International Studies

I am living in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil also known as “A Cidade Maravilhosa”/The Marvelous city. And by all accounts it is a marvelous city, the ocean crashes against mountains, a gigantic statue of Christ sits atop a mountain watching the city, and palace like hotels are surrounded by some of the most infamous slums in the world known here as Favelas. Rio really has it all, you can find Favelas with 14 year-olds carrying guns. That is actually why I came, to see if I could help the people in the slums in any way. I quickly realized that the images you see on tv and the stories you hear are not as common as they make you believe. For the most part they are just people trying to get by, while surrounded by mostly high-income families and tourists that have a negative idea of them just because of where they live.
When I decided to come to Rio I had no idea how important the next few months will be for Brazil. Rio just won the bid for the summer Olympics in 2016 and in the next couple years there will be several new stadiums and buildings put up to get ready for this. Developing Rio is a great idea and I am sure it will be great for the city but the problem is how the government plans to get the land for the new buildings.
The government announced in the local paper their plan to remove several Favelas to make room for the new stadiums needed. For several of these communities (possibly all of them) the newspaper was the first time they heard that their communities were slated for removal. One of these communities is called Vila Autodromo and they are the first one scheduled to be removed. In fact to date, not one government official has talked to the community leaders of Vila Autodromo face-to-face. After a protest in front of city hall they finally got a meeting set for March 3rd but it is a closed meeting and seems very shady. Vila Autodromo is an excellent example of a peaceful productive community that the city should be showing off and encouraging and developing not ignoring and breaking up. There are still lots of details to workout and lots of meetings to organize but we will be working to make sure that the mayor is involving the the people in the process. If the government is paying so little attention to one of the most productive Favelas imagine how they would treat the ones that have more problems? I will keep you updated on what happens after the meetings and what is happening in Vila Autodromo and other communities in Rio.

I am living in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil right now and working with an NGO down here. We are working with the favelas of Rio and trying to get more international attention on the favelas. The current issues of peaceful productive favelas being slated for removal with little to no input from the people living there are extremely hypocritical. There is a certain community here, called Vila Autodromo, that is the first on the chopping block so it is the community we are currently focusing are energy towards helping. This community is very productive nearly 100% employment and all the kids are in school, which is a great thing for any community and very rare for a favela. We will be spending a lot of time in this community as well as directly attending as many political meetings as we can that pertain to this neighborhood. I have more stats at the end of the e-mail and I would love to provide you with any information that I can get for you. I will be working down here for the next three months but the work we are doing will be going on long after the Olympics come and go.

I received the e-mail below from recent BGSU graduate, Martina Hanulova. If you would like to contact her or hear more about her work, please e-mail me at kfoell@bgsu.edu and I will put you in touch!

Dear Friends,

I hope this email will reach you well. I would like to share with you few updates from my work with UNDP country office in Sierra Leone.

My project, Open Government Initiative (OGI), aims to increase the accountability and transparency of the 3 branches of government by enhancing the visibility of these institutions, and by creating a platform for an open communication between the Government and the citizens. The project is an initiative of the President Ernest Bai Koroma who in his premier address to parliament in October 2007 stressed the importance of accountability, transparency and higher performance standards in public service.

OGI has conducted four successful interactive field trips since September 2008 with all focused entirely on the Presidency. Our recently concluded phase targeted the Legislature that I was lucky to be part of. Currently, OGI is embarking on its last phase, focusing entirely on the Judiciary. These town hall meetings will be organized to elicit community participation in finding workable solutions to the problems affecting the Justice sector.

In the last week of October, OGI organized its first judiciary town hall meeting. I must stress that this is the first time in the history of Sierra Leone that representatives from the Justice sector faced the public directly. The panelists who took part in our first judiciary town hall meetings were: High Court Judge, Master Registrar, Magistrate, representative from Bar Association and Law Reform Unit, representative from Ministry of Gender and Children’s Affairs, President of 50/50, Director of Prisons, Inspector General Office, Director of Anticorruption Commission, Representative from Ministry of Local Government and Internal Affairs, Human Rights Commission, and Solicitor General.

Before the end of the year, we plan to conduct 2 more town hall meetings with the Judiciary (in Bonthe and Kailahun Districts)

I am attaching an in-house report that I put together after our first Judiciary town hall meetings held in Kambia Town, Kambia District. I am also attaching a feedback survey report from our last parliamentary this town hall meeting held in Kabala Town, Koinandugu District.

I hope you are all well.

Kind Regards,

Martina Hanulova

I recently joined the advisory board of Dosti, a Toledo-based organization promoting education in the Peshawar region of Pakistan. Dosti appeared in last week’s Toledo City Paper; you can read the article here:

http://www.toledocitypaper.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1849:hope-for-the-next-generation&catid=44:city-side&Itemid=453

Are you sick of “reselling” your textbooks at the end of a class only to get pennies on the dollar? Do something that will make you feel good instead of cheated: donate those books for global literacy! At the end of each summer session, International Studies will be collecting books to send to Better World Books. ALL kinds of books are needed: some will be donated directly to Books for Africa, some will be resold on the BetterWorld website (with a portion of the proceeds going to Books for Africa), and anything unusable will be recycled.

Please note that BetterWorldBooks is a for-profit organization with a social purpose. Their usual arrangement is to pay a commission to the book drive organizer and make a donation to the designated non-profit; IS is directing its “commission” to go directly to Books for Africa, so we will NOT make money on this and the charity will get double its usual amount. Since BetterWorldBooks provides all collection, advertising, and shipping materials, and pays shipping costs, there is no cost to International Studies or BGSU.