Robyn James is a community development worker based in Canberra. She trained as a secondary teacher, and taught in secondary schools for two years. Robyn has worked in the disability sector since 1970, starting as a volunteer on camps with the Yooralla Society of Victoria; Robyn then had paid work with Yooralla, the Spastic Society of Victoria, Australian Quadriplegic Association, teaching in courses for people working with people with disabilities in TAFE colleges and Disability Services Queensland.

Bill works as a Senior Policy Analyst with the Australian Communications and Media Authority He is Chair of the Board of Seeing Eye Dogs Australia and is Australia's representative on the International Council on English Braille. Bills involvement with Blind Citizens Australia goes back to its founding in 1975, and he was President for seven years and Executive Officer for six years until June 2000.

Deborah now works independently, assisting Government and community based organisations to develop and manage overseas aid activities. She designs new activities and reviews existing ones, mainly in the Pacific and occasionally in countries in Asia.  She is also an experienced trainer and facilitator, in a variety of topics such as capacity development, strengths-based approaches, cross-cultural communications, activity design and monitoring. She has a particular interest in the concept of capacity development across cultures and likes to work with people involved in efforts to support Pacific organisations and networks.

In 2003-04, Deborah began to work with Fiji Disabled Peoples Association (FDPA) and its affiliates, and this led to her undertaking a Master in International Development which focussed on FDPA's work. The research considered the consequences of FDPA's use of the rights based approach in its work and involved meetings with many people in Fiji about disability issues. 

Deborah is now the Chair of the Policy Advisory Committee of the Australian Disability and Development Consortium (ADDC).  She has participated actively in a number of disability policy activities, developing papers and presenting at conferences. She tries to link up development experience and thinking with disability policies and activities in her work.

DANIEL STUBBS (President)

Daniel is the Executive Director of the Inner City Legal Centre, based in Kings Cross Sydney, a community legal centre that provides legal services to disadvantaged and marginalised people in Sydney. Until mid 2009 Daniel worked as a consultant on social policy and organisation development issues in the Pacific. He worked for development agencies, regional and international bodies on human rights issues (often relating to people with disabilities) and civil society organisation issues such as governance and management. Daniel has lived in Fiji, New Caledonia, Canberra and Melbourne. Before working in development Daniel was the Executive Director of a high profile Australian social justice organisation (ACT Council of Social Service). Daniel's history in the disability sector and his own disability (vision impairment) has seen him develop a strong commitment to the experiences and challenges faced by people living with disadvantage. He has been successful in promoting responses to these issues which are developed, owned and implemented by the affected community. Daniel has experience in both the community and government sectors where he has undertaken research, developed/analysed social policy, implemented social change and community development. He has also worked voluntarily with many small and large organisations on social justice and organisation development issues. Daniel has an honours degree in Economics (University of Melbourne), a Graduate Diploma in Development Economics (ANU) and an honours degree in Law (Macquarie University). 

DANIEL STUBBS PAPER ON THE RIGHTS BASED APPROACH