CANADA:

Location: Toronto

Miriam Patterson and Liz Donnery met with a Rotary club in Toronto to share stories of the work in Africa. We had a positive response, but no guarantee of funding as of yet. 

Plans are underway for a big-scale educational fundraising event which will take place in early June.

St. John's United Church began their Lenten collection for the work in Africa this week. This collection will take place every week for the next 6 weeks.

Lynn Connell returned with wonderful stories of the work happening in Zimbabwe and Tanzania.

Liz Donnery           ldonnery@icacan.ca

ICA ASSOCIATES INC. (Canada)

Location: Toronto

Jo Nelson spent a week in Regina working with Regina Public Schools and the Saskatchewan Ministry of Education. ICA has trained a significant number of principals and classroom teachers in facilitation methods. Jo also facilitated a planning session with the John Howard Society,  Community Living in Durham Region and the Niagara District School Board.

Bill Staples facilitated workshops for Eneract, Service Canada and led a focus group for Consumers association. John Miller has been teaching - Designing Planning Systems and the Organizational Journey in Toronto and Group Facilitation and Facilitating Conciliation in Vancouver.

Wayne Nelson           wnelson@ica-associates.ca

JAPAN:

Location: Japan and around the World

ICA Japan 2008 Conference

The conference group meet again and we selected about 30 places for prospective site visits, and included links to each home page of these places.  We gave ourselves a month to contact them all.  Many sites visit prospects are also candidates for exhibits and for participants.  We also hired an experienced Japanese conference coordinator, Yuka Hayashi, to begin April 2, 2007.

Chiapas Team. Six members of the Chiapas team arrived in Tokyo for a two week exchange program, and now they are here being oriented to Japan.  Toshiba CSR Team Members of the CSR group visited ICA Japans office to announce their support for a reforestation project in Massai country of Kenya.  Toshiba decided to plant 1,000,000,000 trees around the world, working with NGOs to accomplish this great recovery of Planet Earth.

Vietnam Reforestation Project: Naomi leaves Monday tomorrow to help Mou Chou Village in rural Vietnam.  Mou Chou villagers were inspired by their use of ICAs participatory planning, and are implementing a nature park and planting an additional 4000 trees.  They will soon have the most beautiful village, and a place to relax, together.  With Naomis help, they will do another strategic planning for the village.

Chisso Corporation Collaboration: Shizuyo returned from a three country trip to Vietnam, China, and India, promoting RBS for recycling waste water to clean water.  Chisso may adopt some of Toshibas technology to reduce the need for large amounts of electricity.  Chisso only provides the Bio-reactor and the design of the system, so that any village around the world can implement this recycling system.

Wayne Ellsworth           wayne@icajapan.org

KENYA:

Location: Nairobi

INTRODUCTION

An animal has come; lets join hands and chase it away (HIV / AIDS is the Animal as some youth recited a Kiswahili poem During the HIV / AIDS Prevention training in Wathini Baptist Church in Makueni District in Kenya)

The objective of this training was to equip the church members with information on HIV / AIDS so that they can pass it on to other people in the community as they meet in their social places.

The church is now five years old with members of 150. Most of the church members are small-scale farmers. The area receive very little rain whereby the harvest is also very little. Only seven members out of the hundred and fifty are working.

In December 2nd and 3rd 2006, Bernard Mwania a member of the church recruited two church members and trained them on how to facilitate using the ICA curriculum for HIV / AIDS prevention so that, they can help him during the training which took place at the church compound on 21st 22nd and 23rd December 2006. December 21st 2006 was a planning day and setting the hall.

The training was residential and it was for the whole church whereby we managed to train 65 participants, both parents and youth. The result demonstrated that, the church is willing to address the HIV / AIDS challenge. Church members complained that, the time was too short because they had more questions to ask and were eager to know more about HIV / AIDS. It took the facilitators more than two hours to answer questions from the participants. Facilitators allowed questions from 9.00pm to 11.00pm. These were questions from the sessions we had covered from morning. We also managed to show them video shows on people infected with HIV / AIDS. We had melody dancers from the church that used to lead the other participants so that we can capture the attention of the participants back to the training. I squeezed the training for two days because of lack of money to cater for the food of the participants for more than two days.

A time come when we broke into three groups so that each group can come up with points on what they know about HIV / AIDS. We had a group of Parents, a group youth who have finished secondary school and collages and have not yet married, a group of 10 years up to form three in secondary school.

Participants said that, they need another training for home care and counseling so that they can be able to counsel and care for the affected and the infected.

I was advised by the pastor and Church elders not to talk about use of condoms because according to the faith of the church, condom encourages immorality with the society. I managed to talk to the youth during the group discussions about use of condom after one of them raised a question on the use of condom.

Bernard Mwania facilitating during the HIV / AIDS
prevention training in Wathini Baptist Church.

Bernard Mwania

PERU:

Location: 100 Valleys

The AVANZA PERU 3-week leadership formation program was evaluated and curriculum changes made for the next one which begins 4 March, and final marketing efforts are proving fruitful as the program fills up. 

Another appointment was held with a major bank and it appears that they are going to assist us soon in our application for major funding.

Ken Hamje           kenh@ica-peru.org

ITERLENG ICA South Africa:

Location: South Africa

Greetings, Training work: We will be conducting 2 days training for Palesa coporate consultants over the weekend, and Dineo and Fisser are busy with the AIDS Consortium 6 days PSP training.

We are working towards a deadline for a proposal that  needs to be submitted to the US Embassy by 1st March for Groot Marico, through their small grants programme. Our partner Kairos Foundation originally from the US has approached us to do a joint funding proposal for the More to Life training to be offered the YFL youth. 
Muzi and Shimmy visited the North West, Groot Marico programme last friday to check on its progress.

Muzi Mbonani           mbonanim.ica@telkomsa.net

ICAI:

Location: Montréal

Lambert and I spent a significant portion of this week supplying ever more paperwork and documentation for his work permit. Montréal International is working hard to resolve the situation and is confident that it will not take too much longer. Despite these frustrations we have been able to make progress on a revision of the Membership Handbook, development of the 2007 Annual Report, resource development efforts, and a variety of practical issues regarding the office. Reviewed preliminary FY06 financial report. Caught up with Inge van Steekelenburg of ICA Netherlands, Charles Wabwire of ICA Uganda, Wayne Ellsworth of ICA Japan, and Nelson Stover.

Thanks to everyone for submitting their Network Exchange stories and photos by 1 March, and 2007 Annual Report contributions by 15 March!

Sarah Miller           sarah.miller@earthlink.net