“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 »

Eduardo Galeano. Credit: El Pais/Samuel Sanchez

The Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID) and the global news agency IPS – Inter Press Service concluded their High-Level meeting “Post-crisis world: the impact in developing countries and on the media” with a speech (in Spanish) from Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano, on the topic “Deadly sins of our upside down world”. The event took place on September 7th in Madrid.

AECID and IPS organized the meeting to analyse the 2008 – 2010 economic and financial crisis and its effects in developing countries from the perspective of the media, with a focus on generating new visions and proposals towards a more inclusive development. Read more »

Workshop overview

IPS Latin America organized a two-day training workshop for Central American journalists in Ciudad de Guatemala on 4-5 August, 2010, focused on the current challenges of Central American countries facing the food crisis and smallholder farmers’ response.

The workshop was part of the activities for “The role of smallholder farmers in response to the food crisis and as a tool to eradicate rural poverty: knowledge sharing to influence pro-poor policy formulation in Western and Central Africa and in Latin America and the Caribbean” small grant, funded by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD). Read more »

Mario Lubetkin, Enrique Iglesias, Juan Pablo de Laiglesia. Credit: Jesus Mendo/IPS.

In the framework of the recent European Union-Latin America/Caribbean Summit (EU-LAC), IPS – Inter Press Service and the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs organized a media roundtable in Madrid “Europe and Latin America, strategic allies in the global debate?”. The event was held in the head office of the Ibero-American General Secretariat (SEGIB) with the participation of governments, international organizations executives and journalists of both regions. Read more »

Almost 80 million smallholder farmers in Africa, supply about 80 percent of its food. In order for Africa to establish a prosperous and sustainable economic future, the voices of its farmers must be amplified.

To enable this, journalists from across the West Africa region attended a media workshop in Accra, Ghana, hosted by Inter Press Service IPS Africa on behalf of the International Fund for Agricultural Development.

The workshop aimed to build the capacity of local journalists and editors from West and Central Africa to gain the skills and knowledge they need to report on the food crisis and how it can be solved, particularly with the contribution of smallholder farmers. Read more »