Clashes were reported in tightly controlled oil producer Libya, sandwiched between Egypt and Tunisia, while new protests erupted in Bahrain, Yemen and Iran on Wednesday.

The latest demonstrations against long-serving rulers came after U.S. President Barack Obama, commenting on the overthrow of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, declared: “The world is changing…if you are governing these countries, you’ve got to get out ahead of change, you can’t be behind the curve.”

With young people able to watch pro-democracy uprisings in other countries on satellite television or the Internet, and to communicate with like-minded activists on social networks hard for the secret police to control, governments across the region have grounds to fear contagion.

Hundreds of opponents of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, in power since 1969, clashed with police and government supporters in the eastern city of Benghazi overnight, a witness and local media said.

Reports from the port city, 1,000 km (600 miles) east of the capital Tripoli, said protesters armed with stones and petrol bombs set fire to vehicles and fought with police in a rare outbreak of unrest in the oil-exporting country.

The riot in Libya’s second city was sparked by the arrest of human rights activist Fethi Tarbel, who has worked to free political prisoners, Quryna newspaper said.

Gaddafi’s opponents used the Facebook social network to call for protests across Libya on Thursday.

In a possible concession to the protesters, Libya will free 110 members of the banned militant organization the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group from Tripoli’s notorious Abu Salim prison on Wednesday, another human rights activist said.

POLITICAL, ECONOMIC CONCESSIONS

In Yemen, a 21-year old protester died from gunshot wounds after fierce clashes broke out between police and demonstrators in the southern port town of Aden, his father said, as unrest spread across the Arabian Peninsula state.

Mohammed Ali Alwani was among two people hit as police fired shots into the air to try to break up around 500 protesters.

In the Yemeni capital Sanaa at least 800 anti-government protesters marched against President Ali Abdullah Saleh, a U.S. ally in the fight against al Qaeda.

In power for more than 30 years, Saleh has pledged to step down when his term expires in 2013 and offered dialogue with the opposition, but radical protesters are demanding he go now.

In Bahrain, protesters poured into the capital of the Gulf island kingdom, Manama, for a third successive day to mourn a demonstrator killed in clashes with security forces on Tuesday.

The emirate has a history of protest over economic hardship, the lack of political freedom and sectarian discrimination by the Sunni rulers against the Shi’ite majority.

Some 2,000 protesters demanding a change of government were encamped at a major road junction in Manama, seeking to emulate rallies on Cairo’s Tahrir Square that toppled Mubarak.

In Iran, supporters and opponents of the hardline Islamic system clashed in Tehran during a funeral procession for a student shot at an anti-government rally two days ago, state broadcaster IRIB reported.

Both sides claimed Sanee Zhaleh was a martyr to their cause and blamed the other for his death.

Monday’s rallies in Tehran and several other Iranian cities were the first staged by the Green pro-democracy movement since security forces crushed huge protests in the months after President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s disputed 2009 re-election.

Rulers in several countries, drawing lessons from events in Tunisia and Egypt, have announced political changes and moved to cut prices of basic foodstuffs and raise spending on job creation in efforts to pre-empt spreading unrest.

SOCIAL NEEDS

Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika promised to lift a 19-year-old state of emergency soon and has acted to reduce the cost of staple foods in the North African oil and gas exporter.

Authorities deployed an estimated 30,000 police in Algiers on Saturday to prevent a banned pro-democracy march. Several hundred protesters defied the ban and dozens were detained.

A coalition of civil society and human rights groups and an opposition party vowed afterwards to demonstrate every Saturday until the military-backed government is removed.

Morocco, where the main banned Islamist opposition movement warned last week that “autocracy” would be swept away unless there were deep democratic reforms, announced on Tuesday it would almost double state subsidies to counter an increase in commodity prices and address social needs.

Syria, controlled by the Baath Party for the last 50 years, released a veteran Islamist activist on Tuesday after he went on hunger strike following his arrest 11 days ago for calling for Egyptian-style mass protests, human rights activists said.

Jordan’s King Abdullah has sacked his prime minister and appointed a new government led by a former general who promised to widen public freedom in response to anti-government protests.

Countries with oil and gas wealth such as Saudi Arabia and Algeria appear better placed than poorer countries like Egypt and Tunisia to buy social peace.

By Paul Taylor (Editing by Angus MacSwan)
Yahoo! News

She pledged to expand the Obama administration’s efforts to foil Internet repression in autocratic states.

