Sofie's Home

So Sofie's home from camp and she was quick to ask me if I had held up my end of the bargain. When my 8 year old went to sleep-over camp this past week, we made a deal. I would lose at least 3 pounds while she was gone. I was pleased and relieved to be able to say yes, I lost 3! Not more, not less. Need another short term goal to break this effort up into doable chunks.

Sierra Magazine Features PHE in Ethiopia

The new issue of Sierra Magazine features the story and photos of the professional journalist and photographer who visited the Berga wetland site in the same group I did last November. The story and the pictures include a few from that site visit (you will recognize health worker Gete Dida from a previous post) and many more from their much longer trip to the country. The piece captures a key part of the story - the tremendous education, health, family planning, and rights challenges for women in Ethiopia. And journalist Paul Rauber connects these challenges with the environment in ways meaningful to the people struggling to survive as well as the biodiversity (mostly birding) interests of Sierra readers. He even points out how these clash in stomach turning ways when a spectacular species is spotted just over the shoulder of a woman begging.

I'll write more about this article and the issues it raises. Great read if you want to learn more about Ethiopia through the eyes of someone visiting Africa for the first time. Photographer Ian Berry on the other hand, has been covering African issues for decades including the distinction of being the only photographer documenting the 1960 Sharpville massacre in apartheid-era South Africa.

Off to Camp Weight Loss Bargain

My daughter Sofie is off for her first sleep-over camp - an entire week! Before she left, we made a deal that I would lose at least 3 pounds while she is gone. I am down three after three days. The question is can I keep it off with the horizon dotted with temptation.

Join the Party!

More great news. I have had a lot of terrific support from colleagues here at the Woodrow Wilson Center and our Environmental Change and Security Program. Pledges of course, some "green team" lunch time walks, invitations to play weekend basketball, and general moral support. Even making sure we have fruit rather than just the same devilish cookies I have been eating at our meetings here for the past 11 years!

And now a new kind of support from colleague Meaghan Parker. Meaghan made a generous pledge of $3 per pound and promised to add to it $3 for every new Mama pound she loses!

So join the party! If you want some extra motivation for shedding, we are happy to have you on board the Losing Pounds for Berga bandwagon!

School Expansion Started!

Great news! I received an update about our efforts to help the Maru-Chebot First Cycle Elementary School from Geremew Selassie (pictured) of the Ethiopian Wildlife and Natural History Society (EWNHS). And it is good news - they have started expanding the school to go beyond 4th grade!

After returning from my visit to Ethiopia late last year, I tried a few modest things to raise some money for the Berga wetland community and this inspiring combined education, conservation, health, livelihoods project. When I had my colleagues over for a December office party for example, I suggested a donation rather than a bottle of wine or food. My 8 and 6 year old daughters helped me pick out school supplies for the kids with a focus on basics like pencils, erasers, rulers, scissors, and calculators. We sent three boxes (two of school supplies, one of clothes) and a very good friend carried over $600 we had collected from friends and family.

Geremew and his colleague Zewditu Tessema have been so very kind to bring these supplies to the community as part of EWNHS's partnership with the community. The community decided to use the $600 to purchase materials for to start expanding the school. This step is critical, as it will extend the school beyond 4th grade as the closest school for older children is 5 km away, a distance that often proves prohibitive, especially for the young girls.

Here are the key passages of Geremew's email:

We have already delivered the two boxes and 66 corrugated iron sheets for the new class rooms during a small ceremony held in the school. We will send you the pictures as soon as they are ready. The construction of additional class rooms has started. That picture too will be included.

Thank you Geoff for everything you people down there are doing for the Berga community.

Many thanks,
Geremew G

Such a modest amount of money in the big scheme of things starting to make a difference. Gives me inspiration to re-energize my weight loss effort (which has really been treading water) and try to get the word out on this effort and ones like it. Next post - soliciting ideas for going "viral" with Losing Pounds for Berga.

