Conferences aim to smooth delivery of donated goods

By Maggie Farrand

Throughout the United States, nonprofit groups raise money and collect goods to help struggling communities in former Soviet republics.

One of the challenges is getting the food, clothing, shelter items, medical equipment, educational materials and other supplies where they are needed. Four conferences in the past year have addressed those challenges on both sides of world.

The humanitarian assistance is transported through the Small/Medium Transportation Program (SMTP), funded by the U.S. Department of State, Office of the Coordinator for U.S. Assistance to Europe and Eurasia (EUR/ACE). Since its founding in 1997, it has moved more than 1,750 sea containers of critically needed humanitarian commodities, valued at approximately $179 million, under the direction of aid group Counterpart International.

The citizen-to-citizen program connects communities in the United States to communities in nine former Soviet republics.

The four conferences run by Counterpart brought together partners and donors to celebrate their successes and work on ways to improve their humanitarian work.

At regional conferences in Ukraine in May and in the Kyrgyz Republic in October, attendees reviewed program policies and procedures and discussed any issues or legislative changes that arose in the previous year. 

They shared experiences, networked with peer organizations and met with representatives from the State Department and transportation companies. They also exchanged ideas on best methods and practices for various aspects of the shipping process.

Attendees at the overseas conferences included recipient organizations from Ukraine, Belarus, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. U.S. embassy officials and representatives from transportation companies and Ukrainian and Kyrgyz government agencies also participated.

Conferences in Las Vegas in November and Washington in December were designed for the donor organizations in the United States. Also attending were representatives from International Service Corp shipping company Network America Lines, A.P. Inspections and the State Department.

“These conferences are very useful in connecting donor and recipients organizations with the entire process of sending humanitarian aid to a country,” says Rang Hee Kim, Director of Humanitarian Assistance at Counterpart. “It’s a process that involves a lot of moving parts, but when you see the aid arrive and serve its purpose, it’s all worthwhile.”

Organizations interested in sending humanitarian aid shipments to countries in the former Soviet Union can apply to the program; once their request is accepted, Counterpart manages all logistics—including scheduling loads, arranging inspections, tracking shipments and distribution once the shipment arrives at its destination. The U.S. Agency for International Development covers the cost of shipping.

The program supports more than 50 U.S.-based nonprofit organizations in their humanitarian activities in Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, the Kyrgyz Republic, Moldova, Tajikistan, Ukraine and Uzbekistan.

March 16th, 2012 | Tags: conferences, DoS, humanitarian assistance, Small Medium Transportation Program, SMTP | Category: | Leave a comment

Finding common ground, Yemeni women seek new ways to work together

Responsive Governance Project aims to improve life, empower women in Yemen

By Jeff Baron

Activists and officials in Yemen are finishing work on proposals to improve its worst-in-the-world record on opportunities for women.

Counterpart International’s Responsive Governance Project (RGP), the Ministry of Human Rights and the Women’s National Committee plan to unveil the agenda at a conference March 19 in the Yemeni capital, Sana’a.

“Yemen is one of the worst countries in the world in terms of the gender disparity,” says Abdul Karim Alaug, Deputy Chief of the RGP in Yemen. The program has been helping civil society groups develop policies to address what they have identified as Yemen’s critical problems. And Alaug says the status of women is “a crosscutting issue” that affects Yemen’s progress in all areas. (watch a short video on empowering women in Yemen)

The World Economic Forum has issued a Gender Gap Report for each of the past six years, and Yemen has ranked last every year. In a country with limited opportunities and resources for its people generally, Yemeni women especially are deprived economically, educationally and politically, the nonprofit said. They suffer from high maternal death rates, and illiteracy is twice as common among women as among men.  

The most recent Gender Gap Report ranked Yemen among the bottom five nations for women’s economic participation and opportunity, educational attainment and political empowerment. It was 83rd among 135 countries in women’s health and survival.

A change at the top

Yemen’s array of persistent problems inspired a popular uprising that forced out President Ali Abdullah Saleh after 33 years in power, and the country still faces a rebellion in the south and a sectarian split in the north. The newly elected president has promised a two-year transition to reform the military and the government and to write a new constitution.

Alaug says the two segments of society that have emerged as “very important actors” in Yemen’s movement for change are young people and women. “These two groups have been excluded, to a large extent, from the political as well as the social and economic dialogue in the country,” he says.

Yet Stephanie Baric, the Director of Counterpart’s Yemen programs, says Yemenis generally agree on the importance of improving the situation of women.

“Through our focus group discussions and in reports and assessments that have been conducted in Yemen, there is a general recognition that … achieving sustainable human development in Yemen requires addressing the gender inequities,” she says.

