Articles by Theme
To make it easier to find information related to specific development themes, SDIA has created 7 categories for sorting articles to help you find what you are looking for. The themes correspond to the programme areas that SDIA members work in:
Education and Child Development
Community Health and Well-being
Community Development and Sustainable Livelihoods
Protecting the Environment
Human Rights
Development Issues
Peace Building
We invite you to submit articles about your work that you think would be useful to other practitioners. Send to info@susiladharma.org.
Notes from the Field #1:
An initial study of the medical lore and practices of extremely poor people in Chennai, India. In spite of the fact that they live in a modern country where the highest level of medical care is available, these people cannot access it.
Download attachment(s):
[ nff1_ccdSlumMedecine-2007-04.pdf ]
Notes from the Field #2
Our main focus is on supporting the government bottom-up participatory planning mechanism and process. With this approach we think we can achieve meaningful and lasting development solutions.
Download attachment(s):
[ nff2_sustDev2007-07.pdf ]
Notes from the Field #3
The Human Rights Program trains new teachers in human rights education.
Download attachment(s):
[ nff3-0712-humanrights-email.pdf ]
Notes from the Field #4:
Charlotte Ndona and the Susila Dharma DR Congo team studied the forces that shape the lives of women in seven villages in the Democratic Republic of Congo. These included the constraints put on them by a lack of education, early and frequent pregnancy and the long distance each one has to walk to to carry water, food and firewood back to their families every day. They studied the social pressures on, the cultural economic situation and legal status of, and the choices available to these women.
Download PDF version:
French |
English
Download attachment(s):
[ SDIA-Notes4_gender.study_2008-02-fr.pdf ]
[ SDIA-Notes4_gender-study_2008-02.pdf ]
Participatory Rural Analysis (PRA) is a method for empowering rural or other low tech communities by giving them the tools to analyze their own communities. Such analysis is often much more accurate and insightful than that done by outside professionals from the academic world. The process of analysis also provides local villages and other communities with the basis they need to interact effectively with government and other outside business and institutional organisations.
Mithra Foundation's Annual Report for the years 2006 through 2007.
Download attachment(s):
[ mithraAR-2007.pdf ]
[ mithraAR-accounts-2006-2007.xls ]
2007 Annual Report from Albadi Orphanage and School Project in D.R. Congo.
Download attachment(s):
[ albadiAR-2007.pdf ]
Mathilde Dybowsky spent five weeks volunteering at Asociación Vivir in Ecuador during the summer of 2007.
The Centre for Culture and Development received 1350 GDP from SD Britain for the construction of the building of multi-purpose hall for a supplementary coaching centre Children at Kaligrammam.
Download attachment(s):
[ ccd_constructionReport-2007.pdf ]
Supported by SD Norway, this one week program in a village near Madurai, India, was designed so that children had an opportunity to express themselves freely and genuinely. Here is the report of the camp.
Download attachment(s):
[ ccd_summerCamp-2007.pdf ]
2007 Report on the Colegio Amanecer Nuestra Señora de Fatima in Colombia.
Amanecer Foundation was created in September 1991. Its objectives include: developing educational and social programmes which encourage a balance between a human being’s interior and exterior contents.
In the spring of 2007, Olvia Resksodipoetro of Yayasan Usaha Mulia (YUM) and several others took a trip to Kalimantan where they visited a number of SD related projects.
Download attachment(s):
[ kalTrip_2007.pdf ]
By Katherine Carré, 11 April 2007
As representative of SDIA/WSA to the UN Geneva, Kathrine Carré attended some of the meetings of the Fourth Session of the Human Rights Council (HRC), and has produced a summary of events and meetings.
