Tigers' Indigenous institute a first for the club
RICHMOND has appointed Luke Murray as Indigenous Community Engagement Co-ordinator of its planned Australian Institute of Indigenous Learning and Development.
Murray, the older brother of Essendon's Nathan Lovett-Murray, will officially start duties at the club next week. He will be responsible for managing community involvement in the planning, development and implementation of the Institute.
His key areas of work are:
To provide links to, engage and consult with the Indigenous community and organisations from the education, employment and training sectors; To provide advice on the content of the courses and programs to be run by the institute; To liaise with the Federal and State governments in respect to course programs; To oversee implementation of the RFC fostership program in the Northern Territory.
After a few minutes talking with Murray, it's not hard to understand how he's landed this pioneering role at Punt Road.
He exudes enthusiasm for his work in the education sector with Indigenous youth and you quickly get the impression he's darn good at what he does. After spending more than a decade at Melbourne University, and the past three years with Latrobe University as its Indigenous student recruitment officer, Murray can't wait to get his teeth into his next big challenge, at Tigerland.
"I'm really looking forward to it – the whole thing's very exciting. It has huge potential and possibilities and Richmond can lead the way in this field," he said. "We will attract a lot of Indigenous kids to the institute just due to the fact that it's at a football club. Our people just love football: the game's had a huge impact on our kids. The power of footy is unreal and that's certainly played a significant part in attracting me to the role. I love my footy, too.
"From an educational perspective, the opportunity to look after those Indigenous kids who don't get into Uni is exciting. There are heaps of kids who get their VCE, but their entry scores aren’t high enough for Uni. So I see the institute as a place where kids, hopefully, can get ready for Uni or where they can get a decent enough qualification to gain good employment."
Although Murray is bullish about the Punt Road institute's potential, he's also a realist.
"We'll start off small and just gradually build it up. It's going to take a few years before it's really established," he said. "The same thing happened at Melbourne Uni in 1998 -- we basically had to rebuild the Indigenous support centre there from scratch. By 2001, we were the number one-performed Indigenous education centre in Australia. We did all that within three years, so I know what that rebuilding, or in this cause, building, phase is all about."
RICHMOND FOOTBALL CLUB
Friday, March 13, 2009
Last Modified on 13/03/2009 00:06