Urgent Action Fund Africa is accepting applications for a full-time, salaried Program Officer with a focus on grant making in Africa. The position will be based in Nairobi, Kenya. The Program Officer will work with the US-based Program Team in reviewing and managing correspondence from African organizations that request support from the Urgent Action Fund. The Program Officer will report to the Director of UAF-Africa and will supervise a Program Associate.

The Municipal Services Project (MSP) is looking for an experienced Project Coordinator to manage research and administrative activities in the project. This is a two-year contract position from March 2004 to March 2006 with the possibility of a one-year extension. The Coordinator will be based in Cape Town at the International Labour Research and Information Group Trust (ILRIG) offices, affiliated with the University of Cape Town.

Who says that donors won't give large gifts online? For many nonprofit organisations, donations of $1,000 and up are considered large, or major gifts. So, are these big gifts coming online? A recent study shows that a surprisingly significant number of major donations are coming in online. The study looked at 3,151 fundraising campaigns that collected donations during 2003. There were a variety of campaigns involved in the study, including small to very large, across over 500 cities in the United States.

The treatment of Zimbabwean citizens and other people from the region who migrate legally and illegally to neighbouring countries mainly Botswana and South Africa is often catastrophic, raising underlying questions about xenophobia. In most cases their human rights are systematically and grossly violated. The question of ill treatment and violent malpractices on illegal migrants has taken on a new urgency in the wake of recent reports on the flogging of some 100 Zimbabweans who illegally entered Botswana.

Within the framework of the new programme initiatives that are being implemented by the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA), proposals are invited for the constitution of Comparative Research Networks (CRNs) to undertake comparative studies on or around a variety of themes. The primary purpose of the CRNs is to encourage the development and consolidation of a comparative analytic perspective in the work of African social researchers. In so doing, it is hoped to establish a strong corpus of comparative studies produced by African scholars and which could help to advance theoretical knowledge and discussion. For the period 2004 – 2005, the Council will be open to receive proposals up to 31 July, 2004. Notification of the result of the selection exercise will be made by 31 August, 2004.

The Swazi government is to pay the primary school fees of 60,000 orphans and vulnerable children (OVC). The Ministry of Economic Planning and Development revealed last Thursday that in the national population of 960,000 people, there were 200,000 OVC.

The Executive Director will be responsible for the overall management of C A S E, including financial matters, procurement of contracts and quality control. The successful candidate will combine highly developed research skills, leadership and managerial qualities. The Deputy Director will assist the Executive Director with both the general management of the organisation and procurement and execution of research projects.

InterAction, the largest alliance of US-based international development and humanitarian NGOs seeks a Program Manager to serve as its principal staff representative, liaison and manager of the Africa Liaison Program Initiative (ALPI) ALPI is a USAID-funded tripartite effort to enhance collaborative relationships among three key stakeholders in African development: African NGOs, US-based PVOs and USAID. This position focuses on facilitating and managing relationships among diverse stakeholders and requires someone with an understanding of the benefits of those relationships and the ability to serve as a strong advocate for initiation and maintenance of partnerships despite their inherent challenges. This individual must have a background that ensures credibility with the various ALPI stakeholders through experience interacting with African NGO, American PVO and USAID systems and personnel within an African context.

The Westminster Foundation for Democracy works to achieve sustainable political change in emerging democracies. It is an agency of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and works closely with the Westminster political parties. Established in 1992, the Foundation is now transforming itself to become an international leader in its field, working in some of the most challenging settings in the world. The WFD is recruiting for the following Africa-specific posts: Programme Director, Programme Manager and Programme Officer.

Looking to build an effective, efficient and sustainable organisation? Limited resources for attending courses? Need effective training that you can do while working?

Fahamu, in association with the University of Oxford, is offering distance learning courses specifically designed to meet the needs of human rights and civil society organisations. You can be anywhere to do these courses. Using cutting-edge interactive CDROMs, with support from a course tutor via email and an optional workshop, the course methodology is designed for learning at work without the need to take study leave. Those successfully completing the course will be awarded with a certificate from the University of Oxford.

Fahamu – Learning for change – uses information and communication technologies to serve the needs of organisations and social movements that aspire to progressive social change and that promote and protect human rights.

