Our legacy

As proud Aboriginal men, Adam and Michael have both benefited from their strong connection to culture, which has given them courage. Being connected to culture has also taught them about resilience. It gives them the ability to get through any situation.

The love, care and guidance of incredible Aboriginal women have deeply impacted their lives, especially their mothers who instilled the importance of education, working hard and family and culture.

The GO Foundation started out small and has grown into an Aboriginal-led and governed organisation that puts culture at the heart of its work to support better outcomes for our people.

We’ve now provided more than 2,300 scholarships for Indigenous primary, secondary and tertiary students in Sydney, Adelaide and Canberra.

We have culture and identity at the heart of our holistic Program for students in Year 1 to university and beyond.

Our first education scholarships for independent school students were in Sydney in 2014 through the Australian Indigenous Education Foundation (AIEF). We also provided a few university scholarships.

In 2018, GO started to give independent school scholarships directly to students through each individual school. At the same time, an identified need in public education shifted our focus towards awarding scholarships to students attending public schools.

We proudly partnered with the Public Education Foundation (PEF) to give out our first round of public school scholarships. With our focus on partnerships, this one has strengthened over time.

Greater collaboration has meant we could grow the number of scholarships we award, leading to greater reach and impact.

In 2019, our Scholarship Program expanded to Adam and Michael’s hometown of Adelaide. We welcomed Canberra to the GO family in 2021.   

Our Program has always been holistic with a focus on providing wrap-around support to students. This is on top of the financial support our scholarship provides.

Our Program has evolved with a dedicated team of Aboriginal people to ensure our Program is designed and delivered with lived experience and a strong cultural lens.

We appointed a Head of Scholarships, Mark Heiss and Scholarship Program Manager, Ashlie Rogers, in 2019

In March 2022, the GO Board endorsed the Impact Measurement Framework. The framework was co-designed by the GO Team and Jumbuna Institute for Indigenous Education and Research, UTS.

This Framework was designed to enable GO to identify its program impacts. It helps to judge program performance based on data and understand change. It helps us to form recommendations for the future.

We released our 5-year Strategic Plan 2022-2026 in July 2022.

This commits us to keep delivering our program in Sydney, Adelaide and Canberra so we can consolidate our delivery model and build on our growth and engagement.

Other priorities under the plan include:

• deepening our relationships with the young people in our program to ensure we are led by them
• having greater reach and impact, including supporting the transition to high school for Year 5 and 6 students and creating an alumni network
• measuring our impact and showcasing success stories produced by the GO Program
• building a strong, sustainable financial future for GO to enable us to support more young people.

2023 is GO’s tenth year of a clear education focus. We’ve seen significant growth in our scholarship numbers over this time.

In January 2022, we reached a milestone of awarding our 1,000th scholarship to a Year 11 student in Paralowie, Adelaide – it was her second scholarship. Her work ethic was strong and she had 100% school attendance.

The scholarship gave her the space to explore her passions at school and work towards her goals. She was able to achieve her dream of a career in Indigenous healthcare/education.