The Nation Newspaper

Category: Impact Journalism Day

  • Cocaine worth $13m stolen from South African police

    Cocaine worth $13m stolen from South African police

    Thieves have stolen 541 kilogrammes of cocaine worth around 13 million dollars from the police in South Africa.

    The drugs were held inside the office of the Hawks special unit in the town of Port Shepstone in the eastern province of KwaZulu-Natal at the weekend, the police announced on Tuesday.

    The thieves entered the building through a window and then managed to break into the reinforced cabinets where the seized drugs were being stored.

    READ ALSO: South African judge dismisses Zuma’s attempt to remove prosecutor

    South Africa plays an important role as a transit country for the illegal trade in Latin American cocaine, especially for onward transport towards Australia, Europe, and Hong Kong. (dpa/NAN)

  • Casa del Paraná, where people with mental illness regain their autonomy

    In Argentina, a center based on the New York clubhouse model aims to integrate people with mental issues back into society

    Gustavo is happy that he has been able to “reset his life.” In 2007, he suffered an outbreak of schizophrenia, followed by severe depression. When he was hospitalized for psychiatric treatment at the Agudo Ávila Regional Center for Mental Health, in the city of Rosario, Santa Fe province, he thought he had hit rock bottom. He had recently returned to Argentina from Spain, where he had left a small daughter behind. He couldn’t find a job. His loneliness was devastating.
    When talking about his recovery, the first thing Gustavo, 47, remembers is the emotional reunion he had with his 12-year-old daughter more than a decade later. Then he recalls his first visit, in 2011, to Casa del Paraná, a place for people suffering from mental health conditions such as bipolar disorder, schizophrenia or depression. “I remember the director came up to me and said ‘You won’t be alone’,” he says. Casa del Paraná is where he managed to bounce back. Afterwards, he was able to find work in a company that sells printers. With the money he earns, he can travel to Spain to see his daughter.
    Casa del Paraná was founded in Rosario in 2007 to help people with mental illnesses reintegrate into society and be able to work. It operates under the “clubhouse” model, born in the United States in 1948 when a group of patients from a psychiatric hospital opened the first center, the Fountain House, in New York. The goal was to end the social and economic isolation of people who struggle with mental issues.
    In 1990, the Clubhouse International organization was created to oversee 320 houses that reach around 100,000 people in 34 countries each year.
    “All the houses must comply with international standards and are reviewed every two years,” says Rita Larrañaga, director of Casa del Paraná, the first in Latin America. Since its creation, it has welcomed 155 members, all 18 years or older.
    Today, Casa del Paraná has 35 active members, “17 percent of whom are also doing paid work experience,” the director says. “The idea is that members who did not have previous work experience, or who were employed years ago, can go back to work and rebuild their CV.”
    Larrañaga explains that the clubhouse does not provide psychiatric treatment, but rather seeks to help men and women recover through a participatory method based on a free membership principle. Members work in the clubhouse, which highlights each one’s strengths and abilities while helping them to build strong relationships.
    “Our funds come from the Mental Health Department of the Municipality of Rosario, as well as from an international foundation, monthly donation campaigns, and three fundraising events that we conduct every year,” Larrañaga explains.
    “Our mission is to help these people reach their full potential and be respected as co-workers, neighbors and friends,” Jorge Baldarenas, president of Casa del Paraná, says. He adds that a diagnosis does not define a person – it is just a small part of who they are.
    Both Gustavo and Baldarenas underline that autonomy is the first thing that people with mental disorders lose. That is why the nonprofit works towards helping them reacquire it. That is also why each member decides when he or she is ready to leave the house.
    Among Casa del Paraná’s activities, there is a social program with recreational outings; an educational program with spelling, music, mathematics and computer workshops; and an ‘employment in transition’ program, which offers members the opportunity to accept paid work outside the house and still be able to participate in clubhouse activities.
    “When the house secures a paid position for the community, it makes it available to everyone so we can decide together who will get it,” the director explains, adding that each member can also count on a coordinator’s help when needed.
    Larrañaga emphasizes the importance of having a routine. Members arrive at the house at 9 am and divide the tasks that each one will carry out during the day — some will manage the reception, while others do maintenance, cooking or cleaning. “We work on daily habits and social skills, which are often lost,” she says.
    To take the initiative further, a group of professionals founded the Casaclub Foundation, based on the model of Casa del Paraná, which will launch a new clubhouse pilot project in the city of Buenos Aires, the second one in Argentina.
    Beyond returning to work and feeling proud of recovering his autonomy, Gustavo says that the best thing about having taken part in Casa del Paraná was the friends he made there. “They’re my engine,” he says, “the ones who lift me up when I’m about to fall.”

    This article is being published as part of 7.7 Billion, an international and collaborative initiative gathering 15 news media outlets from around the world to focus on solutions for social, economic and civic inclusion.

  • Giving seemingly opposing sides a chance to bridge the gap

    When Aiden Lenox attended a meeting last year to talk about anti-bullying efforts in Cincinnati’s public schools, the high school sophomore expected to talk about We Dine Together. The national initiative promotes inclusive spaces across the United States for students to eat lunch, and he had started a local chapter.

