New working relationship will see mentoring and tutoring programs taken to the next level.

THE reputation of the FOGS mentoring programs continues to leap ahead after the organisation signed an agreement with highly-regarded Sydney mentoring agency AIME.

AIME is the Australian Indigenous Mentoring Experience – a not-for-profit, Sydney-based charity delivering a six-year mentoring program for Indigenous students between grades six and 12, founded by 2010 NSW young Australian of the Year, Jack Manning Bancroft.

Jack created the AIME Program in 2005 as a 19-year-old while at university, starting with a group of 25 students in Redfern.

AIME became incorporated three years later, with Jack becoming CEO, and today he manages a team of around 50 staff working with nearly 2000 university student volunteers who are providing one-on-one mentoring for Indigenous school kids along the east coast of Australia.

As part of the AIME program, the mentors spend an hour each week with the school students over the course of the 17-week program.

The ultimate aim is the improvement in completion rates for Year 10 and Year 12, and improvement in university enrolment rates for students taking part in the program.

AIME has become the leader in the field with Indigenous mentoring in Sydney, so it made sense to have a mutually beneficial working relationship with the FOGS, who are making similar inroads with Indigenous mentoring in Queensland.

FOGS Education Programs CEO Steve Nance said a formal agreement between the two parties was an “everybody wins” situation – with mutual benefits for both parties and, most importantly, a brighter future in education for the students learning under the mentoring and tutoring umbrella.

“Jack was going to Sydney University and he could see the number of kids who weren’t going to school around the Redfern area,” Steve explained. “He got a couple of his mates and went down and offered to tutor a couple of the kids at school.

“And from that, his program has now grown to a couple of thousand kids, with a staff of around 50 people and he is looking to expand out to 5000 kids in the program.

“We have signed a formal agreement with AIME, where they bring their program into the schools where we are working, and we will help out at the schools where they are working

“What it means is that the tutoring component of our program is looked after if AIME is involved with particular school. It is a big win for us.

“We rub each other’s back quite well – we get some expertise into our side of the program, and the benefit of some very good young Indigenous kids who really know what they are doing.

“And on their side, they get our support, our name and reputation, and they can put footballers into tutoring programs to make the kids want to come and be a part of it. That makes a big difference to them.”

Nance said it was a meeting between Manning Bancroft and FOGS Executive Gene Miles that got the ball rolling towards a working relationship between the two organisations.

“Gene had met Jack, and when I came on board with the FOGS, he suggested I touch base,” Steve explained. “So I went down to Redfern to check out their offices and so forth, met him, had a good chat to him, we worked out that we could do a few things together, and it sort of went on from there.

“So we ended up signing an agreement with them, which has been really good for both parties – because they value-add for our program, and we do the same thing for them. We’re all getting a win out of it at the moment.”

“On our side, they provide tutors and mentors for us, or we source it ourselves. It enables us to not do the same things in the schools that they are already doing, so there is no doubling up, and that frees up a lot of time and money for us to be doing other things.

“They are currently in one of our schools in Logan, but we are brokering a deal to get them into all of our Logan schools through Griffith University.

“But also with our expansion up on the Sunshine Coast, they have signed an agreement with Sunshine Coast University. So we are using this as an expansion model for us for the future.”

Nance said the AIME program used university students act as tutors for Indigenous students – just like the FOGS’ program – and as a result, proximity to a partner university is essential.

“They have to have a university take the program on board, and that university has to be between 30-35 minutes away from the school,” Steve said.

“If that doesn’t happen, then the AIME program can’t work.

“Secondly, the school then has to accept the AIME program. They have accepted our program, but they then also have to accept the AIME program into their school curriculum.

“Sometimes that doesn’t happen, but most of the time it does.

“On the other side of the coin, if the AIME program is already in a school – as is what happened with Loganlea – then the school has to accept our program as well – which I’m pleased to say they did with open arms.

“We currently have around 14 or 15 mentors, but we will be advancing that to over 20. We have close to 100 tutors that we send out to the schools.

“We wanted to get some practice teachers in education to do some tutoring for us, and it is a part of their voluntary hours anyway.

“We made an arrangement with the university that if they could provide the trainee teachers, we would make every effort to get them out to the schools.

“And because we had such a big demand, we ended up getting a mini-bus to transport them all around.”

Nance said FOGS’ commitment to education was further demonstrated by the organisation helping to fund a study by the University of Queensland, looking into the effectiveness of service teachers on Indigenous education.

Executive Chairman Gene Miles said the FOGS’ growth in the Education Departments under Nance, particularly with the agreement with AIME, were achievements to be proud of.

“It shows we are proactive with our programs, and engaging other organisations to deliver the best results for the kids in these programs,” Geno said.