The ACACIA Female Leadership Initiative (AFLI)

The ACACIA Female Leadership Initiative (AFLI) was cofounded by two participants of the 2008 Jane Goodall’s Global Youth Summit, Julia Coburn and Shadrach Meshach, out of a desire to foster leadership attributes in youth that will be critical in solving the interconnected and complex problems of now and the future. Our goal is also to support and encourage individuals who otherwise would not have access to leadership opportunities -most notably girls and young women. Because everyone’s input is important and everyone’s voice must be heard!

Through AFLI, youth from different countries are connected together with the goal of learning from one another and working towards solutions to local and global problems. We are working on a multi-faceted set of projects combined with a focus on: MAKING CONNECTIONS, FORMING PARTNERSHIPS, DEVELOPING SKILLS, and BREAKING BARRIERS. These projects include youth taking action through Roots & Shoots, developing skills and educating communities through leadership workshops, creating meaningful international connections, faciltating critical dialogue on a local and international scale and creating outlets for voices to be heard where there sometimes may not have been an opportunity.

MISSION
The ACACIA Female Leadership Initiative’s (AFLI) mission is to create opportunities for youth to connect via an international network and Roots & Shoots projects to develop, expand and grow their leadership skills and, in the process, come to a better understanding of what it means to be an effective leader in 2009 and beyond.

This includes encouraging and supporting individuals, predominately women and girls, who traditionally do not have opportunities to become leaders in their own communities.

Our projects focus on four themes:
1) MAKING CONNECTIONS 2) FORMING PARTNERSHIPS 3) DEVELOPING SKILLS and 4) BREAKING BARRIERS

With an equal exchange of perspectives, knowledge and ideas it is our central mission for everyone’s input to be heard – it is through understanding each other that we can overcome our biggest hurdles.

For Details and How to Support

http://femaleleadership.org/

Call for Nominations, Orient Global Freedom to Create Prize, recognises artists who bring messages of hope to places of turmoil and despair.

Creativity Creates Prosperity

At Orient Global, we believe creative freedom is powerful. Prosperous societies are founded upon creativity. Societies that encourage artistic expression build strong foundations for economic, political and cultural development. They will lead tomorrow’s world.

Finding Light in Darkness

The Orient Global Freedom to Create Prize, established in 2008, recognises artists who bring messages of hope to places of turmoil and despair. Light comes in a deeply felt song or dance, in paintings or photographs that change the familiar into the exceptional, in dramas that tell hidden stories, in designs that solve practical problems.

Finding Courage in Truth

In societies where creativity is suppressed, artists provide a voice for the frightened, silent majority. They express the pain of the past and the possibilities for tomorrow. They inspire the human spirit and nourish the creativity needed for progress.

Artists in all creative fields, using any artform, are urged to enter.

* Main Prize. For individuals or groups. The winner receives US$50,000. Second prize, US$15,000. Third prize, US$10,000. Award monies will be divided evenly between the artist/group and a nominated advocacy organisation.

* Imprisoned Artist Prize. For artists currently imprisoned for defending human rights. The winner receives US$25,000 to support family, pay legal costs and promote advocacy.

* Youth Prize. For individuals or groups under the age of 18. The winner receives US$10,000 for an educational scholarship and US$15,000 for help with advocacy.

How to Enter

See the website:

Please note the entry deadline for submissions is August 14, 2009.
Stage 1, Register for Prize

Artist or nominating party registers for an entry form using the application form.

The artist or nominating party must download the latest version of Adobe Acrobat Reader.
Stage 2, Receive Application Form

An application form is emailed to the registered email address within 48 hours.
Stage 3, Submit Application

To enter the artists or nominating party must email the completed application form by 14 August 2009 to entry(at)freedomtocreateprize.com.

