In the 1980s, 80 percent of Cuba's trade was with the Socialist Block. With the fall of the Berlin Wall, this market disappeared and the economy practically collapsed. From 1990 to 1991 Cuba's imports declined by 73 percent. The agricultural sector, centered on intensive sugar production for export, depended on imported supplies. It hit rock bottom.
Then came the Cuban Democracy Act of 1992 (also known as the Torricelli Law) and the Helms-Burton Act, prohibiting companies that receive US subsidies to trade with Cuba, and excluding ships that dock in Cuba to visit the US for six months. This resulted in Cuba paying more for shipping because ships had to come from very far away and often solely to go to Cuba.
There were shortages of everything: medicine, gas, food, soap, toilet paper, and matches. "My bones were protruding here," says Jose Diaz, a 66-year-old architect, pointing to his ribs. "I had to sell my car because there was no gas. I lost 80 pounds, since there wasn't enough food and I was biking to work. But now I have a pot belly. I eat everything put in front of me."
To confront this crisis, Cuba's doors were opened to tourism and certain economic activities were liberalized, like small restaurants and fruit and vegetable markets. Later on, foreign currencies were allowed to circulate. Today, in addition to the Cuban peso, a convertible peso is circulating and can be used to make purchases in many stores and restaurants. Cuba also started to diversify its exports, focusing on medical services and biotechnology, distance learning, and commodities like nickel and tobacco.
What little foreign currency entered the country was used to maintain basic social services. In meetings with the Ministry of Education and National Institute of Economic Research, representatives were proud of the fact that no educational or health facilities were closed, and the weight of the crisis was distributed in an even manner.
The agricultural sector had to adapt to new conditions, and change from a monoculture, export-oriented model to the organic production of food for local consumption. Cuba is now considered the biggest laboratory for organic agriculture, in part because there are no chemical products available in Cuba for many of its crops.
In recent years, Cuba is slowly emerging from the crisis. In 2005, economic growth was at 11.8 percent; the next year 12.5 percent. During 2007 it grew 7.5 percent, thanks partly to a relaxation of some aspects of the US embargo. The United States is now Cuba's fifth largest trading partner.
The GDP of the country is higher than it was in 1989 when the crisis began. But this doesn't mean that Cuba has fully recovered. There are still great challenges ahead, like transportation, housing, and food security, to name the most pressing. Even though the average diet has increased to more than 3,200 calories per day, there is still much to be desired in terms of variety. There are shortages of milk and beef, and crop yields are lower than they were in the 1980s. The country spends a lot of money importing subsidized food to distribute to the population. But that food only covers half the population's nutritional needs. The buying power of salaries and pensions are insufficient to cover basic needs. Despite substantial increases, an average family still needs the equivalent of three median salaries to cover their basic needs.
]]>These community organizations are the leaders in an epic struggle against HIV and AIDS in South Africa. They are doing what the government cannot seem to do: deliver essential services that directly benefit the millions of people in the country infected and affected by HIV/AIDS.
"If the government of South Africa wants to address HIV issues, then it needs to strengthen community-based organizations," says Gerard Payne, who works for the AIDS Consortium, a national organization that supports thousands of community groups. He says that the HIV/AIDS crisis is the most significant challenge facing South Africa since the transition from apartheid.
The scale of the problem requires a local, grassroots response, and community organizations are doing their best to deliver it. Many are overcommitted and underfunded. "Whether it is through financial resources, whether it is through training, we need to strengthen them, so we can reduce the rate of HIV in this country," Payne says.
Payne has just been to visit one such community organization, where he stood in the dusty courtyard outside a two-room cinderblock house in South Africa's North West province as a dozen high-energy toddlers played and ran around him. Four of the organization's home-based care givers prepared to make their rounds, visiting patients in their homes to help cook, clean, and remind them to take their medication.
Payne's job at the AIDS Consortium is affiliate coordinator, so he visits the community-based organizations, assesses their needs and capabilities, and recommends a course of action to train the staff. Many must learn and implement procedures for raising and managing money, and develop a strategic vision for what the organization can be and where it can go. This helps the community organizations get past simply reacting to the HIV/AIDS crisis and working towards measures that will help improve the situation.
