Oxfam-Monash Partnership: a force for global change

The Oxfam-Monash Partnership combines the forces of anti-poverty campaigner Oxfam and Monash University to bring about positive global change.

 By AGRON DAUTI 

Effective global change will depend on strong partnerships and breaking away from traditional methods of thinking, was one of the key messages of the Future Series launched by the Oxfam-Monash Partnership in late May.

Oxfam Australia CEO Helen Szoke, who was speaking at The Future Series: Building Collaborations for Change at Federation Square, said collaborations were the way forward.

Her enthusiasm was echoed by the Associate Dean of Research (Arts) at Monash University, Jacqui True, who said harnessing the energy and activism of young people was key in developing a stronger future.

Recognising that development organisations and academic institutions could have a greater impact when combining their efforts, the Oxfam-Monash Partnership was established to forge solutions to development challenges, and to enhance the contributions of both global anti-poverty campaigner Oxfam and Monash University to positive global change.

The launch event on May 15 included some of the key thinkers and actors in the Australian development sector discussing what the prospect of enhanced collaboration means for the development sector.

Panellists discussed how the development sector could benefit from partnerships, as well as the various challenges associated with initiatives that aim to achieve positive global change.

Prof True,  a specialist in gender, development and international relations, emphasised the importance of student engagement.

“We’re really committed to training the next generation who will work in this sector,” she said.

“Student engagement is a really important part of the Monash-Oxfam Partnership because I think this is where we have a real synergy – we recognise the importance of young people, the importance of really harnessing the energy and activism of students and youth.

“We really hope to continue this work and we’re really committed to university and NGO partnerships,” she said.

Dr Szoke, who has an extensive background in the field of development and human rights and is co-chair of the Make Poverty History campaign, said “co-operation, sharing expertise and new ways of thinking were all important”.

“We should perhaps be collaborating and sharing that expertise to a much greater extent, instead of having a sense of this is our turf and this is how we’re going to play it,” she said.

“So I think the notion of co-operation and partnership in a sense needs all of us to suspend our previous ways of thinking about how we’re going to work in the future – for many of us, I think it means we have to start to kind of build and consolidate on shared expertise and shared knowledge.

“We’re delighted to have the formal partnership with Monash … there is so much expertise in every tertiary institution,” she said.

Other speakers included the chief executive officer of the International Women’s Development Agency, Joanna Hayter, and the executive director of the Australian Council for International Development, Marc Purcell.

Ms Hayter, with decades of experience in the field of international development and social justice, said the key aspect of collaboration was how it was achieved.

“I don’t think collaboration is about the ‘what’ or the ‘why’. I think collaboration is about the  ‘how’ and that’s what makes the difference … that’s what makes the result,” she said.

“The collaborations that are most successful are those that see the convergence of difference, the respect for different ways of working and a sense that broadening those that we work with away from those that we’re just comfortable working with is an important challenge for future collaborations and indeed for the innovation this world needs.”

Mr Purcell, who has worked for 18 years in the community development and human rights sectors in Australia, said working together was essential.

“We need to rethink our whole traditional approach towards addressing poverty and look at questions of inequality and interconnectedness of the issues around inequality in Australia and inequality in Indonesia or elsewhere,” he said.

The discussion was chaired by Mark Clisby, former director of operations at Oxfam Australia and now chair of the Oxfam-Monash Partnership Governance Committee.

It was the first of many Future Series discussions to be held by the Oxfam-Monash Partnership.