A Family of Clinics in Rural Nepal

When I traveled to Nepal in October, 2009, I met with a number of impressive NGOS (some already described in Women’s Giving Tree) and my best experience was with a grass roots organization, a women’s health clinic, located in the foothills 2-3 hours outside Kathmandu. The clinic is one of four village clinics established by World Neighbors, an American NGO, but are now independent nonprofit community clinics. Friends of Nepal Pariwar Foundation (pariwar means family) provides partial support for salaries of nurse-midwives; other expenses are covered by small fees for services and margin on medicines sold. The clinics work on very little money and serve a very wide area.

We drove down a steep mountainside to a hamlet surrounded by rich green rice paddies. The clinic served even more distant villages by providing basic gynecological and obstetric services to women who often walked a day to the clinic to receive care. I met a woman, toothless when she smiled, who was being treated for uterine prolapse, a common problem resulting from either early childbirth or lack of rest after delivery. She was incredibly grateful to be given a vaginal ring, which cost little and made such a big difference! 

The clinics do about two-thirds general care and one third women’s and maternal care. Two thirds of the clients are female from all ages. In the last year close to two thousand women were provided family planning services with 81 percent using Depo-Provera, a contraceptive injection given every 3 months, often at “depo camps” stations set up along the road. Family planning users increased by percent in one year. The clinics performed 259 clinic deliveries, a 28 percent increase from the previous year and included prenatal checkups. As Tom Arens, President of the Foundation, observed, “It’s common for a woman to arrive in the middle of the night for delivery, carried from a remote village in a basket or a chair usually used for a bride being carried to her wedding.” Tom takes travelers to Nepal on visits to the clinics – it’s an amazing experience 

The four clinics manage on their own small earnings and a grant under $15,000 a year. I know that my small annual contribution goes a long way. Won’t you join me in helping the rural women of Nepal? For more information or to make a contribution, email tarens@sonic.net

WONETHA

Sex work is a way that many African women manage to survive and support their families. It is not a chosen, but necessary, occupation.  Sex workers are particularly vulnerable, subject to abuse by law enforcement and the general public. Sex workers are also discriminated against by the health system which often denies access for HIV/AIDS victims to antiretroviral drugs. One sex worker commented: "I vowed never to go back to a health facility when a nurse told me that the facility was constrained by a lack of drugs and priority was given to those who needed them badly. She said givnig them to a sex worker who was a vector of HIV and STIs would be like washing a cloth spotless white and spreading it on filthy ground to dry."

Likewise, sex worker initiatives geared toward advancing their health and socioeconomic wellbeing are often furstrated by state agents. One government minister ordered hotel management to evict participants of a sex workers' training, saying that if the training continued the hotel would be held as an accomplice to the promotion of prostitution, a criminal act in Uganda.

Finally, sex workers are subject to sexual violence since the public believes sex workers cannot be raped since sex work is a criminal offence.

A Ugandan civil society organization, Women's Organization Network for Human Rights Advocacy (WONETHA), was esablished in 2008 to improve the health, social and economic standards of adult sex workers. The organization has close to 400 members in 13 communities around Uganda.

What does WONETHA seek to do? First, it has an Outreach and Support Programme that does education on human rights and sexual reproductive help, condom distribution, counseling and referral. In its Advocacy and Networking Programme, WONETHA's activities include a media campaign, training of police, litigation and policy advocacy. Finally, the Leadership and Capacity Programme engages in training of peer educators, training in social justice, human rights and feminism, recordkeeping on sex work, and documentation of health violations.

WONETHA's most all-encompassing goal is decriminalization of adult sex work in Uganda. No other African country has decriminalized sex work.  While Uganda has made great strides in confronting the HIV/AIDS problem, it continues to stigmatize sex workers and creates fear for workers to come out of the closet.  As a result, rates of HIV infections among sex workers is almost twice as high at 47 percent as in the general population.

WONETHA is to be recognized for its work on one of the most hidden and discriminatory fields for women. In the African context: Women don't choose to be sex workers -- they are forced by poverty to obtain income for their families. They deserve to be rescued and rehabilitated. For more information, please see the WONETHA blog.

