Webinar: January 8, 2014. Emergency Response and Disability for First Responders / Respuesta de Emergencia e Impedimentos para los Equipos de Primera Respuesta

Please feel free to pass this information along to anyone who might be interested.

Emergency Response and Disability for First Responders / Respuesta de Emergencia e Impedimentos para los Equipos de Primera Respuesta

Event Date/Time:

Wednesday, January 8th, 2014

2:00 PM EST - 3:00 PM EST

Location:

Online Webinar

Description:

In order to best assist individuals with disabilities in an emergency situation, first responders must be aware of the preparation needed in serving this community. Flexibility and creativity may be called for in order to insure individuals who have disabilities are able to access emergency services and to do so effectively. This webinar will address the issues of physical, communication, and programmatic access as well as the responders’ need to understand the potential unique challenges facing this segment of the population and how to serve them in a respectful manner. First responders and community emergency preparedness teams will primarily benefit from this presentation, but individuals with disabilities may also find it useful in communicating their needs in an emergency situation.

http://adata.org/event/emergency-response-and-disability-first-responders

Linda

Linda Landers, MPA

Regional Disability Integration Specialist

U. S. Department of Homeland Security

Federal Emergency Management Agency-Region 6

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and Region 6 is firmly committed to providing equal access to its programs, services and materials.  Please contact me if you would like to request an accommodation or to obtain information in alternative formats.  

Emergency Response and Disability for First Responders / Respuesta de Emergencia e Impedimentos para los Equipos de Primera Respuesta

Event Date/Time:

Wednesday, January 8th, 2014

2:00 PM EST - 3:00 PM EST

Location:

Online Webinar

Description:

In order to best assist individuals with disabilities in an emergency situation, first responders must be aware of the preparation needed in serving this community. Flexibility and creativity may be called for in order to insure individuals who have disabilities are able to access emergency services and to do so effectively. This webinar will address the issues of physical, communication, and programmatic access as well as the responders’ need to understand the potential unique challenges facing this segment of the population and how to serve them in a respectful manner. First responders and community emergency preparedness teams will primarily benefit from this presentation, but individuals with disabilities may also find it useful in communicating their needs in an emergency situation.

En Espanol: Respuesta de Emergencia e Impedimentos para los Equipos de Primera Respuesta

Para poder ayudar mejor a las personas con impedimentos en una situación de emergencia, los equipos de primera respuesta deben estar conscientes de la preparación necesaria para atender a esta comunidad. La flexibilidad y la creatividad pueden ser necesarias para asegurar que las personas que tienen impedimentos puedan accesar los servicios de emergencia efectivamente. Este webinar atenderá los asuntos de acceso físico, acceso a la comunicación y acceso programático, así como el hacerle entender a los equipos de primera respuesta los retos potenciales y particulares que enfrenta este segmento de la población y como asistirles de una manera respetuosa. Los equipos comunitarios de preparación para los casos de emergencia y de primera respuesta serán quienes se beneficiarán de esta presentación principalmente, pero las personas con impedimentos pueden encontrarla útil para poder comunicar sus necesidades en una situación de emergencia.

Para inscribirse, visite: http://www.ilr.cornell.edu/edi/register/index.cfm?event=4484  

From the Sponsor:

• Region II - Northeast ADA Center

Target Audience(s):

• People with Disabilities

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• State & Local Government (ADA Title II)
• Other Laws

Registration   Required:        Yes

Cost:                                         Free

Link:                                        http://www.ilr.cornell.edu/edi/register/index.cfm?event=4484

Deadline:                                 Wednesday, January 8, 2014

Fighting Corruption Through Informal Pay-offs

http://www.africanexecutive.com/modules/magazine/articles.php?article=7630&magazine=474

Fighting Corruption Through Informal Pay-offs

The realization of a corrupt free society has become the most difficult and an expensive policy venture in sub-Sahara African countries today. Policy makers and institutions have been rendered incapable when it comes to the fight against corruption. And fifty years down the road, corruption has still remained one of the most outstanding impediments to economic and political developments in sub-Sahara Africa. The extent to which corrupt acts prevail in sub-Saharan Africa versus the low efforts to reduce it, is alarming and hurts the economy as well as the trust of service seekers in public institutions.

