Is there really a cure for aging? There are thousands of articles, studies, and research that focus on how women can ‘reverse the aging process’. Now, Goldman Sachs’ 10,000 Women Program might also want to consider making this claim.

On graduation day, 26 women of all ages walked into SKD Stadium in Monrovia, Liberia looking years younger. They all have a bright new future! They have new skills, new vision, and a renewed hope that their efforts will rebuild their country. As one graduate stated, “I came into the class a business women, I am leaving an entrepreneur.” She also said that the members of the class have made a commitment to each other to support each other and to share their new knowledge with their children. They all agreed, “It is the only way we can succeed.”

The graduating women had finished the rigorous 10,000 Women Business Training Program sponsored by Goldman Sachs. They were ready to take on the world with their new insight to running a successful business. Much like any graduation around the world, these women were relieved, enthusiastic, and committed to putting into practice the new skills they earned after months of hard work.

Unlike most graduations, these women understood that their efforts and integrity will keep their country out of war and their families safe. The women come from different backgrounds, tribes, and manage diverse businesses. A few are highly educated professionals with training in the medical and agricultural fields; however, most women have a very basic education.

They were not given the same opportunities to go to school, get a job, and provide a stable home for their family. Instead, these women make the best of their situations with what they have and survive by identifying and pursuing opportunities they are able to find. Their determination and ability to learn and adopt business skills without training in this field is commendable. What is even more astounding is the women’s willingness to learn more, make changes, and build a better business and a better life.

The US Ambassador to Liberia, Linda Thomas Greenfield, recognized the importance of these women’s accomplishments and remarked, “This is your country, your economy, your business. The United States is your guest and your friend.”

Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf congratulated the women and spoke to them as the leaders they are – strong and influential. President Sirleaf declared, “If you educate a woman, you educate a nation.”

We should all wish these women good luck and prosperity. They have better skills and bigger dreams. They will succeed!

Blog Post by Nancy Wallace, Liberia Country Director

Post-election, WCI helped the newly-elected women form a National Women’s Caucus, create a platform for action, develop a national HIV/AIDS Media Campaign and sign-on to critical committee posts within the Parliament.  Two of the women WCI trained moved on to become the National Minister of Health and the National Minister of Tourism.

In May of 2008,  WCI headquarters and field office staff met with the National Women’s Caucus to assess the need for a program aiming to increase women’s representation through the May 2009 elections. All members of the Women’s Caucus reported that they lack the skill sets and knowledge to organize a cost-efficient political campaign in this new and far more competitive election environment.  In contrast to their male counterparts, the vast majority of women MPs in Malawi lack staff, supplies and funding to support their campaigns.  Women seeking office for the first time have even fewer resources at their disposal, especially those who are campaigning to represent the needs of their constituents in poor, rural districts.

Malawi is now in the middle of its official 2009 campaign period leading up to the general elections on May 19^th, and, despite new challenges,  women are among the candidates vying for top posts in the government.  Two women with the newly formed Rainbow Coalition party are running for president and vice-president, and the current president Bingu wa Mutharika has chosen a woman as his running mate.  The 50:50 Campaign, a national program supporting women’s participation in politics, has offered support to all female candidates.  WCI supports the 50-50 Campaign and, through its program connections with UNICEF-Malawi, has joined forces with the initiative. WCI-Malawi consultant, Luke Malembo, writes, “It is very difficult to predict the outcome of the parliamentary elections because there are so many candidates in one constituency. However, The 50-50 campaign is progressing well. The National Ministry of Gender is coordinating the program and a number of trainings for women candidates have been organized by the Gender-NGO network.”

These women face a difficult challenge in a country whose political system has traditionally been reserved for men, and whose 193-member Parliament has only 27 female representatives.  However, the program coordinator for 50:50, Bertha Sefu, sees changes in the public’s attitude towards women in politics and is optimistic that women’s representation will increase after the May elections.

Read More about the 50:50 Campaign here: http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=45979

Several international aid and advocacy organizations including the United Nations and International Crisis Group have called for a halt of the Sri Lankan government’s offensive and also access to these areas.  However the government has carefully monitored aid and international media access to the civilian camps and rebel areas.

