Heads
of International Volunteer Sending Organisations meet in Pretoria For the past six years the heads of the world's major international volunteer sending organisations (IVSOs) have been meeting to share information and plan ways to work together on international volunteering, aid and development issues. In November 2002, IVSO comes to Africa for the first time. IVSO made a conscious decision to hold the meeting in a country that is a recipient of international volunteers rather than a "sending" nation. Dr Cliff Allum, Skillshare International's Director, explains: "At IVSO, the challenges and opportunities facing international volunteering and development will be explored. There will be a range of presentations and workshop discussions. Two pieces of research have been commissioned especially for this conference on new trends in volunteer sending agencies and the relationship between national and international volunteering. This is an exciting opportunity for the agencies to explore and discuss best practice in international volunteering." After
the main conference, study tours are being arranged to enable participants
to visit international volunteer programmes supported by IVSOs in
southern Africa. This will be an exciting opportunity to gain an understanding
of the work of other agencies and explore and discuss best practice
in international volunteering. BBC TV Appeal for Skillshare
International For more information, please contact Emma Judge, Public Relations Officer on 0116 257 6608 or email emma.judge@skillshare.org
Placements Lesotho Mozambique Swaziland Tanzania Building
partnerships with the Yemeni Development Foundation Forging partnerships with UK based organisations to increase the impact of our work is a new and developing strategy for Skillshare International. Over the past 18 months, we have been working with the Yemeni Development Foundation (YDF) to develop its strategy to tackle some of the development needs in the Yemen. The partnership between the two organisations is based on a joint belief in the importance of building institutions and strengthening communities' capacities to meet their needs. YDF is a Birmingham based development organisation that works to support Yemeni and other Arabic speaking voluntary organisations and community groups in the West Midlands area and beyond. After many years of community development involvement and years of close observations and discussions with various groups within the community, YDF was started by Mohammad Amasayabi, a Yemeni national, in April 2000. The Republic of Yemen is one of the poorest countries in the Middle East and the development needs are enormous. Levels of poverty are highest in the rural areas, with 82% of people living in extreme poverty, whilst in urban areas the figure stands at 47%. Access to primary health care is a major issue in the country. Over the last decade, the Infant Mortality Rate and Maternal Mortality Rate have been the highest in the world, and 30% of children are malnourished. Lack of access to education is also a huge problem: almost all females over 20 years of age are illiterate and illiteracy affects 45% of females aged between 10 and 20 years old. One of YDF's approaches is to work to strengthen the abilities of local civil society in the Yemen to tackle poverty. In September, Skillshare International and YDF ran a three day workshop with 10 partner NGOs in the capital, Sana'a. The workshop was run as a pilot to discover how the NGO sector perceive its needs and to find ways that YDF can help to meet them. The workshop was facilitated by a team made up of two Skillshare International staff and six YDF staff from Birmingham and YDF's Sana'a offices. Part of the aim of the three days was to build the capacity of local YDF staff to facilitate events such as this in the future. During
the workshop, strategic issues facing NGOs in the Yemen were unanimously
identified as: The third day of the workshop concentrated on project management. The facilitating team worked closely together to overcome the challenges posed by working across languages. The response from participants at the end of the workshop was enthusiasm and great appreciation for the participative ways of working adopted by the facilitating team during the three days. The NGO sector has an important role to play in tackling poverty in the Yemen and recent years have seen the rise in well established NGOs. One such NGO is SOUL. SOUL was established in 1997 and aims to achieve a higher quality of life for women and children in the Yemen. For such a young organisation, the activities carried out by SOUL are impressive. These include studies in education, health and childcare, HIV/AIDS, dressmaking and computer training, training of traditional birth attendants, environment, micro-credit and campaigns. The micro-credit programme provides women with the means to start small businesses in a society where bank loans are culturally unacceptable for women. Individual visits are made to carry out feasibility studies and repayment rates have so far been 100%. Another of the NGOs participating in the workshop was the Al-Aman Organisation for Blind Women Care, which works with visually impaired women and children in Sana'a and surrounding areas. The organisation was established in 1995. There is now a hostel for 38 visually impaired girls and it supports a further 200 young women in accessing mainstream education and training. The organisation also runs a project to translate mainstream curricula into braille. For Skillshare International, the visit has shown how our experience in supporting NGOs in Africa and India can be shared with an organisation starting similar work in a country facing enormous poverty. This exciting new way of extending the impact of our work is one that we hope to build on in the future. Skillshare
