women & girls in danger in flooded Pakistan - we support!

VAM supports the initiative taken by Women for Water and Gender Concerns to specifically collect funds to support the women and girls in Pakistan.
Of course it is great that the development cooperation organisations in the Netherlands and elsewhere are supporting Pakistan and collecting funds for that. Again though, the women are the last to get dedicated funds to do their work - altough experience in Surinam and Sri Lanka has shown that they are very effective and have "an eye" for the specific needs of women.
Thats why we urge everybody to support the "people to people" campaign directly; we will assist were we can with our expertise.

more info; http://womenshelpinghands.blogspot.com/

Centre de Formation des Femmes, Bandiagara Mali

The Board of VAM has been approached by the Stichting Djenné to work together on the realization of a women's vocational school in Bandiagara, a city in the South-east part of Mali.

On behalf of VAM, Marie Antionette visited Bandiagara in April 2010.
Important results of the visit and the meetings held there were:
- the founding of a formal Foundation for the project - all 76 local (women's) NGO's participating
- the start of a steering group for the project, which includes the local and regional authorities
- expression of large support by the local, regional and national government, resulting e.g. in a gift of the land needed for the building.
Most of the women in Bandigara have had very little formal education.
The aim of the Steering Group (and the Foundation) is to have the women's vocational school up-and-running in two years.
The school will provide different vocational training courses. The school will include a shop, a nurcery (gardens), a restaurant, ICT equipement -  all aimed at creating new economic activities that generate income for the women. The school will be build together with and (partly by) the women themselves.

The steps taken so far:
- the interviews with the local women and local businesses to access the labourmarket perspective have started
- the design of the buidling (modular and incl. sustainable energy, water, (eco-/ composting) sanitation) is all most finalised
- fundraising has started and generated some first positive results

The first financial support has been provided by Impulsis.
More news (also in Dutch) on the website.

Mali drinking water: next phase

Sylvia Hooy and Lesha Witmer, together with Luud Roos of Soroptimist visited the city of Bamako in Mali this February to talk to local water committees, local authorities and ministries and discuss the project the drinking water project that has been developed so far.
We discussed the sites with some of the local women and heard their vieuws on the plans.




flason kulubali, representative of the women in quartier N'gomi "new"




women in N'gomi, community II of Bamako





VAM and other partners signed a Memorandum of understanding and cooperation with the Ministries and Municipalities.

Meeting with the Minister of women, family to sign the MoU






More information to follow on the website (www.stichtingvam.nl).

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.