Although beekeeping can contribute enormously to alleviate poverty, Mrs McLeod pointed out that it is “usually overlooked as a marginal activity not worthy of investment and attention”.

Bees for Development is an organisation that works to overcome this lack of attention. Describing itself as “the hub of a network of beekeepers all around the world”, it encourages and promotes sustainable apiculture, and particularly focuses on poor and rural areas.

Bees for Development has developed a series of educational and training programmes that facilitate the spread of knowledge about bees and profitable and sustainable beekeeping methods: practices that increase beekeepers’ incomes without jeopardising bee populations and local biodiversity.

“Our organisation’s view”, Mrs McLeod says, “is that the most important thing for beekeepers is information”. The organisation has developed a huge, free-to-use, online database about all aspects of bees and sustainable beekeeping – their “Information Portal”. But, as we all know, the best way to learn is by doing. Mrs McLeod explains that “what commonly happens is that an experienced beekeeper is approached by others who want to get involved”.

Bees for Development also support training, workshops and meetings, offering Resource Boxes (packs of explanatory material such as booklets, posters and the Bees for Development Journal), the content of which can be varied according to the needs and purposes of those taking and running the trainings.

Bees for Development was founded in 1993 in Monmouth, South Wales, U.K. The standard price for Resource Boxes is £50, but those who cannot afford it can receive a Sponsored Resource Box free of charge. Further information about all the current initiatives of the organisation is available at www.beesfordevelopment.org.

Mrs McLeod went on to emphasise that the training activities also aim to stimulate and strengthen beekeeper organisations: “When beekeepers can organise themselves into co-operatives or collective marketing groups, they can improve the terms of trade with other people. This is a significant element of our training: teaching people how to form effective associations to represent their own interests”.

This is all crucial for beekeepers, as demonstrated in a recent training programme in Uganda: “When we got to Kampala we noticed that, notwithstanding the presence of many local beekeepers who produce excellent honey, the majority of what is consumed has been imported. The issue in Uganda is that producers cannot meet their national market”.

Bees for Development started working with a co-operative, providing trainings for local beekeepers. “Now, we can proudly say that the co-operative we were working with has been invited by a supermarket supplier in Uganda to start supplying their stores and even to export to Kenya. Their produce is being very well received.”

Text: Nicola Piras

Illustration: Fred Geven

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cAccording to research conducted by several experts, one billion of the world’s poor share two common traits. Firstly, their subsistence is based on agriculture; secondly, they quite often lack secure rights to the land they cultivate.

As Mr Hanstad points out, “we can consider landlessness as one of the best predictors of extreme poverty around the world”. But there is another important aspect that emerges from analyses of the world’s poor: although women produce more than half of the food consumed in most developing countries, they rarely have any legal claim to the land they till.

Ensuring women’s land rights is a core focus for Landesa. In 2009 it opened the Center for Women’s Land Rights, aiming specifically at “putting the most powerful development tool – land – into the hands of the most promising users – women”.

When women have legal control over their land, Mr Hanstad told us, they can invest in their family’s future and can ensure that their children’s needs are met. “Of course,” he continued, “women’s land rights are a matter of social justice; but they are also critical from an economic perspective”.

Conscious of the importance of adopting approaches that are sensitive to specific local realities, political institutions, history and culture, the centre works together with governmental institutions to develop tailor-made solutions. Because land rights and customary rights are different in each country Landesa’s programmes are different in each country.

Founded in 1967, Landesa was formerly called the Rural Development Institute. It currently leads projects in China, India, Liberia, Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda and has ongoing research activities in a number of other countries.

To find out more about Landesa and its Center for Women’s Land Rights please visit http://www.landesa.org/women-and-land or contact Ms Rena Singer, Landesa’s Senior Communications Manager, at renas@landesa.org.

Landesa devotes much of its efforts to educating and informing policymakers, researchers, and practitioners around the world, with a special view to promoting changes in laws and policies that will protect and strengthen women’s land rights. To this end it has launched the Women’s Land Rights Fellowship Programme, to train and mentor legal professionals.

