By Philip Lee, Deputy Director of Programmes, WACC.

More than one hundred years of silent oppression scar the coal-mining region of Coahuila State, in the north-east of Mexico. Recently, with support from WACC, a local NGO called Didaxis has filmed some of the women who have been widowed and left to fend for themselves after mining accidents killed their husbands.

On 19 February 2006, shaft 8 of the Pasta de Conchos mine exploded, leaving 65 miners trapped below ground. The authorities decided to seal the mine without recovering the bodies. Their widows protested, but two years later still nothing had been done and the company closed the mine for good.

Julienne Munyaneza, Pogramme manager, WACC

“Changing attitudes towards intellectual disability remains a big issue in the Arab world”, says Wimco Ester, the Managing Director of MediaHouse (MH), a WACC partner based in Cairo, Egypt.

In 2007, MediaHouse embarked on a documentary initiative dubbed “Early Start” to challenge discriminatory attitudes towards children who are intellectually disabled and their families. MediaHouse produced a series of 12 video programmes to raise awareness on the difficulties faced by children and young people with learning disabilities and to show the importance of early intervention. MH used an interactive methodology where the filming crew, while preparing and shooting, discussed the common misunderstandings and wrong ideas they had about these issues before meeting with disabled children and their families.

By María Teresa Aguirre; Programme Manager, WACC

The inhabitants of Mugogo, a village situated some 2,000 kilometres from Kinshasa, capital city of the Democratic Republic of Congo, will long remember 4 January 2008 as a very special day in the life of their community.That was the day when the first broadcast of Radio Bubusa hit the air. An initiative of a group of rural women, the idea of the radio station was first mooted towards the end of 2003, and now, in 2008 and with the support of a grant from WACC, the idea finally came to fruition. The first broadcast surprised more than one listener with its unique blend of traditional songs interspersed with a voice that announced in Mashi (a local dialect) the name of the station and the place it was coming from: Radio Bubusa, broadcasting from Mugogo.

Radio Bosco FM 89.9, celebrated its third anniversary of community broadcasting on 2nd March, 2008, on the plains of Guadalcanal, in the Solomon Islands. Radio BOSCO is supported by WACC, the Salesians of Don Bosco, Catholic Communications Solomons, the Community Sector Programme, SIGNIS, and many other friends and well wishers. Young people from the community are engaged in running Radio Bosco FM, the first community radio in the Solomons.

A clip from Six floors to hell.

By Julienne Munyaneza, Programme Manager

Video 48, the audio-visual wing of Hanitzotz Publishing House, a partner of WACC in Jerusalem, Israel, committed to bridging the gap between Arabs and Jews, fighting for the recognition of Arab Israeli’s rights, has just released/produced a powerful film “Six Floors to Hell”.

It was produced thanks to the financial support of WACC and its German partner, Evangelischer Entwicklungsdienst (EED), in Bonn, Germany.

By Julienne Munyaneza, Programme Manager for HIV and Ecumenical Relations, WACC

From the 28th to the 31st of January, CFD (Centre de Formation et de Documentation), a partner of WACC in Rwanda, organised a very successful training seminar for youth leaders coming from different churches and the Islamic community of Rwanda.

More than 80 young people, women and men, attended the seminar where they actively participated in formulating communication strategies and using communication tools to address AIDS-related stigma issues.

By Lavinia Mohr, Deputy General Secretary and Director of Programmes, WACC

On 28 – 29 January 2008 twenty prominent female journalists from the Middle East, Turkey and Austria, representing a broad range of media, took part in a Media Training Seminar on Media Monitoring at the Diplomatic Academy in Vienna, organised by Austria’s Federal Ministry for European and International Affairs. They debated questions such as how the media could contribute to changing stereotypes and prejudices and consequently to mitigating conflicts. The discussions focussed also on the presence of women in the media environment and the coverage of women in the media.

A combination of radio programmes, internet broadcasting and printed bulletin is giving wide exposure to a disability-related project supported by WACC in Brazil.

The radio programme series ‘Minuto da Inclusão’ (Minute of Inclusion)implemented by the eponymous group Minute of Inclusion from Sao Paulo was first launched on May 25th 2007 through four radio regional station members of RADIOBRAS, Brazil’s communication enterprise linked to the country’s Ministry of Communication.Eight months later the one-minute programmes are also broadcast through a network of 12 community and private radios stations in several regions of Brazil as well as through two Internet stations.

By María Teresa Aguirre, Programme Manager for Partnerships and Projects/Communication Rights (WACC)

After several months of preparatory work, widespread consultation and many messages of support and encouragement, the Palestinian group Women Media and Development (TAMor Tanmiyet wa Aâlam al Mar’ah) has launched a Palestinian women’s website that brings together the creative work of a myriad women from all over the West Bank and Gaza strip.

Johannesburg, South Africa - Participants at a 2-5 December Global Consultation on Genetics and New Biotechnologies held in Johannesburg, South Africa stated that ‘the creativity of science needs to serve the common good’ and cautioned against the risk of biotechnology leading to ‘increased dependency and threat to biodiversity’.