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The Asian Rural-Urban Development and Peace Institute (ARDEP) started as an informal movement of Academicians in early 2000 working for public policy research, community development extension, social enterprise initiatives in areas of value-chain approaches and environmental related activities including upland children’s rights and population management.
This is an initiative of University Professors and members of the Academic Communities in the Visayas and Mindanao regions working through international linkage with academic institutions in the Asia-Pacific such as the National University of Singapore and the Asian Institute of Technology (AIT). Organizational collaboration and linkage has been established in mid-2000 with the Habitat for Humanity-Thailand and Habitat for Humanity – Vietnam. ARDEP is also a member institution of the Asian Christian-Faculty Federation (ACFF) and has a working relationship with the United Board for Christian Higher Education in Asia (UBCHEA).
Through an institutional partnership with the Julio and Florentina Ledesma Foundation, Inc. (JFLFI), partnership with local partners and communities in the field of shelter delivery with Habitat for Humanity – Negros has been also forged and worked-out specially in areas of alternative construction technology utilizing the framework of Sustainable city making San Carlos City as the laboratory model of urban development.
The institutional collaboration with the Julio and Florentina Ledesma Foundation, Inc. for the application of the earth-construction technology also established the European linkage of ARDEP with CRATerre International Centre for Earth Construction and School of Architecture of Grenoble EAG, France. In 2008, the need to formalize its institutional identity for an official linkage led to its official registration with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) as a non-stock, non-profit, and non-governmental institution.
To date, ARDEP implements various researches and capacity-building initiatives in the areas of housing, food security as well as interventions for local government units by assisting them in different methodologies and strategies for the localization of the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) and works closely with twenty-two (22) universities or Higher Academic Institutions in the Visayas and Mindanao to catalyze these institutions as development staging areas to reach out to the local communities and localities, as well as resource base for its pool of faculty and local experts. The international linkages are also further sources of its panel of experts in its different program areas.
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