Women’s Participation and Livelihood Improvement Program

Below is an excerpt from a promotional document for USAID that I wrote recently, it gives a good initial overview about the program I’m managing here in Afghanistan.

Catholic Relief Services (CRS) seeks to reduce poverty and promote human development in Central and Western Afghanistan by enabling vulnerable communities to expand opportunities for meeting basic needs and improving lives.   By connecting and expanding upon CRS/Afghanistan’s core strategies, the emerging Women’s Participation and Livelihood Improvement (PaLI) program builds an enabling environment for women to strengthen their contributions to family livelihoods and community development. 

Women’s socio-economic support units, or self-help groups (SHGs), form the core foundation of PaLI activities.  In 2004, women participating in the CRS Agro-enterprise Support Program began to mobilize into specialized groups to collectively market the produce of women farmers.  CRS/Afghanistan decided to begin exploring SHG programming with the assistance of advisors from the CRS/India program, which currently supports over 24,710 self-help groups with more than 335,492 members.

An SHG is a group of 12-20 women who gather together on a regular basis to save and lend each other money according to their own rules.  Savings activities build group cohesion, support micro-enterprise development, and provide an economic safety net for participants and their families.

Simultaneously with the formation of women’s SHGs, CRS began partnering in early 2005 with local NGOs to diversify the incomes of rural families and add value to the fruits and vegetables produced locally.  With the help of partners Welfare and Development Organization of Afghanistan (WDOA) and Voice of Women (VWO), CRS has established 5 women-run food processing centers in local villages for the production of jams, juices, pickles, tomato paste and dried fruits and vegetables.  The centers collectively employ 100 women, each of whom has received training in processing methods, marketing, and financial record-keeping, as well as sanitation and quality assurance practices. Their products are processed, packaged, labeled and sold in local markets and in the new women’s store run by WDOA, Thulidath Bano (Product of Women).  

Both through the food processing and SHG activities, CRS has found that the regular meetings and income-generating activities of the groups help participants to build self-confidence, group solidarity and a collective strength that enables them to challenge traditional norms for women in their communities.

In June 2007, CRS began implementing a project with the Ghor Provincial Department of Women’s Affairs (DoWA).  Through administrative and technical trainings, CRS aims to strengthen the long-term capacities of DoWA to respond to women’s needs, report critical trends and advocate for the addressing of women’s concerns on a provincial and national level. 

Overall, CRS recognizes the potential for women’s contributions and participation in all activities and for women to act as change agents for their communities. CRS/Afghanistan’s core programs in agriculture, education, and watershed development all include components targeting women through activities such as young women’s accelerated learning programs, women’s agriculture projects assisted by female agronomists, and hygiene and sanitation trainings for women to manage the safe and clean and efficient use of water in their communities.

 

A day in the life of an IDF in Mitrovica

It’s hard to believe that I’ve been here for over 10 months now. Crazy. But life is good… I have great colleagues and a supportive network of friends, the electricity stays on now almost around the clock, and I’ve been running quite a bit every day, which is a good balance with the amount of booze and chocolate that I’ve been consuming.

No political or otherwise profound thoughts in this post… just a bit about what I do and who I see every day.

So first thing in the morning, if I decide to go running, I’ll get up around 5:45 to 6 am. If not, I’ll get up between 7 to 7:30, depending on the events from the night before. Plus the water pressure (if any) sucks before 6:30 or so. After finishing my morning routine, I leave my apartment between 8 to 8:15, grabbing something at the nearby bakery before heading to work. (note that this all takes place within a radius of about a quarter of a mile, no hills or gorges involved)

Walking into my office, I greet my colleagues in their respective languages, trying to impress them if at all possible with any new vocabulary that I have learned. I find that my vocabulary in the languages consists of mostly single words in Serbian and entire phrases in Albanian (without knowing the meaning of each word in the phrase). Recently, I’ve become more proficient in using the different phrases, at least a dozen of them, that Kosovar Albanians have for somehow asking, “how are you?” Generally you have to use at least 3 different “how are yous” after your initial greeting to someone. So I have to giggle a little sometimes when an Albanian, speaking in English, asks me how I’m doing two or three times in a row. “I’m good… Yep, I’m still fine… I already told you, I’m not tired and really, I’m doing quite well.”

After greeting my colleagues, I go turn on my decrepit computer, and while I wait for it to wake up, I make some “filtered” coffee for myself. Unfortunately, I haven’t developed a taste for Turkish coffee, which the rest of my colleagues drink… a sort of gritty, syrupy form of espresso. No filters involved. So I get pretty psyched when my colleague, Enisa, sometimes decides to join me in having filtered coffee.

