Dear Subud members,

	Gender Study Woman Selling Flour in DR Congo

This first eNews of the year has a lot of news from members across the Susila Dharma network. We are working on widening our distribution of the SD eNews through collaborating with Subud World News website and ISC so people will find it easier to locate. Please pass the eNews along to anyone you think would be interested. Your feedback is always welcome!

In this January 2008 issue we send you:

1. Feature: ICDP in Argentina Report
2. News from the Network

1. SD nationals: Indonesia, France, India
2. L’Escale Project handed over.
3. Puppeteers without Borders  goes to Bosnia
4. Isaac Goff fixes small hearts in Bolivia
5. Off to university in Brazil
6. Camino de Santiago Pilgrimage
7. Water research in Bas Congo

3. Participating at the United Nations  

4. Useful Development Resources

5. From the Office
1. Notes from the Field—Gender Study
2. What is SDIA Working On?
3. Travel plans
4. SDIA Year end financial picture

Thank you everyone.

With love from the SDI office team…

1. FEATURE: Paloma takes a closer look at ICDP projects in Argentina

Paloma de la  Viña is on the Board of SDIA and recently was elected  to be  Chair of Subud Spain. In the fall she went to Argentina to pay  a visit to active ICDP projects around Mina Clavero. She has written  a most  interesting and personalized account of her experience. Paloma went with specific questions for  project leaders from sponsoring SD national organizations like SD Britain. A small excerpt:

Q. Have the caregivers noticed a change in the behaviour of the children?

A. We refer to the Las Calles group, which is  one where we have direct and continuous contact with the children. There is a significant improvement in the relationships the children have with their peers and with adults. They seem more predisposed to play, to listen, and to interact. The scope of their language has widened and they are more open emotionally. We believe this is the result of being more contained by their family.

Read the full seven page report with photographs here

2. NEWS FROM THE NETWORK

1. SD Nationals News
   
   Indonesia: SD Indonesia implements a UN micro-credit program.
   
   Last year SD Indonesia was invited to implement a micro credit project for the UN Office of the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) as part of the disaster recovery program. This came about because of their successful work with emergency relief and recovery after the Tsunami, earthquake and floods in the last 2 years. Ariana Susanti, the chair of SD Indonesia, reports:

   Concerning our partnership with OCHA, we had a project manager based in Jakarta and project manager on site to conduct daily activities. There is also one field staff from local community who is in charge of administration, financial management and reporting. This is a short term project (6 months) and will be ended in January 2008. However according the contract, SD Indonesia still manages the project revolving fund until 2009. For this period, there are 75 beneficiaries which about 87% are women.

   Besides giving a loan, SD Indonesia conducts a series of trainings and workshops to improve the capacity of the beneficiaries in such areas as management, entrepreneurship, and production processing. The expected result is that there will be many small, independent business groups, able to maintain their livelihoods. So far SD Indonesia has successfully encouraged the formation of two small business groups in two sub-districts.

Yayasan Tambuhak Sinta (YTS) in Kalimantan has a new edition of Kabar Itah, their newsletter. Download it here. To see older versions, see the listing on our website

India: New Chairman.  Congratulations to Samy Saminathan, founder of Center if Culture and Development in Madurai, who was elected to be the new SD India Chair at the recent Subud India Congress.

France: Great Newsletter! The SD-France newsletter, Les Infos de Susila Dharma France (in both French & English) is an inspiring example of reporting to donors and members.  Have a look on the SD-France page: http://susiladharma.org/members_europe_france.html

2. Switzerland:
   L’Escale Project for handicapped children changes hands.

Floriane Syfrig sends us an update on the project she began:

In January 1994 we started our day care project for handicapped children. Wednesday and Saturday afternoons two specialized teachers welcomed four to five children with handicaps, offering them a space to play and enjoy themselves with pleasant activities according to their potential. In the beginning the upper age limit was ten, but very soon we had to extend it and so we had also teenagers of 18!

