A Grandmother Finds WORTH in Zambia

Maweta Tembo sits among her four small grandchildren in the village of Chiwala, part of the Chongwe District outside of Lusaka, Zambia. A 72-year-old widow, Maweta has already raised six children of her own but now must care for her grandchildren, whose parents were killed by AIDS.

Before the PCI-led WORTH program, each day was a struggle for the grandmother. With little money, her grandchildren often went without food and she could not afford the fees required for them to attend school. But now, there is hope for Maweta.
In the Chongwe district, there are currently 5,000 women enrolled in the WORTH program. Combined, these women provide care for 11,550 orphans and vulnerable children. WORTH empowers these women by providing them access to literacy classes and economic training. With help from local organizations, women are encouraged to form self-managed community groups and taught how to manage and save money. The savings are used to create village banks that can provide local women with microenterprise loans.

After attending a WORTH community orientation, Maweta began mobilizing women in her village to form a group. After nine months, Maweta has learned how to read and write and gained basic math and accounting skills.

In January 2007, Maweta sold mangoes and managed to save $60. She used the money to buy school requisites for her grandchildren so they can continue with their education. She also received a loan from the village bank in order to start a business. Maweta is currently buying fast selling food items and re-packaging them into smaller and affordable sizes for her customers. The profit realized from the business goes towards meeting her grandchildren’s basic needs and she no longer feels the worrisome financial burden she once did.
"If WORTH had been launched years back in my area I would have been rich and my own children could have been educated!" Maweta said.

For more information on PCI’s work in Zambia, visit http://www.projectconcern.org/site/PageServer?pagename=Responding_to_the_AIDS_Crisis_in_Zambia.

Teaching by Example: The Story of Mariel

Like every morning, in a warm sector of the municipality of Santibáñez in Bolivia, anxious students of the Luís Guzmán Araujo School sit outside and wait happily, expressed through their small smiling faces. It is the beginning of a new school day and the boys and girls of the fourth grade, with their typical childhood curiosity, anxiously await the beginning of the day to learn more about the problem of environmental contamination, which days before their professor, Norma Cabas, taught them, using the knowledge imparted on her by Project Concern International.

Mariel Rodríguez Antezana, a lively and highly observant nine-year old girl who attends this school daily, tells us that her greatest aspiration is to become a teacher. With her high level of intelligence, she was quick to realize the harm that the plastic bags and bottles strewn about her community were causing to the environment.

Conscious of this harm, Mariel quickly learned to recycle this material and converted herself into a teacher's helper, telling her classmates to transform the same harmful material into pretty and useful crafts, like beautifully knit tablecloths, placemats, and bags.

This young but great teacher, with hope lighting up her face, now works laboriously together with her classmates that consider her their leader in the war against plastic.

Upon asking her what would be her greatest wish if she could have anything in the world, without a doubt in her voice Mariel answered, "I want to keep studying."

Just as it does in the Luís Guzmán Araujo School, PCI works to promote the recycling of plastic bags in more than 1,200 schools in Bolivia, and has educated to date many children like Mariel, who learn to take action in order to care for our environment.

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To learn more about PCI's work in Bolivia, please visit http://www.projectconcern.org/site/PageServer?pagename=Combating_malnutrition_and_poverty_in_Bolivia.

Project Concern and the International Year of Sanitation
- Katrina Lee
As an intern for Project Concern International, I’ve noticed that many of the topics on this blog deal with predominantly poverty and health issues. A topic that really interested me of late was PCI’s involvement with the UN’s International Year of Sanitation. Backed by the UN’s Millennium Development goals, member nations will report back to the UN on May 2008 to update on their progress in improving areas such as access to water, adequate drainage systems, housing quality, and waste management.

Access to clean water and adequate sanitation for developing communities is a major aspect of PCI’s programmatic focus and is a critical component in improving overall health for families in need. Since 2004, PCI has been implementing in a project called CASCADA, which promotes the creation of regional and national water sanitation systems that work to improve sanitation in some of the poorest areas of Central America. In Nicaragua, CASCADA has helped reorganize the country’s National Water and Sanitation Network and created four additional networks as well as community-based sanitation organizations such as community water boards.

While Project Concern International operates various other programs, I believe that CASCADA is unique in its ability to address sanitation issues at the government level while fully involving the local community. In a greater context, I believe that the International Year of Sanitation is one of the most significant milestones in progressive development. Today, simple issues such as the availability of clean water and waste removal seem far-fetched to many because of the reaches of modernization. It is important to realize that many communities to this day still lack these basic amenities.

We at PCI are committed to providing access to these basic needs, and look forward to seeing increasing progress on this front during 2008, the International Year of Sanitation.

A New Year Bring New Challenges, New Opportunities

Most folks tend to begin a new year with the best of intentions, feeling hopeful and optimistic, ready to take on new personal and professional challenges. It’s often a time to take stock and identify those lingering (and sometimes annoying) things we’ve pushed aside for one (usually good) reason or another and tackle them head on.

Well, the same feeling applies to life at a nonprofit agency – especially PCI, an organization near and dear to my heart.

There is so much to be excited about if you’re a supporter of PCI’s work. Because we’ve been recognized for all of our important work addressing the HIV/AIDS pandemic, we’ve established new programs in two more African countries, Botswana and Malawi. PCI has also expanded its role in responding to crisis situations around the globe. Last year, we helped communities hardest hit by floods in India and Mexico, Hurricane Felix in Nicaragua, an earthquake in Peru, and the Southern California fires. And PCI continues to adopt an innovative approach to its core philosophy of helping people help themselves with microcredit and other economic development programs in impoverished communities around the world.

