By Korir, Chief editor API

Listening to music relaxes one’s mind. Language sometimes does not matter, but the tunes.

Most of the music here is sang in Kiswahili language, a language widely used in many countries in the African continent.

Click the link and enjoy. The music will start automatically within 60 seconds. If the music does not start automatically in about 60 seconds, then download the program “Microsoft Silverlight for free” and that will do the magic.

http://tmtv.eightzerodigital.com/player.php#

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Photo: Aurelie Fontaine/IRIN

A trainer teaches ex street kids market gardening

PIKINE,  - It is widely assumed that few of the estimated 50,000 ‘talibés’ in Senegal – boys in Koranic schools, or ‘daaras’, studying to become Islamic teachers – who roam the streets begging for money to support their religious leader (‘marabout’) will end up teaching, and most will become vagabonds, delinquents and robbers. Now, child protection experts say their future is not always so bleak – the skills that talibés develop on the streets can turn them into successful traders.

“There is no correlation between these adolescent talibés and youths who rob and mug… I don’t believe these theories,” said Biram Mbagnick Ndiaye, a youth programme team leader at Environment and Development Action in the Third World (ENDA-TM), an NGO that supports training programmes for street children, including talibés.

“We take care of lots of troubled youths, and those emerging from daaras are often the least aggressive and the easiest to reintegrate [into society],” Ndiaye told IRIN in the capital, Dakar.

Employment higher-than-average

Three years ago ENDA did a study of 50 talibés emerging from the daaras of Kaolack in the south of Senegal and Dagana in the north, and found that around 80 percent of them were earning money in small businesses, while the rest were masons or carpenters. Only one did not have a job.

These statistics are better than the national average: some 48 percent of the working population in the formal economy is unemployed, according to the World Bank.

“Some manage to escape [their religious master] and become good traders,” said Ndiaye. “Others migrate to Europe and eventually come back and invest in businesses here.”

Photo: Aurelie Fontaine/IRIN

Ex-talibé gardening apprentices

Yves Olivier Kassoka, child protection officer at the UN Children’s Agency (UNICEF) in Dakar, said most talibés learn the Koran by rote and many leave daaras unable to read or write or with training in other skills, but they are used to collecting and saving money.

A Dakar-based teacher, Bernadette Ndiaye, notes that they are also highly resilient and persistent – traits that, with the right guidance, can help them thrive in a competitive market place.

Training a challenge

Engaging in small trade can work for talibés and ex-street kids, but those who want to pursue a vocation or career often have a harder time. Unused to learning, many ex-talibés find it hard to apply themselves to apprenticeships, said trainers at adolescent rehabilitation centres around the country, and there are too few centres and programmes to help all the young people who need assistance.

Pope Ndoye, director of one of the two state-led rehabilitation centres in Dakar, Centre de Sébikotane, which takes in children and youths aged 13-21, told IRIN that they “are not educated, they are idle, they wander the streets, they commit petty thefts, [and] they drink.”

Springboard, a rehabilitation centre in Pikine, 30km from Dakar, is home to some 40 young people aged 16-25, most of whom stay for more than two years. They usually come from broken homes or were once talibés, but there are also some from neighbouring villages to create a good mix, said the centre’s co-founder, Loic Treguy.

At the centre they learn to read and write, and are taught masonry, carpentry, gardening and civic education. They also receive counselling and play sports. Many have never participated in any of these activities and may have taken drugs for years or have learning difficulties, said Treguy.

Students and trainers at the centre grow salad greens, beets, papayas, mangoes, chilli, lemon grass, banana ginger and herbs. Each youth must pitch his or her own tent on arrival and will eventually graduate to a dorm if they behave.

One of the biggest challenges for trainers is dealing with behaviour, said ENDA’s Ndiaye. “Usually, in Koranic schools you learn Islamic values, like respect for others, but it’s not always the case. You can see some quite uncivil behaviour in the streets.” This includes spitting, fighting, and washing in public, much of which the boys consider to be normal, he said.

Springboard’s masonry trainer, Abdoulaye Gueye, told IRIN: “We have to constantly negotiate with them in order to progress, even when they are keen to learn.” The seven apprentices he has taken on are building a new storage room at the centre.

