The FPCD and The Guerrera Book Project Formally Join Efforts

The FPCD and the Guerrera Book Project Formally Join Efforts

The Guerrera Book Project aims to amplify the individual and collective voices of Guerreras: women who have taken up arms for a cause. These women tend to be underrepresented and underserved by reconciliation and development intervention programs, and may have lost or jeopardized their social safety net as a result of breaching strict local gender roles. From El Salvador to Vietnam, from East Timor to Senegal, women have played critical roles in armed struggles for social justice.


The purpose of this multi-year, multi-country project is to empower women in conflict and post conflict situations and to assist them in claiming due recognition and recompense for their contributions and sacrifices.


(Photo from left to right: Guerrera Project Co-Directors Julie Klinger and Emma Gaalaas Mullaney discuss issues with FPCD Executive Director Claudia Abate, at the residence of President Jose Ramos-Horta, Dili, Timor-Leste, January 2009)

Building upon inspiring existing research on women as leaders in nonviolent movements and witnesses of violence, we seek to understand the decisions faced by those women who actively participate in armed conflict. Though these conflicts are often driven by abstract ideas – political, economic, religious – a woman’s reasons for joining an armed struggle are ultimately and profoundly personal, rooted in historical and material realities of injustice, oppression, and violence. By engaging the oft-overlooked individual experience of participating in violence, this project both supports and informs efforts for a just and lasting peace with dignity.


The stories are as distinct as the women themselves, yet each account contains valuable insight into the forces and counter-forces shaping our world.


The Project Co-Directors, Julie Michelle Klinger and Emma Gaalaas Mullaney, work and conduct research in Asia and the Americas on policies and practices concerning rural and indigenous rights, with a focus on vulnerable peoples who are underrepresented in international, national and local development and reconstruction programs. Their training, experience, and interests emphasize oral history, ethnography, and linking field-based research with institutional and political engagement.


To find out more, to join the discussion, or to make a donation, please visit www.theguerreraproject.com or get in touch with the authors at contact@theguerreraproject.com




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The UN requests FPCD's assistance with Educating Iraqi Women

THE UNITED NATIONS REQUESTS FPCD's ASSISTANCE WITH THE EDUCATION OF IRAQI WOMEN
(Click on letter to enlarge)
There is an urgent need to build the capacity of the Iraqi people in engineering and applied sciences to meet the enormous reconstruction and development needs of their country. The conflict has severely disrupted education. Many professionals have been killed, and others have fled, leaving the country with a serious undersupply of skilled human capital.

Women have a vital role to play in filling this need and in rebuilding the economy. Fortunately, Iraq has a small cadre of well educated women who can step into this breach, but more need to be prepared to play their role in the country’s recovery. Women have demonstrated their capacity to participate professionally, becoming heads of households and principal income-earners. Women have also become a political force, obtaining the right to hold at least one quarter of all Parliamentary seats, and forming a cross-party coalition to strengthen their voices for peace, stability and equal rights.

The Foundation for Post Conflict Development is committed to assisting the IWFF.




The Iraqi Women’s Fellowship Foundation (IWFF) plays a pivotal role in the development of much-needed engineering and applied sciences skills, by providing Iraqi women with access to top-rated US universities in the US and the Middle East. It further reinforces the Iraqi government’s restoration of women’s rights. The program in engineering and applied sciences is two-pronged, providing for:

• A one-year faculty visiting scholarship to top universities in the US, to upgrade their knowledge and teaching skills, or undertake research.
• A four-year student program in undergraduate study at American university campuses in the Middle East.

The response from US universities has been magnificent. In the first year of the program (2009-10) Berkeley, Stanford, UC San Diego and Smith College are hosting five faculty visiting scholars. In the second year (2010-11), Texas A&M and Carnegie Mellon in Qatar have agreed to enroll five qualified Iraqi women students, and universities in the US will host seven Iraqi women faculty.

First year (2009-10) funding to launch the program has been granted by the US Department of State. Private sector funding will be key to the continued funding and building of the program. Over the five year program period, fellowships will be provided to 40 faculty and 20 four-year undergraduate students, for a total of 120 fellowship years.

Second year program costs are $1.8 million (7 one-year faculty, 5 four-year students) which covers all four years of each student’s program. The total cost of the five year program is $8.8 million, of which about 87% goes directly to educational costs. Private sector partnerships are being sought to continue building the program.


For More Information Please Contact the FPCD Office or:
Mary Oakes Smith
President
Iraqi Women’s Fellowship Foundation
Washington, DC

Email: mosmith@iwffoundation.org
Tel: 202 342-6600
Fax: 202 338-8988





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