    What Aiden didn’t expect was for a member of the Cincinnati Public Schools board to suggest introducing his club across the district.

    “It was exciting, and it really meant a lot to me to think that there’s other people, especially in authority, that would be inspired and interested in sharing [the program] with other folks in other schools,” says Aiden.

    This exchange of ideas and collaboration is exactly what Dani Isaacsohn had in mind when he started Cohear, the group that organized the discussion.

    Cohear has a simple objective: to help policymakers make better decisions by empowering members of their community.

    “These conversations are getting different people in the room with people in positions of power,” says Mr. Isaacsohn, who has worked on several political campaigns and as a community organizer. “By changing who’s in the room, you’re changing what decision-makers are exposed to and are hearing, and you’re actually getting better insights.”

    Two years ago, Mr. Isaacsohn received a grant from the city of Cincinnati to start Cohear, originally called Bridgeable. Since then the group, which is now privately funded, has hosted dozens of conversations – between refugees and a city council member, between African-American children and the assistant police chief. The result is a network of hundreds of “everyday experts.”

    “There is expertise in living something every day,” Mr. Isaacsohn says. “What [Cohear] is trying to do is help decision-makers access and learn from that expertise and insight.”

    Cohear’s efforts are part of a larger trend of engaging ordinary people in problem-solving. The collaborative approach Cohear emphasizes can offer an antidote to the often hyperbolic and divisive speech found in today’s political conversations.

    Cincinnati, like many other communities, has been engulfed in such divisiveness in recent years. Several big-ticket projects, including a new soccer stadium and a hospital expansion, created plenty of controversy.

    Such projects are often managed by private or quasi-governmental organizations whose leaders are not elected, diminishing the role residents have in decisions that affect their lives. This is where Cohear steps in, giving seemingly opposing sides a chance to bridge the gap.

    “I think a face-to-face interaction injects the humanity into the conversation,” says Cincinnati City Councilman P.G. Sittenfeld, who used Cohear to set up a dialogue with refugees and is one of the group’s advisers. “[Cohear] puts people into a place that can be more honest, more open, and more vulnerable, and that makes for a richer interaction.”

    Part of what makes Cohear notable is the people attending its meetings. According to data collected at the end of every conversation, more than 60 percent of participants – most of whom are women – had never been to a meeting before, and nearly 75 percent of them are people of color.

    For Jennifer Foster, who has a disability that complicates her bus commute, it was “amazing” to help shape policy that is integral to her life.

    “It’s been a blessing to actually see and be heard,” says Ms. Foster. She attended a conversation between bus riders with disabilities and officials from the local transit authority this past September.

    Mike Moroski, the school board member who talked with Aiden, was initially skeptical of Mr. Isaacsohn’s claims of authentic conversations. But the longtime educator quickly became a believer. After conversations about anti-bullying efforts, Cohear produced a detailed report that synthesized its many findings, such as the students wanting more peer-to-peer mediation of bullying and more clubs like We Dine Together to build each other up.

    Mr. Moroski was shocked. “That’s not the first place adults go,” he says. “The adults go to suspension, as opposed to how can we empower these young people to handle it not on their own, but give them the skills they need to handle it and then also create a system where it’s obvious who to go to.”

    Nearly 50 students, teachers, parents, and principals participated in these conversations. When asked if they wanted the efforts to continue, they all said yes. Mr. Moroski is excited for the challenge.

    “How do you create a chain of command that is not only authentic, but has results that parents, students can see and that is meaningful and impacts behavior? It’s just difficult,” he says. “We’re trying to get better at it, and Dani helped us.”

    The next step is to build these conversations into broader change, says Mr. Isaacsohn. “These conversations, it’s a spark for [change], but you have to sustain engagements – put oxygen into that spark and turn it into a real, lasting relationship.”

    This article is being published as part of 7.7 Billion, an international and collaborative initiative gathering 15 news media outlets from around the world to focus on solutions for social, economic and civic inclusion.

  • Building better houses for the poor and the planet

    The Egyptian organization Hand Over is working with engineering students and local residents to build affordable and eco-friendly houses in Cairo

     

    When Radwa Rostom was a civil engineering student at Cairo’s Ain Shams University, in Egypt, she used to participate in charitable activities for underprivileged communities in the city’s informal settlement of Ezbet Abu Qarn. After finishing her studies, she returned with a small team, aiming to provide more than food. She intended to improve the quality of life for local residents, most of whom live in poverty.

    Immediately after graduating, Rostom trained with environmental engineering companies, seeking to acquire the technical skills to implement her ideas. She later worked for an environmental consultancy firm, a solar power company, and a Belgian construction firm that operates in areas affected by desertification.

    The young woman, who started her first housing rehabilitation project in 2015, realized she would need to set up her own company in order to bring her ideas to life. The following year she founded Hand Over, an Egyptian social enterprise that integrates construction into community development. This year, it was nominated for the Aga Khan Award for Architecture.

