Improving women's lives through volunteerism.

As the people-to-people aspect of U.S. President John E Kennedy's economic aid initiative in Latin America and the Caribbean, Partners of the Americas (Partners) began forging hemispheric ties and friendships in 1964. Today, Partners is a non-profit, volunteer-based organization dedicated to social and economic development throughout the Americas that connects 45 U.S. states with 31 countries or regions of countries in Latin America and the Caribbean. For example, Chile is partnered with Washington State, Honduras with Vermont and Haiti with New Jersey.

Registered as local, non-governmental organizations within their communities, these "partnerships" are comprised of volunteers who dedicate their time and energy to a wide range of training and development projects, including agricultural assistance for farmers, education and safe havens for youth at risk, family planning services for rural communities, disaster preparedness for natural disaster-prone regions and capacity-building for women activists, among others. All these projects are generated at the community level and implemented by volunteers. Partners ensures community ownership of projects through its vast volunteer network, seed grants and capacity-building efforts. And while most of Partners' funding flows north to south, the collaboration and volunteerism are multi-directional.

An integral program at Partners of the Americas is the Women and Families Program. For 38 years, Partners has promoted the human rights of women through reproductive and sexual health, violence prevention, political participation, education and economic empowerment projects. These efforts aim to provide women with real choices and the opportunity to play a significant role in the development of their communities and countries. Partners volunteers have worked with women and their families, particularly those living in poverty, to achieve their full potential. Partners' support includes:

* Small Grants--small donations to support the implementation of community-based projects;

* Technical Assistance--travel grants for professionals and activists who assist local projects; and

* Workshops--capacity building for professionals and activists.

Reproductive Health 

Through a network of health care practitioners, academics and community activists, Partners provides women with access to information and services in maternal and child health care, nutrition, sex education and family planning.

Today, most of Partners' activities are specifically designed to address family planning needs, including:

* Enhancing the quality of local family planning services by upgrading staff skills;

* Improving outreach efforts by training local personnel in marketing techniques; and

* Strengthening local institutions by improving management and administration and by training staff in methods of income generation and volunteer management.

On the Bolivia altiplano, Partners volunteers continue to provide reproductive health services and training for community health workers. In these rural areas, information is sparser, and much-needed medical attention is lacking. Volunteer physicians and health care activists have made progress in these communities, specifically in the area of male participation in family planning.

Dr. Wilma Johnson, a Partners volunteer and women's health activist from Utah, began working with these Bolivian communities over twelve years ago. The following is her testimony:

"I began working with the Aymara community of Ayamaya on the Bolivian altiplano approximately 12 years ago. I was a member of a medical group that provided an open clinic and basic medical care to villagers in Ayamaya and nearby communities. However, I had doubts concerning the long-term benefits of merely 'patching' the villagers' immediate health problems compared with the value of providing basic health knowledge.

"At first the villagers were suspicious of me as an outsider due to the oppressive treatment of their political and social system. However, over time, as I lived with them in their small adobe huts, shared their daily lives, worked in the fields with the women, nursed their sick and helped bury their dead, they began to trust me.

"As we made preparations to implement the first Reproductive Health Training, we emphasized that women and youth should participate. There was some fear and apprehension among many, and we thought that perhaps only 40 or 50 total would attend. However, more than 300 people joined us in the village community center. Some had walked 20 kilometers or ridden their bicycles under difficult conditions to attend.

"For most, it was the first time in their lives they had ever openly shared such conversations, and we had many animated exchanges. Over time, we have learned that men, women and youth everywhere seek knowledge and the ability to direct their own lives and improve their families' living condition."

In addition to local project support, Partners' Women and Families Program coordinates capacity-building workshops to improve the skills of individuals and organizations active in the area of reproductive health. In the May 2000 workshop Building Our Strength for Planned Families, Partners brought together family planning professionals for two days of intensive, hands-on training in Jamaica. Forty participants from eight Caribbean countries and the U.S. explored current trends and best practices important in reproductive health care provision, unwanted pregnancy prevention and family planning services.

The following year in the foothills of the Ecuadorian Andes, Partners convened volunteers from 15 Latin American countries to develop important skills in family planning. Participants learned new techniques in participatory program planning, coalition building, advocacy and media outreach. While skills development was an important goal of the workshop, the opportunity to share experiences proved even more valuable as participants discussed challenges and successes in their work throughout the hemisphere.

Adolescent Reproductive Health

As the under-25 age demographic increases in many countries of the region, Partners is focusing on innovative approaches in promoting adolescent health. From 1999 to 2001, Partners implemented a teen pregnancy prevention project in Belize, Guatemala and Honduras to support community-based programs. The project aimed to identify successful approaches to adolescent reproductive health, particularly those that target males and involve organizations outside the traditional family planning networks.

