Harare, 2002. The word came. Cash is in the banks. The three colleagues I was standing near at the time and I quickly jumped in the car to get downtown to Standard Chartered as soon as possible.
It was my first “real job” in the development sector after graduate school. I knew enough to know how little I knew, and little else.
Megan Schiebe of Travel Volunteer Search interviews Jennifer Lentfer of how-matters.org on blogtalkradio’s Global Humanitarian Discussions. You can listen to the 14-minute interview via the links below:
Some paraphrased quotes from the interview:
“Our individual learning process of how we develop our role or calling as helpers is one of the most important parts of our effectiveness.”
“How do we struggle with the fact that helping is hard and that there aren’t any simple solutions to helping the poor?”
Photo: No Hate at 'Gate
"They were born to be slaves and serve White People. Bout time for them to start doing it again."
"No nigger will ever rule the WHITE House".
White-supremacist graffitis were found at Colgate University on the same day the United States elected its first African American president. It's been less than a week, and I am standing in front of an overflowing chapel on this all-American "Hidden Ivy" campus, with over a thousand people who have congregated here to denounce the symbols of a deep, ongoing strand of racism. The midday sun is as dim as the air is crisp, but the chill comes from elsewhere: the bigoted scribbles were part of hundreds of race threats and crimes committed around the same time across the US.
Today, March 21, is recognized as the International Day Against Racism. The date is historically significant. We have also recently seen in stark and tragic detail how discrimination can lead to violent conflict.
In the United States, it was fitting that on Tuesday, March 18, Senator Barack Obama made a speech addressing the question of racism that has been raised in the current US presidential campaign.
In this notebook we learn about how an organization in Hungary tests for and documents incidences of systematic discrimination against a disenfranchised population. When an instance of discrimination is reported, this organization will send out testers find out whether or not this discrimination was systematic and then document their findings.
In the human rights field there is often a gap between local human rights abuses and the international laws and treaties that are meant to prevent these abuses. The League of Human Rights Advocates in Slovakia recruits members of a disenfranchised population and trains them to become human rights monitors. These monitors watch for human rights abuses in their own locality and then translate international human rights laws and apply them to their local situations.
Join New Tactics and other practitioners for an online dialogue on Advancing Children’s Right to Education from February 15 to 21, 2012. Education is a basic human right, enshrined in law all...
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