I just spent the last week in Accra, attending meetings sponsored by Vital Voices Global Partnership, the Africa Businesswomen’s Network (the ABWN) and the ExxonMobil Foundation. These organizations aim to build and support a network of businesswomen organizations in Africa to expand the number of women succeeding as entrepreneurs and leaders in the corporate world; to raise the profile and credibility of women in business; to foster global networking opportunities among businesswomen; and to advocate for policies that expand economic opportunity for women. The ABWN addresses some of the unique barriers women entrepreneurs face in Africa, including negative and unsupportive policy and social environments; poor access to input and output markets and technologies; and inadequate access to information. Attending these meeting were leaders, staff and key members of the six founding ABWN members – from businesswomen’s organizations in Cameroon, Ghana, Kenya, Uganda, Nigeria, and South Africa. 

When I landed the first set of meetings was just finishing – it was focused on supplier diversity.  The 20 women (and one man) attending were just finishing a four day intensive session on how women-owned businesses can prepare themselves to make the best business case possible for supplying goods and services to large companies and governments, focusing on how these business can add value and reach new consumers for products and services.
 
Elizabeth Vazquez, CEO and co-Founder of WE Connect International energized the group. WE Connect is a global non-profit organization founded by corporations committed to doing business with women-owned businesses; the current members of WE Connect represent over $700 billion in annual purchasing power. Elizabeth, who has extensive experience working with women-owned businesses talked about this potential and the need to ensure that women-owned businesses are part of the competitive process.  She stressed the importance of working with suppliers to major companies and learning the internal structure and needs of potential corporate partners.  You can read more about the organization at www.womenconnectinternational.com

We then visited an inspirational businesswoman, Matilda Amissah, who runs Matamiss Enterprise, a pottery business. She has previously provided products to Pier 1 and is currently shipping a new collection of 500 pots for market testing to a buyer in Italy.  Matilda is an amazing woman who worked first as a street vendor and now has developed this business with beautiful products. We were all so impressed with what she has been able to build.

The next four days were spent with the hub leaders discussing how to maximize services to members; create effective advocacy for a better business environment and create a strong base of hubs to grow. I worked with the group on how to communicate your advocacy message in the most effective way, and how to develop strong media relations.

It was an impressive group and an impressive week. I look forward to so much progress.

Dr Yunus once told me that if we wait for the ideal world to happen we will never be able to bring about change.  I am beginning to feel that this is exactly what is happening with respect to the response of the international community to the floods in Pakistan.  We are searching for the ideal mechanism to funnel resources to Pakistan, while millions of families are going hungry each day.  The utopian solution is not going to come our way till we begin to stretch ourselves and really go out on a limb to respond to this crisis of unimaginable scale.  

Flooding in Pakistan

The 30 women (and one man) attending were just finishing a four day intensive session on how women owned businesses can prepare themselves to make the best business case possible  for supplying goods and services  to large companies and governments, focusing on how these business can add value and reach new consumers for products and services. 
 
The speaker, Elizabeth Vazquez, CEO and co-Founder of WE Connect International energized the group. WE Connect is a global non-profit founded by corporations committed to doing business with women owned businesses; the current members of WE Connect represent over $700 billion in annual purchasing power.  

This is a critical time for women owned businesses in Africa to make their case in the global marketplace since large numbers of multinationals are planning to create supplier diversity programs globally in the next five years.   Elizabeth, who has extensive experience working with women-owned business talked about this potential and the need to ensure that women owned business are part of the competitive process.  She stressed the importance of working with suppliers to major companies and learning the internal structure and needs of potential corporate partners.

The group was very interested in WE Connect’s certification of  women owned businesses to make it easy for corporate partners to find women owned businesses to participate in their supplier chains. 

For more information, see www.womenconnectinternational.com

Pakistan is experiencing some of the worst flooding it has seen in over 80 years. Entire villages have been washed away, an early estimate of over 1,600 deaths so far and over 2 million displaced or otherwise affected. Not only is the immediate water damage causing havoc, the floods have inundated crop-producing areas, dealing a crippling blow to the agricultural-based economy and threatening a food crisis. The Pakistani government now struggles to rescue and provide aid to millions.

According to United Nations, the number of people suffering could exceed 20 million – more than the combined total of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, the 2005 Kashmir earthquake and the 2010 Haiti earthquake.

