The Department of Tourism (DOT), in partnership with the Vanuatu Tourism Office (VTO) and the Vanuatu Skills Partnership (VSP) funded by the Australian Government, conducted a one-day pre-TOKTOK workshop for
Useful Outsiders – How Can External Actors Support Authentic Locally Led Development?
Vanuatu skills partnership strategic planning session.
Source: Supplied Friday, 16 July 2021 10:39 AM
The COVID-19 pandemic and its associated border closures have thrown the international development industry into turmoil. An industry conventionally reliant on ‘fly-in fly-out’ consultants has had to face a reckoning in terms of the sustainability of its modus operandi.
Central to this reckoning is a renewed focus on localisation. While this is welcome, and something called for over many years in the Pacific by increasing numbers of Pacific Islander voices, there are also concerns that the pivoting to more ‘localised’ ways of working will only occur at a superficial level; that the power structures entrenched in the customary donor–beneficiary narrative will remain firmly in place, with decision-making still in outsiders’ hands, simply being exercised through a ‘remote c