In an impassioned speech on Internet freedom, Clinton said the administration would spend $25 million this year on initiatives designed to protect bloggers and help them get around curbs like the Great Firewall of China, the gagging of social media sites in Iran, Cuba, Syria, Vietnam and Myanmar as well as Egypt’s recent unsuccessful attempt to thwart anti-government protests by simply pulling the plug on online communication.

She also said the State Department, which last week launched Twitter feeds in Arabic and Farsi to connect with populations throughout the Arab world and Iran, would broaden the reach of its online mini-appeals for human rights and democracy by creating accounts cater to audiences in China, Russia and India in their native languages.

Clinton challenged authoritarian leaders and regimes to embrace online freedom and the demands of cyber dissidents or risk being toppled by tides of unrest, similar to what has happened in Egypt and Tunisia to longtime presidents Hosni Mubarak and Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.

“History has shown us that repression often sows the seeds for revolution down the road,” she said. “Those who clamp down on Internet freedom may be able to hold back the full impact of their people’s yearnings for a while, but not forever.”

“Leaders worldwide have a choice to make,” Clinton said. “They can let the Internet in their countries flourish, and take the risk that the freedoms it enables will lead to a greater demand for political rights. Or they can constrict the Internet, choke the freedoms it naturally sustains, and risk losing all the economic and social benefits that come from a networked society.”

“We believe that governments who have erected barriers to Internet freedom – whether they’re technical filters or censorship regimes or attacks on those who exercise their rights to expression and assembly online — will eventually find themselves boxed in,” she said. “They will face a dictator’s dilemma, and will have to choose between letting the walls fall or paying the price to keep them standing — which means both doubling down on a losing hand by resorting to greater oppression, and enduring the escalating opportunity cost of missing out on the ideas that have been blocked.”

She said fighting restrictions would not be easy but stressed that the U.S. is committed to ensuring the Internet remains an open forum for discourse.

“While the rights we seek to protect are clear, the various ways that these rights are violated are increasingly complex,” Clinton said.

The U.S. will “help people in oppressive Internet environments get around filters, stay one step ahead of the censors, the hackers and the thugs who beat them up or imprison them for what they say online,” she said in the speech to students at The George Washington University. She countered criticism leveled at the administration for not investing in a single technological fix to overcome government controls, saying there was “no silver bullet” and “no app” to do that. Instead, she said, the U.S. would take a multi-pronged approach.

Clinton’s remarks, her second major address on the topic of Internet freedom since becoming America’s top diplomat, come amid a groundswell of protests around the Middle East that have been abetted by online agitators using social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube to organize anti-government demonstrations from Algeria to Yemen, Syria, Iran and Jordan.

Despite the Obama administration’s own problems with an unfettered Internet, most notably the release of hundreds of thousands of sensitive diplomatic documents by the WikiLeaks website, Clinton said the U.S. is unwavering in its commitment to cyber freedom, even as it seeks to prosecute online criminals and terrorists.

She drew a distinction between attempts to prosecute WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange for publishing the material along with the suspected leaker, and measures taken by repressive regimes to crack down on opponents.

“The WikiLeaks incident began with a theft just as if it had been executed by smuggling papers in a briefcase,” she said. “The fact that Wikileaks used the Internet is not the reason we criticized it. Wikileaks does not challenge our commitment to Internet freedom.”

Clinton argued that the Internet is neither good nor bad, a force for neither liberation nor repression. It is the sum of what its users make it, she says.

Reprinted from Yahoo! News – AP

Hours after the government in Egypt shut down that country’s access to the Internet, hackers around the world started banding together to craft some kind of work-around. And one group claims to be only a day or two away from delivering a partial solution.

Their initiative is called the Open Mesh Project, and it began when Shervin Pishevar, an Internet entrepreneur in Palo Alto, Calif., posted a message on Twitter calling for help shipping software into Egypt that could turn regular laptops into low-cost Internet routers, forming what’s known as a “mesh network,” where each computer can route messages along to the others.

Since then, engineers from around the world have been spreading the word and kicking in to help. The mesh network would at least let people communicate with others located close to them. The laptops can all talk to each other. If one goes out, messages just find another way to zip through the cluster of machines.

“This would at least let people build an ad hoc mobile network,” Pishevar said. “At the very least, people inside Egypt will be able to communicate with each other and organize.”

Also, if someone in the mesh network manages to obtain a connection to the outside world, that person can share his or her connection with others on the network.

