Indigenous Community Volunteers

ICV’s Activity Report for the first six months of 2009-10 shows that our program is continuing to expand and our impact on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander wellbeing is growing. We facilitated 548 volunteer assignments from July to December 2009. This was more than all of the projects that ICV facilitated for the entire 2008-09 financial year. Reflecting the quality of our program, 99 per cent of the communities we worked with reported they would invite us back.

Allowing for some consolidation, we are on track to facilitate around 1,000 volunteer placements this financial year.

Reflecting communities’ own awareness of what they need to grow and improve their human wellbeing, our impacts remain strongly focused on the evidence-based building blocks for ‘closing the gap’. When measured against the Council of Australian Government’s building blocks and ICV’s community and human development foundations, we had the strongest impact on education, economic development, reconciliation, and preservation of culture and country. Our health, community and family safety, and early childhood impacts were also significant. Communities and volunteers reported education and economic development impacts associated with more than half of our projects. Over one third of our projects had early childhood development impacts. And two fifths had direct and positive impacts on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health.

During the first six months of this financial year we continued to improve our efficiency with our average project costs dropping by over one third.