    “Many companies design and build grand apartments, airports and buildings using traditional methods, which only a certain category of person can afford,” Rostom says. “My dream has always been different – I wanted to build ‘humane’ housing for the marginalized, using eco-friendly materials.”

    She embraced an old method brought back by environmental experts and known as “rammed earth construction,” using local eco-friendly materials such as gravel, mud and sand, and a small quantity of cement. Hand Over employs the method to build houses and community buildings (schools, hospitals) in ancient or traditional Egyptian architectural styles, such as mud brick Nubian vault houses. The technique is not only safer than modern construction methods, but 25 percent cheaper. It also reduces heat and dampness within a building so that residents consume less energy, reducing CO2 emissions by as much as 30 percent while benefiting from a healthier environment year-round.

    Hand Over’s team started working in the Ezbet Abu Qarn slum, identifying the most disadvantaged families and the houses in greatest need of rebuilding. “Many people refused because they were afraid,” Rostom says. “They weren’t keen because the houses looked simple and unusual.”

    But one family accepted, and their house became the company’s first project. Ahmed Abdul Raada, the owner, says, “You couldn’t live in my house – each winter, snakes and rain came inside. That’s why I agreed to the project immediately. They took a year to build it, and meanwhile they rented an apartment nearby for my three children and me.” Three years later, he says his house is still sound. “If you touch the walls you’ll feel they’re cold, despite the fact that it’s 40°C outside.”

    The company’s second project was a multi-specialist clinic in the remote village of Wadi Gharba in South Sinai, in collaboration with an NGO called Catherine Exists. A group of young doctors volunteered to work and live in the village alongside volunteer builders who collaborate regularly with Hand Over’s projects. Rostom also lived in the area for more than four months, until the project was complete.

    hand over

    Hand Over often collaborates with NGOs and local volunteers for community construction projects. This was also the case for the company’s third project – a school for 300 pupils in Abu Ghadan, a village 80 km from Cairo, built last year in partnership with the social charity Man Ahyaha.

    From the beginning, Hand Over has trained architecture and civil engineering students to work as volunteers with local communities on the design and execution of new buildings using the earth construction method. According to Hand Over’s estimate, more than 1,000 people —between students and folks in need of affordable housing— have benefited from these projects.

    Architect Abdullah Mekkawi started working at Hand Over after participating in one of the company’s workshops. Now he supervises the firm’s construction projects. “For me, it’s more than just earning a salary – I am both giving and gaining something,” he says.

    “We build houses using a method that reduces the need for air conditioning, fans or heaters in summer or winter, thereby reducing electricity consumption,“ Mekkawi explains. “For example, a school’s walls would normally be 12 centimeters thick; we make them 40 centimeters.”

    Hand Over is now working on its fourth project, to build services and administrative buildings in Abu Galum Protectorate in Dahab, South Sinai. “We have finished the design and we’ll start construction in collaboration with the Ministry for the Environment and the UNDP,“ Rostom says. “They understand the concept because we’re building with eco-friendly materials in a nature reserve. The buildings will provide services for visitors, as well as places for protection of the coral reef and administrative offices for workers in the area.”

     

    This article is being published as part of 7.7 Billion, an international and collaborative initiative gathering 15 news media outlets from around the world to focus on solutions for social, economic and civic inclusion.

  • A former robber restores dialogue in marginalized French neighborhoods

    Former robber Yazid Kherfi travels in a camper van across France, hoping to spread the concept of non-violence among youth in disadvantaged suburbs

    It was a day of celebration in the market square of Tarterêts, a city classified as a high security zone located in the Corbeil-Essonnes district, in the southern suburbs of Paris. Built in haste in the 1960s, the district used to be home to as many as 30 15-story towers, some now demolished. Today, it is one of many French suburbs that suffer from high unemployment rates, daily insecurity and criminal acts, creating a great deal of tension between residents and the police.

    Yazid Kherfi, head shaved, arrived at his motor home in the square at around 7 pm and quietly starting setting up folding tables and chairs, board games and mint tea — enough for a friendly gathering with young people at an hour when they are usually roaming the streets. “Youth Houses are often closed in the evenings. If we don’t come, others will — fundamentalists, thugs, dealers, the internet,” he said.

    In the back of his camper van was a bumper sticker for Kherfi’s association, Médiation Nomade, along with a picture of Martin Luther King and one of his quotes: “We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.” The previous week, the motor home had made its way through Carcassonne, in the south of France, and three days before that through Lucé, in the Chartres suburbs (Eure-et-Loir), home to one of the radical Islamists behind the Charlie Hebdo terror attack in 2015.

    Cautious but curious, young people gradually started approaching the site — led by the youngest and most easily influenced. A child played a board game with one of the community leaders while a group of teenagers sat down with Kherfi and started asking questions: “How much did you make in your biggest heist?” “Have you ever killed anyone?”  Calmly, Kherfi replied, “Violence always ends in prison. I didn’t earn anything from it. I spent five years in prison and five more on the run. I lost my best friend [killed during his last robbery], and made my mother cry for 20 years.”

