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Full Length Articles April 2009

April 2009: From Bangladesh, with love

A PWRDF partner helps shoulder the struggle for women’s reproductive and communication rights

“If you give something small to a rural woman, she shares it with her family, her friends and her community. It has a big, multidimensional impact.”

Farida Akhter is the executive director of UBINIG (Policy Research for Development Alternative) in Bangladesh, an organization that works with rural and urban women. She also runs Nari Grantha Prabartana, the first and only feminist bookstore in Bangladesh. This bookstore has become an important meeting place for women.

Trained as a journalist, Farida is fluent in English, Bengali, Urdu and Hindi. On a recent visit to Canada, Farida—who has been a PWRDF partner for the last 10 years and is the gender representative on the PWRDF Board of Directors—sat down with Kristin Jenkins, PWRDF communications coordinator, to share her story.

I was born in Chittagong and am so lucky I was born in a village. Why? Because I was born in the hands of a midwife instead of in a hospital, where the approach to childbirth is very medicalized.

My father was a government worker, and our family moved around a lot as a result. We lived in Pakistan and many other different places, and it gave me lots of opportunities to get to know different people living in different circumstances and different cultures. Even when it was just a different district, I was able to appreciate different ways of life.

I graduated with a master’s in economics from the University of Chittagong in Bangladesh. Instead of teaching, I wanted to break the notion that that was all an educated woman could do. That was the thinking when I graduated in 1978.

I studied with Professor Muhammad Yunus, who founded the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, the first to offer a microcredit program. (Professor Yunus went on to win the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize.) After graduating, I joined an English-language newspaper called the People’s View and started writing on non-conventional issues such as clean water and student unrest. Social justice issues always attracted me because I used to meet and talk to people about things that I never saw reported in the newspapers. This was one of the reasons I wanted to become a journalist, to find a way to communicate with a larger audience.

At present, I am working with a network of 450 midwives, known as Dai Ma Samity. This literally translates into the Midwives Mothers Association. We set up this network in December 2006, and PWRDF supported a large conference in Bangladesh. Some 300 midwives attended, and they were able to debate with gynecologists directly about women’s health issues. Since midwives are usually the very poorest in a community, many felt overwhelmed when they were given the standard conference bag and name tag. Since then, we’ve had a smaller meeting with about 100 midwives in one of our centres 100 kilometres from the capital of Dhaka.

PWRDF also gave us tremendous support to publish a book. Most midwives are illiterate, so this book is not for them. It’s to create awareness of the role and value of midwives among the educated middle class. We show how oral-based knowledge, a tradition of midwives, is valuable. They have a wealth of knowledge. In fact, we have found that the more educated people are, the less likely they are to support midwives. Now the middle class and other educated groups are taking midwives more seriously.

We’ve also organized, with PWRDF’s support, mainstream meetings with doctors and health care workers, and we bring midwives in as speakers. They provide care around the perinatal period—before, during and after childbirth—and provide an important community health resource. Childbirth in Bangladesh is becoming more complicated, with an increased number of stillbirths due to things like pesticide use. We never used to see this before.

Midwives also care for the poorest women who can’t afford other treatments. When a midwife brings a woman into emergency, we want physicians to respect the midwife’s opinion about the patient’s status. This is why we are also working with government to get official recognition for midwives.

Through PWRDF, we also support women writers by publishing their books and by connecting them to other women writers across the country. These women are talented but also very isolated and have no mainstream voice. We discovered that many of them were selling their jewelry to publish their own work. With PWRDF support, we are publishing their books and selling them in our bookstores. To date there are more than 300 books on various topics, including violence against women, environmental issues, rural women’s issues, working women’s issues and so on.

We also had a workshop on globalization at which women’s writers participated. We asked women to write on anything that they know or have experienced about globalization. Then we published their stories in a book in the Bengali language. We found that in true globalization, culture is negatively impacted and creates what is known as a “mono-culture” that affects local industries. For instance, fast food negatively affects local farmers; clothing coming from other countries affects local weavers.

We also formed a Women Writers’ Association, which has about 200 members. In 2000, with the support of PWRDF, we held the first national feminist book festival, and more than 10,000 published books were presented. This festival was the first of its kind in Bangladesh.

It’s important to recognize that in Bangladesh, the literacy rate is only 40 per cent; most people are illiterate. So women’s wisdom is shared through written as well as oral presentations. We don’t believe only in printed material, which is linear. We also celebrate oral culture, which is multidimensional, when we hold a conference. That’s why we also work with musical groups who tell their stories through music and song. Aleya is a musician/composer who can attract a bigger audience with her music. What she has to say is much more powerful, in the form of a song, than speeches.

