Include a Charity Week

Include a Charity Week is a time to reflect on what it means to leave a gift in your Will to an organisation whose work you believe in or has played a significant role in your life.

For John Ingram, who volunteered in Malaysia in 1966 – 67 as a Secondary Teacher and later in 1968 as Resident Tutor in University of PNG, this meant pledging to leave a gift in his Will to AVI. You can read more about John’s story below.

Access our digital brochure, learn more about AVI’s Bequest program and get in touch with our friendly team for a chat. Thank you in advance for believing in our vision for a more peaceful, just and sustainable world.

“My contribution to AVI is minuscule compared to the value that I place on this organisation in terms of creating the kind of Australia that I want my children and grandchildren to live in. But it is a token of my esteem for AVI and of my recognition of how my thinking changed as a result of my experiences as an AVA in 1966, ‘67, and ’68, and how it changed the direction of my life.

Following my experience as an AVA in Malaysia and PNG, my life, professionally and personally, has been lived across cultures, and in providing opportunities for people in minority and often oppressed cultures to achieve the identity, the self-esteem, and the professional and vocational skills that allow them to live satisfying lives. It led to my career as an educator being spent mostly with Australian Indigenous people and, later, with people in other cultures in South Sudan, PNG, and the Pacific.

It also greatly influenced how Paia and I brought up our children as bi-racial, bi-cultural people, proud of their heritages and effective in being able to operate across diverse cultures. It also led to our active participation in the community as our children grew up, particularly in the ethnic communities in Darwin where we actively fostered interaction between the communities in the spirit of genuine multi-culturalism.

So my time as an AVA changed how I understood and valued the diversity of people in this world and was the first step in a lifelong experience of living and working across cultures.”

Paia and John Ingram