Powys is a large and sparsely populated region, a quarter of the land area of Wales but with just 8% of the population. It is an area of low income (40% of men and 52% of women earn less than the European decency threshold and the local population is further disadvantaged by their rurality - falling into the 20% of Wales with the least access to services.
Llanidloes is a small market town in the centre of Wales, gaining its charter in 1280. It is the first town on the River Severn which, together with its tributories, once provided the power to drive a thriving flannel industry, using the locally grown wool.
PEDEC was launched in 1989 with funding from Oxfam and Christian Aid. It functioned for many years with 3 part-time members of staff (making 30 hours per week in all); one working with schools, one concentrating on building up the teaching resources and one dealing with admin and fundraising. During this time we produced Assembly Sheets for Teachers, called World Matters, for use in the classroom, and Pedec's Tracks, a collection of extracts from current publications on development issues. In 1999 we secured Lottery funding for 3 years under the International Grants Programme which enabled us to increase the hours that our part-timers worked. We then stopped producing World Matters and concentrated on running workshops for the formal education sector. In 2003 a three year DfID Development Awareness grant allowed us to add a full-timer to our staff, expanding our activities into the business sector. However, we could not obtain continuation funding for this post at the end of the three years. In 2007 we obtained funding for one year for a full time Youth and Community worker, mainly targetting the Youth Sector and we hope to draw down more funding for Global Youth Work next April.
Networking was always important to us and we became founder members and hosts for Cyfanfyd and Dolen Ffermio. Locally, we have continued to work collaboratively with the LEA. Nationally, we have continued to be actively involved as members of Cyfanfyd and the DEA (Development Education Association).
We gained charitable status in 2001.

© 2010 PEDEC