THE REGIONS
In this section:
Bullets to Bread: Ex-Combatants Learn Baking
Disaster Experts Train for Earthquakes, Storms
Nepal’s New Roads Promote Common Good
Disabled Georgia Student Finds Job, Enters Society
AFRICA
Bullets to Bread: Ex-Combatants Learn Baking
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Women in the Liberia Community Infrastructure Program
bake loaves of bread.
Max Willie, DAI/LCIP |
MONROVIA, Liberia—Some of the combatants in
Liberia’s recently ended 14-year-old civil war are trading
in rifles and revolvers for measuring spoons and spatulas,
part of a U.S.-backed effort to retrain fighters for culinary
and other careers.
“I was forced in the first place to take up arms and
fight for a cause I did not understand,” said Krubo Zayzay,
one of the ex-combatants in the program. “I could not
wait to give up my rebel life and return to my community.”
The Liberia Community Infrastructure Program (LCIP) began
April 2004 in Bopolu, a region about 80 miles from the capital,
Monrovia, as an effort to reintegrate former combatants into
their communities.
Sixty women—40 of them former rebel combatants—spent
three months learning to become bakers and pastry chefs.
Counselors also met with the ex-combatants to talk about
the adjustment to living in post-conflict Liberia. The USAID-funded
program promotes reconciliation and provides psychosocial
support to combatants and others affected by the war.
Most of Bopolu’s 5,000 residents fled into forests
as their towns and villages were overrun by rebel militias
during the civil war. Crime, harassment, and ruined roads
made mounting any program problematic.
The entire region was physically devastated and its residents
impoverished and dispersed. Of the 1,500 who returned, two-thirds
were armed rebels whose psyches had been imprinted with warfare.
“My life has changed. I have something to hold on to
for the rest of my life,” said Massa Gissi, 21, an ex-combatant
in the training program. “After graduation, I want to
own and operate a bakery so that I help myself and family.”
It is a game plan echoed by other participants eager to
set up small pastry shops in their communities or try their
hand at other alternatives to combat.
“It was all the way, no stopping me now,” said
Zayzay, who learned to bake large loaves of fanti bread and
cake doughnuts. “I was excited all through the training.”
While rice is the primary grain consumed in Liberia, bread
and pastry products make up a significant part of the diet
as well, particularly in remote areas like Bopolu where there
is demand for the women’s baked goods.
The first phase of the program has ended, and the new bakers
are awaiting startup kits to help them set up businesses where
their skills can be put to work.
LATIN AMERICA AND THE CARIBBEAN
Disaster Experts Train for Earthquakes, Storms
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National disaster coordinators from the Caribbean region
are instructed in the use of satellite telephones in
a training course held in Grenada in 2003.
Juan Pablo Sarmiento, OFDA/LAC |
SAN JOSE, Costa Rica—National and local governments,
regional disaster agencies, and first responders such as firefighters
and medics are getting help to prepare to cope with a hurricane,
earthquake, or volcano eruption.
The USAID mission in this Central American nation of 4 million
people closed nine years ago. But one program—the U.S.
Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance’s Latin American
and Caribbean’s project on disaster mitigation—carries
on.
OFDA/LAC, as the program is known, has spent millions a
year since 1989 on regional courses for up to 25 students
aiming to prepare to cope with disasters.
Disaster relief agencies from participating countries are
asked to chip in 15–20 percent of the costs.
Courses are split into three broad categories: technical,
management, and training processes. They include courses on
specific topics, such as methods of instruction (helping trainers
spread their knowledge), damage assessment and needs analysis,
shelter management, search-and-rescue techniques, and prevention
and control of forest fires.
The forest fire prevention course, for instance, teaches
firefighters how to improve their use of tools. A search-and-rescue
class teaches how to extract people who might be trapped in
the rubble of a building collapsed in an earthquake, landslide,
or hurricane.
The program offers a course for public school administrators
and teachers that teaches them how to set up a school emergency
plan and how to prepare students for disasters.
“Our efforts are geared at increasing response and
preparedness capacities with national authorities,” said
Tim Callaghan, senior regional advisor for OFDA/LAC. “We
have long-term relationships with national disaster organizations
and coordinators and work with them to help them develop their
own training programs.”
While natural disasters—such as this year’s devastating
earthquake in Bam, Iran, and the most recent typhoons that
ripped through the Philippines—can never be entirely
eliminated, their impact can be “reduced enormously,”
so long as there is appropriate investment in environmental
management and disaster mitigation training schemes, said
Sálvano Briceño, a humanitarian official with
the United Nations.
His statement in early December followed that of the U.N.’s
most senior humanitarian official, Jan Egeland, who warned
that the world faces an “enormous task” in preventing
and preparing for natural disasters, while mitigating their
aftereffects on an increasingly vulnerable population.
When Tropical Storm Jeanne tore through Haiti in September,
for instance, national authorities could barely respond. Instead,
international agencies such as USAID and the U.N. performed
basic tasks such as assessing damage and providing supplies
to shelters.
By comparison, there has been visible improvement of disaster
and risk management in countries where various officials have
gone through OFDA/LAC’s training, said Julie Leonard,
OFDA Caribbean region advisor.
