Tony Mazzocchi – USA (1926 – 2002)

Linked with Karen Silkwood – USA (1946 – 1974), with List of Trade Unions worldwide, and with The Man Who Hated Work and Loved Labor.

Last October, Clean Water Action – and all who care about a safer and more just world – lost a close friend and visionary partner to cancer. Tony Mazzocchi was a leader in the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers Union (OCAW, which merged with the paperworkers in 1999 to form a union called PACE). He was one of the first to call attention to the injustices of an industrial system that endangers workers’ health both on the job and in the community. He believed – and acted effectively on the belief – that the path to solutions lies in building alliances between workers, environmentalists and community residents to transform conditions that ultimately threaten all of humanity. His tireless advocacy over five decades spurred creation of the modern workplace health and safety movement, sparked environmental groups’ increased emphasis on health harm from toxic chemicals, and forged labor-environmental partnerships that produced many of those movements’ most important victories … (full text).

Union Scrapper about: A Review of The Man Who Hated Work and Loved Labor.

He said: « We’re the only industrial nation in the world where if you strike the employer can replace you with scabs—permanently. That’s not a right to strike. That’s a right to commit suicide. (on ‘We Want to Redefine What Society Is All About’: An Interview With Tony Mazzocchi on the Birth of the Labor Party, » Z-Magazine, February 01, 1997″).

Download the audio-Interview with Les Leopold.

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Tony Mazzocchi – USA (1926 – 2002)

at left/above the book – at right/down honoring Karen Silkwood

Tony Mazzocchi, A Video Tribute, 8.12 min, Nov. 13, 2007.

The book telling the life and times of Tony Mazzocchi, same also on labor notes.

He said also: « When you build a big movement from down below, regardless of who’s in the White House, you can bring about change ». (on Anthony Mazzocchi, 76, Dies, » New York Times, October 9, 2000).

Occupational Safety and Health Act.

Anthony Mazzocchi (June 13, 1926 – October 5, 2002) was an American labor leader. He was a high elected official of the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers International Union OCAW, serving as vice president from 1977 to 1988, and as secretary-treasurer from 1988 to 1991. He was a mentor to Karen Silkwood, a co-founder of the Labor Party, and credited by President Richard Nixon as being the primary force behind enactment of the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970. For his efforts, he was called the « Rachel Carson of the American workplace » … (wikipedia).

And he said: Movements grow in desperate times. We are being born, (on Tony Mazzocchi, 76; Workplace Safety Advocate, Political Activist, » Los Angeles Times, October 8 2002).

Continuer la lecture de « Tony Mazzocchi – USA (1926 – 2002) »

Colin Greer – USA

Linked with The New World Foundation NWF, with Social justice philanthropy from the bottom up.

Colin Greer is president of the New World Foundation in New York. He was a founding editor of Change and Social Policy magazines, a professor for many years in the CUNY system, and has written several award-winning books on education and public policy. His best selling book A Call to Character (HarperCollins, 1995) is a progressive response to William Bennett’s Book of Virtues.

He says: « The Democratic party isn’t a live political party in most places outside Washington. It’s basically a message and money machine at the national level that organises itself every four years for a presidential election. Without long-term and serious attention to the local and state, it was not ready tactically to do most of the things you need to do to win an election. By tactical, I mean that you can win elections by winning just enough votes to win the Electoral College, and if you’re really careful you can get enough votes to legitimate the victory with a popular vote. The Republicans have been deeply engaged in the tactics of doing that. Democrats haven’t and didn’t. In the Democratic party there’s virtually no relationship between local candidates and the national party, and no relationship between the electoral campaign structure and local multi-issue organisations … (full interview text, Dec. 22, 2004).

… But if we DO want to engage new audiences, we must, as Colin Greer told us today, approach our new allies with a spirit of humility, listening deeply and harvesting what we hear as a prelude to action … (full long text of TCG National Conference 2006 – Building Future Audience).

