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 Executive Director Letter
New Year LetterDear friends,
On behalf of the Goldin Institute board and staff, I wish you a Happy New Year! As we begin this new year, I would like to take this opportunity to reflect on the achievements and challenges of the past twelve months and outline our strategy for the year ahead. Thanks to the participation and support of colleagues like you from around the world, 2007 was clearly a momentous year of growth and action for the Goldin Institute.
In particular, we would like to highlight the following three achievements:
- Convening of the 2007 Global Forum on Child Soldiers: The use of child soldiers and young combatants in armed insurgencies, militias and resistance movements is a staggering and growing problem in regions as diverse as the Africa, Asia, the Middle East and South America. Well over 300,000 young people under the age of 18 are currently fighting in wars or have recently been demobilized. How can our communities help young combatants leave the fighting? How can former child soldiers receive the services and support they need to reintegrate into society? How can we work together at home and around the world to break this cycle of violence and prevent the exploitation of young people by armed groups and militias?
To explore and answer these questions, the Goldin Institute convened a global forum on the theme of Reintegration & Prevention: Breaking the Cycle of Violence for Ex-Combatants and Vulnerable Children and Youth. This unique gathering brought together teams of engaged leaders struggling to address these issues from over twenty cities in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brazil, Cuba, Colombia, DR Congo, El Salvador, Haiti, Israel, Kenya, Liberia, the Philippines, Rwanda, Somalia, Tanzania, Uganda and the United States. To learn more about the forum and its outcomes, please click here.
 - Inaugurating the Goldin Institute Online: As many of you already know through first-hand experience, the Goldin Institute Online now serves as an ongoing interactive platform for communication and collaboration for grassroots leaders across the globe. In fact, since the launch of this online forum in February, the site has been visited 32,738 times by people from 110 countries – from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe.
Through evaluations and discussions, we have learned that the Goldin Institute Online is used by participants as a way to learn about issues of common concern, connect with other grassroots leaders and share stories, tools and strategies through the interactive discussion board. In addition, over 75 people participated in the inaugural online course concerning reintegration and prevention for ex-combatants and vulnerable youth. This four-week course offered participants the opportunity to read key writings on the topic, write reflections on the course material and collaborate and discuss with others through the discussion board. To begin taking full advantage of this online forum, please click here to create an account.
- Understanding and Improving Microcredit: Since the inception of the Institute, people in our network have often requested assistance in understanding and utilizing innovative tools and approaches such as microcredit. In response to these needs and the growing debate that has been sparked the wake of the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize awarded to Muhammad Yunus and the Grameen Bank, we have launched a global project to understand and improve microcredit as a tool for poverty alleviation from the perspective of those who receive the loans.
Our strategy for bringing the voices of microcredit recipients into the discussion was simple: we decided to ask them. We adopted a strategy known as “oral testimony” which relies on extended semi-structured and unstructured interviews to let recipients tell their own stories in their own words, share their opinions and experiences and convey their own understandings of how microcredit has transformed the history of their lives and their village. In order to do this, we trained a group of villagers from a village in Northern Bangladesh, Arampur, to interview their neighbors about their experiences with microcredit. Using this approach, we heard what people had to say about microcredit on their own terms. I invite you to listen to the reflections of these interviewees and learn more about the project by clicking here.
In 2008 we plan to expand the Goldin Institute Online by offering additional courses and tools to enable our participants to communicate and collaborate. In particular, we are working to build an innovative program management tool and an improved directory and communications hub. We also plan to offer new online educational opportunities such as courses and seminars on strategic fundraising and conducting community-based oral testimony projects as a platform for building effective partnerships and community advocacy.
In addition to providing consultative services to participants in our network, we plan to build upon the pilot phase of the microcredit project by launching assessments in three to five different locations worldwide based on the groundbreaking analysis in Bangladesh. This work will culminate in the dissemination of key strategies to improve microcredit and the launching of new microcredit projects throughout the global network.
I invite you to join us in building on the momentum and success of 2007 as we move into the New Year.
In partnership and peace,
Travis Rejman
Executive Director |
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This is where the Support Information will go.
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Welcome to the Goldin Institute Online. This site or any portion of this site may not be reproduced, duplicated, copied, sold, resold, or otherwise exploited for any commercial purpose that is not expressly permitted by the Goldin Institute.
By using and participating in this web site you signify that you have read these terms and agree to be bound by and comply with them. If you do not agree to be bound by these terms, please promptly exit all sites. The Goldin Institute reserves the right to modify these terms at any time and will publish notice of any such modification online at this site or elsewhere online. By continuing to access a site after notice of such modifications, you signify your agreement to be bound by the modifications.
