Jack Manning Bancroft was spurred to serious action when he realised university scholarships for Indigenous people were going unfilled each year — for lack of applicants.
At age 19, Mr Manning Bancroft established the Australian Indigenous Mentoring Experience in his local neighbourhood at Alexandria, close to Redfern, in Sydney.
He will tell the story of how AIME has evolved over the past five years and his vision for its future during the next University of Queensland Centenary Oration on Wednesday, April 21.
The program pairs Indigenous high school students with university students, lifting the younger students’ chances of completing year 12 and enrolling in tertiary study.
AIME started with 20 students in 2005, is currently working with 400, and with its expansion into Queensland and Victoria this year, is expected to find university student volunteer mentors for almost 1000 Indigenous high school students.
He said AIME had proven its ability to boost completion rates for Indigenous students in Year 10 and 12, and university admission rates.
“A tracking report we conducted last year showed that a kid involved in the AIME program is seven times more likely to go to university than other Indigenous kids," he said.
"The reality is that most Indigenous kids are dropping out in year eight and nine.
“A lot of the kids just hadn’t been taught about life in their own language so they couldn’t understand the importance of education and how it’s actually a tool that they can use and not something that they have to do.”
He hopes by the end of 2020, the program will be recruiting 6000 Indigenous students per year, but he says AIME's direction ultimately will be driven by community demand.
"The challenge for us now is meeting the need,” he said.
"We’re not going to be the be-all-and-end-all, but hopefully we can play a big role and other organisations can support kids who we can’t get to."
The Centenary Oration will be held at 6.30pm on Wednesday, April 21.
To register, please visit www.uq.edu.au/centenary/oration
Media enquiries:
Sam Perry, AIME Programs and Communications Director, 0406 319388 or Penny Robinson at UQ Communications, 07 3365 9723
