This workshop offers participants an excellent opportunity to master the skills and processes involved in proposal writing - a key fundraising tool used in seeking funding from a variety of sources. You will be guided step-by-step through every aspect of preparing and submitting a concise, compelling and effective funding proposal.

Slavery in America has traditionally been viewed as a peculiarly Southern phenomenon, brought to an end by the victorious Northern states after the Civil War. In 1991, in downtown Manhattan, an 18th century burial ground containing the remains of hundreds of African slaves was uncovered during excavations for a new office block. T J Davis explores the hidden slave history of New York and how one shocking discovery changed a city.

Keith Levin and Françoise Caillods
In 1990, at the World Conference on Education for All in Jomtien, and again in April 2000 in Dakar, most developing countries reaffirmed their commitment to providing their school-age children with universal access to a first cycle of education. The number of children who graduate from primary education is expanding rapidly and putting pressure on governments to open up educational opportunities at higher levels. This book explores the problems that surround secondary school financing, outlines the rationale for expanding secondary education and investigates under what conditions it might be possible to do so at sustainable levels of cost. It carries out the analysis for different groups of countries, using data derived from the UNESCO database. Then, it analyses the issue on the basis of case studies in Asia, Latin America and Africa. It concludes with a discussion of the policy options that offer prospects of improved access at sustainable levels of cost without unacceptable deterioration in quality. 2001, ISBN 92-803-1199-9. UNESCO Publishing / IIEP.

FFL is a joint effort of UNICEF, WHO, UNESCO, UNFPA, UNDP, UNAIDS, WFP and the World Bank to provide families and communities with essential information on low-cost ways to help prevent child deaths and diseases and to protect women during pregnancy and childbirth.

In a recent two-week visual arts workshop, kindly financed by the sculptor, Dominic Benhura and held at his premises at Christon Bank in Zimbabwe, Sculptors, painters, installation artists all worked together. Artists experimenting with found objects, tying and sewing canvas, paints splashed on canvases, against the background of the sculptors hammering on stones. Watching the artists what was apparent was not the 'finished object' but the process. The process of artists working side by side, experimenting, reflecting and enjoying a scenic environment to produce work. A network of painted A4 painted images lay on the floor to be added to by each artist as the workshop continued, so that a large collective piece could be formed.

Peter Oakley (ed.)
NGOMPS No. 13, 2001 ISBN 1-897748-62-0, £15.95
The fourth book in a series based on International Workshops on the Evaluation of Social development and is based on the Fourth International Workshop held in Oxford in April 2000. It includes a number of commissioned papers by Anisur Rahman, Musimbi Kanyoro, Frits Wils and Peter Oakley as well as papers presented by participants. It also includes both regional presentations from Southern Africa, Asia, Central America and the Middle East as well as institutional statements by DFID, SIDA, Action Aid and Cordaid. The book concludes by drawing together participants’ perceptions in terms of the current state of the practice of the M&E of empowerment.

Rick James
OPS No. 36, 2001, 42 pages, ISBN 1-897748-64-7, £8.95
Capacity-building and monitoring and evaluation have become two of the most important priorities of the development community during the last decade. Yet they have tended to operate in relative isolation from each other. In particular capacity-building programmes have been consistently weak in monitoring the impact of their work. This publication aims to help NGOs and donors involved in capacity-building develop appropriate, cost-effective and practical systems for monitoring and evaluation. While not underestimating the complexity of this task, this publication puts forward some practical guidelines for designing monitoring and evaluation systems based on experiences with three organisations in different parts of Africa.

In the decade after Brown v. Board of Education, "white intellectuals, in the North and the South of the US... having helped for so long to keep Negroes apart and below... were faced with the challenge of racial equality," asserts Polsgrove (It Wasn't Pretty, Folks, but Didn't We Have Fun? Esquire in the Sixties). In this disturbing book, she shows them to have been "fearful, cautious, distracted, or simply indifferent." Based on interviews and archival research, she indicts not only prominent novelists and thinkers, including William Faulkner, Norman Mailer, Hannah Arendt and even the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr ("none better exemplifies the caution that northern white intellectuals... displayed toward desegregation"), but also their editors (who were "more interested in southern whites' responses to the Negro challenge than in what Negroes had to say") and the media, which "at a time when national magazines ought to have been leading the way to change... opened their pages to those who resisted it." Many of the best-known African-American novelists, cowed by "the emotional and political atmosphere of the McCarthy days," fare little better than their white counterparts in Polsgrove's hands. Only a few heroes emerge from her portrait: Lillian Smith, Kenneth Clark, Lawrence Reddick, James Silver, and most importantly, James Baldwin. Polsgrove concludes her accessible and disturbing account with a thought-provoking broadside against contemporary American intellectuals, who she thinks "have abandoned their responsibility even more completely" than those in the 1950s and 1960s and whose "publishing industry has moved farther and farther from any sense of obligation for the social enterprise." A wide range of periodicals (and their editors) from major weeklies and monthlies to small journals take a thrashing here. Polsgrove could set off a firestorm if she doesn't get the silent treatment. W.W. Norton & Company; ISBN: 0393020134, 2001.

