CHILE:
Location:
In July we were fortunate to be visited by Larry Philbrook from ICA Taiwan, with whom we traveled to the community of Lampa to visit a women's bakery project. There are currently 18 women who are members of this project. It was wonderful to visit the bakery, which is a real success story; it was one of the first ICA-supported projects in Chile and has been in existence for 30 years. Many of the original participants are still involved.
We are currently very busy implementing a course for disabled youth (Training Program for Participative Leadership) in the city of Concepción, Chile at the Concepción Teleton Rehabilitation Institute. This course is attended by youth both with and without disabilities. The course is led by Eduard Christensen and Isabel de la Maza and aims to break down stereotypes, build self confidence and leadership skills among participants, and help with the integration of those with differing abilities into mainstream Chilean society. The Program has been carried out in Chile during the past 9 years in cities across the country, including Antofagasta, Valparaíso, Santiago and Concepción.
Staff contacto@icachile.cl
NEPAL:
Location: Kathmandu
For the last 4 months, ICA Nepal has been concentrating on the establishment of ICA
Associates. It has started with a fully fledged and well equipped office at
the centre of Kathmandu. During the last 4 months, ICA Associates has already
conducted 5 training sessions,1 month each for 25 people in one group. It has started
AXCLA - Asian Cross Cultural Learning and Adventure jointly with Krishnan and
Punitha, long time associates of ICA.
With the assistance of ICA Japan, ICA Nepal received some support from the Tokyo Union Church (TUC) for the Changu Naryayan Women's Group. The women's group is implementing a series of programmes at the village level. ICA Nepal also completed the first phase of a community development project in the far western region of Nepal, which is being carried out with support from MISEREOR.
Tatwa P. Timsina ica@icanep.wlink.com.np
PERU:
Location: Lima and Azpitia
This was the week of Independence in Peru, and a very quiet one as there were no
fireworks permitted because of the disquiet in the jungle areas about resource
rights. But the week offered a great time for people to travel and experience
Peru, including our volunteer from the UK, Shu Sun who toured in the mountains
for 6 days along with Luis Tarazona.
The big project of the week has been a
series of workdays coordinated by Pedro Aburto and Alex Borjas at the Training
Center in Azpitia, in order to make some further improvements, and offer the
staff and colleagues a chance to experience the rural setting and have a great
celebration. There were 26 of us for dinner on Friday night, lots of fine work
done on Saturday with a Pachamanca feast in the late afternoon with about 37
people, including most of the ICA socios and all of the incoming Board members.
A pachamanca is done by digging a large hole in the ground, lining it with large
rocks, building a fire in it to get the rocks very hot, and then add all sorts of
vegetables and meat, which are then covered with more hot rocks and covered with
banana leaves and wonderful herbs for seasoning, and then covered for two hours
turns until all is cooked into a delicious feast.
We took the opportunity to
celebrate the birthday of Martha Sanchez and to claim many promises for the
future with pisco sours and local wine. Sunday morning then saw the termination
of about 30 tasks, leaving the Training Center sparkling and ready for our new
life of continuous programming which begins in early September, with only a one
or two week break between the 3-week AVANZA PERU leadership training programs
running right into 2010. What a life!
Staff admin@ica-peru.org
ICAI:
Location: Montréal
This past week we were excited to welcome a new member of staff, Audra Renyi, who has joined us as the Development and Communications Officer.
Originally from Toronto, Audra completed her university studies in business & international studies in the United States. After university, she worked as an analyst for an Investment Bank in New York. She learned a great deal on Wall Street, and after a few years, decided to help, in her own small way, make the world a better place, and moved to Africa. In Mombasa, Kenya, Audra helped a US-funded micro finance bank build its business plan and provided marketing assistance to a sustainable development venture with a coconut oil factory. Upon the invitation of Coventry University, she presented a technical paper on the positive role private equity can play in creating environmentally sustainable businesses. She has also served as the CFO of a non-profit organization in Western Rwanda, near the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo, which teaches small farmers how to raise the productivity of their land and provides fertilizer and seed loans with the goal of permanently lifting families out of poverty. Prior to returning to Canada and joining ICA International, Audra served as a Finance and Human Resources Administrator for Doctors without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières) in Chad.
Audra brings exceptional financial, communication, marketing and organizational skills, as well as an understanding of the realities and challenges facing organizations in the field, and a passion for supporting sustainable solutions. She is excited about joining the ICA network and promoting ICA internationally. We know you will join us in warmly welcoming Audra to ICA.
With Audra's hiring our current staff team has again stabilized at five members, which gives us a solid foundation for moving forward. With hiring complete, we took the opportunity to undertake planning for the coming months. Lambert led a meeting using the ToP methods, an exercise which, in addition to planning for the coming months, also served to introduce newer staff members to the ToP approach. It was very interesting for them to learn more about ICA methodology, and it helped them to begin to understand what is so particular and special about ICA. This past week we also received a visit from Duncan Holmes from ICA Associates, and benefited from wide ranging discussions with him.
As all of you should have seen, we published the latest edition of the Network Exchange (http://ica-international.org/exchange/2009_07/), and we are very proud of its interesting content and of the positive feedback we have been receiving. We would like to thank the National ICA’s that contributed articles to this issue, and the staff members and interns that worked on its coordination, editing and translations. We are already accepting articles or story ideas for the next issue: please send your contributions to Julia at jbergel@ica-international.org.
Staff info@ica-international.org
