THE REGIONS
In this section:
Goats Up Income for Tanzanians with AIDS
Support to Firms Yields Jobs in Paraguay
Solar Lights Help Bangladeshis to Work
Macedonia Trains First Insurance Actuaries
AFRICA
Goats Up Income for Tanzanians with AIDS
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Salome Kombe with her goat
USAID/Tanzania |
Arusha, Tanzania—In the last days of her life,
Salome Kombe did not have to worry about providing food for
her three grandchildren because she had a goat—this meant
fresh milk every day, and income earned from the sale of young
goats.
At 50, Kombe, who was HIV-positive, was unemployed and lived
in a one-room house. Her neighbors helped as best as they
could, but she was not able to make ends meet until she participated
in a USAID-funded livestock training course. At graduation,
she was given a goat.
The program trained some 500 HIV-positive people in the region
to care for goats and then distributed among participants
some 146 goats and 417 bucks and does.
The program was carried out by Heifer International, a Tanzanian
civil society organization that, like many others, is working
to scale up their responses to HIV/AIDS.
Nine percent of Tanzania’s 34.4 million people are HIV-positive.
Some 160,000 people died of AIDS in 2003, while another 1.6
million were living with the disease, according to the Tanzania
Census.
The needs are dire, yet often receiving funds for projects
is a slow process.
To overcome these barriers, two years ago USAID and other
donors set up the Rapid Funding Envelope (RFE), a grant mechanism
enabling civil society to implement urgent HIV/AIDS projects.
Heifer is one of 23 organizations that have received more
than $3.5 million for emergency HIV/AIDS projects lasting
6 to 12 months.
One organization got a grant to create a community theater
program working with at-risk youth. Another opened voluntary
counseling and testing sites, provided laboratory equipment
to increase preparedness for treatment, and offered vocational
training for orphan heads of households.
What distinguishes the RFE from other funding mechanisms
is its donor pooling: it works with USAID, the Tanzanian AIDS
Commission, the U.S. NGO Management Sciences for Health, and
a local branch of the consulting firm Deloitte & Touche.
The RFE is supported by eight donors.
Also, information and application forms for RFE are posted
on the internet, and all reports and correspondence are done
online, simplifying the process. With other funding mechanisms,
the process can take up to three months.
“Donor funds are usually not rapid. By the time donor
funds arrive, the situation may have changed and the needs
may be different,” said Mary Ash, executive director
of PASADA, an NGO that received a grant through RFE. “The
RFE was much more rapid.”
AIDS funding has spiked in Tanzania since the country began
receiving funds from President Bush’s Emergency Plan
for AIDS Relief. Last year, total funding for HIV/AIDS was
$49 million, of which more than $27 million was programmed
by USAID. Funding this year is expected to be significantly
higher.
Previously, $12 million a year had gone to Agency HIV/AIDS
programs in the country.
Kombe died of AIDS-related complications since the writing
of this article.
LATIN AMERICA AND THE CARIBBEAN
Support to Firms Yields Jobs in Paraguay
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A worker at Xtreme aligns a wood mold so that it is
straight. The company has built a new plant, increased
production, and hired 50 workers since it joined a U.S.-funded
economic growth project.
Francisco Latourrette, USAID |
CIUDAD DEL ESTE, Paraguay—The wood molding company
Xtreme built a new plant, increased production and exports,
and hired 50 workers in the past six months after it joined
a U.S.-funded economic growth project.
USAID is investing $3.95 million over three years in the
project, Paraguay Vende, to open three service centers that
help firms become more competitive and enter new markets by
adapting their products and services to the requirements of
those markets. It also helps with tasks like writing business
plans.
The 30 participating firms are involved with sesame seeds,
tea, recycled monitors, fiber glass products and ecotourism.
In its first year of operation, Paraguay Vende helped some
of these firms grow their sales and exports by as much as
$850,000.
Xtreme, for example, now has new clients in the United States
and gets help from Paraguay Vende in new purchase management.
As it grew, the company enlarged its staff. At nearly 40,
Eleuterio Ferreira is a typical new hire and, in many ways,
represents the type of person that USAID aims to empower and
increase income for through the project.
“Finding this job has meant so much to me,” said
Ferreira in Guaraní, Paraguay’s native language.
“It gave me a job security that takes care of me and
my family and makes me feel secure and more confident.”
Ferreira spent two years looking for work—all along
trying to provide for a wife and four children. Now he works
fulltime and has healthcare and access to a pension fund.
He can send his children to school and afford medicine and
school uniforms.
“I’m really grateful [to have] a favorable prospect
for the future after such a long time of uncertainty,”
Ferreira said.
Paraguay Vende is the central building block of USAID/Paraguay’s
economic growth program, said Alex Uriarte, USAID’s manager
for the project. He added that the aim of the project is to
create legal jobs. For instance, many people in Ciudad del
Este, site of one of the centers, were unemployed and involved
in illegal commerce selling perfumes and other products.
“Facilitating access to the intangible assets of information
and trust helps individual firms increase their sales and
generate employment,” said Uriarte. “With strengthened
capacity to compete, we expect the private sector to lead
the way to market oriented policy reform.”
