ING Foundation

ING Foundation: Making a difference to the lives of others

ING is actively involved in the community, supporting a range of Australian charities and sponsorships through the ING Foundation.

The ING Foundation was established in 1978 to make a difference to the lives of disadvantaged Australians. We have partnered with four important charitable organisations, and manage a program of financial grants to organisations supporting children in need. Read on for more...

RECENT GRANTS TO OUR CHARITY PARTNERS

BARNARDOS

Both the ING Foundation and Barnardos recognise the need for a strategy to maintain Indigenous children in the education system. As such, the ING Foundation has recently provided a $75,000 grant to support Barnardos’ four Indigenous Learning Centres.

This level of priority and focus was born from an understanding that literacy and numeracy practices, as well as children’s access to proper education is critical to determining success in schooling and consequently, broader life opportunities.

THE ISSUE

The families of highly disadvantaged children face many complexities and difficulties. Their poverty is debilitating and parents themselves often have low literacy and numeracy levels because they grew up in a culture of low expectations and value placed on education. For the children of these families, it is not difficult to understand why school can appear irrelevant.

The result of this is often disrupted schooling due to poor attendance, suspension and exclusion. They fall further behind in crucial areas such as literacy and numeracy, resulting in other compounding problems such as low self esteem, a lack of motivation and a lack of confidence to learn. This further inhibits their full participation in the classroom and increases the chance they will engage in problematic behaviour.

INDIGENOUS LEARNING CENTRES

Indigenous Learning Centres are high quality educational services employing indigenous staff that are role models and work towards improving indigenous children’s school retention rates and experiences of educational success. The Learning Centre’s programs are integrated with other Barnardos family support services to enable follow up home based support to families as required.

Indigenous Learning Centres work closely with schools, teachers, parents/carers to develop:

• individual homework plans to ensure learning needs are identified and suitable assistance is provided
• consistent and realistic behaviour management plans.

Following the development of these plans, children and young people participate in structured recreational and art/craft activities with a designated session for homework and other educational support.

THE SPASTIC CENTRE

The ING Foundation has partnered with The Spastic Centre for a number of years now and has supported the Conductive Education Program in particular for that time.

THE ISSUE

Children with cerebral palsy and/or physical disabilities have a learning disorder that affects their motor skills and the reception of information, as well as expressive functions and the feedback system. Through the repetition of tasks, the damaged brain finds alternative pathways to send messages to the muscle groups in order to recreate the different, accepted movements.

CONDUCTIVE EDUCATION

Through The Spastic Centre’s Conductive Education classes, children gain confidence and a greater sense of personal achievement, social competence and self-esteem. Conductive Education provides the opportunity for the child to recognise his/her own ability by successfully completing tasks, which will change their participation from passive to active involvement.

UNICEF

In 2008, ING Australia employee, Alison Hiscocks travelled to India as part of the ING Chances for Children volunteer program. Alison’s experience of UNICEF’s school projects in India not only inspired her, but also inspired all ING employees in Australia. As such, the ING Foundation is providing $100,000 of financial support to UNICEF’s Enhancing Girls Education program in Rajastan, India.

THE ISSUE

In spite of large scale efforts, around 7 million primary age children in India have never been enrolled in school. Gender disparities in education also persist and approximately 3.85 million (or 55 percent) of these children out of school children are girls.

In addition, these gender disparities are wide in some castes, classes, ethnicities, communities and regions. In the patriarchal environment of Rajasthan, girls are particularly disadvantaged and denied equal opportunities. About 71.33 % of girls in the 6-14 years group still continue to drop out of school before they complete their elementary school years. Traditional perceptions of girls, which support early marriage and segregation of women, play a significant role in creating gender disparity.

ENHANCING GIRLS EDUCATION PROGRAM

Communities in Rajasthan need to see girls as equal to boys in status. This project focuses on the challenges of gender and social disparity in the state of Rajasthan, in particular in the district of Tonk where 12,000 girls are still out of school.

As part of the strategy, the project puts an emphasis on Life Skill Education (LSE), provision of accelerated learning opportunities and management skills for girls’ education.

In order to get these girls in to school, the project focuses on both the state and district level. To make the programs successful, UNICEF is building State level implementing agencies in order to develop and implement state wide, time bound programs addressing the access to and retention in school at the elementary level.

In addition to this, partnerships made with key Non Government Organisations (NGOs), civil society groups, the media and the private sector will advocate for, mobilise and monitor the progress of girls’ education.

Finally, ensuring that appropriate technical support and material development is provided to key institutions in order to develop gender sensitive training and monitoring tools is in tracking the education process for girls.

Our Charity Partners

The ING Foundation has partnered with worthwhile and important charitable organisations in Australia. We not only support these charities with financial assistance, but our employees get involved by volunteering at fundraising events and activities.

They are: