NIPSA Global Solidarity December 2014

Issue 14

December 2014

Training for the

Future

Tools for Solidarity’s new Uganda Project

Off the Grid

Concern’s Crystal Wells reports on NIPSA funded project in Mozambique

Gaza’s Children

Enduring more conflict

Fighting Leprosy

Battling against the stigma, and offering hope to sufferers in Ethiopia

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December 2014

Artisan Support Programm

by Stephen Woods, Tools for Solidarity

There is a crisis of youth unemployment, which is crippling Africa. But w can establish economic groups and start generating income for themse Tools should not be seen as a technology of the past but as the most appropriate technology for most working people. Tools remain, cost for cost, the most environmentally-friendly, the least polluting, the least wasteful, the most versatile, the most job creating and the most power sharing political technology, and as such they are key for the future.

There is a crisis of youth unemployment which is crippling Africa. More and more young people are growing up with little or no prospect of paid employment. However if they have tools and training they can establish economic groups and start generating income for themselves and their families.

This is the rationale behind Tools For Solidarity’s (TFS) new project in Uganda. In conjunction with the Women’s Rights Initiative (WORI), a grass roots, local NGO based in Jinja, Uganda and featured in the March 2014 issue of Global Solidarity Newsletter, Tools For Solidarity has started the groundwork for the opening of a new centre where both tools and sewing machines will be refurbished in-country and supplied to artisans, vocational training colleges (where young people can learn vocational skills such as carpentry, mechanics and building) and to people with disabilities.

TFS volunteers posing with the first container to ASTC workshop in Jinja, Uganda

me in Uganda

with tools and training they elves and their families As with the Mwanza Sewing and Training Centre maintenance and skills training will be integral to the function of the centre.

The project will focus as much as possible on targeting women’s groups in the rural areas – since women have less opportunities to learn these trades and because the rural areas are the ones that suffer most from poverty. It is well-known that women in Africa have fewer possibilities to find a paid job and because of high levels of unemployment are not usually able to develop opportunities for themselves so as to achieve freedom and independence within what is a patriarchal system.

This project is called Artisans Support and Training Centre (ASTC). TFS’ project in collaboration with WORI will try to help the people in Jinja and the Busoga sub-region to develop their own economy apart from outside capital and that task is focused on the most vulnerable sectors of the society.

In July 2 personnel from TFS went to Jinja to meet with Rose Kigere, director of WORI and Annet, the person who will manage the new centre. Discussions were held on all aspects of the implementation of the programme from promotion and the development of training programmes to the layout of the workshop.

We had the opportunity to meet Mr Simon Koma, a fundi (mechanic) who has been recruited by WORI to manage the workshop and oversee the tool refurbishment. The ASTC project has different phases. The first phase consisted in the provisioning of the necessary equipment for the building of the training centre. To this end we are hosting Mr Simon Koma, local fundi (mechanic) for tools maintenance and repair training so that he can in turn conduct the training to be delivered by the ASTC.

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Simon Koma during his training on TFS workshop

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Simon is going to be with us until the 21st of December, so he has spent 80 percent of his time with us already. We asked him to say a few words about his impressions of TFS and his feelings and expectation for the future.

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“My experience of three months with Tools For Solidarity has been a great moment for me in terms of building my capacity in preparation for the work I am going to do back in Uganda. Great thanks to Mr. John Wood who has imparted into me a lot of skills as far as refurbishing of tools is concerned. And thanks of course all the volunteers who have been of help in one way or the other.

Greatest of all to NIPSA, which has founded the tools to Uganda to change the lives of many Ugandans in case the tools they receive are being put to the right use.

Back in Uganda there is a big challenge of unemployment – basically because of few jobs and the education system that trains more for white collar jobs that are not readily available.

Therefore the support given

by TFS to the people of the Busoga Region through WORI will have a very big positive impact in terms of job creation and increase in incomes of the artisans and thereby improving their standards of learning.”

Simon Koma

departure of the shipment. We thought that could be a good idea to utilize the shipment to organize an event to gather so-called different ethnic groups in Northern Ireland in order to highlight practical solidarity between people of different colours and creeds and those of none at all.

