ASAP Africa photo is a winner!

Congratulations to Kirsten Sorenson for creating the award winning poster using this photo, taken by ASAP Africa in rural Zimbabwe.
The poster was created to promote the 20th Annual Cascade Festival of African Films in Celebration of Black History Month at Portland Community College Cascade Campus in Oregon. To read more about the festival click here.

The New Wave of Farming in Africa

As we plan our Organic Fertilizer Project at ASAP Malawi, I came across this interesting story.

ILA GORONGOSA, MOZAMBIQUE - When he started tending this field, not long after the end of his country's long civil war in 1992, Joao Jongue's neighbors thought he was foolish, even crazy.

He didn't burn the cornstalks at the end of the season, but left them on the earth to rot. He mixed tomatoes and peanuts in with the corn. When mice started eating the decomposing vegetables, rather than clear the field, he brought in cats.

"My partner, he didn't agree with this sort of farming," says Mr. Jongue, smiling in the shade of his wide-brimmed straw hat. "So I did it myself."

Now, 15 years later, the soil of Jongue's machamba (small field), is still moist brown, and the corn reaches toward the cobalt-blue sky. His neighbor's plot is dusty and red, but Jongue's yields are still large enough that he can sell half of his crop at the outdoor market in this sunny, brightly painted town. Meanwhile, representatives of international development projects are coming to visit – asking how, in this overly farmed region, he's had such success.

Jongue's plot is a model of what many local aid projects would like to repeat across this region: organic farming, African style.

For many Americans, the idea of "organic food" is connected with high-end grocery stores. But here, "organic" has a different face. A growing number of development experts, as well as local agriculturalists, see organic farming as a way to achieve food security and slow deforestation – two big challenges in rural sub-Saharan Africa.

(The above article was written by Stephanie Hanes of the Christian Science Monitor)

No ban on Zimbabwean diamonds

Zimbabwe is not suspended as was proposed, a joint work plan was adopted by this plenary meeting, said outgoing chair of the Kimberley Process (KP) and Namibian deputy mining minister Bernard Esau on Thursday.

Click here for more details.

24 HOURS LEFT TO ACT: Ban Zimbabwe Blood Diamonds – AVAAZ Petition

Lobbying group AVAAZ are calling on people to sign a petition that they can deliver to diamond regulators meeting in Namibia this week. We have only 24 hours to gather as many signatures as possible. Please sign the petition and then use the AVAAZ tool on their website to send the petition link to as many of your friends and relatives as possible. The diamond regulators meeting in Namibia this week will decide whether to suspend Zimbabwe and stop Zimbabwe from selling blood diamonds on the world market.
Click here to sign the petition
Click here to read more

DRC President Visits Zimbabwe in Regional Mediation Effort

Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) President Joseph Kabila is in Harare today, where he is expected to try to mend the widening cracks in Zimbabwe's unity government. To read more click here.

Aid Groups Fret About Zimbabwe Unity Govt Disarray

Daniel Molekele reports today "Aid workers said Wednesday the disarray of the government of Zimbabwe is putting its most vulnerable citizens at risk as hunger and disease threatens to sweep the country.
Zimbabwe's Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai announced last week he was withdrawing indefinitely from a unity government that has been troubled from the moment its ministers were sworn in in February." To read the entire article click here.

Happy Mother's Day!

October 15th is World Rural Women's Day.
The day provides rural women and their organizations with a focal point to :
1. Raise the profile of rural women,
2. Sensitize both government and public to their crucial, yet largely unrecognized roles, and
3. Promote action in their support. Initiatives on how to celebrate this day are left to individual organizations and communities, according to their own traditions and requirements. Activities or events should be concrete and visible. This action undertaken by rural and farming women in all parts of the world on the very same day, in a spirit of solidarity and cooperation, would strengthen the impact of the day.
To read more click here.

New ASAP Project Manager in Malawi

Michael Mainje joined the ASAP Africa team in Malawi last week as the Chivuma Pa Chuma (CCP) Project Manager. CCP mean "Unity for Economic Growth" in the Chichewa language of southern Malawi. Michael holds a BSc in Agriculture and is a certified secondary school teacher, skills that will surely benefit the communities and staff members currently working to improve livelihoods and agricultural skills in rural Malawi with ASAP.