One by One

This holiday season, how about making a gift that will give a woman her life back?

Many of you know about obstetric fistula, an injury resulting from childbearing that leaves affected women with chronic incontinence and usually abandonment by their families and communities.  Fistula mostly affects women who have children too early or who have no medical care for delivery. It can be treated with surgery, costing only $420! It can also be prevented with education and outreach to women in remote areas of Africa and Asia. 

One By One is a nonprofit based in Seattle that is committed to ending obstetric fistula through treatment and prevention programs.  Over the last five years, more than 200 Giving Circles, which educate about fistula and fundraise for One By One, have formed in the US and internationally.  If 10 women in a Giving Circle each give $40, the funds collected will enable a struggling woman in need to receive healing surgery and return to her village as a contributing member of society.  One By One also supports important prevention programs that aim to save women from suffering from fistula.  See them featured on One By One’s visual annual report at their website. One By One works on treatment and prevention in Tanzania, Ethiopia and Niger and will soon add Kenya to its list of countries.

One By One was founded by its current director, Heidi Breeze-Harris, along with Katya Matanovic, now on the Board of Directors.  In 2003, Heidi, home and feeling ill from her pregnancy, saw or heard three different media programs about fistula in one week.  She had never before heard of the injury and was determined to do something about it.  Her original all-volunteer program became a nonprofit six year ago and last year took in revenues of $540,000, including gifts from hundreds of annual donors and several corporations.

One By One’s partnerships in each country help provide many services: treatment for fistula victims, prevention programs, and medical research on ways to identify at-risk women earlier in pregnancy.  One of the unique qualities of One By One is its attention to prevention – teaching women likely to have fistula about their conditions and helping find emergency transportation for delivery, and training village midwives. 

A fine way to find out more about One By One is to read the blog on the organization’s Web site and watch videos on their YouTube Channel.  Best of all, join One By One by starting a giving circle among your friends.  A small contribution this holiday season can change a woman’s life forever. Please visit One By One today.

P.S. Thanks to my cousin, Maggie Bangser, an advisor to One By One in Tanzania, who first taught me about fistula many years ago and has done extraordinary work through Women’s Dignity Project, a program she initiated.

Sabore

In the last year, Women’s Giving Tree has featured NGOs across the world that aid women and children. This is the first time we highlight an NGO led by a man, Sabore Oyie, an extraordinary and articulate Masai community leader, who has initiated a project to build wells for the 9000 residents in the Ewaso Nyiro region, 2 and ½ hours southwest of Nairobi, Kenya. 

Without wells, the women and girls must walk 6-8 kilometers one way to collect water from the river. The trip to the river can be dangerous, subject to attacks by wild animals. And if girls spend so much time on water collection, they cannot attend school. 

The women and girls of the area carry water in 5-liter plastic gas cans that are strapped by a leather band to the head and hoisted onto their backs or they balance the cans in baskets on their heads. The water is used for drinking, bathing, washing clothes and consumption by domestic animals. The river water is often contaminated – only wells can provide fresh water. 

Sabore is the rare Masai man who seeks to liberate women from traditional drudgery and cultural oppression. Not only is his work aimed at helping women and girls but he chooses to remain unmarried in order to counter early marriage and female circumcision. See a video of Sabore at Vimeo. 

Fundraising for the wells has been led by Therese Hjelm-Baer, retired from the financial industry and living in Aptos, California, who has visited Kenya several times. Therese has assisted Sabore on his trips to California by arranging talks for him at schools, promoting events through Dining for Women, and selling Masai bead work to help widowed artisans earn money to acquire their own land. 

Already a visionary, Sabore participated in Global Leaders for Justice in 2010 at Santa Clara University, a program linked to Global Women Leaders Network. As a result of the Santa Clara program, Sabore’s aspirations have risen from 2 wells to 400 wells. He hopes small profits from his project can be directed to girls to pay for their school tuition and uniforms. 

Wells are expensive at $25,000 each. US efforts have so far raised enough money for only half of one well. Please contribute this holiday season by making the best possible gift to the Masai people. You can contribute directly at www.blueplanetnetwork.org/sabore.