In a similar team effort, engineers from Google and Twitter have figured out a way to let people in Egypt send tweets over any phone, either landline or mobile. The technology converts spoken words in a voice-mail message into text messages that can be sent over Twitter.

There are still a few ways to get onto the Internet in Egypt, even though as of Monday the government announced it had shut down Noor, the one ISP that had continued to operate even after last Thursday’s shutdown.

Some people are using landline connections and dial-up modems to call ISPs in other countries and get onto the Internet. Still others are using satellite connections.

Pishevar posted his call to arms on Twitter soon after the Egyptian government shut down the Internet last Thursday, Jan. 27. One of the first to respond was Gary Jay Brooks, who runs a tech company in Traverse City, Mich.

Brooks put up a website and started fielding messages from engineers around the world. He says he also been in touch with wireless engineers inside Egypt who could help distribute and install mesh- networking software.

A team of engineers in the United States has “pieces and parts” of software that could be put together to create a mesh-networking program that would be easy for regular people to install and use, says Brooks. “In less than 48 hours, we can put a program together and distribute it via CDs or USB thumb drives,” he says.

Mesh networking is an old idea. Oddly enough, the low-cost XO Laptop built by the One Laptop Per Child organization—the so-called $100 laptop—was designed with built-in mesh networking. The idea with the XO machine was that many kids using those laptops would be out in rural areas without reliable Internet access. But they could at least connect with each other. And, if at least one person in a village had an Internet connection, everyone could share it.
OLPC has shipped XO machines to Egypt, but a spokeswoman for the group said there is no program taking place now to use those machines to connect people during the Internet blackout.

But there other ways to make a mesh network without building it into laptops. Pishevar received an email from a team of engineers in Canada who have designed a miniature networking router, about the size of a brick, that contains mesh-networking software. “They heard about what we were doing and reached out to us—it’s exactly what I was envisioning,” Pishevar says.

The product they’ve been working on is a mobile router, small enough to fit into a backpack. “You could have a number of these routers in backpacks or in cars moving around the city or mounted on rooftops—and with these you could create a kind of secondary Internet, one that would not be blockable,” he says.

Pishevar said he needs about $1 million in funding to start manufacturing the routers, and could have them ready to go in three or four months. He says he’s already received a funding commitment from a venture capitalist, though he did not want to identify the investor. “It’s all moving so fast. It’s like a startup. It’s all organized via Twitter, and it’s all volunteers,” he says.

Presumably Egypt will have reopened Internet access before these little routers are ready to go. But Pishevar hopes to build them anyway and distribute them in countries with repressive governments—he mentioned Iran, Syria, and Yemen—to prevent something like the current situation in Egypt from happening somewhere else.

Pishevar, 36, was born in Iran and escaped with his family 30 years ago in the wake of the Iranian revolution. He attended the University of California, Berkeley, and became an Internet entrepreneur. He has started several companies and now runs a Web videogame company called Social Gaming Network.

Pishevar says his childhood experience in Iran is what got him motivated to do something about the situation in Egypt. “I’m an American,” he says. “I’m a child of war. I remember Saddam dropping bombs in the Iran-Iraq War. Others have been through much worse than I have, but that defined my ideas around freedom.”

He wants to ship mesh-networking technology into “any country where there is dictatorship,” he says. “My dream is that in my lifetime we can get rid of dictatorships—I want to eradicate dictators from our planet.”

The good news is that thousands of geeks and hackers and engineers from around the planet apparently agree with him.

This article originally appeared on The Daily Beast.
Reprinted from Newsweek

Editor’s Note

It’s a new year, a new decade, and a new day for Peace X Peace! A lot has been cooking behind the scenes since our last issue. With this first 2011 PeaceTimes we’re serving up three fresh new initiatives: Connection Point, Take Action, and Generation Peace.

Connection Point directly addresses what our founder Patricia Smith Melton has called “the world’s wound”: the tragic misunderstanding that too often characterizes relationships between the Arab and Muslim world and the West. Both are vast, and vastly diverse, complex entities, but we’re not daunted. We believe that the best way to embrace that complexity, to get from stereotypes to shared understanding, is person by person, voice by voice, and peace by peace.

Take Action is CEO Kim Weichel’s monthly column on advocacy issues of critical concern to women and all who love peace. This month she introduces our inside role in developing the United States’ plan to implement UNSCR 1325 on Women, Peace, and Security. Future columns will address the upcoming annual meeting of the Commission on the Status Women and the International Violence against Women Act.