“We’ve done quite a lot of work with the Jamaica
emergency management agency on developing a damage assessment
and needs analysis course,” she said. “And we’ve
noticed increased capacity on both the national organization
level and on the parish level.”
OFDA/LAC courses in the Caribbean are oriented towards all-hazard
management, but with a practical focus on tropical weather
hazards such as hurricanes and tropical storms, since the
region has several each year.
ASIA AND THE NEAR EAST
Nepal’s New Roads Promote Common Good
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Nepalese women transport stone on a USAID-funded green
road.
Laxman Shrestha, Nepal Infrastructure for Rural Incomes
Program |
SHANTIPUR, Nepal——Bhagawati Thapa transports
her crops to Shantipur and other marketing centers in the
region more quickly because of a better roadway and a new
bus service traveling on it.
The new 15-kilometer “green road” connects the
remote hillside town to marketing centers in the mid-hills
district and to those in larger outlying districts, including
Tamghas, Ridi, and Tansen.
The access road is a product of the Employment Generation
Rural Infrastructure Program (EGRIP), a two-year-old USAID
effort in Nepal helping address some of the root causes of
the country’s conflict between its leaders and the Maoists,
who want them removed from power.
That battle has dragged on nine years and claimed more than
10,000 lives. The ensuing chaos has led to food shortages,
which in turn has led some Nepalis to leave their homes in
search of scarce work in urban centers. Farming is the only
option for survival for the majority of rural Nepalis, so
boosting their ability to earn a living from the crops they
produce is essential.
EGRIP is in the country’s isolated, mountainous region,
employing people—those who would otherwise be out of
work and tempted to migrate elsewhere—to build the so-called
green roads and irrigation projects.
Green roads are roads built with manual labor rather than
machinery.
Though the rugged, out-of-the-way locale is a magnet for
tourists seeking majestic views, it can be a burden to rural
Nepalis carrying the oranges, coffee beans, black cardamom,
potatoes, herbs, and other produce they grow to central transportation
hubs that lead to area markets. Before the road, basic food
items had to be carried by foot in an arduous, six-hour walk.
Today, the same goods arrive in an hour.
The Western Transport Entrepreneur’s Association runs
the bus service, which started rolling October 2004 and makes
one trip each day to the market centers. Between 35 and 40
people make the journey each day.
Thapa, who is a 52-year-old farmer and shopkeeper, says
travel from field to market is now cheaper, speedier, and
more comfortable.
Farmers are passing on the savings they see from reduced
transportation costs to buyers, with market prices coming
in at least 20 percent lower. And the growers say they are
making more profit because they can transport more goods per
trip.
The road construction efforts are also putting money in
the pockets of some Nepalis.
Local residents are involved in all aspects of construction.
Committees organize labor groups, procure building materials,
and oversee progress.
Women, who traditionally have been unlikely to take on or
be welcome at this kind of work, make up 16 percent of the
labor force.
Working in community groups for a common good has also reinforced
local solidarity, USAID officials said. In some cases, beneficiaries
have banded together and stood up to insurgents who tried
to disrupt road construction.
EUROPE AND EURASIA
Disabled Georgia Student Finds Job, Enters
Society
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Lika Revishvili, a disabled law student in Georgia,
now teaches non-disabled youth about the legal and human
rights of children with disabilities.
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TBILISI, Georgia—Lika Revishvili, a disabled
woman in this Caucasus state where such people are usually
ostracized or placed in institutions, was able last year to
hold her first job and attend law school.
Revishvili, 18, was offered a job educating non-disabled
children about the legal and human rights of kids with disabilities.
“I plan to visit schools and train not only children,
but teachers and school directors as well,” she said.
“The trainings will be a very good opportunity for
me to grow professionally and to assist other disabled people
to be integrated into our society.”
She got the job after she attended the 8th International
Congress on Including Children and Youth with Disabilities
in their Home Communities, held in Stavanger, Norway, in mid-June.
Since 2000, USAID has helped delegates from more than 20
developing countries attend the biannual congress, which focused
this year on creating support networks that integrate the
health, education, and recreation needs of disabled children.
The meeting also explored the legal rights of disabled people
according to international law.
“I could never have imagined myself in the role of
a trainer for children having no disabilities, but attending
the Norway congress gave me a lot of confidence and so I agreed,”
said Revishvili.
“Meeting so many people from other countries working
on disabled children’s rights made me believe that there
really is a chance that we can make a difference in Georgia.
“My dream has always been to help other disabled people
understand what they can achieve by simply knowing and exercising
their rights,” said Revishvili, who is of small stature
and has an open, ready smile.
Physically disabled since birth, Revishvili gets around
with the help of a crutch and her ever-present father, who
travels with her to and from school everyday and helps her
navigate a university accessible only to the non-disabled.
He half-carries her up the stairs in the university’s
law building and eases her into her chair in class each day.
In Georgia, people with disabilities are deeply stigmatized
and usually excluded from mainstream society. Disabled students
often attend separate schools or are institutionalized.
Most families in Georgia are too poor to afford to care
for disabled children.
“My job is to explain to healthy children that people
with disabilities have similar rights; they also want to study,
to work, and to live like ordinary people,” she said
of her new job.
USAID funded eight of Georgia’s 14 congress delegates
this year. UNICEF and the Embassy of Norway to Azerbaijan
funded another six delegates.
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