Author Archives: davidrcurry

SOS-Kinderdorf International [to 19 March 2016]

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SOS-Kinderdorf International [to 19 March 2016]
http://www.sos-childrensvillages.org/about-sos/press/press-releases

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15.03.2016
A quiet plea for humanity from an SOS volunteer
A Syrian-Macedonian who helps SOS Children’s Villages Macedonia shares his thoughts on the European refugee crisis.

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15.03.2016
Drought leaves an SOS Children’s Village community in distress
Swaziland is one of more than 20 African countries struggling with drought. We visit one community to see how SOS Children’s Villages families are coping with food and water shortages.

Tostan [to 19 March 2016]

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Tostan [to 19 March 2016]
http://www.tostan.org/latest-news

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March 16, 2016
Demba and Oureye: Unlikely Allies in the Movement to End FGC
The most recent installment in our Breakthrough Generation series, “Demba and Oureye: Unlikely Allies in the Movement to End FGC,” tells the story of Demba Diawara and Oureye Sall who, as an Imam and a former cutter, became unexpected champions for the abandonment of female genital cutting (FGC) in their communities and beyond.

This film honors the past 20+ years of work Demba, Oureye, and others whose lives they have touched, have done to end FGC in Senegal…

The Elders [to 19 March 2016]

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The Elders [to 19 March 2016]
http://theelders.org/news-media

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Opinion 16 March 2016 Ela Bhatt
Grassroots solutions: the most powerful tools to fight poverty and inequality
Ela Bhatt explains why the the poor and marginalised must be considered as both agents and the beneficiaries of change if the Sustainable Development Goals are to be achieved. First published in UNA-UK’s “SDGs: the people’s agenda” publication.

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News Lesley-Anne Knight 15 March 2016
Farewell from The Elders’ CEO
Lesley-Anne Knight reflects on her time as CEO of The Elders, celebrating its successes, and highlighting the challenges ahead.

END Fund [to 19 March 2016]

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END Fund [to 19 March 2016]
http://www.end.org/news
Press Releases and Major Announcements

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World’s Most Dangerous Journey: The Fecal-Oral Route
Mar 17, 2016
By: Warren Lancaster, Senior Vice President, Programs
The fecal oral route, not a journey to read about over a meal time, not romantic like stories of the ancient silk route, and not spectacular like driving along the Amalfi Coast of Italy. But it is a route taken every day by pathogens affecting millions of children from very low-income families. It’s the route followed by germs that are passed when people defecate in the open. The fecal matter is touched and contaminates food and water that is then ingested by other people.

Every year more than 700,000 children die from diarrhea. Millions more contract intestinal worms that cause poor health especially in school children. Yet washing hands with soap (the optimal word is soap) can interrupt this route, place a roadblock stopping the transmission of infection.

My work is to fight intestinal worms in children, to offer a parasite- free childhood. These worms are both vulnerable and resilient. Individually they can be killed by a very simply administered dose of deworming medicine once a year. But as a species, they are resilient because they survive in unhygienic environments and re-infect the same children within months. So we treat annually, children by the millions – to me a fantastic and valuable end in itself when I don’t have the resources to tackle the fecal oral route or the even wider geographical environment from which the disease caused by worms gets its name, geohelmithiasis.

But at the beginning of 2014, thanks to the Helmsley Charitable Trust, the END Fund had the opportunity to invest funds in a program to, in addition to treatment, provide hand washing facilities and tools to help clean the environment and dig pit latrines in 2,317 schools in three provinces in Angola. It seems a bit strange to try and communicate the excitement a development practitioner like me has when offered such an opportunity…

Gavi [to 19 March 2016]

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Gavi [to 19 March 2016]
http://www.gavialliance.org/library/news/press-releases/

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17 March 2016
Gavi welcomes new record low price for pneumococcal vaccine
GSK commitment is latest step towards improving access to PCV but challenges remain
17 March 2016 – A new commitment from GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) to provide pneumococcal vaccine at the lowest ever price was today welcomed by Dr Seth Berkley, CEO of Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance. The new price will be set at US$ 3.05 for doses being provided from 2017, a reduction of 10% from the current price of $3.40.

