Visit to south Sudan to empower!

On behalf of VAM, I visited south Sudan last February.

The VAM foundation and BKLVA in the district Kajo-Keji are working together in this project. The purpose is to establish a centre for vocational training of women; the centre will also be provided with new drinking water and sanitation facilities.

I found a large number of very motivated women to work on this project, organized in the regional and local women's organization. The "women action group" is leading in developing this project and works closely with the local authorities and the gender coordinator of Kajo-Keji county; they are stimuleting and supporting this project.

During my visit I got a very good impression of how to set-up this project and support the local women. It is clear that there is a lot of support of local women and authorities for setting up this training centre and to create safe water and sanitation provisions.

We will work on finalizing the very ambitious program for this centre, which will contain different subsequential and paralel projects over a period of time. We will keep you posted.

Mali and Botswana: Soroptimist Mali go for water!

As mentioned before, VAM got involved in the "Soroptimist go for water" project in Mali.

Sylvia Hooy joined Paul de Reus and Luud Roos on a trip to Mali to get acquinted and see the locations with her own eyes.

A week later Paul and ADAMA Sidibé, Soroptimist Bamako, joined Lesha in Botswana for the Regional Working Conference of Women for Water and discuss the Mali-case with other women involved in this type of projects.

Paul send the following report to all participants:

"Having enjoyed lots of African hospitality again in both Mali and Botswana, I want to start with the expression of many thanks to Mrs. Adama Sidibé Troaré and Mr. Sekou Traoré for their combined successful effort to organize a further step in the “Soroptimist Mali go for water” project.
It has been a pleasure to find all involved, on both governmental as well as users level working hard to bring our initial plan to a fruitful end.

During week 6 we have had meetings with the Malinese Ministries of Health (Mr. Maiga), Water and Women Affairs (Hon. Mrs. Maïga Sina Damba), as well as with the Majors of the Departments II and VI (Mr. Souleymane Dagon).
Furthermore, we met members of Eau-Vive in Mali (Mr. Alain Xavier Ky-Zerbo) as well as members of the Malinese Soroptimists. To get our footing we have visited several sites in Bamako to see the daily practice of water vendor ship as well as the degrading difficulties in fetching and transporting drinking water. Luud has made a foto impression of this trip.

Week 7 was spend in Botswana on the Women for Water Partnership conference in Gaborone. During this week contacts were made to may other women’s organisations e.g. from Nigeria (Mrs. Priscilla Achakpa, Women Environmental Programme), Lesotho, Sri Lanka (Mrs. Kusum Athukorala, NetWwater).
These groups showed preparedness to help and advise our project in political and practical matters.

At present we now have finalized the stage of getting all governmental and non governmental parties interested.
The next phase will be the set up of a meticulous plan for the sensibillization, acceptation and implementation of the Naïade technology at end users level.
In this phase we have to pay explicit attention to the three groups involved: the water vendors, - since they be faced with possible loss of income- the urban population - which does have access to more sources of water, both public and private - and the rural population, which does have typical social and cultural backgrounds to their water sources.

Since the African tradition in general connects women, young female and girls to water, the intensive cooperation and support of various women’s organization is required for this stage.
During a meeting in the next few weeks, a brief look-back to the Mali and Botswana trip will be given by the participants, as well as an overview of the present status. Furthermore, the detailed assignments to the various participants will be discussed."

No doubt you will find more information on Mali and the Botswana conference on this weblog in the next few days.

In the mean time, Marie Antionette is on her way to Sudan.

new Blog and new adventures

As some of our "fans" all ready know, VAM goes places. Together with our friends from the Soroptimist International Europe we are assisting in developing a new program on water & sanitation in Mali. Sylvia is going there in February to "get connected" and find out what work has to be done.

Lesha at the same time will be in Istanbul for the preparations of the World Water Forum in her capacity of steering committee member of Women for Water Partnership (VAM is one of the partners).

A very good reason to start this new Blog,- to keep track of our own "movements" and keep you posted on developments and "adventures".
We on the other hand appreciate reactions from our readers.