Canada World Youth 2012 Leadership Awards

Canada World Youth (CWY) is currently seeking nominations for the 2012 Leadership Awards aimed at recognizing the excellent achievements of young Canadians and youth from around the world that are engaged in innovative initiatives promoting peace, intercultural understanding, and community and international Development. The candidates must be nominated by a third party.

CWY is a non-profit organization dedicated to enriching the lives of young people that have a desire to become informed and active global citizens. CWY programs are designed to help youth experience the world for themselves, learn about other cultures and diverse Canadian communities while developing leadership and communication skills.

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Has HIV/AIDS fueled donor ‘funding’ dependency in Africa?

“We cannot hope to formulate adequate development theory and policy for the majority of the world’s population who suffer from underdevelopment without first learning how their past economic and social history gave rise to their present underdevelopment” – Andre Gunder Frank, “The Development of Underdevelopment” (1966).

This week marks the convening of the 18^th International AIDS Conference in Vienna that assesses the progress made in the fight against the disease. This convening’s keynote speaker was former US President Bill Clinton whose speech called for efficient spending in the face of dwindling resources to address the pandemic. Mr. Clinton while stressing that every wasted dollar put a life at risk said “In too many countries too much money goes to pay for too many people to go to too many meetings, get on too many airplanes,”. He also added that too much money is spent on studies and reports that remain on the shelves.

But how did it come to this? Not that the funding coffers are drying up, but that 28 years after AIDS was discovered, and billions of dollars being spent annually, that HIV/AIDS still looms large on our horizon.

Well, the blame rests on both sides of the so-called development game: non governmental agencies (donors) as well as the beneficiaries. Dealing with HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa has become a long term mutually beneficial relationship among the two.

With all those meetings and carbon emissions generated in attending the meetings, the overall goal for these HIV/AIDS projects (probably long forgotten in the NGOs proposal logical framework) of assisting the beneficiaries has dropped lower down the agenda.

In turn the beneficiaries due to having these agencies around for so long (for some AIDS orphans, all their lives) lack the drive to solve their own problems without external assistance (funding).

And indeed why should it be any different when the number of NGOs continue to rise. Just visit Kibera, Africa’s second largest urban slum and you can almost trip over the number of agencies working in HIV/AIDS, water and sanitation and any other baseline survey assessed need.

Last year while visiting with some young entrepreneurs in Kibera, we at YIPE heard some pretty horrific stories in how donor dependency for “funding” has impacted their lives. These youth were all born in the slum and for the most part of their lives, there were always NGOs providing whatever assistance was required.

As a result where HIV/AIDS stigmatization existed in other areas, in Kibera it was not as bad. But that is not just a reflection of the numerous Voluntary Counseling and Testing Centres (VCT) that abound. The real pay off is that if an individual tests HIV positive, they then not only receive free anti-retrovirals, but also receive assistance, be it in the form of food, clothes or maybe rent money. Thus apart from the implementing agency carrying out the HIV/AIDS project, the beneficiaries also became recipients of what they call “funding”.

One of the Kibera youth told us the story of a young man that visited a VCT centre and “sadly” tested negative. Crestfallen that he could not receive “funding”, the young man set out on a mission to reverse that diagnosis.

Not an ideal marriage

This symbiotic dependency between NGOs and their beneficiaries really needs to be further interrogated. It’s a shame that this is the 18^th International AIDS conference and it seems that apart from the condom and abstinence, there is no other readily available and inexpensive way to prevent HIV infections.

Why is it that after all these years Uganda which was a best practice case in how to combat the disease which almost decimated the country’s future economic development prospects now has a rising infection rate? Why is it that the majority of these new cases are not among the red zone population segments such as commercial sex workers and ling distance truck drivers but among married couples? Or is it that there are absolutely no HIV/AIDS focused non governmental organisations in that country?

Those questions are for the INGO, NGO, FBO, CSO and any other “O” professing to have made an impact all these years. Now here’s one for the beneficiaries, particularly the youth. Why do we have to suffer one more AIDS related death on top of the 71 million people Africa has lost since the disease was discovered?

A new approach – People, Planet, Project

This year when countries have to renew their commitments to the Global Fund for AIDS, TB and Malaria, in the face of the global economic crisis, activists are calling for new approaches for raising funds, including airline ticket taxes.

However this will still lead to the same scenario with communities being put on the back burner in their zeal to raise funding for projects.

The solution here is to encourage social entrepreneurs to enter into the fray. The difference between a social enterprise and an NGO is that the entrepreneur has to be ultimately concerned with having community acceptance (if not involvement as employees, distributors …). Their models are sustainable and unlike NGOs they have to be accountable to shareholders and the community (market) they operate in.

