Friends of Nigeria Newsletter Selections, Spring 2006

Panni Kanyuks, our third “adopted” VSO volunteer is on the ground in Lagos at work with Communicating for Change (CFC). CFC is a local communications organization with a focus on both environment and development issues. Panni, a business adviser who most recently lived in the United States, is helping to develop a marketing strategy for the organization, which is working, largely through mass media, to raise Nigerians’ awareness of the environment.

A different life!
Time seems to be flying: I have been in Nigeria for over two months. Many of the things that I experience are still new and I am doing a lot for the first time but it is amazing how quickly one gets accustomed to new routines. Like for example, I don’t take electricity for granted, quite enjoy a bucket shower and have gotten pretty good at catching mosquitoes with one hand.

Lagos is a huge, chaotic place, and even though I am a city person, it strikes me as very different from the cities I’ve lived in before: New York, San Francisco and London. Lagos has little physical appeal and I was shocked at first that a megalopolis like this does no longer have a functioning theatre. There are no parks to speak of or sidewalk cafes to take a rest at.

Instead, large heaps of garbage will be on fire by the roadside, shrouding the sky in smoke, beggars surround your car as soon as you are in a go-slow and the sound and smell of generators pollute the environment everywhere. Developing world conditions do not get more real than this.

Yet, Lagos gives a certain buzz, awakens the survival instincts! I enjoy the bustling street life and never-ending commerce as I zigzag my way through the maze of markets in Lagos Island and bargain with a smile for popo and pears. I love the beautiful Nigerian dresses in vibrant fabrics and the ever-imaginative hairdos that I only just started to realize make use of all sorts of hair extensions and special treatment. If I wanted a place full of contrasts, then I certainly got it!•

Read more about Panni and her assignment on the FON Web site friendsofnigeria.org.

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A Thank-You Note From VSO

Friends of Nigeria
1203 Cambria Court
Iowa City
Iowa, IA 52246-4530
United States of America

Many thanks indeed for your recent generous donation of $3600 from Friends Of Nigeria. This fabulous sum of money is greatly appreciated here at VSO and will be used carefully; please do pass our thanks to all who made this donation possible.
We are extremely thankful to you all for the consistent and enthusiastic interest that you take in our Nigeria bound volunteers. I hope by now that many of you will have seen the recent update from your newest supported volunteer Panni Kanyuk. Panni is based in Lagos and has begun work as a marketing and business advisor for a small media NGO. Her report indicates that she has settled quickly into her work and we’re confident that she will affect great and lasting change in the organisation.

Mark Goldring, our Chief Executive, wrote recently: “I have been encouraged and impressed by what I have seen over the year; steadily improving delivery against each of our country programme aims and some wonderful volunteers using their talents to support, and often learning from their colleagues. Together these combine to maximise our long-term impact on individuals and organisations. There are of course many more fantastic examples of both our programmes and volunteers’ and staff’s work than I can ever hope to see and describe. Neither the global community nor VSO have got everything right this year, but I am confident that both are heading in the right direction. Each one of you has, in your own way, however you are involved, made a difference to the lives of those denied their rights and opportunities somewhere in the world. And for that I thank you very much!”
With very best wishes
Yours sincerely

In the last newsletter I mentioned extending and the questions coming with it. I have decided to extend for a period of 7 months. In this time I hope to be able to finalize the training of the current coordinators for the micro teaching program and the 3P program.
The program in the primary school has stopped because of bad communication. It’s a pity because my heart lies in the primary school but you can’t help people who don’t want to be helped.

The positive side is that I have more time to spend in the College and with the students and new plans are already coming up. I would like to do something with a small group of students. In the lectures I try to introduce games as a way of learning, but that’s a bit hard with 500 students. I would like to go a little bit more in depth with a group of maybe 20 students who are willing to put in some time outside the timetable. But for the current strike (some things will never change I guess) I would have started already.

