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Jawun’s capacity building boosts
local Indigenous-led reform
initiatives that operate beyond any
single organisation or community
Indigenous-led development involves complex
issues. At a level beyond individual organisations
and communities, reform movements are conceived
as ‘circuit breakers’ to tackle difficult, long-running
and interrelated social challenges. Driven by local
Indigenous leadership invested in the change,
and mobilising broad community support, these
reform movements offer a sequence of integrated
initiatives. With such a foundation, Indigenous-led
reforms are more likely to transform dysfunction into
development, and to be sustainable, than initiatives
delivered ‘top–down’ by government.
Jawun can play a key role in supporting Indigenous-
led reforms, not least given the relative difficulty
for Indigenous organisations to attract and retain
skilled staff, particularly in remote locations.
Secondees bring analytical skills and a structured
approach to solving problems, designing solutions
and communicating with multiple stakeholders
and audiences. Secondees can also provide timely
injections of professional capacity to develop and
implement complex reform ideas and strategies.
Key to the success of this approach is that secondees
support reform agendas that are Indigenous-led.
This section looks at examples of secondee support
for Indigenous-led reforms. It also explores other
ways that Jawun has helped initiate reforms through
tactical, strategic support and access to networks.
Several experiences of reform are featured in this
section:
• holistic and community-wide reform in Cape York
• issue-specific reform in Shepparton
• nation-building reform by the Ngarrindjeri people
• national reform through Empowered
Communities.
By giving us their most important and valuable asset—their people—
our partners enabled our people and organisations to build our own
capacity to pursue the reform agenda we had articulated.
—NOEL PEARSON,
JAWUN PATRON AND FOUNDER OF CAPE YORK PARTNERSHIPS
Classroom at Hope Vale State School, Cape York.
Photo: Frederic Courbet
48 JAWUN
2017 LEARNINGS AND INSIGHTS