La Leche League
Breastfeeding Help and Information
BM 3424
London WC1V 6XX
Telephone: 01-404 5011

AIMS
To provide information and support - primarily through personal help - to those women who want to breastfeed their babies.

METHODS
La Leche League Leaders are counsellors who have undergone an intensive training to supplement their own breastfeeding experience. They are available by ‘phone and hold monthly discussion group meetings at which there is a lending library. We publish a hi-monthly Newsletter for members, as wetl as the book ‘The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding’ as well as over 100 leaflets on breastfeeding and related topics. Breastfeeding Abstracts is a quarterly for Health professionals.

SUCCESSES
The beneficial effect contact with La Leche League has on breastfeeding mothers is well documented. Through our encouragement women are breastfeeding with fewer problems and for longer than is the norm today.

FAILURES
Although we pride ourselves on being self-supporting, we lack the funds to make our leaflets as freely available as needed. We are also hampered by the fact that nearly everyone working for us is not only voluntary but also a mother with young children with very little free time. Contacts with health professionals are therefore limited to a local level.

FUTURE PLANS
We should like to make La Leche League groups available in every town in the UK and to he recognised for what we are - the world’s largest resource on breastfeeding at the service of mothers and health professionals alike.

HELP NEEDED
We would like help with publicity. We need more members to support us. We need help in order to make our publications and expertise better known to health professionals and parents. We need to be invited to in-service training and conferences to help balance the impact of babymilk manufacturers.

Joint Assistance Centre
H-65 South Extension-1
New Delhi 110049
India
Telephone: 697986

AIMS
To train and educate young people in disaster preparedness. To involve youth in constructive work, especially in alternative systems of health care and to promote international understanding. To publish disaster-related material. To organise seminars, exhibitions and provide a forum for exchange of views of disaster, development and environment inter-relationship. To develop a resource library on disaster-related subjects.

METHODS
We publish a quarterly journal ‘Disaster Management’. We organise youth work camps where skills that would help minimise loss to life and property are introduced. Every year October 9th is observed as Disaster Mitigation Day. Interested individuals are encouraged to use our library resources and conduct disaster studies and research. We provide consultancy on developing disaster education programmes, aids etc.

SUCCESSES
We have organised a good resource library, produced the quarterly Disaster Management for the last four years. We have identified available resources in India.

FAILURES
Human misery evokes sympathy and compassion but human response to disaster preparedness efforts is inadequate. Our journal is delayed at times for lack of timely contributions of articles and reports. We have not been able to reach all those who will benefit by subscribing to the journal.

FUTURE PLANS
To produce cheap editions of some disaster-related studies in local languages and to arrange wider distribution. In this International Year of Youth we hope to involve more youth in our work. To take up fund-raising to sustain disaster preparedness work in India. To find a permanent office for JAC.

HELP NEEDED
We would like more contributions of articles for ‘Disaster Management’. To hear of contacts with prospective subscribers for the journal. Resource material for the library is needed.

OXFAM - Canada
251 Laurier Avenue West
Ottawa, Ontario
Canada
Tel: (613)-237-5236

AIMS
To support people in the Third World and in Canada who are working to combat poverty and underdevelopmenr through social and economic change. To assist peoples’ efforts to create local employment, to improve health, housing and education and to end discrimnation and repression. To educate Canadians about the problems overseas communities face and to seek their support and solidarity.

METHODS
OXFAM-Canada funds self- help development projects in Latin America, the Caribbean, the Horn of Africa and Southern Africa. Most projects are small, locally controlled and initiated by peasant co-operatives, womens’ groups, trade unions or slum dwellers associations.

In Canada. OXFAM-Canada pros ides resource people and materials for community organizations.

SUCCESSES
Over the past eight months, we have been able to send over$5 million to drought stricken Eritrea and Tigray. These funds are being used to get emergency supplies into remote areas. and for water and irrigation systems so people will be able to grow their own food.

Our recent national campaign for food self sufficiency in Nicaragua has resulted in support for an extensive program of home. school and community gardens.

FAILURES
Support for development work to Canada. which would complement and strengthen our international work has been overshadowed by the crises in Central America and Africa.

OXFAM-Canada would like to develop a stronger volunteer base in communities across Canada.

FUTURE PLANS
Following the massive public response to drought in Africa. OXFAM-Canada plans to provide information and educational programs which will increasingly involve new members in supporting long-term development.

HELP NEEDED
You could join an OXFAM Canada local committee or help to start one if none exists in your community: or volunteer to help organize educational or fundraising events or become an OXFAM-Canada member and receive regular information mailings.