In a recent opinion piece, “The silent horror of the war in Sri Lanka, ” author and activist Arundhati Roy writes in The Times of India that the international media have not done enough to call attention to the Sri Lankan government-sponsored camps.   Roy writes, “From the little information that is filtering through it looks as though the Sri Lankan government is using the propaganda of the ‘war on terror’ as a fig leaf to dismantle any semblance of democracy in the country, and commit unspeakable crimes against the Tamil people.”

WCI’s programs in Sri Lanka specifically focus on the role of the media in promoting women’s leadership in conflict transformation.   WCI sponsored trainings on media skills for women leaders,  implemented a nation-wide awareness advocacy campaign about internally displaced people in the north and eastern regions of the country and also broadcast a television and radio talk show series in English, Sinhala and Tamil addressing such issues as women’s political participation, conflict resolution, racism and women’s role in the family.

However it is evident that following this recent wave of violence, more media attention of the civil conflict in Sri Lanka is needed.  Following the tragic and sudden death of Sri Lankan Sunday Leader editor Lasantha Wickramatungaa earlier this year, his moving editorial about Sri Lankan politics and the media was posthumously published.  An except follows here:

Nabusimake, Colombia

The Arhuaco consider themselves protectors of the Sierra Nevada, a location which they hold to be the heart of the world. Arhuaco society is guided by tribal leaders and spiritual leaders known as Mamu (male) and Aku Mamu (female). Daily activities for Arhuaco villagers consist of giving offerings to the spirits, cultivating the forests and harvesting coffee and the coca leaf.  The coca leaf holds great spiritual significance in Arhuaco legend and practice- it is harvested by the women and consumed by Arhuaco men to givethem energy and decrease altitude sickness. The tribe also makes traditional crafts for sale such as the TuTu bag which uses traditional patterns with spiritual significance. The Sierra Nevada’s indigenous tribes live in nationally-recognized Indian reservations with Nabusimake serving as the Arhuaco capital.

While the government of Colombia recognizes Arhuaco territory and has even made recent moves to protect it[1], the Arhuaco are quickly becoming one of Colombia’s 27 indigenous groups[2] at risk for extinction[3]. Indigenous peoples are uprooted from their traditional lands every year due to violent conflict in Colombia and they currently account for 7% of Colombia’s recorded 3 million internally displaced persons[4]. The Colombian military, paramilitary and guerilla forces all partake in various levels of armed conflict, narco-trafficking and competition for land and natural resources in Colombia – activities which threaten the Arhuaco way of life and their traditional territory. Fertile Arhuaco land and coca crops are sought after by narco-terrorists and many Arhuacos have been murdered, displaced, assaulted or forcibly recruited into armed groups.

Arhuaca women in Nabusimake

In particular, Arhuaca women are an extremely vulnerable group who are finding it increasingly difficult to maintain their traditional lifestyle.  In recent years, these women have faced increased risk for sexual assault and gender-based violence at the hands of armed actors. They are offered little protection and no justice or reparation for these crimes.  In addition, Arhuaca women have been combating discrimination within their own community in an attempt to reclaim the traditional beliefs of the Arhuaco Law of Origin. While the original Law of Origin emphasized the balance of nature and the sexes and promoted complete equality between men and women, decades of colonization, foreign missionaries and the ideologies of armed groups have tainted those beliefs and influenced the subjugation of women’s participation in the Arhuaco community. Arhuaca women were discouraged from participating in tribal council meetings, discouraged from becoming Aku Mamu spiritual leaders and were told that all financial activities should be handled by men. For years Arhuaca women’s concerns were left unheard and their needs unmet; they no longer were offered opportunities for financial independence nor positions of political or spiritual leadership.  Thus, many Arhuaca women have been abandoning the reservations in notable numbers to find work in urban informal sectors, leaving the indigenous communities with skewed sex ratios and dwindling populations.

