Using the most common measure, over one billion of the world’s population live in poverty and exist on less than US$1.25 a day (and nearly 3 billion live on less than US$2 a day). More than one billion people around the globe do not have access to safe water, 115 million children do not attend primary school and 10 million children die each year of preventable illness.
This conference will consider the ‘Australian Approach to Development’. It will consider how development is understood by Australian aid agencies, how it is practiced by Australian agencies, and it will consider the Australian policies that drive it.
The conference creates space for conference participants to discuss different regions (Pacific, Asia, and Africa), sectors (gender, WASH, and children), disaster management and responses, as well as larger questions of the conception of poverty. Perhaps most importantly, this conference also invites people from outside of Australia to provide a critical reflection on what Australian aid agencies are doing.
ACFID understands the values of forging collaborative partnerships between the NGO sector, other aid professionals and leading Australian academic institutions. Partnering with Deakin University, the ACFID University Linkages Network (now the RDI Network) hosts this Conference with the following aims and objectives:
- Enable dialogue between Australian development NGOs, universities and the Australian Government, AusAID in particular on issues of contemporary importance;
- Enable the above mentioned to share perspectives in order to better understand the drivers and impediments to change in different contexts;
- Pursue opportunities for further collaboration and cooperation in sharing knowledge and conducting research, based on reviewing current sharing initiatives, such as the health knowledge hubs;
- Improve skills and competencies of aid and development practitioners; and
- Influence aid and development policy.