TFS of course supports the principal of the elimination of cultural walls between different ethnicities, religions and any other human group. So for this event we host representatives of the Ugandan community in Northern Ireland, the Falls Women Centre and the Chinese community. Also, we had the opportunity to meet with Natania Hagen’s family, a former TFS Downpatrick volunteer who died tragically in the last year. The container was dedicated to her and we wanted to have her loved ones with us and we thank her family for the effort of coming and giving us the opportunity to remember Natania. Finally, we enjoyed the company of the Northern Ireland parliament representative Anna Lo who was there to show her support of our work towards solidarity Annet Kigere, manager of the ASTC amongst all.

In the phase of provisioning, we also worked over the last months on preparing a container that left TFS workshop last Thursday 27th of November. We tried to fill the container with all the necessary equipment to fit out a workshop. That included:

Coming back to the project description, the next steps will be developed in Uganda. Firstly, Simon will come back to Uganda on 21st of December and will start to meet the people in the project. After that, we expect that the container will be arriving in the middle of January of 2015 when ●● 55 sewing machines John Wood and Francesca Rosada are going to travel ●● About 6000 tools to Uganda. For three months, John and Francesca ●● All the indispensable materials for training like will be supporting and advising Simon and the local cloth, thread and books artisans in the fitting of the workshop. Also, John will ●● 7 bicycles which will be used by the mechanics provide more tools training to Simon during that time who Simon will train when he will be back in and will train a sewing machine mechanic. After this time, we expect that Simon and the sewing machine Uganda. mechanic will be able to train other local artisans in That mechanics won’t probably live near the order to make the workshop operate independently. workshop, so TFS want to provide them with These are John Wood’s impressions about the future transport in keeping with the ethics of the of the project: organization about respect for the environment.

“All the preparation is done; the container has left We want to talk about the future steps of ASTC project, with all tools and materials for the project. At the end but we would like to take time to mention the event of January we will leave to Uganda where we will that took place on TFS workshop for celebrating the spend three months to help to develop the centre,

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train local personnel and work with our partners to build the capacity needed to run the project. It will be a busy 3 months but will be just enough time to get all the work done. A new and important time for all TFS past, present and future as this is the result of several years of hard work and effort to get to this stage. The success of the project will enable us to network with organizations in Europe to build long term support for our centres in East Africa.”

There is a huge amount of work to be done and many challenges to make the project successful and sustainable but we at Tools For Solidarity are enthusiastic and inspired by the benefits this project can bring to ordinary working people, their families and communities. We have wanted to set up such a project for many years and are delighted that we have found a partner in WORI to make this a reality.

We in Tools are really excited with the actual development of the programme. Of course, our objective is to provide the necessary support to help local producers work by and for themselves and their communities. We know that the dependence of foreign capital, which produces a new colonization of Africa and other Southern areas, is a very a difficult scourge to eradicate in countries like Uganda. We are confident that with the efforts of all we will be able to reach independence and freedom for all. Also, like in the MSTC, we expect that the seed that we are

planting will be an example for future projects.

Freedom is not something which belongs to individuals, but rather it is the community which has the capacity of endow freedom. Individuals are naturally dependent on community, belong to it and without it are completely lost. No one has yet existed that was able to develop a full, independent and relatively free life outside of community.

Development of collective freedom is development of individual freedom, and that’s why it is important to endow freedom to the community first.

Western sociological and economic theories have tended to introduce new items trying to describe and understand the composition of power and hierarchy, such as social capital and cultural capital.

However, this view sometimes hides or relativizes the fundamental layer and hierarchical character of economic power. In the western economic system, an individual, a community or a business are what they are because of their economic position and their capacity to access money. That’s why TFS in it’s efforts promote the elimination of the walls between cultures, tries to guarantee that people can benefit from and take advantage of their own resources. This means greater independence and freedom for the community and individuals – independence and freedom that are deserved by all people, everywhere.

Stephen, Simon, John and Francesca is the TFS team for supporting, advice and training in ASTC workshop.