A 2010 survey by the Status of Women in the Middle East and North Africa also showed some support for change: Nearly 60 percent of Yemeni men and women favored the use of gender quotas in their elected bodies to increase women’s political representation, and 64 percent supported women as political candidates. Only one of the 301 members of the Yemeni Parliament is a woman.

The proposals being offered this month are designed to turn the talk about improving women’s status into reality.

A consensus of rivals

Political divisions have complicated the effort. Alaug says the Responsive Governance Project tried to bring together women’s activists from different groups to develop a common platform on gender issues, “but because of their differences in their political affiliation they don’t sit together.”

So the project worked with rival factions separately.

“After we did civil workshops and training, [we assisted] them in developing their demands and what we call Yemeni women’s agenda,” he says. The result: “The three documents that are coming from three different affiliations, you see the demands are the same,” Alaug says.

“So what we are going to do now is to develop one document that represents the views and demands of women in Yemen to be presented to any political structure that will come after this [pro-democracy] movement,” he says.

One of RGP’s objectives is to strengthen civil society organizations so they are better able to represent Yemenis and work with government officials. “There is a disconnection between government institutions and civil society organizations, including women’s organizations. And we have been trying to do many activities to facilitate that dialogue and communication,” Alaug says.

Among the policies already being pushed by the RGP and its Yemeni partners: raising the proportion of women in the nation’s teaching force to at least 30 percent; increasing the availability of emergency obstetric care and making other free childbirth services available nationwide to cut the number of maternal and infant deaths; and providing family planning services at no cost.

Progress on health

Lina Amin, a pediatrician and head RGP Policy Technical Officer, says the approach is working on health issues. “Already the Ministry of Health is accepting the participation of [civil society organizations] … during planning, during the development of strategy,” she says.

Jamila Alraabi, Deputy Minister of Yemen’s Ministry of Public Health and Population, said the RGP has helped the ministry update its strategy on reproductive health, worked on maternal health policies and supported the training of midwives in every governorate, or province, in the country.

Alraabi said her agency works closely with local councils of activist groups, religious leaders and other community leaders to put policies in place and provide outreach, health awareness and education programs.

Fatma Uqba, the RGB’s Advocacy Manager, says a cooperative approach pays off for both sides.

“We don’t want [government officials] to think that we are just forcing them to accept some policies,” she says. “We want them to be part of the policies and to feel the partnership. So this is what we mean by educating the government.”   

The RGP, run by Counterpart in partnership with the National Democratic Institute and the Research Triangle Institute, is funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Watch the video.

March 7th, 2012 | Tags: Responsive Governance Project, RGP, women, Yemen | Category: | Leave a comment

An era begins as Yemenis vote

By Jennifer O'Riordan

Despite deep divisions over their country’s future, Yemenis achieved a milestone Feb. 21: a 60 percent turnout at the polls for a presidential election.

An agreement signed in November by warring forces and President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who had been in power since 1978, laid the foundations for a two-year political transition. A compromise made Saleh’s vice president, Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi, the sole candidate in last month’s election.

As part of the Responsive Governance Project, which is led by Counterpart International, Yemeni civil society organizations learned how to raise awareness about the elections and encourage people to get out and vote.

The Responsive Governance Project is funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development and implemented by Counterpart, the National Democratic Institute and the Research Triangle Institute.

Understanding public opinion first

Discussion groups proved to be vital in creating a focused awareness campaign. Counterpart and its implementing partners trained members of the Yemen Elections Monitoring Network on how to conduct discussion groups and gauge public opinion.

Organizations used a discussion guide that included key questions such as “Do you think your participation in the next presidential election will help solve the current situation in Yemen?” and “Do you think women will play an active role in the election and the transition?”

The guide also suggested potential slogans for the awareness campaign leading up to election day. Some of the slogans used included “Let’s start change—vote” and “Build Yemen by your vote.”

Group participants cited a number of potential barriers to a successful election, among them poor security and efforts by a separatist movement in southern Yemen to suppress turnout.

Some of the concerns were not unfounded. At least 10 people were reported killed in election-related violence in southern Yemen, where separatists demanded a boycott and seized several polling stations.

Despite the violence, most of the more than 12 million of Yemeni citizens eligible to vote cast their ballots.

Educating voters

In the weeks before the voting, the Responsive Governance Project printed and distributed nearly 1.2 million posters, leaflets, banners, “Get Out and Vote” cards and other promotional pieces to organizations and activists in all of Yemen’s 21 governorates. Many groups not on the original distribution list requested copies of the material so that they, too, could raise awareness and encourage people to vote.

