Yalari Private Equity Dinner

Last night I was at the Yalari fundraising dinner.  It was an inspiring evening.  I'd guess there were 300 people, and most of the tables were sponsored by private equity firms or their advisors.  I really enjoyed meeting the spouses and interacting with my industry colleagues outside our frenetic work environment. 

Overseas readers may be surprised to learn that the average white Australian has never even spoken to an aboriginal Australian.  Despite decades of economic prosperity our country is doing virtually nothing to address the collapse of remote indigenous communities.  In many areas of the outback less than 10% of aboriginal children complete high school.

Sure, it was just a start, but last night I felt enormously proud of our little private equity industry.  Over $300,000 was donated for the private education of aboriginal children. Bill Ferris and Joe Skrzynski of CHAMP deserve a special mention for personally writing a cheque for $100,000.   These funds will be added to the $60,000+ that the Australian Private Equity and Venture Capital Association raised for Yalari last year by auctioning a Ningura Napurrula painting.

Comments

[Daniel Nerezov]

Donations are great, but I also think the work done over at the www.isx.org.au is very important.

I've been watching Peter Botsman trying to kick start indigenous ventures over in the outback for like 2 years now and his persistence is inspiring.

Self sufficiency is the goal and there's still a long way to go.

[GP]

Agree with you Dan. But I also think education is the key. Unless indigenous kids get a basic education the odds of them breaking the cycle and becoming self sufficient are virtually zero.

Yalari is focusing on very very careful selection of kids with the potential to succeed and then ongoing mentoring by indigenous role models to keep them at school.

[Angus]

It's all very well to say education is important and I agree it is, but let me ask this: if Yalari is so careful at student selection why did 4 out of 6 students drop out of the program after less than 6 months in 2006? And all this money from the "venture capital" industry - where is it? It's not shown in their accounts and they reckon on their website they raised $300k at the dinner but that's not in the accounts either!