Amsterdam, August 10-12, 2009

Information available in Spanish only:

Se ha celebrado en este mes de agosto el V Congreso Mundial de las Familias, que constituye la mayor y más plural reunión de asociaciones dedicadas a la promoción de la familia en todo el mundo. Sesenta y tres países de los cinco continentes han estado representados por casi mil participantes, que se dieron cita en el Centro de congresos RAI de Amsterdam. Más de tres mil siguieron por internet el Congreso. El título de esta edición ha sido “La Familia: Más que la Suma de sus Partes”.

Click here to read entire article in Spanish.

Nairobi, Kenya, May, 2007.

Goal: save 200,000 children from infection by 2010.

The African Family Life Federation / AFLF, a coalition of 21 organizations from as many countries, has adopted the Alive to the World / AW program, recognizing its potential for preventing the spread of HIV-AIDS.

They want to reawaken in young people traditional African values such as self-respect, friendship, optimism, and a longing to be grounded in an orderly family and society. Only if they embrace a broad system of values and virtues when they are children will they realize that fidelity in marriage, and sexual abstinence beforehand, make sense, are attainable, and can save them from HIV-AIDS when they are adolescents. The goal is to reach 200,000 children, ages 8-12, in 8 countries in the first 3 years of the project.

In May of 2007, 10 educational experts from 8 countries worked in Narirobi, Kenya, for 10 days with Christine Vollmer, the creator of VL, to adapt the program’s images and texts to the African context. One well-known aspect of the local reality is that some matters of sexuality must be introduced at a relatively early age.

Alliance for the Family / AFF will train several dozen African educators in the nuances of VL, which has been shown to be successful in schools throughout Latin America. In turn, the Africans will train hundreds of school teachers. The project will include impact evaluations similar to those taking place in Mexico, Peru, and Venezuela. AFLF intends to use them to engage academics and the public in on-going discussions about the relationships between traditional values, stable families, and health.

ISTEC and Alliance for the Family / AFF recently signed an MOU to catalyze social responsibility and trust throughout academia, government, civil society and the private sector. Through this MOU, ISTEC and AFF will strive to strengthen education and training through the application of information technology creating an amiable environment for ISTEC members to work on social projects.

ISTEC and AFF will work to jointly to develop educational activities so as to strengthen the actions of the other, as stated by Dr. Ramiro Jordan : “We feel that it is our duty to pursue social responsible partnerships and encourage the same in the region. This MOU will position ISTEC as a new leader in social responsibility and will bring much needed knowledge to the region. We look forward to an exciting and engaging partnership which will take the region in a positive and sustainable direction”.

For more information on this alliance contact ISTEC's Executive Office This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

Alliance for the Family receives a $125,000 grant from USAID for evaluating the impact of values education on young children.

The United States Agency for International Development / USAID has awarded a $125,000 grant to Alliance for the Family / AFF for evaluating the impact of values education on young children in Mexico, Peru, and Venezuela.

With this grant, the Government of the United States supports and encourages AFF’s efforts at implementing state of the art monitoring and evaluation systems so “the project does not stay within the classrooms but experts can actually prove if the values we transmit and the techniques we use in teaching them are successful—if they have a measurable impact on the children’s knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors,” says Cristina Burelli, Executive Director of AFF.

In a period of three years, 13,000 children between the ages of 8 and 11 will follow AFF’s Alive to the World / AW program within their regular school hours. They will be taught basic skills based on universal virtues and values such as responsibility, self esteem, self control and participation in community life that are intended to stimulate democratic behaviors.

Using the internet, they will periodically report on what they have learned, how they put it into practice, and how they rate the texts and instruction. These electronic reports—a new way of collecting data from young children in developing countries—will help AFF evaluate the degree to which the course affects behaviors. The Latin American Alliance for the Family (Caracas), which developed the course, will provide teacher training. Financial partners are the Alberto Vollmer Foundation, USAID’s Global Development Alliance, and the John Templeton Foundation.