One example is in the care of orphans and vulnerable children in the community. The government of South Africa estimated last year that there are 1.5 million children under 17 directly affected by HIV: one or both parents are dead, or they are living with the virus themselves. With so many children now in need of a place to live, or at least hang out after school, get a meal, and stay out of trouble, it is the community organizations that are struggling to meet this need, many of them without specialized training or adequate funds. "They may be running a program, but have no idea how to really do it properly," Payne says. "So we will help them get training so they can provide counseling and other services that will help the children. We help them get to a level where they have good infrastructure and are rendering quality services." This can include a curriculum to teach "life skills" to young people so they can learn how to prevent HIV.
Another essential area where community groups can make a big difference is in helping people living with HIV and AIDS to understand what treatment is available and how to get it—a basic level of knowledge known as "treatment literacy." This is particularly helpful for women, who for reasons related to poverty and discrimination may be unable to get to a clinic or hospital—their families may not give them time, they may not have money to pay for transportation, or they may just simply not know that they are HIV positive and need medication.
Gerard Payne says that even if a patient can get to a hospital, he or she still may not understand what they need to do to stay alive. "Patients go there, the staff does a CD-4 count and gives them some medication, but they do not explain anything," Payne says. "Our objective is to educate organizations how to help patients understand the different treatments needed, and their rights to access treatment."
He adds that educating people about their right to treatment is a big step for many groups that are accustomed to delivering food and other care. "Community-based organizations respond to needs: if someone is sick, they go to them once or twice a week and take care of them," he explains. "We are saying they need to take it a step further. That patient is eventually going to get really ill, so they need to understand what care is available, where to access it, and that they must adhere to the treatment."
Seeing organizations grow and become more effective is one of the things that keeps Payne engaged in his work. "Last year I had one affiliate with no money, so I helped them get financial management systems in place," Payne says. "The first 1,000 rand [US $125] they raised was due to the fact that we showed them how to open up a bank account and write some letters to raise money."
"The joy and satisfaction I get comes when someone tells me that the work we do is making a difference," Payne says.
Payne says that South Africa is at a crucial stage in its history. "We have come a long was as a country, and struggled through many hardships," he says. "We are now in a different kind of struggle, and I want to be able to feel that I am contributing in the struggle against HIV."
]]>"He insulted us and beat me up," she says, tears welling up with the memory. Ortiz recounts the ordeal in her dirt-floor house in the department of Ahuachapan, sitting on a simple wood chair, holding her four-year-old daughter Melissa—her youngest. "One of my children said to me, 'Mama, let's get out of here,' so we went outside."
That spring night, outside their blue concrete house, the threats continued. "He insulted me so much... saying I was worthless, I had no future, and that it was better for him to kill me and the children."
Ortiz had to take action because her husband was a police officer and had a firearm. The family took shelter at a neighbor's house, and Ortiz called the police. Her husband was arrested the next morning. She and her children were safe for the moment, but in his drunken rage he had burned all their clothes.
The hills in Ahuachapan are bright green after a rainy summer. Blue and yellow butterflies fly lazily among the coffee trees along the dirt roads, and the sun is warm and comforting. It looks peaceful, making the violent confrontation Ortiz describes seem out of place. But in this small country of six million, widespread violence tends to be particularly deadly for women.
El Salvador is still recovering from a 13-year civil war that saw 75,000 people killed and nearly 8,000 "disappeared." It is a politically polarized society, torn between a small business elite, which dominates commerce and the government, and the majority struggling in poverty. Socially, men are dominant: It is a machista culture that holds many women in submissive roles in the family, raising children and doing other work in the home. Roughly half of Salvadorans live in poverty, and women head about 25 percent of households, so the abuse of and discrimination against women contributes directly to keeping them poor and in their subservient role in society.
There is a paucity of data on violence against women in El Salvador, but what few details are available tell a brutal story: In a country about the geographic size of Massachusetts, the rate of "femicide" in El Salvador was 11.15 per 100,000 women in 2005, far exceeding Guatemala's rate (population nearly 13 million) of 7.96 for that same year, according to a 2006 report by the Inter-American Institute of Human Rights. The same report shows the numbers of women murdered in El Salvador inching up slowly from 2001, when there were 211 women killed, to 260 in 2004, before jumping to 390 in 2005. The 2006 total was 437, according to Yanira Argueta, director of the Association of Salvadoran Women. "The situation is critical," she says at a meeting in her office in San Salvador. "Public officials are not sensitive to the problem, and there is no good application of the laws."
