First Nations Foundation Competitors

At the National Indigenous Australians Agency (NIAA), we are committed to supporting aspirations of First Nations peoples and removing barriers to ensure full and equal participation in the social and economic life of Australia. We leverage our partnerships and relationships to ensure First Nations voices are heard. We support the Minister for Indigenous Australians, Senator the Hon Malarndirri McCarthy, and work to influence policy across the entire Australian Government. We liaise closely with State and Territory governments, peak bodies and service providers to ensure Indigenous programs and services are delivering for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. We recognise each community is unique. Our regional presence extends across Australia with staff based in each state and territory. Our staff work collaboratively and in genuine partnership with communities to ensure policies, programs and services address their unique needs. Areas of focus include health and wellbeing, education, employment, economic development, culture and heritage, land and the environment, housing, community safety, Closing the Gap, supporting the Indigenous voice co-design process, and constitutional recognition. NIAA is a flexible, diverse and inclusive workplace and our people are the heart of the NIAA. The NIAA shared values support our positive, inclusive and delivery orientated culture: • We respect multiple perspectives • We are professional and act with integrity • We invest in each other’s success • We are authentic • We deliver with purpose.

Our vision is for a nation in which Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are economically independent and an integral part of the economy. IBA was created to assist and enhance the economic development opportunities of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people across Australia. IBA serves, partners and invests with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who want to own their future. We go further than provide money; we invest in people, places and ideas that can’t wait. We help make them real. We’re deeply invested in the financial success and economic independence of Indigenous Australians. It’s why we exist.

AIME is an Imagination Factory that since 2005, has been creating pop-up imagination experiences on university campuses around the world to unlock the internal narrative of marginalised kids, taking them from a world that tells them they can’t to a world that tells them they can. Kids who experience the Imagination Factory have gone on to achieve educational parity, rise up as entrepreneurs, and take on a whole new mindset that prepares them for success. What inspires our Imagination Factory are the mentors throughout human history, the philosophers, artists, inventors and designers who have moved humanity forward in positive ways. With the force of imagination, mentoring and unlikely alliances between those with power and those without, AIME is creating a fairer world.