Half-way In-Country Video to PTB Students
March 12th, 2010Terry Neese encourages the 2010 PEACE THROUGH BUSINESS students half way through their business courses in Afghanistan and Rwanda.
IEEW launches new campaign on International Women’s Day
March 8th, 2010
As we celebrate our fourth year at the Institute for Economic Empowerment of “IEEW: I Educate and Empower Women.” Today is International Women’s Day, and it is a time to reflect on how women have helped change our world for the better. Just think about the number of lives throughout history that women have singlehandedly impacted and inspired. All it takes is the power within one person to help start a chain reaction of change and empowerment. We celebrate the personal engagement of our sponsors, supporters, mentors and volunteers, and we are so grateful for these individuals who create our powerful support system.  "I Educate & Empower Women," Charlene Lake, AT&T sponsor. With this strong support behind us, we look to the future. It is time to expand our work, and help women not only in war-torn countries, but also here on the U.S. home front. As we launch our new IEEW campaign, we are also on the cusp of launching our new domestic program. We’re not quite ready to take off, but our domestic pilot project is on the runway, and in April, it will be wheels up. At A Glance Imagine back to the days of childhood. As you grabbed your sack lunch to head to school, your parents likely grabbed their suit jacket to head to a place called “work.” You weren’t quite sure what that meant, but, one day you were given a glimpse into a day in the life of your parents when you shadowed your mom or dad at “Take Your Daughter/Son to Work Day.” In that same spirit of discovery and insight, we at the Institute believe that as U.S. citizens, we should know what goes on at the Capitol — on a state and federal level. Businesswomen, especially, need to know what their legislators do and how it affects their businesses. So, we are kicking off a pilot project that incorporates “Take Your Constituent To Work Day” to propel and participate in the process of public policy education. |
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| We are unlocking a winning combination of education and mentorship for entrepreneurial inner-city high school students, women business owners and Oklahoma state legislators in this project.
This will be a successful way for our government and community leaders, our local businesswomen and our future leaders to declare aloud: “IEEW: I Educate and Empower Women!” |
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 "I Educate & Empower Women," Kaethryn Duncan, 2009 mentor. We hope you are as excited as we are about our new domestic program and about the IEEW campaign, which celebrates the power within one person to help women. We sincerely thank our sponsors, mentors, Northwood partners, volunteers, students and so many more for joining us on our journey so far. We know that the road ahead can only lead us to more exciting places. So, hold on, we’re about to kick things into the next gear! “IEEW: I Educate and Empower Women!” |
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HOW TO GET INVOLVED
 "I Educate & Empower Women," Freda Deskin, '08 and '09 mentor. There are many ways you can get involved, and we’ll be outlining the details soon. For now:
Help make this movement strong and shout from the virtual rooftops: “IEEW: I Educate and Empower Women!” |
’09 Graduate Creates Business Brochure
February 10th, 2010Farzana Ibrahimi has created a new brochure for her business in Afghanistan, Kandahar Health & Development Organization. Way to go, Farzana!
A glimpse at the brochure for Kandahar Health & Development Organization.
Video Message to 2010 Afghan In-Country Class
February 10th, 2010Terry Neese, founder and CEO of the Institute for Economic Empowerment of Women, gives the students of the 2010 In-Country Afghan PEACE THROUGH BUSINESS class a warm welcome.
Video Message to 2010 Rwanda In-Country Class
February 10th, 2010Terry Neese, founder and CEO of the Institute for Economic Empowerment of Women, gives the students of the 2010 In-Country Rwandan PEACE THROUGH BUSINESS class a warm welcome.
Protected: Rwandan Class Update
February 10th, 2010Media internship opening at IEEW
February 2nd, 2010
Institute for Economic Empowerment of Women
MEDIA INTERN JOB DESCRIPTION
Title: Media Intern
Location: Oklahoma City, OK; possibly Dallas, Texas for entire month of June
Stipend: College credit; plus expenses
Date of Position: March 1 – July 2, 2010
Time Commitment: March – May: at least 3 times a week
June 4 – July 2: everyday, including most weekends
(due to conference in Dallas)
How to apply: E-mail resume and cover letter to Becca Colbaugh at [email protected]. For any questions, you may call Becca at 405.943.4474
Application due: Feb. 22, 2010
Summary of Position
This position assists the Director of Media relations in all media-related activities, including: writing press releases, newsletters, articles and Web posts, maintaining and updating pages for the Web site, researching media contacts and information for articles, producing and shooting video, designing marketing materials, running social media campaigns, such as Facebook, BlipTV and Twitter accounts for the Institute. The selected intern will also assist other IEEW staff outside of media relations as needed.
Supervisor: Becca Colbaugh
Organization: The Institute for Economic Empowerment of Women, a 501(c)3 corporation; Founder, Terry Neese
Duties
- Assist in research and writing of all written materials for the Institute, including but not limited to newsletters, press releases, articles and Web posts.
- Post items to Web site, including the newsletter and PEACE THROUGH BUSINESS student profiles and photos.
