The Imperative of Investing in Adolescence From the UNICEF website   Among the multitude of issues, goals, targets and priorities on the international development agenda, adolescents – defined by the United Nations as those between 10 and 19 years of age – seldom come first. Particularly when development budgets are constrained, as now, conventional wisdom might dictate devoting most resources to children in the first decade of their lives. Investment in health, nutrition, basic education and protection for younger children has in recent years secured a significantly better start in life for many.  With this achievement, however, comes a responsibility...

Grameen Bank – a bank for the poor From Wikipedia   The Grameen Bank (Bengali: গ্রামীণ বাংক) is a microfinance organization and community development bank started in Bangladesh that makes small loans (known as microcredit or "grameencredit") to the impoverished without requiring collateral. The name Grameen is derived from the word gram which means "rural" or "village" in the Bengali language. The system of this bank is based on the idea that the poor have skills that are under-utilized. A group-based credit approach is applied which utilizes the peer-pressure within the group to ensure the borrowers follow through and use...

The charter of Humana People to People We quote from the website of Humana People to People: “Through the 80-r and 90-s Humana People to People grew in size and scope with more countries, more development projects, more activities within the projects and many more people involved. The Charter was written to sum up the status of the organization and to preview, anticipate and herald an even more vivid, active and magnificent future. The Charter of Humana People to People is a piece of art. It is an example of how it is possible to write the history of the...

Malaria Communities Program In Zaire province, Angola – started 2011 The Objective The overall objective of the program is to establish a school based community malaria control network in Zaire province in the northern Angola. The specific objectives are, through the network, to promote: - Increased use of bed nets in the target population, particularly by pregnant women and children under 5 years. - Improved ability in communities to recognize symptoms of malaria. - Increased health-seeking behavior in target communities The Strategy The strategy is to establish a network of 200 teachers, who are specially trained in the key project...

DRH 1970. By Humana People to People. A story of a bus group traveling in Asia, meeting 2 Afghan men with a child at a deserted roadside carrying the load of a very sick child - a desperate meeting posing the question why children die from hunger in the last half of the twentieth century. "Henning, shouldn't we take him along?" "Yes, let's do it. He is standing quite alone. Usually ten others will turn up when you stop." The desert and the unbelievable heat probably did much for the fact that we could not drive past the Kuchi, who...

From the website of United Nations, July 2012 Global partnership key to achieving Millennium Development Goals by 2015 – UN report 2 July 2012 – With three important targets on poverty, slums and water having been met, a new United Nations report stresses the need for a true global partnership to achieve the remaining Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by the 2015 deadline. The 2012 MDG Report offers “the most comprehensive picture yet” on global progress towards the Goals, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said as he launched the report at the high-level segment of the annual session of the UN Economic and...

The United Nations (UN) was founded by 51 member states in 1945 to “work for peace and development, based on principles of justice, human dignity and the well being of all people” 189 heads of state at the United Nations Millennium Summit in 2000 committed governments and intergovernmental institutions to focusing international economic and social cooperation on the achievement of 8 Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by 2015. Click here to download the PDF

Adopt, adapt and improve One thing you can expect here at CICD, and when you are in Africa or India, is the unexpected! Making plans and trying by all means to follow through with them is an essential part of accomplishing something and reaching your goals ... and you will do a lot of that here. We always say that it is good to have a plan, and to have a plan B and even plan C! It is not at all unusual for unexpected things to happen in the course of the programme, so you will have to be...