The final stretch

Happy 2011!!

I am ashamed that I haven't written in such a long time. Part busy-ness, part laziness, and a dash of procrastination has kept me away from our blog in the last months. I have officially begun my last semester of my Masters degree, but before I can start woohoo'ing, I have to actually get through it! The next four months will be quite a challenge and here are a few reasons why:

1. I am taking 8 credits of courses to finish up my M.Sc., 4 of which are finishing project implementation, doing the project evaluation and finishing writing my thesis. I am also doing a 2-credit Organisational Management and a 2-credit independent study, for which I will write a research paper comparing taxation and micro-insurance for community-based savings and loans groups.

2. This month I am starting a 6-month contract through CDI for World Vision Canada to design a financial capability curriculum for their youth programs across Canada, based on my thesis research. YAY! I must admit, after being turned down by WVC for funding at the very beginning of my project, it feels pretty great to be sought after - after I've gotten positive project results, of course ;)

3. Chab Dai Canada is launching the national registry project this month, with our first steering committee meeting at the end of January in Toronto. We decided to go ahead with starting the project even if we hadn't gotten funding, and so advance we shall!

Personally, I am determined to combat my usual winter blues through an active workout schedule and healthy eating. Of course, a mid-winter tropical getaway would help, but I'll manage with what I have ;)

If I neglect to write regularly, please feel free to nudge me a little. I like blogging here, not only to keep in touch, but it does me good to step back and get a little perspective on what's going on in my life. I will also continue my quest to get Charlie to write now and then!

Haiti: some pictures

Because the internet connection in Haiti wasn't ideal (there was about a 4x4' area in the entrance of the hotel where you could get a signal) I wasn't able to post any pictures during my trip. Now that I'm home I can share a little piece of my trip to Cap-Haïtien. You will notice there are not many pictures of the kids at the camp, and none of individual faces, and I assure you it was deliberate. There are many reasons for this, and Charlie and I will elaborate our ideas on the subject at a later time, but one reason is that, in the wake of the January 12 earthquake, one of the most disturbing and pressing issues that has arisen is the drastic increase in child trafficking in Haiti. The most heard of case was when an American team tried to traffic over 30 children out of the country to be adopted into American families, even though many of the children still had known parents or relatives in Haiti. (See this New York Times article about that story.) But many traffickers do not have such "good intentions" for the children they traffic. All that to say that the less information about vulnerable children (e.g. names, locations, camp info, photos) I post on the internet, the less I may be contributing to a very well-connected, very resourceful network. You never know who may be looking, even at this relatively insignificant blog. So without further ado, enjoy some of the sights I did while in Haiti!

The view of the Cap-Haitien bay

The mountain overlooking Cap-Haïtien is more and more inhabited as the population grows faster than construction can keep up.

Girls jumping rope and boys playing soccer; so some things transcend culture and country!

Haiti: the unexpected {and then some}

Kids all speak a universal language. "Give me the ball!", "Let me hold your camera, just once, pleeeeease", "Me first, me first!" And thus was spent the first day of the Camp des Beaux Arts here in Cap-Haitien, among 100 kids aged 3 to 13. I was with the 3-6 year olds, and one thing is certain - 3- and 4-year olds are too young to come to camp for a whole day! By 11:00 a.m. we were all ready for a well-deserved nap, and so that will defintely go in the schedule for tomorrow.

The camp cousellors were much less prepared than we thought they would be, though in my group they were great wth the kids (at least two of them are the regular Sunday school teachers for that age group at the church). However, I felt that since they knew we would be there, the counsellors hadn't put much effort into preparing activities and they kept asking me what the next program was, when we were under the impression that they had a camp set up and we would just help the counsellors and present a few art workshops. My two colleagues were even left by themselves with groups while counsellors walked around, texted and talked on their cell phones.

