Newest World Accord Supporter Born September 11, 2006!
World Accord Staff are thrilled to congratulate Ken and Donna McGowan who have a new addition to their family. Elyse Marie McGowan was born on September 11 at 1:46 AM, weighing 8 lbs and 7 oz. Mom and daughter are doing great!
Not only are the McGowans great supporters of World Accord themselves, Ken does Estate Planning and has helped many people draw up their wills and plan what they want to happen with their assets. He has helped hundreds of people leave a legacy of support through planned gifts to World Accord. Ken's services are available (free of charge I might add) to all our donors, supporters and friends. He can be reached either through our office or through the offices of Community of Christ in Guelph.
Congratulations also go to Elyse Marie's older sister Shannon as well!!!
Sandy Heathers Reporting, Waterloo, Ontario
Pakistan Brings Canadian Organizations Together
The Pakistan earthquake happened almost a year ago, and there is little heard about it now in the news. This doesn't mean we have forgotten about the earthquake or the needs of the people in Pakistan. World Accord received a generous donation of $20,000 US from Community of Christ's World Hunger and Oblation Funds as well as from private donors, to help our program partner in Pakistan. World Accord has partnered with other Canadian Organizations to increase our ability to make a difference. Hope International of BC, Human Concern International of Ottawa, Ontario and Canadian Lutheran World Relief of Manitoba have teamed together with World Accord to support a program worth $372,500 to help rebuild communities and livelihoods for those devastated by the earthquake.
Thank you to all who have and continue help make a difference!
The Staff of World Accord
MeA Creates Hope For Indigenous Guatemalans
Mujeres en Accion – Women in Action (MeA)
Centro MeAi, El Tejar, Chimaltenango, Guatemala, August 24, 2006
Our team of three from World Accord has arrived in Guatemala from Honduras. It rained every day in Honduras and Guatemala has welcomed us with rain too. But the cool dampness does nothing to dampen the warm welcome from these incredible women.
Women in Action or Mujeres en Accion (MeA) was born of the desire of local women to help the thousands of widows created by the government sponsored slaughter of male community leaders. The “war” was against the majority - Indigenous peoples of Guatemala - through the 1980’s and well into the late 1990’s. Hundreds of thousands of people were killed in a move to strike fear into the poor. This is tantamount to genocide.
Undaunted, Felipa Xico brought some small groups of widows together into a Program to help them replace the family income that was lost when their husbands were killed. World Accord was their first and only major funding source since the inception of MeA. Over the years, the women faced many challenges and some setbacks. But the women in the leadership never stopped trying new approaches to address their family needs for shelter, health care, education for the children and food security.
Today, more than a thousand women are a part of Women in Action. Community groups (of about a dozen women each) work together in agriculture and their traditional weaving to earn a living. Many of the women in the project are now married. The terror of their recent past is behind them in the current political environment but the architects of the past attempted genocide are still politically active among national leaders. In this season of relative Peace, the women are articulating to us their new dreams to address the issues of poverty and political oppression exerted upon them.
This is why we are here. To allow them to tell us their story … to listen to their dreams and to help them write their systematic plans to improve the lives of the poor. To forge with them the new World Accord Program.
Terry Fielder
Project Global Village - Honduras Part 7
Honduras, August 22, 2006
Enrique Castillo of the Rural Reconstruction Program (PRR) introduced me to Chet Thomas, Director of Project Global Village or Proyecto Aldea Global (PAG) in 1984. Within a couple of years, World Accord was able to provide some project funding for about ten years. In the mid to late 1990’s, the Government of Canada began to reduce funding for Development Programs that were managed by Development Agencies like World Accord. Hundreds of thousands of dollars per year were cut for World Accord programs alone. World Accord struggled to replace the lost government funding. Thus, when project agreements like those with PAG came to an end, World Accord was forced not to make new agreements even for good projects, in order to have the money we needed to meet other commitments made before the Government cuts began.
World Accord was able to honour every pledge made to every project. Some were a few months late but all grants were made to cover all project commitments. The real cost of our Government change of policy at CIDA was the loss of many great Project Partners like PAG. Despite this, World Accord and most of the former Partners remained in casual contact.
Three years ago, World Accord contacted PAG. We had an opportunity to access some new funding. We knew the kind of quality program work they do to assist the poor combat their poverty. In part, it was the World Hunger Fund of the Community of Christ Church that supported this new initiative. Some of the PAG Program areas border with World Accord’s other program partner, PRR, in the protected area of the watershed for Lake Yojoa and the Meambar Azul National Park (a Mountain Cloud Forest).