Recognizing the internal and external threats to women in the Arhuaco community, WCI began work with a Colombian anthropological organization in 2007 to address these issues.  WCI and the Corporation for Socio-Economic Research and Action (CIASE) forged a partnership to match WCI’s core competencies in gender analysis and awareness trainings with CIASE’s expertise on the Arhuaco culture. WCI and CIASE thus developed a program that would bring to the surface the original Arhuaco beliefs about gender equality, promote gender analysis and increase women’s participation in the Arhuaco community.  WCI and CIASE organized open forum discussions on gender within the indigenous community for 100 Arhuaco men and women in Nabusimake and any visiting members of nearby tribes.  WCI and CIASE also implemented five three-day trainings with the Arhuaco Women’s Collective, provided them with gender analysis curricula and helped increase the number of women on the Council for Tairona Indians and the number of female spiritual leaders, or Aku Mamu. Discussions and training materials were implemented in Spanish and Iku, the Arhuaco language.

Arhuaca women at a WCI-CIASE training

Despite the success of these activities, one concern that was left unresolved by the program activities was gender analysis and women’s participation

Arhuaco men at a WCI-CIASE training for community gender analysis

in the Arhuaco legal system. This topic became far more urgent as a relevant case was brought to the Arhuaco court during the WCI-CIASE program. The case involved a victim of incest within the community; a young Arhuaca girl who had been brutally raped, abused and impregnated by her father. WCI and CIASE’s female program participants requested a session to discuss this case, and concluded that this could not be a fair trial – for the young girl or the community in general – if Arhuaca women were not also hearing the case. They added that it was also unacceptable that only male judges had presided over various domestic abuse cases within the community in the past. Thus, it was a combination of WCI’s gender analysis programs and the incest case which has now inspired nine female program participants to ask that they be trained as judges to serve on the currently all-male Arhuaco legal Council. WCI is currently seeking additional funds to launch an anthropological assessment on the Arhuaco legal system with CIASE and then to create a training program for female judges within Colombia’s indigenous community of the Sierra Nevada. WCI believes that developing a gender-focused component to the Arhuaco legal system: its laws, judges, enforcement and retribution processes, is critical to preserving the presence of women within the Arhuaco community and the entire survival of this indigenous tribe.

[2] There are 84 Colombian indigenous groups in total, ibid, 2009

[3] 15-August 2008: Moloney, Anastasia, “Colombia’s Indians risk extinction from conflict, drugs war and multinationals,” Reuters: http://www.alertnet.org/db/blogs/46655/2008/07/15-140558-1.htm .

[4] Ibid, 2008

One women’s health issue of critical concern in Ethiopia is that of obstetric fistula.  Obstetric fistula is a condition that occurs during childbirth when a rupture or hole in the birth canal obstructs delivery of the infant and forces a pregnant mother to endure hours or days of painful labor.  In many cases, the baby is delivered stillborn and the mothers who are fortunate enough to survive the traumatic labor are often left incontinent as they can no longer control the urine and bowels that constantly leak through the ruptured birth canal.  Fistula often occurs as the result of pregnancy in highly malnourished women and girls that have been married at extremely young ages.  While fistula is relatively easy and inexpensive to prevent and treat, poverty, specific cultural practices and lack of access to medical care make this condition one of the world’s most detrimental threats to maternal and infant health.

Artwork painted by patients at the Addis Ababa Fistula Clinic. Top Left: a victim of fistula is portrayed with a cobweb over her womb, Bottom Left: a village scene that portrays separate huts in the distance to keep fistula victims away from the community, Right: a fistula patient forced to leave her community is seated on a bench, crying, with her bags packed and leaked urine on the ground.

The Campaign to End Fistula estimates that 2 million women across the globe are suffering with this condition today and an estimated 100,000 new cases are reported each year.[1] While the painful, prolonged labor and the likely death of a newborn associated with fistula are traumatic enough, most women who suffer this fate face a new nightmare even after the labor has ended.  The embarrassment, social stigma and physical discomfort resulting from their total incontinence leaves most fistula victims rejected from their villages and left to fend for themselves.  In many traditional communities, the death of a newborn and the fistula in general are viewed as bad fortune and most likely the fault of the fistula victim. This pervasive lack of awareness surrounding fistula, as well as inadequate medical strategies for its prevention and treatment, result in the unnecessary loss of newborn children and the emotional and physical suffering of millions of women around the world.

