Sydney Airport Lost Property Auction
The Harding Miller Education Foundation was honoured to be the recipient of Sydney Airport’s annual Lost Property Auction this year. The online auction kicked off on Saturday, 4 May and continued until Sunday, 12 May. Cara Varian, our Executive Chairperson and Zelda and Sapphire Truong, HMEF alumnae, represented the Foundation at the launch. Zelda was a 2018-2021 Harding Miller scholarship recipient and is currently studying physiotherapy at the University of Sydney, while Sapphire is studying occupational therapy at the same university after completing the scholarship program in 2023. The three had a busy day being interviewed by multiple TV networks (including appearing on Channel 9’s Today show live broadcast) and print media outlets about the Foundation. Their interviews resulted in over 600 TV mentions, over 200 print and media stories and nearly 200 radio mentions, spreading the word about HMEF to a nationwide audience.
The Lost Property Auction is one of Sydney Airport’s most important charity events and it has raised $1.6m since 2013. This year, more than 2,500 unclaimed items, including technology, clothing, accessories, beauty products and other unique items, were up for bids starting at $10.
A total of $267,000 was raised for the Foundation and these proceeds will be used to support new scholarships for girls in 2025 who live in and around the Sydney Airport area. The Foundation is extremely grateful to the team at Sydney Airport for being such enthusiastic supporters of the Harding Miller Education Foundation and making this collaboration possible. We would particularly like to thank Liz Seattter, Amanda Palmer, Verity Pearce and Theodore Bruce Auctioneers & Valuers for such an enjoyable day and for championing the Harding Miller Education Foundation and achieving such an amazing result.
Scholarship applications for 2025 will open on 15 July and close on 18 September 2024. Students must apply when they are in Year 8 as the scholarship starts when they commence Year 9. If you are interested in learning more, please contact 1300 103 896 or watch this video that briefly explains the application process.
International Women’s Day 2024 Spotlight – Katira Ahmed, HMEF Coach
As we celebrate International Women’s Day, we shine a spotlight on one of HMEF coaches, Katira Ahmed. Katira currently works for a charity organisation that offers disability services to the Brisbane community and co-authored a paper on the overt and covert racism in children’s picture books in Australia, which also explores how diverse family structures are represented in children’s picture books. Katira is passionate about education, particularly in the area of girls’ education, refugee education, race in education, history of education, international and comparative education. She finished her master’s degree in 2023 and now plans to pursue a PhD to conduct research in one of her interest areas. Her conviction is that education needs to be reformed to allow intersectionality of leaners such as people from diverse backgrounds.
Katira’s career in education, and her advocating journey to create opportunities for access to education for all, started after a teaching opportunity in China in 2018, when she took a career change from her bachelor’s degree in nursing. Her passion for education and reform also originated from her own experiences as a refugee child and not having access to formal education before diving head-on into schooling in a foreign country. As Katira emphasized how her experiences shaped the meaning of education for her, she said, “My story isn’t unique. Many experience issues of isolation, racism, discrimination, and bias when navigating the education systems of western countries like Australia. These experiences led me to becoming a lifelong learner and believer that education truly is the key to success and will impact individuals and their communities for generations.”
Katira, who has over five years of experience in teaching and education, is especially passionate about girls’ education because, historically, more girls lack access to school and education than boys. She raised an example of how in some countries, girls are threatened with violence and death if they attend school and yet, there are girls and women who risk their lives to be educated. Katira brought up other instances based on her own experiences, where she has seen children in China being discriminated from inner city schools due to their residential status and due to political systems. She has also witnessed girls being deterred from entering university due to their gender and the cultural expectations that women don’t require nor need higher education. Katira asserted that these systems of gender discrimination and bias exist across the globe and in various educational settings, and they must be dismantled to uphold the rights of all to accessing quality education.
Katira went on to describe that her final research project for her master’s degree at the University of Melbourne highlighted how girls and women often face issues such as sexism, harassment and inappropriate behaviours. Based on this research on how gender negatively impacted female academics career progression to senior academic positions in Australian universities, Katira revealed, “Female academics experienced issues such as pressure to return quickly after maternity leave, lack of funding for their research, comments on their bodies, derogatory statements and not being told of important meetings. These issues were only being experienced by women in these positions while their male counterparts were encouraged and given benefits that were denied for women in these spaces.”
In the spirit of this year’s International Women’s Day theme, which is Count Her In: Invest in Women. Accelerate Progress, Katira believes increased investment is one way of addressing these issues that face girls, women and minority groups. Investment of finances, time and effort will positively impact how and when girls receive education. For Katira, investment ranges as widely from donating used school supplies and offering meals in schools to changing societal and cultural views of girls and ultimately turning the tide in favour of girls and women internationally.