Generation Peace welcomes and acknowledges the peacebuilders of the future and provides a forum for their distinctive voices. This month’s column is by young staffer Abby Smith, who manages the initiative. Next month’s might be by YOU. Speak up! We’re all ears.

- Mary Liepold, Editor in Chief

When I began working on the International Day of Peace at World Peace Emerging, I kept bumping into Dr. Jane’s giant peace doves. Photos of them were popping up through many of the other peace organizations, and I found that Dr. Jane was involved with nearly everybody who is working for peace. If you look around, you’ll find her signing the Declaration of Interdependence at We The World, or speaking at the UN’s Peace Day activities as a Messenger of Peace.

Meanwhile, Dr. Goodall has quietly been making change on a very grand scale, without fanfare. She has been
teaching youth from preschool through college to take action to help others. Her Roots and Shoots clubs are making change in almost 100 countries. These study groups in schools, learn respect for all living things and how to work to make the world a better place for people, animals and the environment.

Groups have access to one another through the Roots and Shoots website and many collaborate across continents. Below are a few reports that demonstrate the powerful impact these groups are making – each a small contribution that united with 8000 others translates into massive change. These youth will go on to be leaders who create a better world through their professions as adults. They will influence others and set new precedents in policy and procedure in every industry.

Dr. Goodall is an amazing example of how far reaching the passion of one person can be. You can find or form a Roots and Shoots Club in your area through the R&S website. These are a few of the Roots & Shoots club projects (excerpted from www.RootsandShoots.org).

Photos are random and not necessarily from the country mentioned below:

TANZANIA
In 1991, 16 local teenagers met with Dr. Jane Goodall on her back porch in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania. They were eager to discuss a range of problems they knew about from first-hand experience that caused them deep concern. Their discussion covered many topics that weren’t in their school curriculum including pollution in the city, deforestation in the mountains, the welfare of domestic animals and the future of wild animals including Dr. Jane’s threatened chimpanzees. Dr. Jane was impressed by their compassion, their energy and their desire to develop a grassroots style solution to problems. Although Dr. Jane was involved in their meetings, the project was carried out totally by the teens. This first–ever Roots & Shoots project was local: educating villagers about more humane treatment of chickens at home and in the region’s markets. It was a small program, but encompassed all the hallmarks of what makes Roots & Shoots so special even today: youth-driven projects fueled by knowledge, compassion and action.

NORTH CAROLINA
A Roots and Shoots group in North Carolina learned about a Roots & Shoots group on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. Poverty on the reservation is some of the worst in the United States, and a Roots & Shoots group of youth there were struggling to plant community gardens without tools or money for supplies. The North Carolina group gathered donations of tools from local vendors, raised $2000 through fundraising efforts and even received a vegetable oil powered school bus to make the trip to South Dakota. After their visit and support, there are flourishing gardens on the Pine Ridge reservation and the youth in North Carolina are gathering information and canning supplies to help their Pine Ridge friends preserve their harvest for winter.

KENYA
Erasto Njavike began as a Roots & Shoots club member and now, 15 years later, coordinates more than 1,600 Roots & Shoots groups in Tanzania. He will be part of the ASK Speaker Curriculum Program, where 110 Maasai boys and girls ages 6-10 will discuss environmental protection, health and wellness, wildlife and habitat conservation and ethnic and cultural diversity. Each lecture will be videotaped and made into a documentary that ASK will take around to nearby villages and schools. ASK hopes that this speaker series will help expand local school curriculums to include basic lessons of conservation, ecology and tourism. The cost of the speaker curriculum is $100,000 (USD). The ASK staff have already raised $25,000 (USD), and are still accepting donations. www.askenya.org/donate.html

WISCONSIN
The Tomah High School Roots & Shoots club had a great school year 2007-08. They raised $5400 for the Special Olympics with their Polar Plunge where contestants braved the ice cold waters of the Black River. They collected 1300 pounds of pet food for their local Monroe Country Animal Shelter. They raised money for Habitat for Humanity, and attended their regional Roots & Shoots Conference where they got to take some classes from their mentor, Dr. Jane Goodall.