In 2007, WCI worked with the National Women’s Caucus of Ethiopia to combat ignorance and social stigma towards fistula.  The women Members of Parliament (MPs) chose fistula as part of its caucus platform and attended a WCI workshop to become educated on the topic.  The workshop featured local experts from IntraHealth International and the Hamlin Fistula Hospital in Addis Ababa.  The women MPs also visited the Fistula Hospital and spoke with patients to learn firsthand about the complexities of the condition and its aftermath.

Having acquired this knowledge, the women MPs organized a session to train all MPs, male and female, about obstetric fistula and what can be done to address the issue on the regional and policy levels.  WCI also implemented its gender analysis curriculum with the MPs; calling attention to the fact that fistula is a prime example of a lack of adequate gender-specific  considerations in local and national policy and legislation.

These educational sessions were extremely successful, and all MPs reported that they acquired far more Knowledge about the medical and social causes of this taboo condition.  Post-training, men and women MPs in Ethiopia formed alliances and drafted region-specific action plans to begin combating fistula in the future.

WCI Ethiopia Field Staff: Program Director Rakeb Abate (left), Program Officer Emebet Bekele Ashagre (right)

WCI Women's Issues Workshop with Parliamentary Committee Members

Nasrin maintains that the Afghan population continues to mistrust police. She claims that the perception persists that the Afghanistan police force is one of the most corrupt in the world. That being said, Nasrin also asserts that there are more shelters being built and that their presence is a great stride forward for Afghanistan.

If, as the New York Times article suggests, there is a interdependent relationship between the increased number of women’s shelters and an increase in trustworthy police officers, how will the Obama administration’s proposal to expand the Afghanistan security force influence women?

The Obama administration seeks to significantly expand the Afghanistan security forces, including both the professional army and national police force. For women in Afghanistan, will this expanded and American-trained security force help protect women who suffer from domestic abuse, or will the high number of trained public authorities prevent women from safely seeking refuge?

Read More on this topic: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/19/us/politics/19military.html?hp

Most of these women flee with their children and few possessions to urban centers as they seek security and work, mainly in the informal sector. Their search is made all the more difficult as jobs are scarce and they lack even the small fees needed for childcare, school enrollment and primary health care.

While this desperate situation affects so many in Colombia, some displaced women have united together to leverage their few resources and become the very solution to their common problem.  In 2003, the League of Internally Displaced Women, founded by Colombian activist and lawyer Patricia Guerrero, helped mobilize a group of displaced women who would defy convention and make a collective statement.  With the help of Guerrero and funds from the United States Government, the group of displaced women negotiated the purchase of a plot of land from a private contractor in Turbaco, 11 kilometers outside of Colombia’s famous coastal town of Cartagena.  The group of women set to work immediately, developing plans for their own 5-block town.  The women worked together to build almost 100 houses, a community meeting center, a daycare center and a micro-finance cooperative.  “The City of Women” has become known throughout Colombia as a place where displaced women have transformed from victims to agents of change, raising their children on principles of equality, nonviolence and self-sufficiency.

WCI President Marjorie Margolies with residents and program participants, City of Women, December 2008

While the City serves as an exemplar of women’s resiliency and empowerment worldwide, it is not immune from the continuing civil war in Colombia.  Armed groups have continued to threaten its inhabitants and dump dead bodies outside of the town to stunt the women’s confidence and the neighborhood’s progress.  Most notably, the City’s community meeting center was burned to the ground by armed groups on the night of January 20^th, 2007.  While many would accept defeat under these circumstances, the women only campaigned more diligently and ultimately were able to secure funds from the European Union and rebuild their center six months later.

Today, about 500 people inhabit the City of Women.  WCI works with this population in the City’s restored community center to implement trainings on human rights, advocacy and incorporating the needs of Colombia’s IDPs in mainstream politics.  Through its partnership with the League of Internally Displaced Women and Congreso Visible, WCI has implemented a training series for displaced women to review the history and functions of the Colombian Congress and its ad hoc women’s caucus.  WCI’s trainings focus on organizing the needs of the community and then working with participants to create action plans for effectively campaigning for these needs through political channels.  The WCI training in the City of Women culminated with a meeting between the displaced women and women members of Colombia’s congress to discuss how these elected officials could better function as a caucus, deliver on their campaign promises and represent the needs of IDPs and all women in Colombia.

Program participants critiquing gender-focused legislation in Colombia

Program participant in a community leadership and advocacy workshop