The following courses are available in 2004:

· An introduction to human rights (3 weeks)
· Investigating, reporting and monitoring human rights violations (18 weeks)
· Using the internet for advocacy and research (16 weeks)
· Leadership and management for change (18 weeks)
· Fundraising and resource mobilisation (18 weeks)
· Finance for the non-financial manager (18 weeks)
· JustWrite: an on-line course on effective writing (5 weeks)

The first course begins on 1 March 2004. For course dates, information, fees and registration forms kindly contact Camille Downes in Durban, South Africa on TEL: +27-(0)31-2071144/8360 FAX: +27-31-2078403 EMAIL: [email protected] or Hilary Isaacs in Oxford, UK on TEL: +44-(0)845 456 2442 FAX: +44-(0)845-456-2443 EMAIL: [email protected] http://www.fahamu.org/

The cholera epidemic in Mali has been brought under control in most of the country, but continues unabated in the Mopti region, where a further 11 people died of the water-borne disease in January, Health Ministry sources said. The sources told IRIN last Thursday that 156 new cases of cholera were reported in the Niger river valley in and around the city of Mopti, 450 km northeast of the capital Bamako, between 1 and 26 January.

Ishmael Reed Publishing Co, a prestigious publisher of anthologies of poetry is looking for 25 poets from Kenya, for a book to be published in California titles '25 New Kenyan Poets'. Please send three of your best poems, as an email word attachment to: [email protected] with the subject of the email being: submission for poetry anthology.

This is a Train-the Trainers Programme with the objective of building high-end human capacity in Africa on Open Source and Web technologies to support the gradual integration of Free and Open Source Software into the continent as a whole. The focus of the training is in Open Source systems administration and network management, productivity solutions based on web and client/server technology and platform integration via TCP/IP, focusing on groups of sub-regional technology experts that can map out a strategy for Open Source solutions to benefit NGOs and Civil Society.

Funding relationships are often problematic:
- The funders who have the money are based in the North (or are branches or affiliates of Northern organisations, controlled from the North), and they have their own agendas which they wish to pursue.
- The NGOs who are seeking money are based in the South, often desperate for money in countries where there are limited sources available to them. This means that they will want to take whatever money is offered, and on the terms and conditions on which it is offered, whether or not it is for exactly what they want to be doing.

Unequal funding relationships exist everywhere, but are far more pronounced in the South, and especially in Africa from the Sahara to Zimbabwe – partly because there is much less funding around, and partly because there is much less indigenous tradition of NGO activity which pre-dates the rapid rise of international development aid over the past 30 or so years which has developed a consequential need for local partner organisations.

The effect of this is that it pushes Southern NGOs into a dependency relationship with their funding partners. They are always in a position of having to “beg for money” and be subservient. And the tune is definitely being called by “he who pays the piper”. And because the funders control the distribution of money, this gives them a position of power often leading to a certain arrogance.

* Read the rest of this article by clicking on the link below. Michael Norton is the founder of the Directory of Social Change in the UK. He has also founded and co-founded a number of organisations promoting community involvement amongst young people and social entrepreneurship. He also runs a number of development projects in India.

* Norton will be speaking on this topic at the 5th International Workshop on Resource Mobilisation, on 26th –28th March 2004 in Johannesburg, South Africa. He will be presenting workshops on: ‘How to raise funds successfully in your local community’, and ‘Communicating your need’ in addition to co-presenting a discussion forum on ‘Expanding the donor base: do Northern NGOs and Southern NGOs face the same challenges?’

* Use the following URL for programme and booking information on the 5th IWRM – sectionid=5&subsectionid=70

The Djibouti government aims to get all its boys and girls in school by the end of this decade. That target, most observers agree, is likely to prove much easier in the capital, Djibouti City, and provincial towns than in the hamlets that dot the arid countryside, where the challenges to universal primary education are strongest.

Togo has just opened its second university in the northern town of Kara, but the government can not afford to build a campus for it yet, so its lecturers and students are having to make do with the buildings of a former teacher training college. The government laid the foundation stone of Kara university four years ago, but it is still sitting in an empty field.

Many women and girls amongst the thousands of people in the north who flee their homes each night to seek shelter in town centres fearing attacks and abduction by Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) rebels are sexually abused, an advocacy group has reported. The New York-based Women's Commission for Refugee Women and Children (WCRWC) said in a statement that the "night commuter" girls and women had reported that those sexually abusing and harassing them were mainly youths and government soldiers.

Four days of rioting by secondary school students in Libreville last week highlighted a growing frustration with education cutbacks in Gabon, a country that grew rich on oil, but which is now struggling to cope with a steady decline in production. The country's main technical school remains closed after four days of rioting over cutbacks to a free student bus service in which one student was killed.

The MODEL rebel movement has backtracked on its call for the removal of Gyude Bryant as the head of Liberia's transitional government. At the same time, a powerful dissident faction within the LURD rebel movement has also rejected demands by LURD leader Sekou Conneh that Bryant should step down.

The Project Officer will be responsible for writing progress reports and proposals for fundraising, facilitating production of training materials and publications, facilitating the implementation of program activities and production of materials. The Field Officer will be responsible for the provision of information to support the organisation 's education, research and advocacy programme.