Launceston nurse Diana Butler does not stop to think about how far she has come in her aid work.
“I’ve got too much to do,” she said.
“[And] I’m actually scared of heights, so if I’m climbing a mountain I can’t look down … I just have to keep on going.”
With 17 years of work in developing a model for sustainable development in communities behind her, Ms Butler said she had an end goal in sight.
She is currently working with her colleagues to create a template for the model so it can be rolled out in other parts of the world.
“[Writing the template] is my dream and I’m working on it … I can see in my mind a clear path,” she said.
A life-changing promise
Next Friday, Ms Butler will travel from her hometown of Launceston to Tarime, a remote region of Tanzania, for a month-long stay.
She estimates it will be the 13th time she has made the 40-hour journey since her first trip there in 2006.
It was during that visit that Ms Butler saw extreme poverty for the first time, an experience she said nothing could have prepared her for.
The encounter prompted Ms Butler to make a promise to the people that she would help them, one she says she will honour for the rest of her days.
Ms Butler co-founded the not-for profit aid organisation Care for Africa in 2006, and she has volunteered as its chief executive since then.
She divides her time between Launceston, where she still works nights at the Launceston General Hospital, and the communities of Tarime.
Ms Butler says in working to end poverty in these communities, her organisation’s ultimate aim is to give people self-sufficiency and independence.
How to break the poverty cycle
Ms Butler says Care for Africa takes an integrated approach to sustainable development.
“What I’ve learnt over the years is it’s all very well to put in a water well, but the springboard effect of putting it in is greater if we extend beyond that,” she said.
If you also provide health care for people in the communities, she explained, you can then get them to school and get them educated.
“Once you have people educated, they need business, they need to make money,” she said.
“[Then] they are not dependent on the donor, and at the end of the day that’s what sustainability is about.”
Ms Butler says her organisation has helped install 12 deep water bores across six communities, which service about 36,000 people, and plans are in place to install another 20.
She says installing a water bore in a school brings the local children to school, because they would otherwise spend their days travelling long distances to collect water.
“We [also] run teach-the-teacher programs to upskill teachers in our remote schools … and a breakfast program that feeds 6,000 children a school day.”
The organisation has also provided adult education and business opportunities in beekeeping, crop growing, sewing, soap making and sunflower oil production.
People-power and a template for success
Ms Butler says the integrated programs her organisation is running in the communities of Tarime have been so successful she is constantly being asked to introduce them elsewhere.
“Every day of my life I get emails, and when I’m in Africa I get people coming up to me to ask if we can come to help them,” she said.
“It’s people from Tanzania, nearby villages, distant villages, from Uganda, Kenya, all over Africa.
“So this is why I’ve decided to actually develop this template that you can extend into other areas.”
While the template is still in its early stages, Ms Butler hopes to secure funding during her upcoming trip for its rollout in communities outside of Tarime.
She says that although the Tanzanian government, partner of Care for Africa, is interested in supporting the expansion of the aid organisation’s programs, it does not have the funds to help.
“And the Australian government doesn’t provide aid into Africa,” she said.
This is why Ms Butler and her colleagues will ask USAID, the Swedish government and the European Union for funding at meetings in Tanzania in the next month.
Ms Butler expects to work through the “very complex” politics surrounding the finalisation and funding of the template for at least the rest of this year, but says it is work she enjoys.
“I absolutely love it. It’s problem solving, I love nutting it out,” she said.
The people of Africa also get Ms Butler’s full credit for the creation of the sustainable development model.
“It’s not me being this Wonder Woman with all these brilliant ideas,” she said.
“It’s actually the people coming to me and putting the ideas together.
“It’s actually all driven by the people.”