AWN Coordination Meeting for the month of January 2006

Kabul, 25 January, 2006

Coordination meeting for the month of January, 2006 was held on 25th of January at AWN meeting hall, Kahul. The meeting was organized to discuss various matters of activities and events that were on the agenda. Majority of AWN members and individuals were present in the meeting.

Meeting started with recitation from the Holey Quran.

The following agenda was discussed in the meeting.

1. Negotiation and discussion about visiting minister of MOWA (Ministry of Women Affairs)
2. Update of NGO’s directory
3. Explaining rules of NGOs for AWN members.
4. Selection of two civil society members for trip of London
5. Accumulation of reports from members to submit for Ministry of Women Affairs
6. Any other business

Ms.Jamila Afghani, member of executive committee & director of NEC and Ms.Shukria Kazimi program manager of AWN welcomed the participants.

A brief of the minutes of the meetings is as under

First portion:
Ms. Shukria Kazimi had a discussion about item one of the agenda regarding Ms. Masooda Jalal desire to meet with all women NGOs. Ms.Shukria Kazimi talked about the schedule of meeting. Finally they agreed to have the meeting with MOWA on 5th of February 2006.

Second portion:
The second item of the agenda was discussed and Ms.Shukria Kazimi said that all member NGOs should submit complete information about their NGOs (Telephone numbers, Emails, office addresses and their work area) so that it could be included in the directory. It will also help the donors and other related persons to easily find the complete information and also help AWN in promotion of their members and their activities.

Third portion:
Agenda item 3 was discussed. Regarding rules of NGOs they ask for their opinion how to make available it to all member NGOs and provide information regarding different section of the rule.
AWN already had a one day workshop about this issue that most of member-NGOs except some organizations were present in the workshop. It was also considered that if NGOs wants to have another workshop regarding this issue, AWN would conduct one day workshop to highlight rule of NGOs.

Fourth portion:
Agenda Item 4 and other items were discussed. Ms.Kazimi discussed about fourth quarter report of members that was required by MOW and stress that all members of AWN should submit their fourth quarter report to AWN and AWN office will be responsible to collect them and submit to Ministry of Women Affairs. All participants assured that they will submit their fourth quarter report to AWN soon.

At the end Ms.Jamila Afghani gave information about selecting of two civil society members for the London conference. She said that this process has taken one year and last year one woman had come from London for the assessment of Afghans’ problem.
A conference which will take place on 30 and 31st of January 2006 in London, all countries which are facilitating Afghanistan will participate in this conference and a five years strategy for Afghanistan’s problems will be discussed. During this one year civil society prepared questionnaires and distributed among all provinces and villages of Afghanistan and after that they listed all problems of Afghan people and then these problems will be discussed London’s conference.
In this conference two agent of civil society of Afghanistan will participate (i.e. Ms.Marzia Basil director of Academy of Law and Mr.Aziz Rafi from civil society)

At the closing of meeting participants requested that networking should be discussed in the next possible so that a better solution could be sought for it.

Meeting finished at 12:00 pm.

Coordination Meeting July, 2005

Kabul, 19th July, 2005

AWN Coordination Meeting for the month of July, 2005 was conducted at AWN meeting hall, Kabul on 19th July, 2005 from 2:00 pm to 4:00 pm.

The main agenda of this meeting comprised:

• Introduction of participants
• Discussion about how to fundraise and find funding opportunities for women’s programs inside the country
• Relationships of NGO members and AWN executive committees and the financial sector
• Role of NGOs in the parliamentary election and also cooperation of them in Kabul
• Needs of NGOs to conduct the trainings
• Election of Executive Committee of AWN
• Discuss Code of Conduct and also conduct awareness workshop about Code of Conduct
• Introduction of BLS Company
• Speech of Arezo Qanih about communication and different ways of communication
• Training of volunteers by AWN

40 participants attended this meeting. At opening of the meeting the participants introduced themselves. In first session of the meeting various problems of NGOs were discussed. It was pointed out that some NGOs had problems with proposals and also with their donors. For instance European Union is big funding agency, but until recently they had given funds to international NGOs only and no national NGO has benefited from their funding.One of the participants from the European Union provided information about funding and said that EU has recently allocated a large fund to those who work on political campaigns and the elections. The money is to be spent on three main goals; (1) Services for women; (2) Research; and (3) to remove family violence. Previously, they use to give funds to international NGOs but they were not satisfied with the results. Now they want to give funds to national NGOs too. The head of the NGOs must make a proposal and submit it to them. A 5-person committee has been established to work on NGOs proposals. After this, participants asked questions which were answered by relevant persons with complete details.