Half the world's 6,000 languages are under threat of extinction, a new edition of the 'Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger of Disappearing' warned Thursday to mark International Mother Language Day. The death of languages also spells the end of the culture which gave rise to them, making them "a living heritage we should cherish," said Koichiro Matsuura, director-general of the United Nations (news - web sites) Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO (news - web sites)), commemorating the special day his agency established three years ago. UNESCO plans to set up a monitoring system that will warn when an endangered language--classed as those no longer spoken by at least 30 percent of a community's children--is threatened with extinction. The agency is urging countries to protect languages as natural and cultural treasures.

One of the most respected painters in the country, August Ferreira, has recently embraced a different task. Ferreira is now a leading commissioner for Ensarte-prize launched this year by the Angola´s insurance company (ENSA), which will reward painting and sculpture winning artists with usd 10,000. The painter is in charge of receiving and, administrativelly, keep the paintings and take them to a juror which will gather, by the end of April, to reward the winners. This will sure be remembered by Ferreira who, three years ago, displayed an exhibit on “memories and experiences”, summing up more than thirty years of his painting.

Mr. Hackman Owusu-Agyeman, Minister for Foreign Affairs, has issued a hotline service number to Ghanaians for use when they encounter difficulties in acquiring passports.

Fair Share remains committed to contributing to effective, accountable and democratic governance responsive to the needs of marginalised people, and invites interested parties to purchase a copy of
the 2002/3 National Budget Book.

The short list of Africa's 100 Best Books of the 20th Century has been finalised by the project jury. With 505 titles, the list is considered a comprehensive documentation of the most significant literary contributions by Africans made during the 20th Century.

INASP's African Journals Online assists all those who need access to research and information on Africa. Its long term aim is to provide a comprehensive coverage of all scholarly journals currently published in Africa. It offers free access to the Tables of Contents and abstracts of over 70 journals in all disciplines, together with links to full text and a document delivery service.

Slavery, cinematic or otherwise, is a tricky proposition. Unlike the Holocaust and projects such as the recent ``Band of Brothers,'' there's nothing heroic about American involvement, nothing to latch on to in patriotic terms. Quite the opposite, actually. Revisiting the brutality of bondage often means dealing with the notion that our ancestral bloodlines very likely played a part in this cruel and unusually punishing institution, whether as victimizer or victim. Nothing is more uncomforting and unnerving than that. This explains why ``The Middle Passage,'' airing Saturday night on HBO, would never appear on network television - and not just because its ghastly scene of a tortured African slave with his sliced fingers, blood dripping into the cracks of a rat-infested ship's floor, is too graphic for prime time. It's the subject - and the unfortunate but inescapable fact that viewers will watch most anything ``except'' a show about slavery.

Hundreds of thousands of Ethiopians celebrated the return of a sacred artefact on Saturday which was looted by British troops 134 years ago. Thousands lined the streets as the 400 year-old tabot – a representation of the Ark of the Covenant – was taken to Addis Ababa’s Trinity Church where the relic will be stored. It is one of the few items returned by the British after the Battle of Maqdala in 1868 – treasure which is now said to be worth US $4.2 billion. In 1868 British troops stormed and pillaged the-then capital of Abyssinia during a mission to secure the release of two British envoys being held captive by Emperor Tewodros. The emperor shot himself rather than face defeat.

The Story of Africa tells the history of the continent from an African perspective. Africa's top historians take a fresh look at the events and characters that have shaped the continent from the origins of humankind to the end of South African apartheid. See the rise and fall of empires and kingdoms, experience the power of religion, the injustices of slavery, and chart the expansion of trade between Africa and other continents. Hear what it was like to live under colonialism, follow the struggle against it, and celebrate the achievement of independence.

The first EFA (Education For All) High Level Group Meeting took place in Paris on 30th October. The meeting ended by adopting a Communiqué that requested all EFA partners to redouble efforts to meet EFA goals through greater co-ordination of efforts, partnerships with civil society and increased and more efficient funding of basic education.

This classic paperback is available once again- and exclusively-from Harvard University Press. This book is the story of the life of Nisa, a member of the !Kung tribe of hunter-gatherers from southern Africa's Kalahari desert. Told in her own words -- earthy, emotional, vivid -- to Marjorie Shostak, a Harvard anthropologist who succeeded, with Nisa's collaboration, in breaking through the immense barriers of language and culture, the story is a fascinating view of a remarkable woman. Harvard Univ Pr; ISBN: 0674004329, 2000.

FXI has expressed shock over the number of books that South Africans are unable to access due to the existing gap between the current legislation and the ban placed on them during apartheid. There are approximately 18,000 titles on a banned book list drawn up by the apartheid government and listed in a 560-page document called "Jacobson". FXI welcomes the announcement by the Film and Publication Board that it will remove Salman Rushdie's "The Satanic Verses" from the banned book list. However, FXI believes it is totally unacceptable that in a democratic country, where the constitution protects an individual's right to receive information and express themselves, thousands of books are out of the public's reach because there is a gap in the legislature.