Australia's Everything Suarve grows to give more youth a second chance with Power Apps and Copilot

On Australia’s Gold Coast, a group of teen boys huddle over worksheets and notes, learning technical aspects of construction. Then they head outside to work on building a tiny home that is destined for a crisis housing organization. Later, they recline in the grass with eyes closed, practicing mindfulness exercises.  

Each of these boys has a troubled past. They have struggled with homelessness, unsafe home environments, crime, detention, and mental health challenges. Then they found a second chance at the youth rehabilitation nonprofit Everything Suarve (Esuarve).  

“Before, I was seen as just some troubled kid. I get respect from everyone now, and I respect them back. I’m being seen as a person,” says 15-year-old J., a participant in Esuarve. He recently graduated from the nonprofit’s 10-week program and hopes to get a job in roofing. He credits Esuarve with giving him the confidence, tools, and trust to change his life. “It taught me how to make good choices, to quit crime.”  

In just five years and with a small team, Esuarve has helped more than 300 young people ages 15–24 through job training, mental health support, housing, mentorship, life skills, and more. The program results in a 79% drop in recidivism and 90% rate of employment or return to school. “We’re here to give them hope and a chance in life, no matter where they’ve come from,” says Joseph Te Puni, Founder of Everything Suarve.  

The nonprofit works with up to 20 youth at a time, but many more young people need their help. Meanwhile, staff and volunteers were swamped with administrative tasks, which got in the way of what really mattered—building relationships with the people they served. Esuarve turned to Microsoft Partner ONGC Systems to gain back time through a custom Microsoft Power Apps solution and Microsoft 365 Copilot.  

“The kids need us. Our job is out there, with them,” says Camille Pepper, CEO of Everything Suarve. “This system has given us time back through more efficient processes. We can get off the computer and show up for what we’re here for—our young people.” 

Decreasing administrative overhead  

Te Puni founded Esuarve in 2020 because he knew firsthand the obstacles young people face. As a teen he had run-ins with the law, lost friends to drunk driving accidents, and made poor decisions. “I realized a lot of those choices I made were based on survival. I also knew what it felt like to be judged based on my past or what I looked like,” Te Puni remembers.  

He committed to helping youth find their way but had no experience instituting efficient processes or running a nonprofit. “We were always heart-led. We weren’t business or tech people,” he adds. As word of Esuarve’s program spread, more people signed up—and operations became messier. Paper files for each participant littered the desks, emails cluttered inboxes, and it was frustrating to track down details in documents stored scattershot across shelves and online platforms.  

Then a representative from ONGC reached out with ideas to upgrade manual and time-intensive processes. “The knowledge ONGC brought gave us safety and security through a system that allows us to get more time back,” Te Puni remembers.  

The Power Apps solution is designed around a timeline of Esuarve’s 10-week program. Completing steps triggers follow-ups through Power Automate. For example, the solution automatically sends youth IDs to the trade college that provides the construction certifications participants earn through the program. It also sends automated emails so youth, the justice department, and partner organizations always know their next actions. In this way, the new solution seamlessly handles tasks that used to risk slipping through the cracks.  

“The timeline is one of the most powerful tools we have,” says Joey TK, Facilitator at Everything Suarve. “It gives us a clear picture of each young person’s journey—the support they’ve received, the challenges they’ve faced, and the progress they’ve made.”

Esuarve is also using Microsoft 365 Copilot to boost productivity and save time. They input grant requirements and instruct the AI agent to create a summary and checklist. Pepper estimates that generative AI shaves weeks off the time it takes her to complete grant applications. The team uses Copilot to generate summaries of lengthy documents—a particularly welcome aid for Te Puni, who did not finish high school.  

He also prompts Copilot to suggest improvements to emails in Outlook.  “When I first started Esuarve, I had a lot of embarrassment around how I was writing emails, since I was expelled from school at 15,” Te Puni says. “Today, Copilot operates in the background for every email I write. It’s one of my biggest teachers.”

The Esuarve team reinvests every saved minute into the program and participants. “Before, we were doing everything the hard way,” Te Puni says. “But now we're implementing a system that’s more efficient and streamlined. That lets us spend the time where it’s needed—with our young people.”

Collaborating to create a globally accessible research hub

At its inception, this technology-and-research collaboration came from a shared vision to create an easy-to-use hub for ALS scientists. People living with ALS, legal experts, researchers, and Microsoft technologists came together to map out, then build and refine, this hub. Since then, Neuromine continues to grow as users add structured data from other organizations and study outcomes. It is a living, ever-growing resource to speed the pursuit of new possibilities and pathways.

“Expanding the platform and adding new data to it makes Neuromine relevant to researchers around the world, exponentially increasing its impact,” says Clare Durrett, Managing Director at Answer ALS.  

Verified researchers can access the mountain of data within Neuromine to accelerate their work. “Partnering with Microsoft powers a global reach, sharing data, and ease of use to get to the data, all free for researchers to use,” says Dr. Terri Thompson, Research Program Director at Answer ALS.  