Another topic I like to do with the students is on how to use a reading book. I found out during a workshop for teachers that they have no clue of the different ways to use a book. In ‘the west’ it is a common skill for teachers and for parents. You are even considered a ‘bad’ parent if you never read a book to your children. I know already that there is not a real reading culture here but that even teachers with 20 years of experience have no idea. There is no better place to improve on these kind of things than a College of Education, so I will try!

I’m still very happy with the support Friends of Nigeria are giving to VSO.

For people who want to visit my Web site, bring a Dutch dictionary or a Dutch friend because that is the language I use for friends and family in the Netherlands. The pictures are obviously not in Dutch (except titles) and you can find them under “fotoboek”.
For me a well deserved holiday in the Netherlands is coming up but I will be back before this edition is published and I hope to keep you updated during my extension.

Blue Wooldridge (06) 62–65 Is Elected Fellow Of The
National Academy Of Public Administration

A faculty member from Virginia Commonwealth University’s L. Douglas Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs has been elected a fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration, a non-partisan organization that provides policy advice to local, state, national and international government leaders.

Blue E. Wooldridge, D.P.A., associate professor of government and public affairs, will be formally introduced and inducted into the academy at the group’s fall meeting in Arlington, Va., on Nov. 17. Wooldridge has worked with the academy as an associate member for the past three years.

“The National Academy of Public Administration has made an excellent and deserving choice in its election of Dr. Wooldridge,” said VCU’s Robert D. Holsworth, Ph.D., interim dean of the College of Humanities and Sciences and director of the L. Douglas Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs. “He is an outstanding scholar and researcher who has shared his expertise in budget and financial management, human resource management and work force diversity with state, local and international government bodies in more than a dozen countries.”

Founded in 1967, the academy is an independent, nonprofit and nonpartisan corporation composed of 550 fellows. Academy members are elected by their peers and include the nation’s top policy makers, public administrators and distinguished scholars of public policy with extensive experience in a variety of issues at the highest levels of public service. The fellows include current or former cabinet officers, members of Congress, governors, mayors, city managers, state lawmakers and diplomats.

“The academy is involved in the most vital and complex governance issues facing our nation, and we look forward to your active participation in our work,” wrote Valerie A. Lemmie, chair of the board of directors of the National Academy of Public Administration, and C. Morgan Kinghorn, the organization’s president. “You join an impressive number of individuals elected this year based on your outstanding leadership and devotion to the cause of effective public administration.”

For more than 30 years Wooldridge has designed and delivered workshops for elected and appointed officials at all levels of government. He has conducted numerous training programs for domestic and international elected and public officials, including groups in Armenia, Bulgaria, Kazakhstan, Jamaica, Thailand, Hungary, Macedonia and the Czech Republic.

A member of the VCU faculty since 1987, Wooldridge teaches graduate courses in public and nonprofit management and organizational behavior. He also teaches undergraduate courses in urban government and politics and public policy.

His current research interests include strategies for increasing the effectiveness of management education and training; issues in privatization; trends in local government revenues; procedure and content of local government budgets; strategies to improve productivity; and implications for public managers of the increased diversity of the work force.

Wooldridge is a member of the Government Finance Officers Association, the Academy of Management, the Commonwealth Association of Public Administration and Management and the American Society for Public Administration. In 1988, he was a Fulbright visiting professor in the Department of Political Science and Public Administration at the University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania.

Wooldridge received a doctorate in public administration and a master’s of public administration from the University of Southern California. He also received a master’s of governmental administration from the University of Pennsylvania and a bachelor’s degree from Berea College in Kentucky.
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As Jim Cunningham prepared to graduate from veterinary school, many urged him to enter practice or complete an advanced degree and teach at a university. But President Kennedy had been shot, which affected him deeply. Joining the Peace Corps just seemed like the right thing to do. A family friend had introduced him to Africa in general and Nigeria in particular. So he spent two years at the University of Ibadan as a Peace Corps Volunteer (64-66) helping to establish West Africa’s first veterinary school.

