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The beginning of October saw autumn breeze slowly sweeping the horizon and offered relief from months of scorching heat. But October brought with it not merely change of weather but transformation is very much in the air on many fronts!
Some of you might be aware that the boards of World Population Foundation and Rutgers Nisso Groep (RNG) Netherlands have approved a full merger of the two organizations. The merger is aimed at achieving greater efficiency and to make use of the combined resources and complementary expertise of the two organizations. In view of the formal, legal merger, which will come into effect from January 2010, RNG’s Director Ms. Dianda Veldman has been appointed as Executive Director of WPF. Until the end of 2009 she will be in charge of both organizations.
WPF, Pakistan welcomes this move and hopes that the union of the two organizations will further enhance the country office’s ability to work for the realization of Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights (SRHR), especially of the young people in Pakistan!
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Editorial Team |
Editorial Team:
Areebah Shahid
Saeed-ur-Rehman
Technical Contributors:
Qadeer Baig
Design & Layout:
Kashif Muneer
Aasia Niazi
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Important Links |
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WPF,Pakistan
News |
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World Population Foundation and Rutgers Nisso Groep Approve a Full Merger |
The boards of World Population Foundation and Rutgers Nisso Groep have approved a full merger of the two organizations.
Rutgers Nisso Groep (www.rng.nl)
has been for more than 100 years the centre of know-how and services
for sexual health in the Netherlands. In 2001, RNG also started an international
programme called “Youth Incentives”. RNG is the Dutch chapter of IPPF, but their cooperation is not limited to IPPF members. RNG have in the past collaborated in several activities such as SRHR training programmes and the bi-annual international conference, and initiatives for example in China.
The reason for this merger is rather simple. WPF’s board thinks that now is the right time for the Foundation to broaden its base and make use of diverse experiences to enhance its prospects beyond what WPF can achieve if it stays on its own. The merger will not merely allow WPF to expand its operations geographically and hence deliver the message of Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights to more countries, but will also allow it to improve its capacity and deliver high-quality outputs.
Moreover, while WPF has ample experience of working outside of Netherlands, RNG comes with a solid reputation as a research organization, having substantial indigenous knowledge. The combination of both the organizations will hence facilitate the union of a diverse range of expertise for greater effectiveness.
On the organizational front too, the merger will make possible greater efficiency and effectiveness as the combined resources of the two organizations, geared towards the same purpose will lead to better outputs.
Presently a number of formalities are being prepared with a notary public
that should result in one legal body “stitching” with effect of January 1, 2010.
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YAN holds its Quarterly Capacity Building Workshop |
Youth Advocacy Network (YAN) conducts Capacity
Building Workshops and meetings every
quarter. From 28th-29th September 2009,
YAN Governing Body consisting of 8
members, decided to hold meetings with
the provincial Youth Ministry and other
established youth organizations, Youth Parliament
of Pakistan (YPP) and Channan Development
Association (CDA). These meetings are
an effort towards networking and exploring
future prospects for the network. All
meetings were very fruitful and youth
organizations were very forthcoming.
These meetings were followed by a Governing
Body meeting which was attended by
8 members and YAN secretarial coordinator. During
the course of the meeting the progress
was reviewed and future activities
planned out. A major YAN development is that it
has submitted its papers to register
as an independent youth network. |
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| Training of LSBE (level 1) Master
Trainers (MTs) |
A string of trainings for Master Trainers in Karachi, Multan and Mitiari were held in connection with the European Union funded project, “Rights-driven Institutionalization of Sexual and Reproductive Health in Pakistan”, in order to equip them with knowledge and skills on core Life Skills which include self awareness and empathy, communication and interpersonal skills, critical thinking and creative thinking, decision making and problem solving; and coping with emotions and stress.
