A few interesting links...

Market Magic: Nonprofits could access needed capital by turning donors into investors. Part of the series on Philanthropy at Slate.com

40 Years Of Peace Corps : A Long Partnership With FSM, Palau Celebrated. Commentary from Pacific Magazine.

Trade Is More Effective Than Aid. An editorial by Helen Hughes of the East-West Center.

Political Relationship Between Yap and the Outer Islands : Rank, Hierarchy and Routes of Migration: Chieftainship in the Central Caroline Islands of Micronesia. From a text published by the Australian National University.

For more information on the efforts of Habele, the Outer Island Education Fund, and its work promoting educational opportunities and accomplishment in the Outer Islands of Yap visit habele.org

Donors Call For Reforms To Boost Micronesia Results
Pacific Magazine, November 10, 2006.

Some key points: Donors this week called for reforms to be stepped up in the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM) to assure greater progress in future assistance programs….Development partners noted that significant levels of assistance are received by FSM, but previous programs have not always achieved their objectives….They urged the government to demonstrate its commitment to achieving improved results through speedier reforms to [among other things]

-Promote more effective donor coordination
-Raise public awareness and understanding of reform priorities and development objectives.

ADB's strategy in the FSM focuses on three broad objectives: good governance, social service development, and pro-poor economic growth. Since joining ADB in 1990, FSM has received more than $97 million in assistance.

Read the Article here.

Unlike the huge grants and infrastructure projects financed by foreign governments, Habele is focused on providing individual students with tuition assistance and basic educational materials in order to meet their academic (and ultimately personal and economic) goals. This is truly capacity building in its purest sense. Visit www.habele.org for more information!

The Habele Outer Island Education Fund has received first quarter report cards for the two Yap Outer Island scholars attending Bethania High School in the Republic of Palau.

“Our scholarship awardees are doing well and they have much to be proud of” explained Tom Lutte, Treasurer of the Fund.

The transition is incredibly challenging but the girls are excelling,” noted Alex Sidles, Habele Secretary, in regard to the progression from attending the isolated community schools on the Atoll of Ulithi to the competitive academic atmosphere at Bethania.

Details of the girls’ school year accomplishments and an overview of the Habele public school library and support projects will be included in the forth-coming 2006 annual report. Habele is tax exempt non profit organization that provides scholarships, awards, and grants to students from the remote Outer Islands of Yap State in Micronesia. More details at www.habele.org.

In an article highly critical of US policy towards the Pacific, Andre Vltchek argues that the island nations of Oceania should come together and develop a more centralized (or at least cohesive) regional voice. While the piece is inflammatory in tone (and limited in detail) it does raise some interesting points.

The big three, the U.S., Australia, and New Zealand, have divided the Pacific island territories. New Zealand now controls Polynesia, Australia is “in charge of” Melanesia (including the plundering of natural resources by its multinationals in Papua New Guinea), and the U.S. has a firm grip on Micronesia.

The New Pacific Wall: The U.S., Australia, and New Zealand Control the Pacific Islands is available at WorldPress.Org.

In laying out the grounds for greater unity Vltchek scathingly notes…

-Pacific Island votes at the UN are openly for sale…

-For several tiny nations, it became profitable to play the Taiwanese card...

-The economy of Palau, as for the entire Federated States of Micronesia (FSM), is largely dependent on the U.S. handouts…

…Inter-Pacific cultural and economic ties are being replaced by ties with the U.S., Australia, and New Zealand….

-Micronesian nations are securing cash through direct agreements with the United States by offering the military unlimited access to their territories..

He concludes:

[the] New Pacific Wall has fragmented this enormous area of the Pacific, once inhabited by diverse but historically intertwined cultures. There is an acute need for Pacific island nations to create a strong and united bloc able to negotiate with the rest of the world with one voice. Only such a bloc could effectively address economic, social, transportation, educational, and political problems confronting the entire region.

While Vltchek may be correct in his observation that developed nations benefit most from a patchwork of bilateral and unilateral polices with individual island states, his suggestion that the region as a whole is “historically intertwined” may be a slight exaggeration. Nor does he provide specific characteristics of a possible mechanism in his prescription.