Sun, Sea and Refugees

I have recently returned from three weeks in Greece.  My mind is full of images -- swimmers frolicking in the sea, diners making toasts with ouzo, and many, many dark-skinned young men roaming Athenian streets and beaches, trying to sell armfuls of cheap watches, flashlights, and knockoff designer handbags. These men are asylum-seekers, refugees and "irregular" (illegal) immgrants sustaining themselves in Athens -- a bustling city with few social services for illegal foreigners and a Greek population struggling for its own economic survival.

One source of assistance for refugees in Athens is the Refugee Programme of Caritas, the philanthropic service of the Catholic Church.  My friend, Begonia Kalliga, Secretary of the five-member, volunteer Managing Committee, gave me an overview of its work.  This includes: serving annually almost 45,000 hot lunches in the Soup Kitchen; providing 600 packages of food and almost 300 packages of clothes and bed linens to families; offering language lessons in Greek and English.  The Refugee Programme also offers social services through its staff social worker and volunteer doctors and lawyers -- health education for mothers, vaccinations for children, and counseling for over 2000 adults.

The varying appearances of Athens' refugees and illegal migrants made me wonder where these street people came from.  I learned that families helped by the Refugee Programme were mostly from Somalia, Afghanistan and Iraq, while individual young men came from those same countries and also Iran, Palestine, and countries in North and West Africa.  Migrants often arrive on the shores of Greek islands on inflatable boats, having paid huge amounts of money (3000 - 5000 Euros) for passage from Turkey, and having no idea where they've landed or how to move on.

On the day I visited the Refugee Programme, the lunch crowd was quiet, polite, friendly, and clearly intent on consuming a large hot meal.  The Refugee Programme operates through the work of volunteer managers, 70 volunteer workers per week, and a paid staff of five.  Funding comes from the small Catholic community in Athens and the private sector.  While the Programme once had some state support, government help was discontinued three years ago as a result of Greece's economic crisis.

This snapshot of the refugee problem in Athens reveals an attempt by good people to deal with a large and far darker problem in Greece and throughout Europe.  With a population of only 12 million, Greece has about a half million irregular -- or illegal -- migrants, along with 700,000 legal or partially legal immigrants.  The Red Cross reports that approximately 300 irregulars arrive in Greece every day.  Human

For those who don't escape, some are picked up and detained by Greek authorities in Reception Centers which are extremely unpleasant and unhealthy with poor food, overcrowded sleeping arrangements, terrible hygiene and untrained immigration police who offer little help with asylum paperwork and little information on legal procedures.  For migrants who manage to escape the Greek authorities, many sleep in the open air or in shabby rooms with up to 50 people per room.  

Besides Caritas, there are several other NGOs providing refugee help, but they are a drop in the bucket for the 250,000 illegals living in or near Athens.  The next time you fantasize about Aegean holiday fun, consider the tragedy of Middle Eastern, Asian and African immigrants whose experiences of Greece are traumatic and desperate.  As my friend Begonia Kalliga says, "The Refugee Program gives a hot meal, a short break from daily hassles and a small bit of hope for making it to the next day."  If you wish to help refugees in Greece, please email womensgivingtree@gmail.com for information.

Cantera, Nicaraguan Cornerstone

My friend Alice Waco, from Santa Rosa, has been volunteering at Cantera, an NGO in Nicaragua, since its founding in 1988 during the Sandinista revolution. Cantera's leader, Anabel Torres, a former nun, was inspired by the Sandinista struggle for social justice, left her religious order, and received land from the Sandinistas. Her goal was to establish an organization named Cantera, "cornerstone" in Spanish, that would strengthen the capabilities of the people in the fields of "gender, intergenerational relationships, agro-ecology, ethics and spirituality."

Torres was particularly concerned with empowering women through gender workshops that foster women's roles as leaders and managers who can take charge as equals. In men's workshops on gender, the themes are oppression of women through machismo, the evils of domestic violence, and the importance of men participating in work in the home. These topics are taught not only to adults but also to youth and children.

