IN THIS NEWSLETTER

By Lena Vind-Andersen, Information Officer

MS Zambia extends its heartfelt condolences to the first family and the Zambian people on the death of H.E Dr. Levy P. Mwanawasa. May his soul rest in peace. President Mwanawasa will be missed as a strong defender of democracy.

While the nation mourns, the work towards building a vibrant local democracy in Zambia continues at MS and MS Partner organisations.

In Chongwe, the newly formed land committee is celebrating the success of securing land for a new primary school, and farmers who have participated in democracy workshops held by Chongwe DFA, have begun changing their ways.

In Kafue, an ADC board has been formed, which will now begin coordinating the efforts of all the ADC's in the area. And Youth Association of Zambia has held a workshop for youth leaders in Lusaka.

A number of new resources are or will become available soon: CSPR have just completed a study on how donor conditionality impacts on the attainment of the Millennium Development Goal number 8 of Global Partnerships, while ZCSD are in the process of developing a manual on decentralisation and the MS Knowledge and Strategy team are building up resources on gender policy implementation. Also, the new fundraising DW, Christian Coff, is now offering fundraising assistance to MS Partners.

Important upcoming events include the Annual Small Scale Farmer's Forum in September and the Civil Society Day in October.

Read about all this and more in the August/September newsletter. Please do not hesitate to send in contributions and ideas for the next edition, which is due in October, due to the fact that the editor will be on leave in September. Deadline for contributions will be October 10th.

CALENDAR:

22nd - 25th of September:
Zambia Orientation course

26th -27th of September:
PAC - Meeting in Lusaka

MS PARTNER NEWS

Landing a school
What do you do, when there are not enough schools in your town? The new land committee of Chongwe DFA negotiated a deal with the local headmen and contacted the government. A new primary school is now being built in Chongwe.
The parents in Chongwe were concerned: With only one primary school in town, there was simply not enough room for all the pupils. Already, up to 80 children attended the classes, which would usually only hold 40-45 children. On admission to the 1st grade, it was the space available in the classroom, which decided, who got to start. But this situation is now about to change, thanks to the newly formed land committee of Chongwe District Farmers Association. “It is usually really difficult to get the Chiefs and Headmen to release traditional land for schools and clinics, because they think the land will never come back to the village,” explains Jashon Tatile, chairman of the lands committee.
Click here to read full article on our website

Coordination is key
ADC's in Kafue have formed a board, which will coordinate their efforts and serve to share experiences of the ADCs in the future.
The executive committee of the newly formed board met in Kafue on August 8th to agree on the constitution of the board. Issues of sustainability, frequency of meetings and main tasks were on the agenda.
It was agreed that the main task will be to get the board registered as a CSO, and to begin the task of doing lobby and advocacy work on behalf of all the Kafue ADC's by producing a marketing brochure. The board will be run on a daily basis by the 5 members of the executive committee, while the full board, consisting of 34 representatives from all ADC's, will meet on a quarterly basis. To sustain the activities of the board, all ADCs will contribute a monthly fee, but the board will also look into possible income generating activities.

Educating Youth Leaders
The Youth Association of Zambia held its first ever workshop for Youth Leaders at the Commonwealth Youth Programme Centre from 7th to 8th August, 2008. A total of 30 participants drawn from all the nine provinces of Zambia attended the workshop.
The workshop was convened in order to sensitize the youth leaders in Zambia on the operations of the Citizens Economic Empowerment Commission (CEEC) and the funding guidelines for the Citizens Economic Empowerment Fund (CEEF). The Youth Association of Zambia Executive Director, Mr. Evans Musonda stated: “I hope this workshop will help in clarifying the current misinformation about the administration of the Fund and the application guidelines.”
Click here to read full article on our website

Fertilizer support is not enough
The government of Zambia has increased its budgetary support to fertilizers in August, but rising food prices and environmental and climate changes might negate the efforts to significantly impact the living conditions of the poor.
Food prices have risen by 45 % since 2006 and the newly Released Human Development report by UNDP predicts that yields from rain fed agriculture could reduce by up to 50% between 2000 and 2020. In light of this, the SADC- CNGO are urging governments to focus on diversification in food production and MS partner Civil Society for Poverty Reduction are raising concerns on the low allocations to the agricultural sector.
Click here to read full article on our website

Decentralisation manual on the way
ZSCD are in the process of producing a manual on decentralisation for all Civil Society Organisations engaged in training activities for the communities.
The manual is aimed at facilitators and will contain good advice on facilitation techniques, suggestions for practical exercises as well as the basic information on decentralisation, which needs to be disseminated. A test run was performed in Kafue in August, where members of various CSO's and representatives from ADC's were asked to give their input. ”With the manual, we will be able to do a more uniform presentation of the benefits of decentralisation and it will help us provoke thinking and create better awareness in the communities. We need a good way of doing this, in a straight forward manner using simplified language. In this, the manual will be a valuable benefit to the trainers,” said some of the test runners.

