by Glory Mushinge
Zambia

For more than seven years, the country has waited for the policy, while holding studies and consultative meetings amongst the private and public sector to ensure the final product would become something to write home about. The eventual launch of the policy on the 28th of March 2007 marked the beginning of much hard work for the sector, as there are many issues that need to be addressed.

There are issues of infrastructure, especially in rural and peri-urban areas where there is literally no proper communication infrastructure and skills to utilize ICT’s. In the words of the Zambian President Levy Mwanawasa, as carried out by his Vice President, Dr Rupiah Banda, when he officially launched the policy this week, "Government’s intention is to bridge the digital divide amongst Zambians."

by Sarah Wyatt
USA

Young playwright Sarah Ruhl continues to gain widespread recognition for her play, The Clean House. She is emerging as a powerful presence in the American performing arts. The acclaimed and affecting comedy by the MacArthur genius grant recipient explores four markedly different yet intimately connected women and their varied attitudes toward order and cleanliness.

Ruhl recounted in American Theatre, “I was at a party full of doctors. A doctor walked in and said, ‘It's been such a hard month. My cleaning lady from Brazil is depressed and I took her to the hospital and had her medicated, and she still won't clean. And in the meantime, I've been cleaning my house. And I'm sorry, but I didn't go to medical school to clean my own house.’ I was fascinated and horrified by the political and cultural implications of the speech, but also by how transparently the woman laid out her case. It became the first monologue in the play.”

by Marianne Taflinger
USA

When Iqbal Quadir’s computer crashed one day, he flashed back to his time in Bangladesh when he went out walking to find a pharmacist, only to find the pharmacist out walking to find medicine. In that flash, he realized that “connectivity is productivity,”—if you cannot connect, you cannot be productive, no matter where you are, or what your circumstances might be.

Quadir and his partners built this business in Bangladesh where the per capita GDP is $415, or the equivalent of $1,197 dollars a year in purchasing power. 83% of the population lives on less than $2 a day, and electricity is virtually nonexistent outside of the capital city. In 2005, the Bangladesh government was tied for last place with Chad in central Africa on international corruption. You could say it’s “top of the list” on perception of corruption when viewed by the foreign business community.

by D-L Nelson
France

Sujatha Venkatesh sips Indian spiced tea in her Geneva, Switzerland countryside home as she talks about her real and creative journey from Bangalore, India, to becoming the maven of Indian classic and folk dance in Switzerland.

Sujatha Venkatesh in performance.

Although she sits restfully and nibbles on a chocolate-covered cookie, when she talks about her childhood, it is clear why and how she has the work ethic she does, why she gets more done in a day then most people do in a week.

She was the middle child between an older brother and younger sister. Her father was an engineer in charge of a machine tool company. “He wasn’t a typical Indian father,” she says. “He helped with the children, probably an idea he picked up in his many travels.”

Her mother would not allow idleness. Time was for learning, crafts and cooking. “We kept fingers, eyes, feet and voices active,” Sujatha says. The family was up at 5:30 in the morning for yoga, something her father continues at age 80...except it is even earlier.

by Katharine Daniels
Executive Editor, The WIP
USA

You must be the change you wish to see in the world. - Gandhi

The earth was designed to sustain every generation’s needs, not to be plundered in an attempt to meet one generation’s wants. – Matthew Sleeth

What do you get when you cross the chief of medical staff at a large New England hospital with an evangelical Christian? In the case of Dr. Matthew Sleeth, you find an environmental crusader with both the scientific understanding of how the environment impacts our health, and the spiritual understanding of our moral obligation to reverse the destruction humans inflict on this planet. This combination may just save us and succeed where both environmentalists and politicians have failed.

In Serve God Save The Planet, Matthew Sleeth defines the moral challenge of protecting the environment for future generations. As an emergency room physician, Sleeth saw first hand troublesome rising trends in illness. His patients were sicker than ever from cancer, asthma, and other chronic diseases.

by Anna Clark
USA

Green consciousness is finally hitting that bastion of carbon emissions with a war-inducing appetite for oil: the American automobile.