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Colin Greer – USA

A Call to Character is a unique family reader that brings together a liberal assortment of voices from novels, short stories, plays and poetry – both the well loved and the obscure – to enrich and enliven a child’s imagination. The unusual breadth of readings illustrates lives defined by hign standards of personal character, such as courage, honesty, fairness, responsibility, compassion, empathy, generosity and love. (BAMM.com).

His book A Call to Charakter.

… Formerly, he was Professor at Brooklyn College, CUNY. He is the author (with Herbert Kohl) of The Plain Truth of Things and A Call to Character, Harper Collins. Other books include: What Nixon is doing to Us; The Solution is Part of the Problem; After Reagan What? and The Divided Society. He is best known for The Great School Legend and Choosing Equality: The Case for Democratic Schooling (which won the American Library Association’s Eli M. Oboler Intellectual Freedom Award). He was a founding editor of Change Magazine and Social Policy Magazine. He is a contributing editor to Parade Magazine. Dr. Greer participated in and directed several studies of US Immigration and urban schooling policy and history (at Columbia University and CUNY). He wrote briefing papers on philanthropy and government for First Lady, Mrs. Clinton, and on education policy for Senator Paul Wellstone. He chaired the President’s White House Fellows Program (1992-4) and chaired the Funders Committee for Citizen Participation for ten years. He currently chairs Healthcare without Harm (Boston), The LARK Theatre Company (NYC), and The Culture Project (NYC). He serves on the Boards of the Teachers and Writers Collaborative (NYC), NY City Interfaith Center, Tikkun (California), Open Democracy (London, UK), and the American Institute for Mental Imagery. He is currently working on studies of philanthropy and social justice under Ford Foundation grants. (theatre communications group tcg).

Social justice philanthropy: roots and prospect, March 2006.

Continuer la lecture de « Colin Greer – USA »

Bruno Manser – Switzerland (1954 – 2000?)

Linked with The Bruno Manser Fonds BMF, with The Borneo Project, and with Bruno Manser, Land Rights.

Bruno Manser (born August 25, 1954 in Basel, Switzerland) was an environmental activist. He was well-known in Switzerland for his public activism for rainforest preservation and the protection of indigenous peoples. Manser created richly illustrated notebooks during his stay in 1984 to 1990 with the Penan people, in the jungle of the Eastern Malaysian state of Sarawak, on the island of Borneo, near the Indonesian border of Kalimanta. He stayed with the nomadic band of Along Sega, who became the Penan figurehead for their struggle. He also visited many other settled Penan communities in the Upper Baram district. These notebooks were later published, with some success, by the Christoph Merian press in Basel. Manser, however, was declared persona non grata in Malaysia and had to leave the country with a bounty of $40,000 on his head … (full text).

Bruno Manser’s 1000 photos archive: search in english, (en Francais, auf deutsch). Click on the three pictures, a hidden search tool behind each appears, to help you to select by key words between the 1000 (small) photos. Click on them to enlarge.

See all articles about Bruno Manser (and mainly this photo archive) on Google-News-Bruno-Manser.

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Bruno Manser – Switzerland (1954 – 2000?)

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Bruno Manser – Laki Penan

The engagement and commitment of Bruno Manser in favor of the indigenous people of the tropical forests continues with the work of the Bruno Manser Fund BMF, who resides in Basel. The most important project is at present time the support of the Penan with a « Community Mapping » project, whereby especially trained Penan teams map their homeland and traditional use areas in the forest. The resulting maps serve i.a. as basis and evidence for various land right cases pending before the local courts … (full text).

Rainforest dwellers successfully maintain logging road blockade in one of Malaysia’s last virgin jungle areas, Aug. 14, 2006. (BMW).