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December 2014

The Truth Behind

TTIP Transnational corporations may soon be given the right to bring law suits against European governments in secret tribunals if they believe that laws and regulations will interfere with their corporate interests or reduce their profits

Unlike traditional free trade agreements, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) currently being negotiated in secret between the EU and the US is not designed to remove border tariffs, those went long ago. Instead it is aimed at removing regulatory ‘barriers’ within nation states.

This will be done through the use of so called ‘Investor State Dispute Settlements’ (ISDS) and have already been used to subvert democracy and the rule of law in other free trade zones. The ‘barriers’ that corporations have in mind to dismantle include food safety laws, environmental protections and workers’ rights. TTIP also has the potential to open up our public services, in particular health and education, to foreign companies in an unprecedented new wave of privatisation. In other words governance by national parliaments and the democratic process will be permitted, but only to the point where the CEOs and boards of large corporations say that it’s ok.

The TTIP negotiations were never intended to be made public. The German Green party (alarmed at the prospect of large scale environmental deregulations) leaked a draft copy in March 2014 and since then opposition has been growing steadily across Europe. The scale of the threat posed by TTIP, however, has not yet entered the mainstream of public consciousness. For this reason the NIPSA Global Solidarity Committee will be organising an awareness event in the New Year.

The public services and protections that are under threat if the TTIP deal is agreed include: ●● The NHS: In addition to opening up NHS contracts to US private health insurers it will become impossible for any future government to reverse the privatisation of NHS services without compensating private health firms for the loss of their projected profits.

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●● Food safety: Currently the European Union restricts the sale of US beef treated with growth hormones linked to cancer in humans; ‘regulatory convergence’ could make these restrictions illegal. Similarly endocrine disruptors, widely used in pesticides in US food production and which can damage the human hormone system would no longer be restricted to the level currently allowed in the EU thereby permitting US food imports currently deemed unsafe to be sold in the UK and Ireland. ●● Environmental protection: If the Northern Ireland Executive makes a decision to refuse the use of hydraulic fracking by foreign companies, those companies could avail of ISDS to sue the Executive for the loss of projected profits.

Also current EU environmental regulations introduced in 2007 requires industry to prove that a chemical is safe before it is used, whereas in the US a substance has to be proved unsafe before its use can be restricted. The result is the US currently prohibits 12 substances from use in cosmetics while the EU bans 1200. Any ‘regulatory convergence’ in environmental protection will undoubtedly be at the lowest common denominator. ●● Public health: When Australia attempted to introduce plain packaging for cigarettes the tobacco giant Philip Morris turned to ISDS to sue the Australian government. Philip Morris arbitrated under the terms of their free trade agreement with the US due to the potential impact on cigarette sales. ●● Labour rights: Harmonisation of EU and US labour laws would inevitably lead to a downgrading of collective bargaining agreements and trade union recognition.

This is just the tip of the iceberg; it is not an exaggeration to say that TTIP has the potential to undermine both European and US democracy.

According to John Hillary the Executive Director of War on Want, “Perhaps the greatest threat posed by TTIP is that it seeks to grant transnational corporations the power to sue individual countries directly for losses suffered in their jurisdictions as a result of public policy decisions. This provision for ‘Investor-State dispute settlements’ (ISDS) is unparalleled in its implications, in that it elevates transnational capital to a legal status equivalent to that of the nation State.”

The Tories in Great Britain who are normally very vocal on the perceived loss of sovereignty to the European Union, strangely, have nothing at all to say regarding the very real prospect of handing over sovereignty to foreign corporations. And it is the issue of loss of sovereignty that MPs find hardest to defend when written to by constituents.

In early 2015 NIPSA will hold a TTIP awareness event for members; in the meantime you can sign the pan-European campaign to stop TIP here: http://www.waronwant.org/campaigns/ trade-justice/more/action/18180-sign-up-tosay-no-to-ttip.

