Guest Speaker Prof Allan Curtis.Born and raised in Orbost, East Gippsland in Victoria, Allan was directly involved in farming, fishing and forestry before leaving Gippsland to attend Melbourne University. From an early age he was aware of the issues facing rural communities dependent on natural resources. After completing his undergraduate degree, Allan moved to North East Victoria, teaching geography and politics to country high school students. His interest in natural resource management led to a long term involvement in landcare and catchment management, including initiating the first secondary education landcare program in Australia, which was awarded the Greening Australia/ ABC TV National Tree Care Award in 1990. Allan has represented North East Victoria as a Ministerial appointee to the Murray Darling Basin Ministerial Council’s Community Advisory Council, and served on the North East Catchment Management Board for five years.  Allan’s  research examines the social dimensions of regional natural resource management. He has specific expertise in the role of local organisations in rural development; understanding rural landholder adoption of conservation practices; the policy and institutional arrangements supporting catchment management; and in the evaluation of natural resource management programs. Allan has authored/co-authored in excess of 250 academic publications. He has gained in excess of $6.7 million in research grants, including $5.2 million over the past 10 years. He has been awarded Australian Research Council funding through the SPIRT and Large Grant programs and has been successful through the general calls by the Rural Industries R&D Corporations, including RIRDC and LWA. He currently leads the social research in the ARC National Centre for Groundwater Research and Training, the Landscape Logic CERF hub and in the CRC for Future Farm Industries.

Guest Speaker and Local midwife Mary Doyle is hoping to continue to raise more funds to buy supplies for mothers and babies in Uganda. A local midwife and family health nurse is sharing her 30 years of experience to the extreme to come face to face with startling poverty and a devastating lack of health and education in Uganda. Mary spent 5 weeks working as a midwife in Fort Portal Referal Hospital, a government hospital in Uganda, that regularly has a waiting room of around 300 pregnant women every day. She faced many challenges working in conditions and with equipment far less favouable than we would expect here in Australia. Mary is a member of the local Murray Valley Sanctuary Refugee Group and has contact with a few Congolese and Sudanese families in the area. Through this connection she has  learnt what hardship they’ve come from and what severe poverty there is in places like Uganda, Congo and Sudan. She knew her assitance and expertise would only be a drop in the ocean, but wanted to experience it and see if she could help in some small way. Mary said she expected to see some confronting scenes as the many differences between Australian women and those of third world countries became immediately apparent. She experienced a maternal death, which is virtually unknown here in Australia, common over there, and foetal deaths as well. Mary mentioned that women in these areas are having not just two or three babies, but eight, nine, 10 and 11 because they don’t have the education, they don’t have access to family planning and they’re still very primitive in many ways… many of the women were young teenagers. Only a few of them come to the hospital to have their babies. Many of them still give birth at home with traditional midwives. The ones who come to the hospital are often the ones who have been in labour for a few days and are in real trouble. The poorest areas of the country are in the north, where poverty incidence is consistently above 40 per cent and exceeds 60 per cent in many districts – and where outbreaks of civil strife have disrupted farmers’ lives and agricultural production. In 2012, Uganda ranked 161st among 187 countries on the United Nations Development Programme’s Human Development Index, in the Low Human Development category. The lack of resources is also shocking, with no linen and no food provided for the mothers. Medical supplies are also desperately needed … since her return Mary has continued her efforts to raise funds for additional supplies … she says every little bit helps … “The poverty is so bad and it’s easy for us to forget”