Now I have no choice but to get involved in biodiversity issues. In the face of climate change and environmental degradation, we have created the Women and Biodiversity Network that sees women working in rural areas as farmers, potters, weavers. Why? Well, if you’re not preserving local seeds in clay pots, you’re not supporting potters. If you’re not growing local cotton, farmers can’t survive. If you’re not growing local bamboo, weavers can’t make their looms.

Bangladesh is rich in biodiversity, or natural plant systems. Through Naya Krishi or the New Agriculture Movement, we have cultivated 2,500 varieties of rice. Biodiversity is a big part of our culture and is my new passion. Something as simple as rice, for instance, comes in many different forms for different uses. It can be puffed, pressed, for guests, for eating with mangoes, for treating illness, aromatic for special occasions and so on.

What have I learned? Well, if you give something small to a rural woman, she will make it into something that has a big impact. She never takes it just for herself. It has a multidimensional impact because she shares it with her family, her friends and her community.  

The other thing that I have learned is that even a woman who is suffering terribly and is sad in the moment can immediately transcend her grief. I may be worried about how to console her, and she will instead help me by making me laugh. This, I have learned, is how women here survive.

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April 2009: You were my miracle

I lost my job, my children, my home. All I had left was my faith in God and my prayer for miracle…

Congolese refugee Annie Kashamura Zawadi thanks Bishop Linda Nicholls and the Diocese of Toronto for answering her prayers.

“Violence against women and girls is alive, normalized, tolerated and silenced…Get involved. If you don’t condemn it, you condone it. If you don’t denounce it, you reinforce it.” —Annie Kashamura Zawadi

“Thank you is what I can say to all who contributed to my freedom…I couldn’t do it alone. No big enterprise is individual. In Swahili, we say aksanti. Humble, sweet and grateful word.” —Annie Kashamura Zawadi

The story of Annie Kashamura Zawadi, a Congolese mother of five who struggled for two decades in a relationship marked by profound psychological, emotional and physical abuse, is the story of faith in action. “I am a proud survivor,” she writes in her book of autobiographic poems, I Can Testify: A Few Words from a Survivor.

Annie’s story is the tale of how one woman’s prayers were answered by Anglicans on the other side of the world. And how God’s love transformed the lives of everyone involved. “If you have God, anything is possible,” says Annie. “If you don’t have faith, you are finished.”

When Annie told her pastor that she wanted to go to Canada but she had no plane ticket, no passport and five children in tow, he told her, “You really have faith.” Then he touched her head and said, “You will go to Canada.”

Months later, Bishop Linda Nicholls and members of Holy Trinity Thornhill Anglican Church, north of Toronto, mobilized to receive Annie and her family. They had already sponsored a family from Somalia as part of the Thornhill Ministerial Refugee Sponsorship Committee, an ecumenical task force made up of members of the Anglican, Presbyterian, Baptist, United and Roman Catholic churches. This time, however, they had very little time to fundraise. Instead, they turned to a federal joint-assistance sponsorship program that would take care of Annie’s financial needs from the moment she arrived, leaving the parish to provide the things it was really good at: social, environmental and cultural support.

Meanwhile, several hemispheres away, Annie and staff from the Canadian High Commission in South Africa were putting a sophisticated emergency exit plan into action. Two teams in separate cars pulled her children out of different schools, in spite of threats from her violent ex-husband. A third team headed to the airport to expedite the final paperwork that would allow Annie and her children to leave Africa and enter Canada. Twenty-four hours later, the exhausted family arrived in Canada. They had nothing. The children were wearing only their school uniforms and carrying the knapsacks they had packed for school that morning.

Linda Nicholls and her committee were ready. A registered nurse on the committee assessed the family’s immediate health needs and helped them negotiate the medical system, getting [provincial?] health cards for everyone and fielding questions on an ongoing basis. One committee member took care of the children’s educational needs, communicating with schools and helping the family understand options and requirements. Others provided support in the form of transportation and babysitting so Annie could run errands.  “This was about building relationships and we had people in place to do that,” recalls Bishop Nicholls.

The gift of refugee sponsorship can provide many lessons for a parish, says Bishop Nicholls. “Refugee sponsorship moves us out of our comfort zone and connects us to the world. In my parish, refugee sponsorship has taught us how to share the rich gift of freedom that we have in Canada. In the process, the people we sponsor have taught us about freedom and generosity in ways that we otherwise would never have known.”

