How Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander people can reinvest back into our community, today!
A Indigenous people we have the opportunity to re-invest back into our community through the sheer amount of skills, expertise and man power that we all hold and can offer. The opportunity of reinvesting back into our community can and will have wide reaching and sustainable effects on the growth of an Indigenous economy. So why is there little reinvestment going back into community? Well, in my opinion, the answer to this isn’t easy, but a way to get started is by recognising that this is an opportunity and for us to start the conversation within and beyond our community to increase the spread of reinvestment.
I see countless numbers of Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander people now progressing beyond secondary school and doing tertiary studies and applying their white collar and blue collar learnings in the world. Imagine the impact we could have if we as Indigenous people, with all the types of skills and knowledge we have, invested more volunteering time and effort back into our Indigenous communities and the organisations that represent them? I personally think that this could be a huge impact that could set a great standard across our community. There are people and groups in our community who do this, but they are certainly few and far between.
Indigenous business owners and Indigenous people in various professional careers are sitting on a ‘gold mine’ of knowledge, skills and experience that they could be donating back to Indigenous organisations, Indigenous causes and our community.
With the significant growth of the Indigenous business sector, being anywhere between 12,000 to 16,000 Indigenous businesses, and the growth of Indigenous employment in blue collar, but especially in white collar roles, provides a massive pool of talent within our own community to give back to support community outputs and outcomes.
Some of you might be asking ‘Where do I start?’. Firstly, it starts with recognising that you have value and that you have the opportunity to offer this value to community. Secondly, identify a local Indigenous organisation or Indigenous owned business that you can approach to have a conversation with and discuss how they might be able to utilise your skills and talents. Most communities in Australia have local Indigenous organisations that you can reach out to. For example your Local Aboriginal Land Council, Aboriginal health clinics and practices, etc. Some very easy and simple places to start.
At NGNY, our consultations typically involve pro-bono support and time that we allocate without charge to Indigenous organisations. We provide a lot of consultative support as well as mentorship to Indigenous business owners. We have plans to do bigger and better things, but we know that right here right now we are able to support our Indigenous brothers and sisters with technology and business guidance and mentorship
We have also established Buy-Indigenous as a way for us to continue to build on the Indigenus Digital Economy. As NGNY, we don’t make any profit from Buy-Indigenous. We see this as an investment back into our people to invest in the growth and sustainability of Indigenous owned and operated businesses.
This thought piece is certainly not intended to mention that there are not people out in our community already reinvesting but to highlight that we could be doing it at a much larger scale. Further to this, we want to motivate people in our community who say that they want to give back time to just do it and not just continue to talk about it.
We’d love to hear some good news stories from people in the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community who are reinvesting back into our communities, community organisations, businesses, and for that matter, other forms of reinvestment. Let’s promote and get these good news stories out there so we can stimulate and motivate a movement in this space.