Adjusting to life in the centre “can take a long time” said Treguy. “At first, there are always problems.” Despite the difficulties, most young people eventually take to the training. Moussa Diarra, 18, who once roamed the streets, is now pruning trees in the garden.

He fled his home in Tambacounda, 400km from the capital and the biggest city on eastern Senegal, in his early teens because his brother used to hit him. Now he wants to return home and help support his family. “I could do this gardening there and help them… I’m proud to have learned this business,” he told IRIN.

The right help

Talibés do best when they try to make it in the informal sector, trainers told IRIN. “The problem for that even with all the training in the world, it is hard to find them jobs,” Ndoye told IRIN at the Sébikotane centre. Staff there, try to direct some rehabilitated youths into the army, others to football training academies, he said, but opportunities are few and far-between.

More resources need to be put into training talibés and street children, said UNICEF’s Kassoka. The agency has been helping the government to modernize daaras in Kaolack, and at Diourbel in central Senegal, so that students graduate with some life skills. “It’s working, but it’s very resource-intensive and the government needs to be more engaged,” said Kassoka. “It has the will to take on [the task], but not completely.”

Many talibés are considered at-risk teens and end up in centres for troubled young people, when they actually need more targeted help. More partners are needed to take on the “constant flow of ex-talibés,” Kassoka said.

Ndoye said the state has expanded its efforts in recent years by putting more resources into such centres, particularly in terms of staff training. “There has been a shift in mentality,” he noted. “Before, it was considered shameful for a family to have a child like that… today things are more open – the media discuss it, people are starting to try to understand these youths.”

af/aj/he source http://www.irinnews.or
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Through the EEA and Norway Grants, Norway is helping to facilitate dialogue between the two communities on the divided island of Cyprus. A large proportion of the funds provided in the period up to 2014 are earmarked for civil society support. The Memorandum of Understanding was signed in Nicosia this afternoon.

“The physical division of the island is hardly conducive to fostering dialogue and understanding between the two communities. Through the EEA and Norway Grants, Norway will continue efforts to forge contacts between north and south at grass-roots level. Such dialogue could help Cyprus to find a solution to this protracted conflict in the long term,” said Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Støre.

Cyprus will receive NOK 62 million through the EEA and Norway Grants in the period up to 2014. About 25% of this amount is earmarked for civil society support. A separate Fund for Non-Governmental Organisations will be set up, which will give priority to projects involving both the Greek Cypriot and the Turkish Cypriot communities.

Funding will continue to be given to the Home for Cooperation Centre. The centre, which was established with Norwegian support during the previous grant period, is located in the UN-controlled buffer zone in the capital, Nicosia.

The centre is a unique meeting place for the two communities and offers a number of activities, such as exhibitions, research and education, as well as office space for NGOs from both sides. In the new round of EEA and Norway Grants, the centre will receive funding for a project designed to initiate a dialogue on a syllabus for teaching history in the north and the south.

In addition to allocations for NGOs and civil society, funds have been earmarked for programmes in a number of sectors in which Norwegian partners are also involved. For example, the Norwegian Crisis Centre Secretariat has been commissioned to participate in establishing a crisis centre for abused women and children.

Funding is being provided to upgrade the Cyprus Bone Marrow Donor Registry and intensify efforts to combat money laundering. Funds are also being allocated for measures to conserve the biological diversity of the Troodos National Park.

The funding provided via the EEA and Norway Grants is Norway’s contribution to reducing social and economic disparities in Europe. The Grants are also intended to strengthen cooperation between Norway and the beneficiary states. Around NOK 14 billion is available under the Grants for the period up to 2014. Norway is providing 97% of this amount, while Iceland and Liechtenstein are providing the rest.

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Photo: DTU flood team

One of the few remaining refuges to keep cars dry at the height of 2011 flooding in Bangkok: elevated parkways

BANGKOK,  - Less than a year after Bangkok was chosen as a “role model city” by the UN International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UNISDR) as part of the UN’s 2010-2015 “Making Cities Resilient” campaign, the worst floods in half a century put that distinction to the test.

IRIN asked experts what the 3,000 low-lying cities such as Bangkok – which includes its delta neighbours – can do to improve their flood resilience.

