Ian Thorpe’s Fountain for Youth -  a not for profit charity, founded after the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games, supports  Aboriginal education, literacy and the celebration of Culture - empowering Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children to find their voice, tell their own stories and live their dreams.  Stronger, Smarter children is our goal.

Since 2003 our Literacy Empowerment Project has focused on supporting the education and wellbeing of over 2,500 Indigenous children and their families in some of the most disadvantaged remote Aboriginal communities in Australia.

The Literacy Backpack Program is an initiative to improve reading at school and in the home by students and their families.  In communities that have seen illiteracy rates as high as 93%, many bookless homes, most have no public library, no access at all to reading material, we have been building up otherwise missing resources for literacy development.  Without the Backpack Project many communities would still have no reading resources for homes and schools would have very poor quality and often outdated education resources!     

The Project is helping to close the space between school and community, strengthening relationships between teachers and families, supporting parents as role models for their children, reading and sharing books together at home, developing a ‘whole of community’ reading approach with teachers and parents working together to provide good education outcomes for their children.

Empowerment through Education is the key in remote areas where we are witnessing the greatest disadvantage and poverty levels.  Communities are asking for our support!

Teachers have said the Literacy Backpack program is a critical adjunct to school based reading and writing development, otherwise more than half of every day is devoid of reading.

Your donation will assist in the provision of ‘the right’ education resources, carefully selected by the schools, the delivery of a wonderful selection of books of various titles across all topics for the libraries that will enhance the student learning, books chosen by the students through book clubs and taken home to keep, reading materials for the families; a variety of magazine titles and newspapers, National Indigenous Times, Koori Mail.  Much needed education resources and electronic smart boards for the schools, Reader Program Kits that provide more accurate measuring of student progress. 

Your support will change the life of a child, raising expectations and developing literacy across the community.  Join us on this journey!