DDI to organize artisanal diamond mining

July 23, 2008

By Michelle Graff

New York—The Diamond Development Initiative (DDI) is working to do for artisanal diamond mining what the Kimberley Process did for conflict diamonds, namely, to clean up the process and help the estimated 15 million miners and their dependents worldwide who depend on this craft to live.

During a visit to the Jewelers of America offices in New York on Tuesday, DDI Executive Director Dorothee Gizenga shared the organization's latest efforts to address the political, social and economic challenges facing the artisanal mining sector.

Gizenga said that there are an estimated 1.5 million artisanal miners in the world in countries throughout Africa and in South America.

Currently, the DDI is focusing its efforts in countries such as Angola, Sierra Leone and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), where the DDI is working to aid the estimated 36,000 children who work in the diamond mines there.

For example, in the DRC city of Mbuji-Mayi, Gizenga said they are planning an incentive program in the hopes it will encourage education; even those children who have to work because they are orphans or heads of households are encouraged to attend school on a flexible schedule.

The DDI's program rewards children who do well in school, or become involved in community service, with something children everywhere in the world ask for—a bicycle.

Backed by financial donations from industry players such as BHP Billiton, Cartier, De Beers, Signet and Tiffany and Co. Foundation, Gizenga says future goals for the organization include expanding its scope to other countries and to find systems that work in each country so the artisanal miners, and their communities, benefit from their craft.

"Diamonds represent a livelihood...15 million people depend on that," she says.

For more information on the DDI and its efforts, visit its Web site, DDIGlobal.org.