For A Change articles from December 2000

For A Change archives from December 2000

Where peace begins.
December 1, 2000... This year, unusually, the Christmas season coincides with the Muslim fast month of Ramadan as well as the Jewish Feast of Dedication, Hanukkah. More than a third of the world's population will be involved to some degree in marking one or other...

First water, then goats and computers: an English parish's links with Uganda.
December 1, 2000... When an English church looked for a clean-water project to support in 1983, no one knew how far it would lead, writes Ann Rignall. The speaker held up two glasses of water--one clear and sparkling, the other cloudy. He asked his audience...

Bringing conservation into the mainstream: where would you go for a solar cook book? Paul Williams visits a pioneering Welsh centre.
December 1, 2000... Tucked away in a wooded valley in west Wales, not far from the historic town of Machynlleth, lies one of the power-houses of the movement for sustainable development and `green' technology. The Centre for Alternative Technology (CAT) first...

What makes (Clarence) Adoo's soul sing.
December 1, 2000... One hardly ever meets such a cheerful, optimistic and energetic person as Clarence Adoo, but what has happened to him has tested his strong faith greatly. As a professional trumpet player, Adoo has worked with such orchestras as the...

Alberta's peaceable school.
December 1, 2000... In the last farmland east of the Canadian Rockies, the pioneer town of Rocky Mountain House, Alberta, is demonstrating how to grow peacemakers from kindergarten age upwards. Rocky Elementary Public School has named itself a `peaceable school'...

Khot-La Cha: man with a kind heart.
December 1, 2000... Chief Simon Baker, 89, has been called a `Canadian treasure' and is known by his Squamish name Khot-La-Cha, which means `man with a kind heart'. His grandmother, who brought him up, prophesied, `You are going to be a rich man, not in money, but...

Reaching in, reaching out: Lee H. Hamilton, head of the Woodrow Wilson centre in Washington D.C., has won international acclaim for his work in foreign affairs ...
December 1, 2000... For tall, trim former US Congressman Lee H Hamilton the workday begins early--sometimes by 5.30 am. He parks his car, goes to the eighth floor of the majestic, sprawling Ronald Reagan Building in Washington, DC--three blocks from the White...

Media make Sarajevo commitment: five years after the Dayton peace agreement, Michael Smith visits the Bosnian capital Sarajevo to attend an international media conference.
December 1, 2000... Sarajevo still bears the scars of war, five years after the signing of the Dayton peace agreement, on 22 November 1995, which ended the three-year siege of the city by Serb artillery. For 1,395 days, Serb guns and tanks in the surrounding hills...

From victims to survivors: Alexander and Natalie Pinchook describe their work with Tsentr Deystvie (CentreAction) to help Belorussians cope with the aftermath of Chernobyl.
December 1, 2000... It was a warm sunny day early in April 1986. The schoolteacher and her class were making the most of the weather, walking near their village. All of a sudden, an armoured car arrived and stopped a few metres away. A man wearing a protective...

Castle of lies.
December 1, 2000... Most of us instinctively recoil from strong debates on controversial issues. In my state of adoption, Minnesota, USA, we call this human tendency `Minnesota nice', (although it does not seem to afflict our outspoken governor Jesse Ventura). In...

Rebirth of Europe.
December 1, 2000... Most of us instinctively recoil from strong debates on controversial issues. In my state of adoption, Minnesota, USA, we call this human tendency `Minnesota nice', (although it does not seem to afflict our outspoken governor Jesse Ventura). In...

Peter Howard: a re-evaluation.
December 1, 2000... Peter Howard: a re-evaluation by RC Mowat New Cherwell Press, Oxford, 2000 This slim book provides an introduction to the thinking of Peter Howard, the British journalist, sportsman and playwright who led MRA from 1961 to 1965. In...

Story of laith.
December 1, 2000... The Story of Laith by Sarah Powell Jamali published by Dr A Jamali, Amman, 2000 In 1933, a young Canadian woman, Sarah Powell, married an Iraqi teacher, Mohammed Fadhel Jamali. Jamali went on to become Prime Minister and later a political...

Women take the law into their own hands: South Indian lawyer Chitra Balakrishnan has been helping the rural poor get a handle of their rights.
December 1, 2000... In 1945, Mahatma Gandhi wrote of his dream for Indian Independence as `the kingdom of God on earth'. `Politically translated, it is a perfect democracy in which inequalities based on possession and non-possession, colour, race, creed or sex,...

Seeing beyond the job: Peter Hinton.
December 1, 2000... At 26, Peter Hinton was the youngest First Lieutenant (second-in-command) of a submarine in Britain's Royal Navy, serving in HMS Cachalot, one of the new `Porpoise' class. He had joined the Navy as a Cadet at the Royal Naval College, Dartmouth....

Who am I?
December 1, 2000... I am the youngest of five, and my first niece was born when I was seven, quickly followed by several others. I have no childhood memory of being on my own: there was always someone to play with and look after. I was often asked to come along,...

Newspaper under fire: (during the seige of Sarajevo the newspaper oslobodjenje was produced under fire).
December 1, 2000... During the 1992-95 siege of Sarajevo, Oslobodjenje newspaper was produced under fire. Never before had a daily paper been produced within 150 metres of artillery, sniper and machine gun positions. When the basement of our ten-storey building...