CEN was featured in an article by Michael J. Carter which appeared in IPS (Inter Press Service) on December 27th about figuring out how to change the world for the better.

According to a 2009 study at Stanford University, a new non-profit organisation is registered every 10 to 15 minutes in the United States alone. As a result there are as many varieties of aid projects as colours in the rainbow.

How hard can it be? Find a problem and solve it.

Problem: Women in Afghanistan are oppressed.

Solution: Help empower them by creating a women-only shopping mall, thereby helping them earn income and gain business experience. Read the full story.

The quality of life in developing countries can keep one awake at night: Children working in sweatshops; women working 19 hours a day for 10 cents a week; little access to HIV/AIDS or malaria medication; chronic starvation and institutionalized poverty.

Such inhumane conditions do not need to stay this way though. Organizations like Seattle’s Ten Thousand Villages (www.tenthousandvillages.com) — a fair-trade retailer of artisan-crafted home décor, personal accessories and gift items —is making a difference every day.

Ten Thousand Villages has spent more than 60 years cultivating trading relationships in which artisans receive a fair price for their work and consumers have access to unique, handcrafted items. The company establishes long-term buying relationships in places where skilled artisans are under- or unemployed and in which they lack opportunities for income.

“There is fair trade and free trade,” said Tyi Esha, assistant manager at Ten Thousand Villages “Free trade has an individual making a project for you, and the process is messed up and selfish. Fair trade is giving the artisans the whole profit back — not a penny more, not a penny less. It goes back to the workers.”

“Fair trade is taking a look at working conditions and transparency in business dealings, while also thinking about maintaining cultural sensibility,” Store Manager Stacie Ford-Bonnelle said. “With fair trade, the welfare of the entire community is preserved.”

Read the full story,

With the best of intentions, global development work often falters when NGOs take a top-down approach. As “experts”, organizations believe they know what’s best for communities - routinely implementing projects that realize their concept of development and oftentimes importing Western staff to achieve this. Exacerbating this scenario is the phenomenon of Learned Helplessness, a term most frequently heard in the field of domestic violence, but also applicable to communities that over generations have become used to having decisions made for them. With communities not engaged in the initial planning and development process, it is little surprise that the developing world is now littered with technology and projects that fell apart as soon as the implementing NGO left.

Top - down development can exacerbate learned helplessness

HIV/AIDS work, both domestic and global, has frequently taken a different approach. In forcing governments to acknowledge the existence of the disease, the fight against HIV has been fought from the ground up since the very beginning. In the early days activism by the gay community in the United States forged and guided public health policy and programs at every level, creating effective and powerful models both informed by scientific research and rooted in community needs. As the HIV pandemic spread to other demographic groups, the importance of direct community input and their engagement in the decision-making process was recognized as key to the fight against HIV. The uniqueness of each community group and their own specific needs are identified through such ground-level tools as community planning groups, community-based organization capacity building and, most importantly, the hiring and training of individuals who “walk-the-walk and talk-the–talk” of their community to implement the work.

Key to this model is the concept of development sustainability – ensuring that work will continue once the funding organization has exited the community. The only way to ensure this will happen is through projects that are based directly on community need and that have engaged the community at each step of project development; truly building capacity from within. Projects lacking a feasible “exit strategy” risk creating sustainable work over the long-term solely for the NGO. Both of the two very different global health organizations for which I’ve worked, the International Training & Education Center on Health and Clinton Foundation Health Access Initiative, have examples where after several years of organizational capacity building with government Ministries of Health they have been able to exit countries leaving self-reliant and sustainable HIV/AIDS programs in place. In fact, one nation, The Bahamas, is now providing peer education and support around HIV work to other countries in their region.

Key to sustainable community work is the concept of “servant leadership”; meeting the needs of and working on behalf of others. As global health program manager, one phrase frequently used was “How can I be of help to you?” Communities are more than aware of their specific needs and it often simply takes listening, moving the pieces around and facilitating access to resources in order to create sustainable change. The CEN model works at this most fundamental level by responding to communities’ needs; then providing development tools so individuals can achieve their dreams – for themselves.

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Frances Walker-Dudenhoefer is the Vice President of CEN's Board of Directors and has many years experience in global health.

“I think we are living a very critical moment actually, now, in terms of the discussion of women, and in a transitional period of our economies.”

Zainab Salbi, founder and CEO, Women for Women International

2010 provided several instances that benefited numerous communities. Nations worked together to aid neighbors struck by natural disasters, and we watched as historic revolutions were born, showcasing the unquestionable truth of what collective action can produce. Though there were a few rough spots with our own economic recovery, political playground fights, continuing wars, and questions of what we’re doing wrong, this provided a perfect opportunity to examine exactly how we can make it right.