As a development practitioner, some of what happened today is exactly what I don't like about short trips like this. On one hand, what we are doing fits into the long-term work that our organisation in Québec has been doing with our partner is Haïti, it's part of a "bigger picture." Also, providing a safe, fun space for children is an important part of their development, and contributes to the work our partner is doing for post-traumatic counselling in the aftermath of the earthquake (mane survivors came to Cap-Haitien after January 12). On the other hand, and I guess this is a risk whether you are going short- or long-term to another country, I don't like dropping in as the white person who may be perceived as having more power, more resources, more whatever, instead of being seen as a partner. I know the leaders in this organisation do see us as partners, but being seen as somehow superior by our fellow camp counsellors was hard, and I still don't know how to help change that mentality.

My hope is that through this week, we will be able to act as partners, be seen more and more as partners and equals, and share what we know so that next year they won't need our help at all to put on a great camp. I also need to say, despite my mixed feelings about us being here for this camp, I did have a great day with the kids. They played hard, sang hard, and were so full of love and excitement, that I did come away with a smile on my face.

Haiti: {second} first impressions

I have lived here before. So I keep having little flashback moments. We landed in Cap-Haïtien (CH) this afternoon after a longer-than-usual commute from Montreal and I’m pretty tired. Seeing Pasteur Voltaire again after so many years was a very welcome first sight. But what really hit me was, when driving through the city to get to the hotel, we passed by the bicycle repair corner - the bicycle repair corner – and I almost gasped because at that very moment, that very sight was exactly as I remembered it from 11 years ago. And it gave me a comforting feeling, like I wasn’t in a brand new place, and I began to find my bearings.

There’s something about how Haiti smells that will always be familiar as well. I’m not enough of a wordsmith (I’m a Brakesmith, remember?) to describe the smell but immediately after deplaning in Port-au-Prince (PaP), my nose knew exactly where I was. And being here is making me remember a lot of things about 1999 that I’d forgotten or hadn’t thought about in years.

My day can be described by one word with many meanings: chaos. Beautiful chaos. Unsettling chaos. I need to stay out of the way chaos. Keeping the many taxi drivers away from our luggage. Finding the right person to get us to our connecting flight from PaP to CH. Declining to tip the many “helpers” who had a hand on a suitcase while it was put in the car, even though they are very good at guilting you into tipping. (Being idealistic is so much easier from the comfort of my cush Montreal life.)

If there is one thing I learned today it’s that even though between being in Haiti 11 years ago and now I have travelled and studied a lot, I still have a lot to learn. I hope I keep remembering that.

Vacation!!!

Yes, it has been a while... and at first it was due to the busy-ness, but that can't be our excuse for the past 2 weeks because we've been on a fantastic vacation!! We stopped in Winnipeg to visit friends and family for a few days before continuing to Vancouver for our west coast holiday. Charlie's grandparents are both turning 80 this year, so we had a weekend away, a couple hours from Winnipeg, to celebrate the event. Besides the flies and mosquitos, which I have very little tolerance for, it was an awesome weekend.

Our time in B.C. with Christa has been incredible. So I don't keep you for too long, I'll just outline some of the highlights.


1. We spent one day on Granville Island and then walked through Stanley Park and really saw how absolutely awesome it would be to live in Vanouver! Urban living + beach + forest = yes please!

2. After a few days in Van, we loaded up a car that had been generously loaned to us and drove across Vancouver Island to Tofino for a week of camping. On the drive there we stopped many times to hike and explore. Our favourite stops were to Englishman River Falls near Nanaimo and Cathedral Grove near Port Alberni. Cathedral Grove has its name because it is a forest of 70-80
meter-tall cedars and firs that are hundreds of years old. The pics to the right: Charlie jumping into the FREEZING cold water at the bottom of the falls; he swam back to shore with a traumatised look on his face! and "tree-hugging" in Cathedral Grove!

3. In Tofino, we did a combined whale watching and hot springs tour in Clayoquot Sound. Not only did we see whales (greys and orcas) we saw a family of orcas chase, kill and eat a harbour porpoise. See the picture below for the kill moment! The hot springs were so great, we didn't want to leave. We hiked a short distance in the rainforest (did you know Canada actually has the most productive rainforest in the world?) to get there and the boiling hot springs were the best shower we got all week!


