Oceania and Japan

Part of New Zealand’s aid to Pacific Island nations is in the form of tertiary scholarships. Students awarded scholarships study at tertiary institutions throughout the Pacific, including New Zealand. But what is it like when they return home, fitting back in to their culture and family life and finding work? The research described in this article explored this question in relation to women graduates from Vanuatu when they returned after studying overseas for three or more years.

Based on the contemporary interest in developing new adult literacy learning programmes based on ‘literacy for livelihoods’, this paper examines some case studies from New Zealand, Bangladesh, and Egypt of literacy being used in livelihoods, and relates these to the kind of literacy being taught in many adult literacy programmes today. It points out that people often change their livelihoods and that each livelihood has literacy practices embedded within it.

Aid agencies provide significant funding for research that is directed at socio-economic development. These agencies typically require out-of-country (OC) researchers to work with in-country (IC) researchers on such projects. Moreover, building the research capacity of IC researchers is often an important objective. This paper is written from the perspective of an OC researcher engaged in building the research capacity of IC researchers.

Worldwide concern for the environment has spawned a new field of interest and expertise within the development assistance industry. Environmental projects have become the new `darling' of the foreign aid community with donors and practitioners vying for suitable `eco' projects to support. While this support for the environment mimics the attention the development industry has paid to women (and later, gender), concern for these equally fashionable issues has not always been synchronised.

The paper documents lessons learnt from a study on aid partnerships in post-conflict development and peace building in Bougainville. The paper examines how donor agencies, in this case the Australian Agency for International Development (AusAID) through the International Women’s Development Agency (IWDA) contributed to the successes and failures of the Leitana Nehan Women’s Development Agency (LNWDA). While the donors contributed to the organisational development and capacity of the LNWDA, the balance of power remains skewed.

This paper reports on a collaborative research project that shows how participatory social research can be used as a strategy for combating social exclusion. The Crime Prevention Partnership Project brought together dominant and disempowered groups to explore social issues of mutual concern and identify potential solutions. Indigenous Australian undergraduate students played a central role in this project, working with the police as customer service trainees and with the university as members of a project research group.

Recognising that the stance of investigators could make a major impact on the quality and/or interpretation of development-study findings, a small investigation to explore researcher positions and roles was implemented. This was a subsidiary component of a larger health-development study which aimed to explore the evidence base for psychosocial and mental-health policy formulation and implementation in two conflict-affected, low-resourced countries.

Within Australia, State employment programmes are an essential means of attempting to redress the substantial social and economic disadvantages experienced by indigenous Australians, particularly at the community level. While such programmes expend large sums of money, the social and economic outcomes for indigenous Australians remain far below that of the non-indigenous.

The May 2000 coup in Fiji prompted a flight of capital from the country's garment industry. As workers lost their jobs, attention turned away from improving wages and conditions to retaining garment factory jobs in the country. What can feminist researchers contribute in a climate of high capital mobility that prohibits organising for a living wage? This paper applies Amartya Sen's idea of women's `fallback positions' in relation to their husbands to an exploration of women's `marriage' to capital.

Donors face many issues when trying to support development goals in large regions such as Latin America. In their attempts to channel assistance to appropriate end-users, they also have to provide coherence with national strategy, balance supply and demand of technical resources, and ensure accountability to their taxpayers. Resolution of these issues requires considerable focus and a clear understanding of all relevant factors. This is particularly so for, but not exclusive to, small donors.