Celebrating Womanhood 2008 April 4, 2009 No Comments
The first Celebrating Womanhood Regional Awards encapsulating the 7 SAARC countries concluded successfully on October 20, 2008. The awards were presented on the same night as the Celebrating Womanhood Navadevi Awards.
Celebrating Womanhood is based on recognizing the strengths of women and celebrating their achievements. The Regional Awards aimed to encourage sharing and learning from the experiences, skills, knowledge and wisdom of the women who have pressed on in their quest to create opportunities despite adversities. The recipients were chosen on the basis of their contribution to their respective area of work in recent years.
Sri Lanka: Happily Immune From AIDS? No Comments
AIDS was a mere speck on the horizon when the World AIDS Day was first observed in Sri Lanka in 1990. At the time there was a sense of complacency about AIDS in Sri Lanka. Though other South Asian countries were feeling the urgency of the scourge, Sri Lanka seemed to be happily immune.
However, by the middle of the nineties complacency began to give way to concern as a gradual increase in numbers of HIV infected persons began to emerge. A range of factors contributed to this increase. Chief among these was the burgeoning tourist trade and increasing incidence of homosexuality, growing number of sex workers in the areas where armed forces were stationed and in major transport routes. There was also the low use of condoms; high and growing number of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs); and high levels of mobility, displacement of population and sexual violence due to the ethnic conflict(1) and particular vulnerability of young women in the Free Trade Zones (FTZ).
Canadian Community Economic Development Network Conference 1 Comment
Motivated by the issue Rooting Development in the Community, Uniterra volunteers from Guatemala, Botswana, Vietnam and Sri Lanka participated in the Annual National Conference of The Canadian Community Economic Development Network (CCEDNet), held in Vancouver this past March 15-18.
The Canadian Community Economic Development Network Community economic development and North-South dialogue.
Practitioners of community economic development (CED) from the countries of the global South have much to learn from their Canadian peers in CED—and vice versa. Interesting social economy initiatives are being implemented in the countries of the South, initiatives which may prove rich in lessons for Canadian CED practitioners and organizations.
LiveliHood Forum No Comments
We Can and WDC No Comments
“The award I accept today belongs not so much to me as to my colleagues who steadfastly help multitudes of women find a better life – one free of fear and violence.” These were Pearl Stephen’s words when she was honoured with the ZONTA award for two decades of tireless work to help women in distress in Sri Lanka.
Sixty-four-year old Pearl Stephen is the founder and coordinator of Women’s Development Centre (WDC), an organisation that works for the welfare of women. Situated in Kandy in central Sri Lanka, 120 kilometres from Colombo, it has a staff of 150 today; 95 per cent of whom are women. Most of these women have suffered some kind of violence.
The WDC offices are at present spread all over the centre, north and east of the country. It has managed to effectively network with the government, communities and a variety of organisations to support its efforts and also to step up the reach and impact of its work.