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See also: Providence
Hello Dear Andrius,
Lots of great stuff happening in all forums, and the Food Story
project is taking off!
I'm sending this to you personally, because I have written 2-3 times
lately abt this project, and Sam, but I see in postings that you have
not mentioned Sam heading a team at HH yet--as per my
suggestion--which I have indicated interest in, for several reasons.
In Kenya, KAIPPG is doing just the kind of things you are talking
about with kiosks, and we want to do and learn more. I would
appreciate Sam and others doing this work at HH--or at least
considering this--which we can apply in Kenya and elsewhere for the
benefit of us all. I can also be helpful to Sam in this, even while
not having time to "lead" the effort at this time.
I do have some experience and linkage with agriculture-nutrition-food
security (KAIPPG, GenARDIS, GRASSUP)--perhaps more directly than many
at our forums (ie at the grassroots in a developing country)--and it
seems like HH would an excellent fit for a team. I have tried to
outline this is my letters.
So a question is: Is there a reason why you have not mentioned HH in
that regard? Besides not mentioning Sam at HH, you also didn't place
me there when you asked abt me leading a team, so I'm wondering what
your thinking is abt this. Any feedback would be great, and thanks
for your thoughts and activities!!
Blessings and best wishes for a bon voyage and exciting travels, Janet
Hello Dear Pam, Synnove, Steve, Andrius, and All,
Great to see this interchange and link [to Full Belly], and I did check this out myself briefly after Synnove (I think) posted it. It does look excellent, and I'd love to work on pursuing this for my partners and others in Kenya, Nigeria, and further afield. I do agree with Pam abt being cautious in terms of raising hopes which might not be realized, so it would be wonderful if you can check on how we might link up with them Synnove, as that is not completely clear to me when I look at the info on the site.
Andrius has mentioned elsewhere abt Pam and I (and others hopefully) linking our partners-networks-friends in Kenya and Nigeria more closely, and that will be terrific! In fact, we do each have a circle of contacts in both countries, and in some cases know the same people and orgs, so that's a great start. I would also like to bring in Tanzania, Uganda, Zimbabwe, Cameroon, Ghana, and anywhere else that we can make linkages. OVF will be most important to work with in this respect too, as well as Maria and others.
I would also like to say now that there is a grant opportunity from The Commonwealth of Learning--called COL-PROTEIN (speaking of My FoodStory, haha!)--which I have passed along to some of you already (Sam, Maria and Tanzania contacts, Tom Ochuka and Sam in Kenya). This would revolve around distance learning, with a specific focus on nutrition/food-security and poverty reduction.
Perhaps we could consider a joint proposal which would involve several countries, linked to local and regional nutrition programs of our partners, and to the MyFoodStory project? I can run this by my COL contact, who has been instrumental in helping Kenyan partners in the GRASSUP NOW initiative, and see what his feedback would be. Pam, in fact, knows him too, and he has interacted as well with OVF (this is Dr Krishna Alluri, a nutrition and education specialist).
My timeframe for this will be somewhat constrained, but the proposal is not due until the middle of January. I will start the ball rolling around mid-December if I can and there is interest in doing so, and hope we can jointly develop something which will grant-worthy.
With all best wishes and appreciation, Janet
AndriusKulikauskas August 26, 2009 5:55 CET RisingVoices guide  BloggingPositively edited and created by JanetFeldman with help from dozens of bloggers!
Janet Feldman is a great inspiration for her energetic response to the AIDS challenge in Africa as well as many other challenges.
 The Providence Phoenix has a nice feature about her.
She is the Director/Founder of KAIPPG/International. KAIPPG is a community based volunteer organization located in Mumias, Kenya, which is dedicated to preventing and ameliorating HIV/AIDS, poverty, malnutrition, and lack of education and healthcare.
Janet's contact information and more about KAIPPG's guiding philosophy.
She is also the founder of ActAlive, join their discussion group.
She is news director for One World Beat.
Janet Feldman is a judge for the International Schools Cyberfair. From that site: Janet Feldman is the founder/director of two HIV/AIDS-related organizations--KAIPPG/International, an HIV/AIDS nonprofit whose parent organization is in Kenya, and ActALIVE, an international arts coalition composed of groups and individuals who use the arts to address HIV/AIDS--and has also been the co-creator of several ICTs-related projects in the areas of health, nutrition, education, women's empowerment, and poverty alleviation. Her background is in the arts and international diplomacy--with a specialization in conflict resolution--and she has worked in a mediation program, been the director of a public arts space, and been an arts consultant. She is a volunteer for several educational endeavors in Haiti, has recently finished a stint as news director for the international music festival, One World Beat, and has served as an adviser/ally to youth-related organizations such as the II IYSCA and AIDS2004Youth.
