The LAFF Society

Submitted by Rosalia Sciortino, who worked on Reproductive Health at the Foundation in 1993-2000 in Manila and Jakarta.

From the Citizens News Service (CNS)

June 13, 2010

by Shobha Shukla

On the 1st day of Women Deliver 2010 conference, taking place in Washington DC, USA, leaders from United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), and CARE International announced an agreement to enhance collaboration on maternal health programs in more than 25 countries, by working with national governments and by engaging local communities. However for women to deliver, they need power. Successful women change makers have to deal with their power –getting it, keeping it and using it wisely. Read more

Helen Clark, Administrator, and the first woman to lead the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) believes that “achieving gender equality is not only morally right, but also catalytic to development as a whole, creating political, economic, and social opportunities for women, which will benefit individuals, communities, countries, and the world. With women currently comprising only eighteen per cent of the world’s legislators, we are far from parity. Initiatives like legislative quotas, civic education drives, and voter registration campaigns which seek to boost the numbers of women legislators need to be applauded and replicated.”

On the economic front, women are joining the workforce in increasing numbers, but still, almost two thirds of women in the developing world work in vulnerable jobs where they are either self-employed or work as unpaid family workers.

This increases the responsibility of women in power, as they are the inspiration as well as aspiration of millions of their ‘not so fortunate’ sisters. Helen rightly feels that women have to work with men, (as well as with other women) and not against them. Inclusive leadership is the crying need of today.

Building alliances, forming networks and working together will give women leaders the strength to work more and live up to the expectations reposed in them by millions who still lack the basic access to maternal health. Sharing experiences not only restores confidence, but also results in better outcomes.

Arianna Huffington, co-founder of The Huffington Post, feels that the quest for power should bring more balance and wisdom. She finds a lot of intelligence around her but very little wisdom. In a lighter vein she remarked that if ‘Lehmann Brothers ‘were ‘Lehmann Brothers and Sisters’, then they might still be standing. She laments that today’s young women are beset with the fear of failure. Young girls are stressed to the maximum as they are scared of dealing with failure. But then failure is the stepping stone to success. The author of several books, she cites her own example when her 2nd book was rejected by 36 publishers before seeing the light of the day.

There should not be an unbridled hurry to achieve all that we can and wish to. Perseverance is the key to success. And to be powerful in a wise manner one needs to be healthy. Very often women undermine their own need for a healthy and joyous existence and succumb to the traditional role of keeping family happiness above everything else. But if they have to deliver to the world they need to use their creative abilities to the maximum. A good night’s sleep is essential to be able to enjoy each waking moment of life. At this point of inflexion, when women are coming out of their well (and veil), it is important for them to exercise the power they hold as a mother, sister and wife, in a wise manner in order to make this world a more just and humane place to live in.

Ashley Judd, actress and activist, feels that ‘what comes from the heart goes to the heart, and what comes through the head, goes over the head’. So it is important to have passion, as well as compassion in our quest for power and in exercising that power.

Investing in women and girls will be critical for achieving the goals. Development progress is lagging where the needs and status of women and girls are given low priority. Women’s reproductive health needs remain hugely under served. More than half a million women die every year from complications related to pregnancy and childbirth. Moreover, 25 years into the HIV/AIDS epidemic, gender inequality and unequal power relationships expose women to great risk. While about half of all people living with HIV/AIDS globally are female, in sub-Saharan Africa, approximately sixty per cent are female.

Women Deliver is an initiative which works globally to focus attention on fulfilling what is called “Millennium Development Goal #5.” This goal calls for a reduction in maternal mortality and universal access to reproductive health globally. We must not forget that “Women are at the economic heart of the developing world. And to do all this work, they need to be healthy”.

Shobha Shukla

(The author is the CNS Editor, has worked earlier with State Planning Institute, UP, and teaches Physics at India’s prestigious Loreto Convent. Email: shobha@citizen-news.org, website: www.citizen-news.org)

Submitted by Mary Ann Burris who was with the Foundation in 1991-2003, working in Knowledge, Creativity and Freedom and in the Reproductive Health Program.