Prioritize

A master plan capturing the city’s development visions, priorities and vulnerability is the first step, said Adri Verwey, an urban flood expert atDeltares a Netherlands-based water management think-tank.

“Cities need to decide the levels of security that they want and which areas need more protection,” he said.

In the Netherlands, where 26 percent of land is below sea level, cities with a high density of human and economic capital are designed to withstand a one-in-10,000-years flood, while inland, rural and sparsely populated areas are designed to withstand a-one-in-1,250 years flood.

Find higher ground

Unbalanced development is the weakest point of urban planning in many Asian countries, but Thailand’s case is more extreme in that it has focused all its energy on the country’s business and political capital, said Anisur Rahman, land use planning specialist at the Bangkok-based Asian Disaster Prevention Center (ADPC).

“Better planning would be developing the country with more attention given to other [surrounding] cities, so they can help share the pressure, especially in a catastrophic situation like this.”

Instead of allowing new businesses to set up in and around Bangkok, future investments should be diverted to less-developed areas on higher land, said Rahman.

Lawmakers from Thailand’s ruling party have submitted a parliamentary motion to move the capital to Nakhon Nayok Province – a sloping terrain with higher elevation.

Water resources management

“Store and divert” sums up all flood control strategies, said Takeya Kimio, a visiting senior adviser at the Bangkok office of Japanese International Cooperation Agency (JICA).

“Store” means building more reservoirs and retention ponds to retain water upstream and “divert” means develop sufficient canals and channels mid- and downstream to carry the overflow to sea.

For cities that are slowly sinking and have rising sea levels, governments need to regulate water resources, said Nat Marjang, a lecturer on water resources engineering at the Bangkok-based Kasetsart University.

“Before the law, which regulates groundwater extraction [in Thailand], was enforced, many factories built their own wells to extract water for industrial use. This is an important factor contributing to land subsidence.”

Photo: Shermaine Ho/IRIN

Going, going…

Bangkok is sinking by 30mm annually, according to the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration.

Combined with a rising sea level of 25mm every year, the city could be under 50-100cm of water by 2025.

Private sector role

The private sector should be directly involved in flood management, said Jerry Velasquez, senior regional coordinator for UNISDR Asia Pacific.

“What we need from them is not only corporate social responsibility and money, but their active involvement. It can be as simple as building a dyke around their factories, choosing the right locations to build factories and coming up with disaster contingency plans.”

The Federation of Thai Industries estimated losses from the seven hardest-hit industrial estates could reach US$13 billion, covering 891 factories and 460,000 workers, according to local media.

Re-evaluate flood control system

Despite the extensive network of flood-control infrastructure already in place in Bangkok, experts said it largely failed to keep pace with the city’s dramatic urbanization and development.

From 1985 to 2010, the percentage of the total population living in urban areas in Thailand increased from 26.8 to 34 percent, adding 10.5 million people to cities, according to the most recent UN world urbanization prospects.

While many officials believe the barrier known as His Majesty King’s dyke, which runs north to south in eastern Bangkok, can save the city from flooding, Vewey said it was designed to handle lower-frequency floods and not a one-in-50-years flood like this year’s.

Verwey said flood-prone countries needed to be more prepared.

“I’m impressed by the speed of sandbagging and the distribution of food and water [in Thailand], but you can’t always solve problems with sandbags… It’s shocking how people are unprepared for the flood. It’s as if the phenomenon of flooding has been completely forgotten in Thailand,” Verwey said.

Flooding in 1995 killed more than 400 people and affected close to four million, according to the government.

Investing in flood prevention is a “calculated choice”, said Kimio at JICA. “There are only two options, either reduce the speed of development or invest more in flood control,” he said.

Since the 1980s, the risk of economic loss due to floods in Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development countries has increased by more than 160 percent, outstripping the growth of GDP per capita, according to UNISDR.

Nine of the top 10 coastal flood-prone cities by 2070, including Bangkok, are in Asia, according to a recent World Bank report.

Asia accounts for more than half of the developing world’s cities most vulnerable to flooding, according to UN-HABITAT.

sh/pt/mw source http://www.irinnews.org