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December 2014

The Forgotten Communities of the Zambezi River

© Crystal Wells/Concern Worldwide 2014

Seven months - that’s how long Maria Luis Because of this, they eat whatever they can grow, estimates that she and her family will go without and this year, Maria suspects that their harvest will only last them four months. Even successful food this year. harvests are often insufficient to last a family “Our only food is rice,” she says. through an entire year, leaving the months of “There is not enough for seven people. When it’s December, January, and February often defined gone, there’s hunger.” as times of hunger.

This is not an unfamiliar pattern to Maria Luis, “Hunger in Bilinguinho does not stop,” says who lives with her husband and five children in Manuel Polana, who works in the area with Bilinguinho, a small island in the mouth of the Concern Worldwide.

Zambezi River in Mozambique.

“They grow nothing but rice. That’s the only crop.

There are no roads connecting Bilinguinho to If something happens to the rice, they don’t have other towns along the Zambezi, leaving Maria an alternative.” and the other families who live there extremely isolated. To reach Chinde, the provincial capital, With both flooding and drought commonplace people have to travel three or four hours by hand- and the soil sandy, the environment in dug canoe, making everything from health care Bilinguinho and other communities along the Zambezi River can be very challenging to farm. to markets, too far upstream to reach regularly.

There are no roads or bridges to travel by car to Chinde, making boat the most efficie mouth of the Zambezi River. Concern Worldwide uses boat and motorbike to access is

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ent way to access the city, which is on the solated communities around Chinde.

By Concern’s Crystal Wells who recently visited the NIPSA funded project

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It is not uncommon for families to have their homes washed away by floods at the height of the rainy season in January. Maria lost her home in 2013 because of flooding that forced her and her family to relocate to higher ground and start again from scratch when the water subsided.

However, the way of farming often does not reflect the realities of their environment, often because new methods have not been introduced and they do not have the resources to buy new seeds and tools.

This is where Concern’s farmer field schools come in.

The format is simple - bring farmers together around test plots where they can learn new techniques for farming rice and how to grow other crops, from lettuce to beans, tomatoes, and sesame. To help reduce food spoilage, Concern also trains farmers

to build storage containers where harvests can be better protected from extreme weather, including cyclones.

“I often meet farmers who tell me they have never tasted a tomato before they joined our farmer field school,” says Barbara Hdlaka, an agriculturalist with Concern in Mozambique.

“For communities that survive on only one crop, like rice, this is an important shift because it makes them less dependent on one food source. It also adds greater diversity to their diet.”

For some, the farmer field schools catalyzed a new income stream. Sold for its seeds, which are used in a variety of foods from hamburger buns to oil, sesame is proving to have enormous potential as a cash crop for poor farmers in rural Mozambique.

© Crystal Wells/Concern Worldwide 2014

Left and below: The Concern team walks through mud and water for 30 minutes to visit Maria Luis and her children in their home in Bilinguinho, a very isolated community only accessible by boat. Maria is one of the farmers participating in Concern Worldwide’s farmer field school in Bilinguinho, where she is learning best practices for crops such as rice, maize, sesame, and vegetables.

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Maria is now doing just that – cultivating different varieties of the plant on the plot behind her thatchroofed home. One is a short-cycle rice, which develops faster and will likely be harvested in April, “This is much higher than they would have received and the other is long-cycle, which will be ready in May. for other crops, like rice and coconuts.”

“We are seeing buyers coming to some of the most remote communities in Zambezia to purchase sesame directly from growers for as much as £0.80 per kilo,” says Hladka.

While this shaves a month off of their hungry season, Maria and her husband will still struggle to feed the family this autumn when this year’s harvest runs out. Their only option will likely be to travel five “Even slight adjustments to how they space the rice to six hours by canoe to work in people’s fields in seeds in their field could lead to three times more exchange for fresh or dried cassava. rice when the harvest arrives,” says Hdlaka.

“Life here is difficult,” Maria says.

“We are also helping farmers grow two types of rice so that they have two harvest months as opposed “I dream of better things, like a real house. I dream of security, but we must survive on this plot of land.” to one.”

In Bilinguinho, Maria and the other members of the farmer field school have started to produce sesame and are learning new methods for growing rice.