A total of 30 Master Trainers in Karachi,
20 in Multan and 11 in Matiari were trained. |
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| Training of Teachers |
As part of
the process the trained Master Trainers
will be training the teachers in their
respective areas to run and implement
LIfe Skills Based Education (LSBE)
curriculum level one with young boys and girls
of grades 7th to 10th. Training of
128 LSBE Educators was also completed
by Master Trainers in Karachi with
collaboration of City District Government,
Karachi. |
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| Visitors Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands |
Mr.
Fritz Meijndert, First Secretary
and Mr. Saadat Ali, Sr. Programme
Officer, Education & Governance from Embassy of the Kingdom
of Netherlands visited WPF on
September 7 to discuss WPF programmes
in Pakistan particularly the
progress on LSBE for Madaris
and SRH Education Programme for youth in Pakistan.
EKN and WPF agreed to continue
their collaboration in Pakistan. |  |
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| Small Grant to Partner Organizations for Advocacy Efforts |
Memorandums
of Understand were signed between WPF,
Pakistan and its implementing partners
for the Gender BAsed Violence (GBV)-Reproductive
Health (RH) project to provide small
grants, organize training of CBO partners, community
seminars and advocacy events that will
be held all through October and early
November in each
district to raise wide spread awareness
among the local population and muscle
men regarding the pressing issue of Gender
Based Violence and its impact on Reproductive
Health. |
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| GBV Documentary |
The
work on a documentary aimed at visually documenting GBV-RH issues
and various stages of the GBV-RH project; highlighting the prevalent
situation in the 6 target districts as well as the challenges
and learnings of the initiative has commenced. The filming will
commence in October and the documentary is slated for release
towards the end of November 2009. |
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Rights-driven Institutionalization of Sexual and Reproductive Health in Pakistan-Donor European Union | |
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Research
on the Status of Sexual and Reproductive
Health and Rights of Young People, Enters
Analytical Phase |
The e-survey launched to assess the status of Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights of Young People in Pakistan has entered the stage of analysis. The results received are now being scrutinized an compiled to be included in the final report, which will be launched in the final report, which will be launched in November.
Moreover, Foucs Group Discussions (FGDs) with
various groups of stakeholders with SRHR experts
will be conducted in October to validate the
findings of the e-survey. |
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| Orientation Meetings
with Stakeholders from Local Education Department |
The
project focuses on the strategies to
create more ownership of the programmes
among the stakeholders involved in order
to ensure the sustainability aspect.
In this regard, Memorandums of Understanding
were signed between Implementing Partners
and local education departments in all
three respective project areas which
include Health and Nutrition Development
Society – HANDS in Matiari
, Aahung in Karachi and Awaz Foundation
in Multan.
In all three areas the respective implementing partners held the orientation
meetings in collaboration with local education departments to orient
teachers and principals of the selected schools on LSBE, its implementation
mechanisms and proposed outcomes. The schools were selected by the
education departments in consultation with implementing partners.
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| Aahung Joins Hands as Partner in Karachi |
Aahung has duly been appointed as an implementing
partner for district Karachi for Rights-driven
Institutionalization of SRH in Pakistan.
In this regard an MoU was signed betweeen
WPF,Pakistan and Aahung while its project
team will be oriented on the project
in October. |
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| Ms. Iffat Shaheen joins WPF Family |
Ms. Iffat Shaheen joined WPF-Pakistan in September as Finance Officer. We welcome her in our fold and look forward to a long and productive relationship ahead.
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Expressions |
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TA for WPF Pakistan; from life skills to sexuality educationBy Jo Reinders,
Technical Advisor, Sexuality and Youth, WPF-the Netherlands
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From 28 September up to 7 October 2009 I technically assisted WPF Pakistan in Islamabad in their work; especially regarding activities related to their successful programme Life Skills Based Education. This mission was one of the most hospitable visits I had ever done.
As a first activity I trained WPF staff on SRHR
and young people, using the 2-day-standard
training on SRHR and young people that
Headquartes (HQ) always uses in
programmes for young people.
