Thread by @RohanIrvine

We're at the last day of @UXAustralia!

The keynote this morning is Shirley Chowdhary CEO of @GOFoundationAU presenting The GoO Story — The vision of Adam Goodes and Michael O'Loughlin

#uxaustralia #uxaustralia2020

Shirley is paying her respects to elders past present and emerging on the land she joins us from.

GO puts culture at the centre of everything they do — Shirley is now showing a video with two of GO's students and the Bangarang dancers talking about education, connection to country and connection to culture.

So why does GO exist?

Indigenous Australians have the oldest living culture in the world.

But:

24 times more likely to be incarcerated than you are to finish school.

Indigenous women are the fastest growing population in prisons.

When Adam and Michael were playing footy with the Sydney Swans the community in Sydney embraced them and they always wanted to give back to them.

They created the Goodes & O'Loughlin foundation.

They secured a small grant from the government and went to a small rural town in Dareton where they worked hands on with the community.

They learned:

If you try and do everything you don't do anything really well.

They could garner a lot more support with their personality compared to government grants.

They decided that if they focussed on education they would be able to make improvements in every area.

The GO foundation just gave out their 530th scholarship.

They thought that the culture needed to be at the centre of what they did.

They wanted to focus on girls.

They wanted to focus on public education.

GO partnered with KPMG to identify the link between education and better improvements across all dimensions.

They found that centering culture was the most important aspect of getting better outcomes.

GIrls were getting university offers the same as boys but chose not to go largely for caring reasons.

There were enough role models for Indigenous kids

Money is not enough.

You can throw as much money as you want at a student by way of a scholarship and it won't make a difference.

What really helps is the support and the hands up you offer students through their journey.

Access and opportunity.

Adam and Michael grew up with lived experience of not having enough, being raised by a single mum, and they wanted to specifically help that group of people who were largely in public education.

There are 213,000 Indigenous students in Australia - 15% were in independent schools — about 60-80k students don't have the tools and resources available every day to succeed at school.

When they did the first public school scholarship all 44 applicants said that school was their safe place but they were getting in trouble for things they had no control over.

Being assigned homework but they can't access a laptop and wifi at home.

They get in trouble.

Everyday they come to school they fall further and further behind for things they have no control over. GO knew this was something they could impact greatly.

Culture is at the heart of everything.

They work hard to make culturally inclusive workplaces.

60% of scholarships go to Indigenous girls.

GO focusses on eldest children — they research showed that if you give the scholarship to the eldest children the role modelling for the family and the community is exponential for improving outcomes for everyone.

GO provide scholarships from kindergarten to university, from public to independent schools.

Some of the criteria they use:
Aspiration and ambition after year 12
Cultural strength and identity
Kids who give back
Passion and financial need

Every single scholarship has the same three components.

1. Cultural and aspirational mentorship
2. Access and Opportunity
3. Financial Assistance

The key to our program is making the trip through school as rich and rewarding as possible.

We believe students will self select further education.

It broadens perspectives, evens playing fields and shows students every day what they can achieve.

COVID impacted GO and they had to cancel all their face to face events and rearrange the mentoring program.

They created a newsletter, setup online mentoring sessions and realised really quickly that you kids needed laptops and wifi immediately. They gave out 230 technology scholarships including laptop, wifi, 24hr learning and 3rd part tech support.

Shirley is telling a beautiful story about a student GO were able to support to get a place to live, raise his HSC marks and get into an engineering degree with a job at GHD.

Shirley is encouraging us to all to read the Uluru Statement from the Heart: ulurustatement.org

Available on the GO Foundations website: gofoundation.org.au/uluru-statemen…

Answer from an audience question:
We're not always generous enough in spirit to acknowledge the truth of the history of this country and the trauma that Indigenous people have been through.

Q: Resources so we can design for country
A: Indigenous people are the knowledge holders.

The Sydney Wars
Bruce Pascoe - Dark Emu
The first Australians
NITV
SBS

(My add: Frontier War Stories— boespearim.podbean.com)

Q: NZ is good, are we following?
A: Not quite, Indigenous people need us to walk alongside them to change things. We can't go forward without examining our past and acknowledging what we've don't to our Indigenous community.

Steve: We need to actively change to become anti-racist, we will continue to have institutionalised racism because we're not taking the steps to change that.

Q: Recent white immigrant - how can we all benefit from Indigenous knowledge.
A: It has to start with the Uluru Statement, it's an invitation from Indigenous people learn together.

Ask yourself:
Can I use an Indigenous business for this?
What structural process are excluding people?
What is the portion of internships should be Indigenous people?

We need to do the work, we need to question ourselves, we need to listen to Indigenous people.

Thank you so much Shirley!

#uxaustralia #uxaustralia2020

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