Postal entries must be received before August 21, 2009.
Stage 4, Shortlist Selected

Shortlisted entries will be selected in early September 2009.
Stage 5, Judging Panel

Panellists will deliberate in mid-October, 2009.
Stage 6, Winners Announced

Winners will be announced at an awards ceremony in London in mid-November, 2009.

http://www.freedomtocreateprize.com/Home.asp

Shoot Nations 2009-global, youth photography competition for young people

WELCOME TO SHOOT NATIONS 2009 PRESENTED BY PLAN UK.The theme for this year’s competition is GROWING UP IN THE 21st CENTURY.

This year we want people to look at the world around them and think about their place in it, and any limitations, advantages and opportunities that come with being born male or female.

We want you to focus on stereotyping, on how much who you are is related to whether you are male or female and on the different paths boys and girls are encouraged to tread. Take a closer look at who you really are!

The photos will provide a vivid illustration of the subject from different viewpoints from all over the world.

Submit 3 photographs, drawings or graphic designs that capture:

Because I am a Girl / Because I am a Boy (pick one)
What’s holding me back?
What could I be?
Upload your entries for the chance to win great prizes, be exhibited at the United Nations and other sites worldwide.

The competition is open to anyone aged 11 — 25 from anywhere in the world. In previous years the competition has received over 2,500 entries from 108 countries. Over 15,000 people have visited exhibitions of Shoot Nations photographs on 4 different continents — help us make this year even bigger and better!

‘Shoot Nations enables the smallest family, community or environmental issue to reach the highest level of global governance (the UN)’, Hamish Mackenzie, Plan International

See Details http://www.shootnations.org/

New fund for innovative knowledge sharing launched by AfricaAdapt

Africa’s poor and vulnerable communities rarely have the opportunity to share their valuable experience and learn from others in broader or more formal exchanges of knowledge on climate change adaptation. The AfricaAdapt network, which is funded by the joint UK Department for International Development (DFID)/International Development Research Centre (IDRC) Climate Change Adaptation in Africa Programme , is launching its new Knowledge Sharing Innovation Fund promoting new ways of sharing knowledge that can help address this problem.

The Knowledge Sharing Innovation Fund will offer grants of up to US$10.000 to projects that seek to overcome barriers to share knowledge with ’hard to reach’ or marginalised African communities. These barriers may be related to language, access to information and marginalisation due to gender or disability. Theatre performances, songs, radio broadcasts, visual arts, videos and comics are just a few ideas about how they could be overcome. The key is to ensure these groups can learn and share.

Ensuring that vulnerable communities are active in the exchange of African knowledge, best practices and know-how on climate change adaptation is a high priority for AfricaAdapt. These communities are the most directly threatened by climactic impacts, however they also have a wealth of experience in adapting to past changes that could benefit other communities.

African researchers, local and civil society organisations, cooperatives and community networks are encouraged to submit their ideas. The First round of submissions open from 1 July to 1 August 2009. Shortlisted applicants will be notified by 15 October.

http://www.africa-adapt.net/AA/NetworkNews.aspx

Africa Peace and Conflict Network’s new site and publications announcement

You are invited to visit the Africa Peace and Conflict Network’s (APCN) new website, which is accessible to the public as of June 5th, and is steadily being updated and extended as of that date.

There will be online events for the launch, which will be announced on APCN’s email list. We would be glad if you would help publicize this via your website and any associated or other sites or social networking forums.

APCN’s site has much free content including refereed publications like research papers, photo-essays, podcasts, etc.

Submissions are welcome of quality manuscripts or multimedia pieces analyzing issues broadly related to conflict or peace in Africa. In addition to our existing fora, a refereed, print, scholarly and professional journal (Review of African Conflicts and Peacebuilding) will be forthcoming.

APCN also reviews & publishes books and film reviews (see list of available titles) and conference report.s Attendees of thematically relevant symposia are warmly invited to submit enlightening and thoughtful conference analyses- see africapeace.org for style guidelines (website undergoing overhaul, so check back regularly).

Volunteer assistance to our work is greatly appreciated; contact information is on the site. At present, membership in the Network is still free, but this will not be the case for much longer. In the meantime, there is no cost for site registration, subscribing to the APCN email list, or downloading APCN content (but see the citation and usage rules).

