International Studies

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