Cantera has many other programs that promote gender equality such as groups for abused women, scholarships for girls and women, and training of women as "promatores" so they can lead workshops in their own communities. I was delighted that Anabel Torres has also envisioned the creation of organic farms and bee farms. She received a grant from the Japanese government to train women and men to become beekeepers.  And after terrible hurricanes in recent years, Cantera has rebuilt houses with women playing a role in designing their small homes and working on the construction.

My friend Alice, a professional masseuse, has given workshops for Cantera in massage, stress reduction, and natural health. All these progressive activities take place in a Catholic country that has been subject to the brutality of civil war, with the Sandinistas' leader, Daniel Ortega, finally elected to power as President of Nicaragua in 2006. Cantera demonstrates how grass roots organization, aided by external volunteers, can overcome the forces of male culture and conservatism in Central America.  Many Americans support Cantera through Friends of Cantera. Contributions can be sent to Alice Waco, 918 Benton St., Santa Rosa, California and more information can be found at CanteraNicaragua.org.

Nepal Youth Foundation

I have been a supporter of the Nepalese Youth Opportunities Foundation (NYF) for years, and a trip to Nepal in October, 2009, intensified my enthusiasm for this extraordinary NGO. NYF was founded by Olga Murray in 1990, when she retired from her career as a legal researcher. Retired?? Olga, the most active 85 year old I know, made her fascination with Nepal into a new, lifelong commitment.

Let’s start with the Nepali children who are the focus of NYF's activities. NYF started out by setting up two children's homes in Kathmandu, one for boys and one for girls. Many of the children have been street kids, working as beggars and abandoned by their parents. The children live in a NYF community in which, together, they form their own caring family, finish high school, and many go on, with scholarships, to university and professional careers.

Olga took a special interest in malnutrition in existing poor families. She established Nutritional Rehabilitation Homes for malnourished children who are referred by hospitals AND for their mothers. These are small hospitals dedicated to restoring severely malnourished children to health and educating their mothers about nutrition and all aspects of child care. At the end of this year, there will be 12 such facilities around the country. After five weeks of the feeding program, most children gain enough weight to reach average for their age and the mothers gain an average of 12 pounds. Best of all, the mothers learn how to cook and grow healthier foods than rice and lentils so they can better feed their entire families when they return home.

NYF's program that moved me the most is Indentured Daughters in which NYF buys back daughters in the western Terai region who have been indentured at a young age to work as a servant for a wealthy family. NYF buys the girl’s family a piglet or goat to make up for lost income from indenturing the girl and then sends the girl to school in her home community. NYF has liberated 10,000 bonded girls and is on the verge of eradicating the bonding custom. The best part is that the girls have formed their own groups to publicize the illegality and cruelty of indenturing.

Always innovating, Olga has recently started a children's counseling center. As reported on NYOF's website, "Nepal is in its infancy as far as psychological counseling is concerned. However, many children suffer from emotional trauma as a result of the insurgency which raged through country for ten years and was only recently resolved. Furthermore, disabled children, orphans, and homeless youth suffer from oppression and discrimination, and they, too, are in need of counseling."

Please read in detail about NYF and consider ways you can contribute to this amazing work!

The Butterfly Project

I'm sure we've all thought about the power of one – how one person can make a huge difference in the world. For me, the work done by Carole Peccorini in East Africa symbolizes beyond measure the power of one.

Carole, a nurse, counselor and writer, traveled in 2005 to 14 orphanages in Uganda to bring children health-giving glyconutrients and vitamins. There, she met Evaline at an orphanage in the north, and was completely taken by this bright and shining girl of ten. Carole asked the orphanage director if Evaline could go to college. "Intellectually, yes," he said, "but it would be a question of money. Who would pay the $6000 for three years of college?" Carole knew it was doable and immediately committed from a place deep within to become a partner in funding higher education for Evaline if she wanted to go to college.

She created the Butterfly Project based on the 1200 Blue Morpho Butterflies, iridescent blue mylar butterflies, she had tucked in her suitcase for gifts. Before she left Uganda, she vowed to raise $60,000 to send ten orphan girls to college.

