Brendo's bodyboard - AIME's Op Shop

Ben Knight is organizing this fundraiser to benefit Australian Indigenous Mentoring Experience Indigenous Co.

You can donate today to support AIME to live out its mission of working with 100 000 marginalised kids by 2025; and as a bonus, be in the running to win Brendo's board amongst a few other things laid out below:

A donation of 20 000 AUD will guarantee you the board.

A donation of over $500 puts you in the draw to win Brendo's Salty Dogs board (to be announced in AIME's newsletter at the end of the year) - Sign up to the newsletter here

A donation between $100-$499 puts you in the draw to win 1 of 5 limited edition AIME x Brendo's board hoodies

A donation between $5-$99 gives you a chance at featuring on Brendo's podcast, The Grey Space.

Brenden Newton is a husband, father, ex-professional bodyboarder, mental health awareness advocate and Lead Global Mentor at AIME - an 18-year-old not for profit on their way to supporting 100,000 marginalised young people by 2025.

AIME does this through the power of imagination, mentoring and a network of highly active people from inside and outside of the margins.

In the bodyboarding scene, Brenden is renown for committing to some of the world’s heaviest waves, and when I say “heaviest”, I’m talking about waves that are literally on the edge of 'surfable'.

Brendo is now ready to give away one of his most prized possessions to help AIME continue to inspire young people all over the world.

Every dollar goes towards AIME building bridges and opening doors to those inside the margins, so that by 2025, 100,000 marginalised young people around the world can take centre stage to seize the opportunities of the future.

To be in the running to win the board you need to have a $500 donation in my January 7th 2022.

The winner of the raffle will be announced in AIME's newsletter on January 12th and we will also make contact with the lucky winner on that date.

About AIME

In 2004, AIME founder Jack Manning Bancroft, sketched an idea of a social network for good, one that connected university students as mentors with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander high school students in Australia, building bridges between two different groups, to lead to educational equity, exchanges of worth and value, and for the mentors a deeper connection to a different lived experience.

In 2005, it commenced and scaled at pace around Australia engaging over 25,000 Indigenous high school students who closed a 40% education outcome gap, and it lit up the minds of a generation of university students desperate to connect to something bigger than themselves, with over 10,000 university students volunteering their time and energy to make AIME the largest ongoing volunteer movement of university students in Australian history.

The power of AIME to build unlikely connections grew as we encountered further barriers to the high school students’ pathway out of inequity – barriers in mass cultural storytelling where they couldn’t see anyone like them, barriers in employment, barriers in the board rooms, barriers in the shape of the economy that saw so many kids like them outside the margins.

One by one, we’ve worked tirelessly on building bridges between these young people and the people in control of many of the friction points where change has not yet occurred, but is possible if we embrace unlikely connections.

Read more about AIME here