Democracy starts at home
Roger Chongo has begun giving his children pocket money. He also includes them in the planning for the farming of his land. This is because he has learned that democracy starts at home. ”Our family functions much better now, because the children now know why they are working and they get something out of it as well,” he says.
Roger Chongo is a small scale farmer living in Chilyabale in Chongwe District. Recently, he attended a democracy and land rights workshop held by Chongwe District Farmers Association (CDFA), of which he is a member. This changed his outlook on many things. Chongwe DFA has held several democracy and land right workshops over the past months. The focus of the workshops has been to educate their members on their democratic rights and obligations as well as the rights of women to own land.
Click here to read full article on our website

Report on donor conditionality launched
Civil Society for Poverty Reduction (CSPR) has launched a report on how donor conditionality impacts on the attainment of Millennium Development Goal number 8 on Global Partnerships.
The report was launched on August 21st and is part of a joint effort with The Jesuit Centre for Theological Reflection and the Civil Society Trade Network on Zambia, who have undertaken studies on debt and trade respectively to complete the picture on how the MDG 8 is affected by these areas. Generally, the study demonstrates that hard core conditionality has injurious effects on both the economy and its citizens. Conditionality adversely affects a government’s capacity to make independent choices and therefore hinders its ability to carry out development programmes as it wishes. It also diminishes the democratic space for meaningful domestic accountability as the government concentrates on donor accountability. Click here to read full report

The risky cotton business
Has it been worth it, or should I have used my energy on another crop? That is a question many cotton farmers are asking themselves after receiving their salary of a years work in the cotton fields.
Due to heavy rain in the rainy season, some cotton farmers have not been able to get the production level they normally would have expected. Virgil Malambo, the District Organisational Coordinator (DOC) of Chipata District Farmers’ Association points out:”Farmers are forced to take a decision, on whether or not they should produce cotton, on inadequate information. This is likely to result in wrong decisions and thereby losses for their households. All in all, figures are missing when the sowing season starts, making it impossible to know whether to produce cotton is worth it or not. The calculation is first possible when the harvest and marketing is ending. By then it is too late.” Click here to read the full article on our webpage

YWCA to host the Child Helpline
Young Women's Christian Association (YWCA) in responding to the four principles of United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child on Participation, Protection, Non discrimination and Best interest of a child, will soon host a child help line in Zambia in coordination with its partners.
The partners on bound include, the Child Protection Unit under Zambia Police, Children in Need Network, United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), and Save the Children Sweden. The idea of hosting the child help line arose as a result of a need assessment finding that revealed that 56.6% of the children in Zambia would like to talk to someone about their problems. A number of major activities such as securing the Toll Free line have been undertaken prior to the launch of the child help line. The organization hopes that through the child helpline, increased number of children will access care and psychosocial support, increased number of child abuse cases will be reported and that the best interest of the children will be safeguarded. Look out for more news after the launch.

UPCOMING EVENTS

Announcing the 2008 Annual Small Scale Farmers Forum
Stand up and be counted by participating in the 8th Annual Small Scale Farmers Forum hosted by Farmers Organization Support Programme and Zambia Land Alliance.
For the past eight years, hundreds of agricultural stakeholders have come together to discuss important issues affecting agricultural development in Zambia. This year’s forum is set for September 22 – 25 in Lusaka. The theme for the forum is: “LAND CONTROL AND ACCESS: Key to Household and National Food Security”. Individual small scale farmers, groups, NGOs, agro-enterprises and government ministries are free to participate as delegates, exhibitors or presenters.
For participation details contact Farmers Organization Support Programme at 0211-263693.

Stand Up—Say No to Poverty!!
Participate in the Civil Society Day on Friday, 17th October, 2008. The campaign focuses on attainment of Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). All are invited.
CSPR has been hosting an annual Civil Society Day since 2003. The main objective of the day is to enhance experience sharing, alliance building and networking for national development and poverty reduction. The Civil Society Day will see exhibitions of works done by various organisations in the many dimensions of poverty. To commemorate the stand up against poverty day, we shall have a walk via a mapped out route. This will be preceded by a public forum on national development on Thursday, 16th October, 2008. This Year’s Civil Society Day will be a national event as it will be held in all CSPR focus provinces - Eastern, Western, North-Western, Luapula and Southern — on the same day.The day has been deliberately set to coincide with the World Call to Action against Poverty, a campaign spearheaded by the Global Call to Action against Poverty (GCAP).Participation to the Civil Society Day is open to the Private Sector, government, the donor community and the general public.