Illène Pevec, founder of A Child's Garden of Peace (Brazil) reports on events in June 2007.
by Katherine Carré, June 20, 2007
The UN Human Rights Council held its fifth session in Geneva from 11th to 18th June 2007 and has successfully survived its year of transformation and institution building, but not without pains. Only a few thematic reports were presented, amongst which the Right to Food. The UN Special Rapporteur on Food will be one of the speakers at the Forum in Geneva later this month which two SD people will attend.
India now claims superpower status as a nuclear weapons state and nearly double-digit economic growth. In contrast to these signs of progress we have the dubious distinction of being on the wrong side of other indicators of human development—maternal mortality, female infanticide and foeticide, and deaths due to preventable diseases, to name several. India’s progress is uneven: while she is developing world-class technology and services; she also has has the world’s largest number of poor and illiterate people. For many, freedom—in its true sense—is yet to dawn. For these people, the struggle continues.
Professor Patrice Brodeur (University of Montreal) attended the UN Meeting on Interreligious and Intercultural Dialogues October 2007 in New York.
Download attachment(s):
[ un_interrel_intercult_Panels.pdf ]
[ un_interrel_intercult_provisionalProgramme.pdf ]
[ un_interrel_intercult_ConceptNote.pdf ]
A comprehensive, illustrated guide for activists, community leaders, development workers, and health promoters with examples, "how-to" plans, and background information on a wide range of environmental issues affecting people in both village and urban settings.
Download attachment(s):
[ entrelazos-informeDeMiembros-2008.pdf ]
Anisha has received a sizable grant to help marginalized farmers in a region south of Bangalore, India to maintain a place in the changing Indian economy.
To make progress towards poverty reduction and sustainable
development we must understand how local, regional and
international decision-making serve the people. The Governance and Development project explored grassroots
development initiatives and how they can generate more inclusive and
participatory decision-making processes as well as governance structures and
mechanisms.
The Belgrade Marathon has now joined in the partnership for the “School without Violence“. The slogan of this year’s marathon is “19th Belgrade Banca Intesa Marathon – for School without Violence“. …International sports legend Carl Lewis will also join the campaign. He will be a special guest and promoter at the fundraising cocktail party for the corporate sector
The “School without Violence” is a comprehensive program to educate children, teachers, parents and the broader community in Serbia about the ongoing problem of intolerance, violence and harassment at schools in Serbia. The problem of violence among children is not a new one in Serbia. But for far too long it has been neglected and allowed to exist on the periphery of the national consciousness. The goals of this new UNICEF project are multifold: to bring the problem of bullying and violence in school into the daylight; to raise the consciousness of parents and community members regarding the right of every child to feel secure at school; to make a protective network within all schools; to connect this network with outside services and resources, and to preventively respond before the threat of serious incidents escalates.
Initiatives in post-communist states often focus on bolstering the private sector or the state, ignoring organizations that combine for-profit activities with social aims. This report suggests ways to promote social enterprises, to make the legal and political environments more favourable, to support social enterprises, and to provide ‘seed money’ and small grants to sustain social enterprise.
Participants from the Balkan countries, dedicated to theatre, and to the social and cultural fabric of Bosnian society, took part in a conference called “Mask, Object, Puppet: A Powerful Means of Theatrical Expression. Erica Sapir, of Puppeteers Without Borders gave a presentation called, “Using puppetry in education with special emphasis on Non Violent Communication.”
High level conference, sponsored by the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO). A fact-sheet created by Myra Margolin and Solen Gratiet.
Download attachment(s):
[ faoFactsheet-2008-08.pdf ]
At the Pan-American Gathering in Amanecer, Colombia, a Subud Educators' Workshop was held on July 27 and 28, 2008.
Raphael Bate, chair of SD France, attended the Human Rights Conference in Paris in September, 2008.
Katherine Carré's report on the Ninth Session of the Human Rights Council meeting in September 2008.
On the day of the celebration of the Aïd el Fitr (Idul Fitri), very
strong flooding took place in all the towns of the valley of the oued
(river) Mzab, of which Ghardaïa is the capital city, at around 600 km
south of Algiers in the middle of the Sahara desert.
