“Winning the Victorian partnerships award is a great opportunity to promote our cause – spreading Landcare further overseas. Many Australian Landcare colleagues will see exciting possibilities as to how they might develop links with communities abroad to help with environmental rehabilitation.” – Australian Landcare International Chair Rob Youl.

For over a decade, Australian Landcare International (ALI) has promoted Landcare’s philosophy overseas with great results. ALI was launched in 2008 to promote and support Landcare projects and networks that now operate in around 25 nations. The success is down to government initiative, global NGO support and ALI working with existing community workers.

ALI has since worked with numerous partners: ACIAR (including its Philippines Landcare program) and Crawford Fund in Canberra; LVI and NLN; Bank Australia; Australian Agroforestry Foundation (AAF); World Agroforestry Center (WAC), Kenya; World Business Council for Sustainable Development, Geneva; Kain Foundation, Adelaide; Hibiscus Co-operative, Wolverhampton University – UK, Jamaica and St Kitts; the German, South African, NZ, Uganda and Icelandic Landcare movements; Rotary; Duchy of Cornwall forestry office; Nanzan University, Nagoya, and City of Toyama, Japan; Australia-Japan Foundation; CSIRO salinity researchers; the editor of the online magazine PT Explorer, Hank Tyler of Kansas, USA; Graeme Kent’s Aussie Action Abroad – which works in Nepal; Port Phillip EcoCentre, which hosts our meetings; and two other Victorian environmental NGOs, Secretariat for International Landcare (SILC) and Beyond Subsistence.

ALI is also often in contact with US Landcare, African Landcare Network and International Landcare – the latter runs occasional global tele-conferences from its Nairobi office. Moreover, ALI has collaborated with numerous Australian groups and networks, as well as many generous individuals, especially through its ALI Fund (formerly Overseas Landcare Fund – OLF – it now has TGR status), whereby it has raised some $45,000 for over 50 small projects in 19 countries. Further, ALI has run training programs in Tonga, Fiji, Uganda, NZ, Malawi, Zambia, Jamaica and St Kitts and Nevis, and helped WAC publish: Landcare: local action, global progress (2009).