Financial boost for Oxfam-Monash partnership

23 June 2010

Jessica Malin and Neda Monshat were the first student beneficiaries of the Monash/Oxfam partnership, which was signed in 2008.

Monash University and Oxfam Australia have received a generous philanthropic donation of $2.9 million to support their collaborative contribution to justice and poverty alleviation.

The initiative will support action research within Oxfam Australia's programs, building on its existing agenda on aid and development knowledge with the discipline-based expertise and collaboration of Monash academics.

Specific joint projects will be developed over the next five years and will build on the existing partnership, which began in 2008 with the signing of a comprehensive MoU.

In the new phase of the partnership, Oxfam and Monash will collaborate on research and will apply research results to new projects, communications, advocacy and curriculum development.

The partnership will build on Oxfam's existing agenda by focusing initially on three areas:

• Accountability - to develop strategy for gathering more effective feedback from communities we serve and to fix the broken feedback loops in aid more generally
• Climate change adaptation - to support community led adaptation to the impacts of climate change
• Gender equality - to address issues around culture and women's leadership.

A 'search' conference is being planned at Monash University for 14-15 September 2010, to identify potential areas for future combined work involving the two organisations.

A joint steering committee will evaluate all project proposals and up to 30 Monash academics will be invited to participate in the conference. The conference will be integrated with Education Matters 2010, the University's annual celebration of excellence in learning, teaching and scholarship, which will run from 8-17 September.

The Oxfam-Monash collaboration will significantly increase the collective impact in the areas of global poverty, health and community empowerment.