RAPAPORT… The International Diamond Manufacturers Association (IDMA) announced that JCK Events and JCK Magazine has approved IDMA’s application to the JCK Industry Fund for a grant on behalf of the Diamond Development Initiative (DDI.)
According to Jeffrey Fischer, IDMA president, representatives of JCK Shows and JCK Magazine awarded DDI a grant to further develop its website, www.ddiglobal.org.
IDMA has played an active role in DDI since forming in 2005. In Africa alone, more than one million artisanal diamond diggers and their families live and work in absolute poverty and Fischer said it is simply unacceptable to allow these conditions to continue.
The DDI’s mission is to gather interested parties in order to collectively address political, social and economic challenges facing the artisanal diamond mining sector to optimize the beneficial development of artisanal diamond mining at a local level.
DDI aims to address a fundamental problem identified by governments, civil society, and industry in the alluvial diamond producing countries of Africa.
Fischer reiterated IDMA’s longstanding commitment to the improvement of social and economic conditions throughout every sector of the diamond pipeline. According to Fischer, it is intolerable, from both an ethical and a professional point of view, for an industry which deals in a product that epitomizes love, to tolerate conditions of social and economic deprivation in the diamond pipeline.
Fischer reported that as a result of recent support from the government of Sweden and the Tiffany & Co. Foundation, DDI currently has a project fund for work in Africa, and is seeking its first executive director. However, funding for other important aspects of DDI’s work remains extremely limited and further support is welcomed.