Meereeng 50 accelerator program will support, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander businesses providing them with mentoring, coaching and networking opportunities to help them benefit from the very best market opportunities.
Meereeng 50 is a15 months accelerator program bringing together representatives from Aboriginal business, some of Australia’s largest companies, including Lendlease and National Australia Bank, academia, the sourcing and procurement profession and government.
Meereeng 50 will be launched in Melbourne this Tuesday 17/09/2019. It is a collaborative project led by Kinaway, PwC Indigenous Consulting (PIC) and the University of Melbourne.
Jodie Sizer Co-CEO of PIC explains that Meereeng 50 was born from many conversations across the Melbourne business community. In these talks, corporates said they want to diversify their supply chains and increase their procurement spend sourced from Indigenous businesses.
However, for many Victorian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander business owners, converting this interest into a commercial relationship proved difficult.
“We’re co-designing a purpose-built program that will be a combination of formal learning and business coaching and support to help those businesses develop skills and systems that will allow them to be successfully embedded in key supply chains,” Ms Sizer said ahead of the launch.
“We’ll also be working alongside some of our corporate clients to identify and source contracts for the Meereeng 50 participants and make the supplier processes less onerous.”
