Seed funding for social entrepreneurs

Visionaries Wanted!

• Do you have an incredible, new idea that could change your community, country, or world? • Are you an entrepreneur who won’t rest until your idea has been brought to life? Or a leader who has recently started an organization to do just that?

If so, apply for an Echoing Green Fellowship. You could receive up to $90,000 in seed funding and support to launch a new organization that turns your innovative idea for social change into action.

Follow in the footsteps of the founders of Teach For America, City Year, and over 400 other social change organizations and apply online by December 3, 2007.

Watch the video: http://www.echoinggreen.org/video Find out whether you qualify: http://www.echoinggreen.org/shouldyouapply Apply online: https://apply.echoinggreen.org Questions? Contact us at apply@echoinggreen.org.

Angry Faces on World AIDS Day 2007

Alongside World Aids Day on December 1, Médecins sans Frontières / Doctors Without Borders (MSF) has launched the “Angry Faces” campaign. The campaign’s goal is to raise awareness regarding the lack of access for millions of people to HIV/AIDS treatment.

Free comprehensive care for HIV treatment must be provided to Nigerians

Médecins Sans Frontières calls for increased commitment in the fight against HIV/AIDS

Lagos, Nigeria Published on 30 November 2007

On the occasion of this year’s World AIDS Day on December 1, the international medical humanitarian organization Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) / Doctors Without Borders, calls for increased commitment from all health care providers in Nigeria to provide comprehensive care to HIV/AIDS patients. While the government’s response to the pandemic has improved since it started providing free drug treatment nationwide in 2006, the level of medical services available and accessible by people living with HIV/AIDS is still dramatically inadequate. The Nigerian Ministry of Health should also improve their leadership in order to provide wider and more adequate treatment solutions.

Although the national treatment programs, started in 2001, half of all patients still do not have access to life-saving treatment. According to the Nigerian National Agency for the Control of HIV/AIDS (NACA), it was estimated that 500,000 people would need treatment in Nigeria by December 2005, but as of June 2007 only 170,000 people are on treatment nationwide.

The current treatment services available in the country must include a free comprehensive treatment program. Comprehensive HIV/AIDS program include continuous psychosocial support for the patients, education on how to adhere to the treatment, nutritional support, treatment of opportunistic infections, a constant monitoring of treatment progression/failure as well as adapted treatment protocols for specific patient groups such as children, tuberculosis co-infected patients or pregnant women. As MSF Head of mission Ton Berg explains: “While we acknowledge that anti-retroviral drugs are now free in treatment centers nationwide, the very few opportunistic infections drugs where available are inadequate to meet the needs of patients. The treatment of opportunistic infections is an integral part of comprehensive treatment of people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA) and is critical to the success of any HIV/AIDS care and support programme.”

Treatment centres must also be decentralized, to be made available to as many patients as possible, with appropriate and well-trained human resources. Adequate numbers of qualified health care workers are still grossly lacking in most treatment centers across the country. In many instances, this has lead to patients spending almost entire days in clinics awaiting treatment.

Since 2003, Médecins Sans Frontières has been providing free anti-retroviral treatment and comprehensive care to HIV patients at the General hospital Lagos (GHL). As of September 2007, over 1300 patients were registered for treatment at GHL through MSF’s program. In October 2007, MSF started to handover uncomplicated cases of HIV patients to the GHL. MSF also operates Port Harcourt’s Teme hospital, opened in 2005 to provide accessible emergency services and surgery for people who otherwise may not be able to afford health care.

More info at www.msf.ca

Abana : Rwandan children living with HIV tell their stories

“Abana” means “children” in the Kininyarwanda language of Rwanda. MSF treats young people living with HIV, who are now coming of age and sexually identifying in a country where stigma is high, and their very existence is a reminder of the country’s troubled past. See their art-therapy drawings, hear their voices, and watch their video interviews at http://www.msf.ca/abana/

Free comprehensive care for HIV treatment must be provided to Nigerians

Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) / Doctors Without Borders calls for increased commitment in the fight against HIV/AIDS.

On the occasion of this year’s World AIDS Day on December 1, the international medical humanitarian organization Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) calls for increased commitment from all health care providers in Nigeria to provide comprehensive care to HIV/AIDS patients. While the government’s response to the pandemic has improved since it started providing free drug treatment nationwide in 2006, the level of medical services available and accessible by people living with HIV/AIDS is still dramatically inadequate. The Nigerian Ministry of Health should also improve their leadership in order to provide wider and more adequate treatment solutions.