    Yet it is precisely his life as a former thief which fascinates these young people, eager for thrills, who dream of becoming billionaires. Some proudly boast about their first misdemeanors. “But since I fascinate them and have the same background, I have real legitimacy in their eyes, and they respect me,” Kherfi said.

    The older ones watched the event from afar, approaching cautiously, one after another, and greeting the city’s mediators. These included Eric Breton, deputy mayor in charge of city policy, who has been a school principal for 18 years and knows all the youth in the neighborhood, as well as representatives of local associations. Once the party started, and the dancing began, Kherfi turned to them. “Next week, I’m going to the Montconseil district. Do you want to come?” he asked. “No way! If we go, it’s to kill them all!” replied one of the neighborhood’s kingpins. The following week, in Montconseil, Kherfi received the same answer. The two rival gangs still struggle to overcome the tensions that took the life of 19-year-old Adel, victim of a stray bullet in Place de Montconseil in 2016.

    Kherfi regrets his criminal past, but the experience allows him to relate to youth in troubled suburbs, and give them hope for the future. “As a teenager, I was constantly called a useless loser and scum — which I ended up becoming,” he recalled. Now he defines himself as “a non-violent warrior” and believes that anyone, even those who hit rock bottom, can change. His own life is an example of that.

    Born in the underprivileged Val Fourré district of Mantes-la-Jolie, in the western suburbs of Paris, the Franco-Algerian started stealing cars and committing burglaries and armed robberies at age 15. In all, he spent four years in prison, and five years on the run. Finally free at age 31, he turned his life around. “I had always been told that I was hopeless,” he recalled, “Then, for the first time, someone told me that I was smart. That was the trigger.”


    Yazid Kherfi, former robber who made prison and founder of the association Nomad Mediation, who goes to meet young people with his camper to discuss with them, help them to reintegrate and advocate non-violence. He fools this in partnership with local associations and the town hall. He interned that day in the district of Tarterêts.
    Corbeil-Essonnes on 10/05/2019
    Photo François Bouchon / Le Figaro

    He started working at a youth center in the Yvelines region, west of Paris, which he later directed; he graduated with honors in educational science, and specialized in security. Appointed to the French National Council of Cities from 2003 to 2005, he also became a member of the Regional Economic and Social Council. Aside from his work with Médiation Nomade (organizing 300 events since 2012), Kherfi now works as an urban prevention consultant and trains educators and police officers in conflict management. He has published two books on the subject.

    His actions are bearing fruit. Recently, the city of Avignon, in the south of France, has pushed its closing hours for youth centers back to 11 p.m. In Saint-Fons (near Lyon) and Clichy-sous-Bois (near Paris), the tension has fallen between young people and police. Kherfi’s experience has attracted the attention of authorities in Mayotte and the U.S. —particularly in Chicago — and eight French cities have adopted his model, including Corbeil-Essonnes, Valence and Saint-Denis. At the request of France’s prison administration, he has also organized conference-debates in 48 prisons, for 650 prisoners in all.

    “I constantly go back and forth between the world of daytime and that of night, between police and offenders,” Kherfi said. “The balance may seem risky, but nothing makes me happier.” The 61-year-old former robber hopes to devote more time to reintegrating former prisoners into society, but first he’s looking for a suitable successor to carry out Médiation Nomade’s work. It is not easy to find.

     

    This article is being published as part of 7.7 Billion, an international and collaborative initiative gathering 15 news media outlets from around the world to focus on solutions for social, economic and civic inclusion.

  • An app to help Colombian farmers sell their products at fair prices

    Comproagro is an app that connects Colombian farmers with consumers, allowing them to sell their produce without intermediaries. It has more than 26,000 users in 29 departments in the country and its creator hopes it will develop offshoots around the world.

    “Mr. Oscar, good afternoon. We saw your products online and we are interested in buying some.”

    This was the first call received two years ago by Oscar Garzón, a Colombian farmer, from a client who saw his products on the Comproagro website.

    “Since I started selling my lettuce online, I have received a lot of calls,” says Garzón, who produces vegetables and potatoes, and has doubled his profits by selling directly to consumers. “I’m very happy because being able to negotiate directly with the client allows me to sell at a fair price.”

    Created by Ginna Jiménez in 2015, Comproagro is an online platform that allows Colombian farmers to offer their produce directly to consumers, enabling them to negotiate not only the price but also the payment and delivery methods.

    Jiménez, who comes from a family of farmers herself, was only 15 years old when she launched the website. She was inspired when officials from the Colombian Ministry of Information Technology and Communications visited her school and discussed supporting innovative business projects with digital tools.

    Later that day, she returned to her farm in the municipality of Toca, in the Colombian department of Boyacá, and told her brother and mother about her idea. “Let’s develop an app in which all the peasants in the country can sell without intermediaries, and finally get fair pay for their efforts,” she told them.

    Farmers say that the problem with middlemen is that they buy products at a fraction of the market price. “Intermediaries pay us 500 pesos [USD 0,15] for an avocado. Since we have no other option, we sell the product. Then they go and sell it for 2,000 pesos, which means that they make three times more than we do, when we are the ones who broke our backs growing that avocado,” says Jhonatan Lozano, a blackberry producer who lives in southern Colombia.

