The First Caty Kyne Memorial Scholarship Awarded

Caty Kyne was the Victoria, Australia IACD local group convenor who tragically passed away in 2009.  With a generous bequest from her estate, the IACD local group in Victoria has set up the Caty Kyne Memorial Scholarship Award.  Amungwa Fonteh, an IACD member since 2005, received the first Caty Kyne Memorial Scholarship Award.

The Caty Kyne Memorial Scholarship Award was set up to support IACD members and community development practitioners and activists from the Global South to attend IACD events and conferences.
 
Criteria / principles for decision making about allocation:
The operative concept is reciprocity, the scholarship promoting exchange for people who are activists in their own community who otherwise may not be able to directly benefit from the seminar, conference, or study experience. It will allow activists / practitioners from other countries / societies to come to Australia and/or IACD event and learn with us.
We recommend particular attention to people engaged in areas relating to institution building with local NGOs about which Caty was passionate, such as :
- Community arts
- Re-location / transition towns
- Cross cultural
- Indigenous
- Women
- People with disability/ies
The scholarship would carry an obligation to contribute to CD conversation in both countries (if participating in overseas event) leading to ongoing involvement in the CD deepening process upon return to their local situation.
 
The First Caty Kyne Memorial Scholarship Award:
Amungwa Fonteh, an IACD member from Cameroon was the first recipient of the Caty Kyne Memorial Scholarship Award which enabled him to attend the IACD 2010 conference in New Orleans on the theme of "The Role of Community in Economic and Natural Disaster Recovery".
Mr. Fonteh has been involved for over 25 years in trying to strengthen the community development field in Cameroon. Both in training new generations as a lecturer in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Faculty of Social and Management Sciences, University of Buea but also through grassroots community activism. Amungwa took part in the local organisation of the IACD Conference in Yaounde in 2005 and presented a paper on 'the Role of Rural Community Development in Building Civil Society Structures in Cameroon' from the perspective of an activist. Concurrently with his work at the University of Buea, he has served as the Community Development Expert (Chief Technical Adviser) in the Grassfield Participatory and Decentralized Rural Development Project.

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