It seems that the people from the flood-affected areas have no idea where to go in order to keep themselves safe from the unending devastation. Apart from death toll, thousands of livestock have been died and misplaced in the flash floods and now the survival of live animals is believed to be under threat due to non-availability of fodder. Livestock is not only a major source of earning for rural households but also a primary source of wealth and assets in the long run.

The forecasts, based on studies of other natural disasters such as the Indian Ocean Tsunami, suggest 4.5 million children will be at risk from water-born infections as hundreds of thousands remain beyond the reach of aid agencies.

The scale of this disaster is so large that it is difficult to imagine. Roads, building and crops all washed away. Many have lost family and friends. This disaster is far from over. The rains are still pouring and will continue for weeks. The Pakistani people need help on desperate basis. the people need food, cloth, clean water and medicine on immediate basis.

A GUEST POST BY DIANA SCIMONE, director, The Born2Fly Project to stop child trafficking.

Diana Scimone, director, Born2Fly Project

1. Child traffickers have recruiters in your children’s schools–yes, even in the US, the UK, and other western countries.

2. Recruiters are other kids.

3. Child traffickers monitor Facebook, Flickr, MySpace, and other social media sites looking for vulnerable kids.  More information is here.

4. They work in malls, including in your city.  More information is here.

5. There’s money to be made buying and selling children. Each year more than 100,000 kids are trafficked for sex and labor slavery in the US alone.

6. Human trafficking is organized crime. It’s the second most lucrative illegal industry on the planet (after illegal drugs) and rapidly becoming the top one.

7. These are not “bad” kids, just vulnerable ones.

8. Most kids are rescued because someone saw something that didn’t look right and knew where to call. In the US, call the National Trafficking Resource Center hotline (888) 373-7888. In other countries, call one of these hotlines.

9. There are warning signs.  According to the US Department of Health and Human Services, here are clues to help identify a trafficking victim:
•    Accompanied by a controlling person or boss; not speaking on own behalf
•    Lack of control over personal schedule, money, I.D., travel documents
•    Transported to or from work; lives and works in the same place
•    Debt owed to employer/crew leader; inability to leave job
•    Bruises, depression, fear, overly submissive

10. There are questions you can ask if you think someone is being trafficked.  These include:
•    What type of work do you do?
•    Are you getting paid? Anything taken out of your pay?
•    Can you come and go as you please? Are you afraid to leave? Why?
•    Have you or your family been threatened?
•    Do you have to ask permission to eat/sleep/go to the bathroom?
•    Has your identification or documentation been taken from you?

11. Your city likely has an anti-trafficking task force. To find out, Google the name of your city and “human trafficking task force.”

12. There’s plenty of information on the web to keep you aware and help you protect your child. Your child does not have to be a victim. Visit:  “Human Trafficking of Children in the US: A Fact Sheet for Schools” published by the US Department of Education, and Child trafficking could be happening in your school (here’s how to tell).

* * *

Diana Scimone is director of The Born2Fly Project to stop child trafficking. The B2F wordless book and companion curriculum are scheduled for testing in 5 countries this fall, and then will be ready for distribution. Diana blogs regularly about the fight to stop child trafficking at www.dianascimone.com.

(Reuters) – After years of difficult negotiations, the U.N. General Assembly voted on Friday to set up a body that will seek to improve the situation of women and girls around the world.

The new body will be known officially as the U.N. Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women, although officials say it will be referred to as U.N. Women (www.unwomen.org). It will consolidate four separate U.N. divisions now dealing with women’s and gender issues.

“U.N. Women will significantly boost U.N. efforts to promote gender equality, expand opportunity, and tackle discrimination around the globe,” U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said in a statement.

U.N. diplomats said four years of negotiations between Western developed nations and developing countries, many of them states where women are often discriminated against, had been tough because of varying views on women’s rights and gender equality.

A new post of under-secretary-general will created to head U.N. Women, with diplomats saying privately that former Chilean President Michelle Bachelet is one of the top candidates.

Ban said he was inviting suggestions for candidates from member states and non-governmental organizations.

U.N. Women will focus on supporting inter-government bodies like the Commission on the Status of Women and ensuring that all United Nations agencies and organizations live up to their commitments to gender equality, the U.N. said in a statement.

U.N. Women will become operational on January 1, 2011.

(Reporting by Louis Charbonneau; Editing by John O’Callaghan)

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton often says, “Talent is universal, but opportunity is not.” During my recent trip to a rural village in Nepal, I witnessed how a girl can have a hopeful future when given the opportunity to education. 