Projects she helps with include:
She is active at many online venues that foster development around the world:
She is a member of:
Janet Feldman lives in Barrington, Rhode Island
See also: Terry Rosenlund.
Your full name: Janet Feldman
City and country where you live: Barrington, Rhode Island, USA
Contact information: email, phone or other ways of publicly reaching you:
kaippg@earthlink.net, #401-245-5520
What is your deepest value in life that includes all of your other values?
I believe in a holistic view of life--encompassing self and other, thought and feeling, contemplation and action, unity and diversity--and in an inclusive and integrative approach based on this outlook.
What is a question that you don't know the answer to, but wish to answer?
I would love to create a better quality of life--indeed a better world--for all beings on or of the planet, by which I mean human beings, animals, the natural environment. I hope to devote a good deal of my life to answering even a tiny portion of the questions I have related to how to go about doing that.
What would you like to achieve in the next three years?
I would like to learn how to balance caregiving for an aging parent with time spent on my own work. I would like to work individually and in groups of people on creating and implementing projects that make a real impact on people's lives. I would like to work to ensure that women and young people have a fair share in any sustainable-development policies, practices, and outcomes. I would like to work towards greater gender equality, less violence and conflict of all kinds, more practice of peaceful conflict resolution and ways of addressing differences peacefully and creatively. I would like to ensure that women and young people are less vulnerable to HIV/AIDS, violence, trafficking, and all forms of human misery. I hope to be helpful in terms of lessening poverty and hunger, by increasing the ability of people to generate an adequate income and "grow" (figuratively and literally) more food-security for themselves and their communities. I would like to work on projects related to the restoration and preservation of the environment, and I hope to ensure that humans and other species (forms of life) alike can live better and healthier lives, free of abuse and harm. I would like to work on projects related to arts, media, and ICTs, as I believe that creativity and all forms of communication will truly help to save the world, one painting or radio program or email at a time!
When and how did you learn of Minciu Sodas?
I learned of Minciu Sodas from a friend, Joy Tang of the oneVillage Foundation (www.onevillagefoundation.org), about five years ago.
How have you participated in Minciu Sodas and how have you grown and benefited by participating?
I have been active in writing letters and engaging with members online, and in projects at member locations, for about five years. I moderate one of the forums linked to Minciu Sodas, Holistic Helping, and in that forum we most recently worked on a project related to conflict and peace in Kenya, called the Pyramid of Peace. I have benefitted greatly from being involved with so many dynamic and dedicated members in/from all parts of the world; from our discussions and even divergences of opinion and viewpoints; from our mutual work together as well as the ability to develop as an independent thinker. Participation has helped me to expand my own skills, capabilities, hopes, and dreams, while at the same time allowing me to be engaged with other people in such a way that I hope I have contributed to their growth, capabilities, hopes, and dreams as well.
What challenges of agriculture in Africa would you most like to help with?
I already work on a project in Kenya related to women, agriculture, and technology (connected to my own nonprofit), which I helped to design and also implement and expand. I would like to do further work along these lines, including with young people. The project I work on now--and which I would like to link in some way with the one that is the subject of this grant--uses various and mostly "lower-end" ICTs (radio, mobile phone, film and photography) to help women learn more about agiculture and nutrition, expand their already-activated capabilities, share with one another and unite for greater effectiveness and support, gain access to credit, and support their families (the project is predominately composed of women farmers who are HIV/AIDS-affected in some way, including widowhood). A similar endeavor with four other nonprofit partners centers around the use of distance-education and ICTs to address poverty, nutrition and food-security, environmental education, health, and education issues. So my focus would be to expand on this integrative approach, in projects helping women to become better farmers and healthier, happier individuals, the better to create stronger families and communities, and ultimately nations (let alone a better world!).
Which food stories would you like to collect? and how might you share them
so they have the biggest impact?
I would like to assist KAIPPG Kenya (www.kaippg.org) and our related partners and colleagues to collect stories with a focus on women, in particular women who are the breadwinners of their families, and are themselves HIV/AIDS-affected in some way. These stories would be shared as we have done in our existing projects: via listening groups (radio) and sharing circles (in-person gatherings), photography and film, on websites and in eforums, among our international partners, among individuals and communities in the local areas, and also at the national level. Adjunct ICTs and media trainings could help more women to record their stories, while establishing a series of kiosks in outlying and remote areas would help to bring these stories to people who otherwise might not hear them. Radio would also have this result, as so many people do have radios and listen to them for a variety of purposes, even if they have no other means of communication with the outside world. These food stories could be shared with organizations at all levels that address food-agriculture-nutrition and related issues, and hopefully this would lead to greater visibility of the stories and people behind them, as well as generating support for these individuals and communities, and for the "best practices" these stories often represent.