Part of the problem is public perception. A 2006 poll by CS Sondeo found that only about 83 percent of people in El Salvador believe that rape is a crime—which means that more than 15 percent don't consider it a criminal act.
Whether rape, murder, assault, or even psychological abuse, violence against women is more than an injustice or a human rights violation: it is an investment in the social status quo that keeps men on top and women below them. And it prevents women from fully contributing to the two changes El Salvador desperately needs: an end to poverty and the building of democracy.
]]>Molina de Vasquez worked hard to get the group established because she wants women to have opportunities to work outside their homes so they can broaden their horizons. "So many women are mistreated by their husbands," she says. "They need to know about their rights and feel capable of doing things."
"I would like to get women to know about their rights and duties, and to increase their self-esteem. We can help ourselves and our families, care for our children, and earn income to change our lives."
When asked why helping other women is so important to her, she says, "Let me tell you a little about my own life; then you will know."
The details come spilling out; she's like someone who walks away from a serious car accident, describing how lucky she is just to be alive. Mistreated by her father, her mother abused, Molina de Vasquez was married at 14 to a soldier. "I thought it was a way to escape," she says, "but my life got worse." Her husband was violent, and his family "used to tell me that my job was to have children and take care of my husband." When she failed to deliver a child for the first three years of their marriage, "I was useless to them," Molina de Vasquez says with a sigh.
But others could see that she was a leader. When their first child went to kindergarten, she was chosen to be the president of the parents' board at the school. "When I told my husband, he was angry. He told me I was not capable of it. I accepted this; he always told me I was good for nothing. For 11 years it was like that."
Eventually they moved to a rural area and things started to improve. Her husband became an agricultural laborer. They had a son. But Molina de Vasquez wanted to do more activities outside their home, like joining a health training program. Although reluctant to allow her to participate, her husband said she could host training sessions at their home. As part of this training, one of Oxfam's partners, AGROSAL, taught the women about their rights and how to prevent domestic violence. It was part of the Vida Diferente campaign to prevent gender violence.
"I started to listen to talks about preventing violence in the home," Molina de Vasquez says. "I learned about my rights." Since her husband allowed her to hold the meetings at their house, Molina de Vasquez took a risk: "I invited him to the talks and training sessions, and he became more sensitive." Together, she and her husband questioned the gender roles and attitudes in the machista culture in El Salvador, and they recreated their relationship. "Now my husband and I solve problems through dialogue, not violence," Molina de Vasquez says. He now recognizes how important it is for her to use her leadership skills. "If someone asks me to do something, I will do it because I know my husband will not say no."
Molina de Vasquez is committed to the new women's organization: "First I would like to get women to know about their rights and duties, and to increase their self-esteem." She says there are practical reasons for this, which leads to the second goal: "We need jobs for all the women. We can help ourselves and our families, care for our children, and earn income to change our lives." For Molina de Vasquez, respect for women and fighting poverty are part of the same struggle.
The changes in Molina de Vasquez's family are hard to compare to the earlier, oppressive days. "I have overcome it—so why can't I help other women? That is my goal: to help many other women."
]]>One of the goals of the campaign is to increase the number of women who understand their rights and can effectively defend them as Adelina Ortiz did. To help educate the next generation, the campaign developed a program for teachers and schoolchildren in 2007 that teaches young people about how to prevent gender violence and what to do if they are attacked.
"We used to talk about gender equity here," says Patricia Jovel. "But never gender violence." Jovel is the director of a school participating in this new initiative in El Progreso, a village perched on the impossibly steep Quetzaltepeque volcano outside San Salvador. The school, where 850 students from 6 to 16 years old attend classes in two half-day groups, is a collection of six cinderblock classrooms topped by metal sheet roofing on either side of a terraced concrete courtyard sloping down the mountainside. It is a beehive of activity after classes, as without any level area for a playground, the students play tag around the central courtyard in the brisk mountain air. Jovel says the young women who sometimes have to walk home in the dark after school are now better equipped to fend off the young men offering drinks and cigarettes to them. "Thank God there have been no rapes," she says.
The students have learned their lessons well: Karla Sanchez, 15, says it is a matter of her basic rights. "Everyone must respect our rights as children, girls, youth. We all have the same rights, and no one can violate them. And if something should happen, we know we can tell our parents, our teachers, or adults we trust. They are here to help us," she explains patiently. And if these people can't help, she knows where to go. She lists a number of institutions where she can turn for protection: the Human Rights Office; the National Police; and the Salvadoran Institute for the Advancement of Women, known as ISDEMU. As she leaves, Sanchez articulates one essential idea about reporting gender violence: "We should not be afraid of what people say."