Thanks to Room to Read, an international NGO that focuses on literacy and gender equality in education, I met a 12-year-old girl named Ranjana in the village of Malpi outside of Kathmandu. Ranjana receives a Room to Read scholarship to attend a private school.

After a few minutes of walk on a small muddy path, Ranjana greeted me in front of a simple hut with chicken and goats, and mountains of potatoes. I sat down with her, her mother, and several neighborhood village women came to see who I was. I learned that Ranjana’s mother, like all the other women surrounding us, is illiterate and makes less than $2 a day. Her father has gone off to work as a migrant worker in Qatar but never sends money home because he has to pay off the debt owed to the employment recruiting agency. Ranjana told me how much she likes going to school and her favorite subject is science. Asked what she would like to do when she grows up, she said she would like to become a doctor to help improve her family’s situation. Then tears started rolling down her small face. I was worried that I asked an inappropriate question. She shook her head and said she needs to study hard.

Yes, Ranjana has to study very hard to realize her dream. But at least she is given the opportunity to hope for a better future. Many girls like her do not even have the opportunity to dream, the audacity to hope.

According to Save the Children, two-thirds of the world’s 880 million illiterate adults are women. More than 70 percent of the 125 million children who do not attend school are girls. Significantly more girls than boys drop out of primary school. More girls drop out of school to be married off at a young age, to help raise family, or to migrate to another place looking for a better opportunity. This remains a common phenomenon in many parts of the world.

That is why the international community needs to find innovative ways to elevate the value of girls, keep them in school, persuade their parents that giving girls education will be a smart investment for the family. And giving them a scholarship, books, or a reading room, needs to be widely replicated.

Before I left Ranjana, I encouraged her to study very hard so she can become a doctor. I secretly made a wish that her mother let her continue pursuing her dream. She just needs a chance.

I will not go through the disgraceful World Bank statistics on sub-Saharan Africa, which I have seen many times, but I was disappointed when I looked at them earlier this week. Those countries could assist the girls in their populations if they wished to do so, but they do not. We have to put pressure on them in every way that we can.

I wish to tell noble Lords a story. A friend of mine, Wenchie Yu Perkins, works for the American State Department. Before that, she was a colleague of mine in Vital Voices Global Partnership. She visited a 12 year-old girl in Nepal involved in a Room to Read project who had a scholarship at an elementary school. Her mother is illiterate and makes less than $2 a day. Her father is a migrant worker in Qatar. However, he never sends money home because he is still repaying the fee to the agency and to his employer, who has his passport. The girl lives in a hut-I was sent photos-filled with chickens, goats and small mountains of potatoes. She dreams of becoming a doctor and improving her family’s situation. My friend told her to study very hard to become a doctor so that she could make her mother proud. However, as Wenchie says, and as I know, the real problem is whether the girl can finish secondary school before she is married off or sold off to pay for a new roof for the hut. We know that these girls are sold for all sorts of reasons.

I welcome the coalition, but between now and the meeting in September and the other G8 and G20 meetings, I ask it to get our people who work behind the scenes to put together an agenda that can bring about change. This change involves money, auditing that money and getting civil society and Governments to work together, but more importantly it should aim to bring on board the corporate sector working in these countries. That sector is taking away minerals and other products from them but is not giving anything back. It gives back a small proportion of its profits, but not much more than that. I have gone through the CSR reports of companies working in these countries. Pressure must be put on China to give back. We know that some oil refineries in Nigeria and Chad are owned by China. I am not attacking China, I am just saying that we need to put pressure on China. We also need to put pressure on American companies that have taken huge stakes in sub-Saharan Africa but pay small lip service to CSR.

India has been mentioned. Many charities are working in India, putting their money into the Government and civil society. They are educating children before they go to work. We know that, unfortunately, children in rural areas have to work. The charities run a number of schemes through the CAP Foundation which can educate children for £89 a year and can keep a child in school in the mornings. These projects are there. Although the money we send is very important, it is not just about money. Increasingly, we have to audit it, put it through NGOs and other organisations, and see where it is going. Just giving money in flat donations from country to country is not working. The United Nations is full of talk, but it does not actually deliver, because it is not on the ground.

The work of Prime Ministers Blair and Brown should be continued by this new coalition Government-and I am pleased that they are doing so. They should work behind the scenes to get real results and value for money, because I can give many examples of where money is wasted and not used properly.