The commitment was announced by GSK’s Chief Executive, Sir Andrew Witty, at an event in Washington DC. The price will be available through the pilot Advance Market Commitment (AMC) to all Gavi countries and, for countries using the vaccine when they transition from Gavi support, it will continue to be available at this price for 10 years after transition.

“This price reduction is good news for everyone who wants to see children protected against the leading cause of pneumonia,” said Dr Berkley. “Sustainable pricing is one important objective of Gavi’s supply and procurement strategy, along with secure supply and product innovation. Healthy long term vaccine markets are critical to ensuring that the immunisation systems being built in developing countries today will benefit children for generations to come.”

Pneumococcal vaccines protect against pneumococcal disease, which is the leading cause of pneumonia. In 2015, pneumonia claimed the lives of 922,000 children under the age of five, accounting for around 15% of deaths worldwide of children in this age group, making it the largest vaccine-preventable killer of children.

Gavi began supporting developing countries to introduce pneumococcal vaccines in 2010. Since then, more than 50 countries have introduced the vaccine into their routine immunisation schedule with close to 50 million children now fully immunised against the disease…

Hilton Prize Coalition [to 19 March 2016]

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Hilton Prize Coalition [to 19 March 2016]
http://prizecoalition.charity.org/
An Alliance of Hilton Prize Recipients

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Part 4 of the Storytelling Series in Nepal: The Beauty of Our Journey
Posted March 18, 2016
Rasmi Dangol currently serves as the Accountability Assistant for HelpAge International Nepal, where she has worked since 2014. She has been an instrumental player in the Hilton Prize Coalition Storytelling Program in Nepal, supporting Steve Connors, the Master Storyteller, and working alongside the In-Country Coordination team. In this piece, Rasmi reflects on her experience as […]

CHS Alliance [to 19 March 2016]

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CHS Alliance [to 19 March 2016]
http://chsalliance.org/news-events/news

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15/03/2016
What makes an effective leadership team in a charity?
What are the characteristics of an outstanding leadership team? Charities are complex organisations that often work in challenging situations and rely heavily on their leadership teams to fulfil their mandates and missions. However, there isn’t a lot of documented research on senior leadership teams in charities.

The publication Building outstanding leadership teams – insights from charity chief executives, sheds light on the issue and key findings from it were shared by Compass Partnerships Director Mike Hudson at Agenda Consulting’s Third Sector Strategic People Conference in London last week..

The study sought to understand what it is that makes senior leadership teams effective by looking at the prevalence of 75 characteristics in the leadership teams of 100 large UK charities. These findings led Compass Partnerships to identify a number of key drivers of effective leadership teams.

Drivers of outstanding senior leadership teams:
:: Effective leadership of behaviour – this was defined as the leadership team modeling desired behaviour, acting as a team outside meetings, communicating well with managers, and managing stakeholder relations.
:: Great team working by valuing style and personality differences, maintaining a cohesive team, being open about mistakes and weaknesses, and good at compromising.
:: Effective team meetings characterised by listening to each other, using each other’s talent during meetings, following through agreed actions, taking good decisions.
:: Clear leadership of strategy and impact by tracking achievement of strategic objectives, focusing on strategic issues, focusing on achievement of impact, and bringing innovative and new ideas.
:: Investment in team development such as by days spent on working together better as a team, reviewing team performance, external support, and planning to improve team effectiveness. This was found to be the area that charities are currently not performing well in and need to improve…

EHLRA/R2HC [to 19 March 2016]

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EHLRA/R2HC [to 19 March 2016]
http://www.elrha.org/resource-hub/news/

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Published on 18/03/2016
Event – Innovating humanitarian action: more than just luck
21 April 2016, 16:00 – 17:30 Public event | Streamed live online Overseas Development Institute, 203 Blackfriars Road, London
ALNAP and ELRHA’s Humanitarian Innovation Fund’s new research is the first study to untangle how to innovate successfully in humanitarian action, and the upcoming edition of HPN’s Humanitarian Exchange magazine showcases a range of cutting edge initiatives. This event will bring together grassroots innovators and leading humanitarian officials, to discuss how to channel the momentum gathering behind humanitarian innovation and shape the future of the sector going into the World Humanitarian Summit – and beyond.

