A few months ago I made an incredibly hard decision: to resign as CEO of CARE Australia. This has been a wonderful and all-consuming role.

Thanks to your support, CARE Australia is a strong organisation. Our programs have grown and, more importantly, our ability to measure the impact we are having, understand the factors behind these results and scale up our successes, has grown. I am fortunate to have a really strong Senior Management Team and a strategic and engaged Board of Directors.

After almost nine years, I feel the time is right for me to look for a new challenge and for the Board to find someone who will take CARE Australia further along the journey we are making to a world where everyone can live with dignity and security.

I will leave with a wealth of wonderful memories of meeting people in the communities where we work. Women in the Irrawaddy Delta in Myanmar who had seen so much destroyed by Cyclone Nargis, communities in rural Chad during the worst drought in recorded history, or the group of women in a remote part of PNG who took me aside to talk about their struggles. In each community I have been struck by the hard work, the tenacity and resilience of the people I met, and their gratitude for your support.

Each community was being helped by complete strangers, thousands of kilometres away, who would never meet them and who expected nothing in return for their generosity. Working for CARE Australia has enabled me to see, day after day, the strength of our common humanity – our willingness to reach out and help where it is needed, because we can.

My time with this remarkable organisation has been incredibly rewarding. And I leave CARE confident that our dedicated supporters like you will continue to make a difference to millions of people around the world.

Thank you again for your past generosity and ongoing support for CARE.

I know that, with your valued support, CARE will continue to make inroads and I’m certain we will one day put an end to extreme poverty across the world.

That will certainly be worth celebrating.

With my best wishes for the future as I say “farewell”,

Julia Newton-Howes