Sanida Communications Director, David Haigh has over 25 years experience working in cross cultural and bi-lingual environments in Central and Northern Australia, South East Asia and the Pacific including 5 years working and living in Indonesia and 6 years living and working in Papua New Guinea.
David has recently completed a 6 year contract as Superintendent Sustainable Development Media (SD Media), a multi disciplinary role supporting the Lihir Gold Operations Sustainable Development Department social and commercial programs. The role involved stakeholder engagement, community development and social and economic impact monitoring, project management, data management and accessibility.
He led a team of 7 talented PNG national colleagues including journalists and audio visual professionals in the design and production of a range of audio visual IEC resources and communication resources supporting all stakeholders in the Lihir Gold Operations.
The SD Media team built strong and respectful relationships with these stakeholders through the nationally distributed, monthly community newspaper, Lihir I Lamel (Lihir Today). The SD Media team provides production capacity for the key stakeholders to communicate to the nation and the grass roots community on Lihir Island and in the New Ireland province. The team has established a level of trust with the stakeholders through an honest and transparent arrangement that is unique in the PNG resource industry.
Working closely with the Principal Social Responsibility, David has designed and developed a range of data access tools improving the accessibility of the social and economic impact monitoring data which forms a key platform of the Social Monitoring and Management Plan. These included a Community Contact Register database and Community Relations Impact Monitoring website.
David has a Graduate Certificate in Community Relations for the Resource Sector from the University of Queensland's, Centre for Social Responsibility in Mining. He also has Diploma of Management and is certified by Australian Centre for Corporate Social Responsibility and Global Reporting Initiative to prepare a Best Practice Sustainability Report.