For A Change articles from June 1996

For A Change archives from June 1996

Red lights go green in Birmingham: the people of a former red light area have run the pimps and drug dealers out of town: now they have launched a plan to regenerate their district.
June 1, 1996... Two years ago, Balsall Heath in Birmingham was the hub of a [pounds sterling]10 million a year prostitution business. 450 girls plied its pavements, attracting hundreds of kerbcrawlers. Pimps and drugdealers lurked around. Local residents were...

Somali peacebroker: Yusuf Al-Azhari spent six years in solitary confinement as a political prisoner.
June 1, 1996... Yusuf Al-Azhari was walking between two Somali villages recently when he found a woman lying under a tree with her four children. She had malaria. He laid her head in his lap and she died four hours later. He took the children to the nearest...

Colour of darkness.
June 1, 1996... Courage in Rwanda Scottish nurse Lesley Bilinda had been working in Rwanda with the British charity Tear Fund for five years when the genocide broke out in April 1994. She escaped death because she was on holiday in Kenya; her husband, a...

Food for the hungry.
June 1, 1996... Charles E Langley is not a food technician, but he was determined to find a way to feed the hungry. His company, Food Sciences Inc of Jennings, Louisiana, has cracked a problem which many larger companies have been struggling with for...

Renewal in village India (Swadhyaya movement).
June 1, 1996... The devotees of the Swadhyaya movement in India believe that social development begins with in people. Over the last 40 years their work has affected thousands of villages all over India. Pandurang Shastri Athavale, the movement's leader,...

Doctor in the Amazon: contact with Europeans has often brought disease and death for the world's indigenous people.
June 1, 1996... In 1954, an outbreak of measles hit the Indians who lived along the southern reaches of the Xingu river, in the interior of Brazil. 112 people died--one in five of the population of 600. `The Indians had not known measles before,' says...

Overcoming hurt and hate in South Africa.
June 1, 1996... Hurt and hate--two forces driving much of mankind into destructive reaction. South Africa has its share of both. But are some hurts and hates too deep to overcome? Many tend to believe so. To forgive when forgiveness seems folly and to...

UK industries on upturn.
June 1, 1996... Enlightened management seem to have taken on board that people operate best when they are given responsibility. Even when this is not given them, workers sometimes grasp the initiative. This is one conclusion to be drawn from a conference...

Investing with principle: ... ethical investment movement in the UK.
June 1, 1996... Charles Jacob grew up in poverty but has since made millions. However, his is not a rags to riches story. For Jacob, who is known as the father of ethical investment in Britain, made most of his money for other people. Though he is now...

Identity clash: born in Ethiopia, raised in Britain, Kumar Raval has one foot in the East and one in the West.
June 1, 1996... God made the Universe complete, within it he made me complete; even if I am removed from the Universe I will remain complete.' This is the translation of a 5,000-year-old Vedic aphorism which I was taught to recite as an infant. It was only in...

Middle Eastern journey.
June 1, 1996... William Conner's association with the Middle East goes back to his experiences as a young tank commander in Montgomery's Eighth Army during the Desert War. The friendships he made with the people of the region then and since have lasted. ...

Jean Monnet: the first statesman of interdependence.
June 1, 1996... Francois Duchene meets the test of a good biographer. He leaves the reader fascinated with his subject, the `Father of Europe', Jean Monnet. His book serves to underline the ambivalence most British people have towards Europe. On the one...

Pardon and peace: a reflection on the making of peace in Ireland.
June 1, 1996... Canon Frayling is Anglican Rector of Liverpool--a city that has many links with Ireland and a large Irish population. Over the past decade he has been involved in efforts to build partnership and trust between its diverse communities--Anglican,...

Banking on the poor (Grameen Bank, Bangladesh).
June 1, 1996... The Grameen bank is recognized as one of the most successful international development projects ever undertaken and its founder, Muhammad Yunus, is known worldwide. Yet the principal lesson it teaches has generally been ignored by development...

Ceasefire.
June 1, 1996... Polarization is a sad fact of contemporary public life in the United States as elsewhere. Perhaps the saddest fact is the way the word `Christian' is bandied about--proudly by some whose attitudes are a parody of what Christ proclaimed and...

Why I love Poland: `Democratic Poland is no less surprising than communist Poland'.
June 1, 1996... As a correspondent in Poland, you have to be permanently ready for the unexpected. Every morning for 30 years (with four spent in between in Vienna and five in the USA), I have woken wondering what my dear Polish friends will find on this...

Cities are people.
June 1, 1996... June sees yet another major global UN conference--this time on cities, in Istanbul. But Habitat II (child of 1976's Habitat) marks a new departure: for the first time citizens' groups will take part officially alongside governments. `We...

On becoming fifty --.
June 1, 1996... I was out walking with no particular destination in mind. I imagined someone stopping in their car to offer me a lift. `Where are you going?' they would ask. `Here,' I would answer, `I'm going here--and here,' I would add, taking another step....