Australia's migrant communities want charity and not-for-profit organisations raising funds for international causes to work more closely with them to help them get more bang for their buck.
Jenifer Amuna has been the president of the Uganda Community of South Australia for the past four years and said community collaboration was critical to ensure aid work had real impact.
"You wouldn't appreciate me going to your house and pretending as if I know everything without consulting you … so it's good to work together with local communities," Ms Amuna said.
"I think it's really important for charity organisations to reach to respective communities.
"We want to be a part of what you're doing in our country, so I would urge them to reach out to us."
Building connections
Ms Amuna said she was delighted when marathon organizer Andy Dunt reached out to her.
"Andy went on our Facebook page and he messaged me, informing us of the great work that they're doing in northern Uganda to improve lives and health of mothers and children," she said.
Unfortunately COVID-19 delayed the collaboration from coming to fruition until now.
This weekend, the Ugandan Community of SA will run alongside other competitors to raise funds for a paediatric ward in northern Uganda and South Sudan.
Sandy Festival is an annual marathon with several distances of up to 68 kilometres to symbolise the lengths some people in remote areas of South Sudan and Uganda go to access healthcare.
Mr Dunt said it was relationships that sparked his interest in providing assistance to African communities.
"A group of us headed over in 2010 to build a medical clinic, and also put some clean drinking water in some of the communities, and that was just based on our relationship with people in the communities here in Adelaide," Mr Dunt said.
He said the relationship he had with members of the Sudanese community here in Adelaide, led to the efforts of his previous trip.
"I really sympathised with their stories and with a group of us we discussed with that community here what we could do for their community back home," he said.
"And the sort of requests that they had was clean drinking water and healthcare."
Resource in your own backyard
It is conversations like that that chair of the African Communities Council of SA Denis Yengi wants to see happen more often.
"If anyone wanted to reach out to the African communities here, not necessarily about aid — we can talk about investment in Africa, we can talk about tourism, you have the people here who know what's on the ground," Mr Yengi said.
Denis Yengi said African-Australians had not forgotten about their home countries.
He said while many countries within Africa had come a long way in terms of development, aid organisations often portrayed the content in a negative light.
"The African continent has made a huge progress from the time where many countries are dependent on aid, now to an age where African countries are looking for collaboration to determine the future," Mr Yengi said.
He said collaborating with leaders could see better representation for Africa, as well as helping the areas that required assistance.
"We have stability across the continent, but there are still some countries that are experiencing insecurity and natural disasters which collaboration could really make a big difference," he said.