So, what did Rio achieve? Well, at that time we were truly able to build on the upsurge, on the recognition by people and governments who wanted to do something about the state of the planet and the state of the human person. I am not being over-dramatic. It is true; you could feel it in the air at that time. Bruno Manser wanted to protest about deforestation. He had had an operation on his leg, because he had broken it in Switzerland. But in Rio he jumped from a parachute, riding piggy-back on somebody else, just to make his point. So people do go to extremities. You could really feel this atmosphere in 1992, and everybody believed that governments and people were sincerely committed to the issues and commitments that came out of Rio … (full text).

En présence des cinéastes.

Continuer la lecture de « Bruno Manser – Switzerland (1954 – 2000?) »

Michael Edwards – USA

Disambiguation: your search tool will bring you out several Michael Edwards.

Linked with Alliance, with the Resource Alliance, and with The 21st Century Trust.

Michael Edwards is the Director of the Ford Foundation’s Governance and Civil Society Unit in New York, having worked in international development for the last twenty years, including periods spent living and travelling in Latin America, Southern Africa and South Asia. After a series of senior management positions with Oxfam and Save the Children, he moved to Washington DC to work as a Senior Civil Society Specialist in the NGO Unit of the World Bank. His writings have helped to shape a more critical appreciation of the global role of civil society, and to break down barriers between researchers and activists across the world. Michael was educated in England at the universities of Oxford and London, and now lives with his wife in the center of Manhattan. (Future Positive.org).

His two books:

  • Future Positive, International cooperation in the 21st century;
  • Civil Society;

find their publishing informations on Future Positive.org.

Global Civil Society: Expectations, Capacities and the Accountability of International NGOs, Oxford 28 March – 5 April 2003.

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Michael Edwards – USA

Just another Emperor? The myths and realities of philanthrocapitalism”, by Michael Edwards, published simultaneously in London and New York, 10th March 2008.

He says: « To me that means three things that I’ll leave you with that in the hope that they provoke some initial questions for our conversation:

  • Bringing social and economic democracy back into the conversation. Democracy requires both freedom and equality, yet (perhaps as a result of US dominance in this debate), freedom gets the lion’s share of the attention;
  • Thinking in terms of participatory and deliberative democracy and not just representation – that’s where some of the most interesting innovations lie, like participatory budgeting and citizens forums;
  • And being open to learning from non-Western experience where many of these innovations are strongest, like Brazil and India (e.g, importing participation in the local budget process by Labor government into the UK last year).

These changes would lay the basis for a different kind of conversation that sees democracy as something we co-create together, learning as we go, not something that is exported from one part of the world to another against a standard template or end point in time. And that I think would be a conversation with a lot more intellectual excitement, practical influence, ethical integrity and real purchase on the ground to which all of us as grant-makers could make a central contribution … (full conference text).

CIVIL SOCIETY: Field Statement of Current Programming (October 2003, 7 pages).

GOVERNANCE: Field Statement of Current Programming (October 2003, 7 pages).

Continuer la lecture de « Michael Edwards – USA »

Xiaoliang Li, Sihai Long, Lihong Shi, Zhongxun Liu and Xiuyun Shang – China

Linked with my today’s comment on the China-Occident/France relation: China versus Occident/France = the WE versus the I.

And, to increase the awarness of the big variation of all chinese people, please go also to the China country’s sumary of this blog (scroll down to China).

All five chinese women are a part of the 1000 women proposed for the Nobel Peace Price 2005. Unfortuntely there were provided only some few lines about their work and biography. Regardless here the few we may know:

——————-

1. Xiaoliang Li – China

She says: « Only by understanding why people do certain things, and with their genuine needs as the point of departure, can we change behavior and thinking, and effectively contain the spread of Aids ».

.xiaoliang-li-china-rogne.jpg. Click on picture for greater size.

She works for the Yunnan Medical University.