Social enterprises also by virtue of their type of entity have to be transparent in terms of finance and corporate governance. Profit also would be a useful tool to assess the uptake of socially marketed products such as female condoms. Maybe some unsuccessful NGO projects could have been abandoned sooner if there was a price tag to measure success.

In retail speak, once a consumer buys into the story behind the product, they own it. Isn’t that sustainability?

The best outcome of this 18^th AIDS Conference would be a new approach in ensuring that the implementing agencies do have the “moral standing” as Bill Clinton put it to ask for funding to do their “jobs faster, better and cheaper” – something most entrepreneurs do on a daily basis.

National Cohesion Should Be Anchored In The Younger Generation

By Ndolo Asasa

The National Cohesion and Integration Commission (NCIC) is currently holding a 4 day consultation workshop with elders drawn from various communities nationally on fostering national cohesion. This is a good start, though the strategy attracts a yawn!

While the elders hold an important position in national cohesion, the future of a sustainably integrated Kenya lies in the hands of the younger generation and the middle class. As such, NCIC must demonstrate freshness and courageously place the youth at the centre of their programmes. It must stop pushing the youth to the periphery and treating them as users of decisions made elsewhere.

It is hoped that NCIC will shift its focus to the youth as a strategy of emphasizing new thought on the Kenya being: the youth have more at stake as they are the custodians of the future and generally have less historical baggage than the elders that ties them to the status quo or romanticized tribal cocoons of the past.

Being the only Commission of the Agenda IV created commissions that is permanent in its nature, it is important that its strategy and style also reflect that state of permanency. It is high time government institutions started running their programmes with a with a firm focus on the future and sustainably by heavily involving the youth and shedding off now entrenched prejudices against the capacity, focus and commitment of the youth.

By the way, what is the average age of the perpetrators of the post election violence in relation to the average age of the commissioners of the Agenda IV created commission?

The youth must be more centrally used in the efforts to solve existing and anticipated societal problems of the Kenyan nation for a sustainable future.

The writer is a human rights defender who blogs on http://ndoloasasa.blogspot.com/

You are the World – the World is You

Using personal development to facilitate and lead groups and teams

Date: April 23rd-25th, 2010
Presented by: Drs. Max and Ellen Schupbach, Portland, USA

This is the commencement seminar of a 3 year Leadership and Facilitation Program (for details, please see below)

Personal Development and Leadership

This is a 3 day seminar focused on using personal development for leading and facilitating groups and teams, and using the issues of the world for personal growth.

Deep Democracy is a psychological and sociological principle that also uses concepts from physics and mathematics to show how events in the outer world are intimately linked with our inner experiences and personal development. From this perspective, your experience of your body symptoms, the issues that appear in your relationships, and the conflicts and events in the world around you are entangled.

This seminar will provide new concepts and skills for inner-work and group-work that can be applied directly with your projects, teams, and groups in a new way. It will also show how to use difficult and impossible situations as a meditation practice for personal development.

The Seminar

This seminar is part of a team and group facilitation training, and will focus particularly on the self-management (or inner work) aspect. Each day will follow a similar format: Mornings will focus on teaching and learning personal and professional development skills. In the afternoon, you will learn new group and facilitation practices. For participants who have taken these seminars before, emphasis will be placed on the actual practice of the concepts.

What You Will Learn

You will “take home” tools that can assist in your relationship and team  issues with the world at large, and that help to understand that  the path of being more effective in the world is guided by your personal development.

Day 1: Nature and the Facilitator

Process-oriented Inner Work practices bring an outside perspective that can be essential to supplement the skills and methods that we use to lead our own personal projects, as well as our teams and groups. You will learn nature-based inner work practices for personal and professional development. Process-oriented inner work exercises can also assist in deepening the religious and spiritual path that you have chosen. The psychological aspect of this day focuses on escaping the trap of the “advisor”, who either doesn’t have sufficient information about the situation, or shares the same information – and therefore cannot bring forth truly new solutions.

Day 2: Relationship as a key to Self Discovery

You will study how working with relationship issues can assist in the process of getting to know yourself, and in finding solutions for the world at large. You will learn new ways of resolving relationship issues by using them as a practice ground for personal and professional development, and understand how they are directly connected to the timespirits*1 that rule the world’s conflicts.

Day 3: Body Symptoms as a Guide for Leadership and Facilitation

This day will focus on using body experiences and “gut reactions” as additional guides for unfolding and developing leadership and facilitation potential. The body knows. You will learn how to discover and follow body wisdom that is not simply instinctive and reactive, but is connected to the wisdom of the surrounding world at large.

