Mission
AED's mission is to make a positive difference in peoples lives by working in partnership to create and implement innovative solutions to critical social and economic problems.
History
Since its founding in 1961, AED has become one of the world’s foremost human and social development organizations. Putting people with a stake in the outcome at the center of the change process has been the core of our work throughout our history. In small villages and large cities around the world, AED builds local capacity to improve education, health care, leadership capabilities and economic opportunities.
Improving Access to High-Quality Education
From our first assignment in 1961 to study the higher education system in Kansas, we have approached our work in education as a means of serving society.
In 1968 we took our proven methodologies to El Salvador to evaluate instructional technology in our first international project, El Salvador Instructional TV. Since then, our work in education has expanded around the world. AED has become a recognized leader in girls’ education and we continue to seek opportunities to advance girls’ education, particularly in rural areas where the gap between girls’ and boys’ enrollment is more pronounced.
We have earned international recognition for ground-breaking work in such areas as school-to-career transitions, education for people with disabilities, middle school reform and educational technologies.
Saving Lives by Changing Behavior
In the late 1970s, AED launched its first behavior change initiative. Prevailing public health practices at the time had failed to effectively treat diarrheal disease, a major killer of children under age 5 in the developing world. By focusing on mothers’ behaviors as the solution, giving them the knowledge and skills to administer oral rehydration therapy and using mass media to reach them in large numbers, infant mortality from diarrheal disease declined 40 percent in Honduras in the project’s first year.
AED embraced social marketing—as these new behavior change approaches came to be known—as an important solution to fostering healthy behavior patterns and became one of the field’s pioneers.
In 1987, AED began to apply lessons about changing health behaviors to AIDS through AIDSCOM, a USAID-funded program that changed AIDS prevention efforts forever. We brought people at risk—who are often invisible to larger society—to the center of prevention strategies with targeted behavior-change messages.
Starting in 1991, we began to apply in the United States the lessons we were learning worldwide. AED began a partnership with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to prevent the spread of AIDS in the United States by teaching communities to design prevention strategies and create programs tailored to their needs.
AED’s work has transformed the way health professionals, policy makers, people with AIDS, educators and others deal with the pandemic.
Strengthening Civil Society and Fostering Democracy
Since 1979, when AED organized an exchange visit to the United States under the International Visitor Program, we have customized training programs to fit individual countries’ needs for particular knowledge and skills. Following the breakup of the Soviet Union, AED coordinated training for more than 13,000 professionals through the New Independent States Exchanges and Training project. In turn, those professionals trained 10 times that number in every sector needed to build a post-communist world.
AED helps countries build democratic systems by strengthening the capacity of civil society organizations to shape policy and solve community problems and by helping governments improve accountability and responsiveness to citizens.
Learning from the Past, Looking to the Future
Today, more children have access to a better quality education, more mothers are breastfeeding, more communities are developing HIV/AIDS prevention programs, more NGOs are strengthening civil society, and more communities are making environmental progress as a result of AED’s efforts.
As we move forward, we will continue to seek ways to put people with a stake in the outcome at the center of our efforts—whether those efforts are in education, health care, natural resource management, civil society, food security or helping young people take full advantage of a changing global economy. We believe AED’s efforts will continue to make a difference and improve the lives of people around the world.
