Our Overseas Project Philosophy guides and informs all of our decisions around how we work in the developing world. Some of our past projects have not necessarily fit within this philosophy, but all newly selected and prospective projects will. All our development work is supported and kept accountable by our incredible development advisory board.
We use education to break the poverty cycle
We think that the single most powerful thing we can do for a developing community is to help provide the education so that they can break free of extreme poverty.
Education might mean different things in different settings. In one place formal school education might be what’s important, whilst in another it might be HIV/Aids education.
We recognize that education needs vary across different settings, and as such, we tailor our support to the needs of the community and young people with whom we are working.
We focus on young people
We’re huge believers in the power of young people to achieve big change – not just in Australia but also in developing countries. An investment in the education, leadership and resilience of young people is an investment in the community now and for the future.
In particular we focus specifically on projects that support teenagers and young adults. Research shows that investing in education for these age groups disproportionately improves social, economic and political outcomes for the individuals and their communities.
We only work in partnership
We’re not experts in the challenges facing the communities in which we work. – and we’re not going to pretend we are.
So we operates exclusively through partnerships with in-country local organisations. We are primarily a financial partner, but we provide technical support if there is a clear opportunity to draw on key organizational strengths.
We do not place volunteers overseas unless a project partner requires technical support or additional capacity, and when we do so it is done through a recognized volunteer program such as Australian Youth Ambassadors for Development or Australian Volunteers International.
We’re committed to sustainable development
We’re careful to make sure our projects create sustainable development for the communities we support. For this reason we only support projects that are between three and five years in length (then we leave). Each project needs to be able to be supported by the community when we leave
We work exclusively in the Asia-Pacific
Focusing our development work in the Asia-Pacific gives us the opportunity to significantly maximize our impact in the following ways:
- Of the 1.4 billion people living in extreme poverty, 900 million of them are in Asia. It’s an area of incredible need.
- Due to lower project management and operational costs, our funds will go further in Asia-Pacific allowing us to spend more money directly on our projects and the people in need.
- We’re closer – so can visit more often. This means we’ll have a better understanding of the communities and partners we’re supporting, allowing greater expertise and focus.
We don’t work in indigenous Australia
There is appalling poverty in some indigenous communities, and it’s an absolute disgrace that those conditions are able to exist in Australia. Everyone at Oaktree is passionate about making Indigenous poverty history, but we don’t do development work in pursuit of this. This is for a few reasons:
- There’s an enormous amount of money being poured into indigenous communities by the Federal Government, with only slow progress being made. As an organisation that only provides money (see above), our relative impact in indigenous communities would be small compared to what we can achieve overseas.
- The Federal Government has the resources necessary to end this injustice – and it should be doing more to do so. We think our resources should go to communities and countries that have no ability to provide for their most basic needs.
- We focus first and foremost on those who need it most – no matter where they are. This means we focus on extreme poverty (defined as those living on less that AUD$2 a day), and whilst the poverty in some indigenous communities is appalling, it is not extreme poverty as defined by organisations like the World Bank.
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