4. We hiked a lot in the Pacific Rim National Park Reserve and fell in love with everything. The highlight of those hikes, though, was when we happened upon none other than a WILD COUGAR on one of the beaches and escaped unscathed! We were walking down a long set of stairs to one of the beaches at the end of a hike, discussing how grueling it would be to climb back up them, when Charlie whisper-shouted (if that's possible), "Stop!" just as Christa was about to jump the last few steps out of the tree line and onto the beach, and there it was! About 50 feet away and quite large, it was wandering the waterfront. And then we found out how fast we could climb stairs at the end of a hike, but not before it turned our way, looked right at us and took a few steps in our direction. Oh yeah, and Charlie got a picture!

When we got back to car, we caught our breath, slowed our heartrates, and promptly looked up what to do when faced with a cougar (something we maybe should have done before going on the hike). We reported it to an impressed park ranger who told us we were very lucky (not to have survived, but to have spotted the cougar!) and that out of about 1.1 million visitors to the area per year, only about a dozen or so ever see a cougar. It is also Canada's only completely carnivorous animal, and if it had wanted to eat us it would have succeeded. Crazy!

I received the below email from RebELLEs. I would like to make a few comments about this to our dear prime minister. I will be sending the following letter along with a hanger to our Prime Minister.


Mr Harper,

You are hurting good programs worldwide for a ridiculous reason. Cutting programs because they support abortion is dumb for a large number of reasons. Here are a few.

1 - Using your morals to guide you in governing is good. Unfortunately, this is not using your morals to guide you in governing. This is using a hot topic to win votes at the cost of something that can actually help people. Want to do some good in the world, honorable Stephen? Increase our aid funding to .7% like our government promised years ago, and add the money to whichever programs you like, but don't cut existing programs for an arbitrary reason.

2 - Cutting abortion programs overseas when you don't have the guts to make a similar move in Canada, where you actually are supposed to be governing is cowardice at its finest. We need to have an actual conversation about this in Canada, not run away from it. If this is not a topic Canadians can deal with in Canada, how is it even remotely democratic to enforce programs in other countries to stop providing abortion services?

3 - Does anyone think that cutting funding to abortions will actually stop abortions? Really? Will desperate people become less desperate because there is no safe place to have an abortion? Will they decide to move to the suburbs, marry a guy who has a decent job, a hybrid SUV, and a clean yard? No. They will continue to live in desperate situations, and now they won't be able to have an abortion, and even if they didn't want an abortion, they now cannot get maternal health care because that program was cut for offering abortions. Which was fine for them to do until this week. Good job.

Sincerely,

Charlie


I felt I should write this, not because I support abortions, but because Canadians need to see beyond the petty politics, and speak out when our nation's already small amount of funding is squandered on making our PM seem relevant. I understand that "foreign aid" will always mean "foreign support to countries where we have social, political, and economic interests" but we need to, as Canadians, ask ourselves:
- Do we really want our foreign aid to be fickle?
- Are we willing to allow our aid to only accomplish small and insignificant things in the world, in order to help our favorite political party gain power and votes?
- Are we willing to ignore the rest of the world in order to achieve something akin to the American Dream (a dream which is wearing quite thin these days, i might add)?

I hope the answer is no.

Am I wrong? Am I right? Does stopping funding to programs that support abortions help in more ways than I admit? let me know, submit a comment, or send me an email!





The email that started it all:

Hello RebELLEs and allies,

Following is an action created by our feminist sister on facebook. This is a simple yet powerful action that most of us can do. If you are able to, please don't delay and act now. Send Harper a hanger!

Also, don't forget to distribute in your networks.

In feminist solidarity,
Y.

