The Rotary Club of Sydney Cove's Indigenous Community Benevolent Fund  has been hard at work participating in a number of initiatives in Northern Australia.   You will all be aware of the efforts to date of Andy Buttfield at Baniyala to improve the lot of that community in a variety of ways.  Ably assisted by Robert Bradshaw, he is up there again right now contuning his push on the educational front.

Our Indigenous activities have been expanded recently by partnering with the Dot Com Mob and their prinipal benefactor the Magid Foundation in helping to develop a number of community learning centres in Cape York.  Working with the Queensland State Library and other supporters such as WorkVentures, Corporate Express, Internet facilities and computing skills are being upgrades at 18 remote locations in Queensland.

The objective is to attract the locals, particularly the younger ones, to the process of learning via aspects of the World Wide Web that truly interest them - such as musical and sporting sites, blogs, FaceBook and YouTube.  These projects also harness the power of peer involvement by first getting a few people onto the Net and then using them as role models to attract others.  Each centre is run by the local community council so they have ownership and thus want to take care of it and improve it themselves.

To get a taste of what is being achieved by the combined effots of a few dedicated people, we suggest you visit the site links below:

www.dotcommob.org
www.youtube.com/user/dotcommob