To celebrate National Reconciliation Week (NRW) this year, Telstra held a competition rewarding employees who created the best internal event educating their staff about reconciliation.
When Terry and Yvonne, members of the Process & Business Improvement (P&BI) Chapter Area, heard about this opportunity, they planned a presentation with two guest speakers where they discussed what reconciliation meant to them as individuals and reflected on this as an organisation.
Terry and the team won the competition and were able to gift a cash prize of $1,200 to a charity of their choice!
Kicking things off, discussions were centred on the importance of NRW and the audience learnt about the five pillars of reconciliation. These include race relations, equality and equity, institutional integrity, unity and historical acceptance.
Next, two First Nations guest speakers joined them to share their stories. Kirsten Shaw, an Indigenous employee at Telstra, and Rueben Berg, a Gunditjmara man and leader in Victoria, provided insight into what the day meant to them.
On top of this, employees were offered additional learning opportunities to improve their cultural competencies if they were interested.
Terry and the team then chose four charities and allowed the audience to vote for which one they wanted to gift the $1,200 to. The employees at Telstra voted overwhelmingly for the Indigenous Literacy Foundation (ILF), with 65% of the team wanting to donate the $1,200 to support literacy in remote Communities.
Thank you to Terry, Yvonne, Kirsten, Rueben and the team for holding this event and sharing vital insights into the importance of reconciliation. This donation represents the gifting of approximately 120 books to remote Communities around Australia.
If you would like to learn more about how your organisation can support the ILF, please head to our Fundraising Hub.