Once in Canada, Annie wasted no time getting her family settled. After 20 years of being sidelined by her husband, who had prevented her from going to school or working, Annie set about furthering her education. “Her entrepreneurial skills pushed her forward,” says Bishop Nicholls. “She never took no for an answer. Her passion was astounding and a real learning for us.”  In 2008 Annie completed a specialist degree in women’s and gender studies, with a major in political science, at the University of Toronto.

The hardest part of refugee sponsorship, says Bishop Nicholls, is making sure the sponsored family is safe. “A moving moment for all involved comes five years down the road when they get their Canadian citizenship,” she says. “Annie turned to a committee member after receiving her Canadian citizenship, and said, ‘Now my children are safe.’ ”

Not content merely to help her own family, Annie began to give back. In Africa she had promised God she would repay her debt of gratitude by helping others. Annie founded Arising Women Place/L’Eveil des Femmes, a bilingual charitable organization that provides support to women and girls who are experiencing or have survived abuse. For her efforts, she received the Ontario Ministry of Women’s Affairs Leading Women Building Communities Award. A talented writer, Annie also has written a book, Foi/Faith 1999, and in 2007 her autobiographical collection of poetry, I Can Testify, was published.

Not surprisingly, Annie’s children also have excelled: Patricia, the oldest, has completed a degree in accountancy at Seneca College in Toronto; Pia is in second year of the journalism program at Ryerson University; Annick is in first year of a business and commerce program at the University of Toronto; and Marco is preparing to write his real estate licence exams. Lukas, the youngest, has just finished high school.

What’s Annie’s message to parishes that may be sitting on the fence about refugee sponsorship? “Get involved,” she urges. “There are so many people like me in need of a second chance.”

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April 2009: Never a dull moment

For Canada’s first National Indigenous Anglican Bishop, it’s all about recognizing the primal authority and identity of First Nations people in Canadian life

By Nora Underwood


The position was only officially created two years ago, but already there is one well-established fact: when you are Canada’s first, you are never at a loss for things to do. In fact, few were prepared for the overwhelmingly positive response to the January 2007 announcement that the Rt. Rev. Mark MacDonald was to assume the position. Since he took the job, there has hardly been a dull moment.

“The idea has been around for quite a long time,” says Bishop MacDonald, who is based in Toronto, where lives with his wife and three children. “For most Canadian Anglicans, this was a better way to provide pastoral care for First Nations people.” Now, having had some experience, Bishop MacDonald says that his appointment is “…a recognition of the primal authority and identity of First Nations people in Canadian life. Anglican Indigenous people are a permanent feature of the land and a vibrant part of its future.”

Bishop MacDonald is something of a trailblazer. As pastor to a group of people defined not by where they live but by their history, he is required to travel a lot. Moving around is something with which MacDonald is very familiar.

After studying in Minneapolis and Toronto, he has held positions in Duluth, Minn.; Portland, Ore.; and parts of Wisconsin. Most recently, he finished 10 years of service as Bishop of Alaska, and he remains Bishop of Navajoland Area Mission, which consists of parts of the dioceses of Utah, Arizona and Rio Grande. Still, being the country’s first National Indigenous Anglican Bishop is momentous.

The living relationship between First Nations peoples and the land is fundamental but not well understood by non-Anglican Indigenous cultures, points out Bishop MacDonald, who will “act as a kind of midwife to the birthing of a self-determining Anglican Indigenous people’s church within the Anglican Church of Canada. The First Nations peoples will be closer to the Anglican Church rather than far away.”

During the bishop’s talks with First Nations people, priorities have emerged. Among them:

• clergy serving mostly in Anglican Indigenous settings are paid poorly or not at all
• more than 50 per cent of First Nations people are under the age of 20
• native leadership needs to be formed and empowered in a way that is meaningful to Anglican Indigenous people
• the issues related to the massive numbers of First Nations peoples who are living in urban areas

Another major item on Bishop MacDonald’s agenda is a proposal that the Church consider creating a new Anglican Indigenous ecclesiastic province. Even though the four existing ecclesiastic provinces create their own canons and way of life, they are deeply connected to each other and act as the vital heart of Canadian Anglicanism.

A new Anglican Indigenous ecclesiastic province would be land based but also observant of the way in which Anglican Indigenous people perceive boundaries and territories. “As we give this idea a full hearing in the Church and First Nations communities, we feel we have some solid ground and precedent as a model,” says Bishop MacDonald. He pauses, then adds: “It will be revolutionary.”

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