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Oxfam Australia Executive Director Andrew Hewett and Oxfam India Chief Executive Officer Nisha Agrawal celebrate the new partnership between their two organisations. Photo: Lara McKinley/OxfamAUS.
In September 2008, a single Oxfam India was born, emerging out of the collective history and work of six individual Oxfams, as Editor Maureen Bathgate reports.
It seemed like a mammoth task — integrating the collective 163-year history, 242 partner organisations and 102 staff of six different Oxfams working in India to one single Oxfam entity.
But after 10 years of planning and an intense 15-month integration process, as of 1 September 2008, Oxfam India was born. The new organisation supersedes all Oxfams previously working in India — Oxfam Australia, Oxfam Great Britain, Oxfam NOVIB (Netherlands), Intermon Oxfam (Spain) and Oxfam Hong-Kong as well as Oxfam Trust, the fore-runner to Oxfam India.
After 55 years of supporting partners in India, it’s a major change to Oxfam Australia’s way of working. The first project our organisation ever supported, when it started out as the Food for Peace Campaign in 1953, was a small health project in India. And it’s where we first employed overseas staff.
But as Executive Director Andrew Hewett is quick to point out, the new arrangement does not mean an end to our work in India.
“Our connection with India is now moving to a different stage. We are not backing away. We will continue to support programs through Oxfam India,” Mr Hewett said.
“Twenty of our existing partners in north-west India have been transferred to the new Oxfam India, along with most of our staff. The remaining 10 partners will be transferred by June 2009.
“We are not handing over our tsunami program in south-east India, as we expect those projects to be concluded within the next six months.”
Over the last few years, the pace of change in India has been dramatic. India is increasingly an important international player in areas that are central to Oxfam’s work — security, trade, arms controls and climate change, as well as aid, emergency relief and human rights. Despite the incredible progress within the country, India remains home to about 30% of the world’s poor, and poverty, social exclusion and discrimination is rife.
Oxfam India Chief Executive Officer Nisha Agrawal said the new entity would not only give Oxfam International a strong voice in India; but also feed a developing country perspective into the Oxfam confederation.
“The idea was to have a strong Indian non-government organisation that is also a member of an international confederation that could really lobby the Indian government on policy and advocacy issues that are important for India as well as globally,” Ms Agrawal said. “It was thought that the Indian government at this moment in time of India’s development would be more receptive to listening to the voices of its own civil society.
“While there are more than two million non-government organisations registered in India, there aren’t very many strong ones that focus on advocacy. And linking the grass roots voices of our partners to policy-making in India is where we see that we would play a critical role.”
Mr Hewett said Oxfam Australia had signed a partnership agreement with Oxfam India, which ensured that India would remain a focus for Oxfam Australia well into the future.
“India is going to continue to be an incredibly important program for us,” he said, “one where we can learn a lot but hopefully also contribute a great deal.”