The executive committee has always tried to introduce the NGOs to funding agencies. As a result, they had some trips to foreign countries. Now an American woman from UNICEF is working to fund the women NGOs. This woman currently works with five ministries but she is also interested in working with NGOs. We would like our work to be transparent to donors so as to attract them more to the women NGOs. The executive also answered some questions that were asked by the participants.

The third point of the agenda pertained to the role of the NGOs in the election. AWN has a list of the NGOs that currently work in parliamentary elections and now wants to include new NGOs interested in working with the elections. Shirin Sahani from IRI spoke about the parliamentary elections. She first thanked AWN for having the opportunity to speak about the women who want to participate in the elections as candidates. She said, “Women candidates do not have the support they need and we would like to support them. We can do this through the NGOs and the private sector. We would like to have practical programs before and after the elections.”

These programs have three main goals:

• Create advocacy for women’s issues in the parliament with the support of civil society organizations working on women issues;
• Build a political base for women candidates with the assistance of women’s NGOs; and
• Develop a national plan of action for women’s development in conjunction with women parliamentarians, NGOs, and the private sector.

AWN director, Mrs. Afifa Azim, said that AWN has a long-term plan to work on elections for five more years. We should encourage women to run in the elections. We would like to know how many NGOs want to work in this plan with us and we want to create opportunities for women from all walks of life to participate in politics and the elections. She said that AWN and IRI have a common goal and a meeting was set to discuss it further before presenting the NGOs.

Next on the agenda, AWN wanted to establish a committee to gather NGOs problems through a form. Once the problems are collected, the committee can work towards solutions. AWN will meet all NGO members after collecting the problems and will conduct a workshop after three months for them.

Another point of the agenda was about the executive committee elections. In August of 2004, AWN had the election of the executive committee members. This year, also in August, they would like to have the election for the executive committee. Anyone interested can run for a position. They can collect their application until August 10th and register their names at AWN.

The last point of the agenda was the code of conduct awareness workshops. The code of conduct was also discussed in the last meeting and a four-person committee was established which was headed by Roshan Sieran. They had meetings and are now planning to conduct a workshop. But before conducting the workshop, it is important for the people to have enough information about the Code of Conduct. Before the registration process some documents are required i.e. documents of the financial and narrative reports, registration, agreement of project, and one copy of the audit report that can be conducted with BLS Company. The Code of Conduct is very necessary; all NGOs should have it. One can register for the Code of Conduct through ANCB, ACBAR or AWN. Any NGO that is not registered with the Code of Conduct will not be able to register with the Ministry of Planning.

BLS Company was introduced at the meeting and they work in Dubai, Mumbai, and Kabul. They have been working in Kabul for four years. They are a very good corporation for auditing reports for ANCB and UNHCR. In Afghanistan, they also work in Herat and Mazar-e-Sharif provinces and now any office or NGO who would like to work with BLS Company can contact their office. The participants asked some questions of the company and received answers.

On the last point of the agenda, Arezo Qanih talked about communication and different ways of effective communication. At the end of this meeting, the date was fixed for the next coordination meeting for September 1, 2005 at 2:00pm.

Coordination Meeting - June, 16th 2005

The Coordination Meeting of AWN for the month of June, 2005 was conducted at AWN meeting hall on 16th June, 2005. The meeting began at 2:00 which was attended by 28 participants from AWN’s member NGOs. Ms. Shila Samimi, AWN master trainer, opened the meeting and welcomed the participants. After introduction of the participants were made, the agenda was distributed. The main highlights of the meeting are as under:

• Report of Dr. Abdul Ahad about the Social and Psychological project from Caritas
• Making Committees to bring back the Code of Conduct workshops
• Report of Roshan Siran, director of PHRO, regarding the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)
• Speech by Jamila Afghani about elections and their role in women’s lives
• Report of Arezo Qanih from ECW about parliamentary elections and the different aspects of the elections

After the introduction of participants, Mr. Abdull Ahad started his speech. He said, “I am thankful to AWN for giving us the chance to introduce our project. In the past 25 years, several wars have destroyed our country and Afghan people have lost their relatives and families. They have been forced to leave their own country and severe ties from their families. Several became sick and their psychological condition deteriorated. They are depressed and they need a clinic or hospital to help them. The goal of this project is to give advice to women and men about their social, psychological and family problems. Our office in Kabul named Psychological and Social Consultants. The office is open from 08:00 AM to 03:30 PM. This is the first time that Afghanistan has this project. We will start our work in the provinces in the next seven months.”