How can you help us reach out and include women?
I have a worldwide social network of women, women's organizations, and nonprofits who focus on women that I can tap into for this project. In addition, I can post to forums of all kinds, and ask my own networks to reach out to their friends and networks, in this way reaching a much larger number of women. It is imperative to reach women in the rural areas who have no Internet connection and indeed zero to little literacy, and this would be one of my primary concerns and goals, including translation of materials into local languages (both print, for those who can read, and audiovisual, for those who cannot).
In the next three years, how would you like to participate at Minciu Sodas, especially if we win this proposal?
I would spend a good part of my time doing outreach and networking, hoping to gather food stories and also help women to establish gardens, generate incomes, and learn more about numerous topics, from nutrition to microcredit. I would hope to reach out to all parts of Africa, and ask those I link with to do the same. I would work with the rest of our members to find ways to expand and scale up whatever research projects we choose to concentrate on, and I will be most eager to find ways to integrate research, activities on the ground, and policy-making as well as policies, as numerous conferences and studies on the subject have indicated that current "disconnects" between the three areas make for ineffectual responses to poverty (in agriculturally-based communities) and HIV/AIDS, the twin scourges of rural development in particular. From these studies and meetings, it is clear that the links between poverty, HIV/AIDS, gender, agriculture, nutrition, and food-security are imperative to address. There have been numerous calls for the gathering and dissemination of "best practices" by individuals and development organizations at the grassroots, as no such systematic approach has been taken, whereby those in the field can study what works and what does not, where it works and does not, and what more is needed, or what other approaches might be more effectual. I am hoping that our food-story project might serve such a purpose--to bolster other research, if not carve out its own unique place in this field--and I am eager to help make this happen.
What are organizations and networks that you would involve and how?
I would want to involve KAIPPG Kenya (www.kaippg.org), the Kenya-based headquarters of KAIPPG International, my own global nonprofit, and also my international arts coalition, ActALIVE (www.actalive.org), whose members address subjects ranging from HIV/AIDS to peace to sustainable development. I would also like to see involvement of GRASSUP NOW (Grassroots Underpinnings: Poverty (alleviation), Nutrition (improvements), ODL/ICTs, Women), a five-party nonprofit coalition in W. Kenya, whose members--including KAIPPG--address the theme areas mentioned, focusing on distance-education and the use of ICTs to address challenges associated with rural development. This coalition is supported by The Commonwealth of Learning (www.col.org), who might be interested in the project currently proposed by Minciu Sodas. I have been involved in organizing two Africa-focused agriculture/nutrition, food-security, HIV/AIDS, and sustainable-development conferences in 2006 and 2007, and I would be interested to speak with--and hopefully enlist--some of the partners with whom I worked, including CTA, Vetaid International, Project Concern International, WARDA/CGIAR, and others.
Janet,
Thank you for your encouragement which I share also and alert Wael Al
Saad. For the Knight News Challenge I'm thinking I should focus on
Lithuania because I live here. http://www.helproom.org/proposal/
Janet, When you can, please think for us, what is your long-term dream
for your life? That's very helpful to know for our "economy of dreams"
http://www.worknets.org/wiki.cgi?Dreams
Andrius
Andrius Kulikauskas
Minciu Sodas
http://www.ms.lt
ms@...
Janet Feldman wrote:
 Dear Andrius, Wael, Solana, and All,
My apologies for continuing to be offline more than anticipated, and I will be
remembering to network Wael and Cameron soon. Wael, thanks too for your eloquent
and important letters! And Solana, thanks so much for your feedback to Andrius
abt Knight...very helpful (you're a desk unto yourself  )!
I'm so sorry about this funding, but I hope you will apply for Knight funds,
with the specific geographic location of Palestine-Israel. In fact, you might
want to consider Palestine on its own, though I know there are intricate
linkages between the two that do need to be addressed by some programs and
projects.
If you were to focus on what news would be important for Palestinians to have
locally (ie in a citizen-media initiative to focus on news Palestinians might
need), and then also what an international group could do to provide contacts,
networking, "answers" (to development questions et al) in a "help-desk" kind of
way, that might provide some invaluable assistance. Wael's development
ideas--being "local" in nature though applicable globally--could be one focus
for such help and activities.