Li Xiaoliang is Associate Professor of Preventive Medicine at Junming Medical College, and a specialist at the Yunnan Health and Development Research Center. From 1989 she has been giving extensive training on the prevention and control of Aids. Not only has she worked on training materials for teachers, she has also developed peer training for young people, and aroused much public concern on issues of health and sexuality. Such work represents is a breakthrough in a society where sex and Aids are taboo subjects. (1000PeaceWomen).

any links:

HIV/AIDS Epidemic in Yunnan, 26 pages;

There are links with this name for Machine Intelligence, specific Software, chinese language, maternal health, music … etc.

———–

2. Sihai Long – China

She says: « I believe what I have done has changed the way many women and children look at themselves and the world … We can not only master our own fate, we can also change the environment in which we live … ”.

.sihai-long-china-rogne.jpg. Click on picture for greater size.

She works in the Bureau of Justice in Yunnan province.

Her work on advocacy of legal rights led her to set up a support center for women and children of ethnic minorities – particularly those who are abducted or suffering from Aids in southwest China. Long Sihai also organizes touring programs aimed at working to prevent abduction. These involve not only the support center, but also the Bureau of Justice, education departments, the Office of Legal Advocacy, provincial television stations, and arts troupes of the Dai national minority. (1000PeaceWomen).

any links: no, beside being mentioned in the 1000 peacewomen-project.

———–

3. Lihong Shi – China

She says: « All people have ideals. Daring or not daring to realize their ideals is the vital difference between idealists and idle dreamers. In this sense, I am an idealist daring to realize my own ideal ».

.shi-lihong-chine-two.jpg. Click on picture for greater size.

She works for the Global Environment Institute,
and for the Green Plateau Institute.

Shi Lihong, an environmental activist, is responsible for the Global Environment Institute and is executive director of Wild China. She is very active in nongovernmental environmental protection. One of the ways she contributes to the campaign for environmental protection is by making documentary films on the subject. (1000PeaceWomen).

Any Links:

Festival of Nature.org, 2007;

wild screen festival 2008;

There are many texts with the name Lihong Shi, but none seems to fit with our peacewomen.

———–

4. Zhongxun Liu – China

She says: « If we do not fight for our rights, we can never get them ».

.jd800772-redim-15p-rog.JPG. sorry, there exists no photo of Zhongxun Liu, China. Click on the rose for greater size.

Born in 1971, Liu Zhongxun grew up in a village beside the Yangtze river. She fights to protect her rights and dignity as a citizen. She resists the unreasonable rules and regulations made by local governments, and brings the local cadres who tyrannize peasants to court. She has no fear of threats, and with law and perseverance, she wins trials. She speaks from a sense of justice for the villagers, and does her best to disseminate knowledge about laws. (1000PeaceWomen).

any links: no.

———–

5. Xiuyun Shang – China

She says: « Transforming one more person means some more peace for society. This will benefit generations today and in the future. I must commit all my strength and my heart ».

.xiuyun-shang-china-rogne.jpg. Click on picture for greater size.

She works for the People’s Court of Haidian District, Beijing

Shang Xiuyun (62) is a communist party member and Deputy Presiding Judge of the second court in the People’s Court of Haidian District, Beijing. Known as ‘Mother Judge’, she has transformed a large number of juvenile delinquents, encouraging them to study and take part in ordinary activities. (1000PeaceWomen).

any links:

Juvenile delinquency sparks concern;

Judge Mother Shang Xiuyun;

Experts call for more Internet laws to protect teenagers.

Concita Maia – Brazil

Linked with Articles for Indigenous Peoples on our blogs, with UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

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

Educator Concita Maia (1951) is the founder and president of the Articulated Movement of Women from the Amazon (Mama), a feminist and environmental NGO that unites and strengthens women from the Legal Amazon, a region formed by nine states and with an area of five million square kilometers. There are 117 indigenous, Afro-Brazilian and Caucasian groups with whom Concita discusses themes such as female health, education, violence, environment and income generation.

She says: « Working as a network strengthens us and gives us conditions to propose public policies that contemplate our reality, our Amazonic cultural diversity and our dreams ».