Between the nationwide Step It Up campaign of community activism and Al Gore’s Academy-Award winning documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, the clamor for global warming action is forcing U.S. automakers to respond. And they are—if a bit begrudgingly.

Hybrid and fuel-efficient cars are hot; GM’s gone so far as to design a plug-in concept car that may never need gasoline. Tellingly, Detroit’s road-maintenance and salt trucks run on biodiesel. With the U.S. Supreme Court ruling earlier this month that gives the Environmental Protection Agency authority to regulate fuel efficiency—expressly because global warming is a “serious threat”—we might expect a green ethic to become more inherent to American cars.

It marks a significant change for an industry built on the premise of wastefulness. Giles Slade’s illuminating book, Made to Break: Technology and Obsolescence in America, points to Detroit automakers for popularizing the corporate strategy that justifies the nation’s overproduction of goods by creating wants and needs in consumers.

by Suad Hamada
Bahrain

Working women in Bahrain are facing many challenges and female activists predict they will encounter even more hardships after the full implementation of the newly ratified Free Trade Agreement between Bahrain and the United States.

A recent study reveals that only 9.9% of the top managerial posts in Bahrain’s private sector are held by women. Besides accepting the second best when it comes to promotion and work privileges, females have to find ways to cope with the tough competition the FTA will bring with its open market policies.

Put into effect last year, the FTA is expected to contribute to the economic growth of Bahrain and increase revenues of businesses. But according to the Supreme Council for Women (SCW) that is dedicated to safeguarding the interests of Bahrain’s female citizens by empowering them in all walks in life, the FTA’s effects on women are still uncertain.

by Susan Mwape
Zambia

According to a Zimbabwean Proverb, even the smallest bird can sing from the tallest tree.

Zambian Irene Banda, a 25 year old social activist, scooped up the Sheila McKechnie 2007 International Campaigner Award. Irene first got involved in campaign work in 2002, when her organization conducted research on how government funds to all constituencies in the country were being used. This fund is called the Constituency Development Fund (CDF) and, as the name suggests, it is supposed to be used for developing the local constituencies’ social setup. From their research in selected communities of Zambia, it was found out that some of the local citizens were not even aware that such a fund existed, must less what it was actually used for. After the research was performed, Irene’s role was to go round talking to people in focus group discussions, in an effort to find out if people had access to these funds, if they knew the funds existed and how the funds should be used to develop their communities. This took a lot of work on the ground and gave Irene her first experience in campaigning for social justice.

In 2003, Irene joined the Big Noise campaign spearheaded by Oxfam International, working alongside 300 other volunteers to collect over a million signatures. It was during this campaign that she was able to meet key political and traditional leaders in selected areas of the country that she felt were influential to further spread the message of the trade justice campaign.

by Hayward Hawks Marcus
USA

Guerrilla Girls: Protesting the Art World With a Primate Punch—Part I

So, after just a little investigation, it seems it’s still mostly a white-man’s art world. Ever the optimist, I wanted to leave with a vision of how this sorry state might change. I ask Guerrilla Girl Frida Kahlo if she thinks the internet might help open some doors for underrepresented artists.

“I certainly hope so,” she replies. “For example, the major art magazines have become trade journals filled with advertising. You can’t tell the adverts from the articles––you can’t even find the articles––and you wonder, doesn’t that compromise the discourse? Whereas the online art mags aren’t that dependent on advertising––I hope. [The internet] is quicker, faster, cheaper and it travels around the world, so let’s hope that it would change it. The internet does break down this idea that art is this single object that can only exist in one place at one time, and that it’s currency that can be traded only among wealthy people. The internet is really redefining media in general. I was wondering how we could create a counter-culture with media the way it was, all being controlled by a small group of people all wanting the same market share. I don’t know if it will change the art world, but I’m hopeful it will create an alternative.”

by Hayward Hawks Marcus
USA

Who could have predicted that I would one day interview artist Frida Kahlo? Not via Ouija board, mind you, but by telephone. And while I didn’t ask, I doubt she was wearing her gorilla mask.

Before anyone asks, this Frida Kahlo is a founding member of the Guerilla Girls, New York City’s female, gorilla-masked, artist avengers, who lead a perpetual battle for parity within the world of High Art.