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With only slight cultural
adaptations this training has in
the last years been taken over by
all WPF partners in Uganda, Kenya,
South Africa, Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam
and is currently provided by them
as a standard training as well. The
standard training therefore confronted
not only WPF staff with similar approaches
and knowledge, attitudes, social influences
and skills as project partners in
our core countries, but also gave
them the opportunity to adapt the
standard training to
the Pakistani culture where needed.
As a result WPF, Pakistan staff confirmed
to see this training as very useful
and effective and planned to adapt
it to the local context to train
their partners. In addition, the
training proved to function as a very valued team
building exercise, opening up the
atmosphere in the office regarding
frankly discussing sexuality in respect
of others’ views.
Myself and Programme Manager Cyma Ashraf of WPF, Pakistan conducted the same training for 18 participants of 8 partner organizations, at Islamabad, collaborating in Life Skills Based Education and coming from all 4 Pakistani provinces, each with its own culture. In spite of the huge challenge to openly discuss sexuality in a group and doing this even with mixed genders – something very unusual and even not allowed in Pakistani culture - partners were very satisfied with the training and said to have learned a lot, including a change in attitudes. The evidence of their appreciation and lessons learned was proven to me by seeing the openness and the fun when they played the very personal and explicit Carousel Game as a closing session of the training.
Besides trainings I and Cyma redesigned
the second level of LSBE curriculum by integrating more SRHR in the
consisting content. It has proven that students are in urgent need
for more SRHR information and teachers are unwilling to do so if the
contents are not culturally appropriate. This was also evident in the
visits to three schools in Faisalabad, where Qadeer and I could discuss
LSBE with students and teachers. Even the students of the girls schools
to which we, after a 20-minutes check finally as men were allowed to
enter, confirmed of their need to have included issues related to SRHR
in the curriculum, while the teacher supported their request.
A last activity was the 3rd National
Life Skills Based Education Forum, attended
by about 65 participants including the
Ministries of Population and Education,
UN agencies and NGOs. Although the step
from Life Skills to SRHR education
is still a step too far for adoption
within the strict norms and values
of Pakistani culture, the integration
of more SRHR information was supported
when done in a culturally appropriate
way. For me it surely was a challenge to present the international
trends and views on comprehensive SRHR
education in this Forum and to give
my ideas in an interview by a Pakistani
TV channel without mentioning the word “sex”. The fact
that I succeeded showed the lessons learned
from this visit!
Concluding it is evident that cultures are dynamic and that a slow
but steady process of integrating SRHR in Life Skills Based Education
without changing the name of LSBE is possible and the best way to proceed.
In Pakistan sex is still a taboo; whether it concerns sex education,
sexuality education or the word sex or sexual in a subtitle in the
new name of our new organization. |
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Defining
the Knowledge Management
By Kashif Muneer (Programme Manager, Knowledge Management)
&
Aasia Niazi (Programme Officer, Knowledge Management)
| Reading the term ‘Knowledge Management’ confuses one as to what it is. One major misconception that needs to be corrected is that it is not just ‘Information’ and not just ‘Data’! Many of us simply do not think in terms of managing knowledge, but we all do it. Each of us is a personal store of knowledge with training, experiences and informal networks of friends and colleagues, whom we seek out when we want to solve a problem or explore an opportunity. Essentially, we get things done and succeed by knowing an answer or knowing someone who does.
Knowledge resides in people’s heads and managing it is not really possible or desirable. What we can do, and what the ideas behind knowledge management are all about, is to establish an environment in which people are encouraged to create, learn, share, and use knowledge together for the benefit of the organization, the people who work in it, and the organization’s customers.
The fact is that we all rely on what we know to do our jobs effectively. Do we know everything we need to? No we don’t. Are there gaps in our knowledge? Of course there are. Do we share what we know? Is the knowledge of individuals available to the whole organization? Not at present. How many times have we lost valuable knowledge and expertise when a staff member moves on? Do we use what we know to best effect? Not always.
