Archive for the ‘World News’ Category
Posted by Gayle Gifford on April 22, 2010 in World News
Our backyard compost bin
“Support & Strengthen the Safe Chemicals Act”
The Safe Chemicals Act of 2010 was introduced in Congress on April 15th by Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ), Congressmen Bobby Rush (D-IL) and Henry Waxman (D-CA) to overhaul the nation’s failed chemical policy laws.
“This landmark legislation would do a lot to protect the public from toxic chemicals. For example, it would require basic health and safety information for all chemicals, ensure that chemicals meet a health-based safety standard that protects vulnerable groups, including workers and children. It would also provide fast action for some of the most notorious chemicals, like formaldehyde, lead, and toxic flame-retardants.
“The bill can be strengthened by making it harder for potentially harmful new chemicals to arrive in the marketplace, and easier to take known toxins out of the marketplace.
“For example, one provision would allow new chemicals on the market without having to meet the new safety standard. If ensuring consumer confidence and protecting public health are top goals in this reform, this needs to be fixed in order for the final bill to be truly protective of American families.
Click here to take action today by asking your Members of Congress to co-sponsor and strengthen the Safe Chemicals Act.”
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Posted by Gayle Gifford on March 8, 2010 in World News
Today is International Women’s Day. “Equal Rights, Equal Opportunities: Progress for all” is the theme of this year’s commemoration.
From our vantage point here in the US, it can be easy to forget that many women around the world experience profound discrimination every day without protection of law. And millions of girls and women experience rape, domestic abuse, genital mutilation, and other forms of violence against women, regardless of where they live.
If you are at a total loss for an action to commemorate this day, you can add your voice to a petition being circulated by Amnesty International USA asking the United Nations to develop a stronger agency for women. You can find that petition here.
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Posted by Gayle Gifford on January 18, 2010 in Profiles of passion and courage, World News
“Together we must learn to live together or we will perish as fools…
America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. … There is … nothing except shortsightedness to prevent us from guaranteeing an annual minimum—and livable—income for every American family…”
” … Our only hope today lies in our ability to … go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal opposition to poverty, racism and militarism …
“… We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now … Over the bleached bones and jumbled residues of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words: ‘Too late.’ ”
From: “The World House“ chapter in Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?, The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
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Posted by Jon Howard on January 15, 2010 in Effectiveness, World News
It’s hard to be hard-headed about giving to Haiti when people are hungry, thirsty and injured. But before you reflexively hit the DONATE NOW FOR HAITI button on the first email (or text message) you see, take a moment to consider your own values. Even in emergencies, perhaps most of all in emergencies, it’s important to try to give in ways that can help to avert similar disasters in the future.
Timothy A. Wise reminds us that “aid is power” in his 2005 blog posting Humanitarian Crises: What is a Progressive to Do? A lot of American aid power goes, intentionally or unintentionally, to helping entrench American businesses and exports at the expense of local products and producers. Food aid often winds up driving local produce and producers out of business. Reconstruction contracts with international construction firms undercut local professionals, builders and workers. Wise advises sticking with agencies which were present before the crisis and will stick around later and those with clear strategies to build local capacity.
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Posted by Jon Howard on January 14, 2010 in World News
I visited Haiti twice, in 1989 and again in 1995 and I know how difficult life there can be at the best of times. Now, in the very worst of times, Haiti needs our help to survive and recover.
I’ve sent my money for emergency help to Medicins Sans Frontiers (Doctors Without Borders), and can confidently recommend them as a good way to help.
MSF has medical staff on the ground in Port-au-Prince. Although all three of their Port-au-Prince hospitals were destroyed, they will be setting up an inflatable hospital in the next day. I once visited a MSF hospital in rural Haiti. It was an oasis of compassion and care.
We can only hope that this catastrophe will be the very bottom of the seemingly endless well of misery this poor nation has suffered. Perhaps now, the U.S. and the world will turn away from interventions and imposed solutions and support Haitians in reconstruction. That work must literally be “from the ground up” since so much of Haiti’s land has been ruined by deforestation and erosion
My client Grassroots International does exactly that kind of development. In the years ahead, Haiti will need programs like GRI’s on a much wider scale to achieve food self-sufficiency and the long-term prosperity it deserves.
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Posted by Gayle Gifford on December 10, 2009 in World News
Our dreams for the end of discrimination this Human Rights Day:
- A commitment to quality, universal education for all.