I keep meaning to find the time to share what I have been doing since I left the Ford Foundation in 2003 with LAFF colleagues.   I am embarrassed to say that, except for joining with a lifetime membership, I have not been very communicative.  My apologies.  In the years since 2003, I have been fully engaged in running and growing a small nonprofit in Kenya called TICAH, the Trust for Indigenous Culture and Health.  All of our work has to do with the connections between culture and health.  Our programs include work on herbal medicine and nutrition for AIDS-affected families, a medicine plant garden and peace shrine at the National Museums of Kenya, a sexuality project called “My Body, My Choice” which started as work with HIV-positive women’s groups, but which now includes work with a wide range of ages and orientations.  We have a training and outreach program in Nairobi slums that focuses on household security— food, services, health, safety, gardens, and another focusing on HIV-positive children and their needs in which we use a lot of art, meditation, music, and play.   One of our earliest projects was collecting treatment experiences of positive friends, colleagues, and acquaintances.  We have done this work in Kenya, Uganda, Senegal, South Africa, India, China, Thailand, and the USA so far.  As part of this “Listening To Those Who Live It” program, we have been painting body maps to share our stories.  Body maps are life-size self portraits that tell our stories of healing and illness, stigma and strength.  We have been trying to bring body mapping to HIV support groups in the USA for a couple of years now.  They have been exhibited in London and Berlin so far.  We have found a partner called Urban Zen, started by Donna Karan, and they have offered us space in their NY gallery in November.  They have also helped to secure the help of Baaba Maal, Senegalese musician, and Bajah and the Dry Eye Crew, from Sierre Leone, who have agreed to do a fund-raiser concert for TICAH at the Urban Zen gallery in New York on June 15.

Rosalia Sciortino worked in the Jakarta and Manila offices from 1993 to 2000.

This synthesis report reviews the provision of contraceptive services and commodities in Southeast Asia, assessing progress in achieving contraceptive security and meeting the reproductive health needs of the region’s population. The purpose is to systematize fragmented knowledge into an integrated evidence base for follow-up study, advocacy and action.

The report was written by Dr Rosalia Sciortino and commissioned by the Asia Pacific Alliance for Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights, through a grant provided through Project Resource Mobilisation and Awareness (Project RMA).

Project RMA is a joint effort of Population Action International, the International Planned Parenthood Federation and the German Foundation for World Population to increase political and financial support for reproductive health supplies at global, regional and national levels.

Download the web version of the report as a PDF at http://www.asiapacificalliance.org/images/stories/contraceptivesecurityreproductivehealthneedsweb.pdf

Rosalia Sciortino is now Health Adviser for AusAID in Indonesia, while  remaining affiliated Associate Professor with IPSR (institute for Population and Social Research), Mahidol University, Thailand

From Washington University in St. Louis News & Information

By Barbara Rea

Oct. 14, 2009 — Urvashi Vaid, one of the most visible faces of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) movement, will deliver the Spencer T. Olin Fellows annual lecture at 4 p.m. Oct. 23 in Graham Chapel.

Her talk is titled “Beyond the Wedding Ring: LGBT Activism in the Age of Obama.” The event is free and open to the public.

In 1979, Vaid was a 21-year-old college graduate whose strong streak of activism, exhibited from an early age, was channeled into the feminist movement and encompassed lesbian and gay rights.

By the mid-1980s, Vaid was an attorney working for the ACLU’s National Prison Project. She left that position to become the public information director for the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (NGLTF), the oldest national LGBT civil rights organization in the country.

In 1989, she became its director and then executive director of the NGLTF “think tank” policy institute.

Thirty years later, Vaid is as passionate as ever about human rights and social justice issues and continues to work toward real equality for all.

Throughout her career, Vaid has fought for equal rights for gays and lesbians. In her 1996 groundbreaking book, “Virtual Equality: The Mainstreaming of Gay and Lesbian Liberation,” she lays out her view that true liberation will come only from institutional transformation.

After leaving the NGLTF, Vaid became deputy director of the governance and civil society unit of the Ford Foundation. Since 2005, she has led the Arcus Foundation, whose mission includes the achievement of social justice that is inclusive of sexual orientation, gender identity and race.

