Our staff and partners write about their news and views. Choose a blog to read their story.
Peru
Peru may be a middle-income country but, as Sue Turrell found out for herself, many Peruvian women live in dire poverty and their hard-won rights are under threat. I have only ever been on holiday to Latin America: three weeks hiking round Lake Titicaca and a visit to Machu Picchu. So I was really looking forward to visiting WOMANKIND's programme in Peru: meeting our partner organisations and the women they work with.
I am travelling with Susana, WK's Programme Manager for Latin America, who is herself Peruvian. Lima is a huge sprawling city with a population of around 8 million and the way people drive is... scary! No one speaks any English so I am reliant on an interpreter; but she's so skilled that after a few hours I forget that I'm not speaking directly to people.
Meeting partners
We spend the first few days talking to partners about their work, their successes and their challenges. They combine training and providing services to individual women with lobbying the government for policy change: obviously a winning formula as their achievements are extremely impressive. A growing challenge is finding funding: many of them are working full time but only get paid for part of that time. Some donors are turning away from Peru because it is now a middle income country, but this hides massive differences between the rich and poor and doesn't take account of the threat to women's rights.
Visiting Calandria's programme in Tarapoto
Susana and I spend the day visiting Calandria's work around Tarapoto, a town in the jungle area an hour's flight north of Lima. The area is tropical, lush and green and much hotter than Lima. Calandria has been working with groups of women throughout the region, training them to become leaders in their communities. These women, such as Mary, pictured below, are full of confidence and drive, determined to influence their local governments to improve women's lives.
Partner meeting in Tarapoto
All WK's partners Calandria, Aurora Viva, Demus and CADEP are attending a three-day meeting with WK to celebrate the successes of the four-year project which is just coming to an end, and to plan for the future. Although each organisation is different, each has made a unique contribution towards improving women's lives.?? Calandria has trained a network of women leaders; Demus has put women?s rights at the centre of public debates; Aurora Viva has strengthened women?s security in the workplace; and CADEP has ensured that indigenous communities around Cusco know that women have sexual and reproductive rights.
March '08
Addis - first impressionsThis is my first visit to Ethiopia and I've been looking forward to it! Addis Ababa is a sprawling, low-rise, poor African city surrounded by hills.
The first surprise is the enormous airport, built for some major event but now far too big for the number of flights. There are small shops everywhere and lots of cafes, restaurants and bars. Although the Italians only ran Ethiopia for a few years, they left behind wonderful coffee, great pastries and pasta.
Addis's ringroad was started over 30 years ago, but the government took so long to build it that it is now in the middle of town, rather than skirting its boundaries as the name suggests...
Driving to Durame
As we are driving down to Durame, to visit WOMANKIND?s partner KMG, I look out at the parched and dusty land. There have been no rains since October though it is expected any day. Three out of every four people I see from the car are fetching water with a wide range of plastic and clay pots; the lucky ones have donkeys to take the load.
Large herds of cattle are being driven down well-worn paths to nearby lakes as local water sources are drying up. Seeing all this you realise how vulnerable the vast majority of the Ethiopian population is to changes in the weather patterns. People have little to fall back on in times of hardship and if the rains don?t come soon, there will be widespread suffering.
Visiting KMG projects
Durame is made up of small district towns and villages and most people are reliant on agriculture for a living. WOMANKIND?s partner organisation, KMG, implements a wide range of activities as part of its strenuous efforts to reduce levels of violence against women (and, in particular, eradicate female genital mutilation - FGM) and the incidence of HIV and AIDS.
Programme Manager Rachel and I witness a Community Conversation, where a whole community comes together to discuss key issues, in this case HIV and AIDS. Many of those present have been recently tested and the community is pledging to support individuals found to be positive - in the past such people were ostracised. The local police chief, a judge and representatives from the Ministries of Education, Health, Women's Affairs and Information are all here. How likely would it be to find these officials at a similar community meeting in the UK?
We sit in on a training session for teachers and students on human rights and the Ethiopian constitution - this is attended by the local prosecutor who gets a grilling about why exceptions are made for government officials and why the law is not always consistently followed. We meet a group of volunteers who work with KMG; they explain why they are so committed to this work ? it produces change in the community and improves people?s lives. We also meet an ?uncircumcised girls group? who testify why they stood up to tradition and refused to be cut - and heard about their hopes and ambitions for the future. We're constantly impressed by people's courage - they are standing up and speaking out on sensitive issues.
KMG
KMG is an Ethiopian NGO which is 10 years old in 2008. Boge, KMG?s founding and current Executive Director, and her team of hundreds of staff and volunteers, have achieved an enormous amount over the decade.
They have changed community views on FGM, giving girls the courage to refuse to be cut. They have improved the lives of the most marginalised, such as those who are HIV-positive; and the Fugar, a community of potters?? traditionally isolated from wider society until KMG worked to bring about acceptance and support from the wider community.They have increased women's confidence and chances for some level of independence by providing skills training, health care and the chance to meet with other women to discuss the issues that concern them. It is an impressive legacy and one that WOMANKIND and KMG are building on over the next five years thanks to long-term funding from Comic Relief.
February '08
Turrell VisionSue Turrell, WOMANKIND Worldwide's Director, shares her thoughts.
