AUSTRALIA:

Location: Timor Leste

In late October-early November a five person team David Jago, Natalie Moxham, Tom Schwarz and John Telford from Oz and NZ, facilitated three strategic planning  events with organizations in Timor Leste - PRADET an NGO which provides psycho-so cia trauma counselling services, TSDA Timor Sea Designated Authority and Timor Aid an Indigenous NGO which offers training programs in may districts.  This is the sixth such team sent from ICA Australia, and is part of the ongoing relationship building and support work with Timor Leste.

John Telford           thetelfords@gmail.com

BANGLADESH:

Location: Dhaka

ICA Bangladesh planned to organize a one-day advocacy meeting on MDGs Millennium Development Goals for media awareness raising involving youth journalist and reporters. On 30 November 2006 a program proposal was prepared for advertisement and cooperation.

ICA Bangladesh Chairperson Dr. A H M Amanullah left Dhaka for Sydney on 01 December 2006 to attend a consultative meeting on breastfeeding at the University of Sydney under the International Development Project of the Australian Government. Noted that he did his PhD from the University of South Wales, Australia on HIVIDS. By this time he has been contribution through his expertise in various HIVAIDS related development and research projects side by side university teaching. Dr. Amanullah has expressed to make ICA Bangladesh as a partner for that project to work in health sector.

Summary report of Ford Foundation meeting on CBFM Community based Forestry Management and third sub continental ICA meeting held in Pune was prepared jointly by Aziz from Bangladesh, John from Australia, Amba from Nepal, and Archana from India for ICAI Network exchange.

Nelson Stover and Elaine Stover from USA scheduled their visit to ICA Bangladesh and designed the capacity building training for ICA Bangladesh staffs. Shankar Jadhav from India also confirmed his joining the gathering in February 2007.

Maria and Richard from Australia expressed their cooperation and support for ICA Bangladesh and in March 2007 they are going to visit Dhaka and assist ICA Bangladesh through capacity building training's for ICA members.

Dhaka ICA is preparing a training catalogue for public courses. Hutchinsons and Maria and Richard are working on it.
Prepared by

Md. Azizur Rahman           marahman1976@yahoo.com

CANADA:

Fred, Eowynne, Cara, Crystal, David and Liz had meetings this week to plan
out ICA Canada's direction for 2007.

Cara Naiman           cnaiman@icacan.ca

MENA Middle East and North Africa (Egypt):

Location: EGYPT

Hala Met with UN Habitat and explored facilitation support for Iraq.

Fekry and Qorany hosted Misereor program officer on site in Fayoum.

Sabah, Fekry and Hala prepared a response to support an evaluation for GTZ in Aswan.

Madeleine and Cairo Branch team have finished implementation plans for Children at risk program.

Said and Abel Rahman continue to facilitate workshops in Upper Egypt for UNICEF.

Dina secured research grant with IDRC for resource mobilization training.

Hala Eikholy           hala.elkholy@ica-mena.org

GHANA:

Two staff members, Joseph Kekesi and Peter Maar, represented the organization in a 2-day workshop in Accra of AJWS partners in Ghana. The workshop served as a forum for the sharing of ideas and experiences, exchange of information on best practices and exploring areas of collaboration.

During the same week, Joseph Kwao a project officer, also attended a 3-day workshop organized by FoodSPAN Food Security Policy Advocacy Network, titled Capacity Building Workshop on Advocacy. The workshop was intended to build the capacity of FoodSPAN members to effectively engage on issues affecting food security in the country.

(AJWS -  is American Jewish World Service)

Joseph Kekesi           icagh@africaonline.com.gh

PERU:

Location: 100 Valleys Project

This week Gloria Santos and Alison Hamje closed sales with three mining companies for a total of 24 participants in the AVANZA PERU 3 week program beginning 21 Jan. -- that's just over 20,000 dollars of income, ending a very long dry spell with no ICA income. 

Esaud Caycho also closed a one-day program with a mining company which will include our old colleague Julio Aguirre. 

Pedro Aburto's work on the Azpitia Training Center is bringing it back to life for full time service, and it is looking really great again.

Ken Hamje           kenh@ica-peru.org

SPAIN:

Location: Madrid

We organized participants of different courses to form an encounter group or Club to follow up the events of the courses and support each other in their personal life. There was a great expectation and we gave them the basic suggestions to create a good interaction. Positive communication, active listening, nobody better or worse than anybody else, look for solutions instead of problems, win win situations . They volunteered to be available for telephone conversation each one one month and will meet with me once a month for follow up. They were very excited to have new friends.

Franco Voli           francovoli@yahoo.com

UNITED KINGDOM:

Jonathan has been working on preliminary funding for the European ToP ToT and the HIV/AIDS initiative proposal for the BIg Lottery Fund, Martin has been catching up on finances and Julie has been off sick. And we have a new Youth Coordinator starting in January 2007- Amelia Lee- who will be based in Manchester

Jonathan Dudding           jdudding@ica-uk.org.uk