Visit www.africapeace.org

VINYL 2010 ANNOUNCES WINNERS OF SECOND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT ESSAY COMPETITION

PRESS RELEASE
31 March 2009

1000 REGISTRATIONS: 5 WINNERS

The winners of the second Vinyl 2010 Essay Competition, which has total prize monies of €11,000, have been announced, following the detailed deliberations of the two judging panels. The independent judging panel chaired by Nadine Gouzée, the Head of the Sustainable Development Taskforce for the Federal Planning Bureau for Belgium, was composed of representatives of the academic and NGO community and also included a representative of the UN Children and Youth Major Group. The industry judging panel was chaired by Ole Grøndahl Hansen, Director of Denmark’s PVC Information Council and was composed of eight industry representatives.

Earlier this year, participants aged 18-30 years from Europe and around the world were invited to submit 1,000 words in response to the following question: “Faced with a food and energy crisis, how can society improve its well-being”. Close to a 1000 people representing 89 nationalities had signed up to take part in the Essay Competition. Over 200 completed essays were finally submitted to the panel of judges.

Prizes have been awarded to the three top contestants from across Europe, in addition to the best global level entry. A special Industry prize has also been added to this year’s prizes.

This year’s winners for each prize category are as follows:

European Economic Area category:

First prize (€3,000) has been won by 28 year old Jon Elms, an MSc student studying Project and Enterprise Management. His key interests are sustainable development and organisational design. He is currently employed as a project manager in the construction industry and lives and works in London.

Second prize (€2,000) has been awarded to 30 year old British / Canadian Fiona Wright who works to actively support the growth and development of skills and competence in strategic sustainable development worldwide. She lives in Sweden and is currently teaching and coaching people in an overarching framework for strategic sustainable development.

Third prize (€1,000) has been awarded to 26 year old Robert McSweeney who is an environmental scientist for a consultancy firm in London and works predominantly on climate change impact and adaptation assessment. Global Category :

The Global prize (€3,000) winner is Christian Williams a 28 year old New Zealander who studied Civil Engineering at the University of Canterbury and specialises in Highways and Transport Engineering. He is also interested in conservation and sustainability. The Industry prize (€2,000) has been awarded to 22 year old Wei Chao Zhou a student from Singapore at University College London currently pursuing a MSc degree in physics.

The winning essays, as well as the 35 runners-up, can be read on the competition website: www.vinyl2010essaycompetition.org . Visitors are encouraged to give their views and engage in dialogue with the other 200 authors. To date over 200 comments have been made. The 40 top essays will be published in a book that will be available shortly on the competition website. Some of the winners will be invited to speak at various high-level events focused on sustainable development.

The competition has exceeded the expectations of all the team at Vinyl 2010 considerably. Speaking as the independent Judging Panel meeting drew to a close and this year’s winners were announced, General Manager of Vinyl 2010, Jean-Pierre De Grève, commented: “The interest shown by so many contestants in this year’s competition is simply overwhelming. We are delighted to see the willingness of this age group to offer solutions to some of the biggest issues facing society today. This is the second such contest that Vinyl 2010 has organised and judging by participatory levels this year, we certainly see the value of continuing to offer young people a platform to air their view on this important subject in the future”

Chair of this year’s Judging Panel, Nadine Gouzée, said: “The Vinyl 2010 Essay Competition is a great forum for a vital and creative debate on how society needs to address these crucial issues. It is inspiring to see how engaged and enthusiastic the young people can be when discussing our future and the different kind of futures we need to consider. They offer the inspirational energy which we all need to see if we are to create the political will to truly develop a sustainable future.”

This year’s Competition was organised in conjunction with a wide range of partner organisations with interests in the field of sustainable development, including this year’s lead media partner, Cafe Babel (www.cafebabel.com)

For more information on this year’s competition, please visit: www.vinyl2010.org/essaycompetition.org.