Forming in 1985 to protest an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, where the number of male to female artists ran 148 to 17, the Guerrilla Girls referred to themselves as “The Conscience of the Art World.” With pseudonyms of deceased female artists, they cloaked their identities inside gorilla masks to keep the public focused on their actions, not their personalities, to protect their own art careers, and, I suppose, to give their appearance the same humorous slant as their work.

by Sarah Hurd
USA

Like most Americans, I did not know that the District of Columbia, our nation’s capitol, does not have full voting rights. To make matters worse, the United States is the ONLY democratic country in the world that has such an arrangement (which is in direct violation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights ratified by Congress in 1992). This is one of the many reasons why the League of Women Voters has designated Washington D.C. Voting Rights as one of its priority issues this year, and is diligently working to educate and advocate on its behalf.

So what does this really mean? I can hear you ask. Plainly put, it means D.C. gets no votes in the Senate or the House. It also means that Congress has exclusive authority over D.C.’s local budget, and can annul laws it passes. Additionally, Washington D.C. does not have control over its local judiciary and prison systems; the President oversees them and appoints the judges.

At its core, the residents of our nation’s capitol live in a state of “taxation without representation.” They pay one of the highest per capita federal income taxes in the country, fight in America’s wars, serve on juries, and yet still do not have full voting representation.

by Susan Mwape
Zambia

Since last month, the Lusaka City Council (LCC) has been demolishing illegal settlements in the City of Lusaka. The City Council has earmarked even more area to be razed despite the pleas by the residents to formalize these areas.

The ongoing demolition has left a good number of people in the city homeless, as most of the people whose homes have been destroyed say they were not given notice. Youths have cried foul over this exercise by the City Council. They have argued that it is the council’s poor planning that has caused the mushrooming of illegal settlements.

“The best the council can do is to legalise these settlements instead of demolishing and leaving people homeless,” said Theresa from the Bauleni Compound in Lusaka.

According to Charles of the Youth Knowledge Network, the council should start by demolishing the bars that have risen in a number of townships within Lusaka. He said it has become normal for bar owners to open their bars as early as 5 am and go until way after midnight.

“How come the council is failing to demolish these bars that are a hazard to the youth and school going children?” Charles asked.

by Katharine Daniels
Executive Editor, The WIP
USA

* The Real Wealth of Nations: Creating a Caring Economics, the new book from Dr. Riane Eisler, has allowed us at The WIP to take our mission to a new depth that I personally was not at before. I know that it will make the same impact on many other readers.

So to celebrate the release of Dr. Eisler's The Real Wealth of Nations, The WIP is proud to repost an editorial I wrote after I had the honor of interviewing her. This editorial first appeared on The WIP on March 31, 2007.

I read a book about Economics—something I don’t do very often. Actually, I think this was the first book I’ve ever read in my life about economics. It’s by Dr. Riane Eisler, The Real Wealth of Nations. It was accessible and legible, and interesting, and even inspiring. It was historical, thought provoking, and if what she proposes is true, life changing.

It was around the third chapter that I had eased into my couch and her statistics started to resonate with me—stats like the fair wage for a typical stay-at-home parent would be $134, 471 per year, or a 1995 United Nations report that calculated the annual unpaid work by women at 11 trillion dollars.

by Claire A. Williams
USA/Kenya

For my first marathon, I trained in cotton socks. I didn’t know better, and four months of blood blisters punished me for this oversight. My shoes were old, and I never measured the miles I ran. Instead, I relied solely on my own overly optimistic minutes-per-mile calculations on the city streets where I trained. I had no cause, raised no money, and was lucky to have my one and only spectator on race day. Naturally, she forgot to take any pictures.

The second time around, though, I decided things would be different. I would finish in a timely manner and prove not only that I could finish a marathon, but make good time as well. I got an iPod Nano, a red one at that, which meant that I was supporting charitable causes.

