The need to highlight, raise awareness on and to celebrate achievements and successes of Black European Women from a self-empowerment perspective has been repeated on several occasions. It is a fact that there are many Black European Women in decision-making and leadership positions in different Member States of the European Union. However, their contributions and achievements still remain largely invisible.
Therefore, AFRA and its partners think that it is high time to pick up this challenge from a self-empowerment perspective and focus on this aspect within the framework of the European Year on Innovation and Creativity 2009. [more ...]

The need to highlight, raise awareness on and to celebrate achievements and successes of Black European Women from a self-empowerment perspective has been repeated on several occasions. It is a fact that there are many Black European Women in decision-making and leadership positions in different Member States of the European Union. However, their contributions and achievements still remain largely invisible.
Therefore, AFRA and its partners think that it is high time to pick up this challenge from a self-empowerment perspective and focus on this aspect within the framework of the European Year on Innovation and Creativity 2009.

For this reason we are currently working on our next book with the title: "100 Black European Women in Leadership". This project aims at gathering data on 100 Black European Women in leadership and decision-making positions in Europe, under the following categories: Social and
Humanitarian engagements, Politics, Entrepreneurship, Academics and Research, Arts and Culture, Sports and Media.

The selected 100 women shall be published as an attempt to honor these Black European role models (in all their rich diversity) for their leadership activities on the one hand, and on the other hand to encourage and promote the younger generations to go even further.

We therefore would very much appreciate it, if you could recommend and/or help passing on this call to Black European Women around you, whom you think definitely deserve to be honored and celebrated.

The deadline for nominations has been extended to April 20th 2009.

An international jury is going to decide upon the 100 Black European Women to be considered in the book project. Alongside the book project AFRA and its partners are organising the High Level Gala Night in Brussels in October 2009,  to officially present the book “100 Black European Women in Leadership” and to honor selected personalities (for the first time) with the "Black European Leadership Award (BELA 2009)".

For further information we gladly will be at your service and are looking forward to getting in personal contact with you.

"Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek." (Barack Obama 2008)

Let us make a difference together!

Beatrice Achaleke
Executive Director AFRA

Nomination-Form.doc

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Happy new year to each one of you! I do hope you all had a good start in this historical new year 2009. President Barack H. Obama gave each one of us every reason to begin this year on a positive note, despite of all the challenges faced daily. We have all been very inspired and proud of him, let’s follow his example and face our own european challenges now! [more ...]

Happy new year to each one of you! I do hope you all had a good start in this historical new year 2009. President Barack H. Obama gave each one of us every reason to begin this year on a positive note, despite of all the challenges faced daily. We have all been very inspired and proud of him, let’s follow his example and face our own european challenges now!

As already announced in the past, our BEWC General Assembly and first capacity Building seminar is taking place in Soesterberg /Utrecht-Holland from April 9th -10th 2009.

Aims
This meeting has two main aims:
1. a capacity building seminar to help equip those trying or planing to set up a national coordination of the BEWC with the right tools to start up sucessfully.
2. the general assembly of the BEWC, including the election of board members and adoption of a plan of action of the BEWC for the next four years.

Participation
Participation is opened to all officially registered members of BEWC.
For those who still want to register, registration is open until March 20th 2009. You may also want to register online under www.bewnet.eu/main/members/. For those not yet decided, but who would like to attend this meeting, we do encourage you to register, but to please bear in mind that priority will be given to registered members in case of too many registration.

Deadline for registration
Please send us your registration form not later than March 15th 2009. We shall send you a confirmation of participation by March 20th 2009

Cost of Participation
Participation is free of charge. However, each participant is expected to take care of her own travel expenses.Thanks to a limited funding of the EU program “Europe for Citizens” we shall be able to cover your feeding and accommodation for one night.

As we are currently working out more details of the program, we shall get back to you with more details within the coming days. Meanwhile to facilitate the organisational process, we would kindly ask you to:

1. register if you intend to attend the capacity building seminar and General Assembly from 9th -10th of April 2009
2. indicate if you would take part in both the general assembly and the capacity building seminar
3. indicate if your are interested in taking part in the elections
4. to start making your own travel arrangements to and from Utrecht

A draft agenda and further detailed information about this meeting shall follow soon.

We gladly look forward to meeting you again and taking the next steps and challenges together.

With best greetings from Vienna

The participation form can be downloaded here:

PARTICIPATION-FORM.doc

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We are very proud to present to you this Book: [more ...]

We are very proud to present to you this Book:

Black Women writing about themselves from their very own perspectives. A Book should should afford to miss!
order your copy now by following this link:

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Tiye International is an umbrella NGO of Black, Migrant and Refugee women’s organisations. Tiye has a consultation status with the ECOSOC of the United Nations. [more ...]

Introduction

Tiye International is an umbrella NGO of Black, Migrant and Refugee women’s organisations. Tiye has a consultation status with the ECOSOC of the United Nations.

The role of NGO’s and their initiatives are important to keep on promoting the empowerment of women in all their diversity at all levels of society.
However to ensure gender equality (and the empowerment of women) the motivation, strategies and commitment of women and their NGO’S are not enough. Public strategies and measures as well as political will are also needed at all levels of society and in all budgetary policies to achieve gender equality.
In some countries such as the Netherlands the gender equality support structure for the empowerment of women is disappearing step by step by a top-down policy of continuously shrinking budgets. Tiye is very worried about this decrease of budgets. New strategies in the
Netherlands, such as gender budgeting, are urgently needed, especially to assure effective empowerment of all women (black, migrant or white) and to guarantee that the allocation of resources contributes to gender equality in stead of consolidating existing inequalities.
Although in many countries worldwide, gender budget initiatives have been implemented in the past 20 years - such as in Australia, South Africa and Central America - it is still at the bottom of the political agenda of the majority of European governments. Nevertheless, in
quite a number of international policy documents, European governments and the EC committed themselves to develop and apply the tools of gender budgeting, such as:

The Platform for Action resulting from the World Women’s Conference in Beijing (1995), especially the strategic goals A (women and poverty), F (women and the economy) and H (institutional mechanisms).

