There is currently a lot of attention in the global news for the Ebola virus. Yet the people most at risk often lack the essential knowledge, and the means, to protect themselves adequately.

Our colleague Shine writes from Monrovia, Liberia: "I am sure you have heard about the Ebola outbreak in some parts of West Africa, affecting Guinea, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, and Liberia in particular. It’s the worst outbreak ever recorded. Over 1,100 people have died and the World Health Organization has declared it a global health emergency.

Big business, with its pursuit of profit at all costs, creates some huge problems in society. Such as poisoned environments, factories run with slave labour… and the process of globalisation is spreading them everywhere.

So what can the little person do? Just this: make a conscious choice not to participate – and actively search out better alternatives. Because while the world is awash with stuff we don't need, we definitely do need more ethical entrepreneurs. And, at the same time, conscious consumers.

A nice example is Sanchi Bags, recently started up in India with the vision to promote the use of eco-friendly products and empower women. The idea is that the fashionable bags – including ones for laptops and tablets – will attract youth into the “go green” movement and become trendsetters across generations. The bags are made from locally-sourced biodegradable material and, most importantly, manufactured in their own households by suburban and rural woman homemakers.

You can connect with Sanchi via their facebook page www.facebook.com/sanchibags

New titles for familiar issues is a problem for me. I have to learn the new titles and abbreviations – and often it feels as if someone thought them up to be on the inside and make me feel an outsider. But it is important to keep up and take part in the debate. We must not be overawed by jargon. And we can let each other know when a new term becomes important. I saw "mHealth" in several places and googled it. It means health care and public health programmes supported by mobile electronic gear such as mobile phones. ~ MM

Fifteen years ago I read an evaluation of programmes to help victims of sexual violence in the wars in Bosnia Herzegovina. I was struck by the number of responses from refugees  who said that the intervention that helped them most was this –  a designated tent in the camp which was physically safe and where they could meet other women, relax, talk and help each other.

We have had some good news here at Networklearning. Our Kenyan colleague Abdikadir Ismail (Abdi) has just been made Headmaster of a day school in the North, near Maralal. And, he has volunteered to write up the challenges for publishing on our blog.

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The Open Publishing edition of NGO-in-a-box is a toolkit of free and open source software, tutorials and guides for producing, publishing and distributing content.

Publisher of the useful newsletter, Drum Beat, the Communication Initiative Network has recently modernised its website for knowledge sharing, networking and interaction: www.comminit.com

A good way to keep up with important issues in your field is to sign up for digital newsletters (e-bulletins) from good information providers…

Some reports on encouraging recent developments for people with seeing and hearing difficulties…

Consider 'Stepping Stones', a training package with a 240-page manual and a 70-minute workshop video.

The International AIDS Conference took place in Mexico in August and Aidsmap has full reports plus downloadable resources developed specifically for this conference.

A call to all of us working in the South – in Africa, Asia, the ex-Soviet countries, the Asian Pacific etc. It is time for us to look again at the Earth and the big issues around sex and reproduction. It is not only the job of the Health NGOs – it is everybody’s job.

Are any of you involved in the voluntary HIV testing of pregnant women followed by transmission prevention?

Here at Networklearning we have found another reason to like checklists. They are a great way of ensuring good training and improving the way professionals do their work. And now a checklist is saving lives. A study carried in eight hospitals across the world has found that using one during major operations cut deaths and complications by more than a third. It ensured that the surgical team checked that they had the right patient, checked that all the swabs and forceps were removed before the patient was sewn up, and so on.

Has your organisation developed any checklists for your own workers? We would be very interested to hear about any improvements it has made.
Source: news.bbc.co.uk

Hesperian has a new resource, A Community Guide to Environmental Health, (free download in parts) free to poor communities around the world through the no-cost download (full download) on their website. If you do not know this website, pay it a visit! They have great materials. And please spread the word!

Do you get communications from ARROW in Malaysia? Their materials are great. And now they have some of their bulletins translated – in Thai, Mandarin, and Cebuano.

If you are interested in obtaining free print copies, giving feedback, or having an AFC issue translated into an Asia-Pacific language, they would love to hear from you. Email to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Will you have the money for Windows 2012 or Apple SuperDuper? If you may not, think again about the no-cost alternatives.

The Word Programme that you already have includes functions that have been around for over 20 years and will be perfectly adequate for your lifetime. OR there are free, good quality Open Source programmes that you can download: for example, OpenOffice does everything Word can:

• Could you write a good-looking document? Yes.
• Could you send it to colleagues whatever programme they are using and have them open it? Yes.
• Could you open old documents? Almost certainly. But if there is a really old document that you need but cannot open, you could consult Jon, our technical expert at networklearning. > Contact

jhpiego is a new website for Health Workers run in association with Johns Hopkins. It seems to have good resources and they use language appropriate to a grassroots worker trained in English. Look at their resources about malaria, for example, Malaria - protecting mothers and their families.

Consider signing up for Family Health Research, a newsletter designed to promote the use of evidence-based practices in reproductive health programs.

Take a look at www.translate.google.com. This is a translation service provided by a computer and so it is not perfect. The question you want to ask is, can you use it despite its limitations?

Are you signed up for The Drum Beat? The most recent issue is about recognising and rewarding successes. It also highlights a few programmes that champion innovative ideas with rewards that are not just money.

Two colleagues have done a literature review on the Information needs of health care workers in developing countries with a focus on Africa. Their damning conclusion:

“Health care workers in developing countries continue to lack access to basic, practical information to enable them to deliver safe, effective care.

