The Walk with Woor-Dungin Fundraising Campaign supports Woor-Dungin's capacity to work with our current Aboriginal community-controlled partner organisations as well as plan for the next intake of partner organisations, set for 2019.

Walk with Woor-Dungin is seeking 150 individuals and organisations sharing Woor-Dungin’s principles of self-determination and reconciliation who will commit to contributing $1000 per year, or multiples of $1000, for three years.

You can contribute half-yearly amounts of $500 or quarterly amounts of $250 if you prefer.

Our target is to raise $150,000 each year for three years.

This will provide Woor-Dungin with funds to continue to operate the Aboriginal Partnership Program. The funds will enable us to respond to the priority needs of current Aboriginal partner organisations while planning for the intake of a new cohort of partner organisations in 2019.

The Aboriginal Partnership Program is Woor-Dungin's core program and the very foundation of our organisation. Its objectives are to:

• Work in partnership with Aboriginal community-controlled organisations to support them in fulfilling their purpose;
• Increase the level of philanthropic funding flowing to Aboriginal organisations to enable them to better meet community needs;
• Foster respectful relationships between the philanthropic sector and Aboriginal organisations; and
• Promote and facilitate partnerships with businesses, including professional firms, who provide pro bono advice and other services to us and to our partners to achieve identified goals.

We develop genuine relationships, based on reconciliation, reciprocity and trust, with a small number of Aboriginal community-controlled organisations over three-year periods. Partner organisations graduate from the program to become alumni, who in turn support new partner organisations.

Current partners and alumni are:

• Healesville Indigenous Community Services Association
• ILBIJERRI Theatre Company
• Mallee District Aboriginal Services
• Njernda Aboriginal Corporation
• Willum Warrain Aboriginal Association
• Winda-Mara Aboriginal Corporation

The Aboriginal Partnership Program is responsive, flexible and open. When new partners join the program we collaborate with them to produce a workplan based on their community’s current needs and undertake activities towards meeting those needs. But if new priorities emerge - and they do - we adapt and work towards tackling those too.

In this way, everything we do is informed by our partners’ needs.

Stated priorities for partners inducted in the previous intake of 2014 have included income generation, employment, and maintaining culture.

In response, since 2014 we have run Income Generation and Resources Group (IGRG) workshops three or four times a year, providing an opportunity for our partner organisations to establish or consolidate relationships with philanthropic grantmakers and pro bono service providers.

Following our partners’ requests we established the Criminal Record Discrimination Project (CRDP) in 2015 to advocate for legislative reform to enhance employment opportunities for our partners’ community members. The CRDP’s submission to the 49th Aboriginal Justice Forum in December 2017 was supported unanimously by delegates and is now with the Victorian Government. 

We expect that a spent convictions scheme will be legislated soon.  This will benefit all Victorians (Victoria is the only State in Australia which does not have such a scheme) and will include an amendment to the Equal Opportunity Act 2010 (Vic) to prohibit discrimination against people with an irrelevant criminal record. 

In 2016 Woor-Dungin also discovered that members of Aboriginal communities in Victoria had criminal records because prior to 1992 there was no clear distinction between welfare and criminal records. In July 2018, the Attorney General acknowledged Woor-Dungin’s work and delivered an apology on behalf of the State of Victoria.  Legislation was passed in August 2018 to ensure that statements of criminal history do not include care and protection orders as offences.

The Respectful Relationships program promotes self-determination by fostering long-term, trust-based respectful relationships between philanthropic grantmakers and Aboriginal organisations and communities. We and our partners believe that time spent developing and maintaining genuine relationships is essential to achieving successful outcomes.

And of course we will respond to whatever priorities our future partners may have.

Support self-determination. Support reconciliation. Walk with Woor-Dungin.