In Kenya, corruption has been in the center of political debates for over two decades. But the road to see a corrupt free Kenya has been tedious and dangerous, and the fight is neither on nor dead. We are hanging in between the decision to fight corruption and the political will to institutionalize anti-corruption policies. Although a few efforts have been witnessed, corruption in Kenya has sickly become part of our everyday life. Corrupt public and private sector officials cannot just think of another way of delivering services as bribery has become like a daily medical prescription that without which no service can be delivered. 

Weakest links in anti-corruption approaches

Unfortunately, in as much as it has assisted in operationalizing and defining corruption, the weakest link in anti-corruption efforts lies with its legally bias approach. That is, acts of corruption take place in the most covert manner and it is almost impossible to mobilize evidence that can be valid to prosecute the actors. Thus, the legal protocol needed to prosecute corrupt public officials becomes the undoing of our Anti-Corruption Agencies particularly in the case of reducing rampant petty corruption in the public sector. Whereas, this legal approach is effective in the fight against large scale corruption where procurement flaws can possibly be traced, it poses a challenge towards reducing unrecorded incidences of petty corruption. In addition, public institutions are not working as they are supposed to. So, in as much as, policies against corruption can be good, there are high possibilities that they will be handled by wrong implementers. In other words, the current design of anti-corruption agencies, the approach and policy implementation render anti-corruption efforts unsuccessful in most instances. 

Scholars have argued that petty corruption affects the common citizens more directly than large scale corruption. So even though countries such as Rwanda are said to have seen a little improvement in the fight against corruption, the vice still remains a threat to sustainable and equitable economic and political development. There are also evidences that corruption is still an inherent factor in economic development even though the correlation between the vice and economic development has proved elusive over the years. We, therefore, need specificity in our quest to curb corruption. Efforts should uniquely focus on specific corruption sites where petty corruption is more prevalent. In other words, we must set a target point within the scale of low to grand cases of corruption, and formulate measures that befit each level.

If corruption is very prevalent at the lower levels, then we should come up with specific measures to address this form of corruption as per its level. This is because the nature of corruption is shaped by specific contextual factors. And to avoid the legally laden and generalized anti-corruption measures as well as give attention to details of various nature of corruption, the fight should be contextualized either departmentally or culturally. Because for a long time now, the vagueness in the definition of corruption, and inadequate knowledge on its nature have created confusion on what corruption entails when it comes to its practice.

In most of the sub-Sahara African countries, petty corruption tends to be more prevalent than large scale corruption. This means that a common citizen is further impoverished by prevailing corruption in the public institutions. 

Studies such as; Corruption and Local Governance in Kenya: Public officials versus service-seekers. Investigating low scale corruption in the rural public sector or The Anatomy of Corruption in Kenya: Legal, Political and Socio-Economic Perspectives traces the differentiation between grand and petty corruption in Kenya to weak public institutions. Monitoring mechanisms that can stall occurrences of corruption in the public sector are also either non-existent or disappointingly ineffective. That means, a common citizen is likely to witness an act of corruption every week if not daily. For example, it is very ‘normal’ to see police officers extorting matatu operatives when travelling from Kisumu to Southern Nyanza towns, or see public officials soliciting bribes at the ministry of lands to have a document quickly processed. Put differently, with our weak and inefficient public institutions, services take long to be delivered and thus one must give a payoff to quicken service delivery system. This is an act that experts have referred to as grease the wheels theory of corruption and of which is a reality in most sub-Sahara African countries.

