Round up of last week's events....

Hi there everyone

Well life is still treating me well here in Dar es Salaam.  So life has been pretty busy since I last blogged.  As usual I should probably give an account of my work as this is the main purpose for being here:)

Progress at TAWLA

As I mentioned previously I had been working on a strategy paper for the hotline service that TAWLA wishes to establish to assist women in need of legal advice on their human rights.  I have now completed this paper which runs to some 20 pages and have shared it with my colleagues here.  I am meeting to discuss my proposal with Anna Marie who is the chief executive of TAWLA tomorrow to discuss and brainstorm!  I will fill you during my next post as to how that goes :()

In addition to the hotline and my work with legal aid I think that I had mentioned in my previous blog that I was also assisting with our governance department on the promotion of gender equality, maternal health and reproductive rights (I should mention that when I speak of departments, in total in TAWLA we are 16 people, 4 paid staff and 12 volunteers...so there is a lot of work to do with limited resources! I thought I should clarify this as I know at home when we speak about departments we think of maybe 30 or 40 people!) Anyway,  this work is progressing well also.  In this regard, I have become more involved with our governance team who have applied for funding from the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) to allow them to campaign and lobby for better representation of women's rights within the constitution.  The Tanzanian constitution is currently under review and through the work of organisations such as TAWLA it is hoped that women will be better represented in Tanzanian society through the inclusion of specific provision in the constitution to this effect.  We had a meeting at CIDA this morning to discuss the proposal which had been submitted by TAWLA.  If granted TAWLA will act as the co-ordinator of initiatives on the part of a number of gender promotion organisations within Tanzania.  This morning was a great learning experience for me and a wonderful opportunity to listen to women who passionately believe in the right of equity and equality for women.  I truly hope that the funding necessary to implement their vision will come to fruition.   The long term hope is that a national education program can be implemented at the grass roots level which would allow women from all walks of life to realise their full potential and express their voices within their own communities.  I will keep you up updated on the progress of this funding application.  We hope to hear back in towards the end of August, so please keep your fingers crossed!

And now for the fun stuff.....


So last week a former Challenges volunteer had put me in touch with Sunday Kapesi a Tanzanian lawyer who works here in Dar. Well I should start by saying that if the Tanzanian tourist board are ever looking for an amazing spokesperson Sunday is their man...I got a guided tour around the city and discovered a great little bar for after work drinks! As we all know how much we like our 5:31's on a Friday evening....It also turns out that Dar is about as small as Dublin is too as Sunday had met my housemates Elaine and Tende through the Dar social scene before, so it's a very small world indeed!

Last weekend, I decided to do a first aid and CPR course...While I hope that I never have to use it...as we live about an hour and half away from any kind of hospital with no ambulance service I thought that it is probably a good idea if I at least have the basics down!

Sunday we celebrated Tara's 8th month birthday down at Kim beach near our house.  It was such a fun day...drinking beer in the Indian ocean is a great experience and I highly recommend it...you can see for yourself in the photos below!

Until next time,

Eithne xx