Fundaci�n Polaris World, Polaris World Foundation

Polaris World Foundation for Cooperation and Development Aid.
The company creates a tool of solidarity in order to promote projects leading to social, economical and cultural improvements.

Since its creation, Polaris World Foundation’s main aim has been financing, promoting and developing programs for improving the economical, social and cultural conditions of the most disadvantaged people. This nonprofit organization, presented to the media in July 2004, cooperates with the execution of projects located in several sub-Saharan countries.

At the present, Africa is the destination of the Polaris World Foundation’s main efforts of solidarity. Our institution cooperates with about twenty projects developed in the following countries: Mali, Togo, Congo, Kenya, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ghana, Benin,

Polaris World Foundation - Fundación Polaris World

Sierra Leone, Chad and Cameroon.

The Polaris World Foundation for Cooperation and Development Aid is also dedicated to other fields related to cooperation, such as basic infrastructure aimed to improving the quality of life, and vocational training for women and young farmers. We are also considering to train development assistants and to establish a program for optimizing the available resources, especially in domains such as education, culture, sports, health, environment and attention to groups socially excluded.

The most important issue in cooperation for development is working from the very core of the people receiving the aid. They have the most important role, as they have to produce and express their own needs for their own development. The Polaris World Foundation gives shape to these projects, proposed by the people who are living in those countries every day.

Participation criteria

Project selection, among all the demands received, is made according to the following criteria:

Preferential scope of action: countries with low human development index;
Creation of structures helping the development of people and communities.
Path and experience of the counterpart organization cooperating with us, and their role in previous cooperation projects.
Projects related to the vocational training in: farming, livestock farming and fishing.
Projects related to basic health training, promotion of health and healthy habits.
Construction and equipment of basic health structures.

At the present, Polaris World Foundation is focusing all its financing efforts on projects located in countries with low human development index (HDI). HDI is a measuring tool made by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). The HDI – human development index – is a summary composite index that measures a country’s average achievements in three basic aspects of human development.

Longevity, measured by life expectancy at birth;
Knowledge, measured by combination of the adult literacy rate and the combined primary, secondary, and the tertiary gross enrolment ratio; and
Standard of living by GDP per capita (PPP US$).

The HDI arises as an initiative for identifying the countries, based on parameters not traditionally used. This index has been calculated since 1990 by the UNDP.