Accountability beyond the headlines : why not-for-profit organisations need to communicate their own expenditure stories

This paper analyses the expenditure patterns of 97 Australian international aid and development organisations, and examines the extent to which they disclose information about their expenditure in order to discharge their accountability. Not-for-profit (NFP) expenditure attracts media attention, with perceptions of excessive costs potentially damaging stakeholder trust in NFP organisations. This makes it important for organisations to be proactive in communicating their expenditure stories to stakeholders, rather than being judged on their performance by standardised expenditure metrics. By highlighting what it costs to ensure longer-term operational capability, NFP organisations will contribute to the discharge of their financial accountability and play a part in educating all stakeholders about the dangers of relying on a single metric.

Framing local stories for community consumption facilitation and evaluation in narrative driven arts-based projects

Cyclone Yasi struck the Cassowary Coast of Queensland in the early hours of Feb 3, 2011, destroying many homes sand property, including the destruction of the Cardwell and district historical society’s premises. With their own homes flattened, many were forced to live in mobile accommodation, with extended family, or leave altogether. The historical society members however were more devastated by their flattened foreshore museum and loss of their collection material. A call for assistance was made through the OHAA Qld branch, who along with QUT sponsored a trip to somehow plan how they could start to pick up the pieces to start again. This presentation highlights the need for communities to gather, preserve and present their own stories, in a way that is sustainable and meaningful to them, but that good advice and support along the way is important. Two 2 day workshops were held in March and then September, augmented by plenty of email correspondence and phone calls in between. Participants learnt that if they could conduct quality oral history interviews, they could later use these in many exhibitable ways including: documentary pieces; digital stories; photographic collections; creative short stories; audio segments –while also drawing closely together a suffering community. This story is not only about the people who were interviewed about the night Yasi struck, but the amazing women (all over 50) of the historical society who were willing to try and leap the digital divide that faces older Australians, especially those in rural Australia, so that their older local stories would not be lost and so that new stories could also be remembered.

Yasi : Digital stories and oral histories collection

"The second of the Oral History Workshops conducted by Associate Professor Helen Klaebe and the Oral History team from the Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, was conducted in El Arish on the last weekend in September 2011. The first workshop was held in Cardwell in March 2011. Historical Society members and other researchers from both the Cardwell and El Arish areas combined to organise and fund the workshops, which have produced a growing collection of recordings of personal stories from people with a wide variety of experiences during and after cyclone Yasi. Aside from being productive in documenting history, the workshops have offered a greatly appreciated educational opportunity for many people, most of whom have never before had access to such benefits. Not only were they able to learn history gathering methodologies and the relevant technical skills, but they also gained new experience in the use of computers to apply these skills. These far northern oral history workshops took the form of a shortened version of the 5 series workshops being presented at QUT in Brisbane this year. The agenda was aligned to the wishes and requirements of the participants who attended from the Cassowary Coast and Tableland regions."

The story behind the stories: Qualitative criminology research in Australia

Qualitative Criminology: Stories from the Field brings to life the stories behind the research of both emerging and established scholars in Australian criminology. The book’s contributors provided honest, reflective, and decidedly unsanitised accounts of their qualitative research journeys - the lively tales of what really happens when conducting research of this nature, the stories that often make for parenthetical asides in conference papers but tend to be excised from journal articles. This book considers the gap between research methods and the realities of qualitative research. As such, it aims to help researchers and students who conduct qualitative criminological research reflect upon their role as researchers, and the practical, ideological and ethical issues which may arise in the course of their research. It is also a call to criminologists to make public the ‘failures’ and missteps of their research endeavours so that we can learn from one another and become better informed and more reflexive qualitative criminologists.

Communicating personal amnesty : a dismodernist approach to arts intersections between disability, personal stories and well-being

This thesis investigates the role of narrative devices in the process of improving an individual’s psychological and physiological experience of health and well-being using two methods of inquiry: a theoretical research project and a comparative analysis of two case studies. Through these two approaches the research examines how the health status of people experiencing disability can be re-positioned and re-designed to develop creative, narrative-based approaches to strengthen communication between the mainstream community and those marginalised by pathological, social and biological illness-centric policy. The theoretical section of the thesis examines two different, but complementary bodies of research: health and well-being, and narrative reconstruction. By invoking Antonovksy’s (1985a) theory of salutogenesis and Davis’s (2002) theory of dismodernism, the study examines the role of language and narrative in the defining of health in social, pathological and ableist spheres. The research positions health and well-being as disparate from historical and contemporary readings of illness and disability and presents literature to support the potential to improve health well-being through a creative re-narration of the experience of disability. The research examines the theoretical concepts of resilience, autonomy and social inclusion through a detailed examination of narratology and the amnesty narrative. The study links these theoretical approaches to a practical Arts-Health intersection program developed for the research project called Communicating Personal Amnesty. Through a comparative analysis of a Pilot Study and Major Case study, the research presents findings derived from theory-building participatory action research showing the efficacy of the program. The research provides a detailed analysis of key narrative structures through a variety of experimental methodological approaches to encourage an important dialogue between the creative components of the thesis and the more traditional health-based academic critique. The research is an example of emergent translational health methodologies, in disability studies.