At this age they require stricter rules to improve their school attendance in order to improve their ability, gain expertise in specialized workshops, and join the work-force. It wasn’t possible to mix very young children with our teenagers, so we decided to bring our project to an end.

Fortunately, a recently retired friend from working as a special education teacher was interested in taking over. I was able to make the necessary arrangements with the authorities for her to continue the project. I also asked my sponsors to maintain their donations, so last September, with some financial security in place, she was happy to welcome 2 little girls.

During fourteen years we welcomed more than 30 children. Our annual budget of Sfr.20,000 was from private donations. I am very happy to see a follow up of l’Escale, which is now called Planète Eveil. It is no longer a Subud project, even though I am still on the committee. I thank you all for the interest and support you have shown to this project over the years.

3. Bosnia:
   Puppeteers without Borders is going to a theatre Conference

Erica Sapir tells us that they have obtained the funding mentioned in the Dec eNews:

This is just to share with you the good news that a Subud brother from France, who has known Puppeteers Without Borders from its beginning, has offered to pay for the travel expenses to the Feb. conference in Mostar. The conference is called "Object, Puppet, Mask - Powerful Means of Theatrical Expression". We have been invited to participate, and I think we have something valuable to share with a country that is bringing its pieces together. I am very humbled, very grateful.

Puppeteers Without Borders is on the web

4. Bolivia:
   Isaac Goff assists with medical support for children

Isaac Goff, founder of Dharma Trading in California, has established fair trade business links with co-operatives and businesses in Bolivia through a Chicago organization called Solidarity Bridge, The Chicago Catholic Medical, Enterprise, & Education Missions. Isaac has been supporting their medical missions by funding heart operations for babies born with hear defects.

To read more about this work and see a photo of Isaac on the home page with one of the children he has helped http://www.solidaritybridge.org/

5. Brazil:
   Jaqueline, the first person in her family to go to university, receives a scholarship.

With joyful celebration and gratitude, Illene Pevec writes:

I wanted you to know that I just received the news that Jaqueline Vieira passed the entrance exam to the business administration faculty at the local university in Santo Angelo. All university entrance in Brazil is by competitive exam into a specific faculty. She is Seu Adão's oldest granddaughter, one of 38 grandchildren. Seu Adão is the man who has worked by my side through many years of A Child's Garden of Peace. Jaqueline is the first person in the family to attend college thanks to this new scholarship made possible from the money the documentary film project has earned and the purse enterprise we are starting up. Your support is making possible a new era for a family descended from slaves and Indians. In return for the scholarship that she is receiving, Jaqueline works with the younger children of the community every weekday. More information on the purse co-operative will be available soon.

For background, read Illene Pevec's journal on our website.

6. France:
   Walking on the Inside: Camino de Santiago, so far—Impressions of a Pilgrimage

Last September in an inner gesture to celebrate 50 years of Subud in the West, Raphael Bate (Chairman of SD France) and Haris Wolfgang (Director of SD USA and SDIA) walked part of the ancient Christian pilgrimage of Santiago de Compostello in France and Spain. The intention of the walk was to give thanks for Subud and bless the efforts of all those workng for Susila Dharma. They walked for 200 miles over two weeks and plan to complete the final 3 week walk in September this year.

Here are some impressions of that experience – photos by Haris and words by Raphael.

7. DR Congo: Research on communal water sources for Kingantoko area is published
   
   Two years ago Viktor Boehm traveled to DR CONGO with two representatives from a Munich University to undertake research into identifying a communal water supply for the Kingantoko Center and the surrounding villages. This Center is owned by Subud DR Congo and obtaining a reliable water source has been a problem there. The English version of Thomas Sailer´s excellent Thesis: "Hydrogeological Research in Bas-Congo, DR of Congo, concerning a communal water supply system" was handed in at Ludwig Maximilian University, Munich, Germany, in Oct 2007. The team that worked on this research thanks MSF very much for their financial support. Download the full thesis here (Note: this paper is very large so we have put it on Mediafire.com)