Media contacts:

Chris Welton Head of Communications PlasticsEurope
+32 2 676 7443
chris.welton@plasticseurope.org

Martin Todd, Cambre Associates,
+32 2 645 79 90
mtodd@cambre-associates.com

-Ends-

Note to editors:

The Vinyl 2010 voluntary commitment is a 10 year plan to improve PVC production processes and products, invest in technology, minimise emissions, reduce waste and boost collection and recycling. Vinyl 2010 is a Partnership registered with the Secretariat of the UN Commission on Sustainable Development.

2007 saw the launch of Vinyl 2010’s first Sustainable Development Essay Competition which led to young people across Europe submitting essays in response to the question, “Are sustainable development and economic growth mutually exclusive?” To read the essays of last year’s entrants, visit: http://www.vinyl2010.org/Home/Competition/Theme/.

For more information on Vinyl 2010, this year’s Essay Competition and other Vinyl 2010 activities, please visit: www.vinyl2010.org and www.vinyl2010essaycompetition.org

Living World Peace – an introduction to our Drop in the Ocean Campaign!

Cross posted from http://drop-in-the-ocean-campaign.blogspot.com/

 

Hello everybody,

My name is Miri and I’ve recently been contacted by Living World Peace – an organisation out to have a peaceful world be experienced by one and all. They’ve asked me, a filmmaker from Sydney Australia, to help set up an exciting campaign where YOU will get to contribute!

We are currently creating an exciting video to kick off this campaign and we can’t wait to see what YOU come up with in response…

And, we’re going to call on you to spread the word! Because there is nothing more powerful that your word about something you are passionate about!!

I’ll be back in touch with you very soon to give you the details, but for now, a little more about our purposes and aims.

We want to create a stand for a peaceful world. Living World Peace is not about an ‘ideal’, it’s not about living as if one day, someday, maybe the world can experience peace…. oh no! Living World Peace is a challenge. We are challenging YOU the individual to LIVE WORLD PEACE TODAY!!! We are challenging YOU. We are suggesting that by EACH OF US, living world peace right now, we will create peace in the world around us.

We have some very real, very exciting, and very tangible goals that also go along with this challenge that we have set for ourselves… and we’ll be in touch with you to lay out our targets and goals very soon… but for now, why don’t you try on our challenge… even for just a minute.

LIVING WORLD PEACE: an exercise
For you to try at home.

Close your eyes and experience peace. Not airy fairy, wouldn’t it be nice. No, I’m saying, close your eyes right now, where you are sitting at your computer and notice the stillness in all the chaos, notice the stillness just behind your eyes, when you focus on your breath coming in… and out… and you will notice that stillness, that peace flowing gently down your arms, down your body, and into your feet. Feel the ground, the chair underneath you. Notice the air coming in and out of your lunges. And when you are in touch with that sense of real peace, in the moment, right now… I want to you to think about what it would look like to see peace in your community, all around… What would it feel like to be moving about your day, experiencing world peace around you, sheltering you, flowing out from you and into the world… What would you hear in the conversations around you that told you world peace was being experienced right now? What would you think, what would you know, that told you ” Yes. I am living world peace.” “Yes, I am experiencing world peace right now. And so are people in my community”… Imagine that they too are spreading world peace out into the world… and realise, that Living World Peace is not just an idea. It’s not an airy fairy ideal. I don’t just have to be a tree hugger or a hippie to experience this fantastic feeling… I don’t have to be an extreemist to experience this. I can experience it whoever I am. Simply by living it. Living World Peace.

Try it, see what it feels like. Sit there and close your eyes – even for just a few minutes a day and go through this meditation. And see what small changes start to show up in the world around you as YOU Live World Peace.

You may have noticed that this exercise involves nothing more than closing your eyes and breathing…. and playing a bit of ‘make believe’. That’s ok. ‘Make believe’ is fun. You’d be surprised at the difference your play can make.

Next up, we’ll tell you how you can get involved in this campaign “A DROP IN THE OCEAN 4 PEACE”. For now, sit back and live it, a little each day.

Take care,
Miri
from LIVING WORLD PEACE, right now.

