I finally meet Nick Kristof
May 3, 2009 at 8:28 pm | In Uncategorized | 2 CommentsTags: Africa, women's rights, girls, women, Women's Funding Network, Nick Kristof
Just wrapped up the Women’s Funding Network conference in Atlanta. One theme I heard throughout was the need for foundations to use strategic communications to tell their stories, influence policy, raise more money etc. Nick Kristof, the conference keynote, summed it up when he said, “the average toothpaste has better messaging than humanitarian organization.” Hear, hear!
So, I have been waiting to meet Kristof for years. In his remarks he talked about the most effective interventions for keeping girls in school – things like de-worming medication or sanitary napkins as opposed to building more schools. Well, he said the magic words for SHE, and I had a chance to go up to him afterwards and give him the pitch: SHE is launching women-led businesses in Africa that keep girls in school by selling low-cost locally made sanitary napkins! He wanted to know how much it costs to keep a girl in school by providing a sanitary napkins – he is all about the economic talk.
Fine. But then my new favorite woman Yassine Fall from UNIFEM took the mic and told him the reason why girls don’t go to school was that structural adjustment from the IMF has stopped governments from investing in public goods like education and eliminating school fees. Policy is the problem, not, as Kristof suggested, men spending less of a percentage of the family income on alcohol and entertainment and more on education and health. She said his analysis was demonizing African men as irresponsible fathers who only drink beer. That was an exciting moment in the fancy hotel ballroom.
Well, its too late for Kristof to add Yassine’s perspective in his upcoming book called “Half the Sky” all about women’s rights. He both opened and closed his speech saying: “I truly believe the struggle of the 21st century is a struggle for greater gender equity in the world.” Good messaging.
The Youth conference checklist
April 25, 2009 at 6:32 pm | In Uncategorized | Leave a CommentTags: Kenya, youth, youth media
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youth march for peace at Kenyan Youth Peace Summit
I am trying as hard to stay in Kenya in my head for as long as possible (going on 5 days now). First thing at hand was working out a nasty computer virus that attacked my laptop. With the youth media team swapping flash drives faster than 17 year-old girls change outfits all the computers stopped working after a few days. A few working methods I plan to take with me to what I hope will be many more youth peace summits in Africa:
- wear the flash drive around my neck so I don’t lose it, and bring 5 to share
- upload any important files to an internet site in case flash drive goes missing
- travel with anti-virus software and learn how it works in extreme rescue situations
- travel with sound cables to hook up the laptop to anything with speakers
- disallow workshop presenters from using powerpoint because 1) they don’t use it correctly and only put up their talking notes 2) for goodness sakes this is a youth conference 3) I need to use my stressed out moments for human-related problems
- when an American wants to come, I will say yes only if they have IT skills including the ability to take a projector apart and put it back together in 20 minutes
- when an American wants to come, they must first pass a comprehensive ”go with the flow” test (sorry type A’s).
- must have on hand “the Kenyan big sister” – she deals with women issues including counseling and telling any women acting up to get it together, and likewise “the Kenyan big brother” to keep the boys in line. (obviously nationality to change in case of conference)
- as lovely as a youth videography team is, if we want this thing captured properly we need a professional
- build in hours of flexible time into the schedule so we can adjust as chaos demands
- fight like hell to have time before and after the conference in country to do follow-up and prep.
peace summit concludes and I am worn out
April 19, 2009 at 9:06 pm | In Uncategorized | Leave a CommentSitting on floor of Dubai airport accessing bad internet– I have spent the last week trouble shooting about every technology known to man and I am exhausted. The fiber optic they are supposedly laying in East Africa can’t come soon enough because Kenya is being left in the dust.
I spent the last week coordinating a youth peace summit in Nairobi of 200 youth from around the region. It was a blast and a lot of work. We had it to talk directly about the post-election violence that happened in Kenya largely perpetrated by youth in 2008. We got kids from slums, different relgions, former IDPs, one girl even brought her baby. I led the youth media team and they were amazing. We had about 24 and we split into sub teams of video (the flip), photography, newsletter, blogger and public relations. Our PR girl called the media houses every day and we got in the Nation, on Citizen TV and on the radio. We produced a newsletter every day. They honestly blew me away they were so dedicated. They were on computers at all hours of the day even though they were always breaking and the flash drive modems constantly ran out of airtime. In the evaluation we did I expected to hear complaints about the technology, but they were so happy they hardly mentioned it. I think they never get to spend hours on computers so just that was special. One said he is studying communications in the university but he learned more in one week doing it than he had in school over all. We take it all for granted – laptops, wireless, it is such a blessing and I wish I could have given these kids laptops as parting gifts because they have so much promise. Stay tuned you will be hearing more from this media team.
Youth Uprising in Kenya
April 11, 2009 at 8:41 pm | In Uncategorized | Leave a CommentTags: Africa, Kenya, youth
George told me why we are holding the peacesummit next week, I mean I had ideas, but this story spells it out. During the violence after Kenya’s election last year, a member of parliament asked a group of 10 youth if they would go disrupt the opposition’s rally. The MP paid the group 500 shillings and they went and caused fear and chaos and stopped the opposition’s event. Afterwards, the politician gave all the money to one youth, and the others wanted it so bad they almost killed him to get it. When the total was divided up it was 50 shillings per youth — less than one dollar. And here these youth risked their lives and could have been arrested. This made them so angry and bitter that they went and smoked weed and then took women and raped them.
