Manning Bancroft - Mentoring: The key to a fairer world

To Madiba.
The man who challenged me to imagine
whats possible

Contents

Professor the Honourable
Dame Marie Bashir AD CVO

T here can be no doubt that AIME the Australian Indigenous Mentoring Experience arose from an inspirational and genuinely altruistic concept, a dream that, when translated into action, would prove a powerful investment, not only for young Indigenous Australians, but for our whole nation and even beyond.

The founder of AIME, Jack Manning Bancroft, a young scholar of Aboriginal heritage, proudly acknowledges his ancestry through his mother, the acclaimed artist Bronwyn Bancroft of the Baryulgil nation, whose traditional country is the Lionsville area of New South Wales.

Jack was ever mindful in his adolescent years of the incomparable gift of education, having strong parental encouragement, together with a keen natural intelligence and a commitment to learning that had given him access to one of Australias finest selective high schools for young men.

From that strong base, he secured a place at The University of Sydney Australias oldest university along with residence at St Pauls College, the oldest university residential college in the nation. It was here that Jack became inspired with the noble commitment, and indeed an achievable plan, to ensure that more young Indigenous Australians could be inspired and assisted to acquire the great asset of education.

Indeed, at the age of nineteen, Jack was already convinced that such a powerful investment must begin, ideally, in the early to mid high school years. Further, that individual mentors, who could demonstrate to the young scholars the practical and psychological asset of such a journey towards continuing knowledge while providing them with supportive encouragement along the way, would contribute to a positive outcome.

Jack had come to discuss these issues with me in 2006, the year in which I had been appointed as Chancellor of the University of Sydney, and coincidentally also the same year in which Jack had acquired his degree, a Bachelor of Arts, Media and Communications.

He shared with me his concerns about the issue of white privilege. However, rather than respond with feelings of anger, he imagined that he could perhaps apply his own privilege, of access to a fine education, to drive reform.

Many individuals across the wider community now share his conviction that Australias Indigenous people, acknowledged as the longest continuing culture in the world (40,00060,000 years old), would benefit substantially from access to the ever-increasing knowledge of the twentieth and twenty-first century.

In his studies, Jack had become aware of outstanding leaders of the past century, individuals such as Nelson Mandela, who, despite prolonged incarceration as a political prisoner from 1964 to 1990, went on with unwavering courage to initiate freedom for his people, and rose to become the first black president of South Africa, gaining the respect and admiration of countless individuals throughout the world.

Jack was moved to share some of his ideas for change and reform in conversation with close friends in his peer group, culminating in the conviction that they could change things and make university certainly initially his own university, The University of Sydney more accessible to young people of Indigenous background.

Other colleagues of Jack, on learning of such a plan, became inspired and were willing to be involved when he explained the pathways through the mentoring process and the encouragement it would provide.

Subsequently, the earliest schools to be involved in 2005 were Alexandria Park Public School, St Scholasticas College at Glebe, and the Dulwich Hill High School. And now, in 2017, 350 schools around Australia are involved in this project, which will further enrich our nation.

However, after the first three years of his personal involvement in meeting the ever-escalating growth of the project, Jack appraised the situation. Not only was he the prime person responsible for AIME, he was also working in after-school care at Glebe Public School, and contributing as a coach to schoolboy cricket as well.

Understandably, economic challenges began to mount and discussions indicated that this situation could likely be addressed with innovative fundraising.

So, in the first year of the AIME program at The University of Sydney, Reconciliation Concerts were introduced. On National Sorry Day, one such concert was held with an entrance fee of five dollars at Manning Bar, a Students Union facility. With the modest fee came the privilege of being able to purchase an AIME t-shirt, which had been introduced at the outset of AIMEs journey in 2005.

One may ask whether there were any negative responses to the development and rise of this unique Australian Indigenous mentoring experience. Certainly, some of the universities declined to be involved, perhaps assuming that AIME was still an unproven concept with potential risks. However, there was also a determined wave of support coming from a range of groups, and a common query now being raised is Why cant we give Indigenous young Australians the opportunities that we have?

A number of Australian universities were inspired by the concept and wished to be involved, including Southern Cross University, Macquarie University, the University of Western Sydney and the New England University, Armidale, where a thousand young scholars from the Tweed Heads area have been involved.

Beyond Sydney, AIME is active in the national capital, Canberra, and the state capital cities of Brisbane, Melbourne and Adelaide, as well as major regional centres such as Casino, Grafton, Lismore and Yass in New South Wales; Gladstone, Mackay and Rockhampton in Queensland; Ballarat, Geelong and Gippsland in Victoria; and in Western Australia the centres of Bunbury and Kalgoorlie.

The unique value of the AIME program has spread beyond our Australian shores, with leaders in Uganda, South Africa and Canada now applying this program in their homelands, and New Zealand and a number of other countries considering the AIME model.

Today, the AIME program is established in eighteen universities across Australia, in forty different regions, and it has been estimated that 15,000 young scholars have experienced the support of AIME. Further, records indicate that at least 5000 university students have served as mentors, some of whom in recent years are tertiary-level students of Indigenous heritage. These numbers make AIME the largest volunteer movement of university students in Australian history.

It is therefore not surprising that both business leaders and academics, including university leaders from Australia, have signed an open letter to university leaders across the world, endorsing the AIME model, with the expectation of creating change in the lives of disadvantaged young people, whilst simultaneously developing the leadership skills of the university students who serve as mentors. Details of Jacks great journey can be found in his two publications, The Mentor (2016) and The Eagle Inside (2015).

Research studies have demonstrated the extent of positive change relating to the introduction of AIME. As Jack has stated, Historical data in Australia has indicated that 40 per cent of Indigenous people aged eighteen to twenty-five years are in university, in employment or training. The non-Indigenous average is 75 per cent for the same cohort. However, AIME students over the last six years have achieved between 73 and 78 per cent, thus closing the educational gap.