Making a splash in the outback
08.10.2005
Thorpe has made a lifetime commitment to improving the health and education of Aboriginal children, reports Tony Koch
OLYMPIC champion swimmer Ian Thorpe was searching for a cause. He had been convinced that he should lend his name and support to charities that worked with disadvantaged young people across the world.
It was 2003 and he was taken to the Northern Territory, to Katherine and its 12 associated Aboriginal communities, to meet the Jawoyn people. The elders welcomed him; the excited young children ran around, wanting to touch him, wanting him to speak to them. They convinced him to try to play a didgeridoo, to throw a spear at a kangaroo shape drawn on a cardboard box and to start a cooking fire using a rubbing stick.
``I have my own didg now and I can get a few sounds out of it, but I do need more practice,'' Thorpe says. ``Actually I was very competent with the spear, with or without the help of a woomera, but lighting a fire got me. I wouldn't give up and ended up with blisters on my hands.''
But it was the children -- and learning how appalling was their life expectancy -- that convinced Thorpe that his cause was right on his own doorstep in Australia and not in some far-flung developing country.
``To see how neglected these communities are, that is the first thing that compels you to try to help these people,'' he says.
``We were looking around the world for a cause. My desire was to find the most impoverished place on the planet and basically contribute funds there. It was actually put to me that in Australia we have some of the poorest people in the world. Honestly, I couldn't comprehend that this was going on in this country. Living in Sydney, as I do, you are so far removed from the rest of rural Australia. I know too much now to turn by back on them. When you visit these communities you feel compelled to do something.''
So Ian Thorpe's Fountain for Youth Trust, which had been operating for three years, found a definite goal: to improve the lives and prospects of young Aborigines.
A driving force behind the trust is journalist Jeff McMullen, whose commitment to Aboriginal advancement came from experiences he had with Aborigines while reporting for Channel Nine's 60 Minutes and the ABC's Four Corners. He is the director (gratis) of Ian Thorpe's Fountain for Youth. The Thorpe trust established a partnership with the Sunrise Health Service Aboriginal Corporation, which provides medical care and health education to 12 communities east of Katherine.
Another involved is the Fred Hollows Foundation, which commemorates the respected doctor who spent so much of his life working in remote communities treating eye disease in Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders.
Last month, federal Education Minister Brendan Nelson gave the trust a fillip with a $1million grant to support literacy and health projects for the Jawoyn communities.
``These programs initiated by Ian's foundation and so ably promoted by Jeff McMullen are most worthy of government support,'' Nelson says.
``Every indigenous person in Australia faces more problems than those faced by any other Australian and for those living in remote parts of the country the disadvantage accumulates.
``In March 1992, Fred Hollows buttonholed me when I was vice-president of the AMA and said I had to use every position I ever had to advance the health and living standards of Aboriginal people. The link here with a sporting icon, who is a thoroughly delightful young man, who is using his name with a genuine commitment behind it, is precisely what Fred was speaking about.''
McMullen says that without health care and education beginning at the youngest possible age, Aborigines stand no chance of improving their lives.
``Noel Pearson's rallying cry to indigenous parents, urging them to demand better education outcomes for their children, recognises how decades of disadvantage and despair have created this education malaise,'' McMullen says. ``If parents don't encourage their children to learn, then it is easy for some teachers to conclude that failure is inevitable.''
He says the challenge in Australia is ``to dismantle the system of silent apartheid that keeps remote communities separated, isolated and impoverished''.
``While the incoming federal president of the ALP, Warren Mundine, argues for a move to far greater private land ownership, Professor Mick Dodson counters that communal land ownership is a central tenet of Aboriginality,'' McMullen says.
``Each man draws respect in what is developing as another crucial debate over how to change the structures of disadvantage. Both have the power to articulate these choices in the future course of indigenous life because each has had a first-rate education. The unfinished business of treaty, land ownership and rights to resources no doubt will be passed to a new generation of indigenous men and women. There is clear consensus that we must not delay in taking action to improve the education of indigenous children. I believe it is time to make this personal, for each of us to find a way to contribute.''
The latest project of Ian Thorpe's Fountain for Youth is a literacy empowerment project, aimed specifically at primary education of infants, that encourages older family members to set an example by reading. To that end, the organisation is launching literacy backpacks with the help of parents and Northern Territory teachers. The idea has been borrowed from Navajo communities in the US, where it has operated successfully for 20 years.
``By listening to the communities tell us what they would like to read, we have learned that there is a considerable appetite for magazines about food and healthy cooking, for indigenous newspapers, sport, music, fashion and news from other Aboriginal communities,'' McMullen says.
``Children have let us know that they love discovering themselves in these books by reading about contemporary Aboriginal life. In the Jawoyn communities this year teachers, students and parents will work together to fill backpacks with suitable books, weekly newspapers and magazines, as well as audio books and occasional videos to follow a text.''
Members of the public are being invited to sponsor a child's literacy backpack by donating $100. Each of the 12 communities in the Sunrise Health Service area will require provisioning twice a year, with learning materials costing about $1500. Initially the literacy backpacks will be provided to about 1300 children from preschool to primary school age.
``The aim is for the youngest children to see their older siblings and parents reading,'' McMullen says. ``Instead of bookless homes, families can create the opportunity for learning and discovery outside the school. Involving parents in the preparation of the literacy backpacks builds an important bridge between the school and the community.''
The federal funding will also assist the running of women's centres at the 12 communities where mothers will work with a nutritionist operating breakfast and lunch programs for infants and older schoolchildren.
``I would like to think these programs can be developed in other communities,'' Thorpe says. ``We have been shown research that indicates that for every year of education we can provide to a young indigenous girl, it will add as much as four years to the life expectancy of that young woman's first baby.
``I am committed to helping these people for my lifetime. We are talking about people's lives. At the end of the day we are assisting Australians who have been neglected and we are going to give them a better life than they could have imagined previously. Health and education are paramount. They are what [is] needed for a positive future. Children have to have basic good health and if you are better educated you can make choices in life.''
Asked if his trust is doing anything to combat the scourge of alcoholism on communities, Thorpe says he supports trying to create a society where people ``do not have a dependency on alcohol and use it as an out''.
``That is what we are trying to do in our own small way,'' he says. ``I am not the one to say whether a community should be dry because I don't live there. I do not understand it fully enough to make those decisions. They have to be made by elders who have the best solutions. It should be said that some of the communities I have been to have incredibly responsible attitudes to alcohol.''
Donations for the indigenous children's programs and others supported by the trust can be made at www.ianthorpesfountainforyouth.com.au
Lease on Aboriginal livelihood -- Page 29