- Update Facebook and Twitter accounts with fresh and interesting material, including Web content, links, photos, student profiles, news items relating to PEACE THROUGH BUSINESS, etc.
- Post all student photos to Flickr account.
- Copy edit all written materials.
- Research contact information for reporters in targeted media outlets (nationwide).
- Order back issues of stories published about or relating to the Institute.
Duties for June
- Assist in writing daily recaps during Leadership Development and the International Women’s Economic Summit, which includes interviewing speakers, participants and students.
- Copy edit press releases.
- Responsible for getting photos printed and setting up photo board display.
- Post photos to Flickr on daily basis.
- Assist video production and interviews.
- Assist IEEW wherever needed.
Benefits
The intern will have the opportunity to work for an international non-profit program that has received worldwide recognition and participation from high-profile leaders, such as Mrs. Laura Bush. Student will also have the opportunity to travel to Dallas, Texas, for a once-in-a-lifetime experience for the month of June. The student will be engaged on an international level, working with women from Afghanistan and Rwanda, as well as business experts, and government leaders, such as Afghanistan Ambassador to the United States Said Jawad and Congressional leadership. Student will learn about how to write effective and meaningful stories and press releases, and how to incorporate social media into everyday media practices.
Qualifications
- Junior or senior in college, senior preferred.
- Strong writing and communication skills. Experience writing for a public relations company, newspaper, the Web or other media outlet is a plus.
- Good organization skills, and ability to meet deadlines.
- Familiarity with WordPress, Adobe Photoshop Elements, Adobe Premiere Elements, Flickr and video taping and editing preferred.
- Proficient in Facebook and Twitter, specifically as marketing tools.
- Ability to travel to Dallas, Texas, for the month of June (room and board provided).
New York Times article focuses on U.S. military project with Afghan businesswomen
February 1st, 2010New York Times
January 30, 2010
U.S. Military Experiments With Empowering Afghan Businesswomen
By GAYLE TZEMACH LEMMON
KABUL — Standing at the front of a narrow trailer with cardboard-covered windows that serves as a conference room at the Camp Eggers military base, Capt. Edgard Flores of the U.S. Air Force held up a sample of a men’s brown T-shirt and put a ruler to it.
“It’s very simple,” he said, speaking slowly in American English that his translator quickly rendered into Dari for the Afghan businesswomen seated around a long wooden table. “You just measure it across. If it doesn’t measure 18 inches, it is wrong.”
The women nodded and took notes as Captain Flores moved on to the next topic in a four-hour tutorial in how to produce goods to specification for the U.S. military.
The session, held in mid-November, was part of an initiative to use military purchasing power to accomplish two goals: strengthening the capacity of businesses owned by Afghan women and creating local supply chains to support Afghan security forces, which are poised to grow sharply by the end of the year under President Barack Obama’s strategy for the country.
The effort, started last year by the Pentagon’s Kabul Regional Contracting Center, sets aside contracts totaling $365 million over five years to produce clothing and equipment for the Afghan National Police and Afghan National Army. The international community pledged in 2001 to rebuild the country’s security and armed forces; since then, the United States has committed $26 billion to train and equip the A.N.A. and A.N.P., accounting for roughly 55 percent of total U.S. reconstruction assistance to Afghanistan to date.
In the view of military contracting officials leading the set-aside project, supporting female entrepreneurs and bolstering Afghanistan’s economy are part of countering an increasingly emboldened insurgency. “Fifty percent of the country are women,” said Air Force Maj. Chuck Seidel, a local procurement chief with a budget of roughly $1 billion to purchase local supplies, including uniforms, boots and now T-shirts and other basics, for Afghan forces.
“If we are going to make a difference,” he continued, “we have got to create jobs, we have to give hope. How better to do that?”
Female entrepreneurs seem to agree. Overwhelming interest in the training session hosted by Major Seidel, Captain Flores and their colleague Patricia Babida, a veteran Air Force contracting officer, led the procurement team to schedule a second, equally crowded Saturday seminar a week after the first.
More than 60 business people, mostly women, from 35 Afghan companies turned out for the two Camp Eggers tutorials. Many of the Afghan women in attendance had never before set foot on a military base.
And they almost did not have the chance this time. The set-aside was nearly scrapped last August when female-owned companies that answered the initial solicitation for the Afghan army and police supplies submitted incomplete and mistake-ridden proposals. Product samples, like the brown shirt Captain Flores displayed, came in the wrong color, the wrong size and the wrong fabric — and sometimes all three.
Ms. Babida and her colleagues quickly realized that the businesswomen did not understand what the Americans were seeking and had never before been asked to produce to such exacting specifications.
Instead of giving up, however, Ms. Babida, an entrepreneur herself who believed strongly in the effort, thought the businesswomen might feel less intimidated if they could ask another woman all of their proposal-related questions. She and her contracting colleagues agreed to try once more, this time holding information sessions to walk the women through the arcane details of the obscure “request for proposal” submission process with painstaking precision.