Gastene Nhamadinho, 46, started producing sesame three years ago with Concern’s help, he says that this has more than tripled his income from 2012 to 2013.

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Tackling hunger

the key to helping people lift themselves out of poverty

Mozambique is one of the most impoverished countries in the world, where every other child under the age of five is chronically undernourished because of a lack of access to nutritious food. That makes them more susceptible to disease and impacts their ability to grow and learn.

Over the past two years, NIPSA has partnered with international development agency Concern Worldwide to fund a £10,000 project in one of Mozambique’s poorest regions – Zambezia province - providing communities with practical, intelligent solutions that save lives and change their course for the better.

The farmer field school project has helped improve sustainable agriculture in places like Bilinguinho by giving men and women farmers the know-how, seeds and tools to grow more nutritious, diverse crops – benefiting their families and wider communities.

This autumn, Concern, in partnership with NIPSA, has a unique opportunity to help stop hunger for even more people in Mozambique and other developing countries. Every donation made to Hunger Stops Here before 14th December will be matched pound for pound by the UK government - making twice the impact on giving children and their families a life free from hunger.

●● £10 could provide life-saving food for a child for two weeks ●● £28 could buy a chicken, goat, seeds, tools and training for two families ●● £47 can buy water pumps for three communities

Please donate by calling: 0800 032 4001 or go to: concern.net/hungerstopshere

December 2014

Gaza’s Children

endure another Israeli War

by Stephen McCloskey, Director , Centre for Global Education

On 8 July Israel launched its third and most brutal offensive on the Gaza Strip in six years.

Operation “Protective Edge”, following “Pillar of 360 square kms. Naval vessels shelled Gaza from the Cloud” (2012) and “Cast Lead” (2008-09), pounded sea and, in one incident that resonated around the world, mercilessly killed four boys playing football Gaza from the air, land and sea.

The world was aghast at the sight of Apache on a beach. Then tanks and troops were committed Helicopters and F-16 fighters dropping their on the ground and laid waste to all before them; the ordnance day and night on one of the mostly densely neighbourhood of Shujaiyeh to the east of Gaza city populated and impoverished regions in the world with 108,000 residents was particularly devastated where 1.8 million people live in a tiny coastal strip of in an operation that left senior United States military officers “stunned” by its severity.

Children and Facilitators wearing NIPSA’s Global Solidarity T-shirts in Khan Yunis.

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James Rawley, the UN’s humanitarian coordinator for the Palestinian territories said of Israel’s operation that “The scope of damage and devastation is unprecedented in the Gaza Strip”.

The 51 day onslaught ended on 26 August and the total number killed in Gaza was 2,131, of whom 1,473 were civilians, 501 were children and 257 women.

On the Israeli side, 71 were killed, of whom 66 were soldiers, one a security co-ordinator, three were Israeli civilians and one was a foreign national. In Gaza, the Palestinian Health Authorities estimated that at least 89 entire families were “wiped out” by Israel’s war such as the Judeh family of a woman and four children in Tel Azatar, northern Gaza who were killed when their house was destroyed allegedly without warning. The targeting of civilian buildings included the destruction of 18,000 housing units that has left more than 100,000 people homeless, the majority of whom live in UN shelters and are dangerously short of food and water. 45 primary health centres were damaged during the bombardment and 17 of those have been closed. 122 schools were damaged and 26 completely destroyed despite the fact that most of them were flying under a UN flag and used as shelters for internally displaced people. Human Rights Watch has accused Israel of war crimes for attacking three of these shelters, killing 45 people including 17 children. It has described the attacks as “indiscriminate” and “unlawfully disproportionate” and added that “Israel has offered no convincing explanation for these attacks on schools where people had gone for protection and the resulting carnage”.

Children waving during project Celebration Day, Bureij.