Next year it will launch the Women’s Land Rights Visiting Professionals Programme, which will bring professionals from the developing world to Seattle to improve their ability to work on women’s land rights issues. Both programmes are run from the organisation’s Seattle office. And both programmes aim to create a network of professionals that work at both national and international levels.

The organisation is also building an E-Library on Women’s Property Rights, aiming to create a worldwide database to support practitioners and advocates in finding the most effective solutions to ensure women’s legal ownership of land.

Text: Nicola Piras

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Even though ISEC also organises workshops and conferences, its main activity is that of producing educational material that supports teachers, lecturers and activists, and provides a source of information for individuals in general. Through its books, articles, reports, films, factsheets and web-based materials, ISEC highlights the necessity of revitalising cultural and biological diversity.

As Mr Gorelick says, “We believe that the solution to most of the crises we face today – social, ecological, economic, and even spiritual – lies in shifting away from the globalising direction we have been taken by our political leaders, towards economies that are more localised, smaller in scale, place-based, diverse, and ecological.”

“Food”, he points out, “is perhaps the most important of our needs to localise, since it is something everyone, everywhere, needs every day”. Hence, many of ISEC’s projects and programmes emphasise the localisation of food production.

ISEC does not try to tell people what their local food system should look like, as “the details of what any local food system will look like – the foods grown or the methods employed – will vary widely from place to place”. ISEC tries instead to focus on those forces that impede peoples’ ability to be self-reliant in food; forces that are largely the same everywhere.

“There’s a need”, Mr Gorelick says , “for widespread educational campaigns that spell out how ‘free’ trade treaties free up big agribusinesses to invade local markets everywhere; or how subsidies make food from the other side of the world cheaper than food grown next door”.

The International Society for Ecology and Culture is a non-profit organisation operating since the late 1970s. Information about the programmes it offers can be found on its website (www.localfutures.org) or requested via e-mail: infousa@isec.org.uk.

ISEC presents specific examples and individual experiences from all around the planet to show the catastrophic outcomes of globalisation, the necessity of a paradigm shift, and proof that such a shift is possible and desirable.

This is seen in the story of an Australian farmers shared by Helena Norberg-Hodge, ISEC’s director. Having worked for many years as a grower for the industrial food system, this farmer told her he had felt like a serf, with little control over his own life. Everything changed when two years ago he decided to sell locally. “Rather than shipping his products to a faceless corporation, he now meets his customers face-to-face. Rather than the two or three foods he produced for the global market, he now grows close to 20 different products, and his land is healthier for it. Overall, he is much, much, happier now that he has ‘gone local’”.

Text: Nicola Piras

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Each one of us, whether as a producer or as a consumer of agricultural products, can have a strong influence on how these are produced. Hence there is a need to inform and educate everyone about how farming can be efficient and sustainable. A particularly relevant aspect of this is the biodiversity of a farm or a region – an issue that is recognised as important by the international community through the Convention on Biological Diversity. Since 2008,

The Green Wave campaign has contributed significantly to the annual celebration held on the 22nd of May, the day proclaimed by the UN as the International Day for Biological Diversity. Taking part in it is easy and fun. As the Executive Secretary of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, Ahmed Djoghlaf, explains, “we have kept the project simple and adaptable to enable the participation of as many schools and young people as possible around the world.

Teachers have access to a series of resources and guiding instructions on the Green Wave website. They are welcome to create their own projects and/or integrate biodiversity components in their existing curricula”.

This year’s theme, reflecting the International Year of Forests, was forest biodiversity. As always, participants were requested to count down to 10:00 a.m. local time, when they planted a locally important tree species. Wherever this was not possible, for example because of climatic reasons, students could still participate in the event by watering the trees in their schoolyard, or by taking another action to support trees and forests. Each single action contributed to the creation of a figurative “green wave” travelling west around the world.

The Convention on Biological Diversity aims to conserve biodiversity, ensuring the sustainable use of biodiversity and enabling the fair and equitable sharing of benefits arising from this. To know more about the Convention you can visit its website: http://www.cbd.int. In 2012 the theme of The Green Wave will reflect the importance of marine and coastal biodiversity.
 
