Finally we understand that the water scarcity is because almost all the households depend on the water wells as a source of clean water. In the dry season the well experiences drought so the women have to take water from the springs that are located far away from their homes.
There is also water mismanagement. Water distribution is also not fair between upstream and middle/down stream community. The community upstream gets enough water to fulfill their needs such as for fisheries, agriculture and household needs. But the middle/down stream communities lack water supply.
The problem solving involves other parties such as village government, informal and religious local leaders as well as other communities. Recently my colleagues and I have actively facilitated the multi-stakeholder to discuss about the social problems related to water supply.
During the process, some methods that I learnt from our SEAPCP Advance CO course in
But we continue to challenge the people to keep their spirit to plan and organize themselves. Now is the rainy season so most of the community wells in Cibanteng are full with water. Due to this situation, the spirit and motivation of the community seems to have decreased to deal with the water problems.
After the advance CO workshop in Malaysia in June 2009, I conducted a "big" internal evaluation of our "DESA PERDIKAN" project. We "down sized" our ambition to be more realistic and do-able. Currently I am focused on organizing the community in a village in Purworedjo that is known as the "Etawa Goat Village". Etawa is very specific goat and very expensive, and they are protected by the local government.
THANAM WORKS WITH YOUTH IN MALAYSIA!
wintery Mongolia!
Angry lot: File pic shows PERMAS president Tan Jo Hann tearing up the DBKL letter at the DBKL headquarters after officers failed to turn up for the meeting.
The mayor was responding to the incident last week where 12 residents from the longhouse were kept waiting for two hours despite being told to come at 11am for a meeting with the officers.
After waiting for so long, the residents, who had taken time off from work to attend the meeting, lost their temper and staged a walkout. They had requested a meeting with the DBKL to discuss their living conditions as their 16-year-old transit homes were falling apart. Fuad also said he would go down and meet the residents next week to see for himself their living condition.
In 2002, about 200 families from Sector D were given notices to move to another longhouse about 500m away. They were informed that low- cost units were being built for them to rent and buy. Developer Mega Legacy was supposed to build low-cost units at RM42,000 each in 2006, but nothing has materialised.
“We will give an ultimatum to the developer to submit the development plans for the units and if they fail to do so we will terminate their contract. We cannot be helping developers who fail to deliver,’’ Fuad said.
For now, Fuad said the developer must carry out rectification work on the units which were falling apart. “I realise that something must be done and quick as safety is also a concern. The developers must take responsibility for this.
“If they fail to do so we will take back the land. We regret that enforcement was not done sooner.
This issue is long overdue and I will personally look into the matter,’’ he said.
The Jinjang Utara Longhouse was built to house squatters relocated from various areas in
Report from Paul Biblap, INDIA
In continuation of my effort on SEAPCP Echo workshop- I took the matter to the Community and put effort with various groups (stakeholders) such that CO trained people are given platform to test their skill. Community Care Centers agreed and I took up gradual follow up process one to one basis with the trained HIV positive women and ultimately 7 HIV positive women members took part in peace process organised by all Faith programme. All these people were ecstatic and they felt it was a great day in their life (even though it was very hot day).
Then these women were further trained on how to take up the organiser roles and now they have promised me to use it at their local areas for other HIV+ people. I will come back with further info. Meanwhile, I have tried to link these trained HIV+ women with formal system of Government run centers but I failed. I will start further endeavor in that direction once again.
The best part is that news of our CO session with HIV+ people is getting disseminated in various quarters through their own verbal channel. And results are pouring in! I got invited by HIV+ people from Mahesana district whether I will be interested to organize a CO session for them. I immediately agreed and had series of meetings before the session. Each meeting was eye opener for me and unfolding a good no of issues which needs serious attention.
I found that compared to Ahmadabad echo workshop Mahesan echo workshop is quite different from many accounts- Ahmadabad was urban slum and people knowledge were comparatively better but Mehsana people are from rural areas and they are coming from different background where abject poverty is very common and medical services are of very poor quality. In other words a HIV+ person can access better logistic for health care in Ahmedabad compared to that of Mahesana rural areas. I will try to link echo workshop in that direction also.
I guaranteed of my full-fledged support to Mehsana team but asked for their commitment to implement the learning at ground. I will need to follow it up further and then come back to you after completing the task.