    Lozano also appreciates the app. He has received about 10 calls so far, and most times he has managed to sell all of his products at once, and at nearly twice the price he generally receives.

    Ginna Jiménez ComproAgro

    The platform does not generate profits for its creator. “Right from the start, the idea was to offer a free service,” says Jiménez. “It would be unfair for farmers to pay for it, when they already invest a lot to grow their crops.”

    In 2016, the Colombian Public Ministry (Fenalper, or Federación Nacional de Personerías) recognized Comproagro as a social peace initiative, in the category of entrepreneurship and employment creation. At the time, the platform had around 150 registered farmers. Now it has more than 26,000 users in 29 departments across the country.

    “At first we promoted the app by word of mouth. My mother, brother and I worked hard and managed to convince the media to talk about us, so more and more farmers started coming,” says Jiménez.

    One of these was a beekeeper, Alexánder Martínez, whose experience with the app has been different from the others. Through the platform, he sells his honey for less than its usual price. “But this is not necessarily negative,” he says. “I sell some jars to my regular clients, but when they call me from Comproagro I can sell all my production at once. I make a good, very quick profit with it.”

    Two other farmers, José Martínez and Carlos Muñoz, believe that the Comproagro platform could be better adapted to their needs. Both farmers have been contacted several times since putting their products on the platform, but neither has been able to sell, because clients always call outside of harvest time. “I would like to be able to update the state of my crops in real time so that consumers know when they are ready,” says Martínez.

    Jiménez is aware that Comproagro is not perfect. “A software engineer joined the team to improve the platform, but we don’t have many resources. The idea is to add a chat so that farmers can constantly update the state of the product,” explains the young woman, who is now 20 years old.

    Her dream is for the platform to become a sort of eBay for farmers, and to remain free of charge. To make a living, she and her family also sell their crops through the app.

    In addition to helping farmers, Comproagro has created more than 30 direct jobs, thanks to its distribution center in Toca, where single mothers peel and clean the products.

    Jiménez is now majoring in international business administration at the Boyacá University, while her brother Brayan, a civil engineering student, and her mother, Rosalba, manage the business.

    “I want the platform to cross borders, so our farmers can export their products, and farmers in other countries can use our app,” she says.

     

    This article is being published as part of 7.7 Billion, an international and collaborative initiative gathering 15 news media outlets from around the world to focus on solutions for social, economic and civic inclusion.

  • Helping immigrants through the obstacle course of getting a job

    “In Afghanistan, when you want to find a job, you go and see people directly. They give you two to three days’ work and then you go and look elsewhere. Here it’s completely different: you need qualifications, experience, one type of contract or another…” Speaking softly and in perfect French, Rozy-Khan Shinwari, 25, recalled his struggles to navigate an indecipherable maze as he tried to find employment. Despite the best efforts of the Public Center for Social Welfare (CPAS) and the Brussels-Capital Region Employment Office (Actiris), Shinwari, a young refugee who arrived in Belgium at the end of 2015, found himself at a loss. There was either too much information, or too many things unsaid, or codes that he couldn’t understand.

    It was thanks to Afghan friends that he discovered Duo for a Job, an association that specializes in facilitating the job-hunting process via mentoring. In five years, the nonprofit has matched 1,330 young jobseekers from immigrant backgrounds with senior or retired professionals well-versed in the ways of the Belgian job market.

    “Rozy had already done the groundwork,” mentor Patrick Beauvois, 63, said. Still active in the insurance sector, Beauvois took the young man under his wing for six months. “He had a decent CV but it was too formulaic. He was searching but not finding his match. So, we went back to the basics: what do you want to do, what don’t you want to do?”

    What Shinwari likes is sales and the food sector. Beauvois thinks this is because they remind Shinwari of his father’s shop in his home country, saying, “It’s important to have some landmarks in an environment where everything has to be rebuilt from scratch.” The polite and hard-working Afghan had found employment for three months as a part-time storekeeper. “The owner was happy with me, but there wasn’t enough work to keep me on. Since then it’s been difficult. ‘Sorry, I haven’t got a degree but I can assure you that I’m competent!’ It doesn’t work like that here,” the young refugee said.

    In terms of experience, Shinwari isn’t starting from zero. During the two years he spent in the army, his salary provided for his family, as his father was no longer capable of working. He had to flee the country after the Taliban took his older brother away in retaliation – even now, nobody knows where his brother is. “My younger brother is somewhere in Turkey, but over there, work means doing 12-hour days for a very low wage, and he’s too small and weak to be doing that,” he said. Hence the urgency to get a job and send money back home. “The work I had allowed me to send some money, but it’s not enough.”

    A sense of urgency to find a job can be, paradoxically, a major hindrance to developing a long-term career. One may incur debts that need to be quickly reimbursed, or need to declare a stable situation to the authorities so that relatives can come, or fear saying no to a temp agency in case they stop calling, or simply need to be in control of one’s life again and feel reaffirmed as the head of a family after months of living on state assistance as an asylum seeker. This survival state of mind is “hardly compatible with a structured orientation process that aims at long-term professional insertion,” Duo for a Job observed in an “experience report” published at the end of February.