We then sit, read email, and bitch about “this f–ing Outlook!” or the software program and related network that we use for our CRS email accounts. I sit in the same room, essentially, with my four colleagues: one Serb (our chief Prica), one Bosniak woman (Enisa), and two Albanian guys (Burim and Adnan). They talk throughout the day in Serbian and Albanian, both of which I am beginning to understand about 10 to 20% of the time (muahahaha). They speak in English only for one of five reasons: 1) if I initiate the conversation, 2) if they want to bitch about something with me, 3) if they want to make me laugh or make fun of me (and be sure that I know it), 4) if it is a general story or news item to be discussed about one of our projects, or 5) if someone else is in the room that doesn’t speak Serbian or Albanian.

Initially, I was a bit hurt by the fact that they didn’t include me in most conversations. But now, they do talk in English a lot more. Plus, I like the balance of not understanding most of what is being said, because I’m able to concentrate on my work while still enjoying (and being entertained by) their chatter. I’ll definitely miss their chatter when I go to Afghanistan.

Sporadically throughout the day, I run into folks from other offices in our building, both Serbs and Albanians that work for strong, locally-run NGOs (some still with international ties). Really great people. Also there’s been two Dutch interns that have each worked a few months for the local NGO below our office, and I enjoy calling down from our balcony to harass them while they are out having a smoke. Milo, the current intern, has become one of my closest friends here in Mitrovica.

Finally, sometime throughout the day, I’ll run into one of our landladies, three sisters aged somewhere between 50 to 70 years old. They sit out on their second-floor balcony (adjacent to the CRS office), often with an iron grip on one of their grandkids, and manage to keep an eye on everyone… really, not just the people in our building, but all of Mitrovica. I swear. I’m quite positive that they see and gossip about everything that goes on in the city, perhaps even on both sides.

Of course, whatever knowledge you might gain from the three landladies probably depends on which one you talk to: the dictator, the silent grey witch, or the round one (unfortunately I’ve never learned their names). First, the dictator sister with peach-colored hair is by far the most outgoing, the leader of the three and the only one that ever comes to bitch to us directly at our office. Last winter when we would have frequent power outages, the dictator liked to throw small rocks at our window when we would forget to turn off our noisy generator after the electricity had returned. She probably speaks her mind quite frequently about the faults of everyone that lives in Mitrovica (too bad she doesn’t speak English and I don’t speak Albanian, I’d love hear her judgments about all the different actors in the city).

Then there’s the silent grey witch, who will only glare at us whenever she gets a chance. When the witch delivers the electricity bills for the offices in the building, rather than giving them to us in person, she just places the envelopes on the bottom couple of stairs. Then when we don’t pick them up immediately, she’ll simply keep coming back to check, moving the envelopes up higher and higher on the stairs until we take notice. I think the witch most likely spends her days developing conspiracy theories about the true intentions of everyone in the city.

Finally, there’s the very round, brown-haired sister, who simply smiles at us and waves. I bet she just giggles a lot and really has nothing bad to say about anyone in Mitrovica. One time she saw me from across the road, negotiating the price on a bicycle, and she came over to make sure that I wasn’t overcharged. I like her the best.

The rest of my average day is made up of editing documents in English, writing emails, drinking coffee, drafting proposals/papers/reports, running around to visit our partner organizations in the North and South, editing more documents in English, drinking more coffee, perhaps going for a run after work, finishing my coffee and my my edits to the documents in English, then eventually meeting friends for beer and food.

So that’s an average day for me in a highly elaborated nutshell. I’ll probably write more later on my work with our partner organizations, which has been one of the coolest parts of my experience here in Kosovo.

 

Walking backward

So lately I’ve slowed down a bit, trying to ground myself in the realities of Kosovo’s past and present. One of the most significant insights I have gained over the past month or so concerns the cultural differences in perceptions of time.

I’ve been working with a cool Kosovar Albanian guy, Gezim, to implement a joint project between CRS and Caritas Kosovo involving a youth training center. Gezim is a program manager with Caritas, which has a policy that employed staff must be evenly balanced between Serbs and Albanians. Gezim, who’s pretty tolerant and open-minded (though he would never admit to it) likes to get me riled up on occasion by declaring his opposition to positive discrimination and “multiethnic” policies, for various reasons.

One day, in the midst of a heated discussion, Gezim told me that he would never be able to trust a Serbian male colleague, with whom he has worked for many years. When I expressed my doubts regarding his mistrust of the colleague, Gezim paused, then his expression hardened. He replied, saying something to this effect: “Before the war I lived in an apartment building with both Serbs and Albanians. We were not close friends, but we got along fine with each other. In 1998, a Serb in our building killed 14 of my Albanian neighbors. Now you tell me. After such events, how do you internationals expect us to trust Serbs again, no matter who they may be?”

