Our Manifesto: Development Clinic International

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DEVELOPMENT CLINIC INTERNATIONAL
Development Service Provider NGO

MANIFESTO
Development Clinic International was founded to inspire progressive development, catalyze social change, project human progress, motivate historic progress of Nigeria and the Third World.
Third World nations are weighed down by underdevelopment that have internal and external roots. The Development Clinic International initiative is geared towards mobilizing progressive forces for progressive and sustainable development. There is a social illiteracy in democratic values and the emotional dynamics of a free society.

Poverty, Illiteracy, Conflict, Diseases and Lack of Capacity and Leadership are the five problem areas of development in Nigeria and the Third World. These problems have left in their trail, a long history of social deprivations; distortions in our civil societies, dislocations of democratic and political principles, abandonment of human rights and dysfunctionality in the curriculum and systems of human equality and quality.

Development Clinic International seeks to act as a non-governmental organization that will demand and educate on good governance, leadership competence, bring notice to cruel and unjust conditions, wage war against the psychological barriers to social progress, mobilize opinion and effort towards dealing with social problems and ensuring freedom, democracy, justice and the right of man. It aims at providing a social floor for those who suffer social deprivations to ensure a total development of the civil society – an amelioration or eradication of poverty; an improvement in the systemic and leadership capacities needed to ensure institutional progress and social growth; inspire a mentality steeped in justice and peace; motivate and propagate actions and views for the physical and psychological liberation of enslaved peoples; pursue a proactive approach to the problems of disease; demand compassion for the purpose of combating the evils of hunger, the cruelties of poverty, the terrors of illiteracy, the vagaries of violence, and untold human sufferings resulting from conflicts and social dislocations, lack of shelter, education and hope; promote a culture of learning and education congenial to historic, human, social and technological progress.

Development Clinic International will seek for legal, penal, social and institutional reforms and change to ensure that a liberal political revolution become effective in the mores of the nations based on democracy and social justice.

Our goal is to reduce poverty, improve the quality of life, the quality of leadership, the quality of society and advance the cause of the victimized; reduce the evils of war and conflicts; seek remedies for diseases, champion and actively participate in the provision of quality education to civil society. Our objective is to be the voice of the marginalized, vulnerable, excluded, discriminated against, and displaced; to speak for the racial minority and ensure the rights of the minorities; to move governments and civil society to address and take practical actions on issues and concerns of the poor, the discriminated against, and the marginalized.

Our aim is to be proactive on issues of discrimination - gender, racial, ethnic, xenophobic, intellectual, ethnic minority; carry out programs of education about tolerance and diversity; to investigate, unearth, and criticize inequities in civil society, in education, employment, housing, health, and trade - local and international; to provide sufficient evidence to end denials of inequities and mobilize coalitions (local and international) in social combat to eliminate these inequities; to carry out vigorous campaigns to stop discriminations - professional, racial, intellectual, xenophobic - to stop imposition of social disabilities on persons by reason of birth and background; highlighting the economic foundations of social problems and inequities.

Our ultimate goal is to ensure equality and quality, and realize in the social ethos that makes democratic values effective in the mores of the nation; internalizing democratic values of liberty and equality.

Affiliations

Development Clinic International will engage in partnerships and networking relationships with donor agencies, government, international institutions, other non-governmental organizations (NGOs’) and the private sector in its pursuit of its objective of a better society with progressive development.

We are registered with the World Association of Non-Governmental Organizations, NGO2000 All Nigeria NGO Consortium etc. We are in the process of establishing partnerships with the United States Institute of Peace, The World Peace Council, the Kyung Hee University Graduate School of NGO Studies, Seoul, Korea, United Nations organs and affilaites and numerous other organizations worldwide. We are making contacts with the Transition Monitoring Group and other coalitions with a view to strengthen civil society in Nigeria and enhance our collective and individual capacity to achieve our separate and corporate objectives.

A PRAXIS: “ALL MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL”

Development Clinic International will seek real answers and to understand the forces at work and address its recommendations to those emerging actors whose efforts are the cornerstones of a better society. On a practical and theoretical front, we will work on the ideological work of putting together a body of ideas and policies that hang together and embody human aspirations and our moral preferences.

Our objective is to edify, educate and strengthen civil society; to enrich, empower and empower; to encourage the display of democratic incentives in our modern society.

“When Thomas Jefferson wrote in the American Declaration of Independence that ‘all men are created equal,’ he was not seeking to describe men’s congenital endowments but their political, legal and (social) rights. He was not suggesting that men do not differ from one another in the dimensions and powers of their bodies, minds and characters; he was declaring rather that regardless of variations and differences, they all possessed the right to equal political, (social), and legal treatment. He was not formulating a principle of biological science but a working maxim of public action. The free man’s fundamental right is to be treated equally in all political, (social), and legal transactions.

“As passive equality pertains to the necessities of a decent subsistence in a democratic society, active equality pertains to the opportunities for personal improvement and advancement.

“Unless it is a nation of hypocrites and cynics, surely a nation which so declares will intend: That men are not born equal but are, quite literally, created equal; that what creates them is not a single force or single event but an entire lifetime of treating and being treated equally, and that the nation in all its ranks and offices has determined to create living proofs and displays of human equality in action. Construed in this way, the declaration establishes a guiding maxim for every citizen, voter, official and alien to apply to his daily encounters and transactions.

“As passive equality provides a floor, active equality invites men to raise themselves (and others) as far above the floor as their individual capacities permit. The ideal of active equality is particularly relevant during a period of social and economic transformation because it admonishes that the benefits arising from discovery, invention and general progress shall be made available to all members of the community. In this way, as passive equality seeks to provide limits for men’s fears, active equality seeks to remove limits from their hopes - and opportunities.” (Edmund Cahn, Philosopher of Justice in ‘The Predicament of Democratic Man, 1961 p.129-32)

Development Clinic International was formed with full consciousness of the above imperatives for passive and active equality and recognition of the fact that to achieve a massive change either in law or personal conviction, or in society, you must summon both reason and empathy to your cause.