    In this report, the association drew insight from data that it collected over five years, in order to better understand the needs of marginalized people on the Belgian job market. The report describes a variety of profiles, such as underemployed, working in unstable jobs, or doing part-time work. Around half the profiles are those of refugees, and the other half are people who came to Belgium for family reunification. “It’s important not to create policy aimed at ‘young people from immigrant backgrounds’ as if they were a homogenous group,” Julie Bodson, Advocacy Manager at Duo for a Job, asserted. There are some who are skilled, even highly skilled, yet blocked because their qualifications aren’t recognized, and others who are illiterate and lost in a society organized around the written word. “What they all have in common is that they benefit from personalized support,” Bodson said.

    Duo for a Job can now lay claim to a certain level of expertise – 73 percent of the young people who have taken part in the program have found a training course or job. The association gives credit to its mentoring system, which tackles two main issues that young people often overlook: a lack of self-confidence and no network. “When you’ve had doors closed in your face, you ask yourself what you’ve done wrong and then you give up,” said Beauvois, who has mentored several young people. “That’s part of the role of the mentor: looking a person in the eye, telling and showing them that they’re competent, that they’re valuable.”

    Thanks to his mentor, Shinwari has met with supermarket managers – a great way to learn about the trade and employers’ expectations, even if he hasn’t yet received a job offer. But now he has a plan that should pay off: he’ll continue with French classes so that he can join a training course in sales. “My spoken French is okay, but I still find the grammar difficult,” he said. In the meantime, the young man, who speaks Pashto, Dari and French, hopes to find work as an interpreter.

     

    This article is being published as part of 7.7 Billion, an international and collaborative initiative gathering 15 news media outlets from around the world to focus on solutions for social, economic and civic inclusion.

  • Weaving Women into the Fabric of China’s Success

    A young female entrepreneur is using embroidery to transform the fortunes of women in her hometown

     

    When Ma Xiaoxiao was 10 years old, she moved with her parents from the small Chinese village of Daban to Lanzhou, the capital city of Gansu province, where she worked in the restaurant, textile and Internet café industries.

    “When I travelled back and visited our neighbors’ families, to my surprise, it was the same as 20 years ago: when guests visited, the women wouldn’t appear. They were required to take care of the whole family but not themselves,” recalled Ma Xiaoxiao, who is now in her twenties. She made up her mind to do something about it.

    Daban is located in the Dongxiang Autonomous County, where the people are among the poorest and least educated of China’s 55 ethnic minority groups. In 2017, the average annual income was around USD 750, and the average person only received 7.2 years of education. They mainly live an agrarian lifestyle. A conservative mindset restricts the women to staying at home, raising children and doing household chores.

    Dongxiang County is a dry, desolate place, yet out of this desert comes some of China’s most beautiful embroidery. In comparison to the great silk embroidery traditions of southern China, Dongxiang embroidery is less delicate, but more bold and brightly colored.

    Ma Xiaoxiao returned home in 2018 and set up “The 13 Skilled Female Artisans” embroidery factory with the aim of preserving local traditions and liberating Dongxiang women from crippling poverty and crushing family burdens. She felt that this was a good way to help them gain financial independence along with a greater sense of self-worth and accomplishment.

    In order to better understand the uniqueness of her cultural heritage, Ma Xiaoxiao visited the village’s best embroiderer, Tangnu Geiye, now in her 70s. Tangnu Geiye explained to Ma Xiaoxiao that traditionally the Dongxiang people embroidered everything from undergarments to door curtains.

    The old woman showed Ma Xiaoxiao some of the beautiful works that she made in her heyday, including a stunning pillowcase specially prepared for her daughter’s wedding. Light purple, loudspeaker-shaped morning glory flowers were intricately stitched using a special technique unique to Dongxiang embroidery.

    In the old days, Tangnu Geiye joked, a woman who could not sew would not be able to find a husband, but now, with the advent of less labor-intensive machine embroidery, the women only make items for important occasions such as weddings and funerals.

    Many of these works become family heirlooms, passed down from generation to generation. Ma Xiaoxiao’s own family possesses a beautiful century-old pillowcase intricately decorated with the motif of a climbing melon.

    At a local museum, Ma Xiaoxiao saw an exquisite gown around 150 years old that was embroidered with flowers. It made her realize that these traditions were not just a form of handicraft, but works of art. However, these skills were dying out and largely remained hidden from view, often used to decorate and strengthen the insoles of shoes.

    “We cannot be the generation responsible for the disappearance of the Dongxiang people’s embroidery traditions,” she said.

    Ma Xiaoxiao decided to take these hidden patterns and put them on everyday objects such as lanterns, handkerchiefs, pictures and tea coasters. She was determined to make Dongxiang embroidery known as one of the great embroidery traditions of China and at the same time to boost the prospects of women in the community.

    However, her ambitions were not easily realized. Despite an initial investment of around USD 15,000, after just three months she was overdrawn on three credit cards and for the first time in her life experienced a shortage of cash.