Dr. Julia Kaye is one researcher who is using Neuromine to partner with experts half the globe away. “Because Neuromine is accessible to everyone in the world, it is very easy to collaborate with other researchers around this data,” says the Scientific Program Leader and Research Investigator at Gladstone Institutes. The always-available data facilitates the sharing of ideas across fields and specialties, leading to new avenues of research. 

Signing up youth faster

Esuarve used to receive referrals from police departments, the justice system, and families by email, paper form, and even folks knocking on their door in person. As the nonprofit grew, this makeshift approach became impossible to manage. “We were missing referrals because we had no system,” Te Puni recalls. “This solution puts an automated flow in the background and uses AI to do the hard work.”

Program applicants now complete an online form through Power Apps. They input contact information, referral data, and other demographics, then upload documents such as a driver’s license. Completion of the form automatically alerts staff and triggers the creation of a new record saved in SharePoint. In all, the Power Apps solution saves eight hours of time to enroll each participant.  

The Power Apps solution not only streamlines work for the Esuarve team. It also makes enrollment easier for youth. “The young people weren’t interested in writing down things in paper enrollment, but they’re really good on their mobile devices,” Pepper says.  

The Esuarve team deeply believes that every young person deserves the opportunity to make the most of their lives. The Power Apps solution enables them to spend less time on paperwork and more on expanding their programs. “This system can scale their growth and also evolve with Esuarve,” explains Deniz Uysal, Senior Solutions Architect at ONGC Systems. The low- to no-code Power Platform enables ONGC to quickly add features that match new initiatives Esuarve may develop later. 

Tracking youth progress

During Esuarve’s 10-week program, young people earn first aid, CPR, and construction certifications as well as learn life skills, breathwork, and team-building lessons. All the while, staff and volunteers cultivate relationships and help the youth shed destructive patterns. Instead of taking notes about each participant’s progress by hand, facilitators now record all relevant information via the solution.

Model-driven app design within Power Apps made it easy to add components, such as forms and charts, through primarily no-code functionality. This enables Esuarve facilitators to record vital data such as attendance. As each young person studies for their certifications, facilitators mark the units completed. What's more, when a participant finishes all required units, a Power Automate flow automatically notifies the trade college, which can then grant the certification.  

Facilitators can also write notes about each participant through the Power Apps solution. They record relevant details, such as when a young person has a breakthrough. All notes are recorded in their record so Esuarve has a full picture of their journey. Participants' SharePoint records even include documents like work paystubs so the nonprofit can prove outcomes if needed. 

The complete context means “we don’t lose time in drawn-out team reviews,” TK says. "Many young people come to us carrying significant challenges, and the real work happens through authentic, face-to-face connection, not from behind a screen. With everything at our fingertips, we invest saved time in building trust and supporting each young person’s journey.”  

The solution also incorporates email and texting so staff can communicate with families, trade colleges, court representatives, and more from a central platform. Those messages are saved within participants’ records so any staff member can pick up the thread where another left off. Esuarve staff can contact entire groups, rather than copy, paste, and send individual messages. “We used to spread communication over different phones, personal email, work email, wherever. Now this system captures everything in its entirety,” Pepper says.

Streamlining data insights and reporting

If Pepper and Te Puni had their way, they would welcome every struggling young person with a hot meal and a hug, but currently, Esuarve's limited capacity leaves eligible youth on a waitlist. The nonprofit aims to expand to not only help more people but also develop a campus, complete with tiny home housing, a gym, classrooms, and more. That dream is dependent on securing more funding.  

“We’re a small organization and we fight for every dollar,” Te Puni says. “This solution allows us to capture all data so we can generate reports that show funders how we go above and beyond.”

Government and private funders require extensive reporting, which Esuarve used to provide by manually tallying numbers and cobbling together Excel spreadsheets. “Now facilitators put all that data into our tool so we can easily produce those reports,” Pepper says. All data is securely stored in Microsoft Dataverse and is not duplicated, so at the push of a button, the team can generate a current report. They can easily demonstrate contact hours, certifications granted, outcomes, and more, without the risk of mistakes from manual calculations.  

This evidence helps Esuarve advocate for more funding. “I now have the evidence to say to the government, ‘you’re funding us for x hours but we’re putting three times that into our young people,’” Pepper says. “Funders are data-driven. We give them as much data as possible, and that’s through this solution.”

To complement hard numbers, stories “touch everyone’s heart,” Pepper says. The Esuarve team directs Microsoft 365 Copilot to review 10 weeks’ worth of documentation saved in the Power Apps solution to generate a short narrative about each participant. “Through our storytelling, we’ve opened up the community’s eyes and ears. We’re helping them get behind these young people,” she adds.    

Reports not only enable Esuarve to fulfill grant requirements but also make them more competitive for future investment. “Funding is shrinking globally and in Australia, which means every nonprofit has to better prove the work they do,” explains Isabelle Thilliez, Business Development Manager at ONGC Systems. “This solution has a direct impact on Esuarve’s long-term future because they can showcase to donors all they do—and back it up with concrete statistics.”  

By finding efficiency, productivity, and more effective reporting through technology, Esuarve is poised to create an even greater impact on its community. Pepper says, “We give these young people another chance. We show that it doesn’t take much. It’s just kindness, love, a hug, and hope.”  

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