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The Facts.

  • Client

    Odonata Foundation

  • Website

    www.odonata.org

  • Industry

    Environmental conservation. A not-for-profit working to save threatened species.

  • Program

    Impact Pathways

  • Where

    Australia. Based in Torquay, Victoria, with national reach

  • Timeframe

    February 2024

Where they started.

Odonata does not overlook First Nations people. The opposite. Self-determination sits at the centre of its work.

Long before the two organisations began working together, Odonata had already helped an Aboriginal group buy a 10,000-acre farm at Salmon Gums, raise funds for equipment, and support tree planting on Country. Its Chairman and Founder, Nigel Sharp, had spent years in genuine partnership.

This was never an awareness problem. It was a depth problem. Even an organisation this committed didn’t know what it didn’t know.

The work they stepped into.

The two-day, face-to-face Impact Pathways Program. This is how Indiji Corp moves an organisation beyond cultural awareness. Two days, in person, doing the real work of understanding rather than hearing about it.

Gail and two of her team travelled to Torquay to lead it in person. They didn’t bring a presentation about culture. They brought the culture and history carried by the people who live it every day.

The discipline is the point. Hard truths that often shut a room down were held so gently that around twelve people stayed open and kept going. That is when the real shift began.

When the guard came down.

The shift was the honest kind. Not new information. A new grasp of how much there was to grasp. People found they could ask the questions they had always held back. Gail’s delivery made them feel safe to ask.

“She did it so well that everybody could understand the issues in a really gentle way. Because they are pretty serious issues.”

— Nigel Sharp, Chairman and Founder, Odonata Foundation

The proof.

There is no before-and-after score here. The proof is stronger, and something no competitor can manufacture. Odonata appointed Gail to their board. They were so convinced by the work that they invited her to become a director of the foundation. She now serves alongside Nigel Sharp, Don Macleod and Magnus Nilsson.

They also didn’t file the two days away as a ‘nice to know’. They built on them. They carried that thinking into their other First Nations partnerships and set out to run the Impact Pathways Program again. A further partnership followed at Falbala, a 252-hectare property on Gadubanud Country in Victoria’s Otways, which was recently returned to Traditional Owners. There, Odonata supports threatened species recovery, with the potential for Falbala to become a native wildlife sanctuary.

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