Global Village News and Resources Issue 57 - March 10, 2003

Positive News was handed the guardianship of Global Village News and Resources in summer of 2004. Although we would like to continue to make the archives available to subscribers and readers we would like to point out that stories published prior to issue 89 were not under our editorial guidance and would like to make a distinction that these are not necessarily a reflection of the current opinions of our editorial team.

Barefoot College Provides Model Of Self-Development At Village Level

India - Out of the 600,000 villages in India, Tilonia con be classified as a very ordinary one with a population of around 2,000. It has a railway station, a few provision shops, some 25 hand pumps for drinking water and two schools run on conventional lines. But what is extraordinary in this ordinary village is the existence of a voluntary agency called the Social Work and Research Centre (SWRC) that has been working there since 1972. Over the past two decades, hundreds of teachers, doctors, health care workers, solar engineers, hand pump mechanics, designers, accountants and communicators have been trained. And spreading from Tilonia, over 100,000 people in 110 villages now have access to safe drinking water, education, health and employment. Today Tilonia is better known for its Barefoot College, which got its name because the initiative entirely depends on local people with little formal education. “We believe that paper-qualified, urban trained experts and professionals can easily be replaced by people from the village,” says Roy. “People in Tilonia do not need knowledge - they need confidence and assurance that the skills they already have are enough to improve their quality of life.”

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http://www.gvnr.com/57/1.htm

Indonesia - They said it couldn't be done. You won't hear about it on CNN. But there is a lot more to Indonesia than the Bali bombings. Ambon is a divided city of churches and mosques, almost half & half, Christians and Muslims. It is also a tense city. A minor traffic accident in 1999 sparked religious riots that left more than 5,000 people dead and forced hundreds of thousands from their homes. But hope arrived in Ambon for the first time in three years when a peace treaty was signed in February, 2002. The deal, brokered by the Government, was sealed by a massive rally which brought Muslims & Christians into the streets, marching together as a united front in support of peace.

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http://www.gvnr.com/57/2.htm 

Argentina - Most Americans are only vaguely aware of the sudden collapse of the Argentine economy two years ago and the brutal aftermath which left a once-comfortable middle class, quite destitute. It commanded far less attention in the North American press than "Monica & Bill" and what little attention it did get was soon lost to 9/11, Afghanistan and Al Queida. By December 2001, Argentina's 'arranged marriage' with the International Monetary fund (IMF) had gone sour. Loans to prop up an overvalued peso, multinational privatizations of Argentine companies that stripped the country of control over its own industry and dumped thousands of people from their jobs, combined with political corruption, had created a national mess: an external debt of $132 billion, a 22 percent unemployment rate, and a middle class suddenly slipping into poverty. Businesses were going bankrupt, and people throughout the country were sifting through garbage for food.

For full article: Click Here:
http://www.gvnr.com/57/3.htm

Isn't That Strange???
By Joseph Clifford

Did you know that... we supported Bin Laden and the Taliban for years, and viewed them as freedom fighters against the Russians?
Isn't that strange?

As late as 1998, the US was paying the salary of every single Taliban official in Afghanistan?
Isn't that strange?

There is more oil and gas in the Caspian Sea area than in Saudi Arabia, but you need a pipeline through Afghanistan to get the oil out.
Isn't that strange?

UNOCAL, a giant American Oil conglomerate, wanted to build a 1000 mile long pipeline from the Caspian Sea through Afghanistan to the Arabian Sea.
Isn't that strange?

For full article: Click Here:
http://www.gvnr.com/57/editorial.htm