Curriculum Vitae for John Croft

Current Occupation:

I am a professional Consultant in Ecologically Sustainable Community Development, previously employed part time as Senior Project Officer by the Community Capacity Building Division of the Department of Local Government and Regional Development, where I worked for the last fifteen years. Most of my work with the department has been in the field of Community Economic Development, a field in which our branch was for a while recognised as one of the leading Australian agencies. In 1997, for instance, we were acknowledged as a finalist in the Western Australian government’s award for excellence in the delivery of government services to regional areas.

I am also co-founder of and part time volunteer with the Gaia Foundation of Western Australia, an organisation committed by its three principles to work in the areas of personal growth, building community and service to the Earth. Members of the Foundation undertake personal projects that meet these Foundation objectives. Started in 1987, the Foundation has conducted over 611 successful projects in Western Australia. We currently have 171 registered members in Western Australia and are currently engaged in more than 50 projects.

I am also a Board Member of Sophia College, which provides training in community development, and a range of holistic counselling and Buddhist and artistic therapies.
In the past I was on the Committee of the WA Branch of the Australian Association for Sustainable Communities, and the WA Association for Adult and Community Education and have been an emeritus member of the Living Earth Solutions, an Eco Village Design Consultancy Cooperative, working with Max Lindegger, who was co-founder of the Global Eco-Village Network, and the Co-Designer of Crystal Waters Eco-Village, Queensland, which has just recently won a United Nations International Habitat Award for Sustainable Design.

In March 2007 I returned to Western Australia from an around the world study tour, running workshops and teaching in California, Oregon, Washington, the UK, France, Germany and Egypt, in the fields of project development for ecologically sustainable community economic development and community responses to climate change. I am currently working in organising Dragon Dreaming and Empowered Findraising workshops in association with the Holon Institute Training Centre, a leading sustainability education project in Southern Germany.

Qualifications and Experience

Qualifications:

* B.A. (Geog) University of Western Australia 1970 (Biogeography and Human Planning) (offered Honours in 1969)
* Dip Ed (Best student UWA) 1974
* B.Ed (equiv) (Winner of Joseph Lauwerys Prize as best student) London University Institute of Education 1977
* Completed Ph.D. thesis on "The relationship between non formal (community) education and community development in the Southern Highlands of Papua New Guinea" (London Uni & UWA) 1986
* Currently enrolled with ISTP, Murdoch University for a second Ph.D. writing a book on “Dragon Dreaming: Opening the Global Heart – an exploration of our human destiny” which will be complete December 2007.

Experience:

I am currently engaged in supporting Community Economic Development (CED) aiming at economic resilience, social vitality, political capability and environmental enhancement, through providing training, consultancy and support to individuals and groups working in this field. In this capacity I have been coordinator of a Small Town Economic Planning, giving grants to community based organisations in that state wishing to adopt CED based approaches. I recently was involved in producing a series of case studies on best practice for CED in Western Australia. I have worked with Communities interested in CommunityWise Auditing, giving local people an understanding of the development of social, economic and financial capital. I was also responsible for writing and publishing the internationally renowned LETSYSTEMS Training Pack, and has been involved in assisting over 43 LETSystems, as well as being involved as a key organiser and speaker at conferences in Australia and New Zealand.

I have worked in the area of integrated rural and regional development, community development and community education in Australia, Papua New Guinea, Indonesia, Africa and Europe over the last 31 years. For 10 years I worked overseas. During this time I worked as a researcher for a British Ministry of Overseas Development Project in English Speaking Africa, at ILO in Geneva and UNESCO in Paris, with the Indonesian Ministry of Education and Culture (BP3K). From 1980-83 I worked as Non Formal (Community) Education Coordinator in a World Bank funded program in Papua New Guinea, where I was also employed by the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs, advising the Papua New Guinean government on its 2nd Five Year Development Plan. I have a wide experience of rural areas in Western Australia, and has been involved in a number of projects including the establishment of Business Enterprise Centres, Telecentres, the Community Enterprise Development Association and the Australian Association for Sustainable Communities.

I have been involved in community building and environmental activism both personally and professionally at different levels including

• teaching: previously at University of Western Australia, Edith Cowan University and Curtin University, and at Notre Dame University and in a variety of formal and informal settings around the world
  
• training and consultancy: for the Department of Community Services, the Department of State Development and for youth, women’s', community building and environmental action programs in Australia and overseas.
  
• community building and environmental action practice with non-government organisations in association with a range of government and other agencies
  
• administration and management: having been involved as manager, director and chairman of a number of organisations in this field.
  
• consultancies with many other enterprises bodies and organisations (eg. Ministry for Planning, Department of Resource Development, Petroleum Industry Council etc).

In the period from 1983 to 1986 I was Executive Officer for the Australian Association for Sustainable Communities (AASC Western Australian Branch), working with 36 groups interested in that time with Eco-Village Development. During this time I had authored two books "Moving into the Country in Multiple Occupancy Communities" and "Rural Resettlement: Options and Issues". With Dr Patricia Sherwood of Edith Cowan University, I also worked on producing a video on Eco Village Multiple Occupancy Projects in WA, and produced quarterly newsletters for the AASC. In that time I worked closely with Mr Ian Glew for the preparation of a policy on Multiple Occupancy of Rural Land, passed by the State Planning Commission in May 1985 as Policy Paper No 15. During this time I also worked with Homeswest for the First Fremantle Housing Cooperative, and Boranup Community, the first legal Multiple Occupancy in Western Australia.

I have also been the co-producer of the Video "Sickness Country", looking at the plight of Aboriginal (and other) peoples produced by the Uranium Industry in Australia and have produced many TV broadcasts and training programs in Community Development.
I am a frequent keynote or guest speaker at numerous conferences and international symposia ranging from such groups as the International Transplant Nurses Association to the New Zealand Green Dollar Conference.

