About Us

MESCH is an Australian charity with  a 13 year track record of working, through education and training, to develop health and well-being and, ultimately, safer and more resilient communities in developing countries.

It’s easy to become frustrated with foreign aid. There are so many stories.... orphanages being used as money making scams, misconduct by NGOs, .... Deciding which charity to trust is extremely difficult.

Maybe you started giving to a charity years ago, but do you know where your money is really going?… Can you even find out?…. Are the projects sustainable?... We believe many current approaches to overseas aid are ineffective, inefficient and disrespectful to the people they want to help. They can and must change. MESCH invites you to be part of that change.

We are proud of

  • The projects we've done - 13 years of changing lives with 18 projects involving 31 overseas partners
  • The way we do it 
    - listening to  local people, using our combined knowledge to design effective and sustainable projects and then having their backs till the job’s done. It’s about respect, knowing what you’re doing and commitment. There are no ready-made solutions
    - by working on projects based on education and training rather than providing services, we build our communities rather than focus on one area.
  • Our focus on sustainability - MESCH teaches people to work smarter, producing sustainable change – not dependency, not handouts. 
  • How we use donations - members generally pay their own travel and accommodation so that more than 90% of your donation reaches its' overseas project. 

 

Does this this sound more like the kind of international action you want to be part of - an opportunity to contribute, influence, inspire and motivate in a sustaianble, transparent and effective way?

​We are a gazetted Australian Department of Foreign Affairs (DFAT) overseas aid organisation with deductible gift recipient status by the Australian Taxation Department (ATO). We are neither a religious nor political organisation

Get involved today!

Picture1

OUR STORY

People talk a lot about sustainable aid. They also make TV ads about starving children and orphanages and so on. Those things started our involvement in foreign aid -in Peru of all places. We soon realised that there was nothing sustainable in that path.  So, 13 yrs ago in a cafe in Newcastle, we had 3 commitments:

  • to mesh with communities instead of imposing new systems
  • work on projects based on education and training rather than providing services
  • build communities rather than focus on one area

Our group name (“MESCH”) is an anagram for "Medical and Educational Sustainable Community Help. Since our projects at that stage involved teaching doctors and nurses skills in the operating room and teaching blind people conversational English (so they could get money from their jobs as masseurs), the name fitted quite well. Our organisation is vibrant and organic. So, although our aims and our commitment have never changed, the breadth and extent of our involvement has. MESCH charity orgnaisation is a combination of things which all work together. Currently, community based projects have become larger and language is more focussed. Our name still fits. It's still about education and training.

Mahatma Gandhi once said “be the change you want to see in this world”. Implicit in this is that change must be sustainable. We see ourselves as opportunity makers – both for our developing country partners and our volunteers. When we first establish a connection with a community, an organisation or a leader, we need to establish mutual trust – the building block of successful collaboration. At times, the collaboration does not work - fortunately, only twice over the last 12 years! This happens when perceptions are different (eg they want equipment/ infrastructure and no training) or their capacity for change is not what we thought it was. 

OUR COMMITMENT TO YOU

We are honest and transparent. We will tell you our failures as well as our wins
We warmly welcome any input and we will always answer your questions. Please feel free to email info@mesch.org.au  or use the CONTACT US tab and one of us will get back to you

John Cassey

(for MESCH)