- Education for women and girls in countries where their education is not yet viewed as a right and essential to peace and prosperity.
- End genocide, once and for all.
- No more lip service to “never again.” Do “never again.”
- Protection for children.
- No ethnic cleansing.
- Marriage equality.
- End to sexual and domestic violence and its use as a way of exercising control over.
- Daily action to uphold the golden rule.
- An end to racial profiling.
- A belief that we are all in this together.
- Fair trials.
- A commitment to the principles outlined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
- A personal reaffirmation of our commitment to inclusion, civil liberties and human rights for all.
Please add your dreams to this list.
P.S. To President Obama. As you accept the Nobel Prize today, may your award remind you you and your administration that you have much to do to be fully deserving.
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Posted by Gayle Gifford on December 9, 2009 in World News
This week we are blogging about human rights to commemorate International Human Rights Day on December 10th.
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Just over 64% of eligible voters voted in the 2008 US Presidential election. Though that was one of the highest turnouts in decades, that’s not even three-quarters of the electorate.
For most US citizens, the risk of voting today is potentially a long wait in line.
Sunday I learned about a woman whose conviction to participate in electoral politics is so strong that she is facing life in prison.
Birtukan Mideksa, a 35 year old former judge and mother of a four-year-old daughter, is serving a life sentence in Kaliti Prison in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, for her leadership in the opposition Coalition for Unity and Democracy party.
You can read more about her case here and also find a sample letter to petition on her behalf.
Why is Birtukan Mideksa in jail?
She was arrested in November 2005 after her party disputed results of local and parliamentary elections. Because post-election demonstrations had turned violent — Ethiopian security forces shot and killed 187 people and wounded 765 others while six police officers were also killed — the government charged Mrs. Birtukan, who had neither used nor advocated violence, with treason.
She was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment. Local leaders negotiated a pardon which lead to her release in 2007. In December 2008 she had her pardon revoked and was re-arrested and re-sentenced to life in prison after she refused to recant public remarks she had made in Sweden about the events that led to her pardon and release.
In today’s action for universal Human Rights, you can send a message of hope and support to Birtukan Mideksa by sending her a postcard or letter mailed to:
Birtukan Mideksa
c/o Ethiopian Women for Peace and Development
P.O. Box 1318
Wheaton, MD 20915
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Posted by Gayle Gifford on December 8, 2009 in Profiles of passion and courage, World News
This week we are blogging stories of human rights to commemorate International Human Rights Day, December 10th.
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Some of you may have seen the “60 Minutes” program Congo’s Gold that aired November 29, 2009. The story detailed how the selling of “conflict minerals” such as gold are paying for the war in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). With almost five million dead, this war has been described as the deadliest war since WWII.
Amnesty International USA describes this as a ” ‘war against women’ where “women and girls are being raped in great numbers as a means of destroying their families and communities.”
What seems so far away and removed from our lives came to us up close Sunday when Congolese refugee Albert Mulenda Rajabu spoke about his experiences in the DRC at the Write-a-Thon for Human Rights sponsored by Group 49 of Amnesty International USA.
Mr. Rajabu, a former teacher, stoically shared his own story of surviving two civil wars despite arrest and jailing for his human rights work in the DRC. But he wept when he reported incidences of sexual violence perpetrated against women and girls. He shared with the room the following story of a survivor’s account of the sexual violence. Read More >>
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Posted by Gayle Gifford on December 7, 2009 in World News
Wednesday, December 10th, is International Human Rights Day. It commemorates the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the articulation of the inherent rights of all people worldwide, by the members of the United Nations.
In honor of this occasion, it is worth repeati
ng the first two Articles of the Universal Declaration.
Article 1. “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.”
Article 2. “Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty.”
Unfortunately, our world leaders are examples of the difference between what organizational theorists Chris Argyris and Donald A. Schön described as one’s espoused theory, or what we tell ourselves we believe, and our theory-in-use, or what we actually do.
While the leaders of the world say they believe in the principles of the Universal Declaration, unfortunately, they routinely violate those very principles.
In many organizations, our leaders may sincerely be unaware of how their theory-in-use differs from their espoused theory. In the case of human rights, however, it takes a pretty serious mental pretzle for a leader to believe that extrajudicial killings, torture, sexual assault and imprisonment without charge could possibly uphold the human rights principles set out in the Universal Declaration.
