The Newsroom

Date: June 30, 2008

Youth of Nepal Seek Empowerment 

Similar Struggle Forges a New Bond across the World

By Kristin Wieben

The Amazon rain forest isn't the only place where youth lack opportunity and options.

Throughout the developing world - where more than a billion people live on less than a dollar a day - young people face incredible challenges.

Rural Nepal is one place that exemplifies how difficult it can be to break out of the cycle of poverty. Villages are often extremely isolated and lack many of the things we take for granted, such as electricity, running water, grocery stores, and banks. In many cases, the nearest sizable town is many days away on foot. Most families scrape by through subsistence agriculture, living much as they have for hundreds of years. It is becoming increasingly difficult to make ends meet solely through farming, and in many villages most of the working-age men have left for the cities in search of jobs.

Young people who migrate to the cities in search of work don't have any easy time, however. For kids growing up in Nepal, education is a luxury that many families cannot afford. Over half of the population over age 15 is illiterate - including 74 percent of women - and this, of course, considerably lowers many young people's job prospects. Even for those lucky enough to have attended school, things are still difficult. Unemployment hovers around 42 percent and competition for jobs is fierce.

Faced with these daunting realities, hundreds of young people leave Nepal every day to look for work in other countries, armed only with the hope that one day they will be able to send money home and help their families break out of the cycle of poverty. Tulsi Giri is a determined young man from the village of Pokhara who is working to change these conditions, starting in his own district. He is lucky to have found a good job with Youth Action Nepal in Kathmandu. Although Tulsi's work takes him away from home, it has helped him learn many of the skills and access the resources he needs to start building a better future for youth in Pokhara.

Tulsi and few other enthusiastic Nepali youth founded USSHA (Underprivileged Societal Service and Helping Action) Foundation, a development foundation (a non-profit organization), who's acronym means hope. This organization focuses on giving youth the training and resources they need to take an active role in social development. Tulsi wants to engage the youth in his village in meaningful, self-directed development projects that will enable them to earn a livelihood without migrating elsewhere.

USSHA's first project is a work camp that will gather approximately 26 urban and rural youth in the Pokhara district to spend five days learning intensively about social development, as well as gain experience through hands-on projects. By the end of the camp, the youth will develop a project of their own design that they will continue work on in their communities after the camp. Tulsi discovered CEN's website and, noting the similarity between our mission and his, contacted CEN. Bob and several CEN volunteers provide mentoring, advice and support as Tulsi sets up USSHA and writes his first project and funding proposals.

Our relationship with Tulsi has given us valuable insight in our own work as well. As we support Tulsi in his work, we have taken note of his experiences, which has helped us clarify our mission and goals and consider how to expand CEN's work.

In April, CEN held a fund raiser to benefit Tulsi's organization and fund the work camp. It was a great success, and CEN was able to provide financial support that will cover about 75% the costs of the first work camp . The rest of the funds will come from participants fees. Nepal-based NGO,Youth Action Nepal, is also supporting the project through ideas and technical support. CEN is delighted to be able to support the work of USSHA in Nepal, and hopes to maintain to have a positive and constructive relationship.

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Date: March 19, 2008

Benefit for Nepalese Youth Camp

Join us as we celebrate the Nepali New Year, share snacks and tea, and learn about how we can help create more opportunities for youth not just in Nepal, but around the world. Everyone is welcome, so invite your friends!

When: Friday, April 25, 2008 from 7pm – 8:30pm
Where: REI Seattle Flagship/ 222 Yale Avenue North/ Seattle, WA 98109

The camp will bring together 25 young adults from rural areas, help them develop leadership skills, and give them tools and skills they can bring back to their communities and use to bring about positive change. The camp's focus on teaching young leaders how they can envision and manage community development projects in their own villages is definitely in line with CEN's mission of empowering rural communities around the world.

There is no charge for this event, although we will ask for your support during the event. There is no minimum (or maximum !) donation required to attend the event. 

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Date: January 12, 2008

CEN Semi -Finalist in Echoing Green Fellowshop Program

Echoing Green has selected CEN’s project to advance to the second phase of their selection process for their 2008 Fellowship Program for social entrepreneurs. Echoing Green invited only 347 projects out of close to 1,500 applications to advance to the second phase.

Each year, Echoing Green awards 20 two-year fellowships to entrepreneurs creating new social change organizations. Fellows receive up to $90,000 in seed funding and technical support to turn their innovative ideas into sustainable organizations.

Since 1987, Echoing Green has provided seed funding and support to nearly 450 social entrepreneurs with bold ideas for social change in order to launch groundbreaking organizations around the world.

