Auteur/autrice : Heidi Barathieu-Brun

Linked with the Mahila Samakhya Programme, and with the Educational Resource Unit ERU.

She is one of the 1000 women proposed for the Nobel Peace Price 2005.

They say about her: « A single tribal woman day laborer stood up to usurious landowners, and then went on to change the developmental complexion of an entire village ».

Duiji – India

She learned by the connection with the Mahila Samakhya Programme.

Duiji (born 1942) has single-handedly changed the face of an entire village. She mobilized her community against caste-based oppression and injustice. Her efforts have led to a drastic reduction in atrocities against the Kol community. Caste-based sexual violence is practically nonexistent in her village now, and the tribals are no longer afraid of approaching the police and courts for redress. The literacy rates have shot up and the women participate more actively in community affairs.

Continuer la lecture de « Duiji – India »

Linked with National Bal Bhavan, and with The Springdales Education Society.

She is one of the 1000 women proposed for the Nobel Peace Price 2005.

It is told about her: Rajni’s vision is to find ways to make the educational systems more humane, equitable, and relevant to the changing world scenario, using technology to link schools and youth globally.

Mrs. Rajni Kumar, Chairperson, Springdales Education Society, has been honoured an Honorary Doctorate degree by the Middlesex University, London, at Wembley Conference Centre on July 6th 2005. (full text).

She says: « They taught and I learnt. More importantly, through these Punjabi girls and their displaced families, I was brought face-to-face with the harsh realities of life: how lives can be shattered overnight, and how people can find the resilience and the courage to pick up the threads and build their lives anew. I marveled at it. Education was their lifeline for tomorrow. And working together, we forged lifelong friendships that endure even today ».

Rajni Kumar – India (formerly Nancie Joyce Margaret Jones)

She works for the Springdales School, New Delhi.

Rajni Kumar (formerly, Nancie Joyce Margaret Jones) was born in England on 5 March 1923 to British parents and educated at Tollington Grammar School, London. She came to India with her Indian fiancé to join the freedom struggle, and made the country her home. In 1950, she set up a school for girls displaced by the partition. This work led her to conceptualize an institution that would link the process of education with life itself, and Springdales School was born in 1955. Her many innovative school programs’ incorporating peace and human rights education in the curriculum, literacy projects, the ‘adopt a gran’ project, and many others have altered India’s outlook on education.

Continuer la lecture de « Rajni Kumar – India »

Linked with Indian HIV & AIDS statistic.

She is one of the 1000 women proposed for the Nobel Peace Price 2005.

It is said about Murari Prameela: She is a dear carer to victims of HIV/AIDS and those abandoned by their families and friends in her native Guntur district, which has one of the highest percentages of HIV/Aids in India.

She says: « I do not believe in hearing a lot of lecture on love. It is our actions that matter ». And she said about a girl they cared: « We were not able to save her, but we took care of her, enabling her to live for another three years ».

She says also: « Not many people can afford medical care. The people who live on the streets do not have money or people to look after them ».

Murari Prameela – India

She works for Women for the Mercy Integrated Rural Health Care Ministries (Sorry, link not found in the internet).

A nurse and multipurpose healthworker who leads a team of seven in her native Guntur district in Andhra Pradesh, Murari Prameela is a friend and a carer for the sick and the dying. She targets sick people abandoned by their families. On average, she helps about 300 patients a month, among them Aids/HIV sufferers, and patients with leprosy, tuberculosis, high blood pressure, and heart trouble. Murari and her team also help polio-stricken children, street-children, sick beggars, and impoverished pregnant women who have little support and no access to healthcare. A lesson on Mother Theresa in her 8th grade reader inspired Murari Prameela, a resident of Guntur district in Andhra Pradesh, to follow in her footsteps. There was much to be done since most people here were extremely poor, and 70 per cent of the population lived in villages, working mostly as agricultural laborers with scant access to medicare.

Continuer la lecture de « Murari Prameela – India »

Linked with Schools in Kerala, India.

