 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
USAID Information:
External Links:
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
USAID Information:
External Links:
|
|
|
|
|
INSIDE DEVELOPMENT
In this section:
Rice Visits Small Business Owners in Mexico,
Announces New Aid Program
Jane Goodall Educates African Villagers to Help
Chimpanzees
Health Agencies Fight Outbreak Of Marburg Virus
in Angola
Indonesian Islamic Groups Are Moving Toward Democracy
and Tolerance, Study Says
Stops for African Truckers Fight AIDS
Afghan Midwives May Cut Death Rate
Earthquake Warning System to Provide Assistance
Data
Rice Visits Small Business Owners in Mexico, Announces New
Aid Program
|
|
|
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice visits USAID’s
microfinance project in Mexico. During the trip, she
witnessed the signing of a loan that will benefit microentrepreneur
Carolina Fuentes.
Cutberto Garcia, USAID/Mexico |
MEXICO CITY—On her first trip to Latin America
as secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice visited a branch of
FinComún, a microfinance institution that is bringing
banking services to poor people here.
She also announced USAID’s new $10 million program
that is providing assistance to the Mexican microfinance sector
and aims to reach 500,000 new clients. The Agency will provide
business advisors to help Mexican microfinance institutions
such as FinComún.
The lenders will offer remittance and rural finance services,
improve regulation and supervision systems, deepen public
dialogue, and expand to reach more clients.
The program is helping people like microentrepreneur Carolina
Fuentes, who signed for a new loan through FinComún
during Rice’s visit. Fuentes will use the money to expand
her stall at a Mexico City market where she sells ceramics,
party favors, and keepsakes.
“I congratulate all these fine people for the hard
work that they do and for the businesses that you are creating,
which will benefit their families and their communities and
their country,” Rice said to Fuentes and other loan recipients
on hand during the March 10 visit.
“This is a wonderful project…because it empowers
people…[and] allows people like these fine people, who
are willing to work hard and to take the opportunity afforded
by these loans, to expand their businesses or to begin businesses,”
Rice said.
Fewer than 40 percent of Mexicans have bank accounts. To
increase those numbers, USAID is working with Mexican micro-finance
institutions to provide credit, especially to microenterprises.
FinComún is a 10-year-old, regulated microfinance
institution that provides savings, credit, and remittance
services to customers from its 30 branch offices. It has expanded
rapidly over the past four years, in large measure because
of changes in Mexico’s microfinance policies, advisory
assistance, and a guarantee from USAID’s Development
Credit Authority.
Since 2000, FinComún’s assets have doubled to
$18 million; its outstanding loans tripled to $9.3 million;
savings doubled to $13.7 million; and its clients grew 340
percent—to 43,000 small businesses, 80 percent of them
owned by women.
Cristina Prado contributed to this article.
Jane Goodall Educates African Villagers to Help Chimpanzees
|
|
|
Primatologist Jane Goodall spoke about actions that
are helping deplete Africa’s wildlife at the April
11 Director’s Forum at the Woodrow Wilson International
Center for Scholars in Washington. Education, she said,
is the first step toward “helping the people to
understand that as the environment is destroyed, so
their own life becomes increasingly hard and difficult.”
© Paul E. George, WWICS |
Dr. Jane Goodall, who spent years studying Tanzania’s
chimpanzees, said on a recent visit to USAID headquarters
that to protect mankind’s closest animal cousin we must
improve the lives and education of African villagers.
“I realized that to help the chimpanzees I needed to
help the people,” she said in a brief interview April
6.
Supported by USAID grants since the early 1990s, her Jane
Goodall Institute (JGI) has tried to teach villagers living
near the chimpanzee regions how to spare some of the forests
and preserve the environment.
When she learned that many girls did not continue in school
because of a lack of clean and private latrines, she began
raising money to install toilets in schools.
“I now spend 300 days on the road and visit the chimpanzees
in Gombi [Tanzania] only twice a year,” she said. “The
rest of my time I spend home in England to do my writing.
“I’m leaving the forest to save the chimpanzees.”