When we asked Katira to share some examples of initiatives that promote equal access to educational resources and opportunities for women from diverse backgrounds, she named the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) which actively promotes girls and refugee education from grassroots community participation, the Malala Fund which advocates for the secondary education for girls globally, the Women’s Refugee Commission which advocates for girls, women, children and others experiencing displacement and crisis as refugees and the Right to Education Initiative which aims to build systems that empower the right to education for all. Katira also specifically mentioned that there are many smaller community organisations which support the education of girls and refugee children across the world, such as RefuSHE, an organisation that has supported 3,000 refugee girls, women and children in East Africa since 2008. Katira pointed out that this organisation was started by refugee girls, which makes it very special.
HMEF is proud to have Katira as one of our coaches. Her dedication to education is a valuable support for us. Just like Katira, HMEF believes in the power of education and is committed to ensuring young girls across Australia have equal opportunity to access education. We hope Katira’s story inspires you as much as it did us!
HMEF Team in City2Surf
On Sunday, 13 August 2023, the Harding Miller Education Foundation team had a fabulous day competing in the 2023 City2Surf. City2Surf spans across 14 kilometres from Sydney CBD to Bondi. This year marks the 51st year of this world’s largest fun run. Along the 14 kilometres we were treated to music and entertained by talented groups of musicians and dancers. A fun day was had by all!
A huge thank you to all our competitors – we had a team from HMEF and also a team from Rozelle Interchange. Thank you to everyone that competed and supported us on the day including our fabulous volunteers and our wonderful donors who helped us raised around $11,000. It was a successful fundraising event which will go towards funding more scholarships in 2024. All donations and support of the Foundation is greatly appreciated and is contributing to our goal of achieving education equality in Australia.
Combine Air Training & HMEF Fundraising Event
The Harding Miller Education Foundation was thrilled to be part of a fantastic fundraising event held on 18 March with Combine Air Training. The event was held at the Royal Oak Hotel in Balmain. Enormous thanks go to all the members, owners and organisers of this wonderful event. It was such a fun night and included a silent auction with prizes including football jerseys, colgate packs and even a home sauna!
The event also celebrated International Women’s Day and one of our alumni (Julina Lim) spoke about how the scholarship changed her life. Julina graduated from Cabramatta High School in 2020. She was an exemplary student who achieved outstanding results. She is currently studying Chemical Engineering at UNSW.
We are very excited that $10,770 was raised for the Foundation. A fabulous fun night was had by all and the money raised will go towards the sponsorship of high potential girls in the community. These funds will change these girls’ lives in overcoming hardship to achieve their academic potential and to build a prosperous and successful career. All donations and support of the Foundation is greatly appreciated and is contributing to our goal of achieving education equality in Australia. For more information about supporting HMEF please call 1300103896 or email [email protected]
Thank you Rozelle Interchange for the fantastic charity drive for HMEF
HMEF were very proud to be a recipient from the Rozelle Interchange Project Gives Back 2022 Campaign. The Project collectively with the community, staff, suppliers, client, independent certifier and generous subcontractors raised over $67,000. A special mention to ARA & Cono Services who were “Sandstone Tier” donors, the highest level possible.
The monetary contributions received will support three 4-year scholarships to keep disadvantaged female secondary students in school through the Harding Miller Education Foundation.
We are very grateful for their generosity and kindness. Thank you to everyone involved for spreading some joy this end of year period.
Spotlight on a coach – Christina Reid
The Harding Miller Education Foundation is a volunteer powered organisation with over 130 volunteers working with us in 2022. Our biggest group of volunteers are our dedicated coaches who are a personal guide and support for the scholarship recipients through their scholarship and education journey. These coaches provide an invaluable connection between the various opportunities provided by the scholarship and the students’ current life and experience. They get to know them, build trust, and help them overcome the unique barriers that they face in their own lives. They are a cheerleader, a problem solver, and a trusted adviser. Through this relationship, coaches can anticipate issues and assist students to put in place early intervention strategies before they become unresolvable.
One of our valued coaches is Christina Reid. She is the Brand Manager for Furphy Beer (part of Lion Co). A New Zealand native, Christina graduated from the University of Waikato after spending a semester at the University of Arizona in the USA as part of her study programme. She has been a Harding Miller coach since January 2021 and currently coaches three of our year 10 scholars who are all based at the same school in Townsville.
An accomplished marketing professional, Christina heard about the Foundation from a friend who had recently applied to join our volunteer coaching team and immediately she felt a strong affinity to the students our scholarships support . Christina was attracted to the idea of becoming a Harding Miller coach because she grew up in a small, low socio-economic town in New Zealand and watched so many of her friends leave school early for a variety of different reasons. She wanted to help others realise their potential and not be limited by small-town educational and employment opportunities. She knows first-hand the power of a good education and wanted to share that with others!