But Carole does not sit still. The Butterfly Project is now in Kenya and Tanzania with 9 promising young women currently in college. Five are studying to be teachers and four are training to be nurses. There is still an open promise to Evaline awaiting her graduation from high school. The program is administered by Village Volunteers through three local, African program directors who select the girls and administer the funds. Shana Greene, Director of Village Volunteers, notes, "We do not have staff in country and I never go there because they want to treat me as a hero. Village Volunteers does not believe in simply giving aid but in partnering with stakeholders.”

For Carole, the butterflies symbolize transformation and she uses them to attract donations. She shares her dream with anyone who will listen and has received donations from over 400 individuals. As Carole tells her contributors, "Girls are the change agents for their culture when they have the opportunity for higher education. Educated girls lower the birth rate and the incidence of HIV/AIDS. They change communities, villages, countries." The gift for contributing partners is knowing they have made a real difference that changes a young woman's life and ripples out to touch many, many more. It gives everyone wings. Butterflies are beautiful; butterflies glide through the air. And so do the girls whose lives take flight from the Butterfly Project. And all this is happening from the power of one.

Seeds of Learning

Sometimes, right from your own backyard, you can discover an amazing NGO that works overseas. Recently, I met Annie Bacon, Executive Director of Seeds of Learning, in Santa Rosa. The US office of Seeds of Learning (SOL) is just down the road in Sonoma.

SOL's work is in depressed communities in Nicaragua and El Salvador. In the past 19 years, SOL has built 114 classrooms in 38 schools in Nicaragua and El Salvador. SOL's mission – a bit like Greg Mortenson's efforts in the Himalayas, made so well-known by his book Three Cups of Tea – is to promote quality learning in developing communities.

SOL was started in 1988 by two volunteers working for Habitat for Humanity in Nicaragua.  Todd Evans and Patrick Rickon first made rustic school desks out of scrap lumber from Habitat’s saw mill.  Soon they went on to build one-room schools, created SOL, and in 1995 put up a Learning Resource Center in Dario, Nicaragua, with books, puzzles and eventually reference materials for high school students.  SOL also has a scholarship program to help students pay the costs of tuition, books, uniforms, and transportation to school.

All the education-building work is done Central American community members and US and foreign volunteers, often high school students.  Volunteers have become so attached to the Central American communities they work in that they have begun a sister school program, now involving 2000 students and 80 teachers.

What impressed me most about SOL is its community development model – Central Americans must participate alongside the foreign volunteers and learn practical and leadership skills.  As Annie Bacon put it, “Communities have to invite us and commit to work with us before we go.”

Best of all, SOL’s activities are only a short distance from the US.  It’s easy to go and volunteer and the SOL work is a phenomenal learning experience for high school students and US community members.  Please visit the SOL web site to learn more. 

Knysna Educational Trust (KET)

You probably never heard of Knysna, South Africa, and neither had I until I launched Women’s Giving Tree. It turns out that Knysna is a beautiful town along the Garden Route on South Africa’s southern coast.

A resident notes, “As in all South African towns, the affluent residential areas lie within view of all who pass through. More than half of the town’s population dwells in poor living conditions on the outskirts of town where the dwellings are substandard and services, up until the last few years, have been little more than basic.”

In 1993, the Knysna Educational Trust (KET) was established to help upgrade early childhood development centers (ECD) in the town’s disadvantaged communities. Unfortunately, as informal settlements around Knysna grew, no provision was made for additional educational centers. As a result, many unemployed and uneducated women opened their homes for child care but failed to provide much educational stimulation.

Mujeres en Cambio

When I was on vacation in San Miguel de Allende in Mexico, I was pleased to discover Mujeres en Cambio, a 15 year old, all volunteer, grass roots organization committed to helping girls in the campo (countryside) finish school and, in a number of cases, attend college. Girls in the campo are more likely than city girls to drop out of middle or high school because of the expense. While public education is free through sixth grade, middle school and high school are costly for the indigent, especially the $40 per semester tuition that must be paid up front.

Families in the campo are desperately poor, often making only $5 per day. They lack the funds to pay for school fees, books, transportation, uniforms and shoes. Without scholarships, most girls have to leave school to work or help out at home. Visit the Mujeres en Cambio website.

