Saving Lives…Breastfeeding Orphans in China Disaster

A Chinese police officer has done an extraordinary thing.  She has been breastfeeding orphans and other infants whose mothers cannot nurse them following the earthquake in China.

Not often enough do I take the time to bring together two issues that get me fired up:  Motherhood and Disasters.  I applaud the decision this woman has made and it is a wonderful example of the difference women make in recovery from disaster and protecting the most vulnerable.

Back to New Orleans

As the entire Gulf region continues its recovery efforts, the Continuity Insights Management Conference remains committed with its support of its annual event in New Orleans. But there’s always more that can be done… In cooperation with the Sheraton New Orleans, the New Orleans Recovery School District, RP Risk Advisors, Edwards Disaster Recovery Directory, and Continuity Insights magazine, CONTINUITY CARES is an invitation for you to be a part of the solution by extending your post-conference stay in New Orleans and getting personally involved in much needed construction projects . No special skillsets are required of the volunteers… just a desire to help.

If you are interested in participating post-conference, on May 8 and 9, 2008, on various infrastructure rebuilding projects such as firehouses and schools, please take a few minutes to let us know of any particular skills or interests you might have. All responses are COMPLETELY CONFIDENTIAL and completing this survey is NOT a formal commitment to participate. It is for preliminary informational purposes only.

The Mary Fran Myers Award Recipient, 2007

The Mary Fran Myers Award, 2007 Prema Gopalan 2007 Recipient of the Mary Fran Myers Award

As the Executive Director of Swayam Shikshan Prayog (SSP) for over 15 years, Prema Gopalan has supported poor rural women in building bridges with local government to facilitate democratic processes that are inclusive of women. The impact of Prema’s work is clearly demonstrated by the experience of SSP after the Marathwada earthquake of 1993. The Maharashtran government enlisted SSP to catalyze residents in 300 villages to learn, cooperate, and apply new technology and construction techniques, and their remaining government subsidies, to rapidly repair their damaged homes. When SSP’s initial appraisal found that village officials and homeowners lacked basic information and opportunities to participate in reconstruction, Prema quickly determined that the women’s savings and credit groups, although largely defunct, could be reactivated as community organizations that could inspire and engage large numbers of women to lead their community’s repair and reconstruction. Since then, the efforts of SSP in Maharashtra to engage women’s groups in reconstruction efforts have established a platform of peer learning exchanges enabling other earthquake impacted communities of women around the world to learn from these strategies. In earthquake and tsunami areas, Prema has supported women who mobilized to organize their communities to restore housing, livelihoods, community infrastructure and basic services, participate in reconstruction and create new, empowered spaces for women to continue their development activities after reconstruction was completed.

In 1999, Swayam Shikshan Prayog, with Prema Gopalan’s leadership, supported grassroots leaders from Maharashtra to share their experience with women in 8 earthquake devastated communities in the Marmara region of Turkey. In Gujarat, after the 2001 earthquake, Prema took a delegation of Maharashtran women leaders and SSP staff on a humanitarian/solidarity visit. Gujarat women were so moved by receiving a delegation of peer leaders who had survived similar situations, that they urged the women’s groups and SSP to return and come and assist them. This process was repeated, when the tsunami struck Tamil Nadu at the end of 2004. In all of these cases, Prema took care to work only in communities that invited them in, seeing the value of a women-led relief and reconstruction process. Last year, SSP partnered with more than 42,000 women organized in autonomous community groups in 889 disaster-impacted villages in three states in India.

Under Prema’s leadership, the SSP has partnered with GROOTS International, an international network of grassroots women, and served as their secretariat. In this role, she has facilitated the creation of training teams of expert grassroots community women leaders. These women-led teams are now available to support and build the capacity of women’s groups in high risk and disaster struck low-income communities across the globe. These efforts have been widely recognized as a model of good practice in the field. For these initiatives and for her sustained work with and on behalf of grassroots women, Prema is recognized as an expert in community driven, gender equitable disaster response and resilience initiatives which help transform the chaos of disasters into opportunities for women to lead and restore their communities.

For more information go to www.gdnonline.org