That said, the article does raise important concerns and is well worth reading.

Rather than rallying for national or regional policy shifts, Habele remains committed to development in Micronesia’s remote outer islands at the level of individual students. For information on the fund's private school scholarships and public school library projects visit our website at www.habele.org.

This is a short clip of children in a joint Kindergarten - First Grade class on the Island of Asor, Atoll of Ulithi, The students are copying sentences from a Dr. Suess book. The lighting is poor, as Asor does not have electricity. The children are lying on the concrete floor because it is cool (and the school has only a few chairs).

The library at Asor’s Community Elementary School (ACES) has been developed through the Habele Outer Island Education Fund's public school library project and the hard work of Peace Corps Volunteers. Check out www.habele.org for more info! Please consider donating to Habele in order to expand library development in the Outer Islands of Yap State, the most remote area of Micronesia.

Habele is proud to pass on the news that members of the community on Falalop, Ulithi have come together and raised the additional $300.00 needed to cover the recent fee increase for our two scholarship awardees. Special thanks to Mario Suk for his enthusiasm and leadership!

Regular visitors to the Habele blog (as well as those who are subscribed to our widely read rss feed) know that we recently completed payments for the full tuition and fees of two Outer Island girls from the State of Yap who are attending Bethania High School in the Republic of Palau. Our two scholarship awardees are hard working students from large families living on Ulithi, a remote atoll to the west of Yap Proper. Yap is one of four states in the impoverished Federated States of Micronesia, an isolated and neglected former US colony in the central Pacific.

Today (at the post office to mail our care package - see last post) Habele received a correspondence from the administration at Bethania, dated early October. The letter announced an increase in the monthly tuition and food schedule, from $140 to $170.

Running the numbers… we are sponsoring two girls (2) who will both be attending for the full second semester of five months (5) at an additional cost of thirty dollars per month ($30). This means an additional three hundred dollars (US $300.00) will be required. Habele board members have already been in touch with Outer Island community organizations, Peace Corps volunteers past and present, Micronesians living and working in the states, as well as faithful Habele donors; and we are determined to help the families reach this goal! While the amount may be small to our North American readers, it represents roughly one tenth of the Per Capita GDP of a Micronesian (and a much greater portion of the income of a family in the Outer Islands, atolls which have little if any formal cash economy).

Stay tuned for updates, and feel free to help us out by donating online!

The Habele Outer Island Education Fund is piecing together a winter care package for our two Ulithian scholarship awardees who are attending Bethania High School in Palau. Seniors from the University of South Carolina as well as a recent Alumna of Costal Carolina University have donated shirts, magazines and school supplies. Thanks for pitching in!

This week’s Economist reports on a study by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, which investigated the neural basis for unselfish acts. Researchers examined the responses of the brain when giving anonymously to charity.

They found that the part of the brain that was active when a person donated happened to be the brain's reward centre—the mesolimbic pathway, to give it its proper name—responsible for doling out the dopamine-mediated euphoria associated with sex, money, food and drugs. … But it seems there is more to altruism. Donating also engaged the part of the brain that plays a role in the bonding behaviour between mother and child, and in romantic love.

While the volunteers and donors who sustain Habele have long taken satisfaction in empowering Outer Island students, it is none the less exciting to hear there is an observable and bio-psychological basis for this!

As heads of state took their turn speaking to the General Assembly, the Federated States of Micronesia used its time to address the importance of sustainable development.

The Vice President of the Federated States of Micronesia, H.E. Redley Killion, in his address to the plenary of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) continued to voice the concerns of his country on issues like climate change, sustainable development, the reform of the United Nations and the environment...

More info from a Pacific Magazine article and an FSM Government press release.

Habele is dedicated to promoting educational opportunities and advancement in the Outer Islands of Yap, the most isolated part of Micronesia. We feel that truly sustainable development is guided by local voices and concerns, and must move away from excessive reliance on a disproportionately large public sector. Meaningful social and political sovereignty involves greater economic independence and freedom than presently exists for the FSM; broader educational opportunity is the first step towards personal and national self determination.