Concita Maia anda toda a razão de tanta satisfação é que esse mês ela é destaque na revista “Naturamov” como uma das 51 brasileira que estão concorrendo coletivamente, juntamente com mulheres de 152 paises, ao Nobel da Paz, o mais importante prêmio do mundo concedido a pessoas que se destacam nas áreas de economia, química, medicina, literatura, física e paz. (UOL.com).

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Concita Maia – Brazil

She works for the Movimento Articulado de Mulheres da Amazônia MAMA (named on Associação Brasileira de Organizações não Governamentais ABONG; on CIRADR; on Table of indigenous organizations in Brazil; on Especial Página 20 … and on many more).

Forbidden by her Caucasian mother of talking about her origins, Concita Maia silently held on to the history of her paternal grandmother. She was an indigenous who was hunted down and marked, on her arm, with the letters FC, which are the initials of the man who stole her freedom. Her grandmother was given as a present to another man with whom she had many children, including Concita’s father.

“My mom denied my indigenous background. It did not matter. It runs in my blood”. Popular education was the means that Concita found to take women like her grandmother away from “invisibility”. “Women who live in the depths of the forest and who are not even a part of the population data of the IBGE (Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics)”. In the 80’s, as a graduate and postgraduate in pedagogy, Concita moved to a tribe located along the border with Peru, where she implanted Acre’s first indigenous school.

One year later, when she returned to the capital, Rio Branco, she widened the militancy for the fight for the rights of women from the Amazon.

Continuer la lecture de « Concita Maia – Brazil »

Stephen Lendman – USA

Linked with Lynne Stewart’s Long Struggle for Justice, with Updating Sami Al-Arian – His Ordeal Continues, with Sami Al-Arian – USA & Kuwait, and with BBC: Imperial Tool.

Stephen was born in 1934 in Boston, MA. Raised in a modest middle class family, attended public schools, received a BA from Harvard University in 1956 and an MBA from the Wharton School at the University of PA in 1960, following 2 years of obligatory military service in the US Army. He spent the next 6 years as a marketing research analyst for several large US corporations before becoming part of a new small family business in 1967, remaining there until retiring at the end of 1999. Since then he has devoted his time and efforts to the progressive causes and organizations he supports, all involved in working for a more humane and just world for all people everywhere, but especially for the most needy, disadvantaged and oppressed. Stephen’s efforts only in the last 6 months have included some writing on the various issues of personal concern like war and peace; social, economic and political equity for all; and justice for all the oppressed peoples of the world like the long-suffering people of Haiti and the Palestinians. (The Populist Party).

The Rules of Imperial Management, UN Peacekeeping Paramilitarism, Feb 15, 2007.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached by e-mail. Also visit his blog site, and listen to The Global Research New Hour on RepublicBroadcasting.org Mondays from 11AM to 1PM US Central time for cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests.

The audio: THE GEORGE TRYMAN SHOW, on Feb 20, 2008, 2 hours.

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Stephen Lendman – USA

Damming the Flood: Haiti, Aristide, and the Politics of Containment, Review of Peter Hallward’s book, by Stephen Lendman, Part I, April 14, 2008 … and: Peter Hallward’s Damming the Flood, Part II, 9 pages, April 17, 2008.

Dandelion Salad, by Stephen Lendman Global Research, April 18, 2008.

He writes: … Parenti’s latest book, and subject of this review, is the newly updated eighth edition of one of his most noted and popular earlier ones – Democracy For the Few. In it, he shows how democracy in the nation really works. It dispels the fiction Americans are practically weaned on from birth, taught in school to the highest levels, and get daily from the dominant media … This is Parenti’s dominant theme – of a government, since inception, serving the privileged few at the expense of the neglected or exploited many. That’s hardly a textbook definition of democracy, yet it’s the model one we’re taught to believe we have serving everyone equally. Parenti says his book is intended to show how vital it is for everyone to critically examine our society as a step toward improving it. He stresses a nation’s greatness is measured by its freedom from poverty, racism, sexism, exploitation, imperialism, environmental devastation, and a fundamental opposition to war and pursuit of peace everywhere. Benjamin Franklin also said There never was a good war or bad peace, a notion unimaginable to our leaders today. (full text, Sept. 10, 2007).