Then Roshon Siran started her speech about the MDG that were created in the year 2000. First she explained the MDG to the participants including the background of the UN developments since 2000. 189 countries made a plan to remove eight problems that were identified in the country. At that time, there was no representative from Afghanistan present at that meeting. The 8 objectives of the MDG are:

• Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
• Achieve universal primary education
• Promote gender equality and empower women
• Reduce child mortality
• Improve maternal health
• Combat HIV/AIDS, Malaria, and other diseases
• Ensure environmental sustainability
• Develop a global partnership for development

Afghanistan has to present a report to the UN in September 2005 showing what they have done in these three years regarding these goals. For more information you can check this website www.undp.org/mdg or www.unmillenniumproject.org.

Last year AWN, AWRC, and UNHCR had a one-day workshop. The UN representative at this workshop discussed the development progress in three years. AWN decided to conduct a 4-day MDG workshop that will identify the role of NGOs in this plan.

The third item of the agenda was about setting up committees to conduct Code of Conduct workshops. The AWN representative said that the new code of conduct made by civil society is quite like the NGO’s constitution. On page eight, AWN, ANCB, and ACBAR signed this Code of Conduct on behalf of all their members. However, on the next page there were several questions that have to be answered, many important issues that will have to be addressed at the workshops. For this purpose, a committee of 4 people will be formed. First they will study the various issues. Anyone could participate voluntarily in this committee. The committee includes Karima from AWRC, Fwzia from AWC, Roshon from THRA, and Dulat Khan from WSRO. Roshan was later selected as the head of this committee.

The fourth item of the agenda was the report of Arezo Qanih from ECW. Mr. Arezo Qanih first gave some information about their activities over the different parts of parliamentary elections. ECW is supported by ACSF. They started their election awareness program in February 2005 and they started their program in the provinces on May 11th. A total of 48 trainers participated in this program (18 women and 24 men). “Our goal is to create awareness for 3,056,000 people. But until now, we have generated awareness among 20,000 people” Areso Qanih said. This program has three main items on its agenda. They are gender awareness, voter registration, and activities on Election Day. Election awareness activities are already in the process in the Kunduz province.

At the end of the meeting, the participants shared their ideas about the parliamentary elections. They said that awareness must be created among men and women because not everyone knows how to participate in the election. It was requested that AWN and their members should provide awareness programs in the provinces. Women will be given the task of distributing the election cards.

The next meeting date is fixed for July 19, 2005

AWNCoordination meeting
Monday 16th May, 2005

Chairperson: Mary Akramee

Venue: AWN Meeting Hall, Kabul

The meeting began at 2:00 in the AWN meeting hall at which 32 participants form member NGOs took activate participation . Ms. Mary Akramee, Director AWSDC, opened the meeting and welcomed the participants. After introduction of the participants the proposed agenda was distributed among the participants.

The main highlights of the meeting were on the following topics:

• NGOs suggestions for the coming five years program on Advocacy
• Which NGOs are working on Civic Education
• Financial support of French Embassy for women NGOs
• Distribution of membership form (PCAW)
• Other theme (AWN internet course)

At the introduction Ms. Mary Akramee reviewed the agenda of the meeting and discussed the first point of agenda:

Ms. Akramee requested all of the participants to take activate part in the meeting either personally or through their delegate who can take part in decession making process. The delegate must, however, be formally introduced by their office to AWN for attending coordination & monthly meetings.

As it is very important for the heads of NGOs to personally take part in the coordination meetings for making necessary decisions, therefore, it would be more appropriate if you fix the date each meeting in advance as sometimes decision is to be takne and the meeting cannot be postponed due to non-participation of the head of NGO.

Participants have the following suggestions for avoiding of a situation as mentioned above.

• Fix the date of coming meeting at the current meeting
• An invitation should be send through email to NGOs ten days before the meeting
• Meeting should be held at the mentioned date
• Meeting should be held at afternoon
• The Agenda of the meeting should be attached alongwith the invitation through email

Regarding sending Agenda of coordination and monthly meetings, AWN pointed out:
Since the meeting demonstrates NGO activity, therefore, it would be good if each NGO take active part in designing the agenda to exhibit their activities and also any other required discussion could be added into the agenda.

