Audrey and Bruce Flood raise awareness of the learning disparities between city and rural youth

In a story of giving back in retirement, the Floods have been travelling to rural Queensland for 10 years as volunteers for the Australian farming support organisation Aussie Helpers Volunteers for Isolated Student Education educational program.

The program is an educational volunteer organisation comprising of a dedicated team of 150 volunteers from all around Australia who enjoy giving to others.

The program has been running for seven years and Aussie Helpers took it over in 2016.

It supports rural and remote outback families who teach their own children in home classrooms due to their geographic isolation.

Since 2013, the Floods have travelled from Sydney to a remote town 4.5 hours out of Cairns, living with a local family as volunteers.

Drawing upon their own experiences as a former engineer and university professor, for six weeks a year, Bruce and Audrey deliver daily in-person lessons to the Wilson family's four children.

Audrey said Tiana 21, and Kelvin 20, are now too old for lessons so they help younger siblings Fred 13, and Natalis, 11.

"The Wilson family is 400km out of Cairns, on the southern end of the Atherton Tablelands. Without AHVISE, the children wouldn't have access to face-to-face education," Audrey said.

"We came back home after 13 years in China and we still felt young and vibrant enough to do something to give to people."

Audrey said it has been wonderful watching the children blossom.

"It's really special," she said. "The older children are now young adults and we are enjoying tutoring the younger ones."

Bruce said that in addition to lessons, they also offer life lessons such as how to fill out forms.

"As with all volunteering, you always get back more than you put in and we love it," he said.

"We always look forward to going back despite the distance."

The program is a 100 per cent volunteer charity. This means that the registered tutors are not paid for their time, however, Aussie Helpers Charity, which founded and run the program, provide volunteers with up to $1500 travel reimbursements in order to provide the tutoring to families.

"The volunteers consist mostly of retired teachers, but also others with people with appropriate experience who would like to spend time helping isolated students with their education and learning in general," Bruce said.

"Audrey and I thoroughly recommend it. In fact, I think it would be ideal for our many grey nomads who can head away and help people during their travels around Australia. This program goes all over Australia."

Aussie Helpers chief executive Tash Kocks, whose parents Brian and Nerida Egan set up the organisation, said it supports 30 families a year through the program and 210 over the seven years.

"We ensure help is available to our farming families who need it the most and who are generally the last to ask for help," she said.

"Typically, farmers handle all of their duties on their property as well as their duties in the classroom, which can be a lot. We have volunteers who are mostly retired but still willing and able to pass on their wisdom and guidance.

"When a spouse travels with our tutor, we call them our Angels. They have a wide range of life skills that they teach outside of the classroom as well, from wood working to making traditional damper on the fire. It's a package deal of valuable life skills and we love that we can offer this help to our farmers."

With a lack of volunteers nationwide, Aussie Helpers is urging the community to register now to support the education of rural youth, raising awareness of the learning disparities between city and rural youth," Tash said.

"The more volunteers that register the more farming families we can assist. We would love to see more volunteers out with our families this year.

"It takes a special kind of person or couple to be a volunteer, to give up their time, travel and live with a farming family for a period of 4-8 weeks.

"We have had so many wonderful volunteers, they are genuine, selfless, friendly, warm, good communicators, able to provide hands on learning, willing to be silly with the little ones, and being a little tech-savvy is advantageous, but not crucial. We appreciate each and every one of our volunteers."