Professionals in Humanitarian Assistance and Protection (PHAP) [to 19 March 2016]

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Professionals in Humanitarian Assistance and Protection (PHAP) [to 19 March 2016]
https://phap.org/

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18 March 2016
Podcasts of consultations in support of the WHS now available
Over the past two years, PHAP has organized more than 30 live online events in support of the World Humanitarian Summit (WHS). These events have brought close to 5 000 participants in the live events and another 9 000 have already accessed recordings of them. To make the recordings of these..

Center for Global Development [to 19 March 2016]

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Center for Global Development [to 19 March 2016]
http://www.cgdev.org/page/press-center
Selected Press Releases, Blog Posts, Publications
Six Questions African Policymakers Must Answer Now
3/14/16
Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala
The “Africa rising” story of the past decade, fueled by 5 percent average annual growth, is in danger of faltering. To change the narrative, and — more importantly — the reality it describes, African policymakers must urgently answer these six questions.

ODI [to 19 March 2016]

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ODI [to 19 March 2016]
http://www.odi.org/media
Publications

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Shock responsive social protection systems research report
Bibliography and literature reviews | March 2016 | Francesca Bastagli, Simon Brook, Joanna Buckley, Cécile Cherrier, Jenny Congrave, Andrew Kardan, Simon Levine, Katie McIntosh, Clare O’Brien, Clara Richards, Gabrielle Smith and Zoë Scott.
A review of recent literature on the theory and practice of shock-responsive social protection initiatives and their effectiveness.

A study on organisational development
Research reports and studies | March 2016 | Jessica Mackenzie and Rebecca Gordon
This report explains what ‘organisational development’ is and provides good practice examples, frameworks and recommendations for getting started.

Innovating for pro-poor services: why politics matter
Research reports and studies | March 2016 | Nathaniel Mason; Clare Cummings; Julian Doczi
This report addresses how politics matter for innovations. How politically smart approaches can help deliver access to services.

World Economic Forum [to 19 March 2016]

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World Economic Forum [to 19 March 2016]
https://agenda.weforum.org/news/

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News 16 Mar 2016
Meet Africa’s Young Global Leaders Driving The Fourth Industrial Revolution
:: 12 men and women from Africa are among the 121 people, aged under 40, have been invited to join the Young Global Leaders (YGL) community of the World Economic Forum
:: New YGLs are at the forefront of the Fourth Industrial Revolution: one of the most powerful women in financial technology in Africa; an entrepreneur whose non-profit that builds mobile health units; and a woman who is one of the most pioneering tech voices in African.
:: The new class of YGLs show what the future of global leadership could be: more women, more leaders from emerging economies, more innovators from tech and the public sector.

Conrad N. Hilton Foundation [to 19 March 2016]

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Conrad N. Hilton Foundation [to 19 March 2016]
http://www.hiltonfoundation.org/news

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Our News
Cognitive Development Interventions Gain Momentum in Health Delivery Settings in East and Southern Africa
By Lisa Bohmer, March 17, 2016
Brain development is at its most rapid during the first 1,000 days of life, when early experiences fundamentally shape brain architecture and future potential. By age three, 85% of the brain architecture has already been built. Despite this, the concept that learning begins at birth has not yet caught on and the majority of early childhood development (ECD) programs focus on pre-school age children from age three and up. Fortunately, health systems provide an opportunity to reach the youngest children and their caregivers—beginning in pregnancy—with services that promote healthy growth and development. UNICEF and the World Health Organization (WHO) have developed a package for health systems that is designed to teach caregivers about responsive care and stimulation practices for their infants and young children, from birth through age two.

