Today’s world demands we learn basic computing skills or risk becoming uninformed and underprivileged.
In Australia, many living in remote areas are deprived of such knowledge and barred from the benefits. With some basic IT, their lives will be improved immensely.
Margooroo Foundation has come into existence to help such isolated communities.
WHAT DO WE WANT?
Margooroo Foundation simply asks that as we update our laptop computers and tablets, we donate the old ones to change lives for the better, beginning with Timber Creek, NT.
Educational books are also gratefully accepted.
NB. All hard drives will be reformatted and each machine serviced and learning software installed before being is sent to its destination.
The word ‘Margooroo’ is the closest way of writing the English word for ‘school’ in the Ngarinjimin language.
The Ngarinjimin and Nungali people living just east of the Western Australian – Northern Territory border are remote geographically to the education available in the main population centres of Australia.
The community centre located at Timber Creek has been prepared and made available to assist locals, especially school age youths, to learn how to use the technologies of the 21st century.
Although this assistance to the Timber Creek community is based on their remoteness, the Ngarinjimin and Nungali people make up a major proportion of those who can use these education aids to benefit their lives and contribute more to their communities and Australia as a whole; so special thanks go to their elders for their support.
WHY THE NEED?
Australians in remote areas are becoming more and more frustrated as basic products and services can only be accessed using the internet via a computer or device.
These basics include goods and services, communications for health information, banking, or with government departments that now only communicate online.
Without knowledge of the technology, a growing number of remote Australians are disadvantaged to the point where they are denied the basics that people in cities, regional areas or those IT savvy take for granted.
To them, the rest of Australia has been made even more inaccessible due to advances in technology, so for a growing number they are now disenfranchised to a level comparable to the third world.
This program will allow youth and adults who want to learn how to use computers, can do so, as well as participate in the wider learning new technology offers.
The ultimate goal is to provide Timber Creek with the technology for use in a pro-active learning environment, hence the homework centre that has been arranged initially to be used mainly by primary school children.
This can develop into a mobile service to travel and set up in communities, as the need arises.
What happens to the donated IT?
Laptops donated will be logged into the community centre as property of the Margooroo Foundation, then immediately made available for local use at the community centre in Timber Creek, NT.
Some may be loaned for periods of time to those keen to learn how to use such technology, based on responsibility, such as occurs with books in a library.
Accountability will be applied at a local level.
Who oversees the project locally?
The program is being overseen locally by Shirley Garlett, Deputy Mayor of the Victoria Daly Regional council. Shirley has lived in the Timber Creek region for about 20 years and volunteers at the Timber Creek School, having married into the Ngarinjimin people where she’s been a part of the ‘big family’ for close to 28 years.
Timber Creek is made up of 5 outstations and two smaller communities with schools at Bulla and Amanbidji, that will also benefit from this project.
Prior to moving to Timber Creek she worked with Youth and Adults in the Justice system and Employment Services focusing on a cultural perspective.
Shirley holds a Diploma in Broadcasting & Journalism with a Specialisation in Training, which saw her lecturing at Bachelor Institute of Indigenous Tertiary Education preparing training packages and workshopping with remote youth and adults in the Kimberley, Top End and Central Australian regions.
Shirley says that working with the people and being part of a people for whom English is a second, third or fourth language has been both challenging and rewarding.
Who we are.
Chris De Havilland learned much about remoteness from birth. Starting with his earliest days living at the edge of a desert that was once the home of the Nawu people, then in Western Australia from Noongar schoolfriends who also came from inland towns. As a teenager he travelled to South Australia and learned more when sharing accommodation with a close friend from the Pitjantjara people of central Australia.
Working through the north-west of Australia meant he saw more disparity of opportunity which happens due to various reasons, including remoteness.
Now living north of Sydney, Chris has kept in contact with a friend from his early twenties, Jeremy Garlett, a Noongar man and radio announcer who alerted Chris to the fact that remoteness was affecting the education opportunities of communities such as Timber Creek, where his sister Shirley lives.
Believing ‘education offers hope’, Chris and Shirley communicated and in 2018 began considering options to best assist those in such local communities.
Margooroo Foundation was initiated with a wish that others too may similarly see where they can lend a hand.
How can I help?
There are a number of ways you can help fellow Australians in remote areas.
1. Donate your superseded laptop computer, tablet or unwanted educational books to Margooroo Foundation. Please bear in mind that if you are located in WA, SA, Tas, Vic or Q’ld, we will have to set up a way to get these to those who need them. Just email and we’ll see how we can achieve this.
2. Donate any funds to assist us ‘set up’ the IT and freight them to remote Australia. GoFundMe TBA
3. Contact us about any remote areas with the same needs and same local support systems. Each remote community needs at least one IT ‘computer-savvy’ teacher with the desire to manage their local situation. We’ll try to help you where we can.
Reasons for this arrangement that focuses on materials more than money.
In recent history, well intended public financial donations given for many good causes have amounted to large sums of money. When funds are ‘withheld’ by collection agencies, or ‘diverted’ to unintended benefactors, sadly, donors may begin to question whether their generosity has been misplaced.
Because IT (Information Technology) is what’s needed in remote areas, the foundation’s advisor suggested it may be pragmatic for an arrangement be put in place that is unambiguous and less attractive to potential exploitation.
As money can be electronically transferred easily, the goal here instead is to acquire used laptop computers and books.
Those supervising the use of gratefully accepted donated hardware are the same people who have lived and contributed to the learning of local youth at the ‘ground’ level up to now.
What happens to funds?
Some funds are required, so any finances donated are completely transparent and visible to scrutiny.
Funds donated are designated to be spent on specific criteria, being transport costs, computer maintenance and oversight of the IT donated.
The emphasis is on ‘school’, which is why only spending on hardware, software, IT maintenance and freight are acceptable.
No salaries are included.
Long term?
The Margooroo Foundation program is based on geography only and Timber Creek’s situation is not unique.
It’s designed to help people become computer literate, especially school age youth, regardless of their inherited DNA.
Where long travel, cultural difference and major allocations of time combine to reduce the commitment to conventional schooling, computers can help incite such dedication to this form of education.
Margooroo grew from a desire to help the local people in a practical way.
It was deemed most beneficial to ask those locals before acting. Local knowledge of local priorities was viewed as essential if real help was going to be offered, regardless of how noble the intention.
Only the locals who have lived and worked in the area a long time could provide that necessary insight.
We urge others similarly desiring to assist remote people to please consider this.
First ascertain if help is required, before working in with the local people to achieve their goal.
If donations of IT to Timber Creek exceed their needs, then more peoples of remote Australia would be asked if they too had the same need.
If long-term, reputable educators are available to act as overseers, then excess donated educational equipment would be loaned to that community on a similar arrangement.
With useful modern technology, the aim is to provide all Australians regardless of location, heritage or social background, the access to tools for them to fulfil their future potential.
End Goal.
We would love to be made redundant, with all Australians having equal access to learning skills needed to enjoy a full and productive life.