3. Participating at the United Nations

Katherine Carré is SDI/Subud’s permanent representative to the UN in Geneva and in that capacity attends various meetings on our behalf. On December 5-7, 2007 she attended the General Assembly of CONGO (the Conference of Non-Governmental Organizations in consultative relations with the UN Economic and Social Council) of which SDIA is a member. Excerpts:

Since it is very helpful for SDI to be a member of CONGO whose objective is to facilitate NGO participation in UN debates and decision-making, our duty was to show support for this event especially as the General Assembly (GA) takes place only every three years. Total CONGO membership is around 500 NGOs, but many do not have representatives in the UN centres of New York, Geneva and Vienna. Some 300 reps were present from 170 NGOs of which 129 were full members but only 101 were of "full standing" ie had paid their fees and had therefore the right to vote. A number of people from intergovernmental organizations, governments, academia and other institutions also attended the assembly.

Being part of CONGO provides a sense of belonging to civil society worldwide and sharing common aims of peace, justice and equitable development. SDI/Subud has been a member of CONGO since 1994 and over the years representatives have belonged to several of its NGO committees. A full account of the GA can be found of the CONGO website http://www.ngocongo.org.

You can read Katherine’s full report here

4. USEFUL DEVELOPMENT RESOURCES

Members of the SD Network regularly send us suggestions for learning more about development.

1. Illene Pevec:
   Greg Mortenson, who wrote the book 3 Cups of Tea, spoke in Boulder Colorado last week. If you have not read his book, I highly recommend it for everyone. He has been building schools for tiny isolated mountain towns in Pakistan and Afghanistan for the last 14 years.
2. Cassidy Sterling:
   Fritz Schumacher, author of Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered, wrote a wonderful essay on what an economic system inspired by Buddhist ethics would look like. You can read it again on the E.F. Schumacher Society’s website: http://www.smallisbeautiful.org/buddhist_economics.html
   
   (By the way, Fritz Schumacher was opened in Subud, and Cassidy used to work for The E.F. Schumacher Society.)
3. Bardolf Paul:
   Conference: Communicating for Social Impact - May 22-26 2008 - Montreal, PQ, Canada. Hosted by the International Communication Association, the theme addresses challenges to the meaningfulness of communication work and its translation into venues where the people who most need this research can access it. http://www.comminit.com/en/node/265460

5. FROM THE OFFICE

1. New: Notes from the Field IV—Gender Study in DR Congo
   
   SDIA has launched another Notes from the Field, Gender Study in Kingantoko. In May 9-12, 2006 Charlotte Ndona and the SD team conducted a survey of women in all the seven villages surrounding the Kingantoko Centre. From the introduction:

   Though initially the Gender Study centers on the interests of women, it cannot be implemented nor can it succeed without the involvement of women’s life-companions, men. Men make up a major part of women's environment. Their absence would be an obstacle to the development of gender equality. It is by walking side by side as men and women, that we can implement the Gender Study and make it a success as a process or approach to reducing poverty.

You can read the new Notes from the Field IV here

2. What the SDIA office is working on this month:
   
   • Developing a Conference in Colombia around the time of the Pan American Conference July 2008
   • Website re-design and updating databases
   • Project management tools and resource for members of the network
   • 2007 report on our UN participation
   • Grant proposal writing to various agencies and foundations
   • Governance and Development Survey with the Subud Institute
3. SDIA Directors Travel
   
   Coming up: Lawrence Fryer, also representing SD Germany, is going to India in February to visit all the SD projects; Virginia Thomas is going to DR Congo in the near future.
4. SDIA Year-End Financial Picture
   
   SDIA completed 2007 with a slight deficit of approximately $2,000. We did not achieve our target budget of $220,000 by $20,000 and under-spent in the service areas as a result. Considering this was a year of major changes with the office moving to Montreal and staff changes, the board and staff is looking forward to a good year in 2008. The members have approved a budget of $235,750 for 2008. The office is working with a new accountant and the reviewed 2007 financial statements should be ready for distribution in May.