The ‘Great’ Australian Collaboration

This big umbrella, The Australian Collaboration brings together some of Australia’s highest profile community organisations. You can lose yourself in it for hours as it investigates:

• social, cultural and environmental interests;
• acts as a forum for exchanging ideas and information between its members;
• carries out research projects;
• publishes books and reports on key issues to its members.

……..quite similar to what PWF does though they are very much at the other end of the spectrum!

The site’s goals

• To help to achieve an integrated and sustainable ecological, social, cultural and economic environment in and outside Australia.
• To be a forum for interactions between national community organisations
• To be advocates, while avoiding political issues of the day, concentrating on engagement with governments and others to try to change their longer term policies
• To research and release publications concentrating on major issues in Australian society covering (the basic ingredients of a just and sustainable Australia, comprehensive reporting of all key trends, greater attention to the long term, the underpinnings of democracy, reconciliation, international responsibility, social issues)

The ‘Success in Aboriginal Organisations’ project

This piece of research interests me. It was initiated by the Australian Collaboration and then developed in close association with the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS). It aims to:

“explore examples of successes in Indigenous organisations across the nation, to focus attention on those successes and to draw out the lessons that can be learnt from them.”

The Collaboration members are:
The Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF)
The Australian Consumers Association (ACA)
The Australian Council of Social Service (ACOSS)
The Australian Council for International Development (ACFID)
The Federation of Ethnic Community Councils of Australia (FECCA)
The National Council of Churches in Australia and its Social Justice Network (NCCA)
The Trust for Young Australians (TYA)

There are also a lot of ‘backgrounder’ downloadable factsheets on a wide range of issues including Environmental, social and economic sustainability, democracy, society values, religion, multiculturalism, climate change, energy issues, clean energy, biodiversity, water, indigenous Australians, global poverty and war.

If you find PWF interesting you will really enjoy the depth of The Australian Collaboration – it’s well worth a visit!