For more information on Echoing Green, it's approach, impact, history and more, please visit their website.

CEN is honored to be considered for the 2008 Fellowship.

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Date: December 4, 2007

CEN Posts Angela Viehmayer to Santarém, Brazil

CEN is pleased to share exciting new developments in its work in the Brazilian Amazon. Thanks to the generous support from our donors, CEN  will be partnering with Brazilian NGO Link Social, and US-based Teachers Without Borders to post Angela Viehmayerto Santarém, Brazil beginning at the end of April, 2008. Angela, a Brazilian who has served as CEN’s Board Vice-President, will focus on the deployment of our Creating a Culture of Learning and Empowerment in the Amazon Region (cCLEAR) Program.   

Angela’s new position will enable CEN to maintain a regular presence in the communities of Maguari, Surauca and Xixuau, where we’ve been working since late 2004 through the CEN Amazon Pilot Project. Until now, our contact with the communities was limited by short-term visits by interns and staff. With Angela on board full time, we expect to make a greater impact on the communities and extend our work to engage and benefit more individuals.

Over the 9-12 months following Angela's arrival, we will develop a reusable curriculum, software tools and methodology. These will become CEN’s core toolkit to replicate our efforts efficiently in other communities in the region and eventually in other countries. The curriculum will focus on developing crucial soft skills, such as problem solving, teamwork, critical thinking and time management, as well as building participants’ confidence in their ability to effect change. These sorts of skills are intangible and therefore not easily taught in a traditional classroom setting of books and lectures. Instead, the instructor mentors participants along a journey, progressing from small, simple projects to increasingly complex initiatives that require the application of a full range of skills.

Another component of the CEN toolkit that Angela and Link Social will expand is the Rede Amazonia (Amazon Network), where participating communities learn from each other through peer-to-peer exchange. The network is promoted through physical exchanges between members of the communities and workshops, and strengthened and maintained through electronic tools such as chat and e-mail. Maguari and Suruacá have already hosted Francineide Pinheiro, a nurse from Xixuau, as well as members of each others’ communities. An expansion of the network will promote an even greater sense of community empowerment and allow for more extensive collaborative problem solving.

Because CEN has already been working in these communities, we anticipate that some of the participants will be ready to move on fairly quickly to initiatives such as putting in place a community micro hydro-electric generator, expanding Couro Ecológica handbags, eco/social- tourism and increasing handicraft production.

Within the next twelve months, we intend to develop a second phase, tentatively called the Integrated Entrepreneurship Development Program (IEDP). The IEDP will build upon the general skills developed in the cCLEAR program to assist with entrepreneurship development, as well as address the market failures facing local entrepreneurs by helping them to build value chains, gain new markets, and increase their access to capital.

In addition to their work on cCLEAR, Link Social also expects to expand their support of the Teachers Without Borders' Certificate of Teaching Mastery (CTM) project in Suruacá, which began with  a pilot of the program in Suruacá last year. The CTM provides free teacher development courses, which feature an e-learning and collaboration platform. This will utilize the soft skills developed through CEN's program and will serve to sustain and broaden our work in the communities over the long-term by institutionalizing the teaching of the skills to future leaders.

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Date: October 2, 2007

Update from Associação Amazônia on status of the creation of the reserve

We would like to thank you for your support and participation in our petition to save a large area of intact Amazon rain forest, the Xixuau-Xiparina reserve, from certain destruction through the opening up of a road and a plan to colonise the area proposed by the government of Roraima. Several months have passed since we launched the petition and we are pleased to be able to inform you that it has had an effect and up to now the area is still being protected and conserved. The struggle to transform the area of the Xixuau, and also the Rio Branco and Rio Jauperi region, into an Extractive Reserve continues and we are now close to a final decision by the federal government. The fight continues to be hard. The government of the state of Roraima does not want to give up control of the area and is doing everything in its power to stop it from becoming a national reserve. But for the time being it has had to shelve its plans for opening roads and allowing settlers to move in thanks to pressure from the local people, the national government and the international community. The bureaucratic procedure for the creation of the reserve is now practically complete, only a few details are still required and the federal government is declaring its support.

Last week some of the inhabitants of the reserve met with Brazilian President Lula (see photo above) and had important meetings at high levels of government in Brasilia. They discussed the final steps that need to be taken and received support and assurances regarding the central government's intentions to create this reserve."

For more information about the creation of the Xixuau reserve, please see the article Amazon Protection Begins With Its Own People: Xixuau Takes Matters into its Own Hands

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