In Choloma, Honduras through a network of 32 community organizations, Partners helped launch the COMVIDA-Choloma adolescent pregnancy prevention project. COMVIDA has sponsored the creation of several youth organizations, provided education and training, and mentored youth micro-enterprise projects. The Choloma Chamber of Commerce and Industry has provided the foundation for COMVIDA through staff and financial support. In effect, the business sector has recognized that adolescent reproductive health is vital to the health and development of its community.

Partners is also working with the Mexican Conservation Corps (MCC) to promote environmentally sustainable community development. The MCC is committed to on-going education for its youth members to promote community change and development. Every summer, the MCC coordinates three or four camps offering young Mexicans a structured experience through which to learn about their environment and sexual and reproductive health. By integrating family planning and health education into their successful community service program, corps members have become effective peer educators-counselors capable of increasing young adults' ability to make informed decisions about their future.

Domestic and Sexual Violence Prevention

Projects to prevent violence against women and children are another important component of the Women and Families Program. Since the early 1990s, Partners has worked to reduce the incidence of violence against women and girls in Brazil. Volunteers have established women's shelters and violence hot-lines, provided training for law enforcement officials and judges, and implemented community awareness campaigns throughout the country.

In addition, Partners has coordinated follow-up conferences to support the Platform for Action of the Fourth World Conference on Women in which domestic violence was one of seven areas addressed, as well as the Inter-American Convention to Prevent, Sanction and Eradicate Violence Against Women.

As a result of such efforts, in Santa Catarina, Brazil, a Partners' public education campaign on violence against women was cited by the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) as having achieved the most success in Brazil in promoting the internationally-recognized human rights of women and children.

Partners is currently launching a gender violence initiative in the Dominican Republic, Colombia and Mexico to prevent the trafficking of women and girls and other forms of violence against women. Over 100 activists already have participated in the program through workshops on advocacy, coalitions and lobbying (see sidebar, p. 56). This two-year project aims to generate constructive community responses to the problem of gender-based violence and to encourage communication and collaboration among organizations involved in the issue.

Women's Political Participation

In order to strengthen the role of women in the political process, Partners helps build the capacity of community organizations to develop and implement successful advocacy strategies.

Assisting women's organizations such as Manuela Ramos of Peru and the Institute of Reproductive Health of Haiti, Partners takes activists through the steps of defining advocacy goals, identifying audiences and crafting messages that will resonate with those audiences. Such training exercises are designed to enable women to improve their political outreach and promote women's legal rights.

In Haiti last year, every Tuesday for six weeks, 80 young women gathered for a workshop to explore advocacy skills and women's rights as part of a Partners-funded project. The curriculum included an overview of women's history in Haiti, reproductive health issues, follow-up on the Beijing Women's Conference, leadership and advocacy skills, and self-confidence building. With the program ending on a very positive note, each participant made a commitment to share what she had learned with her peers.

Public Outreach

For many years, Partners considered itself "the best kept secret in the Western Hemisphere." Not anymore. Partners is cultivating grassroots support for development programs in Latin America and the Caribbean through public education and media outreach campaigns.

With projects such as Global Reach Out for Women (GROW), Partners is increasing awareness of international development programs for women and helping to bring a women's perspective into U.S. policymaking. As a result, Partners has established groups of citizen-advocates in key midwestern states to become hubs of public education and advocacy activity (see sidebar, p. 59).

Partners is also publicly promoting international family planning. As U.S. economic assistance for international family planning declines, Partners is more active than ever in promoting reproductive health and rights. Partners chapters in the U.S. are speaking with local communities about successful family planning projects in their partner countries.

As part of this advocacy effort, twelve young leaders of the Mexican Conservation Corps completed a five-state tour in the United States in June 2001 to discuss issues concerning youth leadership, population and the environment, and peer education. The youth ambassadors met with Members of Congress in Washington, D.C., and several community organizations in Arizona, New Mexico, Iowa, Oklahoma and Texas.

The thought-provoking perspectives of these articulate young people on the environment, family planning programs and economic development are captured in the recent Partners publication, "Emerging Voices."

Women and Conflict Resolution

In collaboration with Women for Women International, Partners is implementing a two-year Women for Peace project, aimed at 480 low-income women in six municipalities in Colombia. The project provides intensive training, micro-credit opportunities and small grants supporting peace and political development programs.

This project comes at a critical moment for peacekeeping initiatives involving women in Colombia, especially among the displaced. In recent years, the women have suffered disproportionately from violence and economic hardship. Through Women for Peace, women will have the opportunity to discover their own potential to become co-creators of a peaceful and just society. By combining the themes of peacemaking, political participation and economic development, this project will address key causes of conflict.

Conclusion

Volunteers are extraordinary. They are altruistic and generous. Partners of the Americas would not exist without them. As women throughout the hemisphere learn to empower themselves both inside and outside the home, much of this progress can be attributed to the vital work of people dedicating themselves to people.

