Michael Quall

UPDATE: Michael has dropped out of the running. See his explanation at bottom of page.

Name: Michael (A) Quall

City: Brisbane

Occupation: Business owner, Career bureaucrat, Part-time community development consultant and freelance social policy hacker, Full-time disability carer and stay-at-home dad

Twitter: @nomadiqueMC

Blog(s): http://www.nomadiquemc.com/

Bio:

Toowoomba born, Canberra raised, lately transient 30-something Larrakia man, married 11 years with 8 children.

Former commonwealth public servant turned remote communities management and community development specialist who is passionate about Asset Based Community Development, remote communities, social policy and Indigenous affairs, human rights, and the crusade against racism and poverty globally.

Proud in equal parts of my paternal Aboriginal heritage and my mother’s family’s contribution to agriculture in rural Queensland.

Why I want to be an outreach blogger:

I have lived and worked in such places as Halls Creek, Balgo and Kununurra; Mornington Island; Darwin, Katherine and Alice Springs; and Cape York, and the Northern Peninsula Area. My cultural competency in english-as-a-subsequent-language communities is more than credible. I’ve also traveled to Japan, Germany and Canada to speak to people about such things as racism, and volunteerism.

My career can be divided into two parts – the first involved infiltrating the bureaucracy as a fairly senior public servant, learning everything that I could about politics, government, public service, social policy, communications, governance and administration. The second part has been about passing this knowledge on to remote communities across Australia, and helping those communities tell their stories to a wider audience. For me, this story telling is at the heart of any effective community or social intervention.

Unless I am reading it wrong this is, in essence, what the outreach blogger is all about.

That pretty much sums up why I *can* do it.

But why do I *want* to be an outreach blogger?

What a blast! What an adventure! What an experience!! and to *still* be giving something important back to communities? What a bonus!!!

UPDATE 13 January 2010: Michael has dropped out of the running to be ActionAid’s next outreach blogger. See his explanation below:

Hiya folks, just a quick note to say that I’m no longer in the running for the outreach blogger gig. Thanks to everyone who supported my brief sojourn, sorry to disappoint you in the end.

I’d say something trite here, like “it was a hard decision”, but it actually wasn’t. in the end I just didn’t have time to do the video project justice, and when i saw project #3 i knew it just wasn’t for me. I’m proud of my networks and colleagues and peers but, for the most part, like me they’re not fundraisers. They’re doers, action people, hands dirty kinda folk. Busy and poor, but always ready to lend a hand. I’d lose a fundraising challenge by a long margin.

It has been an interesting social experiment in itself to be a part of this ‘competition’. Satisfying in itself was the fact that my project #1 (blog post) received only negative comments from readers, yet was a runner up in the list. Fond as I am of Up Yours and I Told You So, this made me smile. A lot.

You’ve got quite an interesting (albeit rapidly shrinking) group to pick from now. A couple of genuine hard workers, a couple of talented writers, and a couple of dead-set poseurs. I’ll let you decide which are which (or which category I fit into!!). I hope you all make a good decision – a decision that will deliver the best result possible for the local people of whichever country the outreach blogger gets sent to.

I would dearly have loved it to be me, but in the end I wasn’t comfortable with the process – which naturally led me to assume that I’m not the guy you’re looking for.

Thanks again for short-listing me in the first place, it was a genuine honour, and I look forward to tracking the rest of the process as a neutral (as possible) observer.

MikQ, aka nomadiqueMC