23 Jan 2009 News and stories

AID Foundation joins Clinton Global Initiative

Auke Idzenga, one of the founders of AIDFI was personally invited to attend the Clinton Global Initiatives-Asia held in Hong Kong from December 2-3, 2008.

Article By Mike Pepler, Ashden UK Awards Manager originally published on The Ashden Website

President Clinton travelled to Hong Kong to join several hundred Asian leaders from a wide variety of backgrounds to further strengthen social and global responsibility in Asia, and move toward the benefits achieved through collaboration.

This meeting was similar in format to the Annual Meetings in New York. The meeting focused on three primary areas of discussion: education, energy & climate change, and public health. As an integral part of membership, each CGI Asia participant made a Commitment to Action—a new, specific, and measurable initiative that addresses a social, economic, or environmental problem of the member’s choosing.

Supplying Water to the Uplands - Spreading the Technology
The Alternative Indigenous Development Inc. (AIDFI) commits to a two-year program that would establish self-sustaining ram pump manufacturing and installation capacity in Colombia, Indonesia and Madagascar, and scale-up its existing program of hydraulic ram pump installations in upland communities in the Philippines. The program seeks to address the problem of a lack of easy access to water in rural communities in these countries. Lack of water leads to poor hygiene and sanitation, and limits agricultural activities. In addition to providing access to water, the program will establish a self-sustaining manufacturing, installation and maintenance capacity in each of these countries.

This commitment program would follow the technology transfer approach that AIDFI implemented with good effect in Afghanistan. It will be rolled out sequentially across the specified countries to allow learning from each country to be incorporated in subsequent activities. In addition, to scale up its existing operations in the Philippines, AIDFI will provide training and guidance of installation teams from other provinces, hold conferences for installation teams to share their knowledge and experience between communities and monitor the work of the installation teams to maintain quality standards.

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