When a local Brazilian politician travels to a battered women's shelter in Missouri to witness a community's response to violence, a connection is made. When a group of teachers from Birmingham, Alabama, visits grade schools in Guatemala to improve their own sex education curricula, a connection is made. And when Caribbean family planning professionals meet to discuss different approaches to HIV/AIDS prevention in their region, another connection is made.

Partners volunteers continue to make these connections across a region as diverse as it is vast. Issues such as gender-based violence, the marginalization of women in the political process, and economic exclusion will continue to mobilize Partners of the Americas and others concerned with the health and vitality of the hemisphere.

For more information, contact:

Partners of the Americas

1424 K Street, NW, 7th Floor Washington, D.C. 20005, USA

Tel.: [phone]

Fax: [phone]

E-mail: info @partners.net

Website: www.partners.net

Cerro Verde: A Model of Integrated Health Care 

In 2002, the Bolivia-North Carolina partnership of Partners of the Americas won a competitive World Bank grant to support the community outreach efforts of a local health clinic in Cochabamba, Bolivia.

In Cochabamba, the Cerro Verde clinic has become a model of integrated health care. Cerro Verde provides services in Aymara and Quechua languages and responds to a variety of other community needs. These services include running a teen discussion group, providing basic health education while patients wait for doctors, and conducting a series of comprehensive health education courses for the community. The center also provides individual social assessments for each patient and home visits by nurses and social workers. These community outreach programs began with a Partners volunteer and a modest grant from Partners of the Americas.

The Cerro Verde project also includes training community health promoters, publishing a manual on the integrated care model, and initiating adolescent sexual health workshops. This unique model of medical services goes beyond the traditional identification and treatment of disease to an integrated approach that "recognizes and responds to the impact of social, psychological and environmental conditions on the health of the community."

* For more information, contact: Kitty Stalberg, e-mail: stalberg@email. unc.edu

Protecting Women's Legal Rights: Workshop Methodology

The capacity-building workshop, "Protecting Women's Legal Rights," was held in February 2002 in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, for activists involved in women's legal rights. Twenty-six people participated in the workshop, representing women's organizations and government institutions from across the country. The workshop served as the launching point for a larger project that includes small grant support and technical assistance for legal rights projects in Colombia, the Dominican Republic and Mexico.

The three-day workshop began with a panel presentation on women's rights by Dominican experts on the topic. The training portion was divided into three modules: advocacy, coalition building and management, and lobbying. In each module, participants had the opportunity to discuss, to practice new techniques, and to hear a case study. The case studies were presented by participants themselves and highlighted an issue involving women's legal rights and a target skill. At the end of the workshop, participants divided into small discussion groups in order to formulate their conclusions and suggest follow-up actions.

With the conclusion of this workshop and two more in Colombia and Mexico, the Women and Families Program opened a competitive grant competition for workshop participants and other civil society groups. The grants were awarded to projects that aimed to:

* Strengthen the role of women in the political process;

* Work to shape public perception and policy regarding women's legal rights; and/or

* Initiate or expand existing programs that provide legal protections and services to victims of domestic violence.

* For more information, contact: Mary Beth Hastings, e-mail: mbh@ partners.net

"Wisconsin Women Care"

The "Wisconsin Women Care" public outreach project builds on the existing volunteer-based activities of the Wisconsin-Nicaragua Partners of the Americas, targeting a coalition of women and women's organizations. The project is building awareness of the status of women globally--especially in Nicaragua--and seeks to increase support for international development programs that assist women and girls. Activities to promote this awareness have included mailings sent to 455 Wisconsin libraries, the completion of a Wisconsin Women

Care website, and the initiation of an education and recruitment program among Wisconsin women.

The main event of the project, a regional workshop, attracted 85 participants from around Wisconsin. The workshop included speakers from Washington D.C., Nicaragua and local organizations in Wisconsin and focused on the connection between women in Wisconsin and women in Nicaragua. The workshop closed with each participant pledging to take action on behalf of women around the world.

The Wisconsin Partners of the Americas Chapter is working in collaboration with the Association for Home and Community Education; the American Association for University Women, Business and Professional Women; the League of Women Voters; the PEO Sisterhood; Wisconsin Technical Colleges; and Zonta International.

* For more information, visit the website: wnp.uwsp.edu/programs/wwc/ index.htm

The author volunteered at LACWHN from November 2001 to June 2002, providing research, editorial and fundraising support. With the support of a Fulbright Fellowship, Ms. Young conducted independent research on the impact of international human rights instruments on the civic participation of women's organizations aiming to influence the policymaking process in Chile. Prior to her fellowship, she worked as a program officer for Partners of the Americas, administering capacity-building programs in the area of women's political participation, domestic violence prevention and reproductive health throughout the U.S., Latin America and the Caribbean.