TorqAid is a consultancy focusing in on community development and humanitarian aid in both Australia and overseas.  Its mission is to provide a range of appropriate and targeted consultancy services, training courses and information to the Australian and overseas community development and aid communities.  By doing this effectively, we believe we are contributing to improved standards of assistance both here in Australia and overseas.

Over the past few years we have come to recognise that there are Five Key Attributes (5KAs) of the effective community development (CD) or aid practitioner, namely:

•       A passionate heart, good relationships, and mutual respect
•       A good understanding of the background context
•       Clear objectives 
•       The effective transfer of appropriate skills (ie capacity builder)
•       A reflective, flexible, creative, patient, and generally relaxed practitioner    

We also believe that our development approach should be this as expressed by Xanana Gusmao, as quoted by Kirsty Sword in her book, 'A woman of independence' (Macmillan, Sydney, 2003), namely 'If your intention is to truly help our people, then you must listen to them; respect them; and treat them as equal partners, and not as passive recipients of your aid'.   

In this website you will be able to learn about our consultancy services and the training courses which we offer, as well as read through the information contained in the Australian Aid Resource and Training Guide (AARTG), which we edit and update monthly.  The June edition of this can be accessed by pressing here, and the July AARTG can be accessed within the next couple of days....  

We now have a new system of automatically registering to receive the AARTG monthly, so please go to the AARTG site and complete this if interested.  As well as monthly copies of the AARTG, there is additional optional registration for occasional updates related to both Disaster Risk Management (DRM) and CD work in Outback Australia.

Carpe diem.......…