From little things big things grow
Sixteen insurance company specialists recently volunteered to leave their chic inner-city surrounds and undertake a five-day mentoring program for young people on Melville Island.
It is commonplace for insurers and their policyholders not to get directly involved in each other’s business, unless, of course, the policyholder makes a claim or the insurer has an issue with the policyholder. However, the relationship between Ansvar Insurance and Red Dust is anything but commonplace.
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Role model: Red Dust CEO Darren Smith, a former pro basketballer, runs a skills clinic with Tiwi College students.
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Ansvar has a proud history of insuring faith organisations, educational facilities, charitable organisations, community groups, heritage buildings and care facilities, while its policyholder, Red Dust Role Models is a not-for profit, health promotion charity that works with indigenous youth in remote communities. “We promote positive health choices for youth, aged from eight to 18, in those locations,” explains Darren Smith, chief executive officer of Red Dust. “We take role models on field trips – whether in the field of music, sport, art or dance – to help engage youth and to run those programs.
Smith said the Red Dust programs are based around healthy lifestyle topics such as nutrition, exercise or hygiene, depending on what the community comes up with, in consultation with the organisers.
Ansvar has supported Red Dust for many years through grants from its community education program. Here 10 per cent of its profits are used to fund grassroots initiatives that educate, empower and rehabilitate young people.
However, rather than being satisfied with just writing a cheque and walking away, the insurer has shown some unusual – and personal – commitment by recommending to its employees they work as Red Dust role models for a week at a time in isolated outback communities.
Ansvar said it would pay employees’ salary for their time and cover the cost of their airfares and accommodation. Its staff responded in droves, so strong was the response that the insurer had to run a lottery to determine who went.
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Sign of the times: On the way to Tiwi College.
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The most recent batch of volunteers, drawn from Ansvar’s largely capital city office workforce, went to Tiwi College on Melville Island off the Northern Territory coast, where Red Dust has one full-time staff member.
“[The Ansvar volunteers] assisted him in delivering programs for the 70 students there,” explained Smith. “We know it’s a pretty unique program – a bit different to the office in Melbourne or Sydney, or wherever they’re coming from.”
The college is a remote Aboriginal secondary boarding school and a day school for a small number of primary children. The students who board are collected from communities across Melville and Bathurst islands each Monday and returned home each Friday. The college provides an opportunity for students to leave their immediate community while not having the leave the traditional lands of the Tiwi islands.
“The bonus [for Ansvar staff] is that they have a steep learning curve on the cultural side,” Smith said. “Kids, on the other hand, are the same the world over.
“If you show them a bit of attention, they’ll soak it up. Oneon- one time to assist a student in literacy or numeracy in the classroom certainly goes down well, and the same thing on the sporting field.”
Jody Cox, a business relationship manager in Ansvar’s Brisbane office, volunteered because she believed it would be a good experience and a way to see first-hand what good is being done in these communities.
From their arrival, she and her colleague helped the younger students with reading and writing in the mornings, and after lunch took the older ones for sport.
Cox said it was interesting to see how the teachers worked at motivating the children to stay engaged in the classroom.
Apart from seeing the school from the inside out, what surprised her was the degree of closeness and range of wildlife.
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On your marks: Red Dust Role Model's Chief Executive Darren Smith puts a few students through their paces.
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“The first day we got there, we went to the beach, only to be told to beware of crocodiles and sharks,” she said. “My first reaction was ‘there shouldn’t be any crocodiles on a beach’, but later we did see a crocodile right next to the creek where the girls were swimming.
“You do get a better appreciation [of the conditions] – you don’t expect to see buffalos out and about.”
Jeremy Cook, also from Ansvar’s Brisbane office, went into the draw to be a volunteer, looking for “a different, lifechanging experience”. Cook, who rated himself an experienced traveller, said that despite his preparation, the community experience was different to what he had expected, especially on a cultural level: “I learnt that while we all live in the same country, Aboriginal society is structured quite differently, like the hierarchical system [led by] the elders right down to the babies”.
While at Tiwi College, Cook and his fellow volunteer, Gavin Block – from Ansvar’s Melbourne office – helped the students with basketball training and in preparing for an athletics carnival the following week.
Cook’s background as a track athlete meant he was able to help the children understand long jump is more about getting the last step right than taking a massively long run-up.
That said, everything revolves around the children’s true favourite sport, Australian Rules Football – even their school day was divided into four quarters like an Aussie Rules game.
Claims manager Gavin Block, a first-time volunteer, said the Red Dust program had been well promoted within the company.
“For a long while speakers had come in and told us about their experience,” Block said. “I’ve been fortunate to travel throughout Australia – but to capital cities, not to the Red Centre or the outback.”
For him even the trip to the Tiwi Islands was an experience: “We flew in a small plane that seats three other people other than the pilot and lands on a red strip of dust”.
Once there, Block and Cook engaged the kids in playing sport and leading a healthy lifestyle – although not as the perfect role model: “Working in an office I’ve got a bit round around the tummy,” he confessed.
“Going to place that had no mobile reception, where you couldn’t even get a coffee, made it a very different experience to my normal workday.”
One of the things Block said he learnt was that while his was only a one-week stay, Red Dust is aiming for a generational change and in many communities – and kids at a school are the same the world over.
Jody Cox said she came away with an appreciation of the need to have more patience and respect for people. She said it was also a revelation to go into the shops on the island and see how much more essential items cost there compared to mainland capital cities. “There were very big mark-ups in communities where money is very scarce,” she added.
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- Bernard Kellerman, bkellerman@financialpublications.com.au
- Article Posted:
- August 15, 2011
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