In 1991, she started the Roots & Shoots program to teach
students in Africa and abroad how to help chimpanzees through
care and concern for the human community, animals, and the
environment. More than 6,000 groups—ranging in size from
two to 2,000—have registered in more than 87 countries.
The mission, according to the JGI website, is “to foster
respect and compassion for all living things; to promote understanding
of all cultures and beliefs; and to inspire each individual
to take action to make the world a better place for people,
animals, and the environment.”
At a recent lecture to students at the University of Southern
California, where she is an adjunct professor of anthropology,
Goodall said “there can never be peace until we learn
to live in harmony with the natural world.”
“Every individual matters,” she said. “And
every day you live, you make an impact on the world around
you.”
Health Agencies Fight Outbreak Of Marburg Virus in Angola
LUANDA, Angola—To contain the spread of Marburg
hemorrhagic fever, an Ebola-like virus that has killed 239
people in two months, USAID is sending masks and other protective
equipment and has allocated $525,000 to help Angola set up
a field laboratory that will increase the capacity to detect
infections.
Some 337 cases of Marburg—of which 311 have been fatal—were
recorded by May 17. Nearly all were in the northern province
of Uige, with a handful of cases also registered in four other
provinces.
Cultural traditions, such as bathing the dead, continue
to spread the disease. As people believe they need to bathe
the dead to properly put them to rest, they increase their
exposure to bodily fluids, which is how the disease is spread.
USAID on April 18 allocated $525,000 to the U.S. Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Angolan Ministry
of Health to establish a field laboratory at the National
Institute for Public Health. The lab can detect viral RNA
and antigens in clinical specimens, and can test for evidence
of recent or past infection in people who have recovered from
Marburg virus infections.
USAID support will also mobilize additional epidemiologists
and cover the costs of shipping laboratory and protective
equipment, such as masks and gloves.
The CDC, World Health Organization, and Doctors Without
Borders are coordinating logistics, epidemiology, laboratory
diagnostics, and social mobilization to prevent the further
spread of the virus. They are also directing the isolation
and treatment of patients.
They have also been focused on training teachers and health
workers, together with community education and involvement
aimed at raising awareness of the disease among the local
people. Community leaders—also known as sobas—have
joined these efforts, and play an important role in helping
people understand what needs to be done to stop the disease.
USAID bureaus—Global Health; Africa; and Democracy,
Conflict, and Humanitarian Assistance—are funding the
battle against Marburg. USAID/Luanda is also procuring supplies
and facilitating logistics. A mission officer is an active
member of the donor group that meets regularly to follow updates
relating to the spread of Marburg and efforts to contain it.
Neighboring countries have placed their health services
on high alert.
Angola is hampered in its ability to control the disease
because of a weak healthcare system, lack of personnel and
supplies, and inadequate information systems for finding cases.
Such obstacles lead to cases not being detected, restricting
the ability of health officials to stop the virus from spreading.
Indonesian Islamic Groups Are Moving Toward Democracy and
Tolerance, Study Says
|
|
|
Bus advertisements promote tolerance and active nonviolence
to teenage youth in Indonesia.
The Asia Foundation |
A new study of USAID programs on Islam and civil society
in Indonesia found that “democracy, pluralism, and tolerance”
are being discussed with reference to Islamic precepts and
practices as the country consolidates moves toward democracy.
The study focused on the Islam and Civil Society (ICS) program
of the Asia Found-ation, funded by USAID since 1997. ICS aims
to strengthen democracy in Indonesia and encourage Muslim
leaders and organizations to fight extremism and terrorism.
“The most important contribution of the program is
probably that it has expanded a national dialogue on democracy,
human rights, and gender equality,” said the study, published
in April by USAID’s Bureau for Policy and Program Coordination
and the Center for Development Information and Evaluation
(CDIE). It was written by Robert W. Hefner, of the Institute
on Culture, Religion, and World Affairs at Boston University;
and CDIE’s Krishna Kumar.