I didn’t really know how to respond, and I still don’t. On the one hand, I have lived an extremely sheltered life and have no idea how I would feel if I was in Gezim’s shoes. Who am I to judge such feelings that arise from traumatic violence and death? Yet at the time, it seemed to me that similar attitudes, particularly those more radical, have been a major contributing factor to the cycles of violence that have shaped the history of Kosovo. I still don’t quite understand how individuals of different backgrounds can live next to each other for hundreds of years and not find some way of reconciling their differences. Yet reconciliation depends on whether or not the different groups possess the will to accept each other as neighbors and leave past grievances behind.  In the Balkans, where past events and relationships so strongly influence people’s understandings of the present, such a process is much easier said than done.

In the United States and Western Europe, we possess what Lederach (2005) describes as a linear sense of time. We feel that somehow, by just making the right decisions in the present, we will be able to control the future. We surround ourselves day to day with what we believe will help us to reach our future goals; meanwhile, we are told to “never look back.”Although we often find ourselves assessing “lessons learned,” we tend to “let go” of the past, leaving it for display in museums, photo albums and history books, which gather dust over time. While making plans for the future, our decisions rarely are based upon relationships and events that extend back before our parents’ generation. Particularly in the United States, what happened to our ancestors in say, 600 AD, has little contemporary resonance.

In contrast, as Lederach points out, for other cultures around the world, the past breathes and survives within ongoing events, the surrounding environment, and individuals alive in the present time. The future, on the other hand, is completely unknown and mostly out of one’s control.

Jebuwot Sumberiywo was a participant in a series of lectures given by Lederach in Nairobi, Kenya. Lederach describes how Jebuwot renegotiated her views of time, based upon both her adult experiences in Western European countries and her experiences as a child, raised by her African grandparents. While growing up in Kenya, her grandparents taught her, “it’s the past that lies before me and the future that lies behind me” (p. 135). Jebuwot, who developed a European understanding of time while attending English-language schools in Kenya, never quite understood what they meant.However, one day in Lederach’s classroom, she revealed a new insight into the meaning of her grandparents’ teachings on time. “This morning I understand that what we know, what we have seen, is the past. So it lies before us. What we cannot see, what we cannot know is the future.” She then stood up and began to walk backward. “So the past we see before us. But we walk backward into the future. Maybe my grandparents’ way of saying it is more accurate” (pp. 135-6).

Jebuwot’s demonstration illustrates an understanding of time similar to that which is held by so many populations around the world, those that do not assume the mindsets of U.S./European mainstream culture. “Backward” in this sense does not at all connotate underdevelopment, weaknesses or inefficiencies. Rather, the term describes a view of the world that prioritizes family connections, shared histories, and wisdom from experience. Such a mentality clearly recognizes that despite proven theories, scientific discoveries, and increasing technological capacities, we are limited as human beings and cannot control the future.

Particularly for people and institutions from the United States, I believe that the incongruity of our perceptions of time with those of other cultures prevails as one our biggest challenges when attempting to assist communities around the world. The work of governments and international development organizations is shaped by the pressures imposed by donors to demonstrate progress and plans for achieving immediate results. How can we expect the individuals with whom we are working to accept and conform to such plans, to imagine a future that is completely different from what is familiar in the past and present? How can I convince an Albanian that it is in their best interests to trust and become reconciled with their Serbian neighbor (and be sure of the argument that I am making)? In so many areas around the world, particularly in Latin America and the Middle East, it seems that a primary reason why our efforts have backfired lies in our halfhearted consideration of cultural and historical factors and our limited understanding of how such factors influence the relationships and structures within a community.

Furthermore, I believe that our perceptions of time, our blind concentration on the future and sense of urgency to achieve immediate results, will increasingly backfire on us at home in the United States. We need to learn and to assume the discipline of stillness. Before reacting and making influential decisions, we need to gain a broader understanding of how our past mistakes and successes continue to influence our present realities. Unfortunately, however, mainly due to the way our political processes are structured in the U.S., the fostering of such disciplines at an influential level would be somewhat of a formidable task.

 

The discipline of stillness

I struggle to find words to describe my thoughts and emotions at the present moment. As melodramatic as this sounds, I feel that so many of my past struggles and experiences have prepared me for this point in my life. I love my work, the people I talk to every day, and just being here at this time in Kosovo’s history. With the future status of Kosovo still up in the air, this is a time when change is tangible, when past histories and future uncertainties weigh so heavily on the day-to-day realities of the present.