Some people mistakenly assume that knowledge management is about capturing all the best practices and knowledge that people possess and storing it in a computer system in the hope that one day it will be useful. In fact this is a good example of what knowledge management is not about! Consider this: how often has information or knowledge been pushed at you when you don’t need it – paper, emails, training, another irrelevant meeting? Then later, when you do need it, you vaguely remember seeing something relevant but can’t find it. Some surveys suggest that professional workers spend ten per cent of their time looking for information they know is somewhere. And if what you want is in people’s heads, and they’re not always around, how can you access it when you need it? What if you don’t even know whose head it’s in, or if they’d be willing to share it with you?
One good example of translating this theory into reality is that of WPF, Pakistan’s LSBE portal. The creation of the portal is a step towards the knowledge management of Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights in Pakistan especially for the youth. The portal aims to reflect the right information to the youth through informative articles, polls, referral lists, discussion forums, videos for young people, search facility, interactive quizzes and games etc.
The aim of knowledge management then, is not necessarily to manage all knowledge, just the knowledge that is most important to the organization. In a nutshell, good knowledge management is all about ensuring that people are getting the right knowledge, in the right place, at the right time. |
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World News |
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| Iran set to allow first transsexual marriage |
Iran is set to allow what is believed to be its first transsexual marriage after the would-be bride asked a court to override her father's opposition to the match.
The woman, named only as Shaghayegh, told Tehran's family court that she wanted to wed her best friend from school, who had recently undergone a sex-change operation to become a man, but was unable to obtain her father's blessing, as legally required.
Now her father has agreed to permit the union on condition that the male partner, Ardashir, who was previously a woman called Negar, undergoes a medical examination intended to prove it would be a proper male-female relationship.
The father's change of heart came after he was summoned to court to explain his opposition. He told the judge, Alireza Sedaghati, that he had been driven by "fear of humiliation".
A local newspaper reported that the two had been friends for 12 years after meeting at school and had later studied at the same university, where their close relationship had been well known to fellow students.
After graduating, Negar changed sex under Iran's Islamic laws which deem transsexuals religiously permissible, in contrast to the blanket ban on homosexuality, which is considered a sin.
Iran carries out more sex change operations than any other country apart from Thailand after the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, spiritual leader of the 1979 Islamic revolution, issued a religious fatwa approving the practice, which has government funding. Critics have suggested that some of those changing sex are not true transsexuals but gays or lesbians who feel forced into the operation by social pressure.
Source: Guardian (UK), 11 September 2009 |
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| Contraception cheapest way to combat climate change |
Contraception is almost five times cheaper as a means of preventing climate change than conventional green technologies, according to research by the London School of Economics.
Every £4 spent on family planning over the next four decades would reduce global CO2 emissions by more than a ton, whereas a minimum of £19 would have to be spent on low-carbon technologies to achieve the same result, the research says.
The report, “Fewer Emitter, Lower Emissions, Less Cost”, concludes that family planning should be seen as one of the primary methods of emissions reduction. The UN estimates that 40 per cent of all pregnancies worldwide are unintended.
If these basic family planning needs were met, 34 gigatons (billion tonnes) of CO2 would be saved – equivalent to nearly 6 times the annual emissions of the US and almost 60 times the UK’s annual total.
Roger Martin, chairman of the Optimum Population Trust at the LSE, said: “It’s always been obvious that total emissions depend on the number of emitters as well as their individual emissions – the carbon tonnage can’t shoot down as we want, while the population keeps shooting up.”
UN data suggests that meeting unmet need for family planning would reduce unintended births by 72 per cent, reducing projected world population in 2050 by half a billion to 8.64 million.
The research is published on the day that the Government’s climate change advisers, the Climate Change Committee, warned households and industry that a planned 80 per cent reduction in emissions are likely to prove insufficient.
Source: The Telegraph (UK), 9 September 2009 |
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For more information please contact World Population Foundation (WPF) |
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