Look at http://www.comminit.com/global/spaces-frontpage. Look under the links Media Development and Science and Media for some interesting developments in this area. I do not know a lot about this area but like a lot of people currently watching events in Iran, its importance is very clear. And these papers have got me thinking.

Do you need to conduct some research to plan a project or to design a program?  Do you need data for planning or evalution purposes? Or are you studying for your bachelor, master or PhD?

Help the Hospices has announced that applications are being accepted for the 2010 round of Wolfson international bursaries. This grant programme seeks to increase and improve the provision of palliative care in resource-poor Commonwealth countries.

Agromisa makes practical knowledge on sustainable agriculture available to farmers in the South. Its main publications are the Agrodoks – practical booklets written in clear, simple language, intended for extension workers and field workers of intermediary organisations. Recent additions to the series include Entering the organic export market, Snail farming and Small-scale mushroom cultivation, the latter translated into Swahili.

The Agrodoks and other Agromisa publications are free to download. Once in their website, click on "Search Publications". Agromisa also offer a free Question & Answer service!

When children are abducted the links of their citizenship get broken. These links need to be repaired in order for them to become active, valuable and meaningful members of the community again. Margaret Angucia's 2010 thesis, Broken Citizenship: Formerly abducted children and their social reintegration in northern Uganda (308 pages), differs from other publications in that it presents the subject from the perspectives of the children themselves and the community.

How many of you are involved in the care of people at the end of their lives – who may have cancer, AIDS or pneumonia?

Do you get the Drumbeat newsletter? Every so often they send out an issue on Awards and funding. These tend to be small-scale and specific to  people or areas – but if you fit these conditions…why not try?

For example, New Field Foundation has grant money and wants the submission of introductory information from organisations in certain areas of West Africa that are:

• headed by African women;
• working to improve rural women's organisations, their families, communities, and countries etc;

Deadline: Rolling > New Field Foundation Grants

Hesperian have informed us that a number of their manuals are now translated into Arabic. They cover both health and disability and include “Where Women Have No Doctor”.

• “Where there is no Doctor”
• “Where Women have no Doctor”
• ”Where there is no Dentist”
• ”Special Education”
• ”Disabled Village Children”

For the above titles, contact Ghanem Bibi 
Arab Resource Collective (ARC) Beirut
email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. web: www.mawared.org

• “Helping Health Workers Learn”

Contact Abd Ilah Hussein 
Institute for Arab Research 
P.O. Box 13-5057
 (Chouran) Beirut, LEBANON 
Tel: 810055/6

• “Helping Children Who Are Blind”

Contact Ashraf Mahrous, 
Compubraille, 
P.O. Box 156
, 76th Street #12 ,
El Mukattam, Cairo, 11571 
EGYPT 
Tel: 00202 25084152 

email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

The Regional AIDS Training Network, (RATN) can keep you informed in Eastern and Southern Africa. Get your NGO onto their regular emailing list.

Contact: P.O. Box 16035, 00100 GPO, Nairobi, Kenya; Wireless: Tel: +254-020-2635929/ 254-020-2635938; Mobile (Office): +254-734 999975, 724 255849 Fax: 254-20-3872270; Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. Website: www.ratn.org

NGO-in-a-box offers a set of peer reviewed and selected Free and Open Source software, tailored to the needs of NGOs. It provides them not only with software, but also with implementation scenarios and relevant materials to support this.
> http://base.ngoinabox.org/

A Canadian, Daniel Kish, who was born blind, felt that his mobility – using a long white stick – was too limiting. He set about finding out how to improve on it and has now developed a mission to facilitate the self-directed achievement of blind people everywhere.

A key component is echo-location, which involves blind people making noises to bounce off objects nearer and further away; they can be trained to become much more aware of the sounds around them, to become more confident and to move more freely. Graduates use bicycles to travel around.

A full explanation of World Access for the Blind’s ‘Perception Based’ approach can be read at www.worldaccessfortheblind.org/node/120

Bwnoit Kasa (UNFPA) has a paper titled ‘Population and Ageing in Africa: a Policy Dilemma?’ (15 pages). He concludes that population ageing is often accompanied by persistent poverty, and that African governments have no budget planned for supporting the growing group of older people in Africa.
Find a link to the report on the website of The Pension & Development Network, a not-for-profit organization specialized in the development of micro pension provisions: www.pensiondevelopment.org

Keep in touch with the issue through Pension Watch at www.globalaging.org and Helpage International at www.helpage.org, currently helping older people caught up in the Somalia drought.

Here is something to celebrate. In fact three lives to celebrate - those of the three women who jointly won the Nobel Peace Prize this year. One of them is Leymah Gbowee, aged 39, for her work in mobilizing women from across Liberia's ethnic and religious divides.

Here at Networklearning we are asking you to think about Childhood Development following a recent issue on the subject in the Lancet (ref. 1). One aspect is the use of Vitamin A.

A PowerPoint Professional is needed on a volunteer basis by a non-profit Association. For a quality presentation of its mission and projects (High quality Education for the poorest children in developing countries). Italian text slides (around 30), hundreds of photos and youtube videos of similar projects available. Contact Mr. Giuseppe Spagnolo at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Hesperian (who produce and supply “Where there is No Doctor” and “The Midwife Book”) are looking for NGOs and people in the health field who will work with their online HL Materials Workshop. They will help in the design and customising of flyers, poster and brochures, offering professional back-up in return for feedback. Contact This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.