All the information and instructions for teachers and students interested in taking part are available (in English French, Japanese and Spanish) at The Green Wave website: http://greenwave.cbd.int.

Why planting trees? “In terms of learning”, according to Dr Djoghlaf, “what better than a tree to demonstrate the interconnectedness of species and ecosystems? A growing tree represents a microcosm of biodiversity, a micro-ecosystem in itself – sustaining life in the soil and the roots, in the bark, leaves, flowers and branches – microscopic organisms, fungi, plants and animals of all kinds… There is so much there to observe and study!” “Moreover,” he continued, “there is something fascinating and intrinsically attractive about planting trees. There is strength in the idea of giving and sustaining life – and in particular to something that could live and grow for centuries.” The idea of co-operation, working together to make a big difference, is another key aspect of the campaign.

The promoters’ hope that participants will associate caring for nature with the real pleasures of discovery, sharing and giving something back. “We also hope that they enjoy working together as a group, and as part of a worldwide movement. They get a chance to be part of a global community of young people who care for the planet and co-operate, beyond borders, to safeguard the well-being of humanity”.

Text: Nicola Piras

Illustration: Fred Geven

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Miet Chielens, one of its Programme Officers, explains that the organisation “aspires to give disadvantaged and marginalised children in developing countries a chance to build a better future for themselves and their society”. What distinguishes Edukans from other NGOs is its exclusive focus on education, which it sees as “the most efficient investment for international co-operation, because when individuals get the opportunity to learn basic life and literacy skills, economies grow faster and poverty rates decline”.

Many NGOs share the aim of contributing to the development of knowledge and skills in developing countries. But Edukans’ objective is twofold: besides promoting the education of marginalised children, it also aims to improve the Dutch education system. This twofold objective is exemplified by the World Teacher Project (WTP), a two-year pilot project that was launched by Edukans in 2009 and which, thanks to its positive results, is continuing during the period 2011-2013.

In Ms Chielens’ words, the WTP “links Dutch teachers with teachers in the South so as to improve education in a co-operative way”. One major problem with the educational system in developing countries is that “although a significant number of the poorest children are going to school, too few are really learning something”. It is therefore not only necessary to make sure that every child goes to school, but also to guarantee the quality of the education they receive.

“Of course, it is very difficult to give a precise value to ‘quality’, as it always depends on the context”, she says. “The quality of education has different meanings for different people”. Not all subjects are taught everywhere, nor are they taught in the same way in different countries and regions, so an objective evaluation of what pupils and students learn is not always possible – especially from the perspective of an outside observer. Edukans’ perspective on teaching and learning assumes that “individuals develop themselves on the basis of their own identities and cultures, and through the use of their own talent and potential”.

Edukans is based in Amersfoort, the Netherlands. At the moment it is collaborating with schools and organisations in six countries: Ethiopia, India, Kenya, Malawi, Peru and Uganda.
More information about the organisation and the World Teacher Project can be found in Dutch, English and Spanish on their website http://www.edukans.nl/english. Readers are also invited to write to Miet Chielens (miet.chielens@edukans.nl) or to the programme co-ordinator, Mildred Klarenbeek (m.klarenbeek@edukans.nl).

A bottom-up approach is essential, and this is one of the main strategies of the project. “The general purpose of the WTP is to study the local education system and to co-operate with local teachers, with a focus on quality issues”, and therefore paying attention to issues such as child-centred learning, active learning, or multiclass teaching. In short, this is carried out in faceto- face meetings between Dutch and local teachers.

These meetings are mutually beneficial: teachers in countries like Peru or Malawi get ideas that help them develop their teaching abilities, while Dutch teachers acquire expertise. An additional outcome is seen in the chances that teachers in the Netherlands get to improve their classes and activities, helping Dutch pupils and students develop competencies such as dealing with differences, cultural empathy, social initiative, and flexibility. As Miet Chielens puts it, these are indispensable skills for developing a “global citizenship”.

Text: Nicola Piras

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