Women's Views on News |
| Posted: 06 Feb 2013 07:06 AM PST
Guest post from Women for Women International. Imagine you lost everyone you loved in a senseless and terrifying month of violence. During the massacre, you had a choice: kill or be killed. You saw your friends and neighbours turned into murderers, rapists, looters or torturers. You cannot forget. But you must continue to live—with yourself and with the people around you. Years later, you still have bad dreams. And your country is still struggling to recover. You live in poverty, raising a family on your own. You adopted children who were orphaned by genocide and AIDS and raised them as yours, sharing what little you have. This is today’s Rwanda. Women for Women International (WfWI) has set up programmes in Rwanda which include direct financial aid, rights awareness classes, job-skills training and emotional support. Our one-year programme was developed specifically for Rwanda's special challenges and demands. It includes vocational training which helps women earn an income and support themselves through teaching women to make an income off the land with organic farming techniques geared toward commercial production or giving women the training they need to operate sewing machines and perform tailoring and clothing production. Women for Women International has operated in Rwanda since 1997, and the programmes have helped more than 36,000 women in 18 communities. Esther, for example, is a survivor of the 1994 Rwandan genocide, when over 800,000 people were killed. She dropped out of school and struggled to survive. But with the help of her sponsor, she had access to Women for Women International's year-long programme of job-skills training, rights education and small business assistance, as well direct financial assistance to help meet her basic needs. Today she is earning an income, and can support her family. And as she says in this video, 'I have studied hard and I am already earning an income, thanks to your sponsorship. 'Even though we have never met, you have been a very good sponsor to me.' Watch Esther’s story and find out more about Women for Women International's work in Rwanda. Better still, become a sponsor.  |
| Voluntourism: really giving something back? Posted: 06 Feb 2013 04:05 AM PST
Voluntourism has become a multi-billion pound industry. In the UK alone it is estimated to be worth over £1.3 billion, with over 1.6 million volunteers heading overseas every year. Specialist tour operators have been set up across the western world to ship willing participants to work on development projects in some of the world's poorest nations. Some of these are not-for-profit organisations, there are also plenty of commercial enterprises eager to take your cash in exchange for a 'meaningful and rewarding experience' with a community half way across the world. Volunteering abroad is no longer a niche market; it has hit mainstream tour operators and if you're not up for slumming it with the gap year students, you can opt for a luxury voluntourism experience, combining five star accommodation with a community project. This desire to 'give something back' in this way is apparently something that appeals mostly to women; according to an article by CNN, 70 per cent of volunteer tourists are women. The voluntourism industry may have started with young gap year students eager to improve their CVs but, according to the feature, more and more older women are taking up the opportunity. Alexia Nestora, founder of the blog, Voluntourism Gal, told CNN: “Now tourism companies are catering for an older niche and they seem to be mostly women, a large number either divorced, widowed or retired and looking to start something new.” “Women really want to connect to people and relate to different cultures when they travel, they don’t want a fly-by experience. Voluntourism gives them this.” More interesting however, is the claim by some academics that women are more likely to opt for a voluntourism experience to offset the guilt they feel for taking a break. According to Annette Pritchard, director of the Welsh Centre for Tourism Research and author of 'Tourism and Gender', “these holidays offer women a sense of empowerment and a sense of freedom. “It’s a liberation from the day-to-day routines, but more importantly it’s a guilt free way of enjoying the time off." But is it? VSO raised concerns as far back as 2007 about the negative impacts the fast-growing sector was having on local communities and the volunteers themselves. The organisation accused gap year providers of pandering to the needs and desires of volunteers rather than focusing on the benefits to local people. With the huge costs often associated with voluntourism, it's no surprise the focus is often on the end consumer, and that end consumer is usually wealthy, middle-class and western. A 14-day five-star trip to India with four days volunteering in a school or on a building project costs £3,600 without flights with Hands Up Holidays. Real Gap Experience offers four weeks in Thailand mixing adventure travel and the notorious full moon parties at Ko Phangan with volunteering at schools and orphanages, for £800 excluding flights. The problem with short-term, unskilled volunteering is it can actually do more harm than good. A 2008 survey by MSNBC suggested that construction and working with children were the most popular options for volunteers abroad, but both risk having a detrimental effect on the host communities. Last year an investigation by Al Jazeera revealed how voluntourism has become a lucrative business for Cambodia's orphanages. It discovered that 70 per cent of the country's estimated 10,000 orphans have at least one parent living, and that many were being exploited by the volunteer organisations and orphanages to generate money. The investigation found children being kept in abject poverty just to solicit further donations from wealthy western volunteers. Similar stories have come out of Ghana, with AIDS orphan tourism being reported, and following the earthquake in Haiti. Al Jazeera also reported on the psychological impact on the children, of being cared for by a string of strangers without developing any meaningful relationships. The tragedy of Cambodia's orphans, and may others, is that so many of them do have families, many of them women forced to sell their children as they have no viable alternative. One project, the Safe Haven Children's Trust, is attempting to reunite children with their families in Cambodia, but orphanage tourism is still big business. There are still any number of voluntourism trips available to orphanages in Cambodia. Projects Abroad for example offers month-long placements in Siem Reap from £1,295 excluding flights. A scathing blog on the Independent's Independent Voices highlights another problem with volunteering abroad; it takes work away from local people. Unwitting tourists signing up to build