Like so many of us, Jim thinks the benefits of Peace Corps service outweigh what we give to the host country. Jim became interested in Yoruba culture, religion, and art. This led to an opportunity to apprentice with Lamidi Fakeye, a well known Yoruba wood carver. Many Saturdays carving under Mr. Fakeye’s supervision led to a life-long passion for creating sculpture. Peace Corps service also led to a career-long commitment to Africa.

After an advanced degree in preparation for teaching at universities, he taught at the University of Nairobi and drove from Mombassa to Lagos. Later, as a single parent of three boys, he taught at the University of Zimbabwe where, on weekends, he and his family apprenticed with local stone carvers. As a faculty member at Michigan State University, he was active in the African Studies Center throughout his university career.

The greatest and most lasting benefit of his Nigerian Peace Corps service is his continuing passion for creating abstract sculpture. As he began to create large public pieces, he learned how to weld stainless steel and bronze and found a company who would program their computer-driven plasma and laser cutters to make the parts. He has created sculptures for two sites in Egypt’s Sinai desert and sculptures for sites in Iraq, Palestine, and Sri Lanka with another promised for a site in Israel. He has created many for Americans including one for Stevie Wonder.

He continued and enjoyed his career in veterinary medicine, but his life, and those of his family have been forever changed for the better by Africa. His three sons have all returned to Africa in various capacities as adults, and his stepson served in the Peace Corps in Benin. He has now retired to become a full time sculptor.

www.globalissues.org is an everyman’s attempt to get his arms around globalization. Anup Shah is a 32 year old computer engineer born and raised in Britain, who, while working for a few years in the United States, became vitally interested in matters global. He became concerned that conventional news coverage is inadequate, often biased and episodic—failing to show the relationships between seemingly isolated events. The result of that concern is his website where Shah has in effect created the Wikipedia of global issues. Working in his spare time, he has brought together 500 pages of text, charts, diagrams and other information, which, because it is usefully and informatively structured, readers can plunge into these topics at whatever levels of detail they desire.

The website’s general headings show that Shah’s interests go far beyond the traditional economic focus of globalization: Trade Related Issues; Geopolitics; Environmental Issues; Human Rights Related Issues; Health Issues. Because he is constantly updating the articles (and each states when it was last updated and the substance of the changes) Shah also catalogues his work under “Recent major additions/updates” - the current sub-topics include Obesity, Media Manipulation, Corruption, Brain Drain From Poor to Rich Countries, US and Foreign Aid, and America’s War on the Web. Another perspective is given in a listing of “Most popular articles.”

I reviewed more closely a 54 page section, “The US and Foreign Aid Assistance” (under Trade Related Issues; Sustainable Development). While Shah brings a healthy scepticism to the motivations which lead the US to give foreign aid, and equal scepticism as to the results of US aid, Shah’s conclusions do not get in the way of what I think is the real genius of this website, its factual information which is comprehensively linked to materials available on the web. There are more than 7000 of these links, and there is ample cross referencing (through footnotes, also linked) within the website so you can easily follow Shah’s view of the interrelationships. You can take Shah’s facts on faith, or, click, and you are into the supporting reports and materials. And the topics address so many of the issues I’ve wondered about: How much of what’s promised is delivered? How does US giving compare with giving by other countries and what are the standards of measurement? Do aid amounts include both government and private giving, or the remittances, for example, of farm workers to their families in Mexico? (It turns out the US does count remittances!) What restrictions are placed on aid (Buy American provisions, Washington Consensus requirements of trade liberalization for examples) and what’s the effect, in the US and in the recipient country? Who gets the big chunks of aid funds (Iraq, Pakistan, Israel, Egypt) and what’s left for truly needy but politically unimportant countries in Africa?

This is a great website to bookmark. It is very accessible - each topic is preceded by an outline of what’s covered. Whether you agree or disagree with Shah’s conclusions, he pulls together many issues neglected elsewhere, with a wealth of factual information which will always be helpful. I am grateful to Katy Hansen who found www.globalissues.org, and to Peter Hansen who brought it to my attention.•

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This centaur commands the foyer of a new veterinary and human medicine diagnostic center at Michigan State University.	These twin sculptures were created for sites in Palestine (now there) and Israel.