The package, called Care for Child Development (CCD), has been successfully implemented in both community and clinical settings. The Conrad N. Hilton Foundation provides support for training using this package given that skills building for parents and caregivers is a focus of our Children Affected by HIV and AIDS Strategic Initiative. We have partnered with organizations working in East and Southern Africa—including PATH, the Aga Khan Development Network and UNICEF—to initially pilot and (more recently) begin to scale-up this package…

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Our News
President and CEO Peter Laugharn Interviewed by Alliance Magazine
March 17, 2016
On March 11, our President and CEO Peter Laugharn was featured as part of an interview with Charles Keidan of Alliance Magazine.

IKEA Foundation [to 19 March 2016]

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IKEA Foundation [to 19 March 2016]
https://www.ikeafoundation.org/category/press-releases/

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March 15, 2016
IKEA Foundation gives grants worth €9.4 million to Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) and Save the Children to help children and families caught up in Syria conflict
As the conflict in Syria enters its fifth year, the IKEA Foundation has donated €9.4 million to help children and their families, both within Syria and in neighbouring countries. The money is supporting the lifesaving work of Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) and Save the Children…

Robert Wood Johnson Foundation [to 19 March 2016]

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Robert Wood Johnson Foundation [to 19 March 2016]
http://www.rwjf.org/en/about-rwjf/newsroom/news-releases.html

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March 16, 2016
County Health Rankings Show Stark Differences in Premature Death Rates
The 2016 County Health Rankings, an important tool for communities working to improve health, includes several new health-related measures including residential segregation, drug overdose deaths and insufficient sleep.

Study protocol – Clinical evaluation of dengue and identification of risk factors for severe disease: protocol for a multicentre study in 8 countries

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BMC Infectious Diseases
http://www.biomedcentral.com/bmcinfectdis/content
(Accessed 19 March 2016)

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Study protocol
Clinical evaluation of dengue and identification of risk factors for severe disease: protocol for a multicentre study in 8 countries
The burden of dengue continues to increase globally, with an estimated 100 million clinically apparent infections occurring each year.
Thomas Jaenisch, Dong Thi Hoai Tam, Nguyen Tan Thanh Kieu, Tran Van Ngoc, Nguyen Tran Nam, Nguyen Van Kinh, Sophie Yacoub, Ngoun Chanpheaktra, Varun Kumar, Lucy Lum Chai See, Jameela Sathar, Ernesto Pleités Sandoval, Gabriela Maria Marón Alfaro, Ida Safitri Laksono, Yodi Mahendradhata, Malabika Sarker…
BMC Infectious Diseases 2016 16:120
Published on: 11 March 2016

Reporting transparency: making the ethical mandate explicit

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BMC Medicine
http://www.biomedcentral.com/bmcmed/content
(Accessed 19 March 2016)

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Commentary
Open Access
Reporting transparency: making the ethical mandate explicit
Stuart G. Nicholls, Sinéad M. Langan, Eric I. Benchimol and David Moher
BMC Medicine201614:44
DOI: 10.1186/s12916-016-0587-5
Published: 16 March 2016
Abstract
Improving the transparency and quality of reporting in biomedical research is considered ethically important; yet, this is often based on practical reasons such as the facilitation of peer review. Surprisingly, there has been little explicit discussion regarding the ethical obligations that underpin reporting guidelines. In this commentary, we suggest a number of ethical drivers for the improved reporting of research. These ethical drivers relate to researcher integrity as well as to the benefits derived from improved reporting such as the fair use of resources, minimizing risk of harms, and maximizing benefits. Despite their undoubted benefit to reporting completeness, questions remain regarding the extent to which reporting guidelines can influence processes beyond publication, including researcher integrity or the uptake of scientific research findings into policy or practice. Thus, we consider investigation on the effects of reporting guidelines an important step in providing evidence of their benefits.