Chance meeting leads to fruitful partnership
Thursday, 16 December 2004

A chance meeting in a crowded room more than five years ago has seen two strangers with a heart and passion for Australia’s disadvantaged build a partnership that will change the lives of Indigenous people in the Goulburn Valley.

Adrian Appo and Sylvia Geddes were two of more than 500 people at the 1999 Williamson Leadership Program graduation dinner. Mr. Appo was being inducted as a Williamson Fellow and Ms Geddes was a guest from the philanthropy sector. Seated at the same table, Mr. Appo and Ms Geddes’s conversation led to a fruitful and promising venture.

It was Mr. Appo’s role with the Ganbina Koori Economic Employment Agency that caught Ms Geddes attention and her interest grew in the organisation as she began to realise it had a vision to make a substantial difference in the Indigenous community in Shepparton and Mooroopna.

The relationship got off to great start when Ms Geddes threw her support behind Ganbina’s Ladders to Success program and recommended the R.E. Ross Trust sponsor the program’s first scholarship of $20 000 enabling a young Indigenous man to fulfill his career dream. Kris Zealey is just one of Ganbina’s success stories and with the financial support of the R. E. Ross Trust has completed a Diploma in Outdoor Education. He now is part of the management team at the Camp Jungai Cultural Centre located in Victoria’s hinterlands.

The R. E. Ross Trust also saw a need to support the administration at Ganbina and confirmed its commitment to the region by providing a $20 000 grant to Ganbina to ensure the organisation’s operations were strengthened.

Ganbina was established by Indigenous people for Indigenous people. Its aim is to help Indigenous people gain and maintain employment in mainstream sustainable private sector jobs in the Goulburn Valley area.

It was the organisation’s core values, progressive programs and demonstrated success that eventually led the R. E. Ross Trust to make Ganbina one its major beneficiaries. Earlier this year it announced grants of $192,000 every year for next three years to ensure Ganbina could continue its groundbreaking work.

Ganbina, a relatively new community organisation with no private or government sponsor or benefactor, was unlike the majority of established not-for-profit organisations the Trust has dealt with. It’s first few years of operation were the result of a considerable effort made by its part-time board and its success has been significant.

“However, it was clear to the R. E. Ross Trust that the organisation could not continue to thrive without achieving sustainability, especially core financial viability. The Trust has chosen to pay for Ganbina’s first paid executive and administration staff and its infrastructure costs over three years to help the organisation attract wider committed and long term support,” Ms Geddes said.

She said the R. E. Ross Trust was a charitable trust that, in making its grants, gives priority to preventing and alleviating poverty and disadvantage. “Australia’s Indigenous people are disproportionately over represented among those who experienced such circumstances. The Trust also aims to help those who help themselves and others.”

Ms Geddes highlighted some of Ganbina’s features that led to the Trust’s grant –

“It has a very good track record in placing Indigenous people into private sector jobs and the high rate of job retention achieved by those people, especially compared with the poor record of mainstream employment agencies.

“It has extraordinary ability to get the whole community behind its work and Ganbina has a rigorous approach to planning its work, especially in co-operation with private business and Local Government.”

She said the Trust was also impressed with the high value Ganbina places on education, including in co-operation with local and regional teaching bodies and its focus on self-help and restoring self-esteem.

“Also, the leadership by Ganbina is imbued with infectious optimism which is great to work with and unusual in an organisation with such a difficult task - it operates in an area combining three types of high need: young people, rural area and Indigenous people.”

“Ganbina is an excellent organisation with which to work. Its Board and Executive Officer are highly professional andcommitted. It respects the role of the R.E. Ross Trust and meets all its accountability requirements.”

Ganbina Chairperson Neville Atkinson said the Trust has been instrumental in guaranteeing Ganbina’s remains true to its core values, vision and strategies.

“The support by the Trust enables us to tackle the unemployment and education issues within our community they way they should be,” Mr. Atkinson said. “The Trust has given us the independence to tell the truth and not be restricted by the constraints that apply with government funding.”

“We appreciate the value the Trust sees in Ganbina and I believe it is our demonstrated credibility in addressing unemployment and education issues that has been our number one strength.”