“We thought rather than just abandon this, let’s bring them in so people can understand and try again,” Ms. Babida said. “We have a lot of female-owned companies that want the opportunity and you know they have the capability, they just don’t understand the language barrier” and the regulations.
Yet despite great enthusiasm both from the U.S. military contracting experts and the entrepreneurs at the session, the initial question concerning the program’s viability remains: Will companies owned by Afghan women have the capacity to meet the requirements of so large a contract for so demanding a customer?
Awards for the Afghan army and police clothing and gear are expected to total $35 million in the first year alone, with a $300,000 minimum for each company that submits a winning contract. Though both their numbers and their successes are growing, to date few female Afghan entrepreneurs have produced at such volumes or won such big contracts.
Businesses competing for the contract, whether as a single company or a joint venture, will have to assemble a proposal to produce one of two groups of items, either undershirts and linens or rain gear and sleeping bags. Both are complicated propositions given that large-scale, in-country manufacturing experience remains the exception rather than the rule among Afghan entrepreneurs.
Very few women own factories here. And as the first attempt at the proposal process showed, most who make textiles sew at home or in small workshops to produce one-of-a-kind, handmade goods. Quality control of the kind to which the U.S. military is accustomed is nearly nonexistent.
Those working with the businesswomen, however, warn against underestimating either the capacity or the potential of the entrepreneurs. They note that a number of male-owned Afghan companies have already won contracts to provide the army and the force with boots and uniforms under a local procurement program started several years back.
“The Afghan companies the military is working with are getting better all the time; there is no reason to believe that won’t happen with women-owned businesses,” said Michael Capstick, Afghanistan country director for the nongovernmental organization Peace Dividend Trust, which helps Afghan entrepreneurs increase their skills and capacity. “For some saying, ‘Those women-owned businesses can’t do it,’ well, who says?”
For their part, the female small-business owners vying for the award appear inspired, not intimidated, by the size of the contract. They say they are grateful for the opportunity and confident they can compete, both with one another and with the bevy of larger companies that are expected to pursue the business.
“There are big companies which have the advantage, but I am not losing my hope,” said Humira Aimaq, a widow and mother who registered her own handicrafts and tailoring company four years ago after decades of sewing for neighborhood women. “Most women in Afghanistan are jobless; if I can win this contract, I can create income and work for them.”
Ms. Aimaq’s business, which outfits several members of Parliament, used to sell scarves and clothing to foreigners before security fears in the wake of the election last summer and the October attack on the United Nations guest house drove many of her customers from Kabul’s streets. Now her company is struggling alongside many other businesses owned by Afghan women that sell to the international market.
“In Afghanistan these days, everyone is complaining that they don’t have work, there are no jobs,” she said. “Security is the main challenge facing all business people in Afghanistan.”
Eager for the military business when she first heard about the contracting opportunity early this summer, Ms. Aimaq joined a consortium of four female entrepreneurs that sent in one of the problem bids to Major Seidel’s contracting team. She said she and the other businesswomen understood their mistakes after having attended the Camp Eggers training and were ready to try again.
“We have lots of experience; we are able to produce whatever they want,” she said. “Military items are much easier to produce than handicrafts.”
Senior military contracting officials are studying the effort to see whether it can serve as a model.
“This is the avenue for us to do positive things with our money,” Major Seidel said. “We are in a war against an insurgency,” he continued. “You have American and NATO forces saying, ‘We care about your local economy and we are willing to invest in it.”’
“The goal here,” he said, “is that my desk can be closed down once the training and equipping is complete for A.N.A. and A.N.P. and there is the local business ecosystem to sustain them. Then I will go home to my family.”
In-Country Message to Rwanda
January 28th, 2010A message from Terry Neese, founder & CEO of the Institute, to the 2010 Rwandan PEACE THROUGH BUSINESS class.
IRIN launches ‘Veil of Tears’
January 26th, 2010
Photo courtesy of IRIN News
NAIROBI — JANUARY 19, 2010 — IRIN today launches Veil of Tears, a 60-page color booklet collecting personal stories from ordinary Afghans on suffering and loss in pregnancy and childbirth. Few families have not been touched by tragic experiences of childbirth in Afghanistan, where maternal mortality is among the highest in the world.
The stories have been transcribed from radio interviews in local languages Dari and Pashto, and were originally broadcast in IRIN radio programs in Afghanistan. The booklet brings to the fore the voices of ordinary Afghans, women, men and children. One chapter entitled “I hate the snow” brings the rarely reported perspective of a 12-year old child, who saw his mother dying in childbirth in their remote mountain village.
The collection bears testament not only to Afghans’ suffering, but also to their strong desire for better health services, education and infrastructure to be able to improve their lives and the future for their children.
You can download the PDF version of Veil of Tears from the IRIN website at this link http://www.irinnews.org/pdf/veil_of_tears.pdf
If you would like one of the limited hardcopies of the booklet, write to us at [email protected]
Strategic Communication and Spokespersons Unit
United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA)
Kabul, Afghanistan
Tel: 079 000 6121; +39 083 124 6121