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Gaza in Crisis All of this devastation has heaped further misery and impoverishment on a population that mostly comprises refugees living in eight camps across Gaza, most of whom largely depend on food aid from the UN. Before the launch of “Protective Edge”, Gaza was already a society in crisis owing to an Israeli siege imposed on the territory in 2006: fuel shortages had reduced the electricity supply to 12 hours a day; the lack of sewage treatment plants rendered the water supply 90 percent polluted; food shortages had caused stunting and malnourishment among children; and unemployment had soared to over 40 percent as the economy flatlined. All of these problems have been compounded by Israel’s war with the cost of rebuilding Gaza estimated by the Palestinian Authority at $7.8 billion. While the physical damage wreaked on Gaza may be repaired, it will be much harder to repair the mental damage inflicted on Gaza’s children with any child aged six or over now having experienced their third war since 2008. The United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF) has estimated that over 370,000 children in Gaza need “immediate psycho-social first aid” as a first step toward recovery from Israel’s recent onslaught.

Children have been particularly vulnerable to the effects of Israel’s siege and the mental scarring attached to regular exposure to military aggression.

For example, the power outages caused by fuel shortages denies them computer access, study time and communications with the outside world. The polluted water supply causes chronic diarrhoea and food shortages result in anaemia and growth

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deficiencies. And in education, a chronic shortage of school buildings means that over 90 percent of children attend school for half a day as the majority of schools have to “double shift”. This problem will, of course, worsen as a consequence of Israel’s bombing of UN schools, many of which require significant repair work or complete re-building.

Psycho-Social Support to Children But it is the psychological harm caused to children on a massive scale that is perhaps the most enduring legacy of Israel’s three wars on Gaza’s young people. The Centre for Global Education has been working in the Gaza Strip since 2011 providing education services and psycho-social support to children. Working through a partner organisation in Gaza called the Canaan Institute, the Centre has supported grassroots community organisations in working with children suffering particularly acute forms of conflict-related trauma. In 2013, the Centre received a two year grant from NIPSA to deliver a new project aimed at 300 children aged 7-12 in three particularly marginalised areas of Gaza: Bureij, located in Central Gaza; Beit Lahia in Northern Gaza; and Khan Yunis in Southern Gaza. We delivered the project in partnership with three organisations: the “If We Stop Dreaming Center” in Khan Yunis; the “Palestinian Center for Development” in Beit Lahia; and “Palestinian Women’s Development Association” in Bureij.

Project Evaluation In the final month of year one of the project (May 2014), I travelled to the Gaza Strip to attend a Celebration Day in the three participating organisations that showcased the work and learning of the children resulting from NIPSA’s programme.

I was overwhelmed by the quality of the work completed by the children in such a short period of time. I met with the children and facilitators in the three learning centres and they very positively evaluated their experiences of the project. The children thoroughly enjoyed the project activities that resulted in high quality learning outcomes and therapy sessions in a safe and structured environment with experienced facilitators. The facilitators too valued their participation in the project in which they learned new lifelong training skills and put them to effective use in delivering therapeutic learning activities. They learnt to observe the children’s behaviour in responding to group activities and to refer children with the most severe trauma-related problems to the child psychologist.

I met with Kholoud, a child psychologist who told me that most cases of child stress resulted from constant exposure to conflict and the strained domestic life caused by grinding poverty. She said that trauma manifests itself through a range of behaviours: difficulty in concentrating in school, bed-wetting, Project delivery involved training three members of becoming violent, swearing, a constant state of fear staff in each organisation to work with children over and tension, or retreating into themselves a five month period in groups of 25 with each group I met with Kasem, a 12 year old boy who became attending half-day sessions three days a week. deeply traumatised by seeing five of his neighbours The project delivered alternative and therapeutic killed by a helicopter attack in his neighbourhood. educational activities that provided expressional He became withdrawn, quiet, difficult to control in opportunities for children dealing with trauma. school and at home, taking little interest in the life The therapeutic activities took the form of art and around him. Through his participation in NIPSA’s design, structured play, and group discussion work. programme Kasem had re-joined community life The activities were delivered in conjunction with and become much more engaged in group activities local schools and child psychologists who made playing a very full role in his association’s Celebration regular visits to the project partners to hold one-to- Day. He manifested the benefits of therapeutic one sessions with children manifesting particularly learning and its capacity to reach children suffering difficult behavioural problems caused by trauma. stress, fear and withdrawal. The project evaluation The aim of the activities was to offer children strongly pointed toward delivering the second opportunities to express and discuss problems year of the project to the same three community caused by trauma and also liaise with the children’s associations to sustain the benefits accrued from families to ensure that psycho-social support year one. While many more children in Gaza will continued at home. To this end, four workshops now need psycho-social support as a consequence were delivered in each month of the project with of Israel’s third onslaught in six years, the NIPSA the parents of the children participating in the Developing World Fund is making a significant programme to ensure a joined-up approach to child contribution to easing the plight of children on the frontline of Israel’s war. therapy.