The Responsive Governance Project also used leaflet distribution campaigns, educational forums, mobile messaging and vehicles equipped with public-address systems to spread the word.

The election monitoring network worked closely with the governance project during the campaign. It also partnered with the U.S. Embassy to post billboards in major urban centers and received additional support from MTN mobile to deliver pro-election messages to the phone company’s 8 million subscribers.

The voter education effort inspired citizens to inform others in their own communities. Some visited goatherd in remote areas or spread the word through Facebook or by sticking posters on buses traveling between some of Yemen’s main cities.

Counterpart’s work to inform Yemenis of their right to vote and how to do so will also guide civil society organizations for the next elections.

President Hadi has pledged to lead Yemen forward through a two-year transition period in which the armed forces and government institutions are supposed to be restructured, a new constitution drafted and preparations made for multiparty elections in 2014.

The Responsive Governance Project is a three-year, USAID-funded program that works to strengthen government institutions and improve the delivery of public services while encouraging more citizen participation in the political process.

March 5th, 2012 | Tags: capacity building, elections, President, Responsive Governance Project, Sana'a, USAID, voter education, Yemen | Category: | Leave a comment

Saving the lives of pregnant women in Yemen

With one of the world’s highest maternal mortality rates, Yemen looks to provide adequate healthcare to pregant women and new mothers.

By Jeff Baron

Midwife Samira Qaed recalls a woman who came to her village clinic in Yemen at the end of pregnancy. Like many Yemenis, she had gone into labor never having had a checkup.

The woman’s placenta was positioned badly, and she was bleeding severely and unable to move. “The distance, searching for a car, absence of her husband, not being prepared for this—all complicated her case,” Qaed says. “It was a miracle that we saved this mother’s life. We immediately took her to the hospital. Thanks to Allah, she underwent a Caesarean operation and she was fine.”

Qaed and other midwives are on the front lines of the fight in Yemen to save women and their babies, and she says the biggest obstacle to good maternal health is getting patients to see a midwife. “She [the midwife] is the one saving the mother and the baby,” Qaed says.

Beyond the immediate goal of saving lives, Yemen’s midwives and an international effort supporting them are pursuing something even greater: to make healthy mothers and healthy babies the norm, and to push Yemeni society and its emerging government responsive to their needs. (watch a short video on maternal health in Yemen)

A leader in that fight is Jamila Alraabi, a physician who serves as Yemen’s Deputy Minister of Health and Population. She laid out the challenges:

• Yemen has one of the world’s highest maternal mortality rates. Seven Yemeni women a day die of complications from pregnancy or childbirth – leaving seven families in danger of collapse in the absence of a mother – and nearly all of the deaths are preventable.
• Many Yemenis live in remote villages, where trained midwives are scarce and hospitals nonexistent.
• Because of cultural norms, most Yemeni women are unwilling to be treated by male doctors.
• Seventy percent of Yemeni women are illiterate, which makes providing them with health information more difficult – and cuts down on the number who can become midwives or physicians.
• Yemen has a high birthrate, especially among its hardest-to-reach women. Illiterate women account for more than 90 percent of maternal deaths.

Efforts to attack maternal mortality are paying off, but Dr. Alraabi says part of the long-term cure must be a change in attitudes.

She says only 36 percent of pregnant Yemeni women have at least four prenatal visits for health services – the minimum that international health groups say is appropriate – often because they or their husbands do not consider more than one visit necessary.

As a result, Dr. Alraabi says, dangerous complications in pregnancy, such as high blood pressure or diabetes, often are discovered too late to get the woman proper care, and women can go into childbirth in high-risk situations far from a hospital or emergency obstetrical center.

And Alraabi says women need a stronger voice. In many cases, the pregnant woman can’t make the decision to see a midwife without the approval of her husband or older women in her family. “She should be very empowered and educated in order to say that ‘I need services and I have to ask for it,’” Alraabi says.

Suad Qasem, president of the National Yemeni Midwives Association, says more midwives are needed in Yemen’s rural areas, where her members are the only source of pregnancy care. Her group also is advocating for better training for midwives; many in rural areas have just two years of training after nine years of basic education, and the national standard is three years.

“If she is trained well, she will give good care for a pregnant woman,” Qasem says.

RGP provides training, advocacy

With support from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the Responsive Governance Project (RGP) is providing in-service training to improve the skills and knowledge of midwives. And it’s helping Qasem’s group and others become advocates for constructive changes in Yemeni society and government policy, especially for women and youths.

Abdul Karim Alaug, RGP’s Deputy Chief, says one of the priorities it identified was the expansion of emergency obstetrical care to ensure that every Yemeni woman has access to it.