“What is still more encouraging is that democracy,
pluralism, and tolerance are being discussed with reference
to Islamic theology, practices, and symbols, as well as the
problems and challenges facing contemporary Indonesian society,”
the study said.
Since ICS was launched in 1997, longtime military ruler
Gen. Suharto resigned, East Timor seceded, and Indonesia elected
as its president opposition leader Abdurrahman Wahid. Parliament
replaced him with Megawati Sukarnoputri, Indonesia’s
first female president, in 2001, and Susilo Bamban Yudhoyono
defeated her in the most recent election.
“Suharto’s Indonesia was not a free society,”
the study’s two authors wrote, “but the regime did
not prohibit public discussion of major policy issues.”
Hefner and Kumar deemed this point crucial to Indonesia’s
success in incorporating democratic reforms.
The two also named what they considered innovative elements
of the ICS program:
- civic education courses reaching tens of thousands of
students each year in universities, mosques, and pesantrens,
or residential Islamic schools
- mass media programs promoting tolerance and pluralism,
including the radio talk show Islam and Tolerance that airs
on a network of 40 radio stations in 40 cities
- gender equality and nonviolence efforts, including a
young women’s corps that established 20 domestic violence
counseling and advocacy centers
• activities to professionalize Muslim political parties,
including an institute to focus party platforms on needs of
the people.
Stops for African Truckers Fight AIDS
|
|
|
A convoy that departed from the Kokotoni Medical Clinic,
a short distance from Mariakani, arrives at the SafeTStop
launch event March 9.
Rob Ritzenthaler |
Mariakani, Kenya—In March, this busy, truck-stop
town became what supporters hope will be the first of several
planned HIV/AIDS “SafeTStops” along the Northern
Corridor, which stretches through six countries in East and
Central Africa.
SafeTStop provides testing, preventative care, referrals,
health education, and job training to drivers and others who
make pit stops at this wayside.
The launch March 9 of the SafeTStop campaign included prayers
led by the Rev. Paul Temu of the Catholic Archdiocese of Mariakani
and the Imam Said Ali Ahmed, leader of Mariakani’s Muslim
community.
A major way in which AIDS has spread across dozens of countries
as been truckers: on their long journeys far from home they
have contracted the disease and then spread it to others.
Mariakani is the first stop along a 7,000-kilometer (4,350-mile)
road that snakes from the port of Mombasa through Kenya, Uganda,
Sudan, and around the great lakes to the Democratic Republic
of Congo, Rwanda, and Burundi.
Of the 39.4 million people living with HIV in the world,
25.4 million live in sub-Saharan Africa, a region that includes
all of the countries along the Northern Corridor. In 2004,
an estimated 3.1 million people in the region became newly
infected with HIV, the World Health Organization says.
Transit routes such as the Northern Corridor are both economic
lifelines and networks for HIV infection.
The SafeTStop program hopes to draw truckers away from encounters
that would spread AIDS. Instead, they are offered a safe place
to stay, hot food, and information on preventing AIDS.
“Imagine you’re tired; you’re driving along
and seeing signs like ‘Health Clinic Open’ or ‘Hot
Fresh Food Just Ahead.’ Your eyes are going to light
up,” said Jeffrey Ashley, chief of HIV/AIDS programs
at the Agency’s Regional Economic Development Services
Office for East and Southern Africa.
“We’re offering the community something new: healthy
interventions that will reduce the vulnerability of the population
to diseases like HIV/AIDS by offering them an array of services.”
The initiative eventually will target three main transport
corridors in the region—Northern, Addis-Djibouti, and
Tanzania-Zambia—and will offer a range of economic growth
opportunities at key sites.
Future SafeTStops are planned for Malaba and Busia (Kenya/Uganda
border), Djibouti, Rwanda, Sudan, and Uganda.
USAID offices in the region work with provincial AIDS committees,
transport officials, and private sector companies on the SafeTStops.
Afghan Midwives May Cut Death Rate
|
|
|
Women read their pledges as they complete a professional
midwife training program.