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December 2014

A little goes a long Being poor is never very nice.

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way…in Ethiopia!

by Neil Alldred, Disability Aid Abroad

Being poor in a poor country is even worse.

But being poor and disabled in a poor country is really the pits.

For six years in the 1990s, I was privileged to run a 240 bed hospital and field programme offering a worldwide training resource for medical and other staff working with people affected by leprosy. ALERT (the All-Africa Leprosy, Rehabilitation and Training Centre) is based in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and was for me a real eye-opener as I had never met any leprosy patients nor seen the massive discriminations that they face very day.

Leprosy is a ‘straightforward’ disease caused by a bacillus or germ and can be cured in as little as 6 months by simple antibiotic treatment. It is not a big deal, in medical terms – unlike, say, the HIV/AIDS pandemic, or cancers, for which there remain no known cures. What it is though is a big social problem because cured leprosy patients (ex-leprosy patients) face terrible stigma and discrimination from people who think that leprosy is somehow unclean, a curse from God, as something to be shunned or not talked about, or whatever.

If people in poor countries believe the myths and prejudices around leprosy, it is likely they will try to hide any initial symptoms; they will be, as we say, ‘in denial’, and ignore this minor illness because they don’t want their neighbours or family to know about it. Unfortunately, ignoring it means that it progresses in the body and causes damage to nerves. When our main nerves are damaged, we do not know when we are hurting ourselves, since pain is not being communicated to the brain: a housewife can do the cooking and not realise that she is burning her fingers because she does not feel pain; a farmer can walk barefoot through his fields and not know that he is destroying his feet because he does not feel the pain that would otherwise warn him of the dangers.

Once a leprosy patient has had their fingers or toes damaged, and maybe their eyes, nose and face attacked by the bacillus, they cannot avoid other people knowing about their condition – and that’s when they become ostracised and usually end up begging for a living. It’s almost always a sad, desperate and devastating decline – and a completely needless one, caused by simple social prejudice.

In November 2013, I returned to Ethiopia, with John Coghlan of Disability Aid Abroad, the Belfast-based disabled people’s rights organisation, for a trade union conference on empowering people with a disability in the workplace. Outside the conference, I went to see my good friend Getahun who – like me – has now retired but who is a busy as ever, trying to help people overcome the difficulties that their leprosy has left them with. We visited the Berhan Taye Leprosy Disabled Persons Work Group, on the grounds of the large ALERT campus, and we saw how its members are trying to improve their lives by sewing, weaving and embroidering attractive items of clothing and household wear, for sale to visitors to their shop.

John (right) and ‘The Getahuns’ meet Miss Yehualeshet, Shop Supervisor responsible for selling ex-leprosy patients’ products as widely as possible.

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Mr Woldemariam Habte smiles as he looks out for his family by doing embroidery work - despite having no fingers and very little eyesight

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Imagine trying to sew by hand when your hands are wrecked by a nerve-damaging disease! Would you like to try your hand at working a weaving loom when your fingers and hands are rough and unresponsive? Many of these former leprosy patients are towers of strength – determined to eke out a living for themselves and their children, rather than to depend on hand-outs and begging.