My current interests include approaches that integrate personal growth and empowerment, community building, community economics and environmental action within the new paradigm of "deep ecology" and have written and published widely in many fields. I am currently in the process of writing a book on the Dragon Dreaming methods used for community projecrs.

This is the introductory use of my own Web Log (Blogger), so this page is likely to change as my skills improve.

WHO I AM:

Firstly, to introduce myself.My name is John Croft, I live in Perth, Western Australia, the most isolated capital city on the oldest continent on Earth. My CV is located on the web at gaia.iinet.net.au/CVJC.htm

A little Genealogical Information

I am a very rare being, as on my patrilineal side of the family I am a seventh generation Anglo-Celtic Australian. Thomas Croft, the first of my ancestors to come here, was born in Marden in Kent in 1794. He emigrated to Australia in 1818, when the first settlement was only 30 years old, and married a convict named Elizabeth Davis or Wakeman in 1837 in Van Diemens Land later renamed Tasmania. For anyone reading this who is not Australian Tasmania is the home of the Tasmanian Devil, and is the little triangular island beneath the mainland of Australia.

My great grandmother, Teresa Maud Croft nee Richards was also the daughter of a convict, John Kirwin Richards, born in 1820 or 1823 in Dublin. He was the son of a Thomas Richardsand Mary G. Richards, nee Kirwin. The birthdates and other details of these people I have no details. If anyone in Ireland or elsewhere has access to their genealogical records, I would be very grateful. John Richards was convicted 9th Dec 1848 in Liverpool for burglary, to be transported for 7 years. Transported as a convict in the "Pyrenees" departing Torbay, England 30th Mar 1851, he arrived at Fremantle, Western Australia 28th Jun 1851 (a voyage of 90 days). On 30th Jun 1854 he was given permission to marry Julia Tighe. Finally winning his ticket of leave (commutation of his sentence) in 1856. Teresa Maud's mother and Richard's wife Julia Tighe was a remarkable woman. She was born in 1824, the daughter of Michael and Julia Tighe in Kildare in Ireland, leaving Ireland for Australia as an 18 year old to escape the Irish Potato Famine of 1843. She was put in charge of a boatload of young Irish women sent to Australia during the famine, to help balance out the male-female sex ratios in the European population. She married John Richards twice - in 1854 in a civil service, and then in 1855 in a Catholic service conducted by Dom Salvado the famous explorer priest and founder of the Dominican Monastery at New Norcia.

My father's mother was a Catherine Herberta Derepas, and her great-grandfather, my great great great grandfather was John Henry Derepas, born in 1805 at Drogheda, Northern Ireland. He married a Mary or Margaret McDonald, born in 1809 in Edinburgh, the daughter of John McDonald and Mary Lothian. As a McDonald her ancestry goes back to the Viking-Gael Somerled, and into the ancient families of te Scottish and Irish High Kings, back to Heremon who is supposed to have married Tamar Tephra, the daughter of Zedekiah, the last king of Jerusalem of the House of David. Through this link I can trace my ancestry back to Adam! Derepas is not either a Scottish or Irish name, and seems to come originally from around the Dijon region of France.

On my maternal side, my great-great grandmother was a Margaret Pauline, who was born on the 18th Feb 1830 Low House, Northumberland, England. She married Paul Murphy, born on the 8th July 1831 Dublin, Ireland. He was a soldier in the British Indian Army, enlisting 8th Jul 1844, and served 13 years 73 days- dying at Secunderabad in India on the 12th Mar 1868 from dysentery. Margaret, gave birth to two children - Mary Murphy my great grandmother, born 31st Jul 1954 at Whilton near London, England and her sister Ellen. But Margaret predeceased her husband in India, on the 26th Apr 1864 at Bellary, and so my great-grandmother, Mary Murphy was sent "home" to England, to her father's brother, who won a medal from Queen Victoria for saving a mother and her chld from Fire (I still have the certificate that was presented). She married James Barnes of Proctor Fold, Osbaldeston, Lancashire
who born 1849 and who died when my grandmother, Margaret Ellen Morton, nee Barnes, was about 3 years old.

There is a mystery surrounding my maternal grandmother as we can find no record of her birth details and we know she lied about her age her whole life. She was a very big influence in my life, as was my mother's father, Arthur Morton. He was born 8th May 1884 Quorn, South Australia, and came to Fremantle, Western Australia at the age of 12, when his mother with 7 children fled a very unhappy marriage to William Morton, who was born on 5th Sep 1852 at Wilunga, South Australia. His wife, my great grandmother was born Anne Humphrey on the 17th February 1877, to the well connected Humbrey-Morphett family of South Australia.

And so we come to my parents. Teresa Margaret Croft, nee Morton wasthe third child to these grandparents and was born at Wyakatchem District Hospital in the Wheatbelt of Western Australia on the 17th April 1922. My father, Dudley Herbert Croft, was born in Perth, on the 27th September 1923, the only son of Herberta Catherine (called Trixie) Derepas and my paternal grandfather Dudley Everard Croft.

I am the eldest of 5 children, 3 boys and 2 girls, with there being 6 years in age between us. I am the father of Arwen Sophie Croft, aged 32 in 2005, grandfather to her daughter Juliette Trinity Mumford (age 2). To Lana Elanta-Fennell (aged 26), married to Michael Fennell, and to Pierre Andre John Croft (aged 24).

If anyone wants a copy of the Genealogy on which this is based, please email me and I will send you a copy. If anyone has genealogical details of any of these families, please email me at jdcroft@yahoo.com.