She is one of the 1000 women proposed for the Nobel Peace Price 2005.

People tell about her: Leelakumari’s motivation and pragmatism are exemplary, her signal ability being to draw diverse parties into her struggle: villagers, courts, political parties, environmental groups, and doctors.

Leelakumari Amma – India

She works for the Government of Kerala.

Leelakumari Amma (born 1948) won a one-woman campaign against the pesticide lobby, government departments, and her village’s powerful plantation owners. Upon realizing that the spraying of the pesticide Endosulfan (classified as “highly toxic” by the US Environmental Protection Agency) was endangering her son’s health, she won a court order banning the aerial spraying of pesticides on her village. Her struggle has set off wide-ranging discussions on pesticide impact on health, with countries such as Cambodia banning the use of Endosulfan.Leelakumari Amma, the seventh of eleven children, was born on February 25, 1948 in a small village called Kizhuthiri near Ramapuram in Kottayam district, Kerala. Her father was a primary school teacher, her mother a home-maker. When Leelakumari was two years old, her family moved to Payyavur in Kannur district in northern Kerala (then called Malabar): her father had been asked by a Christian missionary to teach in a new school being set up for the settlers. While at school, Leelakumari joined up for an agriculture certificate course.

Continuer la lecture de « Leelakumari Amma – India »

She is one of the 1000 women proposed for the Nobel Peace Price 2005.

She says: « I always tell my students: Think! Look for peace and beauty everywhere. If you find peace in your soul, if you see the beauty in the world around you, you will be free! I want them to realize that money alone cannot buy happiness. I want them to open the door to something more important, their hearts ».

She says also: « It was not easy at first, so we decided to work out our own democratic rules: togetherness, friendliness, fairness, happiness, empathy and self-esteem. Which in the long run resulted in WE-NESS. We are human beings first, we said, we are boys and girls or other members of the society only secondly ».

And she says: « My life was cut into two parts in April 1986, in BEFORE and in AFTER ».

Tetyana Tkachenko – Ukraine

She works for Women for the Future / Žinky za Majbutnie. This is a political party in the Ukraine. At the last legislative elections, 30 march 2002, the party won 2.1 % of the popular vote and no seats. At the last legislative elections, 26 March 2006, the party was part of the Opposition Bloc « Ne Tak« .

When the nuclear catastrophe took place, it opened her eyes and changed her life. Working in the contaminated area for five years she developed a new child-centered holistic education for peace, democracy, and ecology. Her goal was to save the children and to work for a better world.

Continuer la lecture de « Tetyana Tkachenko – Ukraine »

Linked with .

See also the WSF World Social Forum 2007, Kenya.

She is one of the 1000 women proposed for the Nobel Peace Price 2005.

She says: “In war everybody is a victim. For one to reconcile communities, one needs to rise from being a wounded victim to a wounded healer. I am a wounded healer”. And: “I don’t want my children to suffer the way I saw others suffering”.

She says also: “You wouldn’t think that, for example, Indonesia and Kenya have so much in common. Do you think that people who are refugees or maybe practitioners, if they heard stories from other communities that have begun to process and heal, it would help them to process and heal? It is interesting how healing stories themselves are, no?”.

And she says: “I have committed my life to peace building. To reconcile communities, one needs to rise from being a wounded victim to a wounded healer. I am a wounded healer”.

Tecla Wanjala – Kenja

She works for the Japan International Cooperation Agency JICA, for the Peace and Development Network of the NGO Council PeaceNet, and for the Coalition for Peace in Africa COPA.

Tecla Wanjala, a Kenyan 43-year-old mother of four, has dedicated her work to peace building. The trained social worker holds a master’s degree in conflict resolution. She started working with refugees in 1991 and later with internally displaced persons in her home district in Western Kenya. She initiated reconciliation meetings between opposing ethnic groups. Today, she works on peace building and post-conflict reconstruction from community to national level.

Continuer la lecture de « Tecla Wanjala – Kenja »