Uprising Youth Club House
He told this story to a group of youth we visited in the Machako Slums in East Naiobi called Uprising Youth to illustrate why we are holding this peace summit, because youth can be manipulated by politicians. Uprising Youth is a group of young men that are brought together by a love of football, and their team is in one of the premier leagues. In order to support the costs of the team, like uniforms, registration and transport to games, they have several businesses to generate income. A few years ago there was a big trash dump right in the middle of the slum, so they cleaned it up and negotiated with the city to have the space where they built a club house, which they use for almost daily meetings to plan their game strategy and business ventures. Their first project was to manage the public toilets installed by city hall, which they still do. But the toilets were not bring in enough money, so they got a small loan and built a shower next door, where people pay 20 shillings for a hot shower. Business is thriving, and children play in the hot soapy water that pours out of the doors into the open sewer.
The group also manages 6 rental houses, but their pride and joy is a car wash. They are the only ones in the area with a power washer, and this means they can charge more than the others for their services. One month money was short right before a big soccer tournament, and the group pawned the powerwasher to the nearby NGO for a loan in order to get the boys to the game. It took them about a month to repay the the 7,000 shillings they borrowed (about $100) all in coins.
powerwasher
Several of them told me, “before I joined Uprising Youth I was a jailbird, a hustler. I just wanted to be a criminal, and now I want to be the best soccer player in Kenya.” A couple of the young men, holding babies said, we do this for our children, so they will have better chances than us. Uprising Youth has also accessed the National Youth Fund in Kenya, which is hard to do for all the bureaucracy involved, and got a loan of 47,000 shillings (about $450). They used the money to buy a PlayStation2, which they charged admission from kids to play, but parents started complaining so they temporarily suspended business until school is out. They have almost paid the money back to the government.
soccer coach for Uprising Youth on right
This group of young men live in one of the most violent slums in Nairobi, but all they talk about is soccer and what their next business plan will be. Dreaming big has paid off, after 7 years of asking, someone has given them a matatu (a van). They will use it to drive to their games, and on the other days they will operate it as a bus. Uprising is such a great example of what young people can do with a little support. But what sticks with me is despite their difficult circumstances, these young men had passion and drive, and that can’t be bought.
My new calling: teaching blogging to Kenyan students
April 10, 2009 at 7:40 am | In Uncategorized | 2 CommentsI finally had a chance to unleash my wordpress sales pitch – really they should hire me. I visited St. Paul’s University outside of Nairobi to see a professor teaching a Master’s program on AIDS, including gender, Dr. Nyokabi to community workers and pastors. Love what she is doing.
On the way out the door, the communications professor asked me to talk to his class on public relations. So there I was, 30 young Kenyans looking at me expectantly. First thing I asked them was how do they use the internet, and how often? Most of them said they use it every day, and every single one of them was on Facebook! I have traveled the world and I can say for sure that young people will do whatever it takes to get to the internet, it doesn’t matter their income or status– they will find a way online. Well, I told them about youth-led organizing using online tools like TakingITglobal and the Global Youth Coalition on AIDS, trying to spread the word that youth can do anything, and the internet can help, you just need to work hard on your vision. Interesting thing was that their professor is not an online guy – I told them they have to keep him up to date, and, that my mom just joined Facebook so things are changing.
They were a quiet bunch but by the end of the class I told them about WordPress and said — what if I told you that you could set up a website in one hour, would you be interested? Finally, all of them raising their hands, nodding. Then I walked them through the site – wishing I had some powerpoint or some visuals, but you can do a lot with a chalkboard. I told them if you can do Hotmail, you can do WordPress.
Anyway, will be interesting to see if any of them create blogs, will need to check back. Their professor, Dr. Charles Ngng, is teaching video production with no equipement, just his personal camera. He is looking for universities or TV/radio stations in the US that could donate their old equipment, as long as its digital, he will make it work. There must be some organization that works on this kind of thing… will do some sleuthing later on, or drop me a line if you know who does this.
Waiting for death, with no help from the church
March 2, 2009 at 12:45 am | In Uncategorized | Leave a CommentTags: Africa, AIDS, Commission on the Status of Women, Fulata Moyo, Malawi, religion, women
Fulata Moyo
This year’s Commission on the Status of Women is discussing caregiving in the context of AIDS. This theme is not well understood – and incredibly unequal because women are almost always the ones who care for the sick. Yesterday I heard Fulata Moyo from Malawi and the World Council of Churches talk about losing her sister to AIDS and her husband to cancer. She focused on lack of care for the caregiver, unpredictable wait for death, and the use of sacred texts to maintain widowhood. What impresses me is that after her husbands death – she went around and told churches how to better care for the caregivers…
When people from the church came to visit me they only said that God would heal my husband. The church told me over and over that God will heal him. I did not want to tamper with that so I prayed day and night and did not sleep. I was giving care to my husband but I also needed care. Some Christian fundementalists visited the bedside and told me there were symbols on my outfit that were demonic so I burned that outfit. I loved that outfit.
After he died the church people told me that God was my husband. But after 6 months I had physical needs. These are issues women face and they will not talk about it. I asked my pastor, so God is my husband, what can I do? Our male pastors do not know what pastoral care for women is. Most women do not talk about this but I do because I am one of the crazy ones. If I had had daughters they would not have gone to school during this time because you also have to care for all the visitors that come to see the patient. Praying was seen as the only way to be supportive, if the spirit was OK then the body was OK. But I needed someone to cook the food.
After he died I went around and talked to churches in the region and shared my experience and called for a greater commitment to pastoral counseling. My advice to people who are with someone who is dying: ‘if you don’t have wisdom keep quiet, and don’t talk to a widow about being a husband of god.’
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