Christina enjoyed meeting her scholars at last year’s awards night in Brisbane as she was able to cement the relationships she had already started to form with them remotely. She is in regular contact with the girls and has encouraged them to start tutoring and take advantage of the other scholarship tools on offer such as Studiosity. She shares a love of rugby league and, sport in general, with her scholars so their conversations are not just all about study and academic achievement!
Christina recently presented at a Harding Miller online Careers in Focus session where she was able to share her knowledge and passion for education, life and travel with a broader group of Harding Miller scholars, staff and coaches.
Rozelle Interchange Project site visit
On Monday, 22 November 2021, we were invited to have a tour of the Rozelle Interchange Project which connects the extended M4 and the New M5 to the Anzac Bridge and Victoria Road in Sydney. The interchange will be a new underground motorway interchange to the City West Link and provide an underground bypass of Victoria Road. The Rozelle Interchange Project are great supporters of the local community and businesses across Sydney.
The Rozelle Interchange Project have been generous donors of the Foundation and we are delighted that they have announced another full scholarship donation for 2022.
The site tour was a great afternoon and thoroughly enjoyed by all who attended including our founders, Kim Harding and Irene Miller; our Scholarship Manager, Caroline Hill and HMEF scholarship student, Annabella Granato to whom Rozelle Interchange Project currently supports. It was wonderful to meet the project team including Steven Keyser, Project Director; John Crane, Support Services Director; Steve Kiddle, Surface Works Director; Sara Galloway, Senior HR Advisor and Stephen Antonopoulos, Communications Manager.
We are so very grateful to our fabulous donors, like the Rozelle Interchange Project, as without them we could not support our girls in overcoming hardship to achieve their academic potential and to build a prosperous and successful career.
Supporting Queensland Girls Education
Supporting Queensland Girls To Excel
It’s not by chance that the Quinn Femelle Foundation, a Queensland based private, family foundation chose to collaborate with Harding Miller. They were actively researching Australian scholarship programs that would focus on providing educational support for girls across Queensland – high potential girls that is, who are from low socio economic circumstances.
Harding Miller, established in 2015 is the premier scholarship program for girls across Australia. It is the most generous academic program of it’s kind, having awarded over 600, 4 year, $20,000 scholarships to girls since inception. HMEF has built a model that empowers philanthropists to make a valuable and evidence base difference through their giving. It is unquestionable and identified by the UN sustainable development goals, that supporting the next generation of women to advance will see future systemic and societal improvements globally.
Harding Miller is focused on establishing formidable partnerships that aim to rewrite the future for Australian girls in need. We are an Australian Public Benevolent organisation established with the clear purpose to show indisputable impact, both for our scholars and at the broader systemic and societal level. Deep, inter-generational, positive impact – we’re in it for the long haul, says Cara Varian, HMEF’s Executive Director.
2020 was the first year of the HMEF/Quinn alliance which resulted in 25 Queensland state school students beginning their 4 year, $20,000 scholarships in Year 9. In 2021 the Quinn’s supported 30 more girls and every year for the foreseeable future, Queensland will see at least 25 girls a year receive these life changing opportunities.
One of the Quinn Femelle scholars is Kya Dulhunty from Bribie Island State High School. “The school award I received for 2020 was the Academic Excellence Award. This is awarded to the top 10% of students at each year level. ” Kya wants to study Anthropology at University and is a straight A student.
Scholarship support begins with the essential tools and resources needed to make the most of their education. “It’s a fallacy that public education is free, says Cara, the cost of technology, data, textbooks, uniforms, school excursions, sport participation and other extra curricular activities all adds up and can easily enter the thousands of dollars. Multiply that by the number of siblings in the family and suddenly the financial strain for some families becomes untenable and its the kids that miss out who suffer the most.
What Is A Corporate Scholarship – Tell Me More!
What Is A HMEF Corporate Scholarship?
We’d like to introduce you to one of our corporate donors, Online Marketing Gurus. 
In 2020 OMG partnered with HMEF to establish the ‘Online Marketing Gurus Education Scholarship’ for bright disadvantaged girls in government high schools across Australia.
Through their generosity two incredible young women are now entering their second year of a HMEF scholarship and absolutely nailing their studies!
Congratulations Khawlah and Britany.
Interested in getting your business involved with Harding Miller? Click here for more information and to make an online enquiry,
HMEF Business Donor – Australian Wedding Rings
A small business owner makes a big impact through educational support
We’d like to introduce you to one of our small business donors, Alex Hernandez from Australian Wedding Rings.
Watch this video to learn more about Alex and the reasons why she donates to HMEF.
Interested in getting your business involved with Harding Miller? Click here for more information and to make an online enquiry,
