Useful Outsiders

This month we have a really interesting discussion about some of the challenges around humanitarian response and support to war-affected communities, with a focus on the current conflict in Ukraine.

CID's Humanitarian and Standards Manager, Aaron Davy, speaks with Virginia Pycroft from ADRA, and Mike Seawright from ReliefAid.

Among other things, they talk about working with local teams and volunteers whose lives are directly impacted, the safety and wellbeing of aid staff, interaction with the military and maintaining impartiality, and funding and fundraising mechanisms.

Speakers:

• Virginia Pycroft is a New Zealander who has worked for ADRA for ten years in both humanitarian and development sectors in NZ and the Pacific. She is and currently serving in ADRA Timor-Leste. As a member of ADRA’s Emergency Response Team she has been deployed in the Asia Pacific region supporting local ADRA teams as they respond to natural and man-made disasters over the last ten years. The latest, outside the region, supporting the ADRA Ukraine team respond to the conflict.  
• Mike Seawright has been delivering humanitarian assistance to families living in the world’s conflict zones. He has provided medical aid in Iraq, Yemen, Sudan, South Sudan and Pakistan, economic development and energy projects in Afghanistan and most recently emergency humanitarian aid, leading multiple interventions in Syria, Afghanistan and Ukraine. Frustrated that not enough was being done to help families affected by war and conflict Mike founded ReliefAid. With a simple vision of helping families who had no one else to turn too, ReliefAid has delivered life-saving aid to over 250,000 people in war torn Syria, Afghanistan, and Ukraine, and they are not stopping there.

Links:

• ADRA’s work in Ukraine 
• ADRA Ukraine Appeal
• ReliefAid Ukraine Appeal

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This month we look at how NZ can better support people who are forced to flee their homelands. Speakers discuss NZs refugee and asylum seeker policy, and the lived experience of people navigating the system from application through to resettlement and support services. They look at NZ’s commitments, quotas, and they raise some questions around equality.  

Speakers:

Rachel O’Connor

Rachel O’Connor is the Lead Advisor to the Race Relations Commissioner, at the NZ Human Rights Commission. She previously worked for the NZ Red Cross, managing their national migration programmes including the refugee quota community settlement programme.

Bernard Sama came to New Zealand from the Southern Cameroons seeking protection from New Zealand as an asylum seeker and was formally recognised as a refugee in 2008. Following the positive outcome of his application, he had several years of what he now describes as difficulties coping in New Zealand as a refugee, and separation for a decade from his family. He successfully reunited with his immediate family from the Cameroons in 2019 and lives with them in Auckland. Bernard chairs the Asylum Seekers Support Trust and is a cultural advisor for Refugees As Survivors New Zealand. He is also in the final year of a PhD study at the University of Auckland. His research, supervised by Professor Jay Marlowe and Dr Anna Hood, explores how the therapeutic jurisprudence perspective could inform and improve the New Zealand refugee status determination procedure.

Jay Marlowe is a professor of social work and co-director of the Centre for Asia Pacific Refugee Studies at the University of Auckland. His research focuses on refugee studies and settlement futures as it relates to migration policy, role of technologies and disaster risk reduction. In 2019 he became a Rutherford Discovery Fellow to pursue a 5 year research programme related to refugee settlement trajectories. As a social worker and former visiting fellow with the Refugee Studies Centre at Oxford University, he has worked with refugee communities as a practitioner and researcher publishing more than 80 peer reviewed papers.

• Safe Start, Fair Future report

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This episode looks at how Covid has shifted a more localised approach to aid and development, and how we can make the most of this moment to really embed locally-led processes.

Former Council for International Development Director, Josie Pagani, speaks with Duncan Green, Senior Strategic Advisor at Oxfam GB and Jennifer Kalpokas Doan, Director, Strategy & Programs at Balance of Power Vanuatu. 

Jennifer is an advocate for inclusive leadership. She has over 14 years’ experience in the field of development, from working in government; from a strategic donor perspective, and from implementation of development programs.

Duncan, as well as working for Oxfam, is a Professor in Practice in International Development at the London School of Economics, honorary Professor of International Development at Cardiff University and a Visiting Fellow at the Institute for Development Studies. He is author of How Change Happens and From Poverty to Power: How Active Citizens and Effective States can Change the World.

The series is produced by CID's Communications, Events and Office Manager, Sarah King. Please get in touch if you have any questions, feedback, or ideas for future episodes and speakers.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A rich and important discussion about some of the barriers to Covid vaccination in NZ and the Pacific. The speakers delve into issues around vaccine inequities, distribution, hesitancy, public trust, and misinformation. They bring perspectives from public health, INGOs, and communities, in Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Kiribati and New Zealand. 

Speakers:

• Sally Angelson, ChildFund New Zealand’s Senior Technical Advisor for Youth, with a focus on the Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea.
• Jess Berentson-Shaw, Co-Director at The Workshop, researcher and advisor
• Eunice Wotene, interim Regional Director for Oxfam in the Pacific. 

Resource:

• RNZ article by Jess: How to talk (and not talk) about Covid vaccination to people with doubts
• Jess' book: A Matter of Fact. Talking Truth in a Post-truth World

The series is produced by CID's Communications, Events and Office Manager, Sarah King. Please get in touch if you have any questions, feedback, or ideas for future episodes and speakers.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We kick off with an episode that really captures what we want the series to interrogate: how can aid agencies, governments, businesses and the public, be most useful - and how do we get better at trusting locals to lead?

In this episode we look at the recent volcano eruption and tsunami that hit the Kingdom of Tonga – speakers discuss the response, how recovery efforts are going, and draw on lessons learned for the role of NZ in the Pacific.

Josie Pagani, Executive Director of the Council for International Development, in conversation with:

Finau Leveni is the Head of International Programmes at Caritas. She was formally a diplomat in Tonga, and has also worked for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. She's an expert in international and humanitarian law, and has been working on the Tongan response. Finau is one of the leading voices in our sector on development and localisation.

Melino Maka has been leading the response of Tongan families and churches to the disaster, and has worked closely with CID on a number of projects. He has sat on many boards, including New Zealand Pacific Business Council, Red Cross, and the Tongan Advisory Council. Melino is a passionate advocate for Tongan-Kiwis, and his home country. He's a well-known leader in the Tongan community in Aotearoa.

Tiumalu Peter Fa’afiu is the Vice-Chair of the global Amnesty International Board, and co-founder of Navigator New Zealand, a consulting business specialising in governance and strategy. He is former diplomat and trade negotiator, and was a New Zealand observer in the recent Solomon elections. He has also worked with CID on a number of projects.

For info about how to donate responsibly visit: https://donateresponsibly.org/donate-responsibly

The series is produced by CID's Communications, Events and Office Manager, Sarah King. Please get in touch if you have any questions, feedback, or ideas for future episodes and speakers.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.