Partners & affiliates
Universe…
Uni= One and Verse = Song
One song… billions of unique and individual tones, uniting as one in peaceful harmony… The challenges we face cannot be addressed by one organization… or one person… or one country… we are called to work together…
United Nations
The Earth Child Institute has worked in cooperation and collaboration with the United Nations Department of Public Information Global Teaching and Learning Project (Cyberschoolbus) as well as other UN organizations and agencies for more than 8 years.
Working closely with the United Nations Interagency Committee on the Decade of Education for Sustainable Development, Donna Goodman will be moderating a special session at the UNESCO World Conference on Education for Sustainable Development in Bonn, Germany on 1 April 2009 entitled ‘The United Nations and ESD: Walking the Talk’
United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF)
Earthchild Insitute founder/executive director was previously employed with UNICEF as a “Programme Advisor” working for UNICEF for four years, from 2004-2008. For two years, her focus was on Water, Environment and Sanitation for Schools and the participation of children and young people in the sector and the second two years were spent on development of a joint strategy on “Children and Environment” between UNICEF and UNEP (United Nations Environment Programme), Climate change and environmental education.
The Earthchild Institute continues to work closely with UNICEF supporting development of an Environmental Education Resource Pack (EERP) for Child-friendly Schools, a tool which will support countries in strengthening children’s knowledge, skills, attitudes and ability to adapt to a changing physical environment, while providing a mechanism to promote and support the use of facilities-based environmental solutions.
United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)
Our work on climate change is intended to be and designed as a programmatic response to the UNFCCC New Delhi Work Programme. Further, we are working closely with UNFCCC as well as with FAO, CarboSchools and UNESCO as facilitator for a workshop entitled ‘Strengthening the International Response to Climate Change’ at the World Conference on Education for Sustainable Development in Bonn, Germany, 31 March-2 April 2009
The Youth and United Nations Global Alliance (YUNGA)
is a relatively new initiative intended to facilitate collaboration between UN agencies and other organizations working with children and young people (such as schools, youth and civil society groups, NGOs and government institutions). The objective is to create a gateway to facilitate the engagement of young people in activities of key environmental and social concern at the local and international level. This mutual partnership will support and promote coordinated efforts to achieve a number of mutual goals, including: respecting the environment, human rights, sustainable development, gender equality, education, health working for peace and creating a better world. The Earthchild Institute is pleased to be one of the founding NGO member of the YUNGA initiative and looks forward to supporting activities to meet our mutual goals. Read our partnership letter in pdf format.
Earthchild Institute’s programmatic hub
brings together a network of extraordinary NGOs working in different countries all over the world delivering water, energy and adaptation programmes and services to children and their families. Our goal is to support these NGOs to facilitate sharing of best practices and lessons learned between themselves; provide networking and policy guidance; and to raise awareness to the effectiveness of their programmes to potential donors and partners. All members of the network are engaged in action-research, capacity building, field-testing and consideration for ‘scaling up’ of their programmes from the start.
House of the Children
honors global cultures by providing sustainable water, sanitation, health and education programs that raise the quality of life of children and adults in context to cultural and environmental needs. Their goal is to support development of healthy, educated, culturally aware children and adults that prosper in their natural environment through communal, low-tech, clean water and sanitation systems that are sustainable, and function in harmony with the environment.
A Single Drop Water PODS
(People Offering Deliverable Services) Sustainability Program creates self-reliant community-based water organizations (PODS) that can assess their needs, design and plan a WASH program (not just a project), implement an appropriate technology as a micro-business, which can create a livelihood and self-fund its own community development. This comprehensive program helps the PODS design their own water strategy from start to finish, ensuring community ownership and fostering local expertise. The focus is to create demand and facilitate good governance to ensure sustainability. Click here for more information about A Single Drop’s international initiative.
Global Missions Services (GMS) in Kenya
The goal of GMS is to inspire children and young people to get involved on many different levels of awareness against harmful cultural practices through life skills trainings held every 3 months during the school holidays, and eventually holding a rite of passage graduation ceremony in December, running parallel with the traditional circumcision season so that the girls graduate into womanhood, and the community identified and trained makes a public proclamation banning the practice in their village. We have done this for 3 years now, and over 700 girls have graduated through the process. One element of this process is to empower participants and graduates to ensure safe and adequate water, environment and sanitation practices and a programme for planting one tree per child per year at local schools. The GMS approach is participatory and works towards strengthening a girl’s critical thinking in a challenging world.
Tamasha, Centre for Youth Development in Tanzania
Tamasha’s mission is to provide a critical youth perspective on all aspects of development and lobby for the inclusion of adolescents and young people as a whole and the most marginalised groups of young people in particular.
Jeunes Volontaires pour l’Environnement (JVE) in Togo
JVE works with young people and at policy level addressing the critically important energy and water needs in Togo. They are currently taking action to address the social conflicts and negative impacts of hydroelectric facilities, including consideration for the disappearing of rivers. They are working with the nations of the Worldwide Commission of Dams (CMB), to examining the impact of the big dams and to assess available options in relation to sustainable access to water and energy in rural areas.
Working with faith-based organizations
Parlament of World Religions
The Council for a Parliament of the World’s Religions (CPWR) was created to cultivate harmony among the world’s religious and spiritual communities and foster their engagement with the world and its guiding institutions in order to achieve a just, peaceful and sustainable world.
Earthchild Institute was pleased to support the 2004 CPWR as a consulting expert on world water issues, both at a pre-summit workshop in Jerusalem, February 2004, focusing on themes of water and confict resolution and at the Montserrat meeting of World Religious Leaders in July of 2004. We look forward to supporting the 2009 Parliament in Melbourne Australia.
