Financial Year: 2009-2010 - The Oaktree Foundation

LOCAL BUSINESS THRIVINGIN AILEU, TIMOR-LESTESINCE the beginning of 2009 Oaktree has been partnered withPlan Timor-Leste on a Youth Livelihoods Project in Aileu, one ofthe 14 districts of Timor. Over the course of the last 18 monthsall the 200 young people involved in the project have receivedthe training and necessary materials to start to implement theirown small businesses.Business skills training has been delivered by the Ministry ofEconomic Development; and technical training on animalhusbandry, fish farming and horticulture has been delivered bythe ministry of Agriculture. All of this has begun to pay off andwe have small businesses springing up all over the place,ranging from building chicken houses, to horticulture and fishponds. We have also seen a Women’s Vocational EducationProgram be implemented to respond to the challenges inattracting women to the mainstream program.GOLD project (cont.).who have finished school to continue with Gold and be trainedup as a facilitator to ultimately go out into schools and provideother young people with the transformational experience theythemselves had with Gold. It has been really exciting to supportthis new aspect of the Gold program particularly given thatthe Track 4s also provide Oaktree with a sustainable and localway to collect brilliant information and stories from the Goldprogram for us to then share back here in Australia. The GoldProgram continues to provide young South Africans with acritical educational experience, with 91% of school principalsin late 2009 reporting positive changes in peers as a result ofthe program, and 95% reporting a perceived increase in thelevel of knowledge about HIV/Aids amongst youth.Finally, we have made a decision to extend the completiondate of this project from December 2010 to July 2011. Thisdecision aims to accommodate our partner Plan, and theneed to ensure that the outcomes are sustainable beyond ourinvolvement in Aileu.The RPD Team are about to embark on a trip to Timor to do ourannual evaluation of the project so stay tuned!FINDING GOLDIN SOUTH AFRICAOAKTREE’S most longstanding development project is our HIV/Aids Peer Education Project in KwaZulu Natal and Mpumulunga,South Africa. Over the last year Oaktree has enabled the Goldprogram to be implemented in 19 schools across these tworegions. In particular, we have seen the implementation of theTrack 4 program which enables thoseAbove: the GOLD project in action.A NEW PROJECTIN CAMBODIA!IT IS with great excitement that Oaktree welcomes a newproject into the fold in 2010. Our decision to focus our work inSouth-East Asia required identifying a new project in the region.After careful consideration, three countries were short-listed:Cambodia, Timor-Leste and Papua New Guinea. PTO18 19