I will develop a small case study and send it to SEAPCP for putting in blog on one of the HIV+ woman who has been doing very good work after getting trained in
regards
Paul
video forum
ia, PPSW (Centre for Women's Resources Development ), PEKKA (Program for Women Headed Households), KAWAN NUSA (Bali), and KAMPUNG HALAMAN (Indonesia Youth Community Media) screened their short films and share about how they were used to raise awareness and prompt communities to take action in addressing their community issues. 
From South Thailand, a short video slide show was shared about the worsening conflict situation in South Thailand. It was presented through the use of a very powerful and emotionally charged poem read by a young girl with visual inserts of photographs of the desperate living conditions of the people there. 
At the end of the day, the message was clear that video is merely a tool for the community facilitator and organiser to raise awareness, conduct collective planning and motivate people towards action! Without this element video becomes merely entertainment, and will not affect changes in the lives of the communities. (If you are interested in learning how you can use community video processes for social change, please contact Mr. Prakkash, Community Video Coordinator, KOMAS, Tel: 03-79685415, or Email: komasjj@pc.jaring.my) 
Suar and I just conducted a "CO Training for Young Activists" in Bali last month September 2009. The 2 days training was very dynamic and Jo Hann spent his time to share some lessons in analysis skill, of course through fun way (games) ! Although the participants were young activists with less experience in working with the community, they had very strong wills to learn about CO. We used simulation (how to deal with community as CO) and games to make it easy for them to understand.
Take a look, this is julie in jail a few months ago when she and some of us stood with the urban poor community to defend their houses against demolition in an area in South Jinjang in Kuala Lumpur!
Spreading the CO approach in JAPAN! 
Paul trains HIV community in IndiaI got some success (at last!). Last few weeks I have been updating you about my endeavors to carry out the local community organizing workshops. It was a very interesting process for me and I learnt a lot from it myself. Initially I had thought to do it with my team only but later on after your detail guidance, I put effort in expanding outreach to other people.
I have contacted the HIV+ networks and had a series of discussions in explaining the process (the network members are all HIV+). Once I was accepted by them, I requested them to extend support to me to reach out to the others and now the success is trickling down to others!
Orgainising the workshop
Firstly I had a session with the organization heads along with my team to explain what is the SEAPCP network and why we are doing this echo workshop and how local people can benefit form the training process to become community organisers. Secondly I also built up confidence with them during the pre-training rapport building. Thirdly after we had established the objectives, we selected the potential participants. This is the toughest task as not a single woman wanted to participate in the training programme as they did not want to be marked as being HIV+!
I also observed that a good no of potential HIV+ volunteers are in dire need to go back to their homes at night and they can not afford to stay more than one day at a stretch of the workshop. They are under heavy medication and often suffer from the side effects like lethargy and vomiting so they prefer training session of 1 day at a time. So this challenged me to design the session to make it as simple as possible within a 1-day frame.
Training the people
Finally I organised a 1-day session with 15 HIV volunteers last week! It was kept simple and I facilitated them to know about themselves and each other as individuals. Then to know what it mean for them to be with family (ie their home) and then what they feel about their society (ie their surrounding).
This simple exercise opened up a flood of knowledge for the participants as well as for me and the organization’s volunteers. I got an insight into their lives, how tough it is for them and how vulnerable they are from police, local leaders and lastly from their own family members.
It was an eye opener and they felt very enthusiastic and now they are very keen to attend the next session. We have succeeded in creating a desire to learn among this very depressed group. Each participant is very poor but we made it a point that everyone had to pay INR 5 (Indian Rupees) as an entrance fee. Then the best participant would be able to take the entire collection home at the end of the training. They were highly amused and agreed with it.
”Fruits of our labor”
This is just a curtain raiser as the final training is yet to come as I am gradually increasing their interest in learning. I had given them some small tasks which will be reported at the next workshop. It seems like a slow process but I am sure of a successful outcome! Please guide me if I am wrong or if I need to change my strategy (it is for my learning also).
Meanwhile, I found there is an urgent need of CO session for the peace building in riot affected areas of urban slums of Ahmedabad. This will become my next target area to spread the spirit and strategy of community organizing.
To all SEAPCP CO bloggers...great job, keep on blogging...to the members of our CO network still not yet registered into this blog, please do so immediately... otherwise you will miss out on the latest developments of our CO network members!
SEAPCP is presently preparing for the next big event that is the COMMUNITY VIDEO consultation workshop to be held in Malaysia in conjunction with the KOMAS freedom film festival! Check out our website for the film festival www.freedomfilmfest.komas.org SEAPCP is also trying to raise more funds so that we can hold a regional community video training workshop possibly early next year!
