Twelve years ago a group of Australian women decided that sewing lessons and nutrition talks were not the best way to help women in developing countries help themselves.
Concerned that the projects offered by existing aid agencies around the world were very traditional and were not developed with women as their focus, they decided on a new approach: an agency run by women, for women, with projects controlled by female partners in the countries in which they were set up.
Back then it was a radical idea. Women in Australia would be raising money to give their poorer sisters in Asia, the South Pacific, Africa and Central America the help they wanted - not the help aid agency bureaucrats decided they needed.
That was in 1985, the year the United Nations held its massive conference on women in Nairobi, Kenya, and a time when there was an increasing awareness worldwide that women had special needs which needed special attention. So the Melbourne-based International Women's Development Agency (IWDA) was born. Last year, the agency, built on a dream, almost closed its doors for lack of funds. But a desperate appeal to its long-time supporters brought A$40,000 (about HK$234,000) in donations, the funding crisis was resolved and now, from the tiny East Melbourne office to which its reduced staff of four full-timers and two part-timers have moved to save money, it is rebuilding.
IWDA director Avega Bishop says it is volunteers, women committed to helping other women, who are making that rebuilding possible, donating their time for everything from addressing envelopes and answering telephones to writing reports. They are helping IWDA fulfil its mission: 'To work in partnership with women from developing countries, with priority given to women experiencing oppression and poverty.' Ms Bishop says: 'Our philosophy is that it is the women who live and work in a community who know best what their problems are and what strategies are needed to overcome them.
'We are not saying that none of our projects involve men - many do - but they have a different starting point from other agencies that don't have that priority on gender-related issues.
'United Nations research shows that if you start with a woman you reach the family and the community most effectively, whereas if you start with a man maybe the benefits don't flow through to the whole family.' In practical terms that means finding the funds for short-term projects such as one in Fiji which is training women in the use of traditional herbal medicines, and working longer-term with partners such as a Philippine organisation running an anti-violence programme.