Networking

The impact we've had include:
- Increases in safety quality of life. The Boston Police department uses our network to inform and education residents about crime and crime prevention measure they can take.
- Increases in trust among and between residents and those who serve them. Boston Police Officers and Neighborhood Coordinators from the mayors office use our network to communicate and interact with our members.
- Increases grass roots and collaborative problem solving capacity. Our members create activity group and community service projects on our the networks.
- Increases in program awareness, attendance, and participation. Programs coordinator and members use the network to enroll and recruit participants.

Example: On September 24, 2009, there were five muggings in three hours on Boylston Street in Jamaica Plain (JP), two of which were at gunpoint. While this is not the first time this has happened in JP, it was the first time this neighborhood was able to respond swiftly and powerfully. In less than 24 hours, the 1,200 members (at the time) of Neighbors for Neighbors coordinated and executed a communications plan in partnership with the Boston Police Department. Our members distributed over 6,000 flyers informing residents of the threat and organized porch sits and neighborhood walks. We displaced fear with communication, collaboration, and action!

This project has brought together for the first time a multi-generational group of city officials, the Mitchell Institute, Bangor Fusion--young leaders under the age of 40 interested in shaping the economic landscape; Bangor Center Corporation--comprised of more than 120 businesses; and other local business leaders. Together, the Mitchell Scholars and community leaders have developed a project that the City of Bangor will adopt and be sustained through public and community involvement and cooperation. This collaboration marks the commitment of current and future leaders to develop a common outlook for developing economic sustainability in the greater Bangor region.

While the Green Alliance works intimately with our BPs – acting as a dedicated sustainability coordinator and a guerilla PR firm – the real goal is to influence consumers to think more about the goods and services they use on a daily basis, and to steer them to businesses and vendors that share their values. We believe environmental awareness goes beyond how we heat our homes and the cars we drive, and includes everything from the restaurants we frequent to the lawyer who draws up our will, the printer that generates our business cards to the dentist who cleans our teeth.

The GA advocates and educates, documenting in a full and transparent way the specifics of each BP’s green products and practices. Inspired story-telling and financial incentives encourage individuals to do business with these sustainable, local entrepreneurs, along the way helping to keep money and resource in the local economy.

To further incentivize such locally-driven consumerism, the GA’s “community co-op”, allows for individual GA membership with the “Green Card”, a discount card that gives the bearer exclusive and substantial discounts at all of our member businesses. We currently boast 1,200 Green Alliance members, all of whom have the potential to save hundreds or even thousands of dollars a year, just by shopping green and shopping local.

This innovation will lead to providing set of technical skills to women that will support them earning their livelihoods by learning new skills. It will also lead to their self respect and pride within family and society.
Online visual training system will offer opportunities to other group of women from other parts of the countries to connect and interact with each other on a common theme without travelling very far. It can become an exposure window for rural women groups to connect with outside world.
It is an audio visual medium which does not require any prerequisite skills or language. For that reason it can be widely adopted by various organizations and SHGs in various parts of the world.

Advocates have consistently voiced the benefits of the AESP, maintaining that their survival has depended upon the learning and practices developed through series participation. While the total advocates served has made the impact more difficult to generalize, there have been identified improvements in the overall Secondary Traumatic Stress experienced by the participants. Further, participants have consistently and strongly voiced their intention of bringing the self-care practices and learning to their workplaces, and have often invited the facilitators to do on-site presentations and to conduct retreats.

The success of our policy efforts and the fact that politicians turn to us for policy advice are amazing for a group not yet a year old. We're viewed as an "organizing outfit" working directly in neighborhoods on food issues. NYC Council Speaker Quinn asked us to develop a proposal on why low-income neighborhoods need food coops; she's using it as a basis for her new FoodWorks NYC. City Council Member Jumaane Williams asked us to develop a proposal on local sourcing of NYC school food. We have a string of policy initiatives we've influenced successfully (FRESH, Sick Days for all workers) and proposals/executive orders we've drafted, all with the eye to significant change in our food system.

Meanwhile, our 11 Neighborhood Branches are supporting the development of five new food coops; have saved the Bed-Stuy urban farm (for the time being) and defending a Flatbush community garden from becoming a parking lot; held several educational events, a food conference and parties; hosted a political debate on food policy; are working with bodega owners to sell more produce and encouraging neighbors to buy from them; are working working for a full-scale supermarket in Ft. Greene; and a community gardening program in Sunset Park to link gardeners (including immigrant worker groups who wish to farm here) to resources.