In the second part of the meeting participants discussed and expressed their suggestions and ideas for the effectiveness of the program regarding the coming five years Advocacy program.

Capacity building of women was also discussed and ways were sought to efficiently utilize their skills at work.
Afghan Women’s Network according to its mandate will conduct a program to evaluate women NGOs’ abilities and conduct workshops according to their needs such as Management, Micro Finance etc.
The main points to be followed for Advocacy in the coming ten years are listed below:

• Put an end to or pass over violence against women
• Build up NGOs’ reputation among society
• Women and economic problems
• Women’s security problem that needs to be work out with government (e.g. the death of a woman in Baghalan or threat to women who work at NGOs )
• Establishment of committee for evaluation of NGOs.
• Support and help to those working for women and are injured or died such as two women who were working for women NGO and lost their life in an accident.
• Work for the women rights and pave the way for families that are the foundation of society
• Establishment of the committee (defense and consoling) for support of the women’s rights
• Work with street children
• Work with those women and children who are abused with drugs. It is the duty of NGOs to work for poppy cultivators and farmers to facilitate their alternative livings and stop them from growing such crops.

Regarding cooperation NGOs have different ideas:

• There must be coordination among the NGOs; AWN is a good source for that.
• There should be publicity for introduction of new NGOs through website as well radio
• Although all NGOs work a lot but they do not submit their report on time. Having their report in time will inform others of their activates

The above mentioned idea were appreciated by participants.

Ms. Kamila PTCRO director said; I am working for the women and my effort is always to facilitate and sever women and have cooperation with Afghan Women’s Network.
I heard about the AWN activates when I was in the United States, which was matter pride not only for me but to all Afghan women as well. In reply to these remarks, AWN said that is why AWN is established for and we are happy to have all of you around us and our aim is to work together for the women.

In the third part of the meeting there was introduction of the NGOs who work for the Parliament election.

• ECW that is located north of Kondoz start its work form May 2005 for awareness.
• THRA work in side Kabul as well as at the provinces such as Logor , Nanagarhar and Wardak
• AWSDC work in side kabul
• SRCSO work in side Kabul and provinces such as Wardak , Maidan and Bamyan
• TAWRO work in Hilmand and Qandahar
• AWRC work in side Kabul and provinces such as Jalalabad , Kapesa , Parwan and Laghman

NGOs work for candidate:

• HDCAW
• AWSE

In fourth part of the meeting information was provided regarding French Funds for women NGOs that is around 30000 Euros. The allocated amount will be granted to those NGOs who work for:

• Contribution to the reinforcement of capacities, structuring and professionalization of the civil society organizations.
• Reinforcing the structuring and professionalization of territorial organizations, particularly in their relationship to the civil society (district projects, local development projects, etc)
• Support actions that help reduce poverty and inequalities through projects directed to self-reliance and responsibility of beneficiaries (improve the dynamism of micro-economic group, create income and jobs). A particular attention will be given to vulnerable and excluded populations (projects designed to improve gender equality, the rights of children and disabled)
• Reinforcing democracy and human rights through supporting the acquisition of fundamental rights by population, supporting democracy and dialog between civil society and the state

AWN’s General meeting - March, 2005

AWN ‘s monthly meeting of March, 2005 was held in its main office in Kabul on 1st March, 2005. More then 30 participants from members NGOs, Executive Committee members and individuals from other NGOs took participation in this meeting. The meeting was chaired By Ms , Semeen Qasemi, Executive Committee Member of AWN.

The agenda contained;

• Collecting recent activities of member NGOs for Website and Directory
• Report of AWN Health Committee
• A Short Report Of Mazar e Sharif workshop
• Speech of WORA Director regarding AWN various workshops including workshops on Legal Rights, Violence and highlighting their usefulness for women in Kabul and other provinces of Afghanistan.
• Economy Ministry's (Planning) suggestions for submitting NGO’s Activities Report Until end of this month
• Economy Ministry's (Planning) Request for Helping those NGO’s which work in Pakteya and have agricultural activities
• Announcement of BRAC Tinning for member NGO’s iIn different sections
  

The next Meeting will be on 1st April 2005 .