Stepping down as Chair of Dochas
Guest blog by Helen Keogh, Chief Executive of World Vision Ireland and former Chair of Dochas, the umbrella group for development agencies in Ireland.
It was great to see so many aid agencies represented at the Dochas AGM last week. 
It shows the commitment and enthusiasm of our members to work together to further improve our work helping the world’s poorest people.
Stepping down
It was also my last AGM as Chairperson – so it was a time of reflection for me and an opportunity to see just how much progress we have made especially in the development of our quality standards and level of professionalism in the sector.
In recent years we formulated Codes of Conduct on Governance and on Images and Messaging but now we are focussing on the implementation and monitoring of these codes.
Working together
We also discussed the opportunities for us to work closer together as a sector and how we can improve the way we provide feedback to the Irish public on the work we do.
What became very clear is that our ability to work together is essential and will be even more important over the next number of years as Ireland’s overseas aid budget remains under pressure.
Aid budget
In fact, since 2008 the aid budget has been cut by an average of 30% and most aid agencies have had to cut programmes. This has had a devastating effect on some of the world’s most vulnerable people.
Although the Government has stated its commitment to ‘seeking’ to keep our international promise to spend 0.7% of our national income on overseas aid by 2015, it will undoubtedly be a challenging target to meet.
What’s encouraging though is that Irish people still believe in global justice and global solidarity - opinion polls show that 4 out of every 5 people think we should keep our aid promise.
Meeting the new Minister
I was also eager to meet with the new Minister for Trade and Development Jan O’Sullivan.
It’s interesting that in giving the Minister these two responsibilities, the Government has acknowledged the links between Aid and Trade, and I look forward to working with her to develop ideas as to how we can make sure that Ireland’s aid policy and trade policy are mutually reinforcing.
Although I’m stepping down as Chair of Dochas, I will continue to be involved, lending my support as much as possible to my colleagues and to the sector, remembering that all we do is so that we can serve those who have the greatest need – the poorest of the poor.
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