Health for Humanity Administrative Manager Laura Youngberg and Leadership Consultant Grant Peirce will facilitate a Workshop , Health for Humanity’s Experience Improving Baha’i-Inspired Development Project Outcomes, at The 2009 Baha’i Conference on Social and Economic Development, December 19-21, 2009, Orlando, Florida.  The workshop is scheduled for 2-4:30pm on Sunday, Dec. 20.

Many Baha’i-inspired social and economic development projects discover that technical skills and training are not enough to transform and empower a community’s progress and development.  Health for Humanity has found that Values-Based Leadership training helps individuals overcome these difficulties and allow social and economic development projects achieve maximum results.  This workshop will introduce participants to Health for Humanity and the organization’s experience with integrating a Values Based Leadership curriculum into a Blindness Prevention project in Mongolia.  Participants will then have the opportunity to explore how the project model can improve a variety of technical training and development projects using case studies. This workshop is aimed at participants who are currently involved in social and economic development activities and are interested in sharing their experiences and learning tools to improve their project results.

Reversing a downward trend, immunization rates are now at their highest ever and vaccine development worldwide is booming, according to a new assessment released today by the World Health Organization (WHO), UNICEF and the World Bank.

The State of the world’s vaccines and immunization reports that more infants are being immunized today than ever before – a record 106 million in 2008 – according to new data. At the same time, its authors are calling on donor nations to address a funding gap that leaves millions of children still at risk, particularly in the poorest nations and communities, where preventable diseases take their deadliest toll.  (Source: WHO/UNICEF/The World Bank news release)

Read the entire press release here.

Long-time Health for Humanity member Jim Ferguson recently completed the Portland Marathon and asked friends and family to sponsor his run for Health for Humanity.  Below is Jim just after the St. Johns Bridge approaching the mile 18 mark along the 26.2 mile course.  Way to go Jim!

Sponsorships, of a run, walk, or any kind of event, are a great way to raise awareness and funds for Health for Humanity.  For more information, or if you would like assistance in developing a sponsorship program for your special event, please contact Amy Puliafito, Development Coordinator at apuliafito@healthforhumanity.org.

Last March, industrial psychologist Grant Peirce submitted a letter of intent on behalf of Health for Humanity to the University of Chicago’s A New Science of Virtues grant competition along with almost 700 other scholars and scientists from around the world. The New Science of Virtues grant competition is a multidisciplinary research initiative that seeks contributions from individuals and from teams of investigators working within the humanities and the sciences and supports highly original, scholarly projects that demonstrate promise of a distinctive contribution to virtue research.

Health for Humanity was recently selected as one of only 40 finalists in the competition for its proposal to study the effects of values-based leadership and virtues development on medical training and capacity-building in Mongolia. The study, Enhancing the Effects of Technical Training in Building Medical Capacity: Values-based Leadership Training and Virtues Development, aims to examine impact of leadership training on medical service delivery at Health for Humanity’s partner hospitals in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia.   He will present his full proposal at the Science of Virtues Symposium in January where he will compete for one of the 20 awards of the competition.  More information on the grant can be found here: http://scienceofvirtues.org/Arete/ResearchGrants.aspx

Congratulations Grant and best of luck in January!