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Australian Indigenous Mentoring Experience (AIME)

Home > Work > Australian Indigenous Mentoring Experience (AIME)

Australian Indigenous Mentoring Experience (AIME)

AIME’s goal is to work with 10,000 Indigenous kids per year by 2018 and see them finish school at the same rate as every Australian child.

Venture mission

AIME is an educational program that gives Indigenous high school students the skills, opportunities, belief and confidence to make this happen. By matching Indigenous high school students with university student mentors, AIME successfully supports the students to finish high school. AIME also connects students with post Year 12 opportunities, including further education and employment.

‘An independent economic evaluation conducted by KPMG found AIME contributed $38 million to the Australian economy in 2012. For each $1 spent on the AIME program, $7 in benefits were generated.’

Goal of SVA partnership

AIME is leading the way in closing the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous education outcomes, a key factor in breaking the cycle of entrenched disadvantage for First Australians. SVA has supported AIME since 2009, providing hands on capacity building, funding and introduction to the networks that have enabled AIME to grow from supporting 25 students to having supported over 10,000 students by the end of 2017. SVA provided $50,000 to AIME in 2017.

 Jack Manning Bancroft – CEO, AIME:

‘Without SVA being hands on in the trenches with us – helping to build our credibility externally, whilst shaping our operations internally – we simply would never have got to where we are. Thanks for daring to walk with us when so few would.’

Case Study - AIME taught me to be proud of my culture

Destiny Gittens was removed from her biological mother’s care when she was two years old.

‘I don’t remember being put into foster care but I do remember crying when I read an article written about me under her care,’ she says.

‘I read how DHS rocked up to her doorstep one day and she was in the lounge room with her boyfriend. There were alcohol bottles everywhere. A DHS worker walked into my room and saw me on the floor with a soaking wet diaper and alcohol bottles near me.’

Destiny joined AIME in 2014 and credits the organisation with helping her grow into the confident young woman she is today.

‘Throughout the years I’ve been bullied about my weight and my cultural background. I’ve been called ‘Gorilla’ or ‘petrol sniffer’. Sometimes they would call me a ‘dumb black abo’,’ she says.

‘At first it hurt, but my mentors and elders taught me that I shouldn’t let it affect me. Our culture is the longest living culture in the world. The words that bullies threw at me only motivated me to teach them the meaning and story behind our culture.’

Destiny plans to attend university to study photography and eventually become an AIME mentor herself.

Key contacts

  • David Williams

    Executive Director, Programs and Partnerships

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  • The Beacon Foundation and Australian Indigenous Mentoring Experience (AIME), two of SVA’s long-time venture partners, have received major funding commitments from both government and philanthropy.

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  • Making replication work

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  • Aiming high – what it takes

    What AIME Mentoring's CEO, Jack Manning Bancroft can teach us about starting up a social purpose organisation and the philanthropy needed.+Video
  • Be better tomorrow – the AIME approach to caring for staff

    In a sector dedicated to supporting others, how do we take care of the carers? For AIME supporting its staff is central to how it goes about helping to close the gap in Indigenous education.

From the blog…

  • The Australian Indigenous Mentoring Experience has become the eighth organisation to graduate from Social Ventures Australia’s venture portfolio, having achieved the sustainability and impact to continue to thrive without hands on support from SVA.

  • National Reconciliation Week is celebrated across Australia each year between 27 May and 3 June. The start and end dates commemorate two significant milestones in the reconciliation journey—the anniversaries of the successful 1967 referendum, and the High Court Mabo decision.

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Social Ventures Australia acknowledges Traditional Owners of Country throughout Australia. We pay our respects to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Elders past, present, and emerging. We also accept the invitation in the Uluru Statement from the Heart to walk together with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in a movement of the Australian people for a better future.