But the best laid plans are rarely the backdrop for success. Thus it happened that in November of 2006, I traveled to climb Mt. Kenya, stayed at a nearby orphanage overnight, and never left. I never climbed the mountain, but in its absence emerged Hope Runs, the organization my traveling partner, Lara, and I started, to train the AIDS orphans of the Tumaini Children’s Center in Nyeri, Kenya, for the Mt. Kilimanjaro marathon on June 24th, 2007.

by Sarah Wyatt
USA

In 2003, Palestinian activists mourned the passing of an American, a woman whose brilliance returns to life in My Name is Rachel Corrie.

The production is based on the writings of Rachel Corrie, the 23 year-old woman who was killed on March 16, 2003 by an Israeli Army bulldozer while she was protesting against the demolition of Palestinian civilian homes. This compelling story of a personal journey is told through Corrie’s own words from her journals, as assembled by British actor Alan Rickman, who also directed the London and New York productions, and journalist Katharine Viner.

The witty and poignant drama follows Corrie's rise from her middle-class upbringing in Olympia, Washington, to becoming an activist forever remembered. Ensconced in her beloved college apartment, the play opens with Corrie reflecting on the dizzying heights and emotional lows of her childhood, on her adventures as a college peace activist, and on her heartbreaking romance with another student.

by D-L Nelson
France

What turns a happy employee and grandmother into a striker willing to walk an icy picket line in Hamilton, ON, Canada for almost six months? Nancy Bachorski says unfair treatment is to blame.

For twenty-six years, Bachorski worked as a mortgage administrator at F1rstOntario Credit Union and she loved her job. She would recommend her credit union to people in passing and while chatting with them as she walked her dog.

Canada’s 400+ credit unions are member-owned financial institutions that hold CND$94 billion in assets. Unlike banks, credit union profits are returned to the membership or the community. In 2006 they donated over CND$36 million to community projects.

In April 2006 management started negotiating a new contract with Bachorski’s union, COPE Local 343. In May, F1rstOntario’s relatively new CEO, John Lahey, announced its most profitable year ever.

by Louise Belfrage
News Editor, The WIP
Argentina

Buenos Aires, April 10th - On April 4th, Argentine public school teachers in the provincial capital of Neuquén, the largest city in Patagonia, held a rally for higher salaries, demanding more than their current pay of 1000-1200 pesos (USD 300-360) a month. A raise of 24% had been offered by the federal government, which the workers had taken as an insult.

During police intervention of this non-peaceful protest, a chemistry teacher, Carlos Fuentealba, was killed when he was hit in the head by a tear gas cartridge.

The following day, approximately 30 thousand people were mobilized into the streets of Neuquén, surrounding the federal government building and demanding the resignation of Governor Jorge Sobisch, accusing him of murder.

Demonstrations and public protests are commonplace in Argentina. They are always noisy, often aggressive, and seldom successful. In an election year such as 2007, they are also of great political importance.

by Susan Mwape
Zambia

Where there is water there is life. Forty-three years after independence, Zambia still has persistent water issues. If anything, the introduction of a multi-party system has only accelerated the water problems that have been going unnoticed. One would expect that a country as old as Zambia would be more stable in terms of its water systems.

As we say, “life begins at forty.” Maybe life for us as a country has only begun.

New Kanyama Township is about an 8-minute drive from town, a 15 -minute walk from Lusaka’s city center. By now, this would ideally have been a habitable area, especially since this compound was founded long before the independence of Zambia and is one of the largest residential compounds in the city.

A sad development occurred here about 2 weeks ago when the Lusaka Water and Sewerage Company (LWSC) closed down all communal water taps to facilitate the opening of new taps that were placed in different locations. The new taps were designed to regulate the water systems as they came equipped with meters.

by Karine Ancellin Saleck
Belgium

Despair of Young European Muslims Drives Some to Suicide—Part I

Iman has never been sung the sweet nursery rhymes of Carthagena. She feels guilty for betraying her parents, even though, on a daily basis, she is perceived by others as Tunisian; these strangers disregard the European dominance of her identity.

Since 9/11, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, primetime media has focused its attention on Muslim extremists. The lack of expression of the Muslim masses, like herself in Europe, and her family in Tunisia (who condemn Islam extremists), leads Iman to feel that Islam is an easy scapegoat for all kinds of societal maladies. The “moderates,” like those in Iman’s family, are totally ignored and required to stay largely invisible if they are to keep their place in France.