RGP – which is led by Counterpart International – is designed to help connect Yemen’s government, civil society and the population so together they can identify a common agenda and ways to improve the country. Alaug says women and youths especially have sought to become participants, not merely recipients, in developing the policies designed for them, and the governance program is building the strength of civil society organizations vital to bringing about needed changes peacefully.

Dr. Alraabi, the Deputy Health Minister, says RGP has been instrumental in helping her agency and local health councils strengthen policies on maternal health. And says she is optimistic that the progress will continue.

“It will come by partnership with all developmental partners, with other governmental institutions and with the civil society,” she says. “No one can work alone, and no one can achieve success alone. It should be a partnership, and this is our hope in Yemen, that we will not have a woman die from preventable causes.”

Watch the video.

March 4th, 2012 | Tags: childbirth, maternal health, midwives, Responsive Governance Project, RGP, women, Yemen | Category: | Leave a comment

National Geographic MapGuide for Ethiopia officially launches

A new Geotourism MapGuide helps fill the information gap in a country that is ripe for increased tourism

By Maggie Farrand

Thanks to a new National Geographic MapGuide, tourists visiting Ethiopia’s Central and Southern Rift Valleys now have a detailed guide to the attractions and sites available in the area.

This MapGuide – only the second MapGuide to be produced in Africa – is designed to promote lesser-known destinations and attractions, including places where Counterpart International’s Ethiopian Sustainable Tourism Alliance (ESTA) is helping communities to develop tourism products.

Alongside ESTA’s other tourism activity in the area, this MapGuide,  launched in December, will serve as the spring board for further tourism development in the area.

The launch ceremony represented the culmination of a highly-participatory process that began in March 2011 with a series of site nominations. Nominated sites were then vetted using criteria set by National Geographic. Roughly 50 sites were selected and visited  by Counterpart’s ESTA team.

The Ethiopia MapGuide is a product of a partnership with Counterpart International, National Geographic, Horn of Africa Regional Environment Centre and Network (HoA-REC), Solimar International and FHI360.

The December launch event, hosted by Counterpart Country Director Bedilu Shegen, was attended by the Dutch Ambassador Hans Blankenberg, USAID-Ethiopia representative Randy Chester, organizational partners and tourism industry representatives.

Jim Dion, Sustainable Tourism Program Manager at National Geographic Maps,celebrated the map’s creation by both Counterpart International and the U.S. Agency for International Development, which supports ESTA.

Yonas Desta, Ethiopia’s Minister of Culture and Tourism representative, said at the launch: “For a long time now, we have been saying that lack of information is one of the biggest challenges facing the tourism industry in Ethiopia. We need to promote our vibrant cultures, our unique ecosystems, and our archaeological and historical treasures.”

From the Ark of the Covenant to unknown sites

Sites featured in the map include the Lepis Forest – a juniper forest that offers horseback tours and first-rate bird watching – and Shashemene – a town best known for its large Rastafarian population.

For those in search of the Ark of the Covenant, you cannot miss Lake Ziway and Tullu Guddo. A small village in eastern Ethiopia, Tullo Guddo and its inhabitants boast being descendants of those who hid the Ark of the Covenant when it was supposedly moved from the northern Ethiopian city of Axum in the ninth century.

Distribution of Ethiopia’s MapGuide

Initially 10,000 copies were printed and  roughly half will be given to the Ministry of Culture and Tourism to distribute at major international tourism trade fairs.

The other half will be sold through Book World/Shama Books, Ethiopia’s most prominent book store chain and publisher.

The MapGuides will also be available for purchase in the top hotels, bookstores and the international airport in Addis Ababa.

About the Ethiopian Sustainable Tourism Alliance

The USAID-funded ESTA aims to enhance biodiversity conservation and economic development through sustainable tourism products, services and other opportunities throughout destination regions of Ethiopia. Several important activities, such as facilitation of handicrafts fairs, community enterprise formalization and legalization, launching of the National Geographic Geotourism MapGuide were undertaken to directly promote sales and bring about sustained economic growth.

Counterpart leads the implementation of the ESTA program with the support of an alliance of international and national organizations who share the mission of the Global Sustainable Tourism Alliance (GSTA), including FHI360, Solimar International, George Washington University and Aid to Artisans.

The Geotourism MapGuide represents an opportunity for local communities to become directly involved in the area’s success, while also encouraging proper conservation and management skills.

March 1st, 2012 | Tags: Central Rift Valley, ESTA, Ethiopia, Geotourism, MapGuide, National Geographic, Southern Rift Valley, sustainable tourism, tourism, tourists | Category: | Leave a comment