To participate in the 2008 Civil Society Day, please contact:
Miss. Ivy Mutwale, the Program Officer, Information Management and Networking,
Phone: +260-211-290154 Mail: cspr@zamnet.zm; ivy@cspr.org.zm

MS GLOBAL NEWS

MS Uganda: Trade empowerment is the vision for cooperative movements
In his series about empowering grassroots communities Massy-Moses Kasule points to the failure of the cooperative movement in Uganda and its impact on the development of “local democracy”. He compares it to the success of the Danish cooperative movement.
Unlike in Uganda, the government in Denmark did not intervene in the control and management of cooperative movements. The result was that it directly and indirectly contributed to the rapid growth of independent cooperative societies. Click to read more on MS Uganda's website

MS Nepal: No more white cars
The civil society organizations in Kapilvastu are fed up with big international donors coming to Kapilvastu as disaster tourists in their big white cars.
To build sustainable peace in Kapilvastu it is necessary to build comprehensive dialogue between the stakeholders, especially the local political leaders. Furthermore it is essential to have profound knowledge of the local dynamics in the conflict prone communities, knowledge that international donors can never obtain. Click to read more on MS Nepal's Website

MS-ZAMBIA NEWS

Offices closed
MS Country Offices will be closed on 28th -29th of August, as the staff retreat will take place these days. The office staff will spend these days discussing how to improve and revise internal work routines.

Fundraising Assistance to Partners
By Christian Coff, Fundraising DW

Initialisation and success of a project depends in most cases on the ability to attract and generate funds. Therefore, MS-Zambia now offers fundraising assistance to partners within building local democracy and land rights.
Where we encounter needs or problems we can try to think of these from a positive perspective - that is in terms of solutions. This is, generally speaking, how good ideas and visions are developed. Having good ideas and visions is paramount to create projects that can lead to a change. Simple as it sounds, there is however a long way to go in turning an idea into a sustainable project. Attracting and generating financial resources for implementing projects are demanding in terms of experience, skills, time, access to relevant information etc. This is why MS-Zambia now offers partner organisations fundraising assistance. Three steps are involved in this process:

1. Establishment of a donor and foundation database
This will facilitate the search for donors and foundations relevant for specific projects and partners.
2. Early warnings on calls for proposals to partners
Running information on new calls to partners.
3. Facilitation of proposal writing for MS-Zambia partners
This includes general guidelines on how to write a proposal, constructing a proposal checklist, face-to-face and virtual assistance in actual proposal writing, training of partners in fundraising etc.

Call for project ideas
Even though I am still in the initial phase of providing fundraising assistance, you are strongly encouraged to contact me in order to discuss any fundraising needs and ideas. I am situated at the MS-Zambia Country Office in Lusaka. Email: christian.coff@ms.zm, tel: 0211 25 26 05

Gender on the agenda
The MS Knowledge and Strategy team on Gender have decided to put gender more firmly on the agenda of MS Partners as well as the MS country office.
At a workshop in August, the team has learned useful tools to begin assessing partners and CO from a gender perspective. The assessments will be used to develop an orientation and training programme for partners and office staff. Further plans include the development of guidelines for implementing gender policies and efforts to improve resources on gender, which will be made available at the CO library. Speaking of what she had learned during the workshop, Volunteer Programs Coordinator Myranda Lutempo stated: “The issue of gender does not exclusively concern women, it also has to do with the empowerment of men, and we need to get this message across.” Another team member, DW Dorte Tietze stressed that MS as an organisation needs to look at itself in terms of gender sensitivity: “We cannot tell our partners to implement gender policies without looking at our own roles and practices as well,” she says.
The team will meet again on September 29th to develop an action plan.

PEOPLE
New faces at MS Zambia:

Pia Owusu will take up the position of adminstrator at the end of September. Pia is the previous administrator of MS in Central America and has worked with MS for close to 20 years.

Leaving MS Zambia:

Volunteer Programs Coordinator Myranda Lutempo has terminated her contract pr. 29th of August. Myranda leaves to pursue a master degree in Development Evaluation and Management for one year at Antwerp University in Belgium. She has been chosen among 500 applicants. She leaves Zambia on the 14th of September.

Out of office:
Accountant Glory Mukonka will be on leave from 18th of August - 15th of September
Programme Officer Nachilala Nkombo will be attending a conference on Development Aid in Ghana between 30th of August - 7th of September
DW Norman Rigava will be on leave from 5th - 10th of September
Information Officer Lena Vind-Andersen will be on leave from 11th - 20th of September

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