Welfare Aid International and Revive Foundation worked in collaboration with NISEP (National Indigenous Science Education Program) to help Aboriginal students from regional and rural areas engage in a Science Experience Workshop in January 2020 at Macquarie University. NISEP, an organisation run by academics at Macquarie University, runs these workshops in order to introduce these students to Science, Technology and Mathematics and potentially encourage them to further their education in these fields. For many of such students, tertiary education is a way out of a cycle of poverty and disadvantage.

In addition to our work in 12 overseas locations, we wanted to also give back to the local community. We decided to work together with NISEP on this project because it is very much in line with our vision and goals at Revive foundation, that of promoting education as a sustainable means of poverty alleviation. The Revive Foundation contributed financially to the costs of some of the students attending this workshop. We also contributed by three of our committee members running stations at the Careers Workshop for the students. Most importantly, a member of the team member Dr Abidali Mohamedali, who is a lecturer at Macquarie University, delivered a presentation to the students to encourage them.

The students thoroughly enjoyed the workshops. Some of them had made journeys to Sydney from very remote areas that took more than 2 days!  Others told us of their stories of disadvantage in remote towns. For some of them, they were the first in their extended families to even consider university studies.

As always, we thank our donors for making this contribution to the local Australian community possible, and we hope to continue contributing to this and other local projects in the future.