It is really inspiring to see people shake off habits and attitudes of dependency and to embrace – so enthusiastically! – the opportunities that modern Ethiopia offers them. They may be poor; they may have a disability; they may be starting off on their journey of empowerment and personal betterment from a position far behind what any of us has had to cope with – but their passion for life and their sheer guts and drive to seek out the better life for their families is truly uplifting.

The Work Group in Addis Ababa already produces lots of items of clothing but their use of technology limits their output dramatically, if they had access to a few electric sewing and knitting machines; if they could have outright ownership of a modern weaving machine rather than the foot-operated wooden contraptions that they have been using for donkeys years – they would be able to produce much more goods, but also goods of much higher value-added. Better designs, better materials, better quality means that they could charge higher and generate more income for their everyday living in what is fast becoming an expensive modern city.

They are looking for help with the purchase of 4 weaving machines, 4 sewing machines, 2 sweater machines and 2 embroidery machines, which together cost a little over £15,000 (or about 500,000 Birr – the Ethiopian currency). No single trade union is being asked to find all that money on their own.

Indeed, the great thing about trade unionism is that there really is Global Solidarity – our small contribution can join others’ small contributions and eventually, thanks to the goodwill and voluntary work of people like Getahun, make a really big difference.

As trade unionists, we are aware that simple charity is not going to change the world. (And - hopefully!

– as trade unionists we still really do want to change this terribly unfair world of ours.) But while we campaign for Fair Trade and while we are activists for better policies against tax evasion by the big corporations, etc, we know that the current plight of poor people cannot be ignored simply because our energies are focused on creating Utopia tomorrow!

We need a two-pronged approach that combines sensitive and empowering fund-raising for income generation projects for people with a disability, whilst at the same time campaigning for long-term change in the social, political and economic areas that affect peoples’ lives.

It’s not rocket science, and it isn’t world-changing, perhaps. But in a poor country such as Ethiopia, a little goes a long way and can make a huge difference in so many people’s lives.

Left to right: John Coghlan (Disability Aid Abroad) meets Mr Getahun Negussie, Manager of the Leprosy Workers’ Self-Help Group, and Mr Getachew, Chairman of the Group, while DAA’s very good friend in Ethiopia - Mr Getahun Jaffero.

19

Developing World Fund How can you help?

Sign up to receive regular information

Would you like to sign up to receive regular information about the work of the Global Solidarity Committee and its many campaigns to strengthen justice, peace, equality and freedom throughout the world? If so send your details to Geraldine Alexander at geraldine.alexander@nipsa.org.uk or by post at the address below.

Donating NIPSA’s Developing World Fund was set up in June 1993 and aims to relieve in any part of the world persons suffering from poverty, sickness or distress, to advance for the public benefit the education of the inhabitants of impoverished countries so that their conditions of life may be improved.

Projects supported by the Fund must be sustainable.

Details of some of the projects supported by the Fund can be found on the map overleaf and on the NIPSA website at www.nipsa.org.uk/globalsolidarity.

The Fund is unique because 100% of all money contributed by members goes directly towards the specific self-help projects. No money goes towards administration costs.

If you would like more information about the Fund please contact your Branch Secretary or NIPSA Headquarters.

We encourage members to donate regularly by either taking out a covenant or authorising a Give-As-You-Earn (GAYE) payroll deduction.

If you would like to contribute to NIPSA’s Developing World Fund please complete the form below and forward it to NIPSA Headquarters.

Developing World Fund

Developing World Fund

Payroll Donation Form

I want to give to the NIPSA Developing World Fund, direct from my salary the following amounts per month Figures are based on standard tax rates

£5

cost in take home pay £1.30

£15

£10

cost in take home pay £11.70

£20

cost in take home pay £7.80 cost in take home pay £15.60

or alternatively you may indicate your own amount

per week (tick appropriate) per month

£

Minimum donation £1.30. Cost in take home pay £1.00

Please tick if you already use GAYE Mr/Mrs/Miss/Ms

Name:

(circle as applicable)

Address: Postcode: Staff/Employer No:

Signature:

Employer:

Work Location:

National Insurance No:

Date:

Return to: Developing World Fund, NIPSA, 54 Wellington Park, Belfast. BT9 6DP