Friends in Deed

Friends in Deed is the inspiring and deeply human story of a small group of people who wanted to help change the world, one step at a time. With a passionate sense of commitment and a filing system in a couple of boxes, a few Australian Quakers began a fifty-year journey to build a repected international aid organisation known today as Quaker Service Australia. Former QSA convenor Heather Saville tells the story with profound respect for the courage of project partners and volunteer workers, and with the kind of hunour that has sustained them all during the toughest of challenges in countries such as India, Uganda, Cambodia and the Solomon Islands, as well as Australia itself. Capturing the struggles of people who live their beliefs, and the evolution of development thinking over half a century, Friends in Deed faces with unflinching honesty the difficult questions that confront many NGOs. Which projects? Should aid work be voluntary or paid? Is government funding necessary and, if so, under what conditions? How is success measured ad when is it time to walk away? Faced with such questions, many of us look at the state of the planet and ask, 'What can I do?' Friends in Deed gives us some answers, a reason to hope - and to act.