| Jake Trindorfer pictured in the white T shirt in the foreground with ... Jake Trindorfer pictured in the white T shirt in the foreground with AIME mentors and mentees |
Taking AIME at mentoring Indigenous students
7 May 2008 | Bernie Goldie
Indigenous people are under-represented in higher education, despite improvements over the past decade.
Although they represent 1.9 per cent of the population, Indigenous students represent only 1.2 percent of the domestic student population at Australian universities.
The problem starts early on – in 2006, 21% of 15-year-old Indigenous people were not participating in school education, compared to a 5% non-participation rate for non-Indigenous students.
A new high school mentoring program aims to tackle this inequality head on. AIME, which stands for Australian Indigenous Mentoring Experience, is being introduced to the Illawarra region this year, having been run successfully in Sydney for the past three years.
The four-year mentoring program starts with Year 9 students; special sessions on engagement and self development are held over 17 weeks during terms two and three. The program exposes the young Indigenous students to role models – Indigenous and non-Indigenous – with the aim of establishing safe and supportive relationships between mentors and mentees.
Jack Manning Bancroft, AIME CEO and founder of AIME, explains how the program was born: “When I was at uni four years ago, everybody kept complaining about the lack of Indigenous students making it through school, and about all the problems that Indigenous people have. As an Indigenous Australian I got pretty sick of all this talking, and decided with a group of people to start AIME.”
“The basic idea was that the education system wasn’t working for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students. So we decided to get into the schools and offer some support and guidance to Indigenous kids from Year 9 through to Year 12. I personally wasn’t a model student, but there were a few key role models involved in my life when I was growing up that made me decide to stay in school and go to uni.”
Program Manager for AIME Wollongong, Jake Trindorfer, said that in its first year AIME will be working with five local high schools and some 103 Indigenous students.
“We have been busy recruiting current UOW students to act as volunteer mentors to these students, so far we have trained 70 mentors. Mentors receive training and get the opportunity to work with a diverse group of people on a rewarding and potentially life-changing project.
“While the main objective of the program is to improve the lives of young Indigenous Australians, AIME also hopes to shape community attitudes. The involvement of non-Indigenous university students is critical to the program’s potential to inspire change. There will be no reason to build these kids up to a point where they can succeed if they enter a broader society that is lacking understanding and experience of Indigenous people and culture”, Jake said.
The program will be delivered through the Woolyungah Indigenous Centre, which provides support and programs for Indigenous students at UOW.
For more information contact Jake at aimewollongong@gmail.com or visit the AIME website www.aimementoring.com
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