“South-South Learning on Social Protection“  is a new knowledge centre for social protection practitioners to exchange experiences across regions and countries. IPS has become a news partner of the initiative, contributing relevant news stories from across its global network. Social protection means policies and tools that help to protect the vulnerable including insurance, safety-nets and cash transfers.

The learning gateway has already featured IPS stories from Windhoek, Swaziland and Tshwane, South Africa as well as an article from the United Nations about how Brazilian social protection mechanisms have helped it to reach Millennium Development Goal one. The South-South focus of the gateway chimes with IPS’s own commitment to fostering South-South communication products and channels to accompany the new global geography of power. Read more »

Elena Madrazo Hegewisch, AECID Director, Mario Lubetkin, IPS Director General and Federico Mayor, IPS Chair.

More than sixty participants joined lively debates on the theme “Communication and Development: policies, networks and technologies”. The seminar was held 5 – 7 July in the University of Santander, Spain as part of a series of joint activities by the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID) and the global news agency IPS Inter Press Service in 2010.

The seminar gave the opportunity to different actors in the field of communication and development cooperation to exchange their experiences and create coordination channels to improve public communication policy. Read more »

A child gets a dose of polio vaccine in the city of Mingora in Swat district . Credit: Ashfaq Yusufzai

Ashfaq Yusufzai has won a 2009 Media Health Award in Pakistan in the category of “Best Reporter – International” for his story for IPS in November, “Polio Vaccination: One Hurdle Down, One More to Go”. The awards are a joint initiative of the Ministry of Health, UNICEF and WHO in Pakistan. Two thousand three hundred entries were judged by a five member jury. Read more »

The gender students from AIT

BANGKOK – IPS Asia-Pacific’s offices became a classroom twice in recent weeks as two classes of graduate students from the Asian Institute of Technology came to discuss issues of journalism, gender, environment as well as the media mindset.

On Mar. 30, a class of 16 graduate students in the gender and development studies module spent two hours at the IPS regional office in the Thai capital, with their professor, Babette Resurreccion. The students were from varied courses, backgrounds and countries, ranging from Nepal, Bangladesh, Vietnam and Nigeria. Read more »

Inter Press Service Asia-Pacific is pleased to announce the appointment of a new regional editor to manage the continent’s editorial services within the global development news agency, Ma. Theresa Bacalla joined the IPS news network in mid-August 2009. Read more »