80s, 90s and Now...Sustainable Core Values in Community Engagement from Blantyre to Brisbane

Greet P¹*

1. Queensland Ambulance Service, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia

Innovative solutions, people’s participation, working together, listening to others… these are words from the lexicon of community engagement. Such phrases echo dialogues from the 1980s between humanitarian development agencies from Australia, the US and Europe and their local partner agencies around the globe.

In 1987 this presenter shared a platform debating durable solutions and improving models for the delivery of practical support to refugees with UNHCR’s Sergio Viera di Mello at a Sydney forum during National Refugee Week. At that time many NGOs engaged in assisting refugees around the globe, including AUSTCARE, Australia’s specialist refugee agency, were arguing that without authentic consultation, effective models for the delivery of basic needs would elude us.

Through the ensuing dialogue between UNHCR and the NGOs better ways of engaging the affected populations, of effectively consulting with the displaced people themselves were identified. This dialogue culminated in the adoption by UNHCR of POP: People Oriented Planning, a framework taking account of the needs of women, men and children in planning the delivery of assistance to refugees and displaced people.

Through an analysis of the text of key documents describing the POP Planning Framework, and Queensland’s Community Engagement Strategy a comparison of core principles was achieved. This exploration of similarities and difference stimulates our thinking as practitioners about:

• What is community engagement and why is it important
• What is the values base we are working from, and
• How those values manifest in our everyday work practice.

Click here to view the full paper