Le jour de la fête de l'Aïd el Fitr (Idul Fitri), de très fortes
inondations ont eu lieu dans toutes les villes de la vallée de l'oued
Mzab, dont la capitale est Ghardaïa, à environ 600 km au sud d'Alger.
“…discussions centered around notions of
resilience… It was not always clear what this meant or looked like. [As if] disaster events are
in some way inevitable… and that
the way to respond to disaster is to find a way to “bounce back.” There
is an assumption that disasters, themselves, are politically
neutral events.”
Capacity development is the process through which individuals, organizations and societies obtain, strengthen and maintain the capability to achieve their own development objectives. The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) helps people to access the knowledge, experience and resources they need to build better lives.
Alexandra Woodward recently attended a meeting of the UNICEF NGO Committee in New York. She had a chance to present Susila Dharma work with children — in particular ICDP — and to make contacts with other organisations and working groups active on specific issues, such as children without parents.
In her article on the 47th UN Session of the Commission on Social Development in New York, Myra Margolin deftly pulls together definitions to clarify our understanding of social integration, what she learned from this meeting, her observations of the UN processes and her experience as a Subud member.
Kalimantan BCU School has started building two new classrooms. The existing classrooms around the latihan hall can only hold a maximum
12 pupils with limited space and the school had reached full capacity
with 55 students. The school has grown from 36 pupils in mid-2008 to 55 now. Four new
classrooms are needed to help us increase our student body to 96 pupils, which is the
financial break-even point…
In January 2009 Lusijah Marx, Luther Schutz, and Wendy Neal traveled to the South African township of Khayelitsha to learn from the experience of Doctors without Borders in creating the most effective and efficient use of human resources to deliver quality health care to empoverished victims of HIV/AIDS
Between the 16th and 27th March 2009, Solen Lees Gratiet attended the
Advanced Geneva Training Course in Human Rights Law and Advocacy at the
International Service for Human Rights. Here is her report of that experience.
Katherine Carré reports on a UN review of progress in combating racism since the UN Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance held in Durban, South Africa, in 2001.
Amalia Rasheed of Spain, reports on the UN-HRC session in Geneva on Freedom of Religion or Belief, held March 12, 2009.
Amalia Rasheed of Spain reports on the UN-HRC session held in Geneva on the Right to Food.
Amalia Rasheed of Spain reports on the UN Human Rights Council sessions in Geneva on The Rights of the Child, March 2009.
All of the students at the Albadi School passed the national exams and a new Savings and Loan Co-operative has just been started.
“…[in] a room full of land mine accident survivors, it came back to me: The
long mournful Call to Prayer from my Subud brother Salahin Thom, ‘Allahu Akbar.’
“…We had our
hands full. Yet in that moment … Salahin’s voice awoke a profound
sense of compassion, I prayed and vowed to find a way to help.”
…a workshop at the Congress called “Sharing Our Acts of Caring: Susila
Dharma in Our Daily Lives”. Attendees reported examples of their own
personal volunteer work and discussed the significance of this work in
their lives…
Yodigo is innovative new multimedia software that aims to deliver literacy fast in settings that are challenged by resource requirements. It is unique in its use of video and Flash design elements that make learning fun, its game-like reward system, and the fact that it can be delivered online or offline.
Oliver Zeilke had the opportunity to test this system at a government school of poor rural children near Madurai in Southern India. Here are some excerpts from his journal.
Katherine Carré reports on a Panel Discussion in the United Nations Human Rights Council Plenary.
Mardiyah Tarantino reports on the United Nations Social Forum, a unique space for open and interactive dialogue between the representatives of Member States, civil society, including grass-roots organizations, and intergovernmental organizations on issues linked with the national and international environment needed for the promotion of the enjoyment of all human rights by all.
Solen Lees Gratiet visits Vida Plena in Paraguay