Relocation of ASAP Malawi

ASAP's office in Malawi is moving from Chikwawa to Blantyre. After only 9 months of actively working in rural Chikwawa, the expansion and demand for ASAP's Chimvano pa Chuma (CCP) "Unity for Economic Growth" project has been so positive that there is need to move to a more central location. Blantyre is the second largest city in Malawi, second to the capital, Lilongwe. The move will actually decrease ASAP's operating costs in Malawi. Because of limited road access in this area, field staff were often required to travel a long way around and through Blantyre to access communities which are actually adjacent "as the crow flies". This move makes expansion in the area much more workable.

Important Health Advice

If you wake up looking like this:

Don't go to work!

Thanks to The Jewish Funders Network

During the past few months ASAP has received valuable assistance from the Jewish Funders Network's Pro Bono Resource Bank. The consultant that has been working with ASAP to develop a clear strategy and vision as we move forward and grow. The experience has been fantastic. To read more about this program click here.

One Year Ago Today

On September 15 2008 a power sharing agreement was signed between Zanu PF and the Movement for Democratic Change(MDC) in Zimbabwe. It's been a year of politic posturing, and working together to heal the nation has not yet been realized.

Creatively Working Together

Click here

U.S lawmakers support Zimbabwe's unity government

Monday, September 7, 2009 5:45 PM EDT
The largest delegation of U.S. lawmakers to visit Zimbabwe in a decade is calling on the country's leaders to ensure the success of the unity government.
The delegation concluded a two-day visit Thursday to monitor the progress of the government formed in February. The visit included meetings with President Robert Mugabe and other government leaders.

The delegation included Gregory Meeks (D-New York), Jack Kingston (R-Georgia), Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas), Melvin Watt (D-North Carolina) and Marcia Fudge (D-Ohio).

The U.S. has criticized Mugabe's 29-year-rule but the Obama administration has thrown support behind the coalition government

Meeks said only the unity government had a "reasonable prospect of delivering benefits to the Zimbabwean people."

Binyavanga Wainaina

Krista Tippet's thought provoking interview with Binyavanga Wainaina this morning explored the morality and efficacy behind many Western initiatives to abolish poverty and speed development in Africa.

Wainaina is the founding editor of Kwani? literary journal and the director of Bard College's Chinua Achebe Center for African Languages and Literature. During the in-depth interview he states "Where things work is where people do them themselves."
To listen to the interview click here.

How Robert Mugabe defies old age

Comment from The Times (UK), 23 February 2009
by Jan Raath
To the naked eye, Mr Mugabe looks the very picture of health, even for a much younger man let alone someone in their ninth decade. "He is in very good shape for 85," said a Harare doctor, requesting anonymity. "I would be very happy to look like that when I'm 85." In an interview on local television at the weekend, Mr Mugabe attributed his apparent health to a lifelong regimen of daily exercise. He said that he jogs each morning and maintains his weight between 75kg and 80kg. "This ensures my body is full of muscles, and not fat," he said. He also works out in the gym in his new mansion in Harare's exclusive suburb of Borrowdale Brooke and has a personal trainer. He has always eaten carefully, has never smoked and admits to only "an occasional glass of sweet white wine".

Nutritional Gardening - Timing is Everything

The two gardens featured in the photos above belong to Rinnet Gotekote (top) and Janet Chikodo(below), ASAP cluster facilitators in rural Zimbabwe. It is fantastic that these photos were taken at the end of October in 2008 - the onset of the annual rainy season. Such a successful and productive garden would be virtually impossible without ASAP's Health and Nutrition Development Initiative. The HANDEI Project increases food security through conservation farming skills, drip irrigation and nutritional gardening.Click here to read more about the HANDEI project.

Send Your Congratulations to Dr. Muhammad Yunus

Muhammad Yunus will receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Barack Obama this month. For more than 33 years Dr. Yunus has been committed to fighting poverty and giving the world's poorest people, mostly women, the resources they need to start their journey from poverty. Click Here if you wish to leave a congratulatory message for Professor Yunus.

