Victoria's growing tree-change towns were young people going without, cut off, slipping through the gaps. He understood how a good town misses its own.
"You sort of have recency bias," he says. "Wherever you live, you forget what you don't see."
Determined to help, Simon ran a small research project to test what he'd seen, and it confirmed many of his initial findings. Then he did the part most people skip. He acted.
He had come to Kyneton to pastor a local church congregation, and it was through that work, in and out of local schools and community groups, that he kept meeting young people. Wanting to build a different pathway for them, he teamed up with born-and-bred local Paul Dettmann, and they founded Social Foundry, which would ultimately lead to them opening a cafe.
"What would it look like," he says, "to create a place where young people could thrive, where community could get around that, and where every dollar spent went back into seeing young people and the wider community thrive?"
That cafe is Social Foundry (SOFO), the not-for-profit social enterprise on the main corner of Kyneton. A decade on, Simon chairs its board whilst leading various other elements, and his wife, Bron Burnett, runs it as general manager. He works in marketing during the week and is a father of three: Jacob, 15, Levi, 13, and Asher, who has just turned 10.
This year, one of SOFO’s own staff nominated Simon for the YMCA Victorian Father of the Year award, and he won.
The award recognises fathers and father figures who make a lasting difference in the lives of children, families and communities. The nomination came from Elly, a barista Simon and the wider SOFO team helped train and welcomed into the team. She left school young and came up through hospitality as, in her words, "that anxious, shy kid who didn't have any confidence in anything." She saw the award while scrolling Facebook and put his name forward.
"Simon has changed many young people's lives forever," she wrote. "He may have even saved some."
Bron, for her part, was blindsided. "I would never have nominated him, because I know he wouldn't want this," she says. "But he absolutely deserves it."
The recognition landed in the same stretch of weeks as something else big happened. Social Foundry has just won the keys to the old Kyneton Primary School, a heritage bluestone landmark built in the late 1800s that sat empty for close to a decade. The Victorian Government restored it in a $12 million project and went looking for someone to bring it back to life.
Social Foundry led the winning bid, at the head of a consortium bringing in property, co-working and social-impact partners. The plan is to turn three acres of disused school into a working community precinct: co-working space for local businesses, room for makers, creatives, markets, exhibitions and events, and space the whole town can use and thrive in and through.
The site sits on Taungurung Country, and the consortium has committed to keep working with Taungurung people as it takes shape. The doors open in time for the Kyneton Daffodil and Arts Festival.
The precinct is a bigger version of what Social Foundry has done since 2018, when the cafe opened in a derelict old petrol station covered in pigeon mess with trees pushing up through the concrete. Simon and Paul, along with their amazing team and wider community did much of the renovation themselves. Bron, pregnant with their third child at the time, ran the operation, and still does.
The idea underneath it is simple. Good coffee and honest food bring people through the door, the cafe pays its own way, and behind the counter runs a free training program for young people aged 16 to 24 who face real barriers to work. Everything is designed for community impact in the lives of people and place.
"Food and drink brings people in the door," Simon says. "It paves the way for the model to support the mission."
Many arrive with almost no confidence, and no recent experience of school or a job. Over ten weeks, they learn to make coffee, run a section, handle a difficult customer, turn up on time and be relied on.
The results hold up. More than 160 have come through. Ninety per cent finish the program they start, and more than three quarters go on to a job, further study or volunteering. Social Foundry now wants to double its intake, from 40 young people a year to 80.
Elly is what that looks like from the inside. She grew up in Woodend, left school early, and started full-time work at 16, first at a cafe in Sunbury. Sue-Lee, who now coordinates community life at SOFO, worked alongside her there and talked her into coming across. Four years on, Elly teaches coffee to the trainees, sometimes in dedicated sessions before the cafe opens, sometimes in the middle of a rush.
"I've watched troubled teens turn into confident hospo superstars," she said.
She is honest about the hard parts. Running a popular cafe is demanding on its own. Doing it while carrying a young person through their worst day takes something extra, and the line between mentor and mate can blur when the people you train become your friends. But the staff are close, held together by the same reason for being there, and that, she says, is the point.
Ask Simon what the mission actually is and the answer is short.
Our vision is that people in the Macedon Ranges would never, ever feel alone.
The focus started with young people and widened from there.
"There are ways to engage anyone who's just disconnected and needs somewhere to start," he says.
"You belong before you believe. Organisations and religions have often said you don't belong until you believe first. We think it's the other way around."
SOFO’s values are kindness, integrity, faith, belonging, purpose, uniqueness, respect and gratitude and Simon is careful about how it shows up. It is the reason he does the work, not a thing he asks anyone else to carry. Most of the young people who come through would have no idea what he personally believes.
"We're not here to convert anyone," he says. "We're not here to change anyone's mind, we just love and care for people."
He fits it around a full working week, unpaid, and does not see that as a sacrifice.
"What can we do with just a little bit of time to have a lot of impact?"
Elly's nomination put loneliness at the centre of it, and so does Simon.
"I'd hate to think people are sitting at home right now feeling like they've got nowhere to go, that they don’t belong anywhere," he says.
The award comes with $10,000, and Simon has no intention of deciding what to do with it alone.
"We'll put it up on the wall and ask the SOFO team," he says. When Social Foundry turn a profit at the end of a financial year, that is exactly what they do. A big sheet of butcher's paper, and everyone's ideas on it.
Most people notice what is wrong in a town and leave it there. Simon noticed, and then he built somewhere for the rest of us to help. The local who told him there was nothing wrong in Kyneton turned out to be half right. It is a good town. It is only a better one now.
Why we do what we do is driven from a strong faith and we want to do good and offer hope with the time we've got.