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Projects on the ground
We are not just an academic association. We are also trying to implement changes on the ground in war and conflict zones linked to the study of women and war, in particular Afghanistan and the Democratic Republic of Congo
September 2011: SPONSORSHIP OF FEMALE STUDENTS IN GENDER AND ARMED CONFLICT AT THE UNIVERSITY OF KISANGANI
Kisangani University, situated in the depth of the Congolese rain forest is setting up a gender studies departement. This is particularly important as this is one of country's most significant universities, set in the midst of conficit zones and close to the regions where collective rapes are taking place. Thinking through gender issues has become essential.
However, for economic reasons so frequent in many parts of the wold, there are more male students than female. However, following a seminar we organised in September of 2011, these male students showed a marked interest in gender studies, which is extremely promising. Female students need financial encouragement.
The centre will open in the autumn of 2012. In the meantime, we are setting up a sponsorship scheme, with our sister organisation, FEMAID which handles accounts to pay college fees for female students in social sciences wishing to pursue research on gender and conflict in the widest sense, in that this can include gender and development, as well as gender and the management of alternative resources.
The fees are evaluated at 250 € a year. Sponsors will be able to correspond with the student they are supporting.
The students will be selected by the Sociology departement and the CEREPSAN, Association ARED (Actions et Réalisations pour le Développement), a local women's association, run by Liliane Salumu.
Please donate to this urgent project by sending cheques and donations to Femaid's account (address sent on demand) or via Paypal- click on www.femaid.org
We are pleased to announce that as from the end of October 2011, eleven felake students are to be sponsored, thanks to our faithful supporters, SAMATA.
Nine will be in the social Sciences Department, two will be for the Chololo Technical Institute for the department of electronics.This is intended to help female students (presently less than 5%) to learn about renewable energies through courses launched by Ecoboyoma a new association set up to work on environment- saving, energy projects in the area.
Buying/ collecting books on gender and Armed Conflict for the future gender departmeent in the Sociology section of the University of Kisangani in the DRC.
Raising awareness without the adequate tools is impossible.Because of the prohibitive price of books and absence of internet, students and professors have very little information.
Since late 2010, we have been collecting and buying books for this project.
If you wish to donate books (on this subject as well as gender), contact us beforehand. Sending is an issue, but we will explain how this is possible. French is the prefered language
Otherwise you can donate through Paypal, we buy the books in Paris and organize their transportation. This is done through our sister organization www.femaid.org
SELF-DEFENCE CLASSES FOR GIRLS IN BUKAVU (Kivu) in DRC
Rape in DRC has taken on unprecedented, catastrophic proportions, especially in the Eastern DRC, where Bukavu is situated. Some 27 000 cases were reported in this area in 2006, which represents about the yearly official figure ever since but does does not account for the scores of undocumented rapes. The victims- children, girls, older women's lives are destroyed forever afterwards, as they are rejected by society
Starting in the month of August 2008, our association helped launch self-defence classes for girls in Bukavu. We worked and today continue working with human rights activist and noted militant feminist Venantie Bisimwa, secretary general of the Réseau des femmes pour la défense des droits et de la paix.
These courses are designed for female high-school students who encounter daily provocation and sexual threats on their way to school.
These courses helped to restore a measure of self-confidence to these girls who are constantly threatened.
This means vanquishing stereotypes of weakness and passivity. Naturally, there is not much you can do opposite a bunch of armed thugs, but a couple of broken teeth, a knee-jerk in the right direction certainly contribute to the victims' dignity and will to fight back. And slowly change gender stereotyping
The positive feedback of this project has shown that we are on the right track
IN OCTOBER 2010 THIS PROJECT HAS BEEN REVIVED
Venantie and myself in Kinshasa went to see the Minister for Youth and Sports Me Claude Nyamugabo and the Minister for Higher Education, Professor Léonard Mashako Mamba who both gave us their enthusiastic support and expressed their desire to see self-defence included in the national school and sports curriculum. This is a capital point we campaigned for and which have a long term effect on the lives of women in DRC, and elsewhere in Africa.
UNDP in Kinshasa also expressed their interest.
We are therefore launching a one-year project initially (renewable) for the Kivu area, worst hit by rape. Venantie Bisimwa's association Réseau des femmes pour la défense des droits et de la paix, with l' Association l'Union Sportive pour l'Autodefense Populaire (USADEP) will be implementing this project and FemAid is raising funds.
This project will help the reintegration of former combattants.
