You 'allow Us To Dream' Overseas Partners Tell LWR Board

Baltimore, October 3, 2003 — LWR not only helps communities change society, it also changes the way they see themselves, representatives of two overseas partner organizations told the LWR board at its September meeting.

Yacouba Zeba and his organization, Dakupa, in Burkina Faso, West Africa, help start small businesses in 33 communities where almost everyone lives from subsistence farming and only 30 percent of all children — and 17 percent of girls — attend school. Village groups run micro-credit schemes, cereal banks and a yogurt co-op with support and training from Dakupa and LWR.

"LWR's emphasis on capacity strengthening for partner organizations has helped us with tools that enable us to look ourselves in the mirror," Zeba said. "We can identify weaknesses and are not ashamed. We also see lots of strengths, even some we did not realize before but know we can build on."

Zeba said he asked a non-literate woman in one village what this 'capacity strengthening' meant to her. "'I am impressed that our village has not started anything yet,' she said, 'because now I am much more conscious of the kind of challenges that lie ahead of us. The process allows us to dream.'"

The woman's dream is a dream that drives all people, Zeba said. It stands in sharp contrast to the poverty and, above all, the fatalism that prevails where he works, he said.

In other business, the board reviewed LWR's current programs and strategies and received information on 37 new or newly extended projects. These are in 15 countries but mostly in India, the Philippines, Honduras, Nicaragua and El Salvador.

The board also approved a new budget for the 2004 fiscal year of $27.8 million, a three percent decrease from 2003.

Also reporting to the board was Julio Chavez, president of a long-time partner organization in Peru that specializes in agriculture and local development.