Australian Indigenous Education Foundation unveils #IndigenousPM integrated campaign via Host, The Glue Society and One Green Bean
Australian Indigenous Education Foundation (AIEF) has announced its plans to secure an additional $100M in funding with an integrated campaign launching this week via Host/The Glue Society and sister PR agency One Green Bean.
The campaign presents a future gazing view of Australia’s first Indigenous Prime Minister following Newspoll research which revealed that two thirds of Australians don’t believe they’ll ever see this happen.
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Painted by Archibald Finalist and celebrated portrait artist Mathew Lynn, in collaboration with The Glue Society, the painting ran in the Weekend and Monday editions of The Australian with only the headline “This Will Never Happen” and an invitation to discuss via the hashtag #IndigenousPM.
The image was shared widely across social media, prompting both discussion about the issue and speculation around who was behind it.
Today, AIEF unveiled how they believe they can play a part in making it happen by providing scholarships at some of the country’s top schools to Indigenous children.
Says Andrew Penfold, AIEF CEO: “We are very appreciative of the support from all agencies and partners involved and their combined creative efforts to bring the #IndigenousPM campaign to life. In the few years that we’ve been pushing for change, we’ve achieved a 90% success rate, the highest success rate of any program in the country and nearly double the national average for Indigenous students completing year 12. While many of our Indigenous students may not want to be Prime Minister, we believe that quality education can open doors to boardrooms, cabinet and other influential offices – and that opening these doors can be nation changing.”
Says Pete Baker at The Glue Society: “Having met some of the students who are already benefitting from The AIEF’s program, it inspired us to realise what the true end potential could be. It actually could be nation changing.”
Says Laura Aldington, managing director at Host Sydney: “It’s been a great pleasure for both Host and One Green Bean to provide our support to this campaign, raising awareness of the excellent work AIEF are doing to make the possibility of our first Indigenous Prime Minister that much closer to becoming a reality.”
As a result of the campaign AIEF hopes to raise another $100 million to support its plan to educate 7,000 Indigenous students across Australia. This comes after the AIEF exceeded its first target of raising $44 million from private and government funding towards educating 2,000 Indigenous students, and follows Federal Education Department statistics showing AIEF has the highest rate of Year 12 completion of any federally funded program (90 per cent as opposed to a national average of 51 per cent).
Client: Australian Indigenous Education Foundation
Agency: Host Sydney
Creative Directors: The Glue Society
Portrait Artist: Matthew Lynn
PR: One Green Bean
Production Co: Will O’Rourke
Special Advisor to AIEF: Nigel marsh
1 Comment
I think it’s a nice gesture, but the reality is there are already 100’s if not 1000’s of places set aside and subsidised for indigenous students at universities all over Australia. Getting into the GPS old boys network may help, but the real issue needs to start at a community level. Being an ex youth-worker in a primarily indigenous area, the real issue in my experience comes from the family – not wanting to lose their child to the ‘gubba’ world, they often pull the brighter ones down with a tall poppy syndrome many of us have never experienced. Sad, but true.
However, any step towards true reconciliation (which should by definition abolish the term Aboriginal and replace it with people) is a good step in the right direction.