I think there are other grants or funding that might perhaps be obtained: the
US Institute of Peace has grants, one a priority competition (I include this
because of a focus on Afghanistan as one priority country, Andrius) and the
other a general competition, which helps to fund projects like this one below.
See urls under that for more info. The deadline is in 2010, however, since all
of their 2009 grants have been given.
Title: Educating for Peace in Palestinian Schools
Subject: Regional Conflict-Middle East
Applicant: Holy Land Trust
City: Bethlehem, State: Palestine
Project Director: Sami Awad
Grant Number: USIP-011-07F Amount: $ 39,235 FY: 2008
Start Date: 06/01/2008 End Date: 06/30/2009
Description: This project will be launched as a model project in five
marginalized schools for a 12 month period. Holy Land Trust will compile a
training manual that will be used to train 100 teachers (20 teachers per school)
during the summer vacation. Throughout the following school year, the training
team members will support the teachers by co-teaching and providing supervision.
Project staff will present the results of the pilot program to the Minister of
Education for replication in other marginalized schools in the West Bank.
http://www.usip.org/grants-fellowships/priority-grant-competition
http://www.usip.org/grants-fellowships/annual-grant-competition
You could also try ANERA (American Near East Refugee Aid). I do not see
"grants" listed specifically, but introductions and networking could surely be
done, and perhaps some form of partnership might result. See
http://www.anera.org.
Hopefully via searches and mailings, as well as word-of-mouth, we will come up
with other opportunities. This is such a crucial area of the world, with
important peace and humanitarian issues to address, that surely there is some
funding available!
With all best wishes and blessings, Janet
Original Message
From: Andrius Kulikauskas <ms@...
Sent: Oct 23, 2009 8:41 AM
To: fightingpeacefully@yahoogroups.com
Cc: Awne Abu Zant <awnevip@... , minciu sodas AR@yahoogroups.com,
risingvoices@googlegroups.com, help group <holistichelping@yahoogroups.com ,
globalvillages@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [holistichelping] US MENA funding unavailable for Palestine
activities
I was writing a proposal for the US funding opportunity "New Empowerment
Communication Technologies: Opportunities in the Middle East and North
Africa". I was hoping to organize a global help room based in
Israeli-occupied Palestine, specifically, the West Bank. I had a
successful stay there in 2006. We have good connections with remarkable
people like Jafra-Wael Al Saad, Awne Abuzont, Alaa Youssef. I believe
there's a real need and opportunity for Palestinians to look beyond
their own country and excel at giving help to others and not simply feel
helpless. I imagine that Palestinian aspirations are a key to the
Middle East and to any "economy of dreams".
I learned today that the West Bank and Gaza are not eligible for funding
http://mepi.state.gov/opportunities/130864.htm
"While applicants are welcome to propose projects or activities in the
West Bank and Gaza, funding is currently unavailable to support such
projects or activities."
This was clarified on October 20, just three days before the deadline!
At least it's made public.
I confess that I thought this was an important opportunity with generous
funding that might have helped me personally. I am sympathetic to the
need and opportunity in Palestine, but this opportunity depressed me in
a deep way. I would like to organize a "culture of independent
thinkers" and an "economy of dreams" that addresses individuals' dreams
in simple ways. I'm not attracted to heroic efforts in desperate
circumstances. I'd like to work from Lithuania if I can.
Palestinians and Israelis suffer hardships. I think that it's
unfortunate that those who invest themselves to get interested and make
an effort to help, as I have in both Palestine and Israel, are left out
from even the most supportive opportunity.
I think it's important to be supportive of "independent thinkers" that
we know in Palestine and Israel. I know an entrepreneur in Palestine
for whom I might write a smaller proposal. I encourage us to organize
around Jafra Wael Al Saad, he's at Social Agriculture
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/socialagriculture/ and elsewhere. He's in
Jenin, Palestine, organizing local groups for a sustainable economy.
globalpalestine AT googlemail.com
Thank you to Janet Feldman for alerting us to this opportunity, which
otherwise is very exciting. I appreciate help to find other such
opportunities around the world, especially to organize an online help
room as I'm proposing http://www.helproom.org/proposal/
Andrius
Andrius Kulikauskas
Minciu Sodas
http://www.ms.lt
ms@...
+370 699 30003
skype: minciusodas
Andrius: Hi Janet! Feel free to edit this page by clicking edit page.
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