Marta Arango awarded Social Entrepreneur of the Year

Marta Arango established CINDE with her late husband Glen Nimnicht in 1977 and has since led the work of the organization with a focus on improving the livelihoods for children through strenghtening communities. Marta's stenghts both as an educator and as a leader has a great impact on the people she works with. This contributes to the sucesses of CINDE's approaches.

The criteria for being appointed Social Entrepreneur of the Year are:

1. Innovation: The candidate has transformed traditional practice through an innovative product, service, approach, or a more rigorous application of known technologies and ideas.
2. Sustainability: The organisation is achieving some degree of financial self-sustainability through revenues or is engaged in creating mutually beneficial partnerships with business and/or the public sector.
3. Direct social impact: The candidate implements the initiative directly with poor or marginalised beneficiaries. Impact manifests itself in quantifiable results.

The Schwab Foundation awards Marta for being "among the earliest pioneers when she founded CINDE in 1977 to revolutionize early childhood care and education. CINDE has a comprehensive approach targeting the key players in a child’s development, particularly empowering families and communities, and strengthening institutions to provide an environment for healthy physical and psychological development. CINDE’s approaches have been adapted in 27 countries, affecting more than 10 million families." (from the Schwab Foundation web site)

Childwatch International congratulates Marta Arango with the award!

Marta Arango and CINDE were also awarded a certificate of commitment at last year's Clinton Global Initiative Annual Meeting in New York in September, for launching the Strengthening Early Childhood Education Through Leadership training.This initiative is committing to distribute dynamic training methodologies through e-learning, sharing best practices with existing providers to expand the quantity and the quality of their early childhood education programs, build 10 pilot family and community centers for demonstrations and training purposes and launch a campaign to increase awareness on the need to provide early childhood education.