Titled “The Land of No Men: Inside Kenya’s Women-Only Village” the 30-minute documentary report takes audiences to northern Kenya, “where the foothills of Mount Kenya merge into the desert,” home to the people of Samburu, which is also where Rebecca Lolosoli founded Umoja village as a safe haven for women from a society long-maintained as a strict patriarchy for over 500 years. “Umoja, which means “unity” in Swahili, is quite literally a no man’s land, and the matriarchal refuge is now home to the Samburu women who no longer want to suffer abuses, like genital mutilation and forced marriages, at the hands of men. Throughout the years, it has also empowered other women in the districts surrounding Samburu to start their own men-excluding villages. Broadly visited Umoja and the villages it inspired to meet with the women who were fed up with living in a violent patriarchy.”
Useful Resources
This website is a space for community activists living near mines in southern Africa to share information, resources and experiences.
The countries currently participating in this project are: Lesotho, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Zambia, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Mozambique and Tanzania. Activists in each country document problems they experience and events they participate in and share this on a WhatsApp group. These posts are then shared on this site in the respective country blogs. Each country, in addition, maintains their own country blog. Additionally, Activists can view the posts on a mobile app called “Action Voices” which can be downloaded on an Android phone from the Google Play store. This website and the activities are a joint project of several organisations in southern Africa. These include:The Bench Marks Foundation – South Africa; Southern Africa Resource Watch (SARW) – Southern Africa; Zimbabwe Environmental Law Association (ZELA) – Zimbabwe; Centre for Environment Justice (CEJ) – Zambia; Associação de Apoio e Assistência Jurídica às Comunidades (AAAJC) – Mozambique; Norwegian Church Aid (NCA), Tanzania and Maluti Community Development Forum – Lesotho.
Experience African literature in a totally new way through an intimate re-imagining of five acclaimed novels, performed for the stage. Reimagined and retold by five women the stories grapple with questions of race, sexuality, patriarchy, friendship, love, loneliness and much more. Drawing from the historical novel ‘The Orchard of Lost Souls’ by the young award-winning Somali-British writer Nadia Mohamed, Raya Wambui bears witness to the painful experience of three Somali women. Patricia Kihoro’s presents a performance of Zukiswa Wanner’s painfully funny and profoundly perceptive ‘Maid in SA: 30 ways to leave your madam’.
Publishing is an important part of sharing the outcomes of research, but the publication process and requirements may sometimes feel like a closed book. HSG and BioMed Central, publisher of BMC Health Services Research which is affiliated with HSG, have partnered to deliver a series of five webinars to open up the peer review and publication processes. Aimed at researchers at a variety of career stages, the series covered: how to prepare an article and choose the right journal, what happens during peer review, publishing models and open access, research and publication ethics and how to be a peer reviewer. This series is now finished, but information on the full series of webinars is provided, including the recordings and slides of all of the webinars.
In 2016, more refugees arrived in Uganda–including nearly half a million people from South Sudan alone–than crossed the Mediterranean Sea to Europe. While the numbers in Africa are increasing, the situation isn’t new: As the world continues to focus on the European refugee crisis, an equally large crisis has been unfolding in Africa. A new visualization shows the flow of refugees around the world from 2000 to 2015, and makes the lesser-known story in Africa–and in places like Sri Lanka in 2006 or Colombia in 2007–as obvious as what has been happening more recently in Syria. Each yellow dot represents 17 refugees leaving a country, and each red dot represents refugees arriving somewhere else.
Docubox was launched in 2012 as a documentary film fund that “supports intimate, character-driven storytelling and encourages new forms of ownership and authorship in East Africa because we believe that true stories well told make the world a better place to live”. Docubox exists to enable talented, driven, focused and accountable East African artists to produce unique films that unearth new realities and cross trans-national boundaries. Through training, development and production grants, screenings for people who love documentary films, it promotes East African filmmakers to share their stories with the world through creative documentary. Docubox believe good documentaries are intimate observations of the world’s identities and people captured by talented, driven, creative filmmakers –films able to uncover new realities because they are authored by authentic local voices, films that offer viewers new perspectives of society. Docubox want to create an authentic body of work that provides personalised glimpses into world, issues and lives that would ordinarily remain undocumented. They want to create a movement that will challenge ideas and assumptions about the world as it is known and provoke healthy, democratic dialogue and debate between our fellow citizens. Docubox believe that to change and inspire society, there is a need to support films that can spark off debate, films that get talked about, films that contribute to the formation of a vibrant documentary film movement across eastern Africa. Docubox want to do this because they believe that stories well told can make the world a better place to live.
On World Malaria Day the World Health Organisation (WHO) released a publication entitled "Malaria Prevention Works". Filled with eye-catching infographics, it presents WHO's recommended malaria prevention tools in a simple and digestible manner. It is divided into two parts: the first chapter focuses on core vector control measures, and the second on preventive treatment strategies for the most vulnerable groups. It touches on a key biological threat, mosquito resistance to insecticides and highlight the need for new anti-malaria tools.
The first e-learning course on health financing policy for universal health coverage has now been launched. This e-learning course comprises six modules which cover the core functions of health financial policy as conceptualised by WHO. Each module is divided into a number of sub-topics. This is a foundational course which targets participants of various levels of experience and expertise. The course is designed to be used in a variety of ways: as preparation for those who will attend a WHO face-to-face course, for those who are for various reasons unable to attend a face-to-face course, and for those who have already attended courses and wish to refresh their knowledge. Individual modules can also be used as part of a programme of blended capacity building. The course will work on a range of devices, operation systems and browsers. The introductory module covers the goals of UHC and health financing. Module 2 addresses revenue raising and module 3 discusses the desirable characteristics of pooling revenues. Module 4 addresses the purchasing of health services and module 5 discusses benefit package design including coverage choices and how to promote UHC through benefit package choices.
This year's Stop TB Partnership campaign runs under the tagline "Unite to End TB!". This campaign draws on the goals set out in the Global Plan to End TB, the roadmap to accelerating impact on the TB epidemic and reaching the targets of the WHO End TB Strategy. To amplify the message the Stop TB Partnership has developed a set of campaign materials, which are free to use. The campaign materials include a ‘Call to Action’ logo, a ‘World TB Day’ logo, social media tiles and e-cards, posters, t-shirts and pin templates and identity guidelines for communities.
A new Oxfam report claims that the scale of wealth inequality has grown and that eight people in the world have as much wealth as the poorest fifty per cent of the global population. This video presents the information from the report in a video overview.