MDI-NH Special Offerings
Community Economic Development is a holistic way of fostering sustainable development at the grassroots within neighborhoods, cities, rural areas, and across the globe. The half day Opening Session on Monday June 8th will bring into focus why we are motivated to do development work and some of the core principles and practices of creating community based and owned initiatives to fight poverty and build equity. Participants from all three Knowledge Tracks will explore what CED work is already happening in the communities where they work and how we can build a local and region-wide practice for Community Economic Development.
We are living in unprecedented times where change is not only a political slogan but is an inevitable consequence of human development which has raged at an unsustainable pace for more than a century. While the first world deals with scaling down and urgent actions to stem carbon emissions much of the developing world still reaches for the golden ring of economic progress. There is no question that moving forward as a species will take a new way of thinking about how we use energy, how we consume, how we plan or fail to plan our growth, where we are going in a world where barriers of time, space, race, country and tribe are being transformed. How will we get there? Are environmental collapse and a world dissected by petty wars over land and resources, religion and political ideology inevitable? What role will grassroots community-based economic development play in making the shift the world needs for its survival? During this half day session we will explore these issues and set the tone for how we will look at development from many angles in the courses in which we have enrolled over the two week of the MDI-NH.
John de Wit is the co-founder and Managing Director of the Small Enterprise Foundation, SEF, a South African microfinance NGO committed to the alleviation of poverty. SEF currently serves 55,000 clients, 99% of whom are women. In the field of microcredit SEF has gained a world-wide reputation for its dedication to reaching the very poor, those who live below half the national poverty line, and ensuring positive impact. SEF’s poverty targeting tool, Participatory Wealth Ranking, was one of the first of two such tools adopted by the Microcredit Summit Campaign.
SEF has been a recipient of the Grameen Foundation Pioneer Award, the International Centre for Research on Women Innovation Award, as well as CGAP Financial Transparency Awards. In 2008 SEF became the first winner of the Common Wealth Business Council – African Business award in the category “Leader in Social Innovation”.
Mr de Wit has served as a member of the Policy Advisory Group of CGAP, the Consultative Group to Assist the Poorest and as a trustee of ChoiCe, a South African health sector NGO which focuses on home-based care for people living with HIV/AIDS and TB.
IMAGE is a two part community-based intervention that works in partnership with the Small Enterprise foundation, SEF. IMAGE delivers a 12 to 15 months gender and HIV training curriculum known as Sisters For Life’s, SFL. This training is divided into two phases with the purpose of improving women’s economic wellbeing and independence, reduce vulnerability to HIV and gender-based violence (GBV) and to foster community mobilization activities to address the key drivers of the HIV pandemic.