The Anchorage International Rotary Club is sponsoring a Vocational Training Team (VTT) in District 9455 with a Rotary Global Grant for Fetal Alchohol Syndrome Disease (FASD). FASD is a chronic problem for Alaska's indigenous peoples as it is for the Aboriginals in Australia. The team will depart April 1, 2019, and return April 17th. Australia's health system is more like Canada's than Great Britain's. Below is an example of a Rotary District that has a hands-on culture.
There are 48 Clubs in District 9455 having about 1800 members. District 9455 is the only Australian District that has an Aboriginal Reference Group. The Group’s function is facilitatory in the sense that Clubs can call upon it to assist them in establishing strategic partnerships/alliances with Western Australian Aboriginal communities for:
• Understanding aboriginal culture, values, and practices make mutual projects useful. Developing strong, respectful relationships with Aboriginal people – which are critical to being able to work effectively together towards a common goal with each party understanding the other’s perspective/s.
• Assisting Aboriginal groups in recording their language, history, and culture before the traditional carriers die out.
Helping Non-Indigenous and Aboriginal people each to develop social frameworks that viably straddle both western and Aboriginal cultures.
• Empowering Aboriginal people by offering them opportunities, skills, knowledge, and experience so that they can develop the confidence to make sound cultural and cross-cultural decisions.
• To encourage Aboriginal people to update and modernize their culture so that it appropriately fits the world they now find themselves in.