Day: October 16, 2010

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-11558746

Hey everyone,

Looks like the 4 countries affected by the LRA have decided to take some action…a joint brigade between Uganda, Sudan, Central African Republic and the Democratic Republic of Congo, backed by the African Union, is going to “go after” the LRA rebels. It is believed that this will be a mobile brigade that can be used by the AU in “times of trouble,” such as going after the LRA, and other groups like al-Qaeda in Mali and Mauritania.

Seems like a legitimate possible solution to me, but its crazy that it’s taken 20+ years to get to this point! Maybe now that all of these countries have united to fight against the LRA, something can finally be done about it, but our discussions have shown that things are a little less cut and dry than they may seem. What do you guys think?

-Shaheen

I was taking the bus back from Tsawwassen at midnight the other day and had a great conversation with the driver. He told me about this website (kiva.org) that gets involved in micro-credit loans. Maybe you all are aware of these sites but I had never come across one.

It is really easy to use and you can specify where you want your loans to go. Maybe you only want to help women in Sierra Leone who work in the sustainable agricultural industry or men in Cambodia who want to start a bike repair shop- chances are they have someone!  Many of the countries we are studying are involved in this.

I thought this was a great thing to help people in these areas when one becomes a bit disillusioned with the more “macro” approaches to post-conflict studies.

The cool thing with this is you can get your money back (not guaranteed) and potentially to use that money to help people for years to come. I believe they also accept team donations if anyone is interested in chipping in $25 or so each.

http://www.kiva.org/

neat stuff