Building strong, sustainable, and respectful relationships with indigenous organisations is a key part of improving Indigenous engagement, fostering employment, and supporting Indigenous communities.

Through our relationship with Kinaway Chamber of Commerce in Victoria, we're aiming to create new procurement opportunities for Aboriginal organisations to work with us across our water, transport and defence and social infrastructure businesses.

Kinaway is from the Gunnai language meaning "exchange" and the Kinaway Chamber of Commerce is a leading Victorian organisation dedicated to supporting Victorian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander business owners. 

The organisations aim is to change Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people's lives through a strength-based model of business ownership and participation in the Victorian economy.

"Kinaway has a unique offering specific to Victoria and we are keen to focus on what more we can do in this region," said Andrew Draper who is the Ventia GM Strategy and Development for the Water business.

"In talking with industry, it became evident quite early on that Kinaway was a leader in this area and having developed strong networks in WA, QLD and NSW Ventia wanted to build on these valuable lessons and grow our commitment into Victoria in a respectful and considered way."

The partnership that Ventia is engaging in, will create opportunities for Victorian businesses to engage with us in our water, transport and defence and social infrastructure businesses and will also broaden our access to high quality suppliers across the state. 

Kinaway businesses are 60 times more likely to employ Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in their business.

Not only does this support business owners but the flow on of Aboriginal businesses success leads to investment back into communities and sets positive role models increasing education outcomes.

As soon as we reached out and spoke to Kinaway we found a partner we could easily share a story with and realised we had similar and shared values.

"This is important to us when establishing any relationship right at the start."