That’s why it is so important for each of us to hold governments worldwide accountable for bringing their practices into agreement with their expressed values.
So Jon and I spent yesterday afternoon writing appeals to governments around the world on behalf of 10 prisoners of conscience during the annual Write-A-Thon for Human Rights. We were joined by over 50 community members, young and old, under the auspices of Group 49, the Providence Chapter of Amnesty International USA.
W are proud to say that AIUSA is one of our longest running memberships.
(By the way, for those nonprofit governance junkies out there, Amnesty International is a very interesting example of a multinational nonprofit that brings together professional staff and a worldwide movement of volunteers who also have a significant say in governing the organization.)
During the late 70s and early 80s, Jon and I were very active in the local chapter, serving as co-coordinators and participating in regional and annual meetings of AIUSA. Jon served for a time as a member of the South Asia Coordination Group, a network of volunteers who acted as resources to US chapters w0rking on behalf of prisoners of conscience or other cases from that region. While the demands of a young and growing family caused our direct service to Group 49 to ebb, our commitment to human rights and our support for Amnesty International has never waivered.
To commemorate Human Rights Day, throughout this week we’ll be sharing the stories of the human rights workers who were highlighted in this year’s write-a-thon.
Please join us and consider how you might act to help protect human rights worldwide. For those of you already active in this area, you have our deepest appreciation.
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Posted by Gayle Gifford on October 19, 2009 in 100 Things We've Learned, Big ideas, Nonprofit Highlights, World News
“The Humanities make us RICH.” Or so goes the sentiment on my morning tea mug.
October is once again National Arts and Humanities Month.It just so happens that I’ve been thinking a lot about the value of the humanities over the last few weeks.
What are the humanities?
According to the National Endowment for the Humanities, as described in the 1965 National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act:
“The term ‘humanities’ includes, but is not limited to, the study of the following: language, both modern and classical; linguistics; literature; history; jurisprudence; philosophy; archaeology; comparative religion; ethics; the history, criticism and theory of the arts; those aspects of social sciences which have humanistic content and employ humanistic methods; and the study and application of the humanities to the human environment with particular attention to reflecting our diverse heritage, traditions, and history and to the relevance of the humanities to the current conditions of national life.”
The humanities are essential to Cause & Effect Inc.
In an evaluation of our work, we asked a colleague to interview a number of our clients. Our clients told her that one of the things that they appreciated about working with us was that we “got it.”
While clients meant our understanding of their organizational challenges, they also mentioned our ability to appreciate and comprehend the complexity of the societal issues that they faced.
In college, I was a geography major (concentration in urban social) with a strong sociology background. Jon was a history major with literature right behind. You might say we studied the humanities.
And while there are days that I long for more of an engineering or science background, I have always been grateful for the systems perspective that college studies helped me develop. I was constantly challenged to consider the interrelationships between political systems, markets, history, culture, art, climate, habitat, food production and more. To this day, we bring that approach to our work with clients – whether we are writing, facilitating strategic planning, or framing a strong fund development program.
The humanities provide the tools that help us make meaning of our world and our lives.
Just over the last few weeks, it seems that I’ve been especially reminded how the humanities manifest in our daily lives.
Last month, Lizzi Ross, the former director of adult programming at the ICA in Boston, spoke to the students in the class I teach at Brown. In describing how she went about designing programming to enable us to appreciate art that isn’t pretty pictures, Lizzi explained that contemporary art requires us to call on our knowledge of history, contemporary culture, literature, art, science and more.
“Ah, the humanities,” I thought.
Last Wednesday, I attended “What Now? 1932 – The Highlander Center Opens Its Doors,” a live taping from Action Speaks Radio. The premise of Action Speaks is to take an “under appreciated day in American History” and look at it through a contemporary lens. That show talked about the popular education approach of the Highlander Research and Education Center, which encourages activists from multiple walks of life to explore their personal experiences and connect them to larger historical and societal issues. “That’s the humanities in action,” I whispered to my neighbor. Rosa Parks, Andrew Young, and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. are just a few of the “graduates” of Highlander.
A love of the humanities can be demonstrated beyond textbooks and scholarly works.
Tonight I’m heading to the Rhode Island Council for the Humanities’ celebration of the humanities and their contribution to life in RI. I’m especially excited as I sat on the committee that nominated tonight’s awardees. A lifetime achievement award goes to cartoonist Don Bousquet, whose humorous cartoons have been lampooning Rhode Read More >>
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