    She struggled to find skilled embroiderers. Ma Xiaoxiao’s call that the women leave home to work in her factory and earn a small income was met with deep suspicion. In order to enlist workers, she had to trek through the snow to visit each household bearing gifts to explain her project. One by one the women came until there were over 10 embroiderers, some just 20 years old, some over 60.

    They huddled together on the heated, raised kang bed, chatting and laughing, trying out different designs and techniques, and comparing their skills. Ma Xiaoxiao paid around three dollars apiece for simple, high quality products. By the end of the month, most of the women were earning more than ten times that. It was a tremendous amount for them, and often the first money they had ever earned. Ma Xiaoxiao said that seeing their expressions upon receiving their first salaries made all of the hard work worthwhile.

    The opportunity to earn a steady income transformed these women’s lives. For the first time, they were able to buy their own clothes and makeup, and no longer had to turn to the men in their family for money. It not only gave them financial independence, it gave them confidence and hope. Slowly the word spread and more and more women came to join the team.

    Ma Axiye, 49, was one such woman. She struggled to raise five children on her own after her husband was crippled in an accident. The opportunity to work at Ma Xiaoxiao’s factory gave her much-needed stability and the belief that she could one day buy her youngest son a computer. Before this, a Dongxiang ethnic minority woman living in a small Chinese town would never have been able to realize such a dream.

    Ma Xiaoxiao is part of a new generation of Chinese returning from the cities and transforming their hometowns through entrepreneurship. By providing tax incentives, improved credit availability, business training and technical support such as e-commerce website development, the government is encouraging the growth of small businesses in these neglected rural areas.

    Projects such as Ma Xiaoxiao’s are reviving the local economy in remote areas of China. By preserving and promoting traditional skills, they have become a source of optimism for numerous poor villagers and their families.

     

     

    This article is being published as part of 7.7 Billion, an international and collaborative initiative gathering 15 news media outlets from around the world to focus on solutions for social, economic and civic inclusion.

  • ROYA Mentorship Program, an initiative that has changed the lives of hundreds of underprivileged children in Afghanistan

    Going to school is an unattainable dream for many child laborers, street children and other impoverished children who fight against hunger and poverty. Kara Lozier has changed the lives of hundreds of Afghan street children with her ROYA Mentorship Program. Thanks to it, Mahdi Amini traded in his working clothes for a school uniform and starts his lessons at United World College in India. Freshta Ahmadi, a deprived girl from Bamiyan province, was one of 60 candidates chosen to attend the Global Changemakers Summit in Zurich, Switzerland. And Hakima Amiri is studying at the Desert Academy in the U.S.

    In 2007, Lozier, a 56-year-old American woman, established a charity called ROYA—Resources of Young Afghans. (The word ROYA means dream in the local Dari language.) That led to the ROYA Mentorship Program, launched in 2016 with 10 needy students in Bamyan. The initiative was widely welcomed and soon extended to Kabul, Ghor and Nangarhar provinces. “The goal of the program is to provide financial support for children from impoverished families, to gain knowledge and skills that will help them to break the cycle of poverty in their families,” said Lozier. “With financial support from sponsors around the world, we began to provide students with access to English courses, computer training, and the Internet.”

    She says that child laborers could not commit enough time to studying, and some students were unable to read and write properly in their native language. So the ROYA team made a decision to provide monthly stipends to dozens of child laborers and support hundreds of needy students while they studied at private schools and participated in supplementary learning classes. Lozier said that the initiative also provides other capacity-building programs to help students develop their soft skills.

    ROYA Mentorship Program only supports children living below the poverty line. Other criteria include age (selected students must be school age or high school age), motivation to study and learn new skills, and a commitment to stay in the program all the way to completion. Lozier said, “Many of our students are orphans, former child laborers, or children of drug addicts, disabled and/or jobless parents.”

    ROYA Mentorship Program currently operates in Bamiyan, Kabul and Ghor provinces, with 350 children attending in all. Recently, it completed a one-year English program in Jalalabad. For the students to have access to books, ROYA established four mini libraries – two in Kabul, one in Bamyan, and one in Ghor.

    According to ROYA’s founder, the program first identifies eligible students, then looks for people to sponsor them. “Interested sponsors can review the short biographies of eligible students on our website, choose the student(s) they want to support and begin to make monthly sponsorship payments,” said Lozier. “Sponsors pay an amount that is enough to cover the cost of books, uniforms, tuition, and sometimes transportation.”

    Once ROYA has identified sponsors, the children start attending private schools and language learning centers. In some cases, they attend school for free until a sponsor is found.

    Lozier says that one unexpected achievement is that as students complete their English language diplomas, develop greater leadership skills, boost their confidence, and feel inspired to return the kindness they have received, they become very active leaders for ROYA. Many are currently working as volunteers, helping other children at ROYA as teachers, assistants and more. They have organized art classes, reading clubs and other initiatives.