Legalizing greasing the wheels pay-offs

With the realization that greasing the wheels concept is here to stay as long as our institutions are still organized and work as they do, we need to waste no resources trying to redesign the institutions to fight corruption. In line with the view of Professor Susan Rose Ackerman, the government will be saved lots of funds in trying to establish supervisory or monitoring mechanisms if it just legalizes illegal payments made by service seekers to have quick services. This is by taking into consideration the cultural and economic aspects of such pay-offs. In other words, if the government is concerned with prevalent corruption in its institutions, it should just categorize service delivery system. A service-seeker will have to pay more if s/he wants a service delivered within a day or hours. As seen in some European countries, the quicker one calls for the service delivery, the more they will have to pay. But, to protect service seekers from further exploitation, service categorization prices should be put public, and published for consumption by service-seekers in the department or public office in question. Otherwise, the payment may be further inflated by corrupt public officials since they tend to change the nature of corruption depending on the mechanism in place.

Pitfalls and other measures

The categorization of services basing on delivery time will however mean that only those capable of paying for such services will be served at the detriment of those with very low income. Again, it is likely to further deepen inequality in countries such as Kenya or Uganda where such payoffs are quite prevalent. Furthermore, service categorization is likely to have service seekers charged for free services that are supposed to be delivered on spot.

Nonetheless, categorization of services may enable the government to reduce prevalence of illegal payoffs as well as mobilize extra revenue for running its programs and make these services cheaper. The only question is; will public officials who build fortune from these illegal payoffs implement such efforts? Public officials hold the key to either successfulness or failure of government policies and initiatives. And are, therefore, likely to frustrate initiatives they feel threaten their corrupt interests. However, legislation of quick services should not be treated as the means to an end of reducing petty corruption in the public sector. It should be done temporarily or as part of institutional reforms to curb corruption. Thus, to be on a safe side, the government should be able to address issues that go beyond inefficient service delivery or excessive bureaucracy in service delivery at the same time as legalizing illegal pay-offs.

For instance, apart from decongesting the bureaucratic set up, the government should also look into the wage factor, and the extent to which it may frustrate or allow implementation of quick service legislation. Studies indicate that low wages correlate to cases of petty corruption in the public sector. No wonder, the emergence of grease the wheels concept – as a low paid and hungry public official is unlikely to overcome temptations of illegal payoffs from corrupt service-seekers.

The government can also ensure that it has an established and effective e-governance mechanism. E-governance will reduce direct contacts between corrupt service seekers and public officials as well as reduce inconveniencies of the bureaucracy that gives advantage to corrupt actors. Some scholars have suggested that e-governance can be very effective when it comes to reducing petty corruption in government offices. This is because; services such as application for a driving license or renewal of a passport can be made easier when done online. However, the government will need to create an effective and digitalized registration database of its citizens to avoid imposition when it comes to online service delivery. Therefore, through Communications Commission of Kenya, the government will need to ensure that a larger population has a cheap access to internet for e-governance to be effective.

At the same time, anti-corruption agency can also operate a corruption free customer care and toll free hotline services whereby those who report valid cases of corruption are rewarded, and their identities protected. Such services may assist in the legitimization processes of anti-corruption initiatives that tend to be the undoing of anti-corruption efforts in sub-Sahara Africa. And since acts of corruption partly thrives on ignorance, such services should be intensively publicized, especially, the awarding part because consumers are naturally attracted to free things. 

Finally, it should be soberly noted that the fight against corruption is largely dependent on the government’s political will. But, for governments that have low feedback mechanism from the public like Kenya’s, the will to fight corruption is low and anti-corruption policies are simply given lip service approaches. Furthermore, the government’s legitimacy is not rooted on the extent to which it deliver services to the public but rather on its election to power. Hence, in such a scenario anti-corruption struggles can hardly be effective in a country like Kenya until that time that the government will genuinely own the fight against corruption.

By Gedion Onyango

Research Fellow: Centre for Research and Technology Development (RESTECH), Maseno University, Kisumu.

Email: onyangojr@gmail.com

Comment on this article! 

http://www.nih.gov/news/health/dec2013/od-30.htm

Embargoed for Release: Monday, December 30, 2013, 12:00pm

NIH to fund research workforce diversity program

Awards will support creative and transformative approaches to prepare students for successful biomedical research careers

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The National Institutes of Health is releasing three new funding opportunity announcements (FOAs) to develop approaches to engage researchers, especially from backgrounds underrepresented in biomedical sciences, and prepare them to thrive in NIH-funded research careers.