We urgently need funding: building rudimentary dojos (sand, screening), to pay instructors, to run courses on gender sensitivity for them and much more
Please donate to this urgent project by sending cheques and donations to our sister association Femaid's account (address sent on demand) or via Paypal- click on www.femaid.orgThis is an modest, experimental project, we would like to continue all through the school year, but this really depends on finances and YOUR help.... if everything works out, self-defence will be integrated in the official education and sports curriculum. .
If you intend to organize a fund-raising event, we would be over-delighted to help
contact us for more details
BUILDING WOMEN' TOILETS AT KISANGANI UNIVERSITY IN DRC
This seemingly prosaic preoccupation is a capital one for many African universities, including the one we are especially supporting, the University of Kisangani (UNIKIS) which is the institution attended by students coming from the Eastern provinces where mass rape occurs.
Having taught a seminar there in October 2010, I have see the dreadful state of what hardly could be called a loo, let alone a rest-room. It is reduced to an unlit mud hut in the middle of high grass infested by jungle snakes. There is no water, no privacy and girls suffer from this, as can be imagined.
They perceive this as real gender discrimination and rightly so: male students as everywhere in the world relieve themselves wherever they can, no problem. Furthermore, it is on the way to latrines that many rapes traditionally take place in refugee camps and elsewhere, so there is a potential added danger in this situation.
In a conversation with the Higher Education Minister in Kinshasa, Professor Léonard Mashako Mamba I pointed this out to him: he was a full agreement and has already inscribed such projects in his Ministry's agenda.
We made a budget. A properly fitted building built in brick with 18 booths and running water comes to $10 000.
In June 2011, we are happy to announce that this has been partially attained, with the help of Femaid and private donors in France
Please donate to this urgent project by sending cheques and donations to our sister association Femaid's account (address sent on demand) or via Paypal- click on www.femaid.org
AIDING THE DAY CARE CENTRE AT KABUL UNIVERSITY
Kabul University boasts a desolate day care centre, theoretically built to help female students and staff. One hundred children come every day to a damp, dismal place, barely heated, with paint peeling from its walls. Toys are carefully put on shelves and rarely taken out because they cannot be replaced. Babies - up to one year old- spend much of their day in their cots. The other children sit around and play when they can: the valiant director would like to turn the place into some kind of pre-school, but lacks the means. Staff is paid about 30€ a month, which is an indicator of the overall indifference the day-care centre faces
Day-care centres in a university such as this one are vital for women’s rights, because this is how students, professors, clerical staff can actually go out to work and study. In Afghanistan, most girls are married before they are eighteen and a child is traditionally mandatory within the first year to confirm the bride's reproductive capacities. Yet, in urban centres, more and more women (including teenage mothers) want to study and work.
If we are to support women's rights and education, it is essential to help women to actually go to classes which is impossible if no one is willing to look after their children.
I met one woman, Ferida, whose mother-in-law refused to look after her grand-children whilst her daughter-in-law was out working, because she thought this would keep Ferida in the house. Through the day-care centre, Ferida and so many like her can go to her job and earn some much needed money for her family, as well as stake her (modest) right to some autonomy.
WOMEN IN WAR with its sister charity, FEMAID iaunched a project to help the Kabul University day-care centre. The Parisian suburb of Malakoff became involved in this, especially through collecting educational toys and helping to raise some funds. Local day-care centres and kindergartens will be involved and the general public.
The French Ministry of Defence has accepted to ship over and deliver 100 kg of toys. We would like to raise the money to redecorate and refurbish the day-care centre.
Somehow aid agencies seem to have by-passed this issue. As the director of the day-care centre mournfully admitted: "Nobody cares about us, yet the children here would deserve so much more..."
We will helped the day-care centre of Balkh University at Mazar-e-Sharif. Here the aim is to do some basic repair work for the roof before the winter sets in and purchase cribs for the babies.
This is indeed a fitting project for an association of women studying women in conflict zones
An all-day event was be held on Saturday October 4th at the the Town Hall of Malakoff, a Parisian suburb. A sale of Afghan (and other) handicrafts wasl be held on Saturday September 27th 2008
The French soldiers brought the toys to the Kabul crèche and the children- and their mothers and care-takers were very happy.
You can contribute by sending cheques and donations to our Femaid account which deals with Women in War's finances, or go via Paypal- click on www.femaid.org
See also article that appeared on Sisyphe, the Canadian feminist website
contact us for more details