2007 Annual Report
acting for change
In every place where inequality exists, there are also people who are asserting their right and responsibility to imagine and create a better future. Inter Pares has the privilege of working with a number of those people and their organizations, supporting them and others to take action together for positive change.
Grassroots organizations, women's groups and local NGOs are important crucibles for local action and innovation. In Managua, Nicaragua, with Inter Pares' support for citizen participation in municipal development, community organizations in three vulnerable barrios successfully carried out a program with the municipality to give poor families full title to their land and homes. These same citizens' groups were then able to develop and submit a plan to the municipality to provide potable water to all three communities.
In Ghana, Third World Network Africa (TWN-Africa) educated and mobilized citizens of African countries about the impacts of Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) with the European Union. The European Commission's own assessment found that EPAs would stifle African countries' efforts to develop an industrial base and further undermine local farmers, whose livelihoods would be threatened by heavily subsidized European imports. The Africa Trade Network, hosted by TWN-Africa, led a campaign to stop the EPAs. The Network brought together citizens from across Africa and Europe to protect local economies, and to demand trade agreements that allow African countries to pursue their own development strategies.
In Huancavelica, Peru, where many communities are still trying to recover from the damage of last year's devastating earthquake, young indigenous people are joining together in the Network of Community Development Facilitators. Supported by Project Counselling Service (PCS), many of its members are graduates of the Diploma program for young leaders developed by PCS in collaboration with the National University of San Marcos and the University of Huancavelica. Network members are working in areas hardest hit by the earthquake, assisting in the assessment of damage and reconstruction. Through radio and television shows written and produced by the young people themselves, they are also educating each other and the public about human rights and the exercise of citizenship, transparent administration of local budgets and good governance.
| Reviewed April 30, 2008 |  |
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