New edition titles for development workers

If you work in a region where there has been periods of warfare, major displacement and/or huge repression, your workers have surely met people suffering from mental stress and other problems. Is this a good time to think of actively helping them, in a systematic and informed way? Our new manual Finding Mental Health after Conflict (28 pp. PDF) can guide you with this work. Two new Arabic titles: We now have Arabic language versions of An Introduction to Human Rights in the Middle East & North Africa – a Guide for NGOs (49 pp. PDF) as well as our popular title, A Guide to Fundraising (10 pp. PDF). For more, see our manuals and resources in Arabic Since our last announcement, we have also added a guest publication, the illustrated We can play and move: ideas to help disabled children learn to move through play .

How many of you are involved in the care of people at the end of their lives? They may be 80 or 18. They may have cancer or AIDS or pneumonia. You want to help them, and their carers, to make the last months easier. You want them to have a good standard of physical, mental and spiritual care, with pain relief and medication. The name for all of this is Palliative Care . There is a World Association for Palliative Care ( thewpca.org ). Now they are making their resources more available in more languages.

Here at Networklearning we have found another reason to like checklists. They are a great way of ensuring good training and improving the way professionals do their work. And now a checklist is saving lives. A study carried in eight hospitals across the world has found that using one during major operations cut deaths and complications by more than a third. It ensured that the surgical team checked that they had the right patient, checked that all the swabs and forceps were removed before the patient was sewn up, and so on. Has your organisation developed any checklists for your own workers? We would be very interested to hear about any improvements it has made. Source: news.bbc.co.uk

Help the Hospices has announced that applications are being accepted for the 2010 round of Wolfson international bursaries. This grant programme seeks to increase and improve the provision of palliative care in resource-poor Commonwealth countries.

Take a look at www.translate.google.com . This is a translation service provided by a computer and so it is not perfect. The question you want to ask is, can you use it despite its limitations?

Big business, with its pursuit of profit at all costs, creates some huge problems in society. Such as poisoned environments, factories run with slave labour… and the process of globalisation is spreading them everywhere. So what can the little person do? Just this: make a conscious choice not to participate – and actively search out better alternatives. Because while the world is awash with stuff we don’t need, we definitely do need more ethical entrepreneurs. And, at the same time, conscious consumers. A nice example is Sanchi Bags, recently started up in India with the vision to promote the use of eco-friendly products and empower women. The idea is that the fashionable bags – including ones for laptops and tablets – will attract youth into the “go green” movement and become trendsetters across generations. The bags are made from locally-sourced biodegradable material and, most importantly, manufactured in their own households by suburban and rural woman homemakers. You can connect with Sanchi via their facebook page www.facebook.com/sanchibags