CAMERON NEIL

Cameron Neil is an energetic, young and experienced youth and development professional and entrepreneur. Cameron has created various organisations, networks and organisations in the social and community sector, and led, supported and delivered youth development services in the government, community and business sectors. He has a particular focus and passion for those people marginalised within society, and how the game might be changed so that all are ‘free’ - both the oppressed and the oppressor. Cameron has a strong social research background and his work and interests are increasingly global in nature and scope.

In his official professional life, Cameron serves as CEO of the International Young Professionals Foundation (www.iypf.org) an international NGO he founded with four other Australian young professionals in October 2001. He will be working from 2005 to 2008 to build the IYPF in to a strong, vibrant and self sufficient NGO that informs, inspires and equips young professionals to be effective sustainability and social change agents. In addition, Cameron maintains an active interest in youth enterprise as a vehicle for liberation and social transformation. He is involved in the Youth Employment Summit.

Cameron is the Fairtrade Certification Analyst for Oceania, working for the newly established “Fairtrade Labelling Australia and New Zealand”, which is one of a family of initiatives around the world operating the “Fairtrade Certification and Labelling system”. Having worked previously as the Development Coordinator of the Fair Trade Association of Australia & New Zealand, the regional peak body and membership organisation for fair trade, Cameron played a key role in establishing the Fairtrade Certification & Labelling system here. Cameron is very passionate about the ability of fair trade to assist disadvantaged families and communities in developing countries to gain greater control over the lives, meet their survival and growth needs, and break out of cycles of poverty. In his fair trade role, Cameron is part of the “Centre for Governance of Knowledge and Development” located within the “Regulatory Institutions Network” at the Australian National University.