Born in New Delhi, India, Vaid arrived in the United States with her family as an 8-year-old. She earned a bachelor’s degree from Vassar College and a law degree from Northeastern University.

The Berlin Call to Action (September 4, 2009) from the NGO Forum on Sexual and Reproductive Health and Development meeting in Berlin, which was the official 15 years post ICPD follow up meeting….

“Were any of you there?  What were your impressions of the meeting?  Lia attended the Bangkok NGO meeting for Asia-Pacific and felt it was a big disappointment as there was not discussion on rights whatsoever and the NGOs present were pretty mainstream. Her impression was that the more empowering part of Cairo has lost steam.  Feedback from the Berlin meeting was that there was a certain lack of unanimity at the meeting – some unhappy people who didn’t see the term “family planning” in the main text, and others advocating to use the SRHR framework (presumably because FP=Population=Population Control) consistently in every setting with every audience. Some felt the “Berlin Call to Action” was written to policymakers with an explicit agenda by some donors who are trying to reposition family planning.    It would be great to hear from anyone who was there – whether this is an accurate analysis of what went on.”   Joan and Lia

President and CEO

October 05, 2009

About The Foundation

Nokomis Foundation is a private, non-profit charitable trust, which through grantmaking, convening and collaboration seeks to create a stronger voice for women and girls.  The Foundation’s grantmaking and initiatives are focused on promoting economic self-sufficiency and advancing the civic and political participation of women and girls.

Nokomis Foundation is seeking to fill the position of President and CEO with a seasoned, creative applicant with a minimum of seven years of leadership experience and passion for the Nokomis feminist mission. The successful candidate will work closely with the Founder to advance her philanthropic vision, leading a team of two other full-time staff to affect social change.

Position Overview

The President/CEO is responsible for the broad leadership of Nokomis Foundation including the management of staff. She is responsible for positive and productive relationships with the Founder and Advisory Committee, effective relationships with grant partners, and efficient business operations.  The President/CEO represents Nokomis Foundation to the public and community. The President/CEO stays abreast and aware of developments in focus areas, and advises the Founder and Advisory Committee on strategic action to support these developments.

Because of the small number of staff and the fluctuating nature of the workload, an attitude of flexibility and cooperativeness is essential to job success.

Duties and Responsibilities

Lead and guide the development and execution of the strategic plan and vision. Ensure that Nokomis staff and stakeholders are involved with initiatives that support the Foundation’s strategic intent.

Provide staff leadership and accountability.

Recruit, hire, manage, and evaluate staff ensuring that fair employment practices are followed.

Represent Nokomis Foundation and its mission, vision and values at the local, regional, state and national levels. Act as a primary spokesperson for the Foundation, and coordinate public communication responsibilities of the Founder and staff.

Actively identify and understand new developments and initiatives related to the mission of Nokomis Foundation.  Connect with fields of philanthropy and seek collaborative opportunities.

Build community awareness of research activities, findings and other data driven activities that support or enhance the mission and strategies of Nokomis Foundation.  Create public relation campaigns, reports, conferences, and other educational experiences to communicate the impact of such findings on the advancement of Nokomis Foundation’s work.

Maintain positive and productive Advisory Committee relations.  In collaboration with the Founder help to identify, recruit, and support Advisory Committee members. Oversee and facilitate communication and correspondence with the Advisory Committee, and work collaboratively with Advisory Committee members to honor the Founder’s intent.

Prepare an annual budget recommendation for the Founder.  Oversee all Foundation financial activity to ensure accuracy, integrity, sound fiscal practices, and compliance with IRS regulations.  Provide appropriate analysis and reports.

Identify, select and manage consultants and suppliers to Nokomis.  Negotiate and execute contracts and agreements.  Monitor performance and address issues or concerns with consultant or supplier.

Required Skills and Knowledge

A strong interest and passion for the mission and vision of Nokomis Foundation

Broad leadership and team building skills that can be applied at the Advisory Committee, staff, and community partner level

Sound organizational abilities in management, operations, finance, and human resources

Aptitude with current technology

Experience in public policy analysis and development

Strategic thinking, planning and decision making skills

Demonstrated public speaking, writing, and presentation skills

Excellent oral communication skills and personal ease in public and social settings

Education and Experience

Master’s degree preferred; bachelor’s degree required, with a preference for a degree in management, public policy, or social science.

