A community partnership brought to you by OfficeMax® Australia and OfficeMax® New Zealand in conjunction with child welfare charity Barnardos Australia.
The Max e Grants program provides small grants of up to $5000 per grant to school and pre-schools to support children (4-18 years) experiencing significant disadvantage to support, promote and encourage their educational potential and outcomes. The program is open to schools in Australia and New Zealand. The program will also consider supporting costs incurred by small community organisations working on projects with schools in Australia and New Zealand, but the application needs to be submitted by the school.
Education is a crucial strategy in reducing poverty and disadvantage and developing self-esteem. With this in mind a priority for the program is to support children living in isolated rural and remote areas, Indigenous communities and recently settled refugee or migrant communities.
The grants program gives preference to small, discrete projects that meet the needs of an individual child or group of children, or young people experiencing disadvantage, rather than contributing to the funding of large projects. However, consideration will be given to an application by one school on behalf of a group of schools wishing to address and issue faced by students in a particular geographical region.
A main aim of the grants program is to try to avoid individual isolation so that a child or young person experiencing disadvantage does not feel separated from his or her peers due to circumstances beyond their control.
Max e Grants has been successfully operating in Australia for more than six years and has given out AUD$600,000 in grants. From 2011, OfficeMax® New Zealand joined this program to launch the same initiative for children in New Zealand.
Together we can give children in need a better chance at life through increased participation in the education system.