In 2007, this pilot project in 53 schools exposed 25,000 students to the key messages of the campaign and trained 1,000 students and 1,000 teachers. The teachers now have incorporated violence prevention into their curriculum, and they work with the trained students. The pilot was supported by the Ministry of Education and was such a success that the minister decided to incorporate it into the public school curriculum nationwide.
Sustained pressure to change societal attitudes toward women is a slow process. One effective way to question long-held ideas and beliefs is to educate those entrusted with defending the rights of women, protecting them in the community, and helping them if they are attacked or injured. These include public officials like police officers, judges, public health officials and doctors, and social workers. The campaign organized a formal training program at the University of Central America (UCA) in 2005, and 45 people attended.
Maritza de Vasquez, a psychologist at the family court in the city of San Marcos, just outside San Salvador, says this training has helped her assist the many women who come through her office. De Vasquez says that women are hearing the messages of the campaign and are taking action to protect themselves. In the steady stream of domestic violence and divorce cases she sees, there is a different attitude. "Women take the opportunity to come here and talk about their situation they come here right away to denounce it," she says. "They are expressing their rights more openly now."
Back in Ahuachapan, Ortiz grows corn and raises sheep to support her children and grandchildren. He husband is in jail awaiting a hearing. "I'd rather see him in prison than anywhere else," Ortiz says. It was her participation in a sheep-raising program run by one of Oxfam America's partners, Association of Salvadoran Agriculturalists (AGROSAL), that exposed Ortiz to the human rights training that helped her defend her own life and protect her children. She points out that in all her training to become a health worker, no one ever educated her about domestic violence or how to prevent it. "The training taught me that women have rights and people are obligated to respect them," Ortiz says. "This made me act, to look for help, and thank God I found it."
]]>Mogale, 37, is open about her status: she has been HIV positive for two years, and she is living with it. After all, she is doing better now and hopes the worst is behind her. "Now I am really fit compared to when I was sick—I can go a long distance walking now," she says. She regularly walks about one and a half miles to the headquarters of Pholo Modi Wa Sechaba, a community organization where she is part of a support group for people living with HIV/AIDS in her village of Welgavel.
Pholo Modi Wa Sechaba helped get Mogale out of bed and back on her feet. The organization sent a home-based care worker to nurse her, help her get to the hospital for treatment, teach her how to take her antiretroviral medication and manage her diet, and file for a government support grant—a source of money for disabled people.
Pholo Modi Wa Sechaba—meaning "health is the root of the nation" in Setswana, the local language—has about 21 caregivers serving 240 patients in four villages. They ensure that patients are taking their medication; they cook and clean, and disinfect and dress wounds from the many infections that bedevil those with an immune system compromised by HIV. In some cases they deliver food parcels to help families survive.
Pholo Modi Wa Sechaba is just one of thousands of local community based organizations helping the roughly 5.5 million people living with HIV/AIDS in South Africa. They are on the front line of the struggle, and play an essential role in providing services. "Community-based organizations are key in the fight against HIV/AIDS," says Gerard Payne the affiliate coordinator at the AIDS Consortium, an umbrella organization for the thousands of such community groups around South Africa. "Without them the fight against HIV and AIDS is a mere media campaign. They provide essential services in the community, they speak the language, and they understand the cultural issues in the communities."
Oxfam America is working with the AIDS Consortium to provide training and other support to community based organizations like Pholo Modi Wa Sechaba in South Africa's North West Province, one of the poorest areas of the country, with a high incidence of HIV/AIDS. The AIDS Consortium is working with 47 local community based organizations in the North West, and with funding from Oxfam it can expand its efforts to some of the 150 others struggling against HIV/AIDS in the province.
Pholo Mode Wa Sechaba helps patients get tested for HIV and, when patients test positive, counsels them on their treatment options and on how to "live positively." In addition to its home-based care program, it has a daycare for young children and an after-school program for orphans and others who need a place to do their homework and learn valuable life skills including how to prevent HIV.
Learning that you are HIV positive forces you to think about everything differently. Just having to share your status with your family is enough of a crisis for many newly diagnosed people. They then must struggle with how to live with what may at first seem a death sentence, how to make ends meet if they are too ill to work, how to endure the side effects of the medication, and how to manage the stigma of being HIV positive.