A minimum of seven years of program development and/or leadership experience.

Application Process

The President and CEO position is open until a candidate is selected with a goal of filling the role no later than January 1, 2010. The application deadline is Friday, October 30, 2009 or until filled.

Please furnish a letter describing interest in the position, current resume of qualifications and experience, salary requirements, and three professional references.

Submit required documents electronically at info@nokomisfoundation.org  <mailto:info@nokomisfoundation.org>  Indicate “President and CEO Search” in the subject line.

Alternately, application documents may be mailed to:

President and CEO Search

Nokomis Foundation

161 Ottawa Ave N

W, Suite 305-C

Grand Rapids, MI 49503

If you are selected for an interview, you will be contacted directly. Thank you for your interest in Nokomis Foundation.

Nokomis Foundation is an Equal Opportunity Employer

(With chapters by Joan Kaufman and Bonnie Shepherd.)

Reproductive Health and Human Rights: The Way Forward, edited by Mindy Jane Roseman and Laura Reichenbach, assesses the past fifteen years of international efforts aimed at  improving health, alleviating poverty, diminishing gender inequality, and promoting human rights.  The book, recently released by the University of Pennsylvania Press, includes essays by leading scholars and practitioners that are centered on the 1994 United Nations International Conference on Population Development (ICPD) and its resulting Programme of Action.

Visit www.reproductivehealthandhumanrights.com, for more information.  

More than a decade after the enthusiasm that accompanied ICPD, there is growing concern about its effectiveness in the context of global health and development. Reproductive Health and Human Rights: The Way Forward grapples with fundamental questions about the relationships among population, fertility decline, reproductive health, human rights, poverty alleviation, and development and assesses the various arguments-demographic, public health, human rights-based, and economic-for and against ICPD today.

Several excerpts are available online at www.reproductivehealthandhumanrights.com, as well as short bios for all of the books contributors.  

A number of the chapters address institutional challenges to ICPD and consider how the changing political, religious, academic, and disciplinary contexts matter. Other chapters engage operational and conceptual issues and whether ICPD has been able to move the reproductive health agenda forward on topics such as maternal mortality, abortion, HIV/AIDS, adolescents, reproductive technologies, and demography. Finally, several chapters examine how ICPD has been sidelined by emerging health and development agendas and what could be done in response. Unlike any book yet published, Reproductive Health and Human Rights: The Way Forward examines the state of the arguments for reproductive health and rights from a multidisciplinary perspective that provides policymakers, scholars, and activists with a better understanding of how reproductive health and rights have developed, their place in the global policy agenda, and   how they might evolve most effectively in the future.

To order this book through the University of Pennsylvania Press , click here.  To order this book through Amazon, click here.

For more information, go to www.reproductivehealthandhumanrights.com.

HEALTH:
Why Is Viagra Popular and the Condom Controversial?

by Johanna Son* - TerraViva/IPS

BALI, Aug 14 (IPS) - Why is the popular drug Viagra so praised for its virtues, while the condom is vilified by conservative religious groups among others the world over?

Both are ‘external’ technological interventions that relate to sexual activity. They are among the most prominent tools in the area of reproductive health and sexuality.

But it is the gender and sexual ideologies behind them - especially when combined with conservative religious forces and aspects of patriarchal culture - that put them on opposite ends of the spectrum of public acceptance.

The result is a paradox that has huge implications for public health, especially in relation to the HIV and AIDS pandemic that is now entering its third decade and affects 33 million people worldwide.

As Michael Tan, a reproductive health activist and chair of the University of the Philippines anthropology department put it: “Why is Viagra so desired and condoms so repulsive in many cultures?”

Tan stressed, condoms are in the World Health Organisation (WHO) list of essentials - unlike Viagra. In other words, the social and institutional acceptance levels of Viagra and condoms are “totally opposite to the biomedical truth.”

As has been stressed over and over in the hundreds of sessions at the 9th International Conference on AIDS in Asia and the Pacific (ICAAP) that ended here this week, condoms remain the most effective way today to have safer sex, which is key to curbing the transmission of HIV and AIDS.