If you want to know more about me you can check out my website: www.lunarwolfproductions.com

or my filmmaking blog
www.digital-dreaming.blogspot.com

Bye for now.

Drop in the Ocean 4 Peace

A campaign created by LIVING WORLD PEACE – an organisation created to make a stand for Peace, experienced by one and all, TODAY.http://drop-in-the-ocean-campaign.blogspot.com/

Youth Participation Guide: Assessment, Planning, and Implementation

Including young people as meaningful partners in programmes that target them with information and services can improve their effectiveness. However, fostering meaningful youth participation remains a challenge. This resource seeks to increase the level of meaningful youth participation in programming at an institutional and programmatic level.

DOWNLOAD HERE

4th UCW seminar on child labour, education and youth employment (15-16 October 2009, Istanbul-TURKEY)

15-16 October 2009
Istanbul, TURKEY

UCW Program and University of Galatasaray are organizing a two-day seminar to present recent research on child labour and its linkages with educational and youth employment outcomes.
The seminar will also aim at identifying key information gaps relating to these themes, thereby helping to guide future research efforts. We are calling for papers relevant to the following themes for presentation at the seminar:
- Determinants of child labour and education;
- Link between child labour and education;
- Impact of child labour involvement on youth employment outcomes;
- Labour market entry processes and school-to-work transitions.

Papers with a geographical focus on Middle-East are particularly encouraged.

All papers should be submitted in .pdf or .doc format by 1 June 2009 to
nkoseleci@ucw-project.org and
gbreglia@ucw-project.org.

The papers will be reviewed by a scientific committee; applicants will be notified by 15
July 2009 as to whether their paper has been accepted for presentation at the seminar.

Details

 

International Women’s Media Foundation Invites Neuffer Fellowship Applications

Deadline: April 15, 2009

The International Women’s Media Foundation ( http://www.iwmf.org/ ) is accepting applications for the 2009-10 Elizabeth Neuffer Fellowship, which is awarded to women journalists who focus on human rights and social justice.

Full-time, part-time, or freelance journalists working on human rights or social justices issues are eligible to apply. Recipients spend nine months (September 2009 to May 2010) in a specialized academic research program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology ( http://www.mit.edu/ ). During that time, Neuffer fellows may also work with the Boston Globe or New York Times.

The fellowship includes housing with a local family, a stipend to cover meals, ground transportation, health insurance, and other living expenses. It does not provide a salary or honoraria.

The goal of the Elizabeth Neuffer Fellowship is to provide a woman journalist with a transformative experience that will impact her career by offering her the opportunity to conduct research at leading academic institutions and build journalistic skills.

The Elizabeth Neuffer Fellowship and the related Elizabeth Neuffer Forum on Human Rights and Journalism seek to impact public awareness of human rights journalism by encouraging dialogue and discussion about critical human rights issues.

Who is eligible to apply for the fellowship?
The Elizabeth Neuffer Fellowship is open to women journalists around the world whose work focuses on human rights and social justice. Journalists working in the print, broadcast and Internet media, including freelancers, are eligible to apply.

Applicants must have a minimum of three years of experience in journalism. Non-native English speakers must also have excellent written and verbal English skills in order to fully participate in and benefit from the program.

(For information on other journalism fellowships, see the International Center for Journalists’ listing of fellowships: http://www.icfj.org/fellship.html.)

Where will the fellowship take place?
Each fellowship will be tailored specifically to the recipient. Working with the IWMF, the fellow will design a program that will enable her to pursue academic research while improving her ability to cover human rights and social justice by increasing her journalistic skill.

The fellow will be based at the Center for International Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, Massachusetts as a research associate during the research component of the fellowship. During the journalism portion of the fellowship, she may spend time at The Boston Globe or The New York Times, either in their home offices or in bureaus in Washington, D.C., or the United Nations.

What is the deadline?
Completed applications must be received by the IWMF on or before April 15, 2009. Incomplete applications or applications received after the due date will not be considered.