The five small community based initiatives are well underway, with each chosen project manager achieving great progress in raising awareness and conducting training in governance and leadership issues, for their communities. To read more about each initiative, please click here.
The blanket of volcanic ash paralysing much of Western Europe highlights the reality that effective Disaster Risk Management (DRM) is still very much required globally in both advanced and developing economies.
In Australia the need to continually update DRM lessons, procedures and community awareness, was highlighted both in the Victorian Bushfires Royal Commission’s Interim Report last August, and the unfolding issues which continue to emerge during ongoing proceedings.
The Foundation for Development Cooperation (FDC) – www.fdc.org.au , in conjunction with the CBM-Nossal Institute Partnership for Disability Inclusive Development, will be facilitating a four day DRM workshop in Melbourne from the 11-14th May.
This practical workshop will look at the key range of parameters usually experienced throughout the Disaster Risk Management Cycle (see diagram), with a strong emphasis being placed on both Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) and Recovery initiatives.
Case studies will be drawn from both overseas and Australia, these focussing in on the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami; the 2008 Myanmar/Burma Cyclone Nargis; the 2009 Victorian Bushfires; and the 2010 Haiti Earthquake.
The workshop includes a one day field visit to the some of the Black Saturday bushfire-affected areas to the north of Melbourne, where there will be interaction with both affected community members, and involved local government officials.
This workshop is designed for DRM practitioners, who work either in Australia or overseas, from the not-for profit; government; and private sectors; as well as for returned volunteers and otherwise interested individuals.
The workshop, when accompanied by the optional assignment, is accredited at postgraduate level, for otherwise eligible participants, at five Australian Universities offering off-campus courses in Development Studies, Emergency Management, and International Health.
The workshop will be facilitated by the FDC Senior Training and DRM Coordinator, Mr Chris Piper, assisted by CBM-Nossal staff and other experienced practitioners.
For details of the workshop brochure, this including the optional assignment (see page 4 of the brochure), please follow the link below.
http://www.fdc.org.au/files/training-events/Melbourne%20DRM%202010.pdf
For more information on the DRM workshop, please contact:
Mr Chris Piper, FDC Senior Training & DRM Coordinator, on + 61 (0)41 2497317 or chrispiper@fdc.org.au
For DRM workshop registration, please contact:
Ms Sherry Chen, FDC Administrative Officer, on + 61 (0)7 32172924 or sherrychen@fdc.org.au
The Competition winners and respective prizes are:
• 1st Place (AUD $ 1500) Fitsum Woldegiorgis for his paper on financial inclusion.
• 2nd Place (AUD$ 1000) Coletta Boehl for her paper on renewable energy.
• 3rd Place (AUD$ 500) Arthur Alla for his paper on social enterprises.
Mr. Craig Wilson, FDC’s executive director presented the prizes to the winners at a ceremony at the University of Queensland on March 19th, 2010.
FDC and UQ were satisfied with the quality of the entries. In assessing the winning essays, Dr. Fabrizio Carmignani said “All in all, we have here three very good essays. All of them deal with important issues, all of them provide the reader with stimulating arguments, all of them denote that the authors have a deep interest in the subject and a good understanding of broad development themes. All of them would deserve the top prize, in one respect or another”.
The Foundation for Development Cooperation is an independent, not-for-profit international development organisation. Through alliances and partnerships, FDC undertakes a range of initiatives which seek to improve the lives of poor people in developing countries.
During January, The Foundation for Development Cooperation (FDC) released the latest version of the FDC Briefing Note entitled: Financial Services Models in Papua New Guinea: Increasing Access to Finance in Rural Areas. A copy of this issues is available here.
The Foundation for Development Cooperation (FDC) has recently been contracted to undertake the second phase of UNIFEM Pacific’s Partnerships to Improve Markets project in Fiji, which will run from January to May 2010. This project seeks to improve the social, economic and physical conditions of women market vendors and to encourage local governments and other bodies tasked with managing markets to adopt a gender responsive approach to marketplace planning, operations and governance. More…
In December, the Pacific Renewable Energy and Microfinance (PREM) project trained Microfinance Institutions on the important role they play in reducing Pacific fossil fuel dependence. The training, undertaken by The Foundation for Development Cooperation (FDC) is just one part of the PREM project that aims to develop innovative loan products that support financing of renewable and energy efficiency technology in the Pacific. The project, funded by Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Partnership (REEEP), works with Microfinance Institutions in Fiji, Samoa and Vanuatu to remove barriers to renewable energy and energy efficiency uptake in the Pacific. REEEP is an international multi-stakeholder partnership aiming to accelerate the market for renewable energy and energy efficiency. More…
11 – 12 January 2010
BEI Conference Room, Dhaka, Bangladesh
The Bangladesh Enterprise Institute (BEI) in association with The Foundation for Development Cooperation (FDC) based in Australia and Libra Advisory Group based in UK is going to organise a two days Project workshop on Bangladesh Social Enterprise Project (BSEP), supported by the British Government’s Department for International Development (DFID) to be held on Monday, January 11 and Tuesday, January 12 from 9:30AM to 4:30PM at the BEI conference room (House 20, Road 05, Gulshan 01, Dhaka). A Policy Seminar on Promoting Social Enterprise Development in Bangladesh: BSEP Outcomes will also be held on Tuesday, January 12 at the Grand Ball Room, Dhaka Sheraton Hotel from 7:00 P.M. to 8:30 P.M. followed by dinner. A copy of the program is available here. More…
The Foundation for Development Cooperation (FDC) and Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) have joined efforts to convene a blue-ribbon Independent Task Force. The Task Force: a combination of CEO-level individuals from a cross-section of Australia’s leading resource sector companies and PEAK organisations – will focus on assessing the role, influence and impact of Australian resource sector companies on international development issues in the developing countries where they operate. More…
Following their training in the BGLP course materials, and based on their excellent project designs, 6 women from BGLP have now become project managers in their own right. Each of the initiatives have been given USD $5,000 in funding. We look forward to seeing some great results come from each of these projects. Well done ladies! More…
Providing greater access to finance, especially in rural areas, and improving financial solutions offered to the unbanked, has been a hot topic for many years already. In July 2009, FDC has been contracted by the Porgera Environmental Advisory Komiti (PEAK) to conduct a Business Models for Financial Services (BMFS) assessment. The objective of the BMFS assessment was to document and evaluate business models for financial services available in Papua New Guinea and beyond in order to make recommendations to PEAK and the Porgera Joint Venture (PJV) regarding potential actions that could improve the access to financial services for the currently unbanked population in Porgera Valley. The information presented in the final paper, submitted in November 2009, has been gathered from both secondary (i.e. desktop research) and primary (i.e. one-on-one meetings and interviews with various stakeholders) sources. The final implementation strategy recommended was based on two options, a “bottom-up†and “top-down†approaches, which could be implemented jointly or seperately. The “bottom-up†approach aims to empower the communities by developing and strengthening existing community groups or associations by providing them with i) a range of necessary financial services and technical assistance to the local communities, especially a means for saving and depositing money and ii) investment options to support the sustainable development of the community. The “top-down†approach aims to maximise the outreach of financial services to the unbanked in Porgera through a mobile phone banking model, based on the development of a solid partnership structure.