Media Disinformation and the BBC, April 10, 2008.

Continuer la lecture de « Stephen Lendman – USA »

Seyran Ates – Turkey

Linked with Muslim Women in Europe caught between traditions and secular ethos, and with Necla Kelek – Turkey and Germany. Sorry, I found no militant turkish women NGO.

Seyran Ateş (born 1963) is a German lawyer born in Istanbul, Turkey. Her article Making multiculturalism work. Multiculturalism details how the far left in Germany tolerates sexism and violence against women when it is done in the name of Islam . In a judgement regarding whether an Islamic schoolgirl could be exempted from gym class on March 24, 1994 (InfAuslR 8/92, S. 269), she quotes the ruling of a higher administrative court in Bremen: « it is irrelevant that adolescent Muslim women are prevented by the demands of their religion from achieving equal status as women in Western society ». Her views, highly critical of an immigrant Muslim society that is often more conservative than its counterpart in Turkey, have put her at risk. In an interview in January 2008, Ateş stated that she is now in hiding and will not be working on Muslim women’s behalf publicly (including in court) due to the threats against her. In one particular incident, she and her client were attacked by a woman’s husband in a German courthouse in front of onlookers who did nothing … (en.wikipedia).

She warns: « Minority protection with respect to Islam can only be had at the cost of the equal rights of women » … (full text).

Listen her audio interview on a german radio, 9.58 min, Oct. 1, 2007.

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Seyran Ates – Turkey

Human rights activist and lawyer Seyran Ates, Turkey, was named Germany’s woman of the year in 2005 for her work in defense of Muslim women in immigrant communities … (full text).

She says: « I see left-wingers as particularly culpable for the mistakes made in current integration policy, because for a long time they hindered any debate. Despite all that left-wing thought aspires to, they did not look closely enough at what was actually happening in these communities, in the cultures that were settling in Germany » … (full interview text, 2007).

Her german website.

Seyran Ates opened a loose-leaf notebook in her fourth floor apartment in the center of Berlin and flipped through the pages of hate mail. She read the letters in a monotone. The 43-year-old Turkish-born attorney had the face of a weary warrior … (full text).

Seyran Ates on flickr’s photo sharing.

Each year, according to UN studies, more than one million people are forced into marriage – and for many years now, Berlin-based lawyer Seyran Ates has been fighting to increase the German public’s awareness of the issue. Sigrid Dethloff reports … (full text, 22.04.2004).

Continuer la lecture de « Seyran Ates – Turkey »

Rose Chiwambo (Chibambo) – Malawi

(Seems the following statement concerns ‘our’ Rose Chiwambo, Malawi: … ‘last night they spelt veteran politician Rose Chibambo’s name as Chiwambo. Any editor worth his or her salt would know that is incorrect … Austin Madinga, Malawi, Oct. 9, 2007, on his blog … ‘.

This is correct: there are texts about Rose Chibambo in the internet).

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

Rose Chiwambo (77) was born in Kafukule in Mzimba District. She is the first Malawian woman to hold a cabinet post. She was appointed Deputy Minister of Community and Social Development in 1963 after winning the Mzimba South seat. She began mobilizing Malawian women in 1952 into a political force. She fled the country in 1964 following a cabinet crisis. She stayed in exile for 30 years, until her return in 1993 at the advent of multi-party politics. She is now settled in Mzuzu doing charity work, concentrating on HIV/Aids prevention.