International at the World Summit on Sustainable Development The World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) was the world's largest ever international summit. With 60,000 delegates and the full attention of the world's media, WSSD certainly helped to get the concept of sustainable development better known. But many people felt that this gigantic event was too far removed from the lives of the ordinary people. Throughout the last year, Skillshare International has been building up to the WSSD, with the overall aim of using the summit to connect local communities with the issues discussed in Johannesburg. In southern Africa and in the UK, we worked with other NGOs to raise awareness of the importance of WSSD. For example, in southern Africa, numerous events were organised by Skillshare staff across six countries to encourage local organisations and people to become involved in WSSD issues. In many countries, local organisations working on important issues of sustainable development lack the capacity to engage with national and international events. Skillshare International helped these organisations to engage with the WSSD process in their country and to use WSSD to make people more aware of the work they carried out. In Leicester, we worked with a range of agencies to promote actions that individuals could take to promote global sustainable development in the areas of HIV/AIDS, equitable global trade and renewable energy. In Johannesburg itself, Skillshare International took part in the Civil Society Global Forum - an event for voluntary and campaigning organisations that ran parallel to the meeting of government leaders. We were also able to help a number of our partner organisations attend the Global Forum. During the Civil Society Global Forum, Skillshare International's Director, Dr Cliff Allum, and Morris Mtsambiwa, Director of the Swaziland Parks Board (which runs the country's national parks) gave a presentation on the future of international volunteering and sustainable development. Senelisiwe Ntshangase, Skillshare International's Country Director in Swaziland, explains: "Skillshare International and the Swaziland National Trust Commission have been working in partnership for many years. The partnership has involved the placement of international development workers. During the last 50 years, international volunteers, particularly those from the North, have been a major feature of many development initiatives in countries in the South. WSSD and the Civil Society Forum was an ideal platform for demonstrating how encouraging people to volunteer internationally can make a huge contribution to global sustainable development." The immediate results of the Johannesburg summit for Skillshare International were a large number of increased contacts with other civil society organisations, particularly in the southern African region. We were pleased to have been able to help our partner organisations make their voices heard at the event. Our work around WSSD continues. Many of the new partnerships we established with other voluntary organisations will help us develop new initiatives in the future, particularly in the area of external relations and advocacy. Supporters
meet in Leicester and Manchester Jos Miller, a Manchester supporter and former health trainer commented: "It was really worthwhile to meet up with other people in the area who are committed to supporting Skillshare International. It also gave us the opportunity to think about what we want from our relationship with Skillshare as supporters." It is hoped that second meetings will soon be held in Leicester and Manchester which will be used to plan supporter events and activities for 2003. First meetings will also be held in Bristol and London early next year. For more
information about future meetings, please contact Victoria Edge-Baron,
Supporter Development Officer, on 0116 257 6615 or email: victoria.edge-baron@skillshare.org Skillshare
International develops skills of medical students The course builds on Skillshare International's work in supporting community level health care in Africa and India. For example, in recent weeks, students have been learning about the work of MASS, one of our partner organisations based in the Indian state of Orissa. This has helped to increase their understanding of how rural people in Orissa receive health services and some of the main health problems they face. The course particularly aims to encourage the students to think about some of the many connections between poverty and ill-health, at the national, community and individual level. David Weatherall, Skillshare International's Policy and Development Awareness Officer, said: "The thinking behind the new course is that tomorrow's doctors - whether or not they ever work abroad - need a much better understanding of global health. Diseases are now globalised and virtually all UK doctors treat patients from diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds." We are
relying on returned development workers and health trainers to teach
much of the course. The course has been co-covened by Dr Adrian Hastings
a lecturer at Leicester University who was a development worker in
Mozambique in the 1980s. The external examiner for the course, Professor
Sandy Cairncross from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine,
is one of our supporters and was a development worker in Lesotho. Update
from India 0.7%
Campaign Update Along with other members of BOND (British Overseas NGOs for Development), Skillshare International welcomes the increase in aid announced in the comprehensive spending review of 15 July: a rise from the current 0.32% of GNP per year to 0.4% by 2006. However, there is still a need for the UK government to commit to the UN aid target of 0.7% agreed in 1970 and to address the issue of how additional aid is spent. Skillshare International's Director, Cliff Allum explains: "Following recent attempts to link aid to other political agendas, it's imperative that any additional aid resources is not syphoned-off and spent on foreign policy, security or anti-immigration policies. Effective aid is targeted at tackling poverty and promoting sustainable development. The tendency for development co-operation to become dwarfed by other priorities is an ever present threat. 0.4% is a great start but there is still a long way to go." For further
information and links to press releases throughout this campaign,
please visit, www.bond.org.uk/advocacy Obituaries On 25 September, Mr Ibraimo Issufo, Chair of the Programme Advisory Committee (PAC) in Mozambique, sadly passed away in Nampula. Mr Issufo was invited to join the PAC by the former director, Alvaro Casimiro, when we first began our policy of localisation in Mozambique in the late 1980s. Skillshare worked with Mr Issufo to strengthen our links in the community. We would like to offer our condolences to his family, friends and colleagues. On 19
October, Mr. Amaro Nunes sadly passed away in Maputo. Mr Nunes had
been a Portuguese language teacher for our development workers since
1996 and was a friend of the country office staff and all the development
workers in Mozambique. In October, Brian Wakley joined the organisation as the International Project Officer. Elaine Stevenson starts her maternity leave in November and Mukami Rimberia begins the role of International Programme Officer for the next 12 months. In November,
Adele Hicks begins as the new Administrative Officer and Rosemary
Hardy starts as the new Administrative Assistant.
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