schools and houses often take away the need for paid labour, leaving local people out of work. There are many other issues relating to volunteering abroad that make it a particularly grey area; is the money going to the right place? Are the volunteers a drain on scarce local resources? Do they have the relevant skills? Are the projects really needed? Tourism in developing countries already has more of a negative impact on women than men; according to the United Nations World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO), women tend to be concentrated in the lowest paid and lowest status jobs in tourism and perform a large amount of unpaid work in family tourism businesses. If left unchecked and unregulated, volunteer tourism risks creating an even bigger gap between developing countries and the West; the very worst examples can exasperate existing problems and lead to further dependence on handouts. As VSO has highlighted, there is a danger of volunteer tourists becoming the new colonialists. The International Ecotourism Society (TIES) has launched a set of voluntourism guidelines specifically aimed at commercial operators across the globe, while Tourism Concern, a UK-based charity which campaigns for ethical tourism, has set up the International Volunteering Standards Group (GIVS) and works with ethical and responsible volunteering organisations internationally. Look for Tourism Concern's GIVS logo if you're thinking of volunteering abroad, and see Condé Nast's simple list of dos and don'ts for some initial guidance.  |
| Posted: 06 Feb 2013 02:50 AM PST
Last week Elizabeth Truss MP, the early years minister, announced government proposals to overhaul the childcare system. By increasing the number of children that nurseries can care for and setting new requirements for staff levels of education, the government plans to bring a ‘cost-effective childcare’ service to UK families. The existing system demands that for every four two-year-olds in the care of a nursery, there must be at least one member of staff. The new proposals increase that ratio to six two-year-olds for every member of staff. Which means that two pairs of hands would be deemed capable of not just dealing with twelve two-year-olds, but also of providing high quality childcare for each and every one of those children. The announcement that a single nursery worker could look after up to four babies under one or up to six two-year-olds, and childminders could care for four under-fives including two babies, faced criticism from across the spectrum. “No matter how well qualified the members of staff, there are practical considerations when you increase the number of children that they have to look after,” said Anand Shukla from the Daycare Trust, a national childcare charity which acts as a resource for parents, childcare providers, and local authorities. He continued, “For one person to look after six two-year-olds, for one person to talk to six two-year-olds, to help their language development, we think is going to be very difficult.” The new ratios, as Truss highlighted in the policy announcement, are lower than many European countries; however, her reference to overseas figures is disingenuous. For example, in the case of Norway where the ratio is 1:8: that figure does not include unqualified nursery assistants, and in those instances where a child just wants to be picked up or needs a nappy change, those ‘unqualified’ hands have a vital role to play. While the minister stressed that the changes to ratios are a voluntary measure, in an industry with notoriously low profitability can nurseries and childminders really be expected to turn down the 50 per cent potential increase in revenue that this change affords them? And will this increase in revenue, then, help nurseries break even? Not according to Truss, who claims that this money will be passed back to parents. No doubt it would be welcomed by British families, who face some of the highest childcare costs in the world. Research from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has found that 25 per cent of the average British wage goes toward childcare. This compares with 17 per cent in the Netherlands, 9 per cent in Germany, and 5 per cent in Sweden. The annual Childcare Costs Survey from the Daycare Trust, revealed that nursery costs increased by 6 percent in 2012. And if family budgets weren’t already being stretched to breaking point, the report also revealed that 44,000 families lost help with childcare costs when tax credits were cut by the coalition in April last year. Certainly the funds raised by increasing ratios would be welcomed in the pockets of parents facing this bleak picture. But hang on a minute. It seems that this money has also been promised to nursery staff in the form of a significant pay rise which the government hopes will raise the status of those in the industry and the calibre of those attracted to work in early years education. The new proposals also require that more childcare providers hold at least a C grade in GCSE English and maths, and a new qualification for early years teachers will be set up at level 3 – approximately A level. However, with average rates of pay at only a fraction above the minimum wage, any wage increase will surely need to be significant. In any case, by now you see the glaring problem with the new proposals. Do the government really plan on paying for all this just by increasing nursery ratios? Childcare should be more affordable and primary caregivers should be able to return to work, if they want to return to work, at a time of their choosing. Those that are responsible for nurturing and instructing the youngest members of our society should be able to communicate using the correct grammar, but they should also receive due recognition from the wider community, and adequate remuneration for what they are doing. In the end, everyone’s targets for childcare are the same, we hope, but increasing the national ratios will only stretch childcare professionals to the limit and diminish the existing quality of care. As Polly Toynbee wryly suggested in the Guardian recently, ‘No doubt children can be kept safe, fed and reasonably clean [if ratios are increased] – but this risks becoming warehousing, not care.’ So can we reach these targets, to which we are all agreed? Research from the Institute for Public Policy and Research (IPPR) has shown that a publicly funded system – such as those implemented in Nordic countries – is the best way to provide and sustain a high standard of early years education for all. By restricting tax relief on pension contributions to the basic rate, by means-testing winter fuel payments, free travel passes and television licences so that they can continue to help the poorest pensioners, the cost of establishing a high quality universal childcare system could – and should – be met.  |
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