Iman is upset by what she sees as an unfair situation. A faithful believer, Iman, like her mother, is tolerant about religious practice, even though sometimes she blames her for having discarded some religious obligations. Iman is unable to create a religious or political identity for herself. She has never worn a headscarf and went to the same school as the other French neighbor girls. She knows as much as they do, if not more, because of her dual yet inhibited Tunisian identity, but she fails to accept her diversity. She thinks she is just an underdog, less beautiful, less intelligent, less everything than the others.

by Karine Ancellin Saleck
Belgium

Towards the end of their secondary school years, or sometimes college years, young Europeans between 15 and 25 experience depression and a sense of failure. During this passage from student to professional life, social commitments weigh more heavily on their shoulders while the professional horizon offers them few prospects. Living with this melancholy distances the adolescents from family and friends offering support. Forlorn meanderings often lead to acts of despair.

This sad urban trend is now also relevant in recent immigrant families, all the more so in families of Muslim origin because of the daily deaths brought on by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The once close ties between the members of ‘recently arrived’ clans have dissolved while the aloofness of the host society has become more acute and blatant since 9/11.

by Glory Mushinge
Zambia

The past week saw some of Lusaka’s top members of the diplomatic community from Francophone embassies in Zambia, get carried away with festivities for ten straight days and nights, between the 15th to the 25th of March.

This kind of exuberance is a rare occurrence that happens only once a year and attracts throngs of people who don’t want to be left out of the fun.

Francophone Week, or La Semaine de la Francophonie, celebrates different cultures through a variety of activities.

Representatives from a host of countries, many from within the Francophone community, made time to play together as they danced to musical performers from Africa and Europe, viewed paintings and sculptures, laughed at comedy presented by theatre artists, and played sports of various kinds for over a week.

Against this backdrop of creativity, Francophonie fosters political action and promotes multilateral cooperation.

by Natasha Dokovska
Macedonia

“Sometimes we’re locked up in the tailor’s shop. Sometimes we’re not given free time to go to toilet…The owner, who is Greek, wants everyone to work overtime, even though we’re already at the sewing machine for more than 10 hours. Nobody can leave, because if you do, you’ll lose the work,” says Biljana Smilevska, one of the seamstresses at the private textile department, Somi Velteks, in Veles.

This is only one example of how women in the private textile industry in Macedonia are exploited. According to trade unions in Macedonia, 80% of the workers employed in the textile industry are female.

Salaries in the textile industry are among the lowest in the country. Most of the women in the industry work more than 12 hours per day for only 60 euro per month. It’s not enough to even survive in a country where the average salary is 200 euros.

by Marianne Taflinger
Intern, The WIP
- USA -

• Photograph by Chad Johnson •

As a child, I was a blond, blue-eyed little girl in a small Southern Indiana town where my father was the itinerant principal of both the elementary school and the middle school. As the principal's child, I was far more visible than I’d ever wanted to be, with over 100 kids informing when “Mr. Taflinger is in the building,” or “Your dad is here,” all day long. On my first day of school, it was my photo that appeared in the newspaper, accepting a textbook from my mother, and it was more likely my father's status of principal, rather than my status as a blond that caused me to be the one chosen over any of the other children in my class.

by Martín Granada
- USA -

Powell and Market Streets, in San Francisco, where the cable-cars turn, is the intersection of the city’s heart and gut in a melee of consumerism, poverty, street-art, soggy gutters, and timeless elegance. The lampposts of Powell and Market preside over red bricks in green rod iron, filigreed with curlicues and old San Francisco charm. At the cable-car turn around, from dawn ‘til dusk, a man named José twists a piece of neon green cardboard on a pole reminding Jesus Loves Us. Yet this is a place where you don’t smile, you don’t make eye contact. Slow moving tourists with shopping bags and cameras might take it all in, even the garbage, but they don’t make eye contact. Even my friend Hester, sporting over-sized sunglasses, rushed right by me until I bleated out her name several times. “You don’t want to make eye contact down here,” she told me.