USAID/Afghanistan |
KABUL, Afghanistan—Hoping to reverse a long
history of high infant and maternal mortality, a new generation
of midwives has been given two-year professional training
and is entering the Afghan work force.
One hundred and twenty-eight women were honored at a graduation
ceremony in Kabul April 13. The first batch of graduates comes
from 20 provinces. Trained in a curriculum adopted by the
Ministry of Public Health and implemented by the Institute
of Health Sciences, the students did clinical work at Kabul’s
Rabia Balkhi, Malalai, and Khair Khona hospitals.
The graduation of the 228 women means a 65 percent rise
in the number of skilled birth attendants in Afghanistan.
They are the first of the 830 new midwives expected to be
trained by 2006 under a $6.7 million USAID grant.
The first congress of Afghan midwives took place May 3–5,
during which the group drew up a constitution, elected officers,
and launched the Afghan Midwives Association, the first of
its kind in the country.
Under the Taliban, women in Afghanistan were denied the
most basic human freedoms. When the Taliban fell, only 467
trained midwives remained in the country, and for every 100,000
live births, an estimated 1,700 babies died.
Some 40 percent of Afghanistan’s health facilities
still lack skilled women to deal with obstetric emergencies.
The vast majority of Afghan women give birth at home, only
8 percent with help from a trained birth attendant.
Over the past two years, USAID has invested $67 million
in improving overall health services in Afghanistan.
Earthquake Warning System to Provide Assistance Data
The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) is working with USAID
on a system to give humanitarian and other organizations information
to respond to earthquakes around the globe.
PAGER (Prompt Assessment of Global Earthquakes for Response)
estimates the extent and severity of earthquakes and immediately
helps to determine how many people may be in need of assistance.
The system does not predict tsunamis. A separate effort,
headed by UNESCO’s (United Nations Educational, Scientific,
and Cultural Organization) International Oceanographic Commission,
is pushing to roll out a tsunami early warning system for
Indian Ocean countries by the end of 2006.
PAGER uses seismic waves, collected in real time at 350
strategic locations, to assess the potential impact of earthquakes,
often before people on the scene can report what they see
or feel.
After earthquakes are detected, USGS scientists based in
Colorado crunch data and transmit critical information via
pagers, cell phones, and the internet to emergency responders,
media outlets, and government agencies such as USAID.
“The idea is to help groups mounting humanitarian assistance
understand the scope of the disaster and where they should
concentrate their resources,” said Paul Earle, a USGS
research geophysicist who is responsible for PAGER.
The system also helps government and rescue workers move
quickly: it can take as little as 20 minutes from the time
the earthquake occurs to the first impact estimate being issued.
USAID is spending $95,000 on PAGER, which is still in the
research phase of development.
Though the Agency has taken a high profile in responding
to the earthquake-spawned tsunami in the Indian Ocean, collaboration
with USGS on PAGER had already been going on, said Gari Mayberry,
USGS’s geoscience advisor to USAID’s Office of U.S.
Foreign Disaster Assistance. Earthquakes in Iran in 2003 and
Armenia in 1988 pointed to the need for such a system, he
said.
USGS already uses a system on which PAGER is based—called
ShakeMap—to compile maps of ground shaking and earthquakes
in the United States.
About 30,000 earthquakes are detected worldwide annually,
but only a handful cause significant damage.
Scientists can’t rely solely on the magnitude and epicenter
of a quake to predict its impact. This is where PAGER comes
in. It creates maps of ground shaking, using specially designed
software. These maps show where and how much the ground shook
during an earthquake. By combining these maps with preexisting
population and infrastructure databases, PAGER estimates the
impact of an earthquake.
“It can be used for mitigation,” said Mayberry.
The USGS “can develop scenarios to show that if there
was an earthquake of a specific magnitude in a specific place,
how it will affect the people around it.”
Early results show that PAGER is living up to expectations.
It predicted, for instance, that 1.3 million people would
face significant risks from collapsed buildings and other
earthquake damage from the Dec. 26, 2004, earthquake in the
Indian Ocean.
A PAGER prototype is expected to be rolled out in October.
Back to Top ^
|
