CID Has New Executive Director

Rae Julian, executive director of the Council for International Development since late 2001, retires on the 15th of February.

“The past six years have been an exciting and challenging time for the organisation,” said Rae Julian. “We have doubled our membership to 92 organisations, reflecting the breadth of support for international development within the country. The new members cover a wide diversity of organisations: Maori and Pacific Island, those set up by former refugees from the Iraqi, Somali, Sri Lankan and Sudanese communities, groups specialising in disability issues and groups supporting single countries. They all contribute a valuable range of expertise to CID’s development and advocacy work.”

“We have also increased our other activities, services to members including training, and policy and advocacy.”

“It is a great disappointment to me that our major campaign has not achieved its goals. Despite our best efforts at lobbying politicians and the general public, the New Zealand government has still not committed to reaching the United Nations target of allocating 0.7 percent of Gross National Income to overseas aid by 2015. While we appreciated the increase to 0.3 percent last year and the commitment to 0.35 percent by 2010, there is still a long way to go. I hope that it may become an election issue this year.”

The new Executive Director is David Culverhouse, most recently principal private secretary for Jim Anderton. David is an economist and has held a number of positions including that of general manager of Enterprise Ashburton, chief executive of the Cook Island’s Investment Corporation, Head of Industrial Projects for the Papua New Guinea government and NZ trade commissioner to Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Guam and the Federated States of Micronesia.

ENDS

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