CAA Core Group

Members of the Core Group - have a long and wide experience in international community development and human rights. They act as a sounding board for the Program Facilitation and work as a link between the Community Aid Alliance, friends of Community Aid Alliance, as well as other networks in Australia, India and else where. In addition, the Core Group will be referral point for volunteer placements, Study Tours and Internships.

Liz Hobbs

Liz Hobbs is the widow of Dr Brian Hobbs. Brian was one of the original members of Community Aid Abroad (CAA) and became the Australian National Chairman of CAA from 1983-1987. Brian was a passionate supporter of CAA for 30 years and had a particular interest in supporting and visiting the highly successful and creative Indian CAA projects.
Since his death, Liz has continued to support the projects, now under the Indian management of Community Aid Alliance. She has 20 years experience in community based rehabilitation of people with disabilities in lower income countries, and is author of the book Life after Injury, a text to help health workers working in war zones and with land-mine injured. She lives in South Australia.

Dominic DSouza (Mentor, National Youth Foundation)

Started his career in professional social work education and then was involved in the promotion of tribal development in Northern Andhra Pradesh. He has done a stint in a development support organisation relating to NGOs and CBOs all over India. Also worked with Asia and South Pacific Association of Basic Education (ASPBAE)

Jill Jameson

Jill Jameson has been a community development worker and peace activist over many years. She has had a long standing connection with Community Aid Abroad from the early sixties when she was living in Kolkata, and later in the eighties, managed programs in parts of India, Sri Lanka and the Horn of Africa. She was Asia program manager for International Womens Development Agency for a couple of years but has primarily worked with local organizations in Burma, Ladakh and Cambodia to help strengthen their capacities. Jill has lectured in Community Development at Deakin University, and is a trainer in conflict transformation and peace-building and action research. She has been involved in the International Network of Engaged Buddhists over the last 15 years.

C.K. (Bablu) Ganguly, Timbuktu Collective, Chenakotapalli, Anantpur District

Bablu is a green activist rooted in the community and pioneered revegetation of more than 20,000 hectares of arid common lands with community involvement. He is an exponent of permaculture and a promoter of organic farming. He is also a theatre person involved in promoting folk culture as medium for social change.

Ganshyam, Executive Director, Judav, Madhupur, Jharkhand

Ganshyam began his social involvement as a student activist in the mid-70s. He has developed skills in mass mobilisation and promoting peoples struggles against displacement due to extractive industries. His other area of involvement is safeguarding human rights, and tribal identity.

K. Krishnan, Executive Director, Foundation for Sustainable Development, Ambur, Tamil Nadu

Krishnans main area of involvement has been in promoting rights of tribal communities in south India. He was the executive director, Irula Tribal Women Welfare Association (ITWWS), Chenglelpet. He has vast experience in community based disaster management and herbal medicine. He is also convenor, South India Adivasi Solidarity Council.

Sally Francis

Sally Francis first visited community development projects in rural India almost 30 year ago. Over a period of 20 years she worked as a community health trainer on Aboriginal communities in Australia, Ethiopia and Somalia, and in marketing and administration with Community Aid Abroad/Oxfam Australia and New Internationalist magazine. In 2011 Sally, with her 10 year old daughter Isla, visited Community Aid Alliance projects in Southern India and in 2013 organised a Mothers and Daughters Study Tour, with Community Aid Alliance, visiting village projects with a health and education focus. Sally is currently Arts Coordinator, Arts in Health at Flinders Medical Centre program, SA, and Ambassador for the national Institute for Creative Health.

Jenny Pender

Jenny Pender lives and works in Alice Springs in the Northern Territory, Australia. She currently works in Federal politics and has had a varied career working for Aboriginal communities, indigenous media organisations and toured the country with aboriginal musicians. Jenny has had a long association with Community Aid Abroad / Oxfam Australia, participating in several study tours and community leadership programs to India, Bangladesh and Laos as well as travelling extensively throughout Asia over 30 years. She has also been a friend of the Community Aid Alliance since its inception.

Claire Salvetti

Claire is a Brit living in Sydney, Australia and has worked for a decade in marketing and public relations. Claire Salvettis family has a long history with India as her Grandfather lived in Bihar and Orissa in the 1930s. In 2009, Claire spent seven months in India, during which she volunteered with local grassroots NGOs including Community Aid Alliance and helped to improve their communications strategies. Now Claire is back in Sydney and working in a leading Public Relations Agency which has its own not for profit organisation called World Schools Foundation that helps to build schools in Bangladesh and India.

Satish Girija, Executive Director, Nav Bharat Jagruti Kendra (NBJK), Hazaribagh, Jharkhand

Satish is by training a mechanical engineer, who has opted to live at community level inspired by Gandhian values and ideals. He has empowered in collaboration with his colleagues thousands of marginalised rural poor in the remote areas of Bihar and Jharkhand states. He is the convenor of Lok Samiti, a peoples organisation, advocating participation in local governance and access to their entitlements.

Walter Mendoza, Development Consultant

Coming from a management background Walter has become an advocate of alternatives lifestyles for sustainable development after living and working among marginalised communities. He is the co-author of The Long and Winding Road A Backgrounder on NGOs and Peoples Movements and also the editor of ecoethic a quarterly magazine of INECC.

Nafisa Goga DSouza, Convener, Indian Network on Ethics and Climate Change (INECC), Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh

Formerly faculty member, College of Social Work, Bombay University and founder member of Laya, Nafisa is member of the World Council of Churches (WCC) Working Group on Ethics of Climate Change; and currently also the Board member of Global Campaign on Climate Action (GCCA). Nafisas main concern has been to put the community voices in the policy choices at the national and global level.

Tony Lisle

Mr Lisle is a public health and development policy specialist with 30 years of experience in designing and implementing public health care and large-scale rural and community development programmes in South and South-East Asia. He has extensive experience in organisational and change management in multilateral and not-for-profit organisations.

He has served the United Nations for 21 years, joining UNAIDS as Country Programme Adviser to Lao PDR; subsequently working in the Programme's regional office for South-East Asia & the Pacific as Team Leader. He was then seconded to UNICEF as Regional Adviser, HIV and Young People's Health and Development in the regional office for Central Eastern Europe and Commonwealth of Independent States, with responsibility for programming in 21 countries. On return to UNAIDS, he served as Country Director to Cambodia and Viet Nam. Prior to retirement from the United Nations, he served as the UN Resident Coordinator/UNDP Representative to the Maldives.

Mr Lisle previously worked with Save the Children Fund Australia's Lao PDR programme, as Country Director, managing AusAID's largest primary/maternal health and social development investments. During the early 1980s he worked in India with local non-governmental rural development organizations before joining Oxfam Australia where he managed the agency's South Asia programme.

He is an Associate of the Burnet Institute's Centre for International Health, Melbourne, Australia and was an inaugural Advisory Board member of the Centre for International Sustainable Development, University of Aberdeen, United Kingdom. His contributions to public health and community development have been recognised through various commendations and awards from international organisations and governments.

Augustine Ullatil, Co-ordinator, Community Aid Alliance (Community Aid Alliance), Bangalore, Karnataka.

Augustine lived and worked with tribal communities in South Orissa in the 80s. He joined Community Aid Abroad, Australia and worked as field representative for 2 decades. During his tenure as a field representative, he facilitated the emergence of a number of CBOs and womens self-help federations in partnership with local NGOs. His area of interest is in promoting community based organisations.