We Are All Connected

Back in 2001, when the Internal Savings and Lending (ISL) was the newest micro-finance innovation, proving to be very effective at increasing household income and food security in rural Africa, ASAP contracted CARE in Zimbabwe to build our capacity and learn more about this innovative and promising program. After ASAP successfully launched our first ISL pilot project funded by The McKnight Foundation, CARE in Zimbabwe extended ASAP’s capacity building partnership, assigning Mr. Christopher Nyamandi to work with ASAP for a full year under the guidance of Mr. Alfred Hamadziripi.

As is the trend in Zimbabwe today, both Mr. Nyamandi and Mr. Hamadziripi have moved from Zimbabwe and have taken positions with other organizations. In this case they are in Sudan and Kenya. And it is through these long-lasting connections and friendships that ASAP successfully helped to build the capacity of the delegation from the Norwegian Church Aid program in Darfur, last month. Recently, Mr. Mohammed Abdelkarim Elsafi expresses his thanks to Regai Tsunga, ASAP’s Country Director in Zimbabwe, writing:

"Dear, Regai
…. let me thank all ASAP family who contributed highly to make our visit succeed, it starts from the bottom from the friendly drivers up the Director who all supported and facilitated our visit.
Be assured that the knowledge that the team acquired while in Zimbabwe will be put for the benefit of our beneficiaries in Darfur. Once again thank you very much for the hot and sincere hospitality. Let me emphasize that the visit is marked as a beginning of an ever lasting cooperation for the sake of our people here and over there, we will keep the good attitudes of Zimbabwean people in our hearts as it marks an unprecedented visit of it is kind to a Sudanese to interact with their peers in a brotherly country in West Africa, borders separated Africans from one another but by such activities we hope to be linked up and cooperate. Eventually let me also take this opportunity thank the architect behind this work, our friend Christopher Nyamandi who make it real.

Best regards

Mohammed Abdelkarim Elsafi
Protection, Psychosocial and Peacebuilding Coordinator
NCA Darfur Programme - Nyala"

Picture here, Mohammed Elsafi and Chris Nyamandi

ASAP expresses thanks to CARE in Zimbabwe, The McKnight Foundation and ALL of our donors that make our work possible each and every day. Together we will succeed and make poverty history.

Seeing Is Believing!

Dignitaries, journalists and community members were taken on a walk-around of two irrigation sites last Friday, as part of ASAP Malawi’s first field day for the “Chimvano pa Chuma” project ( CCP) “Unity for Economic Growth” project in Chikwawa district of southern Malawi. Above, the group including journalists listens attentively to ASAP’s Senior Field Officer, Lingstone Ganamba, during a visit to one of the irrigation plots.
The event, which was attended by close to four hundred community members from different villages, was a great success. Click here to view the newspaper article that appeared in The Nation in Malawi on Sunday August 2nd.

The field day had two main areas of focus – village savings and lending (VS&L) and small scale irrigation. VS&L is an internal rural savings club project that teaches communities how to pool their resources and become financially self reliant. To read more and see a short video about this project, click here.
Currently ASAP is working with 42 VS&L groups in Malawi and together, they have mobilized over MK 421000 ($ 3000) in savings. The event also served as a medium to enhance the spirit of self-reliance and promote the spirit of learning from one another among community members. Thus, the day gave ASAP the much-needed opportunity and publicity to showcase what had been accomplished within the first four months of its community level operations in Chikwawa. In the picture below the gathering listens to the VS&L success story.
Through the small scale irrigation component of the project 83 community members received farm inputs and treadle pumps at subsidized price and are irrigating over 18 hectares of land. Pictured here is Lingstone Ganamba explaining how vast the irrigation sites are, with a proud community member explaining how ASAP efforts had helped to improve food and economic security at household level.
The event was attended by, among other dignitaries, the District Commissioner, the District Agricultural Development Officer, Total Land Care Officials, representatives of other non-governmental organizations, Chief Ndakwera and other local leaders. In the picture above Sub-Traditional Authority Ndakwera makes a speech, thanking ASAP for empowering a community which was previously synonymous with free hand outs. He requested ASAP to consider scaling up to other villages within his area. Taking his turn, ASAP Malawi Country Director encouraged community members to continue working hard so that their economic status should continue to improve. He expressed thanks and appreciation for the support ASAP was receiving from the local leadership, government departments and development partners.

In addition to the speeches made by different individuals and traditional dances performed by communities, participating communities showcased how VS&L had improved their economic status in only a few short months.