She says: « I don’t believe in putting children in orphanages. You alienate them from the protective environment of the family. Giving orphans some sense of hope is worth every energy and time ».

She says also: “It’s pathetic, especially here in Mzuzu where traditional practices worsen the irresponsible ‘city life. People need education on the impact of HIV and AIDS. Behavioral change must be seriously addressed because closing down the dozens of ‘rest houses’ is not a solution. Alongside promiscuity, there are traditional practices including circumcision, polygamy, ear-piercing and tattooing, widow inheritance, forced marriages that must be tackled ».

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Sorry, I can not find any photo of Rose Chiwambo (Chibambo), Malawi in the internet.

She works for Church Action Relief Development Card.

When Mzuzu town, the only major town in the northern region of Malawi, was raised from town to city status in 1985, northerners thought it a big joke. In hushed voices, away from strangers, they quipped that their president had a sense of humor. “How can a town with a population of 50,000 with only one-storey buildings and a main street of 300 meters of tarmac be a city!” they asked. The ‘Dead North’ as the region was described in the colonial era, changed very little during Banda’s rule. Twenty years into independence, little had changed, except for a Chinese-built referral hospital and a university.

With the advent of pluralism in 1994 and liberalized trade, Mzuzu’s population was transformed. The opening of the ‘Northern Corridor’ – a modern tarmac road that connects the country to the important port of Dar es Salaam on the Indian Ocean in Tanzania, has seen Mzuzu become an important transit city. Huge trucks, laden with goods rumble through it day and night headed to and fro the capital city, Blantyre, 200 miles south. Tanzanians and other regional citizens trade cheap goods and wares from Dar es Salaam along the border for retailing in Mzuzu.

Entrepreneurs from Blantyre, Lilongwe and other towns converge in Mzuzu to buy goods that from clothes, hardware to cosmetics. The market square is called ‘Taifa Market’ so dubbed due to the hundreds of Tanzanian women who trade here. Taifa means nation in Tanzania’s national language, Kiswahili. The economic boom, however, has brought its vices. There are no official statistics, but the high prevalence on HIV and AIDS is attributed to the city’s prosperity. Like other parts of Malawi, HIV/AIDS has wrought havoc in communities, leaving behind thousands of destitute orphans, widows, widowers and old people.

Unfortunately, the family’s breadwinner is usually the victim.

Continuer la lecture de « Rose Chiwambo (Chibambo) – Malawi »

Violet Chavula – Malawi

She is one of the 1000 women proposed for the Nobel Peace Price 2005.
Violet Chavula is the women’s coordinator with the Church of Central Africa Presbyterian (Ccap), in charge of Blantyre presbytery. After living in London for several years, she moved to a remote village in Malawi. She is engaged in advocacy for the rights of girls and women and the protection of orphans.

She says: « Influencing age-old tradition requires one’s patience and perseverance. You must be humble, use tact and respect their beliefs ».

She says also: « When you educate a man you educate an individual, when you educate a woman you educate a whole family », Charles D. McIver’s words epitomize Violet Chavula’s passion.

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Sorry, I can not find any photo of Violet Chavula, Malawi in the internet.

She works for the Church of Central Africa Presbyterian Ccap.

Violet, 70, has dedicated her life to empowering women and girls and caring for orphans.

As the women’s coordinator with the Presbyterian Church in Blantyre presbytery, she champions equal rights for girls and women using a holistic approach.

Violet begins by encouraging women in the spiritual walk. From bible studies to women fellowship meetings, “The fear of God,” Violet says, “is the beginning of wisdom.”

Violet runs adult literacy classes for women. Education as a sound foundation for self-growth and community development cannot be emphasized enough.

But without food security, education appears futile. Violet trains women in basic agriculture. “I teach these women how to improve and sustain good harvest using basic agriculture methods like making compost manure. There is enough for the family’s nourishment and the surplus is sold for other household uses”.

Continuer la lecture de « Violet Chavula – Malawi »