Every day is a learning experience. I still find myself compelled to act quickly, to somehow enable social change and the building of peace in the fleeting moments before Kosovo’s independence is declared. Yet I understand so very little. My sheltered and privileged childhood in the United States continues to structure my understandings of time, progress and the formulas for creating a strong and vibrant community. In the first month of my experience here in Kosovo, I was so consumed by my desire to build possibilities for change that I found myself constantly stumbling. I concentrated so intently on the road far ahead, on that desired destination of peace, that I wasn’t paying enough attention to the insights and relationships right next to me, to the obstacles that exist before me.

I’ve been reading an amazing book (that also became my dad’s birthday present) by Notre Dame professor, John Paul Lederach (2005): The Moral Imagination: The Art and Soul of Building Peace. One of the passages in the book on “the discipline of stillness” parallels so much of what I have learned so far from my experiences working in Kosovo. Lederach writes, “the discipline of stillness…is one of the hardest lessons to learn for those impelled by social activism and a desire to understand how change can be sustained… Stillness is activism with a twist. It is the platform that generates authenticity of engagement” (p. 104). As I have come to understand after my initial stumblings, stillness is a prerequisite to building peace that compels us to “pay attention to what is around us … When we focus on the really big things, we often miss the greatest potential of resource, insight and change that is present right in the location where our feet our planted” (p. 105).

Enough for now, stay tuned for more on time and some stories that illustrate what I’m talking about!

 

Falling into place

Despite some initial challenges, I’m really loving my work here with CRS Kosovo.

Basically, my primary responsibility every day is to learn more about the programming and operating processes of CRS, which for the Mitrovica office, focus mainly on peacebuilding activities. Our day-to-day tasks right now involve supporting our local partner organizations to train high school student councils on the following subjects: human rights, tolerance, peacebuilding theories and skills, conflict transformation, joint problem solving, and basic advocacy principles. We also support the formation of student councils in high schools throughout the region, which collaborate across ethnic lines to form citywide and regional youth councils and develop media campaigns that targeting teens and young adults (the main perpetrators of the continuing violence in Kosovo). The student councils also receive mini-grants for addressing problems and advocating for tolerance and peace in their communities.

My involvement basically consists of helping out with logistics, the monitoring and evaluation processes, and the editing of reports for our donor, USAID. I’m also in charge of developing a small new project with our partner organization, Caritas Kosovo, basically just to build upon their ongoing activities with a multi-ethnic training center. Lastly, I’m searching for ways to integrate women and peacebuilding activities into the CRS agenda here in Mitrovica, although with that I’m running into constant obstacles… more about those issues later.

 

First week in the DR

To travel and live abroad can often be a long, self-reflective therapy session, through which a person is constantly reassessing and questioning oneself, one’s own culture and country, almost like looking in the mirror. Why do I do things the way I do? Why are the different people from my country the way we are(when suddenly there’s people all around me that act and do things differently)? And how is it exactly that people in different countries decide that the styles and ways of living of another culture are better than those of their own culture?

There ya go, my deepest thoughts of the moment, por el momento. In less intense commentary, I was thinking as I was running this morning that wow, this must be what it feels like to be a supermodel. I never feel more like I’m on stage or on a reality TV show or something than when I run through the streets here (or when I was in Bolivia) with a chorus of hoots and whistles trailing behind me. But then I thought, hmmm, I’m definitely not glamorous nor beautiful enough to be a supermodel, even in my sexy running shorts and pink tank top. It’s more like I’m a walking (running) 100 dollar bill or something. Like I’m the embodiment of a US bank account walking through the streets of the DR.

So I’m generally really psyched to be here. My first week has been a little crazy, since the consultant for the project of my internship, who thereby is my direct supervisor, has been out of town. But she’ll be back today, and I’ll have more direction in my work here at UN-INSTRAW.

The folks here of course are super cool, as I expected. Language hasn’t really been a huge challenge, even with the majority of everyone in the office being from either Spain or other countries in Latin America. Thus I communicate in Spanish almost all of the time, although pretty much everyone also speaks English, so I can switch back and forth if I need to. I can’t quite just be myself, however, when speaking in Spanish, which as always is really frustrating in trying to get to know people… Although as compared to when I was in Costa Rica or Bolivia or even Spain more recently, the transition back into the language has been relatively easy.

My living situation is pretty cool… The Dominican woman, Doña Ireny, who owns the house where I live, has two of my fellow interns living with her on the first floor, then there’s another intern and a Belgium dude (the boyfriend of an INSTRAW Program Consultant, who also has a husband!) that live with me in the apartment on the second floor. Our apartment has an awesome balcony that looks out onto the main street of the neighboorhood, making for some fantastic people-watching, let me tell ya.

Enough rambling for now… I hope all is well back in the U. S. of A… Did you know that Michael Jackson made it on the front page here in the Santo Domingo newspapers? Man, I was so proud.

No really, I’m serious, hehe.