HORIZON INTERNATIONAL SOLUTIONS SITE

• Janine M. H. Selendy is Chair, Founder, and Publisher of Horizon International, at Yale University, which works to find and advance solutions to the interrelated concerns of global health, environment and poverty.  Since 2016, when she prepared a syllabus on water and sanitation for Yale, she is focusing on advancing an understanding of the interconnection among factors linked to water related diseases, sanitation, and hygiene, preventive measures and innovative, successful solutions. 

• She conceived and Edited two books written by 75 international experts, published by Wiley-Blackwell with Horizon International: Water and Sanitation Related Diseases and the Changing Environment: Challenges, Interventions and Preventive Measures, (“Changing” added to the title of the 2^nd volume). The first volume was publlished in 2011. The second volume was published in 2019. The Late Dr. Paul Farmer, University Professor, Harvard University and Co-Founder of Partners in Heath, wrote the Foreword and Wafaie Fawzi, then Chair Global Health and Population, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, wrote the Afterword.

Among her successful initiatives with Horizon International (described in more detail below), she has been credited with helping save the vicuña and with advancing the use of shea butter whose production by girls and women advances their education, economic well-being and health because of services accompanying their work.

In advance of the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, Selendy brought together and co-chaired with  Dr. Nay Htun, 30 experts. (At that time, Horizon had offices at both Harvard and Yale.) The result was the Harvard-Yale Horizon Problem Solving Program (HYH Program) used by Dr. Htun, an Earth Summit organizer in drafting of Agenda 21. The Program also formed the basis of the Horizon internship and research program and laid the foundation for its Solutions Site, at http://www.solutionssite.org,  a collaborative program developed by Horizon with UNDP, UNEP, UNFPA, UNICEF, the IDRC, Yale University and Horizon's colleagues at Harvard. Selendy is Principal Editor and Publisher.

With the financial assistance of a National Science Foundation Planning Grant for which Selendy was the Principle Investigator, she oversaw development of Horizon's oceans and coral reefs program. It's website, for which she is Publisher and Editor,  www.magicporthole.org andwww.coralreefs.co. It was recognized by American Library Association as a "Great Web Site for Kids." Aquariums, museums, and organizations including the Monterey Aquarium, Field Museum, and Wild Dolphin Project are among the collaborating entities contributing material and making available its resources including educational playing cards.  

Under her direction as Executive Producer, Producer and Director, Horizon International produced 20 television documentaries. Swedish, German, China and Mexican TV stations, were, among others, co-producers of the programs. Raso Ouedrago, Johan Forssblad, Sam Waterston and the late Lynn Redgrave, were among the hosts and narrators. The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Lippincott Foundation, UNFPA, Laurance S. Rockefeller, and many others. Programs include “Cooperating for Clean Air,” “Integrated Pest Management,” and “Holland’s Storm Surge Barrier.”  “Burkina-be People with a Future,” produced with support from the United Nations Population Fund for the Fourth World Conference on Women, Beijing 1995, was credited by UNDP and UNIFEM with helping advance the community sustainable production of shea butter and, by doing so, advance not only the economy, especially for girls and women participants, but also their related educational, maternal and child health, and AIDs prevention programs. While filming in Peru, “Fish Farming in Amazonia,” she and her team filmed significant aspects of the lives of the then endangered vicuña with a population of little 6,000 in 1969. On behalf of the Peruvian government, WWF, IUCN, Selendy presented the film as testimony at CITES, influencing the decision to allow the vicuna to be sheared live and protected, while benefiting the economy of the people. Today, there are more about 350,000 vicuña.  Awards included a Cine Golden Eagle.

Selendy has lectured at Harvard, Yale, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, EPIIC at Tufts University, Lund University, for the USAID in Pakistan, and for a Princess Chulabhorn Science Conference in Thailand, participated in forums at the World Bank and at the UN, consulted for UN-Habitat, WHO and the World Bank, and judged the First Annual Yale Global Health Case Competition.  In 1994, she co-chaired with Dr. Fred Sai a preconference in New York in advance of the International Conference on Population and Development. Dr. Sai was then President of the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF). 

She has mentored volunteers, interns and research fellows at Yale and Harvard, and international undergraduate and graduate students who have helped to advance Horizon International’s goals while improving their own academic and professional abilities. One Yale student organized an international conference in Peru with Horizon-Peru, the credit for which helped her to become a Marshall Scholar. Another Yale student worked together with Planned Parenthood Association of South Africa to prepare the reviewed case study, “The Men as Partners Program,” published on the Horizon Solutions Site. A Ghanaian, Julius Fobil, now Dr. Fobil head of Global Health at the University of Ghana, furthered his research skills and completed a case study, deemed very valuable by its reviewer, the late Dr. Andrew Speilman, of Harvard School of Public Health, which enabled him to obtain a scholarship for graduate studies in Holland and in Germany where he completed his DrPH. 

As 2002 Democratic Candidate for the US House of Representatives, Selendy spoke out against going to war with Iraq and for universal health care.

Her inspiration: While fifteen and sixteen years of age, she traveled throughout the Middle East and spend nearly a year living with a missionary doctor and wife team in Tehran who exposed her to dire needs of impoverished families suffering from lack of adequate food, water, sanitation and hygiene and prodvided examples of how taking the right aproach can make a difference to suffering peoples' lives. 

She is a Fellow National of the Explorers Club ’96, and a member of the AAAS and the Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council (WSSCC), and a former member of the Conservation Advisory Council of North Salem, NY, among others.

She is a generalist whose background in medical, scientific, environmental and other areas provides her with an appreciation of the interconnectedness of many subjects.

Janine Selendy lives in West Cornwall, CT with her partner of 24 years, Charles R. Dickey, retired lawyer and is grandmother of four grandchildren, her son Bela’s children Nicolas and Linnea, and son Philippe’s children, Max and Liam.