As Vice Chair of Plan International worldwide, Wendy was the opening speaker at the Queensland University of Technology Business Leaders’ Forum in Brisbane 17 November with guest speaker Sir Bob Geldof KBE.

Here's a short extract of Wendy's speech:

"Today one out of every five people on the planet is a child living in a developing country in Asia - an estimated 1.27 billion in 2005. This number will change little over the next 10 years, falling slightly to 1.22 billion by 2015.

Over 350 million children or almost one out of every three children in Asia will be absolutely poor - defined as a severe deprivation in two or more basic needs . These are the neighbours of your children and grandchildren.

The vast majority of these children will live in rural areas in South Asia, which has the world’s highest levels of child malnutrition, lack of sanitation and girls out of school. These are also the people who will suffer most from climate change."

To read Wendy's speech in full, click here.

Louise Walsh is Director of Artsupport Australia, an initiative of the Australia Council for the Arts to grow cultural philanthropy. Artsupport Australia works closely with government, cultural, corporate, financial and philanthropic sectors to develop effective strategies for giving.

Louise’s career took on an arts focus in late 1999 when she became the Director of Development for the Sydney Symphony. Over the next three and a half years, Louise was responsible for managing the fundraising team at the Sydney Symphony and raising over $4 million a year (combination of corporate partnerships and individual giving or philanthropy).

Louise, Artsupport Australia is quite a unique idea, how did it come about and why did you accept the role of Director?

David Gonski became Chair of the Australia Council about 8 years ago. His passion is growing philanthropy and when he took on the role of Chairman he decided he wanted to do something specifically for the arts. He felt that it was going to be difficult for government funding at all levels to increase for the non-profit sector. He felt if you’re a large non-profit like the Salvation Army or Sydney Symphony Orchestra then you have a strong chance of attracting corporate partnerships and sponsorship, but if you’re a small to medium company or individual artist then it’s typically very difficult. And thirdly, he felt strongly that philanthropy and private giving was untapped in Australia compared to the US and UK. So he wanted to do something about it.

Artsupport Australia is effectively a division of the Australia Council, a distinct unit reporting to the CEO. We are funded by the Australia Council. We are trying to help the cultural arts sector raise more money from philanthropic sources.

When I spoke to Gonski about this job I had been at the Sydney Symphony Orchestra for about four years and I enjoyed it but I knew I didn’t want to run an orchestra ... I was thinking about the next thing I wanted to do and I went to him to have a chat. I could see the potential with philanthropy. I could see it was so untapped. The opportunity here was to work with him because he’s so passionate about philanthropy as well as the arts and that it was a start-up. So a great opportunity to grow the business and that he was going to be quite hands on - which he was ... read more

Are you interested in helping a refugee? Professional Links is recruiting mentors to assist unemployed and underemployed refugees in Sydney find work.

Refugees and humanitarian entrants are matched with a mentor from a profession the refugee wants to gain employment in. The mentor assists with networking, job seeking skills, local work experience and other pathways into employment. You meet with your mentee for an hour every two weeks for a minimum of twelve months. Most importantly you will LISTEN and provide a valuable sounding board as they negotiate finding work in Australia. You are not expected to provide all the answers.

Please contact Project Officer Polly Baigent on (02) 9282 9333 or by email for more information.

by Wendy McCarthy

It is a common experience in our mentoring practice that organisations approach us to discuss mentoring for high potential and valuable staff. It is a reward for performance and loyalty. The mentee enters into a private and confidential relationship that assists them to think more strategically about their life and career. The usual outcome is that the mentee becomes more motivated, focused and grows in confidence.

In addition, there can be benefits for the whole organisation. International research¹ tells us that people with mentors are up to 13 times less likely to leave and that generally there’s an improvement company-wide in communication, motivation and succession planning. Our own evaluation would support these findings.

Broadly, this is the business case for mentoring. However, each organisation presents different people, objectives and expectations and subsequently each mentoring program is tailored to meet those factors.

In our experience mentoring has been a key strategy to increase the numbers of women in senior management, to broaden cultural diversity in organisations, and to assist women returning to the workplace after maternity leave. Mentoring can not work in a vacuum without other supporting policies; however the power of one to one can be very dynamic.

Read more

Annual survey of mentees

It is not too late to complete our survey.

We would really value your feedback on the mentoring program.

Please complete the brief survey at this link http://www.mccarthymentoring.com/survey0711.htm

It should only take a few minutes and is completely confidential.

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