South Africa's health care system, while free, is overburdened and does not provide adequate social support for people living with HIV/AIDS. They can be tested, learn the result, and get a CD4 count (a measure of the blood cells that support their immune system). Many get free antiretroviral medication. But then they are really on their own—and if they lack a support system of family and friends, as many do in communities already ravaged by the disease, these patients are in crisis.
Pholo Modi Wa Sechaba helped Maria Mogale with these struggles, and helped her understand her treatment options. These are the most important lessons the organization teaches people in the community, particularly valuable to women who are sometimes excluded from health care options owing to poverty and discrimination—a violation of their right to health care. Family members may insist on traditional medicine, which frequently delays treatment, and can often hasten death.
Mogale learned this from Pholo Modi Wa Sechaba: "If people are sick, they need to go to the hospital, and not just stay at home and say they are bewitched," she says at her home, a three-room house made of metal sheets outside Welgavel. "I tell people, 'AIDS is there, but you can get better.'" She smiles as she speaks.
Mogale is a strong, positive example for members of her community—and this strength, tragically, is also a good example within her own family. Her daughter Portia, 18, learned she was HIV positive two months ago, and her 60-year-old mother Priscilla, who lives nearby, is also in treatment. Both are now thinking about their lives differently as well, and look to Mogale for advice on how to live and think about their future. Portia is in her second to last year of high school and is considering higher education, even as she is still learning what it means to be HIV positive.
For Maria Mogale, her future may involve helping others on a more formal basis: she wants to work with Pholo Modi Wa Sechaba. "I want to become a caregiver, and teach others what I have learned."
]]>Each season is slightly different than the previous one, but having anticipated the changing conditions, generation after generation learns to adapt.
But what happens when the seasons become less predictable and the conditions more difficult to manage? What happens when human activities, like burning coal, oil, and natural gas, change the climate—not just for a season, but for the long-term? Then, lacking the information or resources necessary to understand, prepare for, and respond to increased hazards, many of the world's poorest communities experience unprecedented stress.
]]>The survey report, "In Her Own Words: Iraqi women talk about their greatest concerns and challenges," is being released on International Women's Day to highlight the daily hardships women are facing as a result of years of conflict.
The report also calls on the government of Iraq to begin a 'surge' of investment into reviving Iraq's social welfare and essential services sectors now that the security situation, although still fragile, has improved in recent months. Critical in this effort is robust support from the international community. Such investment would benefit the population as a whole, and perhaps none more than Iraq's at risk women, and in particular, women-headed-households.
"Women are the forgotten victims of Iraq. Despite the billions of dollars poured into rebuilding Iraq and recent security gains, a quarter of the women interviewed still do not have daily access to water, a third cannot send their children to school and since the war started, over half have been the victim of violence. And to add further insult more than three quarters of widows, many of whom lost their husbands to the conflict, get no government pension which they are entitled to," said Oxfam International Executive Director Jeremy Hobbs.
A large majority of women surveyed were not receiving any state support and had become so poor as a result of the conflict that many could not afford to provide their families with clean water, electricity, food, an education and medical treatment.
Oxfam and an Iraqi women's organization, Al-Amal Association, which conducted the survey last year, found that despite security gains some 60 percent of women said that their security and personal safety were was still their number one concern.
The majority of women surveyed also said that access to most services, including drinking water and electricity, was worse or the same in mid-2008 as it was in 2006 when levels of insecurity in Iraq were higher. A quarter of the women surveyed—24 percent—had no access to clean water. Nearly half of those who did have access to water—48 percent—said it wasn't suitable for drinking. Eighty-two percent said that access to electricity had worsened or had not improved since 2006.
"A whole generation of Iraqis are at risk. Mothers are being forced to make tough choices, such as whether to pay for their children to go to school and receive healthcare, or to pay for private power and water services. These are choices no mother should have to make, and they are not only threatening individual families. They are also threatening the future of Iraq itself," added Hobbs.
The survey also found that:
The specific hardships that some of Iraq's most vulnerable individuals cope with on a daily basis, as told by them, have overwhelmingly gone unheard.