World Accord has again contacted PAG. We requested their plans for a proposal to expand their program in the environmentally critical areas. Their plan will help the residents of the watershed area to protect future clean water sources for dozens of communities in the area as well a assist the residents to address the causes of their poverty. World Accord will place this project plan into our Program for Central America. We will present our Program to CIDA in September 2006.
World Accord will post more information about this new aspect of our Program on our BLOG and web page in the coming months if we are successful in getting CIDA support to the concept. We will also be seeking match funding for this new program too. CIDA will provide a 3 to 1 match ratio. This means they will fund 75% but World Accord must have the other 25%. World Accord will present the best case we can to get an increase in funding from CIDA. They will send their budget regardless. We will simply offer them some of the best programs that meet our Government’s highest stated values and make it harder for them to say no.
Terry Fielder
Education Is The Key - (Part 6 from Honduras)
Rural Reconstruction Program, La Buena Fe, Honduras: Aug. 21, 2006
The World Accord Central America Program in Honduras has contained Adult Literacy as part of its Education Program since its inception more than 20 years ago. Several of the current Program Staff were illiterate until their adult education began with PRR’s night time home study.
The PRR Education Program, supported by World Accord, continues to offer the freedom of literacy to adults. It has also expanded to include 46 scholarships mainly to help girls go to High School or ‘Colegio’. Scholarships are awarded according to need for students who demonstrate aptitude and work hard. For many, it is simply to provide tuition and bus fare for students to get from their remote villages to the new Colegio at Horconcitos, near the PRR office.
The volunteer work of Leonard and Lottie Brown provides a mobile library of books for children in area schools. Why learn to read if there is nothing to read? This project has provided dozens of area schools with books that are regularly changed. Leonard and Lottie have also set up, and maintained, a teacher resource centre at the PRR office. There is a computer, coloured paper, stencils, a paper cutter, art supplies, etc. and a teacher volunteer mans the centre every Saturday.
Construction Expeditions lead by Volunteers Al Wigood, Jens Schoenrank and organized by Richard Kirsh support the education needs of communities by helping them construct Elementary and Kinder Schools. Once a community builds a school, the government will staff it with a teacher. A Kinder is for all the children but it will impact future generations of girls. The older girls of the family are no longer pulled from school to care for their younger siblings. It will only be a few more years before there are more equal numbers of girls in higher education.
Access to Education is probably the single most significant component to improving the rights of women. Many will still choose life in their village area but Education will offer them a choice they didn’t have before. I did not truly value my right to access any level of education I chose, until I met tens of thousands of people who simply never have that choice.
Terry Fielder
Health Care Challenge for Hondurans (or part 5)
Health Care Challenge Rural Reconstruction Program, La Buena Fe, Zacapa, Honduras : August 20, 2006
Everyone needs good health and access to quality health care to help sustain that good health. That point is not in question. What is in question, is who decides what is the standard of “quality health care” and who pays for it?
The PRR Program, a longtime partner in Honduras, has a health component. The Program has operated a clinic and provided emergency and maternal health care since its inception. A dental technician was also part of the clinic to do fillings, pull bad teeth and make new false teeth. The dental technicians have now moved on and opened their own private clinics. They operate at a rate that the local people can afford.
This has not happened with the health clinic. Private clinics are now operating within a half hour by bus from the PRR clinic which is by no means easy to access from remote villages without a four wheel drive truck which most communities do not have. In addition, the old standards of health care seem to no longer be as acceptable and PRR is under increased pressure to provide a doctor.
The current Honduran Government policy is not to place a doctor in any clinic building that is not community owned. The PRR clinic is on private land and therefore is not eligible for government help. If the doctor worked part time, the salary would more than double the health care cost of the two nurse practitioners. Doctors also need additional diagnostic tools like x-ray, ultrasound and a larger pharmacy with a larger stock of expensive drugs. Who would then pay for the drugs if the poor cannot afford them? All of these things are costly and it seems irresponsible to place a doctor there with no additional resources. Who would hire a carpenter but not provide wood or nails to work?
Governments in North America struggle with the high cost of medical care. The US model of some public and many private health care clinics and insurance is the model Honduras is following, but for the very poor, there simply is no access. There are too few Government hospitals and the private ones are just too costly.
The PRR Program now favours more public health education to try to reduce known problems in the villages, and thus mitigate unnecessary health costs for the poor. PRR would continue with limited clinic services, and refer serious cases to larger centers. It may be better stewardship to take serious cases to hospitals and even pay the bill for the poorest people than to provide treatment services.
Even something one might expect to be fairly simple compared to serious development issues, sometimes is not simple at all.
Terry Fielder, From Honduras
World Accord
