The head of an NGO in the autonomous Papua New Guinea province of Bougainville says the new approach to aid being taken by New Zealand will lead to more poverty.
The New Zealand Government announced last week the aid agency, NZAID, would focus on sustainable economic development rather than poverty elimination.
But Helen Hakena, of the Leitana Nehan Women's Agency in Bougainville says this won't work.
Ms Hakena's agency currently receives considerable NZAID support for its work in counselling those traumatised by the civil war, and empowering those at the grass roots.
But she says an emphasis on economic development would leave an organisation such as hers out in the cold.
"Here in Bougainville I am speaking because there is a whole lot of people, a generation gap who are illiterate, and they need awareness campaigns, they need workshops. We don't need the money right now to start projects, because projects [to] be given to people who are illiterate, that won't work. How will those projects be sustainable if those people are illiterate?"
