By Frauke R-H
FAWCO Region 5 Conference: Bridges to Loving, Learning, Sharing and Caring: First Aid, First Response; Saturday-Monday, October 9-11 The upcoming Regional FAWCO meeting in Düsseldorf has an exciting program and is worth investing time and effort to attend. Here is the current schedule, which may be altered slightly by additional topics (see the Activities Calendar in the Members’ Section for more information): Saturday, October 9 Following check-in at noon and lunch at the Landhaus Milser, Duisburg-Huckingen, the first workshop will take place on Communication/Cooperation with Kirsten Dierolf from Speaking! GmbH, www.speaking-gmbh.de. At 18:00 there will be a German-American Day Celebration Concert and Potluck Dinner at Wilhelm Lehmbruck Museum, Duisburg, in conjunction with the German-American Friends of the Niederrhein. Invited to speak are U.S. Ambassador Coats and Minister President Steinbrück of Northrhine–Westphalia. Sunday, October 10 Starting at 10:00, all FAWCO representatives and presidents will meet. Included is the presentation and discussion regarding the 2006 FAWCO Conference proposed for Berlin at Das Mutterhaus, Düsseldorf-Kaiserswerth, followed by lunch at the Mutterhaus. A tentative presentation on Florence Nightingale in Düsseldorf (trained in nursing at the Diäkonie in Kaiserswerth) is planned. At 14:00, conference presentations start, lasting
approximately 45 minutes each, tentatively at the International School of Düsseldorf,
Düsseldorf–Kaiserswerth:
At 18:00, optional sightseeing in Düsseldorf-Altstadt will be offered. Monday, October 11 Between 10:00 and 11:30, there will be a reception at the home of Consul General George Knowles and his wife Gail for visiting FAWCO members and AWCD Board, with a presentation by AWC Hamburg on their Amnesty for Women Project. At 11:30 the AWCD 45th Anniversary Luncheon will begin at the Hotel Rolandsburg, Düsseldorf-Grafenberg. FAWCO president Arline Coward will be the keynote speaker, along with other honored guests. Projected Conference Costs Full Participant: EUR 85 includes all conference sessions, three lunches, dinner on Saturday and coffee breaks Partial Participant: EUR 45 includes:
Individual Session Costs:
Lodging Costs: Landhaus Milser
We will also actively seek AWCD members to house out-of-town conference attendees. Transportation: Most conference sites – Milser, Lehmbruck, Das Mutterhaus, ISD and Düsseldorf Altstadt – can be reached by using the U79 U-Bahn line. Transportation will be arranged for out-of-town guests to reach the Consul General’s home and Hotel Rolandsburg on Monday.
Healthy Schools by Connie Moser, Substance Abuse Committee Co-Chair, substanceabuse@fawco.org The Substance Abuse Committee has a new initiative: encouraging all FAWCO clubs to promote and implement substance abuse programs in their international and local schools. The European Healthy School and Drugs (EHSD) project is a cooperative effort among a number of research and prevention organizations in Western Europe. It is based on the assumption that effective drug prevention is a combination of objective, factual information and a personalized approach in prevention. Scientific research has shown that intensive programs, organized over a long period of time and focused on social skills, personal development and objective information about substances, are most effective. The EHSD project focuses on drug prevention programs in schools that aim to prevent non-users, experimental users and recreational users from using substances in a harmful way. Cooperation among experts in the field is important, especially when we consider that the youth culture in Europe does not stop at borders, but has developed a strong international dimension. Seven European countries have combined their expertise to find common approaches and develop recommendations for the program. The result is a number of excellent publications and a drug prevention-monitoring tool for schools, including websites www.school-and-drugs.org and www.who.dk/enhps. Tools can be downloaded from the website in PDF format and the following publi-cations may be ordered online:
Web links are also provided to other organizations that support and/or participate in promoting school-based substance abuse educational programs, such as the European Network of Health Promoting Schools, The Council of Europe, The World Health Organization and the European Commission. Each of the project partners has extensive experience in the development and implementation of programs in school-based drug prevention. One of the expert presenters at the conference in The Hague, Trimbos Institute, the Netherlands Institute of Mental Health and Addiction, has overall project coordination.
HIV/AIDS by Paula Daeppen, ngo@fawco.org HIV/AIDS will kill more people this decade than all the wars and disasters in the past 50 years. The HIV/AIDS epidemic is one of the world’s most serious development crises. An estimated three million people died of AIDS in 2003 and more than five million acquired the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) – bringing to 40 million the number of people living with the virus around the world. The epidemic continues to spread, with new epidemics emerging in Asia and Eastern Europe. In southern Africa, one in five adults is living with HIV/AIDS. In high-income countries like the United States and many European countries, the total number of people living with HIV also continues to rise along with the rate of new infections. HIV is spreading at an alarming rate among women, who now account for more than half of those infected worldwide. Young girls are particularly vulnerable to HIV infection and are five to six times more likely to be infected than boys. In addition, the AIDS epidemic has orphaned millions of children, forcing them into precarious circumstances, exposing them to exploitation and abuse and putting them at high risk of also becoming infected with HIV. The United Nations General Assembly in September 2000 committed to achieving the Millennium Development Goals by 2015. The sixth goal, which sets the target of halting and beginning to reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS by 2015, cannot be met without an intensified response that overcomes stigma and discrimination, provides hope, and produces results in reversing HIV/AIDS. FAWCO has been asked to participate in
a new CONGO Committee on HIV/AIDS, which would provide a focus for sharing all the work connected
with this issue and supporting specific projects to support the on-going service and
advocacy work from the UN/NGO perspective. This NGO Committee would help bring together the
work going on in diverse U.N. committees and in separate NGOs and be a place where groups
and individuals could come together to share work and strategies. Although the committee
will be meeting in New York, it will be linked to the U.N. Headquarters in Geneva and Vienna,
and the committee will have a virtual membership so that interested parties may participate
on line. This virtual committee offers FAWCO members a chance to become involved in the fight
against HIV/AIDS – an epidemic that has spread to every corner of the world and is rapidly
growing; robbing millions of their lives, widening the gap between rich and poor and undermining
social and economic security and gains. I would like to find one person in each Member Club
who would become involved in the work of CONGO’s HIV/AIDS committee. If you are interested,
write to Paula Daeppen. Return to: Home |
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