Condom usage campaigns have been central to efforts by countries like Thailand to slow the transmission of the virus and to achieve a reduction in the number of new cases.

But in many countries, including in Asia, condoms continue to be a loaded word, a magnet for conservative groups that say they corrupt values and encourage early sexual activity or go against religious teachings that sex should go with procreation.

Condoms and pills are also often linked to their contraceptive roles - which are of course absent in marketing for Viagra, packaged by pharmaceutical firms for improved sexual experiences.

There is also the argument by many men that condoms diminish sexual pleasure. This feeds into the gender and cultural bias that societies often have, that men’s pleasure is most important, Tan added.

“Condoms and pills tend to be resisted and demonised, blamed for promoting promiscuity and are sometimes even said to fuel HIV itself,” Tan explained at a discussion organised by the Institute of Population and Social Research at Mahidol University.

In India, studies show that condom use tends to be linked more to educated men, according to Jayashree Ramakrishna of the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences in Bangalore, India.

While religion may not be such a big factor in this debate in India, Ramakrishna added that the focus on condoms in fighting the epidemic eased a bit after the Indian government revised its HIV prevalence figures some years ago.

Likewise, she says, taboos remain on the open discussion of sex, which makes it harder to deal with reproductive health and HIV and AIDS. “Women say ‘we might have sex, but we don’t talk about it,’” she said. Officials argue that sex education materials should not be too frank. Eight states in India have banned sex education in schools, Ramakrishna added.

In mainly Roman Catholic Philippines, the Church and religious groups argue that condom use breaks religious and moral values because it prevents pregnancies when sex is for having children within marriage - and that the its health benefits cloak the fact that it promotes free sex.

This controversy is the reason why proposed laws on reproductive health in the Philippines - where the population growth rate is a high 2.1 percent in a country of 92.2 million people - ignite a firestorm of campaigns by pro- church groups saying such are “anti-life.”

In the conservative Catholic context and in Philippine society, Tan explains, the importance attributed to extending the family line is key to male gender roles. Thus, “being ‘baog’ - the Tagalog word for both impotence and infertility - is to many a fate worse than death” because it is linked to male sexual prowess.

But this same focus on the need to reproduce also generates the view that men are the ones ‘responsible’ for it, and women are mere receptacles in this process. Tan explained, “Males are seen as the source of life and are therefore privileged when it comes to pleasure, and women are seen as a source of pleasure or of men’s babies.”

In sharp contrast to the controversies around the condom, Viagra - a drug that was meant to cure erectile dysfunction but is also used to enhance sexual performance - is widely accepted. It has not drawn attention from conservative quarters that say they are worried about promiscuity or free sex, reproductive health activists say.

The most number of spam email messages these days are even about Viagra- type medication, Tan says, pointing out how widely known and popular this has become.

The obsession with male reproduction and pleasure in many societies leads to undercutting the usage of “life-saving devices” such as the condom, Tan said. “Shrill voices have been head about condoms, but they have been too silent on Viagra,” he argued.

Drug approval institutions in countries like the United States and Japan have also been quick in approving Viagra, which is manufactured by Pfizer, but slow in approving other reproductive health-related items.

For instance, Tan said, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration took six months to approve Viagra in 1998, but four years to give its approval for the abortion pill. In Japan, authorities approved Viagra for public use in a few months, but it had taken 35 years to approve the use of the oral contraceptive for women.

Some published reports allege that Viagra, or sildenafil citrate, was first being clinically tested to treat angina, but that it was finally marketed for erectile dysfunction after trials showed this as the stronger result.

Looking into the Viagra versus condom paradox goes far beyond just these two particular products in order to show that “technology is much more than just a tool,” explained Rosalia Sciortino, a professor at Thailand’s Mahidol University and gender and reproductive health expert who chaired the session on this topic at ICAAP.

These two well-known tools offer a lens that show how gender values influence expressions of sexuality and how these can in turn have key impacts on public health risks like HIV and AIDS, Sciortino stressed.

*TerraViva at ICAAP 09 (http://www.ipsterraviva.asia)

(FIN/2009)