The Asia Literacy Ambassadors – Partnering Businesses & Schools project is establishing and supporting partnerships between businesses and schools to stimulate and increase student and school community demand for Asia literacy.

Skilled professionals (Asia Literacy Ambassadors) are being matched to secondary schools across Australia. By sharing their own story, Ambassadors are assisting school communities to better understand the diverse career and life opportunities available to employees who are knowledgeable about Asia and have the skills and dispositions needed to effectively engage with the people and cultures of Asia, off-shore and domestically.

Ambassadors and schools work together to determine the type of partnership that best suits their specific interests, areas of expertise, availability and needs.

Ideally, partnering Ambassadors and schools will participate in at least three face-to-face interactions in the school, workplace or other contexts with students, school leaders, teachers, career practitioners and school councils over a six-to-eight month period. That said, the number of interactions and when they occur will depend very much on the availability and goals of the Ambassador and school. Interactions can take many forms - for example, an interaction could be a student visit to the Ambassador's workplace, a presentation to a student group, dialogue with leadership teams, career practitioners, teachers and school councils, etc.

"One of the students from my Indonesian class commented that our Ambassador's PowerPoint presentation really 'got to her' and that prior to yesterday she'd only been studying Indonesian for the SACE points. Now she sees it as a valuable asset to herself in the future! Our Ambassador really has been making a difference!"

(Clementine O'Sullivan, St Aloysius College)

 The Asia Education Foundation's Asia Literacy Ambassadors project is funded/ supported by the Australian Government Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations through the Quality Outcomes Program.