Teaching journalism students how to tell Indigenous stories in an informed way : a work integrated learning approach

Australian journalism schools are full of students who have never met an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Island person and who do not know their history. Journalism educators are ill-equipped to redress this imbalance as a large majority are themselves non-Indigenous and many have had little or no experience with the coverage of Indigenous issues or knowledge of Indigenous affairs. Such a situation calls for educational approaches that can overcome these disadvantages and empower journalism graduates to move beyond the stereotypes that characterize the representation of Indigenous people in the mainstream media. This article will explore three different courses in three Australian tertiary journalism education institutions, which use Work-Integrated Learning Approaches to instil the cultural competencies necessary to encourage a more informed reporting of Indigenous issues. The findings from the three projects illustrate the importance of adopting a collaborative approach by industry, the Indigenous community and educators to encourage students’ commitment to quality journalism practices when covering Indigenous issues.

Recent emergence of dengue virus serotype 4 in French Polynesia results from multiple introductions from other south pacific islands

BACKGROUND: Infection by dengue virus (DENV) is a major public health concern in hundreds of tropical and subtropical countries. French Polynesia (FP) regularly experiences epidemics that initiate, or are consecutive to, DENV circulation in other South Pacific Island Countries (SPICs). In January 2009, after a decade of serotype 1 (DENV-1) circulation, the first cases of DENV-4 infection were reported in FP. Two months later a new epidemic emerged, occurring about 20 years after the previous circulation of DENV-4 in FP. In this study, we investigated the epidemiological and molecular characteristics of the introduction, spread and genetic microevolution of DENV-4 in FP. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Epidemiological data suggested that recent transmission of DENV-4 in FP started in the Leeward Islands and this serotype quickly displaced DENV-1 throughout FP. Phylogenetic analyses of the nucleotide sequences of the envelope (E) gene of 64 DENV-4 strains collected in FP in the 1980s and in 2009-2010, and some additional strains from other SPICs showed that DENV-4 strains from the SPICs were distributed into genotypes IIa and IIb. Recent FP strains were distributed into two clusters, each comprising viruses from other but distinct SPICs, suggesting that emergence of DENV-4 in FP in 2009 resulted from multiple introductions. Otherwise, we observed that almost all strains collected in the SPICs in the 1980s exhibit an amino acid (aa) substitution V287I within domain I of the E protein, and all recent South Pacific strains exhibit a T365I substitution within domain III. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: This study confirmed the cyclic re-emergence and displacement of DENV serotypes in FP. Otherwise, our results showed that specific aa substitutions on the E protein were present on all DENV-4 strains circulating in SPICs. These substitutions probably acquired and subsequently conserved could reflect a founder effect to be associated with epidemiological, geographical, eco-biological and social specificities in SPICs.

Book Review : Criminological and Legal Consequences of Climate Change. Edited by Stephen Farrell, Tawhida Ahmed and Duncan French (Oxford : Hart Publishing, 272 pp.)

The book addresses a number of pressing social and environmental issues of global concern. It takes the reader on a socio-legal journal of climate change and explores a range of challenging and complex topics including renewable energies, emissions reduction, carbon trading, deforestation, migration and corporate governance.

Weaving the past into the present : Indigenous stories of education across generations

In Queensland, there is little research that speaks to the historical experiences of schooling. Aboriginal education remains a part of the silenced history of Aboriginal people. This thesis presents stories of schooling from Aboriginal people across three generations of adult storytellers. Elders, grandparents, and young parents involved in an early childhood urban playgroup were included. Stories from the children attending the playgroup were also welcomed. The research methodology involved narrative storywork. This is culturally appropriate because Aboriginal stories connect the past with the present. The conceptual framework for the research draws on decolonising theory. Typically, reports of Aboriginal schooling and outcomes position Aboriginal families and children within a deficit discourse. The issues and challenges faced by urban Murri families who have young children or children in school are largely unknown. This research allowed Aboriginal families to participate in an engaged dialogue about their childhood and offered opportunities to tell their stories of education. Key research questions were: What was the reality of school for different generations of Indigenous people? What beliefs and values are held about mainstream education for Indigenous children? What ideas are communicated about school across generations? Narratives from five elders, five grandparents, and five (urban) mothers of young Indigenous children are presented. The elders offer testimony on their recollected experiences of schooling in a mission, a Yumba school (fringe-dwellers’ camp), and country schools. Their stories also speak to the need to pass as non-indigenous and act as “white”. The next generation of storytellers are the grandparents and they speak to their lives as “stolen children”. The final story tellers are the Murri parents. They speak to the current and recent past of education, as well as their family experiences as they parent young children who are about to enter school or who are in the early years of school.