The funding through the Enhancing the Diversity of the NIH-Funded Workforce program will establish a national consortium to develop, implement, and evaluate approaches to encourage individuals to start and stay in biomedical research careers.

Students from underrepresented backgrounds enter early biomedical research training in numbers that reflect the general population but are more likely to exit the training pathways. Substantial research has been conducted to determine the reasons for this and to test interventions on small scales. The new FOAs provide the opportunity for transformation of the biomedical research workforce pipeline through institution-wide, and eventually nationwide, implementation of successful training and mentoring strategies.

“There is a compelling need to promote diversity in the biomedical research workforce,” said NIH Director Francis S. Collins M.D., Ph.D. “A lack of diversity jeopardizes our ability to carry out the NIH mission because innovation and problem solving require diverse perspectives. The future of biomedical research rests on engaging highly talented researchers from all groups and preparing them to be successful in the NIH-funded workforce.”

The diversity program is backed by the NIH Common Fund, which supports programs with the potential to dramatically affect biomedical research by achieving a set of high impact goals within a defined time frame.  The FOAs will establish a consortium of awardees from three integrated initiatives. Awardees will collectively determine hallmarks of success, including core competencies, at each phase of the biomedical career pathway and develop complementary training and mentoring approaches to enable young scientists to meet these hallmarks. Awardees will also test the efficacy of these approaches, and provide flexibility to adjust approaches during the course of the program to maximize impact.  The consortium will disseminate lessons learned, so effective approaches can be adopted by other institutions across the nation.

• The National Research Mentoring Network (NRMN): The NRMN will be a nationwide network of mentors and mentees spanning all disciplines relevant to the NIH mission. The NRMN will address the critical need for increased access to high quality research mentorship and networking opportunities by establishing an interconnected set of skilled mentors linked to mentees across the country. NRMN will also develop best practices for mentoring, provide training opportunities for mentors, and provide professional opportunities for mentees. The goals for mentoring at each career phase will align with the hallmarks of success to be established by the consortium.
• Building Infrastructure Leading to Diversity (BUILD): BUILD will provide support for relatively under-resourced institutions with high concentrations of students from disadvantaged backgrounds to implement transformative approaches to the training of students to undertake biomedical and behavioral research. These approaches will emphasize research opportunities for students, along with additional innovative activities, to enable students to achieve the hallmarks of success at each phase. Awardee institutions will be encouraged to partner with research-intensive institutions to expand research opportunities for their students, to foster networking, and to enrich the training experiences available to students at both institutions.
• The Coordination and Evaluation Center (CEC): CEC will coordinate consortium-wide activities and assess efficacy of the training and mentoring approaches developed by the BUILD and NRMN awardees. The CEC will develop both short- and long-term measures of efficacy, allowing the consortium to continuously gather data and respond accordingly. The CEC will also serve as the focal point for dissemination, sharing consortium progress and lessons learned with the broader biomedical research training and mentoring communities.

“Workforce diversity and inclusion are imperative to optimizing the strength of the NIH research enterprise,” said Roderic I. Pettigrew, Ph.D, M.D., the acting NIH chief officer for scientific workforce diversity and director of the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering. “Indeed, diversity is now well-understood to be fundamental to innovation. These initiatives will strengthen the NIH research enterprise through their efforts to establish more effective ways to engage and train a more diverse and inclusive body of researchers and future scientific leaders.”

It is anticipated that the program will fund up to 10 BUILD primary institutions, one NRMN and one CEC, contingent upon the availability of funds and receipt of a sufficient number of meritorious applications. Applications for the FOAs are due March 18, 2014, with awards to be announced in September 2014. Additional information, including important eligibility criteria for applicant institutions and organizations, can be found in each FOA.