WINGS in Guatemala

Having visited Guatemala twice and done a fair amount of research on the country, I am well aware that most low income Guatemalan women do not receive contraceptive services because they cannot afford them or because cultural barriers stand in the way. Guatemala has the highest fertility rate in Latin America. Because women have so many children, one-half of Guatemalan children suffer from chronic malnutrition.

WINGS is an NGO that started in 1999 when a retired US Foreign Service Officer living in Guatemala was asked for help for seven women, each of whom had eight children, and who wanted tubal ligations. In ten years, WINGS has become an extensive program, working in all parts of Guatemala, that provides birth control, does cervical cancer screening, and offers peer education on reproductive health and family planning to adolescents. Visit the WINGS website.

RecyclArt - Costa Rica

On the Women’s Giving Tree site, we suggest different Ways to Give to NGOs in the developing world. Well, here’s another way to give that most women will appreciate:

You Can SHOP!

Specifically, you can buy RecyclArt Eco-Jewelry: hand-made in the socio-environmental project of a Costa Rican NGO that helps women artisans make a living, by transforming trash into designer accessories. The artisans at RecyclArt are women from rural communities who recoup materials such as pull-tabs from discarded beverage cans that they weave with colorful fabric remnants, and turn into unique necklaces, bracelets, earrings and belts. Visit the RecyclArt blog for more information.

Eye of the Child (EYC)

Malawi is one of the poorest countries in the world, ranking at 160 out of 182 on the UN’s Human Development Index. Where is Malawi? Formerly a British colony named Nyasaland, Malawi is a small landlocked country of 14 million in central sub-Saharan Africa (between Zambia, Tanzania and Mozambique) that survives on subsistence agriculture. Eye of the Child is an exceptional program working to promote and protect child rights in Malawi. Read more about Eye of the Child in Grantee Profiles at The Firelight Foundation.

The World Needs Girls

Indian women from poor families lead extremely difficult lives – if they even survive. When I was in India five years ago, I was shocked at the rampant discrimination against women. I learned, for instance, that there are fewer women than there should be under normal circumstances due to abandonment of girls, inattention to female children, and even abortion of female fetuses.

Aarti, is a multi-faceted program in Kadapa, India (located in Andra Pradesh, between Chennai and Hyderabad) that takes a wide-ranging approach to female needs. Aarti was started by Sandhya Puchalapalli who named the organization after her niece who died in a car accident in 1992 in Massachusetts. Visit this NGO's website. Read More & Comment On The NGO Above

AHOPE For Children

The numbers of orphans in Ethiopia -- 960,000 -- is phenomenal, the second highest concentration in the world. Perhaps 10 percent are HIV positive, and each year an additional 30,000 chldren are born HIV positive. Only 2 percent receive treatment, and, without treatment, half of these children will die by the age of two. Visit the AHOPE For Children website.

Empowering Women of Nepal (EWN)

I visited EWN in Pokhara, Nepal, in October, 2009, with a small group of American women travelers. EWN does work that, ten years ago, no one could imagined doing – training Nepalese women to become Himalayan mountain guides.

EWN is supported by 3 Sisters Adventure, a company run by the Chhetri sisters, whose goal is to bring women into adventure tourism. Nicky says: “In the early nineties no one would have dreamed of a Nepalese woman guiding a trek. Nepalese society is ruled by the Orthodox Hindu religion where women are considered second-class citizens. Their role is to be a diligent wife, a loving mother, and an obedient daughter-in-law. Society dictates that a woman should not cross out of her home threshold. But the Chhetri sisters did just that.” Visit the EWN site

Mayan Families

To the visitor, Mayan women in the highlands of Guatemala don’t appear poor because, in tourist areas where they work, they dress in colorful and beautifully woven traditional clothes – huipils and long skirts. When you go behind the tourist facade, however, you encounter women who are desperate, often raising families on their own because their partners have abandoned them or gone off to work in urban areas. Based in Panajachel, Guatemala, Mayan Families is staffed almost exclusively by indigenous people. 

When Sharon Smart-Poage, one of the NGO’s founders, showed me around the homes of people receiving help from Mayan Families, I was struck by the dearth of everything – water, electricity, plumbing, stoves. The lucky families receive slow-burning stoves and rotary water filters. Families in crisis receive emergency housing and food. Visit the Mayan Families site