CHINA
After the earthquake at Longmenshan School, the Roots & Shoots flag was recovered and group meetings reinstated, though at least one member was lost in the quake. The Roots & Shoots Chengdu Office is now working to meet some of the immediate needs, such as clothing and shoes for the teachers and students in Longmenshan and desks, chairs and books for another of their partner schools in the Shuangliu Earthquake area. They are working with the local education bureaus to help link them with the latest technologies to equip the new school buildings with green technology. They also are working with the local forestry bureau to plant species that will complement the local biodiversity and help rebuild panda habitat and that of many other rare species in this intensely diverse area.

COLORADO
Mark Bekoff, as part of the Roots & Shoots program, has been working at the Boulder County Jail over the past eight years. He teaches animal behavior, conservation biology and animal and environmental ethics to the men living at the jail. He notes, “The discussions the men and I have are extremely interesting and wide-ranging, and it thrills me how outspoken and informed these men are about important issues.” Many of these men go on to do meaningful work when they leave the prison, using the skills and knowledge they received through Roots and Shoots.

CALIFORNIA – MEXICO
The Zumers Roots & Shoots Group from Malibu, California have taken an orphanage in nearby Tijuana, Mexi
co under their wing. The children at Casa Hogar Sion orphanage are primarily street children abandoned by their parents. For weeks before each visit to the orphanage, the Roots & Shoots members ask permission of Malibu shop keepers to stand outside the store and hand out flyers about the orphanage and the children’s needs. Customers go into the store, flyer in hand, and purchase the needed items; then drop off their purchases with group members on their way out. The club has made a big impact on the young lives at Casa Hogar Sion.

CONNECTICUTT
Cornwall Consolidated School Roots & Shoots engages in an ongoing project that benefits students at the Mekele
Blind School in Ethiopia. They’ve helped make Braille books available to the students and are now making recordings of the books on cassette tapes for the school.

OHIO
Central Intermediate Roots & Shoots members worked with their school’s student council to research hunger issues in their community and created a game show to educate the school community. They also hosted their annual canned food drive, making posters to advertise their project.

MADAGASCAR
Three local Roots & Shoots groups teamed up with Peace Corps volunteers to celebrate the first Roots & Shoots Tree Planting Day in Madagascar. The group planted 2,000 seedlings in just one day!

CANADA
Jade Morningstar of La Vita è Bella Roots & Shoots group in Ontario, Canada gave a speech at the “Canadians for Kyoto” rally in support of the United Nations’ Kyoto Protocol, which limits the greenhouse gases that nations can emit. At the event in Victories Park, she gave a speech to 200 people, helping them to understand that the future of our environment depends on what we do right now.

www.RootsandShoots.org

Schools for Schools emerged out of our overarching goal to help children in northern Uganda receive a quality education. Over the past few years, we’ve done extensive research into the region’s education system and seen the need to encourage academic excellence and leadership not only in students, but also on a much larger scale within the schools. Even the children who are able to actually go to school still face unfair limitations because of the poor condition of their classrooms.

Through the Schools for Schools program we are working to change that. By going to the root of the problem and improving education from the ground up, we are able to make a long-term change in the quality of education in the North.

EDUCATION IN NORTHERN UGANDA

Northern Uganda’s standard of education hasn’t always been so low. Prior to the war, at least five of Uganda’s top 10 schools came from the North. Today there isn’t one school from the North in the top 100.

Over the last two years, we’ve been researching to find the gaps in education. After Uganda’s Millennium Goal of Universal Primary Education was introduced, many organizations began to focus their efforts on primary schools. The lack of attention given to post-primary schools has made the pursuit of higher education difficult for students and teachers.

Schools for Schools is the largest-scale project to date addressing the region’s need for improved learning environments and a larger investment in higher education. By holistically rebuilding 10 of the most promising secondary schools in the region, we are looking beyond the temporary fix of simply putting kids in classrooms, but instead putting them in classrooms that will better prepare them for their future and the future of their country.

OUR SCHOOLS FOR SCHOOLS DEVELOPMENT PHILOSOPHY

The development portion of Schools for Schools is an authentic approach to international aid. When we started discussing where and how to invest our resources, we knew we wanted to be extremely intentional about our actions, choosing programs that would do more than just temporarily address the gaps. Our goal was to work from the ground up, creating projects that would encourage community involvement and offer long-term change in the region’s education.

In order to meet this goal, we brought together a group of individuals with the skill sets and personal commitments needed to see such a complex project through. By having a specific group monitor the project from beginning to end, we knew we would be able to ensure that the funds were implemented in the places that were needed most in the most effective way possible.