“We look forward to supporting institutions in the development of novel and transformative approaches to student engagement, training, and mentoring,” said James M. Anderson, M.D., Ph.D., director of the Division of Program Coordination, Planning, and Strategic Initiatives, which oversees the NIH Common Fund. “Successful approaches will be widely disseminated, so that institutions beyond those directly supported by the program may adopt and implement the most effective strategies. We anticipate that this dissemination and widespread adoption will have a broad and sustained impact on scientists from all backgrounds.”

In fall 2013, the NIH issued six-month planning grant awards for the BUILD and NRMN initiatives. Planning grant awardees are assessing research resources and training programs already in place at their institutions and formulating plans to extend beyond those resources. Additionally, the planning grants are supporting capacity-building and infrastructure needs assessments. More than $2.7 million was given to 15 BUILD planning grant awardees and more than $1.3 million was given to seven NRMN planning grant awardees. More information about these awards can be found onhttp://commonfund.nih.gov/diversity/fundedresearch.aspx.

To read about the NIH Advisory Committee to the Director Working Group on Diversity in the Biomedical Workforce, visithttp://acd.od.nih.gov/dbr.htm.

The Enhancing the Diversity of the NIH-Funded Workforce program is funded through the NIH Common Fund, and managed by the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities in partnership with the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.

The NIH Common Fund encourages collaboration and supports a series of exceptionally high-impact, trans-NIH programs. Common Fund programs are designed to pursue major opportunities and gaps in biomedical research that no single NIH Institute or Center could tackle alone, but that the agency as a whole can address to make the biggest impact possible on the progress of medical research. Additional information about the NIH Common Fund can be found athttp://commonfund.nih.gov.

About the National Institutes of Health (NIH): NIH, the nation's medical research agency, includes 27 Institutes and Centers and is a component of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. NIH is the primary federal agency conducting and supporting basic, clinical, and translational medical research, and is investigating the causes, treatments, and cures for both common and rare diseases. For more information about NIH and its programs, visit www.nih.gov.

NIH...Turning Discovery Into Health®

UMOJA. Thursday, December 26, 2013. Christmas Deluge Brings Disaster to Eastern Caribbean

http://www.ipsnews.net/2013/12/christmas-deluge-brings-disaster-eastern-caribbean/

Christmas Deluge Brings Disaster to Eastern Caribbean

By Desmond Brown

A cleric prays with Colleen James in Cane Grove, St. Vincent hours before it was confirmed that James' sister had died in the floodwaters. Her two-year-old daughter is still missing. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

KINGSTOWN, St. Vincent, Dec 26 2013 (IPS) - Colleen James arrived in St. Vincent and the Grenadines from Canada two days before Christmas hoping to enjoy the holiday season with her family. Now she’s getting ready to bury her two-year-old daughter and 18-year-old sister.

“I never do nothing wrong. I always do good,” a dazed James told IPS as she looked out across the flood damage occasioned by a slow-moving low-level trough that brought torrential rains, death and destruction not only to St. Vincent and the Grenadines but St. Lucia and Dominica.

"We looked across and saw people floating down a river." -- Curt Clifton

Disaster officials have so far recovered nine bodies and the search continues for three more people reported missing and feared dead.

In St. Lucia, five people were killed, including Calvin Stanley Louis, a police officer who died after a wall fell on him as he tried to assist people who had become stranded by the floods.

The trough system resulted in 171.1 mm of rainfall within a 24-hour period ending at 8.50 a.m. on Dec. 25.

Trinidad’s Prime Minister Kamla Persad Bissessar has requested that the Office of Disaster Preparedness and Management (ODPM) mobilise food and emergency supplies to be sent to St Lucia.

The CEO of ODPM, Dr. Stephen Ramroop, has contacted the Deputy Prime Minister of Saint Lucia Philip J. Pierre and received a list of items that were urgently required, including canned goods, biscuits, infant formula, water, mattresses, blankets, hygiene kits, disaster kits and first aid kits.

The ODPM expects tp ship two 40-foot containers to Saint Lucia by 1.00 p.m. local time Thursday.

No requests have come from the other affected islands as yet.