Oxfam and the Al-Amal Association, the Iraqi partner organization that conducted the survey in the five provinces of Baghdad, Basra, Kirkuk, Najaf and Nineveh, do not claim that the information they gathered from 1,700 respondents represents the situation facing all Iraqis, or even all women in Iraq. However, it does provide a disturbing snapshot of many women's lives and those of their children and other family members. The information presented in this paper was collected over a period of several months, starting in the summer of 2008.
]]>Paso suspected the reason for this neglect, and it became clear when one health official told Paso that he was not fit to wash dishes in their office because he was an indigenous Quechua speaker, an ethnic group at the bottom of the social order in the scenic region of Cusco. Paso was so discouraged that he almost believed him.
"I was lost," says Paso, now 37, married, and the father of three young boys. "I did not know what culture I belonged to."
Racism, and the discrimination it breeds, erodes the self-respect of the highland indigenous people of Peru. They turn away from their culture and slowly drop their traditional ways of living and working that are so well suited to the Andes. As a result, indigenous people are among the poorest in the country. Paso could see it around his village: farmers like him were not following their traditions of helping each other in their fields; they were poor and ashamed of their culture.
To get some perspective, Paso visited the Centro de Bartolomé de Las Casas, known by its initials CBC, because he had heard on the radio that it was running a bilingual education program designed to help indigenous leaders like him reconcile their place in Peru, learn about their human rights, and develop skills to represent their community with government officials. He joined the program and began learning to read and write in his own Quechua language as well as in Spanish, and he is now more confident in his ability to function in his own indigenous world and the official, Spanish-speaking culture of Peru.
With grants from Oxfam America, CBC had just finished a year-long consultation with Quechua-speaking community leaders and had jointly developed a curriculum designed to help young leaders value their own culture while operating in Peru's modern, post-colonial culture. "We have created a way to help people see they are part of one culture, but they recognize the other," says Nicolette Velarde, an anthropologist at CBC. She says this helps the community leaders create a "dialogue of respect and recognition of one culture with the other."
"Both are valuable," Velarde says. "I am different from you, you are different from me, but there is dialogue and respect."
After developing the curriculum, CBC is now in the midst of training its first group of leaders, which included Paso and 30 others from Cusco and Apurimac.
One of them is Guillermina Mamani Huamán, 53, a mother of four and grandmother of seven. She had a similar experience to Paso's the first time she visited the city of Cusco, 15 years ago. "It was the first time I ever left my village ... Every time I think of it I get emotional," she says, sitting at her loom, staked out on the ground on the banks of the Mapuche River rushing past her father and sister's house.
Huamán went to Cusco to ask a government agency for help in marketing artisan products, but, over the course of four days, she was repeatedly denied the courtesy of even a short consultation. She struggled to find her way in the city, unable to read the street signs, frustrated by her illiteracy, and discouraged by her confrontation with institutionalized racism.
Indigenous women get little help from government agencies whose mission is to assist them. And indigenous women have special problems, even within their own culture, in that men do not always respect the work they do in their homes, and artisan women find that their handicrafts do not fetch a very high price. Huamán intends to learn how to better promote indigenous artisanry and build respect for the work of women. "We need to value fairly what we produce," she says. "This traditional way of weaving is the fruit of our culture, and every weaving has its own character—each woman puts in the way she sees the world."
Paso and Huamán and all the other leaders are planning how they will use their newfound knowledge and leadership skills. Paso is planning to run for public office so he can better represent his community and ensure it gets the schools, health care, and clean water it deserves, without forsaking its cultural identity.
Huamán wants to continue her work to promote the handicrafts produced by women in her community so that they can be more financially independent. "I want to help women educate their children," she says while weaving next to the rushing river, "so they can read and write, and not face the discrimination that I have."
]]>"This is not a typical campaign,” said Janet McKinley, chair of Oxfam America’s board of directors and of the Campaign for Oxfam America. “We're not raising money for new buildings or for a perpetual endowment. The highest return a donor can get is to put money to work now.”
“Oxfam is seeking investors who want to expand our programs over a five-year period, building the capacity of poor communities, particularly women, to earn more, save more, invest in their families, and better manage their risks,” McKinley continued. “And given the increasing frequency and severity of natural disasters, those risks are rising.” McKinley and her husband, George Miller, have already committed $5 million to the Campaign for Oxfam America.
“The show of support we have seen for the Campaign is especially significant since Oxfam, in order to preserve its independence and voice, does not accept funding from the US government. The organization depends entirely on gifts and grants from individual donors, foundations, and corporations to carry out its mission of poverty alleviation and social justice,” McKinley concluded.