Terms of Use
You may use our site for lawful purposes only. You may not use our site to post, transmit or otherwise distribute unlawful material. Examples of unlawful material include, without limitation, threats of physical harm, defamatory statements, pornographic material, and copyrighted, trademarked and other proprietary material used without proper authorization. You may not attempt to use or distribute tools designed for compromising security or take any action to compromise the security of this site. Examples of these tools include but are not limited to password guessing programs, cracking tools or network probing tools. You may not "flood" or disrupt our web site through any means or process.
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Print Policy §
This Privacy Policy applies to the information collected on the web sites owned and/or operated by the Goldin Institute (i.e. www.goldininstitute.org). Please read this Privacy Policy carefully before using the Web Site or providing us with any personal information. By using the Web Site or providing us with personal information, you consent to our practices concerning the collection and use of your information.
Because our organization will continue to evolve, our policies may be revised on an intermittent basis. We reserve the right to change this Privacy Policy at any time and notify you by posting an updated version of the Privacy Policy on the Web Site. You should periodically check this page so that you are aware of what information we collect, how we use it, and under what circumstances we might disclose it. The amended Privacy Policy will apply without a specific notice of any change.
1. Maintaining privacy for your personal information is important to us.
We respect the importance of your privacy. You have a right to make your own choices about how your personal information is collected and used. We know that when you provide personal information to us you are showing your trust, and we take that seriously. Unless you consent otherwise, we will only collect and use your personal information as we explain below.
2. Collecting information about you.
Except as stated below, we will not collect or monitor any additional personal information about you without your consent:
- we collect information when you enter your personal information on our site, for example by providing your contact information;
- we use cookies to identify the IP addresses that access the Web Site; and
- if you contact us, we may also keep a record of that contact.
3. Our use of cookies.
Cookies are small data files that a website transfers to your computer's hard disk for record keeping purposes. Most web browsers are set to accept cookies. A cookie can contain information that includes a user ID. We use cookies to make your use of the Web Site and services as convenient as possible.
The only personal information a cookie can contain is information that you supply yourself. The "help" portion of the toolbar on most browsers will tell you how to prevent your browser from accepting new cookies, how to have the browser notify you when you receive a new cookie, or how to disable cookies altogether. However, if you disable cookies, you may not be able to take full advantage of the Web Site's services. For example, we may not be able to personalize the Web Site each time you visit.
4. Using and disclosing your personal information.
Our purpose in collecting information about you is to:
- provide you with information which interests you; and
- effectively communicate with you.
We will not use or disclose any information about you without your consent, unless we believe, correctly or not, that such disclosure is:
- required by law;
- necessary to fulfill the above purposes or otherwise to provide you with a service which you have requested; or
- necessary to protect the our rights or property or the rights, property or personal safety of another Web Site user or any member of the public.
In order to operate the Web Site, fulfill the purposes set out above or otherwise deliver a service, we may sometimes share your personal information with a service partner or a company affiliated with us. We will not otherwise disclose your personal information to other companies without your consent.
In the rare situation where your data would be transferred to a third party, we will require that this party agree to use your information only for the express purposes permitted by the Goldin Institute, will not maintain your data beyond the timeframe allotted by the Goldin Institute, will make only non-commercial use of the data and only contact you with our prior written approval.
5. When we will contact you.
We may contact you periodically using the information you provide to us in order to deliver information that you have chosen to receive. If you are receiving information from us and do not wish to receive this information any longer, you may remove your name from our contact list by e-mailing us at admin@goldininstitute.org and asking to be removed from our mailing list. Please allow 14 days for this request to be processed.
6. Changing the information we have about you.
If at any time you wish to change which information you choose to receive, please contact us by e-mailing us at admin@goldininstitute.org and we will amend this record.
7. Deleting an email address from our email list or stopping any further communications.
If you wish to have your email address removed from our contact list, please let us know by e-mailing us at admin@goldininstitute.org and we will take all reasonable steps to remove it, unless we need to keep it for legal reasons.
8. Storage and security of your personal information.
We try to do everything reasonable to keep secure any information that we hold about you and to keep this information accurate and up to date. Access to this information is restricted within our company to employees who have specific authorization. Since no data transmission over the Internet can be guaranteed to be totally secure, we do not promise that the information you provide to us will always be totally secure. We disclaim any responsibility for events arising from unauthorized access to your personal information.
9. Links to other web sites.
We provide links to web sites outside of the Web Site. These linked sites are not under our control, and we are not responsible for the conduct of companies linked to our Web Site. Before disclosing your personal information on any other web site, we advise you to examine the terms and conditions and privacy policy of those web sites.
10. Children's online privacy protection.
The Web Site is intended for use by adults only. No information should be submitted to or posted on the Web Site by users under 13 years of age without the consent of their parent or guardian.
11. What to do if you have a problem or question.
If we become aware of any ongoing concerns or problems with the Web Site, we will take these issues seriously and work to address these concerns. If you have any further queries relating to our Privacy Policy or if you have a problem or complaint, please contact us by e-mailing us at admin@goldininstitute.org.
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