Our September grants round was one of the largest ever. We received over 180 applications seeking in excess of $12m, which was considerably more than the funds available for distribution. At their meeting in November, the Trustees approved grants of over $1.5m to 43 projects. Click here for the list of grants
The Trust has made a grant of $24,400 to the Victorian Aboriginal Corporation for Languages (VACL) to enable completion of the collation of significant historic Kulin Nation language material and an annotated transcription of a key journal documenting early Black-White contact in Victoria. (The Kulin nation comprised the Jajowrong tribe that lived in the western area north of Ballarat, the Wathaurung people from the Geelong district, the Woiworung tribe of the lower Yarra valley (including the Wurundjeri clan), the Taungurongs from the hilly district surrounding Seymour, and the Bunurong tribe of the coastal lands around Port Phillip Bay, Western Port Bay and Wilsons Promontory.)
William Thomas was Assistant Protector of Aborigines at Port Phillip and Victoria from 1839 to 1867. The 10,000 pages of the William Thomas Papers, held by the State Library of NSW, contain extensive language materials and a journal of 28 years recording almost daily contact with the Kulin people around Melbourne and adjacent districts. The journal is the most comprehensive daily record of Black-White contact in this frontier period of Victorian history, recording in incomparable detail, the lives of over 150 named Kulin men, women and children. Researcher Dr Marguerita Stephens has been painstakingly transcribing the journal over a number of years.
The journal and language materials, collected by VACL from the Thomas Papers over the past decade, will be published digitally and will provide new insights to the impact of colonial expansion on the Indigenous people of south-eastern Australia, detailing previously unrecognised aspects of Aboriginal culture, resistance, leadership and accommodation to the new. The project includes a comprehensive Kulin community consultation process.
A research grant of $75,500 over two years was awarded to the Brotherhood of St Laurence to investigate the attitudes, behaviours and barriers faced by employers who to seek to employ severely disadvantaged job seekers.
Although Australia experiences relatively low levels of aggregate unemployment, it is estimated there remains up to 2 million working-age Australians who could be better assisted to take up job opportunities. While industry and government predict increasing labour shortages as the economy grows, there remain groups of highly disadvantaged job seekers who face multiple barriers, both individual and systemic, in obtaining and retaining work.
In response to these issues, the Brotherhood of St Laurence is developing the Line of Sight project, which is designed to deliver more effective approaches to assist this particular group of people. The project aims to provide an integrated service solution that can achieve higher rates of sustainable employment and training outcomes for this group than that achieved through Job Services Australia, the current major program which works to help this group gain employment. The Line of Sight project also aims to develop reliable recruitment solutions for employers who seek entry level workers, and will engage with and support local employers who have emerging labour needs. This approach is being undertaken in the belief that proactive outreach to local industries and businesses is essential in order to obtain a solid understanding of their labour and skill needs which will then inform the training delivered to disadvantaged job seekers.
In order to determine the effectiveness of this approach, the Brotherhood approached the Trust to fund research into the barriers and benefits for employers who seek to employ disadvantaged job seekers. The outcomes from the research will inform advocacy to governments on the most effective strategies which assist this group to gain and maintain employment.