GEN Oceania goes visiting...

From early February to the beginning of April 1997 Max Lindegger, Regional Co-ordinator of this office, visited six countries of our region: Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand, India, Bangladesh and Pakistan.

The itinerary was packed with meetings, tours and speaking engagements. The GEN's message was broadcast far and wide! He was well received everywhere he went, and came back with a bulging bag of information, a head full of ideas and lots of hope for the future. He reports below.

Aims for the Tour
Over the last 15 months we've received a large number of enquiries from various parts of Asia. Some of the countries in this region are not very well served with faxes and e-mail. Communication is more difficult than in other parts of the world. By the same token, access to the GEN's web pages is rare. While we mail our quarterly newsletter to these people, this is necessarily fairly broad in subject matter.

We received many requests for face to face contact, and from this we decided to plan a tour of the region in an attempt to meet as many of the people as possible. It was hoped that this would lead to easier and better communications as it allows us to put faces to names, and personalities to communication styles!

It has to be remembered that countries of the South are not only disadvantaged economically, they often also lack access to some basic information. TV, computers, magazines and books are not freely accessible, as they are in the North. A special effort was considered to be justified within the general aims of the GEN.

Results
The tour was successful in taking the GEN's message to a large number of people. As it was possible to contact leaders in the fields relevant to us, it is reasonable to expect that the message will spread well beyond what we could ever expect to achieve on our own. The openness of universities to our organisation was especially encouraging. The students at these universities are the decision makers of the future.

I feel there is much to be learned from an ongoing exchange of information. As I always stressed in my meetings, these were meetings to exchange ideas and to learn from each other.

I was able to meet organisations and projects on a face to face level, and am now in a better position to be able to determine where best to focus our energies. Some of the individuals I met were outstanding in their achievements, and their work inspiring. In the area of slum re-settlement incredible results can be seen in the Philippines, India and Bangladesh. Often the success is due not to the availability of huge amounts of money but to a few dedicated, innovative designers and managers. These individuals don't generally get rewarded for their efforts by medals or any recognition.

This visit to many large cities and tiny villages allowed me to make an assessment of the problems as they exist in 1997. I am sure that it will lead to a better understanding of the situation under which such a large percentage of the population is living.

Next Steps

Workshops and Information Provision:
The face to face contact with NGOs was very valuable and needs to be continued. The next step I believe should be workshopping, information exchange and project work. This needs to happen at the community and village level. We need to go into the villages and slums and live with the people.

The demand for short workshops, to 'inspect' projects, to help with design, to help with solution finding and research is seemingly without limits. I found that a lot of the information which is available is repetitive and often outdated. We need to learn from the successes, spread the information and see that they are repeated in the many places of need.

Working on Partnerships:
Assistance and aid appears in many cases to be very piecemeal and poorly directed. With better co-ordination model villages could be established which could act as seeds from which skills, ideas and initiatives could sprout. Everybody I spoke to agrees that the impact would be tremendous.

Support to Artisans, as Viable Eco-village Businesses:
The viability of artisans is in many areas in jeopardy. Many have something to trade & that we need. The opportunities for skill exchange should not be missed. We are currently talking to a co-ordinating person in India and a distributor of garden tools in Australia in the hope that the skills of the artisans can be fostered, and the tools become more widely available in the gardens and small farms of Australia. We will keep you posted on this one.

The challenges of the South are huge. While the poverty, lack of housing, the general standard of living and quality of life in many cases is worrying, it is good to see that there is hope. By working together we can contribute to a better future.

Max Lindegger