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CFF and Australian Indigenous Education Foundation Partnership News, Nov 16

Earlier this month, a few days after the Prime Minister announced a $20 million investment in the Australian Indigenous Education Foundation (AIEF), I travelled to Townsville and Charters Towers with Andrew Penfold from AIEF to meet with educators and Indigenous students in order to further develop the Catherine Freeman Foundation Indigenous scholarship initiative for girls from Palm Island.

We were delighted to meet with the dedicated staff at Columba College and to hear first hand about the transformational work the school is doing with Indigenous children. We were particularly struck by the happy faces, confidence and self-esteem of the Indigenous and non-Indigenous children at the school, and the warmth and happiness evident in the school community.

We will be pursuing our discussions with Columba College and hoping to formalise arrangements so that we can start offering scholarships for Indigenous girls from Palm Island starting at the beginning of next year.

In the next couple of weeks we will also be continuing our consultations with the people and organisations at Palm Island to ensure this initiative is developed in a thoughtful and considered way to achieve the best outcomes for the Indigenous children.