    When Mahdi Amini was in eighth grade, he left school due to poverty and started to work. Three years ago, he began taking English lessons with ROYA, and for four months he has been teaching English in the Kabul-based ROYA center. He said, “I feel that I have become a useful person in the community. Fortunately, my application has been accepted by United World College and I will go to India in August to continue my studies. I hope by my return to Kabul everything will have changed. I dream of a Kabul where I should not see anyone who, like my past, is looking for work and bread in the streets.”

    Fahima Sultani, who joined ROYA as a student in ninth grade, now works as a program assistant for ROYA and teaches classes. She said, “ROYA helped me to materialize my dream. Now I deeply feel that it is my duty to help out.”

    ROYA Mentorship Program does not depend on donors or governments. Rather, it counts on the kindness and generosity of individual sponsors. In turn, the children whose lives it has transformed are becoming ambassadors of change in their families and communities.

     

    This article is being published as part of 7.7 Billion, an international and collaborative initiative gathering 15 news media outlets from around the world to focus on solutions for social, economic and civic inclusion.

  • Using sports to promote peace and inclusion in Nigeria

    Ranking 148 in the 2018 Global Peace Index, Nigeria suffers an array of violent conflicts and humanitarian crises arising from ethnical marginalization and terrorism, which have killed more than 20,000 people and left about 2.6 million internally displaced in Northern Nigeria alone. In 2016, the long-term clashes between armed herdsmen (Fulani) and farmers (Birom) took about 2,500 lives, displaced over 62,000 people, and led the country to lose USD 13.7 billion in revenue in the affected states, according to former military Head of State Abdulsalami Abubakar.

    In a bid to promote peace and development, Dr. Michael Sodipo, a peace-building expert, founded the Peace Initiative Network (PIN), a non-governmental organization in Kano that uses education and sports to empower youth and women, while reducing tensions between different ethnic groups in the northern region of the country.

    Founded in 2004, PIN concentrates its efforts on three fronts: the Peace Club Project, the Peace Through Sports project and the Youth and Women Empowerment programme. These initiatives seek to address the deep-rooted prejudices and stereotypes between different ethnic minorities that have led to violence, and also to promote social inclusion.

    “The Peace Club project was conceived to deliver peace education to young people in schools, and so far we have been able to reach more than 8,000 students in over 60 schools in the states of Kano and Plateau,” says Sodipo, project coordinator of PIN. “Under this project, PIN has provided school furniture, such as chairs and desks, sewing machines, computer laptops, cameras and voice recorders.”

    Peace Through Sports is a project in which young people in conflict areas of northern Nigeria can use sports as a platform for peacebuilding while learning skills to help them secure employment. “More than 35 football teams in selected Local Government Areas [LGA’s] of Bagwai, Kura, Minjibir, and Metropolitan Kano have received training kits including jerseys, footballs, first aid boxes, stopwatches and whistles,” Sodipo explains.

    The Youth and Women Empowerment programme was conceived in partnership with the British nonprofit Peace Direct to strengthen community resilience to violence through income generation and peacebuilding activities. It operates in two conflict-prone cities – Kano and Jos – and has provided three-month training courses in tailoring, shoe- and bag-making, phone repair, hairdressing, and vulcanizing to around 300 women, so they can start their own sustainable micro-businesses.

    At the end, PIN provided a kit to each beneficiary, for her specific area of training. Women who learnt tailoring were given sewing and weaving machines, for example, while “those that acquired hairdressing skills were each given a hairdryer, a head-washing basin and other tools, and those who learnt vulcanizing were provided tools and a generator set,” Sodipo says. Several youth and women without sustainable incomes also received pepper grinding machines for commercial use, to help them earn money.

    “The beneficiaries have been empowered, and have moved away from potential recruitment by extremist groups to become functioning members of their communities,” Sodipo notes. “The programme’s impact is that they now have the basic skills to earn a living, which puts them in a position to be active agents of resistance to conflict in their communities. To support the project beneficiaries’ various micro-businesses, PIN helped pay one year’s rent for more than 40 of its trainees, while many others were given cash to grow their businesses,” he explains.

    In addition to the peace education and sports programmes, PIN also organises public lectures, seminars, workshops and conferences on conflict resolution and peace, advocating for the inclusion of peace studies in the school curriculum at all levels of education in Nigeria.

    The nonprofit also reaches out to persons with disabilities to ensure equity, inclusiveness and social cohesion through weekly sports and peace education sessions. “PIN started the para-soccer team in 2009 and so far, 264 participants have benefitted from the program – mostly polio victims, who use a locally-made skating seat and their bare hands to control and shoot the ball,” Sodipo explains. He adds that 25 members of the para-soccer club in Kano, who were trained in fashion design and hairstyling, were also recently given work equipment (sewing machines and accessories, power generator sets, clippers and clipper sterilizers) to enhance their livelihoods and spark entrepreneurship.

    “We are optimistic that our projects will be a tool of friendship development among young people from different ethnic, cultural and religious backgrounds,” Sodipo says. “Including other groups into our programmes [such as people with disabilities] will help eradicate stigmatization and build meaningful interactions among the diverse groups of our communities.”

     

    This article is being published as part of 7.7 Billion, an international and collaborative initiative gathering 15 news media outlets from around the world to focus on solutions for social, economic and civic inclusion.