Our School Food Group is building network of schools (20+) and activists. It joined NYC SchoolFood leaders and City Harvest policy analysts to create road-map for better school food. Our Research & Mapping Team is working with young people and students to measure food access across neighborhoods. Another team launched our Food Workers Justice Newsletter.

Many of our core activists are on the planning committee of the Black Farmers & City Gardeners Conference (Nov 2010 in Brooklyn). We've also been instrumental in the Bed-Stuy Women’s Security Conference (May 8) emphasizing the development of women leaders of color in Brooklyn, and the Bronx Food Summit.

Asta is 2 years old, it started with 24 production groups from several communities of Rio de Janeiro and only 5 resellers, Today it counts with 240 resellers and 32 production groups. From these 240, 79 are active, meaning that they sell every month and average of U$ 120,00. In 2008 Asta distributed about U$ 100.000 to the producers in sales and in 2009 and avarage of U$ 200.000. We have resellers that sells to their friends and family and also a small number that sells big amounts to companies as corporate gifts. We have life stories that are being changed because of Asta. Lucia, one artisan from the Fuxicarte group said that because of Asta she´s being able to sustain her family. Before Asta her group couldn´t sell anywhere because nobody liked their products, after Asta and it´s design support and training program, the group became self sustainable and their sales increases every month. “the best part is when we distribute the money of the sales to the artisans, they all get soo happy and inspired to produce more and more!” Today, more than 680 people are being benefited with Asta directly. When it gets to the number of 500 active resellers, Asta will become self sustainable and will be able to generate at least U$1000 in sales to each production group. Also, because of Asta´s beautiful Catalog and media coverage it works as a marketing tool for the producers that are being looked for other buyers. That´s what Asta aims, to act as a “apringboard” to the producers and don´t become their only sales chanel.

Entrepreneurs’ needs in Nepal are diverse and start from knowledge on potential business models, technical knowledge, logistical and administrative support, coordination with the government and local community and mentoring when they face a severe stress. Incubators nurture young entrepreneurs, firms, helping them to survive and grow during the start-up period when they are most vulnerable. Incubation concept provides the complete process of incubation from moving a technical concept through to its commercialization through three phases namely, entrepreneurs, enterprise and market. This approach increases survival rates of business and benefits both the start-ups and the economy. Thus, a business incubator is an economic development tool and a dynamic process of business enterprise development.

In 2006, BEN Namibia and a Canadian volunteer network, Bicycles for Humanity (B4H), developed a new bicycle distribution model, the BEC. A BEC is a 12m modified shipping container with about 350 second-hand bicycles, tools, spare parts, paint, roofing materials, and workbenches, delivered to a grassroots organisation and run as a community-based bicycle shop. With each project BEN Namibia provides extensive training in bicycle mechanics and financial and project management .
Through each BEC, at least 10 per cent of the bicycles are allocated for use by volunteers and beneficiaries of the local partner. Income is generated through sales and servicing of bicycles to the community. This income generation component not only provides paid employment for volunteers, but generates income for community projects and provides ongoing availability of maintenance services to bicycles used by volunteers.
As more than 90 per cent of Namibian healthcare volunteers are women, the majority of our project participants are women. Training women in bicycle mechanics addresses the practical need of teaching them how to maintain their bicycles, and is an entry point for changing existing gender division of labour. BEN Namibia considers it an opportunity to promote more fundamental changes in gender roles and relations, and the planning process of BEC projects with local communities consider strategies to make best use of this opportunity. Training women in bicycle mechanics can be a powerful tool for empowerment.
Fifty six percent of the population of Namibia lives on less than US$2 per day, and typically healthcare volunteers and their clients live on very low incomes. The BECs provide these people with an employment opportunity, and a reward for their commitment to healthcare volunteering.
BEN Namibia has already established 22 BECs, providing employment for 90 people, 50% of which are women.

Networking
• Expansion of the forum to 5 governorates allows women from diverse regions to network with one another, share resources and mobilize around common issues. Forum members have conducted site visits to other regions to share best practices/challenges. There are currently 144 active forum members. In addition to 13 male members who requested after attending some of the forum activities.

