World class university but not as you know it
On 1 October 2020, after one of the most complex years in human history (with COVID-19 creating at least 68 million additional poverty years and 4.3 million years of life lost across 150 countries) the team at Australian Indigenous Mentoring Experience (AIME) launched a new University.
The aim was to fast-track human development and growth to enable a whole ecosystem of change-makers to learn from each other with the collective knowledge we’ve amassed through the years to solve the greatest challenges of our times, and together build a fairer world.
This is the purpose of IMAGI-NATION {University}.
Since launching, the University has attracted a student base of more than 400 people from 54 countries. Some are students from schools and university, some are teachers, executives and ordinary citizens – all make a one-year commitment towards organising change for a fairer world in their communities.
When COVID-19 disrupted the education of around 1.5 billion kids globally and put at risk the education of those at the margins, the move to find ways to support them via digital seemed natural. Over three days, AIME transformed their
high-impact imaginative mentoring programs into a live TV show to bring high-calibre mentors right into the homes of kids everywhere.
The University concept builds on AIME’s 16 years of history in delivering imagination-centred mentoring programs to help alleviate educational inequity by reaching out to young people experiencing marginalisation.
Since 2005, AIME has been unlocking the internal narrative of marginalised kids, specifically 25,000+ Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander youngsters (and other youth experiencing marginalisation in Africa and the USA), from a world that tells them they ‘can’t’ to a world that tells them they can.
The program’s success in changing mindsets and getting results has been well-documented in a University of Sydney led independent evaluation, KPMG’s Economic Evaluation and in a Harvard Case Study (you can read the one page impact summary
here).
As if building a massive volunteer base isn’t enough, analysis has indicated that every dollar invested into AIME is generating $8.9 worth of benefits to the Australian economy. That’s significant value for money in any currency.