One exciting way we plan to spread the word about PCI’s efforts in the coming year is through our Seeds campaign (www.ProjectConcern.org/Seeds). The heart of this awareness effort is a simple pledge: "You have the power to change the world. By adding your name to this pledge, you'll be joining Project Concern International in planting seeds of change to help thousands of children in need escape generations of poverty."

We think and believe that collectively, we can change the world. PCI’s programs are planting these seeds of change to create a new life and to empower individuals to be self-sufficient, healthy, and hopeful. We have the resolve to effect that change – one child, one family, one community at a time.

And now that we’re at the beginning of a new year, there’s no time like the present!

Response to Flooding in Mexico

(First person account by Mark O’Donnell, PCI’s Vice President for Program Operations and Humanitarian Assitance.)

I just returned from a trip to Mexico City to meet with PCI’s Emergency Response Team for the flooding in Tabasco and Chiapas and wanted to share a few impressions.

First, I think it is important keep in mind that while the water levels have been reduced in many areas, the rains continue, causing additional damages to homes and creating obstacles to the response. Thousands of people are still in shelters and in need of ongoing assistance, especially outside of Villahermosa and in Chiapas that have not received the same amount of attention.

Second, the Mexican government and its citizens are doing an excellent job of responding to the disaster. They were on the ground very quickly, worked very efficiently, and have provided PCI access to air, water and ground support that has great assisted our efforts.

Third, our team has just been tremendous, dedicating themselves day and night to the response. In addition to some of the initial assistance with water and hygiene kits, PCI will also be providing food.

We will complete a second household survey to identify additional needs that we will be providing with the support of the US government’s Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA/USAID). Longer term, we will be working with individual families to provide livelihood support to help get them back on their feet.

Finally, while challenges still remain and thousands of people continue to need support, I’m proud of PCI’s involvement in this important effort to assist the people of Tabasco and Chiapas, Mexico.

Tijuana, a city of 1.2 million people, is located amidst the busiest land border crossing in the world. Commerce, employment, migration and tourism bring a constant flow of millions back and forth across the border each year, and with the multitudes of people come a multitude of issues. One of the most serious issues is a growing HIV infection rate in the Tijuana border region that is estimated to be three times higher than Mexico's national average.
There a many factors contributing to the spread of AIDS in Tijuana, including a booming sex tourism industry – a business being fueled affordable prostitution rates and Americans willing to pay good money for services and will pay more if not required to wear a condom.
A study published last year by researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine indicated that the rate of HIV/AIDS infections in Tijuana, Mexico are increasing and numbers are much higher than had been previously estimated.
According to the study, the number of men and women aged 15 to 49 years who are infected with HIV may be as high as one in 125 persons – a dramatic increase from 20 years ago. In turn, infection rates on the San Diego County side of the border are spiking as well.
San Diego County currently ranks third highest in the state of California for HIV infections, trailing only behind Los Angeles and San Francisco. As of October 2007, the California Department of Health Services found over 13,000 people infected with HIV/AIDS in San Diego.

Saturday, December 1st is World AIDS Day. In recognition of this annual event, here are a few things YOU can do to help fight this global epidemic:

> Be a part of the solution! Volunteer with PCI on December 1st at the San Ysidro-Mexico border port of entry as we raise HIV/AIDS awareness in our region.
> Educate yourself about the ever-present dangers of HIV/AIDS and understand that no person or region is immune from this disease.
> Talk to your partner, children, younger siblings, or other young people in your life, about the dangers of HIV/AIDS and methods of prevention (using condoms, avoiding illegal drugs).
> Learn more about PCI’s HIV/AIDS programs in Africa and India.
> Urge your government representatives to support HIV/AIDS eradication programs.
> Get tested.

Hernando de Soto is a revolutionary economist who is helping impoverished communities worldwide rise out of financial struggle. Recipient of Project Concern International’s 2007 Humanitarian Award, de Soto is the founder of Institute for Liberty and Democracy (ILD) in Lima, Peru. Time magazine included de Soto as one of the five leading Latin American innovators of the century and among the 100 most influential people in the world. In his award acceptance letter, de Soto shared the following:
"[The people who work for me see]…the economic potential in the shantytowns of Lima and every other city we work in, and thus the opportunity to really change the world – where two thirds of the people, four billion of them, are stuck in poverty. They share with me a love of the challenge of helping poor and struggling countries make the transition to modern, market economies – and convincing their Governments (and the US Government in Washington and non-profit organizations like Project Concern International) that the poor are not the problem, but the solution.
Over the past 25 years, what we at the ILD have discovered is that there is a large constituency for change in developing countries. They’re called the "poor," and what we’ve revealed about these people is that they wouldn’t survive at all if they weren’t hardworking, clever entrepreneurs. They have assets in the form of houses, property, and small businesses. But they need something else to prosper – i.e. the same legal tools that rich nations (and country elites) take for granted: property rights, legal ways to organize their businesses productively, and mechanisms to operate in expanded markets outside the confines of family and friends.
No matter what populist and anti-globalization leaders might say, we know that these entrepreneurs are eager to take their place in their national and then international markets, because, even though costly bureaucracies and just plain bad law keeps them from these legal tools, they replicate them in their underground economies: informal property titles, contracts, wills, credit – all in an effort to do business and protect their assets. But these "extralegal" practices are inadequate.
What the ILD does is to identify the bad laws and the good extralegal practices, and then help Governments make the kind of institutional reforms that will engineer an inclusive market economy under a single rule of law. That’s the only way it can be done, and the good news is that it has been done before – in Europe, the
U.S., and Japan, for example, when these were still developing countries full of migrants, squatters, and peasants trying to make a better life for their families."