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Who We Are
The CORE Group, a membership association of international nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), promotes and improves the health and well-being of children and women in developing countries through collaborative NGO action and learning. As of June 2007, CORE's 48 member organizations work in more than 180 countries and have a combined annual revenue of approximately $9 billion.
CORE Group members and their local partners are committed to reaching the Millennium Development Goals of reducing child mortality worldwide by two-thirds by 2015 and reducing maternal mortality by three-quarters by 2015. As NGOs, CORE members are uniquely positioned to contribute to this effort through community-based approaches that build support for primary health care, embrace partnership and encourage innovation.
How CORE Works
CORE members work with local partners to deliver services to marginalized communities in developing and transitional countries in order to reach the most vulnerable women and children.
As a network of NGOs, CORE enables its member organizations to work together to decrease duplication of effort and eliminate the need for each organization to “recreate the wheel” when implementing programs in child health and development. Individual CORE members can participate in any of eight technically focused Working Groups, which develop activities and products to strengthen community-based interventions for child health.
CORE links its members with universities, Ministries of Health, private sector agencies, donors and other organizations trying to improve the health and well-being of women, children and newborns.
Examples of how CORE’s approach has resulted in better health outcomes include:
Feeding malnourished children and preventing future malnutrition - Malnutrition is an ongoing challenge across the developing world. In every community, however, there are some mothers who raise well-nourished, healthy children amid the same impoverished conditions their neighbors face. The Positive Deviance/Hearth program helps communities discover low-cost, low-tech solutions to malnutrition – using locally available, nutritious foods – and supports mothers in caring for and feeding their children without outside support. As individual NGOs developed these programs, CORE brought member organizations together to compare results, learn from each other, and expand Positive Deviance/Hearth around the world. Because of CORE’s work, this effective approach to eliminating malnutrition has been implemented in more than 40 countries.
Bringing malaria treatment to children in the most remote parts of Africa - In many remote communities, parents can’t get to a health center to buy life-saving medication for their children. With CORE’s support, three CORE member NGOs working in Rwanda – Concern Worldwide, International Rescue Committee and World Relief – teamed up to conduct a study that identified the number of children suffering from malaria who do not have access to treatment. Study results were used to design a new government strategy to reach these children and to attract outside funding to put the government’s plan into action. By involving three NGOs instead of one, the study findings were much stronger and the impact on Rwanda’s policy much greater.
Training professionals in developing countries to better manage child health programs - Because the information superhighway has yet to reach every village on every continent, professionals in developing countries are often cut off from key information that could improve their health programs. CORE brings essential trainings to developing countries to enable development workers to better evaluate and improve their programs, learn about new advances in child health programming, and work together to break down barriers to quality health care. In 2004/2005, CORE conducted trainings in survey design and administration for program managers (with Uganda’s Makerere University); planning and design of field-based tuberculosis control programs; design and evaluation of behavioral change and communication strategies; and design and improvement of HIV counseling and testing programs in East Africa and India.
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