One of the most important decisions this team made was selecting which secondary schools we would partner with in the North. After developing extensive selection criteria, we chose 10 institutions we believed had the best hope for creating lasting change in the educational sector. Three of the ten we chose are schools that were displaced by the conflict and are now looking to return to their original sites after more than ten years.

As we wanted local ideas and community participation to lead efforts toward effective change, we created development committees for each of the 10 schools. These committees include students, teachers, parents, members of the administration, Board of Governors, and local government. In the beginning, these groups established the list of project priorities for each school within five target areas: water and sanitation, books and supplies, teacher incentives, construction of facilities, and technology. The committee’s ongoing involvement provides opportunities to understand the many educational needs and obstacles at each school. With their input, we are able to continually tailor our efforts to meet each school’s specific needs.

www.invisiblechildren.com

©Copyright 2007 Invisible Children All Rights Reserved

In Phil’s words, “In 2004 I partnered with the organization CARE to bring attention to the necessity of empowering women in the global campaign to alleviate poverty. I traveled to Africa, Asia and South America to gather the stories of extraordinary women in remote parts of the world who have empowered themselves and their communities. Here are a few of these women, remote and mostly unknown, on the vanguard of a global shift toward gender equality.”

Abay, 28

AWASH FONTALE, ETHIOPIA
Abay was born into a culture in which girls are circumcised before age 12.When it came time for her
circumcision ceremony, Abay said, “No.” Her mother insisted, aruging that an uncircumcised woman would be ostracized and could never marry.When her mother’s demands became unbearable, she ran away to live with a sympathetic godfather.

Eight years later, Abay returned to her village and began work as a station agent for CARE, supervising the opening of a primary school and a health clinic and the construction of a well. After five years, she finally convinced one of the women to let her film a circumcision ceremony. She showed the film to the male leaders. They had never seen a female circumcision and were horrified.Two weeks later, the male leaders called a special meeting and voted fifteen to two to end female circumcision in their village.

Asgeli, 52

AWASH FONTALE, ETHIOPIA
As a leader of the circumcision ceremony, Asgeli had performed hundreds of female circumcisions. Now, like others in the village, she is supportive of the change in custom that Abay had advocated. She said, “We did the circumcisions because that is what had always been done.We were in the dark house and did not know.”

Senim, 20

AWASH FONTALE, ETHIOPIA
Traditionally in the Afar culture it would be unthinkable for a young man to marry an uncircumcised girl.When I asked Senim if he would consider marrying an uncircumcised woman he said, “It would be strange, but now I think I could.”

Howa, 9

AWASH FONTALE, ETHIOPIA
Howa’s mother was one of the first women in Awash Fontale to be convinced that female circumcision was a “bad practice.” Thanks to Abay’s efforts, Howa will be the first girl in her entire family history not to be circumcised.

Gloria, 24

SUIPIRA, ECUADOR
At the age of 20, Gloria galvanized the members of her village to fix the
myriad problems with their water system. For years they had suffered from
water contamination, an inconsistent supply, and fights over access to the
one village spring. Gloria generated a workable budget ($37,000),
persuaded her neighbors to provide the labor, and convinced CARE to donate
the materials to modernized water system. She organized over 70 “Mingas”
(community work parties) to complete the project and today the community
enjoys a clean, dependable water supply. When I met Gloria, she had
recently been elected head “Water System Operator” and was widely respected
as one the of the first female community leaders.

Fahima, 39

KABUL, AFGHANISTAN
Fahima, a teacher since 1985, was one of thousands of professional women who lost their jobs when the Taliban came to power in 1996. In defiance of the Taliban andat great risk to herself, Fahima opened a clandestine school for young girls. At one point, 130 girls were coming to her home each week to study math, science, and the local language, Pushto. When the girls were asked why they were going to Fahima’s house, they said she was their aunt. Although harassed by the religious police and threatened with beatings and worse, Fahima continued operating her school for girls until the fall of the Taliban in 2001.

Nafisa, 7

KABUL, AFGHANISTAN
Nafisa was thrilled when she learned she was chosen to attend Salman-e-Fars, a new school recently opened for young girls in Kabul. Girls now make up thirty-four percent of the student population in Afghanistan—a dramatic increase since the Taliban rule, when it was essentially zero.

