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AdvocacyNet
Fellow Update
June 13, 2008
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Thirty-four Peace Fellows are volunteering this summer in 21 countries or territories with community-based partners of The Advocacy Project (AP). AP issues a weekly digest of their blogs.

 

Highlights:

 

Excerpts:

 

Prospects Bleak for Palestinians When Even Bunnies Can't Cross Border
Willow Heske (Columbia University) is working with the Democracy and Worker's Rights Center (DWRC) in Ramallah, Palestine.
"We discussed the potential sustainability of a rabbit farming project in Gaza. They are definitely easy to grow, multiply quickly, and provide adequate nourishment. But we identified two problems: there is not enough produce to feed people, much less the bunnies, and then there is the problem of getting the bunnies in. Even bunnies [...] are turned away at the border into Gaza."

 

Podcast: Women Claiming Rights in Nepal
Shubha Bala (Columbia University) is working on a human rights radio program with the Collective Campaign for Peace (COCAP) in Nepal.
"Wearing her deep purple cloth and traditional attire, her skin thick and worn with years of working as a village woman does, she stood up and simply started to sing..."In our families children get married. We die in other people's houses. We cannot get out rights through begging. We have to take them but we can't do it alone..."

 

Burning Effigies of Violence in San Salvador
Crissie Ferrara (Columbia University) is working on ensuring women's rights in El Salvador with Cemujer.
"Doubtless the movement needs expansion and more participation by others. But the energy that encompasses the women at Cemujer is strong. As a symbolic gesture, they have cardboard guns that they pile into the center of a cellophane fire; it is here where they simultaneously burn the guns and release white balloons decorated with doves into the sky. And the chants continue "No mas Armas, No mas Femicidios."

 

Saris, Feces, Masala and the Canal Stench in Kathmandu
Jes Therkelsen (American University) is helping to raise awareness of caste discrimination in Nepal with the Jagaran Media Center (JMC).
"I've been in Nepal for two days. Walking the streets is like having thousands of sensory bullets being fired at me from every direction: the brilliant yellows and oranges of the women's saris, the squish of the feces (dog? human?) below my feet, the linger of masala on my tongue from my morning breakfast, the motorcyclist's horn blown in my ear, the stench of the drainage canal I cross after walking out of my flat, the heavy humidity curling my hair, the buzz of mosquitos around my head..”

 

Swift justice remains doubtful in Peru
Ash Kosiewicz (Georgetown University) is helping forensic scientists in Peru with the Peruvian Forensic Anthropology Team (EPAF).
"The Putis case was a breakthrough for EPAF in Peru - and the world took notice. Fox News, CNN, Reuters, MSNBC, BBC, La Republica, take your pick. But any notion of swift justice remains doubtful. Look no further than Saturday´s edition of La Republica, one of Peru's leading newspapers. The General Commander of the Peruvian military, Edwin Donayre, in response to questions about the Putis exhumation: "Any excesses and human rights violations should be addressed in the moment and situation during which they took place. How easy it is to talk now after 20 years!"

 

Lifestyles of Wastepickers in India
Paul Colombini (American University) is working for informal waste recyclers at the Chintan Environmental Research and Action Group in Dehli, India.
"They literally live in a huge pile of garbage. In a place called Bhopura, a heavily-polluted industrial suburb of Delhi, about a thousand people live in shacks made of bamboo and scrap materials amid what appears to be a sprawling landfill."

 

Kindness Toward the Muzanga in Kampala
Juliet Hutchings (American University) is helping to raise awareness of the plight of pygmies in Central Africa with the World Peasants and Indigenous Organization.
“I am a Muzanga or a Buzanga (white person), depending on whom you ask, and every child, from 0 to 18 hollers out 'Bye, Muzanga! Bye!'... As I adjust to my very new, very different surroundings, I am reminded how very similar we all are."

 

Younger Generation in Kenya Hopes to Erase Ethnic Conflict
Kristina Rosinsky (University of Maryland) is teaching photography and blogging to street children with the Undugu Society of Kenya.
"They tell me that tribalism is dying out in the new generation of Kenyans due to mixing and intermarriage...So perhaps in the future, the new generation will no longer have to be proxies for the old generation, but rather be able to resist in order to move Kenya beyond ethnic conflict and the hardship that results from it."

 

The Painters and Bingo Players of Oush Grab, Palestine
Rianne Van Doeveren (Leiden University) is working with the Alternative Information Center in Palestine.
"An overwhelmingly hot afternoon, a number of motivated Palestinians and internationals, a lot of paint, water and sweat were the necessary ingredients to shape a stance against a possible new illegal settlement in the Westbank. A non-violent stance that is, made up out of painting and playing bingo at a place called Oush Grab."

 

Exhumation Continues in Guatemala as Younger Generations Remain Conflicted Over Civil War
Heidi McKinnon (University of New Mexico) is working with the Association for the Integral Development of the Victims of Violence in the Verapaces, Maya Achí (ADIVIMA).
"A local elder prayed over the remains and reminded the children present not to forget what they were seeing, that a murder had happened. Even today, some younger people in these villages do not believe that the civil war occurred. It is not part of their experience, and I shudder to think how so much can be lost in one generation."

 

Women in Black Network Helps Commemorate Seige of Sarajevo
Janet Rabin (Mount Holyoke College) is working with the Women in Black Network from Serbia.
"On Saturday evening, Women in Black from all over Serbia joined Fondacija CURE in a street action in the old Bohemian Quarter of Belgrade, Skadarlija. The interactive installment included tables displaying the types of food available during the nearly four-year-long siege, marked with the extremely inflated prices those trapped in the city were forced to pay for staples such as cooking oil and flour."