The call for gender budgeting is equally rooted in the EU commitment to gender mainstreaming and firmly based in the Treaty (articles 2 and 3) Article 3(2) of the Treaty stipulates that equality between men and women must be promoted in all EU activities and that the Community shall aim to eliminate inequalities.

However, gender blindness still prevails in budgetary and macro economic policies in Europe, although some EU governments have started Gender Budgeting initiatives.

Why Gender Budgeting?

Gender Budgeting is an important strategy to promote gender equality in macro economic and budgetary policies. It is an important strategy for ensuring greater consistency between economic goals and social commitments. Studies have highlighted the costs of gender inequality to productivity, efficiency and economic progress. A restructuring of public finance according to gender equality considerations contributes to growth and prosperity. Gender Budgeting also contributes to improved governance, that is increases in accountability, participation and transparency of budgetary policy processes. It is therefore important to promote worldwide the implementation of gender budgeting by the
UN, the EC institutions, and EU Member States.

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AFRA plans a broad dissemination to campaign the Declaration in Austria among politicians, the media, schools, NGOs, relevant international organisations as well as diplomatic missions based in Austria. [more ...]

AFRA plans a broad dissemination to campaign the Declaration in Austria among politicians, the media, schools, NGOs, relevant international organisations as well as diplomatic missions based in Austria.

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Representing AFRA resp. Tiye International , Beatrice Achaleke and Hellen Felter shall participate in the closing conference of the EYOA from 19-20 Nov. 2007 in Lisbon, Portugal. [more ...]

Representing AFRA resp. Tiye International , Beatrice Achaleke and Hellen Felter shall participate in the closing conference of the EYOA from 19-20 Nov. 2007 in Lisbon, Portugal. So far the DG Employment, Social Affairs & Equal Opportunities, Anti-discrimination Unit (EMPL.G.4) of the EU agreed to officially have the declaration xeroxed by the media campaign contractor of the EU Closing Conference in Lisbon and to display the “Vienna Declaration” (in the five available languages) during this closing conference which shall bring together participants from 30 countries. This possibility is a very important step forward not only towards a wider and more official dissemination at the EU level but also towards the recognition of BEWNET by EU bodies.

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Ms Beatrice Achaleke (AFRA, Austria), Ms Wangari Greiner (Maisha, Germany), Ms Salome Mbugwa (Akidwa, Ireland), Ms Daphne Sandberg (Swedish Women's lobby, Sweden) and Ms Christabelle Beaton (Tiye International, The Netherlands) [more ...]

Ms Beatrice Achaleke (AFRA, Austria), Ms Wangari Greiner (Maisha, Germany), Ms Salome Mbugwa (Akidwa, Ireland), Ms Daphne Sandberg (Swedish Women's lobby, Sweden) and Ms Christabelle Beaton (Tiye International, The Netherlands) attended the follow-up meeting of the European Women's Lobby from 25-27 October in Bulgaria, and used the opportunity to spread information about the Vienna Congress and the Declaration to over 80 participants from several EU Member States.

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On Monday, 22. October 2007, the AFRA delegation, represented by Beatrice Achaleke - accompanied by Ms Mirjam Pölzl and Ms Paulette Deugoue - was received by the representative of the European Parliament in Vienna [more ...]

On Monday, 22. October 2007, the AFRA delegation, represented by Beatrice Achaleke - accompanied by Ms Mirjam Pölzl and Ms Paulette Deugoue - was received by the representative of the European Parliament in Vienna, Mr. Wolfgang Hiller. Ms Achaleke used the occassion to brief Mr. Hiller on the “1. Black European Women’s Congress”, its findings and recommendations, and officially handed over the “Vienna Declaration” to Mr. Hiller, who on his part,  praised the initiative and outcome of the “1 Black European Women’s Congress 2007” and promised to support  the implementation of the “Vienna Declaration” and the official launching of the Black European Women’s Network in 2008.

The next office meeting with the representatives of the European Commission in Vienna is scheduled for Tuesday 06.11. 07, to equally give feedback on the congress, present the “Vienna Declaration” and to lobby for the launching of BEWNET next year.

So far the “Vienna Declaration” has been posted on the following official websites of the EU:
http://ec.europa.eu/employment_social/eyeq//index.cfm?page_id=328

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After the congress the initiator AFRA, represented by Ms Beatrice Achaleke, and the co-organiser Tiye International, represented by Ms Hellen Felter, have been able to give feedback and spread information about the congress and the “Vienna Declaration” [more ...]

After the congress the initiator AFRA, represented by Ms Beatrice Achaleke, and the co-organiser Tiye International, represented by Ms Hellen Felter, have been able to give feedback and spread information about the congress and the “Vienna Declaration” at the conference „European Parliament of Equal Opportunities for All”, held in the European Parliament from 11-12 October 2007 in Brussels

During the conference in Brussels Ms Achaleke and Ms Felter met MEP Christa Prets and officially handed over the “Vienna Declaration” to her and began working on a strategic lobbying plan to facilitate the launching of BEWNET next year as stated in the “Vienna Declaration”.

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Since its adaption on the 29th of September 2007, the “Vienna Declaration” of Black European Women has disseminated widely and can be found not only on the congress website, but also on several internet websites and in the print media. [more ...]

Since its adaption on the 29th of September 2007, the “Vienna Declaration” of Black European Women has disseminated widely and can be found not only on the congress website, but also on several internet websites and in the print media.

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