Shakira, 21

KABUL, AFGHANISTAN
When Shakira was 8 years old, the Taliban came to power and her education came to an end. Without access to clandestine classes like Fahima’s, she received no schooling. She recently enrolled in a literacy program for young women, to make up for the education that she was denied. Forced to wear the burqa in public during the Taliban reign, she now chooses to wear it when she does not have time to fix her hair.

Humaria, 11

KABUL, AFGHANISTAN
Humaria sells eggs as a street vendor to help her family survive. As with many families in Afghanistan, years of war have left them very poor. Only half of all Afghan children ages 7 to 13 attend school.When the luxury of education is an option, boys are typically chosen over girls.

Yelda, 12

KABUL, AFGHANISTAN
Yelda was helping her family make carpets at home until the Taliban fell. Now she would like to become a teacher and specialize in English. She has enrolled in the Out-of-School Girls Project, a program supported by CARE and designed to help girls ages 9 to 14 rejoin the mainstream education system.

Teke Foliwa, 42

HAVE, GHANA
Teke Foliwa was recently crowned ‘Queen Mother’ of Have. Her first act was
to form 16 women’s groups for micro credit, agriculture production and
education reform. However, initially there was concern within the community
that she was gaining power too quickly. She says, “Women are expected to be
submissive to the men.traditionally, a queen is just a figurehead; she
dresses up for festivals and serves as a role model to teach women to be
beautiful, quiet, and demure. After my training with CARE, I realized that
I could serve as a different kind of inspiration for the women here.”

Eventually, the men became impressed with the progress being made by the
women and asked for their own groups. “This has moved us forward towards
becoming a true community,” she says. “It’s not just the men and the women,
but all of us moving forward together in a much more uniform way.”

Nana Gyetyah, 56

DAKOTO JUNCTION, GHANA
Nana, known as Mama Koko, became the first female chief of her village. As such, she fought for the rights of the villagers, whose cocoa trees were being destroyed by the timber industry.When loggers destroyed and refused to repair a bridge, she mobilized her fellow villagers to create a roadblock. Her superior, the “stool chief,”complained when she exposed the corrupt relationship he had with the timber industry. He had her arrested, and she spent a month in jail. After CARE helped secure her release, she returned to seek restitution for her community’s ruined farmland. Mama Koko has successfully decreased the amount of logging in her territory, and her strength and position as chief make her a strong role model for the young women in her village.

Akhi, 32

TANGAIL, BANGLADESH
At age 13, before she had even begun menstruating, Akhi was sold into a brothel by her aunt. After working for several years, she became highly depressed and attempted suicide. Her failed attempt brought about an epiphany: Her life could be used to improve the lot of her fellow sex workers. Akhi accomplished the near-impossible task of gaining support from religious, political, and social groups to create an organization to advocate for sex workers’ rights. Despite being arrested three times, she prevailed and, in 1998, formed the “Nani Mukti Sangha” organization. Since the group commenced, condom use in the brothel has increased from near zero to eighty-six percent, and the number of 12- to 13-year-olds recruited into the brothels has decreased.Today, she continues to fight tenaciously for sex workers’ rights, and is said to have such a forceful personality that even the police are afraid of her.

Phil Borges

A longtime friend of the poverty-fighting organization CARE, Phil Borges presents his coffee-table book, Women Empowered: Inspiring Change in the Emerging World. An art book of riveting portraits, moving personal stories and written contributions by Madeleine Albright and Isabel Allende, Women Empowered sheds light on the struggles of women in developing countries to break through barriers to improve their own well-being and the lives of their families and communities.

An orthodontist for 18 years, Phil Borges sold his practice and took a leap of faith that, over the past two decades, has led him through jungles, deserts, valleys and mountain ranges across some 50 countries, documenting indigenous cultures to create a heightened understanding of the issues faced
by people in poor countries. His work has been exhibited in museums and galleries worldwide, his award-winning books have been published in four languages, and he has received numerous humanitarian and photography awards. Stories from his travels — like the time the Dalai Lama tickled him — will capture your attention. But, his book, Women Empowered, will capture your heart.

Purchase “Women Empowered” – $19.77

www.philborges.com

All photos and text ©Copyright Phil Borges, All Rights Reserved

Reel Green Media provides consultation to Hollywood production companies and studios including Warner Bros. and Fox in an attempt to ease the environmental impact caused by big production films.

Most companies are doing an amazing job greening their actual studio spaces,” Selman says. Motion-sensor activated lights, indoor gardens, more efficient food service, solar panels and other changes have put a few of the studios on the path toward certification by the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification for existing buildings.