Qualitative criminology : Stories from the field

Qualitative researchers in the discipline of criminology perform a wide range of challenging tasks. They interview prisoners, police officers, magistrates and judges. They speak with survivors of domestic violence, and drink tea with the mothers of murdered children. They observe courts and communities, investigate the decision-making processes of juries and immerse themselves in the data they collect. They ask ‘big’ questions – ‘how do we criminalise the producers of toxic toys?’ – as well as ‘little’ questions – ‘what should I wear to conduct this interview?’ Qualitative Criminology: Stories from the Field brings to life the stories behind the research of both emerging and established scholars in Australian criminology. The book’s contributors provided honest, reflective, and decidedly unsanitised accounts of their qualitative research journeys - the lively tales of what really happens when conducting research of this nature, the stories that often make for parenthetical asides in conference papers but tend to be excised from journal articles. This book considers the gap between research methods and the realities of qualitative research. As such, it aims to help researchers and students who conduct qualitative criminological research reflect upon their role as researchers, and the practical, ideological and ethical issues which may arise in the course of their research. It is also a call to criminologists to make public the ‘failures’ and missteps of their research endeavours so that we can learn from one another and become better informed and more reflexive qualitative criminologists.

A Worthwhile Exchange - a Guide to Indigenous Philanthropy: research findings and success stories from philanthropy supporting Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islander People.

The Guide includes research findings from the Australian Centre for Philanthropy and Non Profit Studies at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT). This research probed the experiences of fourteen Indigenous people who have had different degrees of success in seeking funding from philanthropic organisations. This research shows how grantmakers can make a significant difference in the lives of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

How to improve pupils' literacy? A cost-effectiveness analysis of a French educational project

The Action Lecture program is an innovative teaching method run in some nursery and primary schools in Paris and designed to improve pupils’ literacy. We report the results of an evaluation of this program. We describe the experimental protocol that was built to estimate the program’s impact on several types of indicators. Data were processed following a Differences-in-Differences (DID) method. Then we use the estimation of the impact on academic achievement to conduct a cost-effectiveness analysis and take a reduction of the class size program as a benchmark. The results are positive for the Action Lecture program.

Folk opera : stories crossing borders in Papua New Guinea

The Life Drama project is a drama-based sexual health promotion project, developed by a cross-cultural research team in Papua New Guinea (PNG) over the past four years. Recognising the limitations of established theatre-in-education and theatre-for-development approaches when working across cultures, the research team explored ways of tapping into the everyday performativity of PNG participants and their communities in order to communicate more powerfully about the personal and social issues involved in sexual health. Through the Folk Opera form, developed by PNG theatre company Raun Raun Theatre around the time of national Independence, the research explored the importance of ‘story’ in identity formation, maintenance and change, the communication of meaning, and the transmission of tacit local knowledges. In a highly diverse and rapidly-changing country like PNG, enacted stories inherently compel the exchange and exploration of different knowledges, and promote the dialogue and ownership that drives social change. The paper will present and unpack the folk opera form as developed in the Life Drama program, drawing conclusions which may apply to other programs which to promote health and social justice across cultures.

Folk opera : stories crossing borders in Papua New Guinea

The Life Drama project is a drama-based sexual health promotion project, developed by a cross-cultural research team in Papua New Guinea (PNG) over the past four years. Recognising the limitations of established theatre-in-education and theatre-for-development approaches when working across cultures, the research team explored ways of tapping into the everyday performativity of PNG participants and their communities in order to communicate more powerfully about the personal and social issues involved in sexual health. Through the Folk Opera form, developed by PNG theatre company Raun Raun Theatre around the time of national Independence, the research explored the importance of "story" in identity formation, maintenance and change, the communication of meaning, and the transmission of tacit local knowledges. In a highly diverse and rapidly-changing country like PNG, enacted stories inherently compel the exchange and exploration of different knowledges, and promote the dialogue and ownership that drives social change. The paper will present and unpack the Folk Opera form as developed in the Life Drama program, drawing conclusions which may apply to other programs which to promote health and social justice across cultures.

Stories into games (Workshops and digital work)

In the summer of 2012 - 2013, the State Library of Queensland invited us to run a number of workshops for younger participants as part of the Garage Gamer program. The brief was very much about the local games industry and the SLQ community, the core concept was about participant contribution. The 'Stories into Games' series of workshops ran across three Saturdays (January 5 - March 2). The workshops were aimed at younger audiences (ages 6-12) and the concept was to engage this group with games as game makers and designers, rather than players. Each session saw a group of participants create a shared story, illustrate the story and then make game assets and objects out of their illustrative work. These were then put into a raw framework created in the Unity Game Engine so that the stories could be played.