The Process Oriented Leadership training consists of three, year-long courses. This seminar and those following are individual, certifiable courses that can be taken separately. The entire program can be taken as a Certificate Course in Process Oriented Leadership. The various courses work as building blocks that the participants can mix and match as needed. The DDI leadership course will consist of a year each of 1) Coaching, 2) Facilitation and Conflict Resolution in Groups and Relationships, and 3) Organizational and Business Development – Vision, Strategy and Leadership.

The seminar will consist of 30% theory in mini-lectures and 70% practical demonstrations and applied exercises in which you can:

1) try out what you have learned within the seminar setting
2) design solutions for the actual situation that you are working on

All you need to know

When?

April 23-24 the seminar starts at 9 a.m. and ends at 5 p.m.
April 25th the seminar starts at 9a.m. and ends at 4 p.m.

How to register?

Phone: 0732354902 or 0729467413
Email: EAleaders@deepdemocracyinstitute.org

How much?

Price: 5,000 KES (does not include accommodation)
Some partial scholarships are available

Where?

Carmelite Community (near Tangaza College)
Langata South Road, Karen, Nairobi
Some accommodation is available, please book directly with the conference center
Tel: 020 89-04-87 (Note the chanqe 020)

*1 “timespirits” or “Zeitgeist” is the general cultural, intellectual, ethical, spiritual, and/or political climate within a nation or even specific groups, along with the general ambience, morals, and sociocultural direction or mood of an era (similar to the English word mainstream or trend).

The Facilitators

Max Schupbach, Ph.D., Dip. PW,  is president of maxfxx, a consulting group working worldwide with organizations, including fortune 100 corporations, international NGOs, government agencies, and religious communities. He has coached multi-ethnic executive teams in South Africa, and worked with Australian Aboriginal communities and Native North American Tribes. Max has facilitated conflict resolution between Croatian and Serbian groups during the Yugoslavian war, and relationships between prison inmates, correctional personnel, and prison administrators in high security prisons on the verge of revolt. He is co-founder and president and training director of the Deep Democracy Institute.

Ellen Schupbach, Ph.D., Dip. PW, is a Certified Processwork Diplomate who specializes in the personal development of the leader and facilitator. She wrote her doctoral thesis on the spiritual experience of the facilitator and coach. Ellen is co-founder and executive director of the Deep Democracy Institute, a Global Think Tank that researches leadership issues worldwide, and aims to create leadership trainings to develop more collaborative systems in today’s diverse societies. She has co-created training programs for Palestine, the USA, UK, Ukraine, and Kenya.

Peace Revolution Fellowship II

Dates: 21 June – 20 July 2010

Where:  Thailand

Are you a young peace activist who is looking for something more to help you in your life and work?

Are you interested in Buddhism and Buddhist approaches to peace building?

Would you like to learn how to develop your own inner peace so that you can more effectively engage in your peace work?

The Peace Revolution Project is now accepting applications for the 2010 Fellowship in Thailand. The Fellowship is open to all young peace activists who believe that Inner Peace + Outer Peace = Sustainable World Peace

Aims of the Program

Participants will:

• Study and practice inner peace techniques with youth working on peace from around the world.
• Learn about Buddhism and Thai Buddhist culture.
• Participate or volunteer in the biggest Mass Ordination Ceremony of 100,000 Thai monks.
• Attend the Peace Revolution workshop to develop their peace activist abilities.

Target Group

Youth aged between 18-30 years old. Up to thirty peace activists will be selected to attend.

Timeline

• Deadline for online application (need a visa to enter to Thailand) – 22 April 2010
• Deadline for online application (no need for visa to enter to Thailand) – 1 May 2010

Qualifications

Applicants must:

• Be 18-30 years old at the time of submitting the application;
• Have completed at least 1 month of the Peace Revolution online self-development program;
• Have good proficiency in written and spoken English language;
• Be optimistic, open-minded, show leadership potential, and have a genuine interest in peace.

Fellowship Program

• Week 1-3: Peace Revolution Retreat (focus on Meditation and Buddhist Studies)
• Week 4: Attend the biggest Mass Ordination Ceremony of 100,000 monks in Thailand and Peace Revolution workshop.

Peace Revolution will provide food and accommodation for all participants in the fellowship program. There is also a limited grant scheme to cover participants′ flights to Thailand. Please ask if you would like to apply for funding for your airfare.

Please submit your online application at http://www.peacerevolution2010.org/modules/profiles/apply-for-the-agency-II and

start the online self-development program today via

http://www.peacerevolution2010.org/modules/stages/s4_question_list.

For further detail, please contact Ping Ping, Project Coordinator, at secretariat@peacerevolution2010.org

Let’s Create a Safer World for Women