But getting the studios to change the way they shoot movies—diesel and fuel used for traveling, going through hundreds of disposable water bottles each day, building and discarding entire sets—more work needs to be done, according to Selman. “We need to increase awareness of the on-location realm.”

In several industries this sort of thinking has taken a back seat as the economic crunch forces companies to cut corners. Not in Hollywood, according to Selman. “It’s kind of funny. You’d think they would stop hiring in their sustainability fields, but it’s such a priority that they’re still hiring. Efforts have not stopped.”

And, as with Oscars and Golden Globes, the competition is fierce. “They all want to one-up each other,” Selman told Sustainable Industries in late 2008. Real Green Media, which has been active for two years, generates revenue on a project-by-project basis relative to the services provided, according to Selman.

by Nick Hilden – Bringing Sustainability to the Big Screen

www.reelgreenmedia.com

Sustainable Industries Journal – March 2009
© Sustainable Media Inc. All rights reserved
www.sustainableindustries.com

She called her company Back Thru the Future and focused on buying and selling used computers. After running the business out of her home for a year, Haga noticed that she always had leftover computer cords, power strips, external disk drives, and other accessories. She was also troubled by the cost of shipping whole computers. Then she had an epiphany: She could break down the old computers into their component parts and sell the motherboard, power supplies, and drivers one by one, just as scrap dealers do with used car parts. Haga changed the company’s focus from brokering to parts resale. Soon her house was so overrun with electronic debris that, in 1991, she moved the business into a 10,000-squarefoot warehouse.

Over the next five years, Haga opened similar locations in Atlanta, Chicago, and San Jose. (Now the warehouses are consolidated in New Jersey.) But even after selling off the parts, she was still left with the computers’ non-reusable metal and plastic casings. Getting rid of the metal was easy—Haga drove it in her truck to scrap centers—though with no state guidelines in place, she couldn’t ensure that it met an eco-friendly end. Dealing with the plastic was more difficult. Haga petitioned the major computer manufacturers to take responsibility for recycling the waste—to no avail. “The computer companies put me on hold and sent me through the phone systems with no answers,” she says. “They wouldn’t recycle or take anything back.” Out of options, Haga reluctantly discarded the leftover plastic at local dumps.

Finally, the industry began to catch up with Haga’s vision; 1998 saw the start of the International Association of Electronics Recyclers, among other groups. Then, in 2000, as part of a pilot program for recycling electronics, the State of New Jersey classified Back Thru the Future as an intelligent segregator. Now the company has the authority to send computer parts to reliable recycling facilities. “I had been trying for so long to be heard,” she says. “At last the government got the word out that computers must be handled properly.”

Today Haga brings in more than $1 million each year and shares ownership of the company with her husband of 14 years. “I started this business because I needed an income,” says Haga, who, on most days, is decked out in steel-tipped boots and perched behind the wheel of the warehouse forklift. “I had no idea I would become a pioneer in the recycling effort.”

www.Backthruthefuture.com
From “Bright Green Ideas” by Rebecca Adler Warren
More Magazine April 2009
www.more.com
©Copyright More Magazine; All Rights Reserved

What on Earth am I talking about???  Hmmm….many people believe in Angels – in facr a majority of people have had an experience with Angels. Others believe in ghosts or have had experiences with loved ones who have passed. In a similar way, participants of the FC work “across the veil” with nature spirits. Bringing ancient traditions from their homelands around the world, Congress go-ers come together each year to share knowledge and work with allies from nature to improve life on planet Earth for all of us.

Many cultures and spiritual traditions recognize the fairy realm although they may use different words and descriptions. The Fairy Congress brings together people on the pathways of Findhorn, Perelandra, the Celtic Faery tradition, angels, the occult and metaphysical teachings, paganism and shamanism. All are invited. The Congress atmosphere is of inclusiveness, openness and expansion.

Our goal is not to escape the outer world but to positively affect it. At this time of multiple crises on earth we feel it is very important to seek alliances with as many light forces as possible in other realms. Mother Earth and the fairy realms ARE big players in what is transpiring on the planet.

Many humans, fairies, devas, angels and spiritual beings come together to create an outpouring of education and celebration. The fairy and devas who attend the Fairy Congress are spiritually advanced and very intelligent. We approach the fairies and devas with respect and love as co-creators of this event.”

www.fairycongress.com