Christopher Dureau has been engaged in international development for the past 30 years. This included considerable time living and working as a development practitioner and as a consultant for donor funded activities. Chris has experience in many countries in Asia, the Pacific and Africa as well as remote Indigenous Australia. Chris is an adult educator with teaching and facilitator experience at all levels of society. Chris was recently Project Director of two large bilateral community development and capacity building programs and advisor to others. Chris is a strong advocate for strength based approaches that encourage the partner community, NGO or government to draw from their own past success (resilience), and mobilise their current assets as they move towards a future which they determine. One of the most significant aspects of this is working with communities in order to enhance their ability to influence decision making.

 

Dr Juliet Hunt has worked in development since 1978, focusing on gender equality, project design, monitoring and evaluation. She currently has a capacity building role with the Vanuatu Women’s Centre and has worked closely with the Fiji Women’s Crisis Centre. She has undertaken reviews on gender equality for the Development Assistance Committee (DAC/OECD),, the Asian Development Bank and Oxfam Australia, and has worked closely with government agencies, multilateral donors and NGOs on gender mainstreaming strategies. She has developed gender analysis tools, guidelines, training programs and gender audit methodologies for a range of development agencies in Australia and overseas. In 2000, Juliet was awarded a 3-month Churchill Fellowship to research good practice and successful strategies on gender mainstreaming in Bangladesh, India, UK, Netherlands and USA. She has written many articles on gender equality issues in development practice and organisations. In 2006/2007 she assisted AusAID with the development of their new gender equality policy and guidelines.

 

Dr Ian Patrick has 18 years experience in international development and has expertise in the practice of monitoring and evaluation (M&E), including impact assessment. He has substantial experience as an independent consultant, and has worked for a Managing Contractor, as an academic in development studies, and in the media.  His experience in M&E has covered establishing M&E systems for governmental and civil society initiatives; and conduct of program and project level reviews, evaluations, and impact assessments. Ian has complementary experience in strategic planning and design roles, organisational review and capacity building, and training. He has previously delivered training courses on impact assessment for development professionals in London, Oxford and Dublin.  Ian has worked in a broad range of sectors such as health, education, law and justice, human rights and indigenous issues. He has developed insight into identifying and measuring impact in different contexts, and has also assisted international NGOs to develop and refine systems for measuring the overall impact of their work at the corporate level.

 

Bill Pennington is an experienced international development practitioner specialising in project design and monitoring & evaluation (M&E). He has field experience in more than 20 countries in the Asia-Pacific, South Asia and the Middle East, with long-term stints in Indonesia, Tonga and East Timor. Bill previously worked as a program manager in the policy development, evaluation and country program areas within AusAID. He now undertakes monitoring and evaluation work as a consultant for different donor agencies and regional organisations including AusAID, the European Union, NZAID, the Asian Development Bank, the Pacific Islands Forum and a number of international NGOs. Bill holds a Bachelor of Science from the Australian National University and a Masters in Asian and International Studies from Griffith University. He has previously delivered courses in project monitoring and evaluation to AusAID and development project staff, public sector officials in Samoa, postgraduate students at the University of the South Pacific, staff of international NGOs and local partner organisations.

 

Christine Perkins has worked for many years in the NGO sector in various roles including training, project design, management and monitoring. Christine has considerable experience in adult education in relation to international development. Sector experience includes health, education and microfinance. Christine has a particular interest in Timor-Leste and has designed and managed NGO Capacity Building Projects there.

 

 

Simon Richards has 20 years international development and humanitarian experience managing and advising on programs in the sectors of Conflict Prevention, Management and Reduction and Peace-building, Governance and Civil Society Strengthening, Institutional Development and Capacity Building for Local Governance, Grant Management, Livelihoods, and training across Asia and Africa. His most recent experience has been living in Africa working on conflicts at the community level across the continent, most notably in the pastoralist arc in the Horn of Africa in the borderlands of Somalia, Ethiopia and Kenya as well as in Southern Sudan and the issues of artisanal mining in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

 

Peter Stephen 

Peter Stephen has worked with private companies, government agencies, academia, NGOs and international not-for profit organisations in agroforestry, forestry, natural resource management and integrated watershed management. He is a specialist in strengthening capacity to support community-based natural resource management processes and practices and has worked across Asia. He has been involved in conflict analysis and transformation in forest and water conflicts in Australia and has led conflict capacity building and training programs across Asia – including irrigation water disputes in Bhutan, mining disputes in Mongolia, tenure and forest conflicts in Indonesia, water resource disputes in the Lower Mekong countries, and land tenure and protected area management conflicts in northern Thailand. Peter joined IDSS in May 2008 to further strengthen IDSS’s work in natural resource management, climate change and the broader environmental fields in the Asia-Pacific region.

 

Phillip Walker 

Phillip Walker has spent two decades in the aid and development sectors in the Pacific, Asia and Africa. He has worked for small NGO’s and international agencies, and managed his own consulting business prior to joining IDSS as the Community Development Technical Advisor in 2008.  As a social scientist his expertise includes strengths based community driven development, people centred approaches, partnerships in development,  inclusiveness and equity, rural development, water and sanitation, and disaster management. He has an abiding interest in implementation methodologies that produce substantive change and enables communities to vision and realize their own futures.

 

Ernest Antoine specialises in management and leadership development in a globalised environment. His expertise lies in building effective links between people in the Asia Pacific region. He has worked extensively in Indonesia and other Asia Pacific countries in the areas of culture, management and psychological services for government, civil society and commercial clients. His particular knowledge of cross-cultural management and communication issues combined with his personal experience and style make him a highly effective communicator and facilitator.

 

Deborah Rhodes has over 20 years experience in international development work and specialises in capacity building approaches relevant to the Asia Pacific region.  She has developed and managed a variety of aid activities. Since 2002 Deborah has provided a wide range of design, monitoring and evaluation and review consultancy services for NGOs, managing contractors and AusAID. She has also facilitated learning programs in Australia and internationally on many aspects of development cooperation, including capacity development. She is currently preparing a book on capacity development from a Pacific perspective.

 

 Monique Toohey 

Monique Toohey is a Consultant Educational Psychologist and has worked in a variety of community development roles over the past 11 years. She was the first counsellor & psychologist to develop student support services & counselling departments in Islamic schools and she has managed numerous youth, family and community capacity building projects for an array of NGO’s such as the Islamic Council of Victoria, The Australian Multicultural Foundation, The Centre for Multicultural Youth & Whitelion. Monique has trained over 100 organisations to develop cultural sensitivity and intercultural competence when working with Muslim communities. She has worked as a trauma counselling trainer of community and aid workers post 2004 Tsunami (Indonesia) and trained Australian development workers in Intercultural training in Indonesia.

 

Michelle Whalen

Michelle Whalen has fifteen years experience working in International Development in a broad range of roles. She has directly supported community and local NGO initiatives as a volunteer in El Salvador, worked in the head office of both an Australian NGO and Managing Contractor managing programs in SE Asia and taken roles as Technical Adviser both through NGO and bilateral aid programs in Timor-Leste. Her core expertise is in training and capacity building especially in the areas of gender, community and organizational development. Her experience in monitoring and evaluation includes project monitoring from head office, managing evaluation processes, designing and conducting impact evaluation, developing M&E frameworks and developing capacity of local staff to integrate M&E into their program implementation cycle.