Powered by a passion to increase connectivity and decrease stigma around homelessness, Sonia Martin had a vision to step up and tackle homelessness head on, providing access to quality healthcare for thousands of vulnerable Australians.

In 2018, Sonia had a dream to take healthcare to the streets. Sonia sat with people on the streets who had been disengaged from healthcare for up to 30 years, listening to their stories and their worries. She was struck by the loneliness of people sleeping rough and doing it tough. Alongside her business partner, she decided to begin to change the lives of thousands of Australians by setting up a simple nursing kit, writing up policies and procedures for a service named Sunny Street, and started providing healthcare from the back of a car boot. Today Sunny Street is an award winning health service.

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Sunny Street is an award winning health service based on the Sunshine Coast, providing equitable, accessible healthcare to Australian’s experiencing homelessness, vulnerability and poverty. In the last 4 years, Sunny Street has had over 35,000 conversations and consultations and positively impacts the health and lives of our local communities.

Founded by Dr Nova Evans and Sonia Martin in 2018, Sunny Street continues to break down barriers across the state, and works within a philosophy of kindness to create multigenerational change in the lives of others.

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Winner of the Health Improvement Services Award.

Sonia Martin of Nambour is a registered nurse who co-founded Sunny Street in 2018 with Dr Nova Evans. Sunny Street began as a mobile outreach service providing healthcare to Australians experiencing homelessness, poverty and complex trauma. In their first three months, she wrote the policies for a national health outreach service. Sonia mentors Australian nurses in the Australian College of Nursing’s Emerging Nurse Leader Program.

Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2022 Awards were successfully held at The Sofitel in Brisbane on July 30, 2022 with an incredible line up of nominees, finalists and some truly outstanding winners.

The Outstanding Leadership Awards, which was the brainchild of Leadership Coach and author Sonia McDonald, is an annual awards ceremony that shines a spotlight on excellent leaders from different sectors across Australia and around the globe.

In October 2021, at the Australian College of Nursing’s (ACN) first-ever virtually held signature event, the National Nursing Forum (NNF), the Federal Minister for Health and Aged Care The Hon Greg Hunt MP announced Sonia Martin MACN as the winner of the 2021 Health Minister’s Award for Nursing Trailblazers (Trailblazer Award).

Sonia was named the winner for providing equitable health care services to people experiencing poverty and homelessness through the service known as Sunny Street. We caught up with Sonia to talk about what this win means for her and the organisation.

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Dr Nova Evans and her colleague Sonia Goodwin met in 2017 while at Queensland Health. Both worked as managers of services where their primary focus was to discharge people safely from the hospital system.

Wanting to find a way to positively impact their local community, Nova and Sonia resigned on the same day in March 2018 to establish a new organisation – one that provides primary healthcare street clinics to people experiencing vulnerability and homelessness.

Calling it Sunny Street, Nova and Sonia have invested $45,000 of their own money into the initiative, going many months without a regular income before the launch in July 2018.