Search the Community

The U3A movement is a unique and exciting organization that provides, through its U3As, life-enhancing and life-changing opportunities. Retired and semi-retired people come together and learn together, not for qualifications but for its reward: the sheer joy of discovery! Members share their skills and life experiences: the learners teach, and the teachers learn, and there is no distinction between them. The U3A movement is a volunteer organization providing educational, creative, and leisure opportunities in a friendly environment for the community's retired and semi-retired members. U3A Network Victoria is the peak body for 100+ Member U3As representing around 37,000 members. U3A Network Victoria is operated by its elected volunteer Committee, several subcommittees, workgroups, and paid officers. A quarterly meeting is held with a Council of Delegates, representing each Member U3A. Network representatives may be contacted through the Network Office. Victoria's 100+ U3As are grouped in geographical regions to facilitate communication and strengthen U3As by sharing local information about marketing, tutors, administrative procedures, potential partners, and many other matters. The aims of the Region's structure within Victoria include providing a communications channel for regions to give information and influence U3A Network. This also provides support when approaching Local Government Areas. Most Regions meet twice yearly at an agreed venue within the Region. Often these meetings will include a workshop on an area of interest or need. The Regions movement is supported and guided by the Network Development and Support Officer. A Regional Representative is elected by the group to attend the Region's meeting attached to Network Council meetings held four times a year. View full university

One of Australia's leading providers of specialist services for deaf, deafblind, and hard of hearing people and their families. Our focus is ensuring that you have access to all areas of life on an equal basis with others. We want you to thrive! We support you to make choices and take actions to change your life. Whether you want to improve relations with your family, find a job you enjoy, learn new skills like cooking, move out of home, develop your English or Auslan skills, or any combination of the above – we are here to support you to thrive. Deaf life: Your way, your language. We work with deaf, deafblind, and hard of hearing people break down barriers, create choice, and support you to reach your goals. The first recorded information about the Deaf Community reports that European deaf people arrived in the Sydney area as early as 1790. Sadly, there is little information about the indigenous Deaf Community before colonization. Some deaf migrants were convicts sent from Britain as punishment for various crimes, while others migrated as free settlers. There were no formal meeting places for deaf people in the Sydney area for most of the 19th Century. Deaf people met at the deaf school premises and at churches, which provided exceptional services. They often congregated around lamp-posts to converse in sign language. Later, Deaf adults met together at St Alban's Church, Darlington. In October 2013, we turned 100 years old. We celebrated our Centenary with special events throughout the year, including hosting the 2nd International Conference of the World Federation of the Deaf, staging an International Deaf Film Festival, and the launch of a multimedia website showing our history and that of the NSW Deaf Community NSW in detail. The Deaf Society is a not-for-profit public company limited by guarantee and is a charity. View full university

The Open Training and Education Network, OTEN, is the largest provider of distance education and vocational training in Australia. OTEN is part of the award-winning TAFE NSW - Western Sydney Institute, national winner of the 2010 Large Training Provider, and 2011 Skills for Sustainability at the Australian Training Awards. We offer world-class distance education services and products to more than 60,000 students in over 200 TAFE NSW courses. These courses give our graduates nationally recognized qualifications through the Australian Qualifications Framework (AQF). These qualifications are highly valued by industry and the wider community both in Australia and internationally. While OTEN is physically located in the suburb of Strathfield, Sydney, our students are dispersed across Australia, from Broome to Bairnsdale and from Atherton to Albany, and internationally in Canada, United Arab Emirates, Sri Lanka, Argentina, and Germany. Being at the forefront of innovation and adaption to technological change, OTEN is continually developing specialized multimedia teaching methods such as podcasts and interactive webinars to engage learners. In conjunction with this and the exponential growth in digital media, OTEN has embraced social networking sites such as Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and Tumblr, which are now playing a critical role in distance education. We continually strive to deliver the highest quality service to our students, business partners, and the community. The OTEN Customer Service Charter underpins this commitment. Distance education is a specialized field requiring a highly-skilled, professional staff. Our dedicated staff has a wealth of knowledge and experience to effectively deliver this type of education across various courses to a diverse community of students. With staff maintaining their industry experience, this ensures that our courses reflect the latest industry trends and developments. We were very proud to celebrate 100 years of distance education in New South Wales in 2010. To commemorate this significant milestone, an e-book was written to record the many wonderful anecdotes and reflections from past and present staff and students and to demonstrate how our business has transformed along the way. We are excited about the future of distance education in Australia. By embracing the rapid changes in technology, we will continue to play a vital role as leaders in distance education and offer educational and training opportunities to diverse students. View full university