St. Vincent and the Grenadines Prime Minister Dr. Ralph Gonsalves, who has cut short his holiday in London, is due here on Thursday.

The body of 18-year-old Kesla James was recovered midmorning Wednesday, Dec. 25, 2013. Credit: Desmond Brown     /IPS

Curt Clifton told IPS he was visiting a friend in the Cane Grove community on the outskirts of the capital, Kingstown, when they “looked across by the neighbour and saw people floating down a river” and rushed to their aid. They managed to rescue James and one of her daughters.

The floods have caused widespread damage in all three islands. Roads, bridges and in some cases, houses, have been swept away and the telecommunications companies, as well as public utilities, are urging patience as they assess the situation.

“We have seen quite an extent of damage, particularly from the gutters coming down, bringing a lot of debris on the road,” Montgomery Daniel, minister of housing, informal human settlements, lands and surveys, told IPS.

“It is going to take some time for us to clean it up. We are going to need the assistance of heavy-duty equipment,” he said.

Sixty-two people were left homeless in the wake of the flooding.

Health officials have also urged residents to be wary of diseases associated with the floods as in many cases pipeborne water has been disrupted.

Dominica’s Environment Minister Kenneth Darroux, a surgeon by profession, is hoping that the island’s plea to the World Bank for financial assistance will help the island better prepare in the long-term for the devastating effects of climate change.

Darroux is spearheading efforts by the Dominica government to secure 100 million euro from the World Bank to fund the country’s Strategic Programme for Climate Resilience (SPCR).

“Discussions are at an advanced stage,” Darroux, who now serves as minister of environment, natural resources, physical planning and fisheries, told IPS. The funds will be part loan and part grant.

Darroux noted that “the traditional climate change and environmental issues were not really producing the results that the government wanted,” adding that climate change should be viewed as a development issue rather than just isolated changes in the climate.

The World Bank-assisted programme is scheduled to begin in 2014 and will address key issues in various parts of the country. These include capacity-building for adaptation to climate change at a cost of 3.7 million euro; construction of storm drains at a cost of 5.2 million euro; agroforestry, food security and soil stabilisation at a cost of 6.0 million euro; and road works totaling 56 million euro.

Dominica has so far received 21 million dollars from the climate investment fund, 12 million of which is grant financing and nine million is “highly concessionary financing”, Darroux said.

The country also expects a further 17 million dollars from the Pilot Programme for Climate Resilience (PPCR) and the Disaster Vulnerability Reduction Project (DVRP), which is a regional project being undertaken by the World Bank which is running simultaneously with the PPCR.

“This investment package will seek to begin addressing the deficiency that was identified in the SPCR,” Darroux told IPS.

“I am confident that the implementation of this project will show the world that the people of Dominica stand ready to play out part in the climate change fight.”

The PPCR is a collaborative effort between Dominica, Haiti, Grenada, Jamaica, St. Lucia and St. Vincent and the Grenadines.

Each island has a national programme and the Caribbean Community Climate Change Centre (5Cs) serves as a focal point for the regional tracking of activities.

The issue of climate finance is a major one for Caribbean countries and several decisions taken at the 19th session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP 19) in Warsaw, Poland, this past November are of particular relevance to the region.

The Adaptation Fund Board (AFB) reached its target of mobilising 100 million dollars to fund six projects. These include a project in Belize, which had been submitted by PACT, one of only two National Implementing Entities (NIE) in the Caribbean accredited to the Adaptation Fund.

The other NIE is in Jamaica, which has also received funding for its project.

The Green Climate Fund (GCF) was also operationalized at COP 19. Developed countries have been asked to channel a significant portion of their 100-billion-dollars-per-annum pledge for climate change through the GCF.

The Board of the GCF has been tasked with ensuring that there is an equitable balance of funding for both adaptation and mitigation. All developing countries are eligible for funding from the GCF.