To date, individuals have contributed 57 percent of the donations for the Campaign for Oxfam America. Foundations and corporations have donated 43 percent. The Campaign has received commitments for 10 seven-figure and 50 six-figure gifts.
Among the leading institutional donors, the New York City-based Ford Foundation has already committed $9 million to the Campaign.
“The foundation shares Oxfam America’s commitment to reducing poverty, creating economic opportunities, investing in women and families,” said Susan V. Berresford, president of the Ford Foundation. “We welcome these efforts to create lasting, equitable solutions to the most pressing global issues.”
Another major donor to Oxfam, The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation in Menlo Park, CA, has contributed $4.5 million in current grants.
“Oxfam makes canny use of its financial support,” said Paul Brest, president of the Hewlett Foundation. “We share its goals of reforming aid and making global trade practices fairer as an effective way to lift the world’s population out of poverty.”
Funds raised through the Campaign for Oxfam America will support longer-term investment in four distinct areas of work:
She was also furious. "This should not happen to us," she said later, referring to the residents of her village of Teberebie, which had been relocated to accommodate a new mining operation in the area. "What did we do wrong?"
Mr. Baidoo had been walking away from a confrontation between farmers and a military force when he was wounded. The protest arose after the military began blocking a road the farmers used to travel to their fields where they grow cocoa and palm trees, yams, cassava, and other fruits and vegetables. Having recently been denied this route through the mine property, and tired of the alternative—a longer, 12-mile round trip on foot—the entire town turned out in February 2006 to demand access to the road. Baidoo and one other man were shot, and several people were beaten.
Amoateng immediately called WACAM, the environmental and human rights organization partly funded by Oxfam that had trained her and others in the community. "I reported that Anthony had been shot, and was lying in his own blood," she said. After WACAM's director Daniel Owusu-Koranteng called the head of the AngloGold Ashanti mine company, Baidoo got the medical care he needed to survive at the company's expense. After recovering for eight months in the hospital he is now disabled.
Teberebie is a farming community in the Wassa West District of Ghana's Western Region. The community was resettled in 1991 to make room for the AngloGold Ashanti, Iduapriem Mine, which is now producing over 300,000 ounces of gold per year. It is just one of many scenes of violence over the last several years, as Ghana has thrown open its doors to foreign companies and relaxed its rules on investment to encourage more mining. The shootings in Teberebie were just two of 15 reported by the BBC in 2005 and 2006.
Amoateng is now a leader of the Concerned Farmers' Association of Teberebie, which consists of 35 farmers who have worked with WACAM to learn about their human rights under Ghana's constitution and Minerals and Mining Act. She is leading this group in a legal case against AngloGold, alleging non-payment of compensation for their lost farms, which are now buried under piles of waste rock.
Amoateng, 30, said she is now more aware of how the government and mining companies in the area are violating the rights of people in her community—and what to do about it. "Because of WACAM, I now know where to go and who to contact in case of any problem in the community," she said. Her recent activities have included leading a march to the nearby town of Tarkwa, where radio, television, and newspaper journalists interviewed her about the situation facing farmers in Teberebie.
In Ghana, as in many other countries in Africa and other parts of the world, women do not usually lead political struggles. Speaking out publicly is simply out of the question for most women in communities affected by mining in Ghana. Men are normally perceived as the voices of the community. But with the right training and personal ambition, women like Amoateng are showing they are strong leaders.
To more effectively represent her community, Amoateng is presently studying to finish high school and prepare for university. She aspires to be a lawyer and an advocate for women and children.
Her concerns center on basic justice for Teberebie. "The 1992 constitution and the Minerals and Mining Act are my closest friends now," Amoateng said. "I don't want the mining company to cheat my community. And I know my rights as a citizen living in a mining community."
Amoateng's work is a good example of how WACAM uses education as a tool to empower mining communities in their struggle to improve their living conditions. Her training with WACAM has strengthened her community as well as her own ability to represent her neighbors. "This has made me very powerful in the sight of both the mining company, and the men in my community," she said. "I am proud of myself."
Jerry Mensah-Pah is a radio and newspaper journalist based in Tarkwa, Ghana, and has been covering human rights violations related to communities affected by mining for four years. He works for WACAM in the Western Region of Ghana as its assistant programs officer.
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