Full article: http://www.msf.ca/en/news/newsreleases/2007/113007_wadnigeria.html

Relatives Seek Justice as Peru’s Largest Mass Grave is Exhumed

AdvocacyNet
News Bulletin 141
*****

June 4, 2008, Putis, Peru: The exhumation of Peru's largest mass grave has opened a window on Peru's shadowy war against terrorism in the Andes, and encouraged indigenous families who lost relatives to demand justice and reparations.
 
The exhumation was completed last Thursday at the remote village of Putis, high in the Peruvian Andes. Braving freezing conditions and drug traffickers, a team from the Peruvian Forensic Anthropology Team (EPAF) spent two weeks extracting almost 60 skeletons and the remains of about 10 more bodies from a shallow grave.
 
Ash Kosiewicz, a Peace Fellow from the Advocacy Project (AP) volunteering with EPAF this summer, and Iain Guest, Executive Director of AP, spent several days at the site.
 
The Putis exhumation is the largest of its kind in Peru's history. Jose Pablo Baraybar, the director of EPAF, predicted that it would accelerate efforts to investigate the fate of more than 15,000 Peruvians who disappeared between 1982 and 2000. Most of the victims are thought to have been buried in clandestine graves, but only 505 had been retrieved before last week.
 
Putis is located in the province of Ayacucho in southern Peru, which bore the brunt of a brutal conflict between the Peruvian Army and Shining Path guerrillas. The victims were Quechua-speaking Indians who were isolated and marginalized, making it hard for their families to lobby for justice.
 
Identifying the dead, Mr Baraybar said, would help them to claim the rights held by other Peruvians. "They have to be assisted to recover their citizenship and use the same tools that the state gives all of us to advocate."
 
Last week's exhumation may have begun the process. Gerardo Fernandez Mendoza, who heads an association of 250 Putis relatives, told a press conference that 430 victims were buried in 14 clandestine graves in the area and that once the bodies are recovered reparations must be paid. "We need health centers and schools. Our livelihood was taken away from us," he said.
 
The Putis massacre occurred after hundreds of villagers were displaced from their homes in late 1984 and rounded up by soldiers. A group of 123 villagers were taken to Putis and shot on December 13, 1984. The largest grave, which was uncovered last week, is thought to contain 76 bodies.
 
The exhumation recovered over 70 bullet casings, including some in the grave which may have come from an officer's gun. This suggests that victims were shot at close range. Many were children, including babies.
 
About 40 relatives walked for hours through the mountains last Thursday to visit the gravesite and provide DNA samples that will be matched with the bones recovered by EPAF. Many relatives wept at their first sight of the grave and pointed to fragments of clothing that seemed familiar. They said a communal prayer before leaving.
 
Guillermina Quispe Coronado, who lost 13 family members in the Putis massacre, said she was distressed to see the remains but hopeful that her relatives can now be buried in peace. "We thought that no one was interested," she said.
 
The relatives are determined to seek justice, and there was at least one eyewitness to the massacre. But any criminal investigation by the prosecutor's office will probably meet resistance from the Peruvian Army, which has refused to provide the names of those operating around Putis in late 1984.
 
Meanwhile, EPAF expects to resume exhumations within the month at four other gravesites in Putis. The work will likely become harder as winter approaches, and security is also a concern. Last week, a firefight was narrowly avoided when a group of armed drug traffickers passed by the EPAF compound at night and almost ran into an army patrol.
 
EPAF's team has drawn praise for working in such difficult conditions. Cristina Olazabal, a deputy prosecutor in Ayacucho, described the exhumation as "professional and disciplined."
 
Greg Maggio, a senior official from the US State Department who also attended the exhumation, praised the sensitivity with which EPAF dealt with family members. Mr Maggio works in the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, which funded the Putis exhumation.

Palestinian Ibdaa dance troupe

The Ibdaa dance troupe remembers 1948

Inside the Damascus gate

A marketplace inside the gate at Damascus

Residents of the Gaza strip

A woman and her daughter in Gaza.

Family of the Gaza strip

A family in the Gaza strip

Citizens at a Bethlehem checkpoint

Citizens waiting at a Bethlehem security checkpoint.

Ramallah Protester

Nepalese woman making a stone bowl

Nepalese woman making a stone bowl

Three balligaray in Nepal

Three balligaray

Nepalese women carrying stones

Nepalese women carrying stones.

Soldiers and civilians in Nepal

Soldiers and civilians living side-by-side in Nepal

Nepalese children at school

Nepalese children at a private school

Priest in Nepal

Priest in Nepal

Woman at a fruit stand in Nepal

Woman at a nepalese fruit stand

Soldier and civilians side-by-side in Nepal