HELP Plus

Just want to put it on the record that my colleague Gib Clarke (pictured here being treated quite well at a Filipino site visit) has come up with a good acronym for the efforts to combine all these population, health, and environment components to advance development for poor communities. PHE doesn't exactly roll off the tongue or make clear its focus at first blush.

Gib came up with HELP Plus which stands for Health, Environment, Livelihoods, and Population with the Plus standing for whatever the communities want it to be. Could be micro-credit, could be sustainable agriculture, could be water and sanitation...

So HELP Plus it is for our acronym obsessed world. Parenthetically, the best acronyms come out of the Philippines, a country that seems to revel in them. IPOPCORM is my favorite, designed purposefully to sound like popcorn according to one of its architects, Leona D'Agnes. Integrated Population and Coastal Resource Management. Impressive title and impressive projects. I in fact blogged on Grist about my visit to one of their sites a couple of years ago where I got to swim with Nemo!

Integrated Lives, Integrated Programs

Quick recap - I'm combining the need to lose weight with the desire to raise money for a dynamic community project I visited in Ethiopia. I'm taking per pound pledges in hopes I will lose a LOT by December and these resources can expand the the school three more grades so kids won't have to walk 5 km each way to stay in school past 4th grade! Or to fence in the school, or to add to the microcredit program that supports especially the women's efforts to sell butter, or to strengthen the conservation around the endangered Whitewing flufftail that nests in the wetland behind the school (and really nowhere else but in South Africa where the bird migrates!).

Or whatever the dynamic community decides for it should be about what they want, not what we get excited about funding. Often it is the more mundane that is the most needed. Those of us who do have conservation as one of our goals need to recognize that communities such as the one in Berga have a multiplicity of challenges. Faced simultaneously. With high priority for a lot of folks.

So I find the integrated approach, recognizing that these people live integrated lives and have integrated needs, responds to the true complexity of their lives. In my case, I work directly with programs that combine livelihoods, health (including reproductive health), conservation and natural resource management. Lots of great resources for these programs that are scattered all over the world.

Heller's Guide to Weight Loss Frustration

My calf is killing me. Haven't gone into raising cattle. No, my left leg is proving problematic when it comes to some of my favorite workout options i.e. basketball. Strained it a couple of weeks ago playing "the game too far" and now it makes itself known with twinges on my walks to and from work. It is as pathetic as it sounds.

The small but nagging injury exemplifies what I find to be a catch-22 for overweight people who were formally very athletic and in shape (long, long ago). Many of the sports you enjoy are now sports you enjoyed. I can still play basketball, although with what we will diplomatically call a significant erosion of my skills. But running the 30-35 miles a week that I did at one point not too long ago has become seemingly impossible until I lose enough to take the pressure off my knees. Gotta lose it to expand the repertoire. Running is a key way to lose it. You get the picture.

Special Friends in Town

So some special friends are in town this week.

When I visited the Maru-Chebot First Cycle Elementary School last November, I was really just tagging along with a group of 10 American environmental activists from the Audubon Society and the Sierra Club. Two friends and leaders in population-health-environment field, Katie Mogelgaard and Sarah Fairchild, had arranged a dynamic visit to Ethiopia for them to see first hand the links between severe environmental, demographic, and health challenges.

Katie and Sarah were kind enough to let me tag along before we all went to Addis Ababa for a conference entitled “Population, Health, and Environment: Integrated Development for East Africa.” Both the visit to Berga and then the conference proved to be fascinating. I’ve told you a lot about the Berga site. The conference was an energizing three days with participants sharing insights from Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda, Tanzania, DRC, and then places farther afield from Madagascar and the Philippines. The conference had a host of sponsors but I should single out friends at the Population Reference Bureau and LEM, the Ethiopian NGO that hosted the meeting.

But back to this week – the Audubon and Sierra group is back in Washington along with a similar group who traveled to the Philippines this past March. I missed joining them for dinner tonight, but I look forward to catching up with them tomorrow to share stories and more importantly, discuss how we are all working to support that community in need we visited together that sunny November day in Ethiopia.