Send Stephen Harper your coat hangers for sexual and reproductive choice
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=122034441157484&ref=mf
As you all may or may not know, Stephen Harper and the Conservative government in Canada have decided to eliminate foreign aid funding under ANY circumstance for abortions in the developing world. All this has taken place while they are attempting to put forward a maternal health initiative at the upcoming G8 summit. The fact that abortion is being moralized by our government rather than being seen as a significant aspect of maternal health completely undermines any initiatives they would consider implementing.

The Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada created a petition (which I urge you all to sign over at http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/safe-abortion.html). Outlined in this document, as well as on their website, are a number of reasons to support the provision of safe and accessible abortions to womyn in the developing world. Some of the statistics are quite shocking and make it very clear that safe and accessible abortions are a fundamental aspect to maternal health initiatives.

- 215 million womyn in the developing world have an unmet need for contraception (meaning they want to avoid pregnancy, but are using either ineffective or no means at all)
- the ability of a womyn to limit and space her pregnancies has a direct impact on her overall health and well-being, as well as that of her children
- 19-20 million womyn around the globe resort to unsafe abortions every year
-70 000 womyn die every year from unsafe abortions, and another 8 million experience severe complications
- 20 000 children lose their mothers every year due to unsafe abortion related deaths, making them 10 times more likely to die within the following 2 years of their mothers death.

So this is a call to all of you womyn, and allies out there, to support the rights of our sisters across the globe. I’m urging you all to send Stephen Harper a coat hanger in the mail, as a means of illustrating the methods that womyn across the world will have to resort to in order to obtain abortions due to the changes in the Conservative governments policy around foreign aid. And don’t hesitate to be creative, include a well written letter, poetry, turn it into an art project, use whatever ideas you have and don’t hesitate to post pictures in the event! And please, spread this message widely!


Mail can be sent free of charge (meaning you won’t have to pay for stamps) to Stephen Harper at the following address!

Stephen Harper
House of Commons
Parliament Buildings
Ottawa, Ontario
Canada
K1A 0A6

Gender and ICED

I've spent the last two days in an intensive elective I'm taking this semester called Gender and International Community Economic Development. And intense would definitely be the word to describe it! We covered the world in topics, did group exercises, watched a documentary, chatted with one of our distance classmates from Ecuador over Adobe Pro, debated quite a lot, and even had time to visit a women's empowerment project for Burundian refugees right here in Manchester!

One of our required readings for the course was Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide, by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn. The book is heavy on blaming culture for gender inequality (when really the issue is much more multidimensional than that). They are good story tellers, but the reader must remember that the authors are journalists, not researchers.

Picture from the front of Half the Sky

Our visit to "Sewing Confidence," the project for Burundian refugee women in Manchester, was inspiring. They have very recently started, but the change we saw in them compared to the initial community assessment we read of the group was amazing. Many of them came to the U.S. and became clinically depressed because the horrible conditions of their situation, as well their isolation from the community. The initial objective of the project was to get them out of their houses a few times a week, get together with other women who spoke their language, and do something productive with their time. Their sewing skills are getting better and they are now at a turning point in their project. They want more than just to "get out of the house" and are contemplating starting a business or a cooperative to market and sell their products. They have a long way to go, but by the end of the visit, one of the students from our class had agreed to help them work on their marketing skills and business model!

In the end, there were five major themes that came out of our two-day class:

1. Gradualism/Moderation: we must pace the change for women's empowerment - by pushing too hard, or opting for radicalism, many will push right back and nothing will be accomplished;
2. Men's and boy's involvement: men must be involved in gender empowerment, they must be included in questioning their own and women's expectations, roles, and norms;
3. Stories: recognising the value of learning from comparative experience;
4. Difference between situations: cultural norms differ from place to place, so the response to gender inequality must differ from place to place;
5. Leadership and Mentoring: importance of role models, woman-to-woman mentoring, and fostering internal national leadership (e.g. through more women elected officials).

I am tired and a little cranky this evening, so I'm taking the evening off and trying to prepare for three more days of class (and three different courses) before getting back on a bus to come home. My Gender course is not done, I still have a couple small assignments and a final project to do, which is to design a Gender Awareness Training for Men!!! Have any ideas?!