Employability and Entrepreneurship
• Provides women with opportunities to participate in supplemental trainings and employment workshops that increase their employability and ability to financially support themselves.
• Forum developed employment database connects potential employers with forum members. By keeping personal information private, the database ensures that women are selected for jobs based upon their qualifications and not their caste, religion or family name. To date over 160 women have secured jobs or internship opportunities.
• Over 15 forum members have started their own businesses

Community Development
• Forum members have launched awareness sessions on topics such as HIV/AIDS, domestic violence, problems with early marriage and Breast Cancer. Sessions are often directed at people in rural areas who have little or no knowledge of these topics.
• Forum members have reached well over 3,000 community members and students through outreach sessions and visits to local schools.
• The forum is currently conducting the first ever blogging competition for Yemeni women.
• Increased participation in community activities has enabled women to prove that they are vital to creating change and building the Yemeni civil society.
• Forum members’ participation in awareness and training sessions has encouraged parents to send their daughters to school as they realize education provides girls with the opportunity to actively participate in society.

Participant Profile
Paralyzed from the waist down since birth, Huda has faced numerous challenges growing up in Yemen; a country where handicapped girls are often hidden away due to their family’s shame and the social stigma’s attached to their disability. This seemingly insurmountable obstacle has not stopped Huda. Through her participation in the Women in Technology Forum, she has gained valuable computer and professional skills and now teaches and mentors other disabled women. Huda believes her experience has empowered her to reach out the world and inspire other women.

We have had the dual impacts of bringing tourism practitioners and related partners together in a new and lasting way, and of implementing effective communication tools that build collective knowledge as ideas are shared across the network. Our primary tools for developing these impacts are a bi-monthly newsletter, a blog, lots of relationship building , and increasingly regular meetings of network members to build connectivity and identify shared priorities and work plans. In a region where small towns, narrow valleys, and limited road infrastructure have created surprising levels of disconnect across relatively small distances, the building and rebuilding of communication across real and perceived boundaries has led to numerous “aha” moments: a network member learns how a neighboring county found a solution to a challenge that they have been ineffectually wrestling with for several years; another network participant developing a workforce training program gains direct assistance from a member two states over who had received funding to coordinate and describe training programs in her state; and more. Other, more tangible impacts include the creation of multi-party tourism packages and itineraries (in ME, NH, and VT)that embody the collaborative work in a marketable product. At one level these impacts are small, but they are real and we are beginning to see the cumulative power as people begin to frame their individual work in the context of the network, and as the network as a whole begins to make progress toward shared priorities and toward lasting capacity.

• I have gained the confidence of my parishioners on the issue of HIV/AIDS and also I have affected the lives of my clients positively.
• People within and around my church community now confidently work in for routine VCT.
• Awareness has been created on HIV/AIDS issue in my parish.

There is widespread acceptance and extreme enthusiasm of the need to train traditional or faith-based attendants not only to prevent primary post partum haemorrhage (maternal bleeding after childbirth) but also to decrease maternal death. To date, most training of these unskilled health providers has been restricted to improving their technique on asepsis during delivery, with no substantial evidence that this approach has resulted in a decline in maternal mortality. Available evidence suggests that maternal mortality is higher in rural communities than in urban areas, hence the need to focus on simple intervention such as the use of oral Misoprostol that will increase the effectiveness of TBA or faith-based healers in management of maternal bleeding. We believe this approach will significantly reduce maternal mortality and contribute to the attainment of MDG 5 by 2015.

Not tried yet

• An ICT infrastructure (computer, internet, battery, printer, camera and voice over IP) at village level accessible by women. Each women group trained will receive the above infrastructure.
• Each year at four hundred women groups (of at least 20 women) will be trained in innovating economic activities and use of ICT for documenting, reporting and sharing knowledge and skills regardless of the distance. In the first year this will ensure a representation at county level. In the second year there will be representation at parish level and by the fifth year there will be a representation at village level in most districts.
• A knowledge and skills documentation center at village level. The women will use the training skills and knowledge to produce content in their own context. The women will have a web presence of what they are involved with in economic development.
• A database of videos of woman demonstrations of economic projects in their contexts will be created
• Live interactive sessions of women on economic development options, processes and impact. At least once a month.
• It will stimulate innovation and new business ventures for economic development at village level.
).