Paraguay Vende is set to end in September 2006. The mission
is now considering expanding the project.
ASIA AND THE NEAR EAST
Solar Lights Help Bangladeshis to Work
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A Bangladeshi woman sews in the evening by a solar-powered
lighting system to earn extra money.
Grameen Shakti |
DHALAPARA VILLAGE, Bangladesh—Two
hours after the sun has set, Chunnu Mia’s two
children are still doing their homework at the kitchen table
with the help of an electric light—unusual in rural Bangladesh,
where only 30 percent of people have electricity.
Mia’s small agricultural machinery parts shop is one
of 31,000 small to medium-sized rural businesses throughout
Bangladesh that, since 1996, have received loans to buy solar
power systems through the local NGO Grameen Shakti.
In Mia’s case, electricity has visibly helped: his business
is open later in the evening, increasing sales. Meanwhile,
his children can do homework at night, and food stays fresh
in the refrigerator.
He bought his solar system in 1998. It powered two lamps,
one of which he rents to a neighboring tailor. Two years later,
Mia bought a second system to light his home.
Grameen Shakti gives entrepreneurs loans for 75 or 85 percent
of the power system’s cost, which ranges from $250 to
$500. Grameen, which is in part funded by USAID, encourages
people to use electricity to generate more income by lighting
shops, bazaars, restaurants, clinics, farms, ricemills, sawmills,
and schools.
For years, USAID has worked to bring electricity to rural
Bangladesh by expanding the country’s power grid. But
cost and distance limit the extension of the power grid to
remote or isolated areas.
The Agency invested the equivalent of $4 million in local
currency in the Grameen Shakti project, which provides solar
systems of various sizes that can be customized according
to energy demand.
Aside from selling and helping install solar power systems,
Grameen Shakti is researching the use of wind energy in the
coastal areas of Bangladesh. It installed four hybrid power
stations—which combine wind turbine with a diesel generator—in
four cyclone shelters run by Grameen Bank, the pioneering
microcredit institution that has loaned $4 billion in South
Asia since 1976. Grameen Shakti is part of the larger Grameen
Bank project.
Grameen Shakti is also looking at marketing alternative power
sources and making solar accessories such as lamps and converters.
“Renewable energy offers those in remote areas the opportunity
to cash in on the benefits of having a reliable cost effective
energy source,” said USAID/Bangladesh Mission Director
Gene George. “It is rewarding to be a part of an effort
that supplies energy needs from environmentally friendly sources.”
EUROPE AND EURASIA
Macedonia Trains First Insurance Actuaries
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Jazminka Durovich receiving her actuarial training
certificate, August 26, 2004.
Lynn Abbott, USAID |
SKOPJE, Macedonia—Actuaries—statisticians
who compute insurance risks and premiums—practice one
of the newest professions in Macedonia, which is taking root
thanks to U.S.-backed training programs.
There are only three certified actuaries in Macedonia today,
but the demand for their specialization is poised to grow
because the first private pension systems are expected to
be put in place in the coming year and they will require certified
actuaries.
As foreign companies open local branches and
new companies spring up, the demand for private automobile,
life, and health insurance grows.
Most of the new actuaries are women, such
as Biljana Petroska and Jazminka Durovich.
“Women were the majority of my graduating
class of mathematics,” said Durovich, one of two actuaries
at QBE, Macedonia’s largest insurance company. “Most
of the actuarial students were women.”
“Without [actuaries], the insurance sector
and, by extension, certain investment operations would not
be able to move forward,” said Steve Gonyea, a USAID
economic growth officer.
Training private insurance personnel to help
this country of 2.2 million people to adopt the standards
of a modern European economy is one task of U.S. aid programs.
Certification requires passing 16 rigorous
examinations, and each training session lasts a week. The
lecturer begins a topic with a formula, discusses it with
the students, and then has them raise examples or problems
in the application of the formula.
Petroska, an electrical engineer who has now
worked as an actuary for nine years, said the training was
helpful and much needed.
“The applied mathematics department of
the university teaches only one actuarial course,” she
said. “The new insurance company law requires actuaries
to sign their financial statements, but the companies are
not really familiar with actuaries yet.”
Petroska was recently promoted to manager
of the research sector in the Agency for Supervision of Fully
Funded Pension Insurance. She was the second person to meet
the requirements as a certified actuary after completing the
USAID-funded training course.
Durovich will be the fourth Macedonian to be certified by
the Ministry of Finance once she has completed three years
of work in the field.
“The training made great parallels between the practical
work and theoretical,” she said. “It opened my eyes
about what to look for and where … the training for non-life
insurance was most useful because I’m the actuary for
motor vehicle insurance.”
She found the life insurance training to be the most difficult.
The first 15 students in the actuarial training were representatives
of the insurance industry and government regulatory agencies.
The course proved difficult for those lacking
adequate mathematical preparation, so in the end only nine
students graduated.
Actuaries in Macedonia, which has an unemployment
rate of about 30 percent, are employed by the government public
pension system, the Agency for Pension Insurance Supervision,
the Ministry of Finance, and insurance companies.
The USAID training was carried out by Financial
Services Volunteer Corps and with support by World Learning.
Lynn Abbott contributed to this article.
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