UMOJA. Thursday, Dec 26: Contest winner Mandla Maseko set to become first black African in space

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/23/mandla-maseko-first-black-african-space

Contest winner Mandla Maseko set to become first black African in space

DJ from Mabopane township near Pretoria will be blasted 62 miles into orbit in 2015 after winning space academy competition

• David Smith in Johannesburg
• 
  
• theguardian.com, Monday 23 December 2013 09.33 EST
• 
  

A view of Earth from space. Photograph: Nasa/Corbis

Born and raised in a township, Mandla Maseko has spent his life at the mercy of the heavens. "Once it rains, the lights go out," the 25-year-old said. "I do know the life of a candle."

But from this humblest of launchpads, Maseko is poised to defy the laws of physical and political gravity by becoming the first black African in space.

The DJ is among 23 young people who saw off 1 million other entrants from around the world to emerge victorious in the Lynx Apollo Space Academy competition. Their prize is to be blasted 62 miles into orbit aboard a Lynx mark II shuttle in 2015.

"It's crazy," said Maseko, the son of a toolmaker and cleaning supervisor. "It hasn't really sunk in yet. I'm envious of myself.

"I'm not trying to make this a race thing but us blacks grew up dreaming to a certain stage. You dreamed of being a policeman or a lawyer but you knew you won't get as far as pilot or astronaut. Then I went to space camp and I thought, I can actually be an astronaut."

He will be the second South African in space following Mark Shuttleworth, a white entrepreneur and philanthropist who bought a seat on a Russian Soyuz capsule for £12m and spent eight days on board the international space station in 2002.

Maseko's father, who grew up in such poverty that he got his first pair of shoes when he was 16, was determined that his children would never go hungry. Maseko and his four younger siblings were brought up in a simple brick house with access to electricity and running water. "I don't remember going to bed without having eaten," he said. "My dad provided for us. He is my hero, and then Nelson Mandela comes after."

The young Maseko's imagination was fired by the science fiction series Star Trek and films such as Armageddon and Apollo 13. "I thought, that looks fun. No matter what life throws at you, you can use it and come out on top. If you get lemons, you must make lemon juice."

Maseko does not drink or smoke, does not have a girlfriend and lives with his parents in Mabopane township near the capital, Pretoria. He enrolled as a part-time civil engineering student but had to drop out due to lack of funds. Then this year he spotted an advert for a chance to go into space. "I was in the right place at the right time and in the right frame of mind."

The competition required him to send in a picture of himself, so he got a friend to photograph him in mid-air after jumping off a wall. It also asked him to explain his motivation. "I want to defy the laws of gravity," he answered.

He was among three South Africans – one black, one white, one of Indian origin – selected from a field of 85,000 hopefuls. "We wanted to show SouthAfrica is way past the colour of our skin. We are the human race."

In the first week of December they went to the US to join more than 100 international contestants at a space camp in Orlando, Florida. The challenges included assault courses, skydiving, air combat and G-force training, building and launching a rocket, and a written aptitude test. The judges included the astronaut Buzz Aldrin. "I got to shake his hand three times," Maseko recalled. "I was like, oh, is this you? He said yes, it is me!"

Aldrin is among 12 people – all American, all men and all white – to have walked on the moon. But Africa has growing space ambitions: the majority of the Square Kilometre Array, the world's biggest and most powerful radio telescope, will be spread across South Africa and eight other countries on the continent.

Maseko, whose Twitter profile shows him in a spacesuit, is aware of his own symbolism nearly two decades after the dismantling of racial apartheid. "I'm a township boy and I'm doing this for the typical township boy who wasn't born with a silver spoon," he said. "I'll be the first black South African and the first black African to go into space. When you think of the firsts, the first black presidents – Barack Obama, Nelson Mandela – just to know your name will be written with those people is unbelievable.

"South Africa has come a long way. We have reached a stage where we are equal and we are one. Next year is the 20th anniversary of democracy and what better way to celebrate than sending the first black South African into space?"

Certification Process

We're Certifiable! Creating a Certification Program

   

By Dave Lounsbury

Organizations develop certification programs when they want to create preference in the marketplace for certain types of people or technology. Certification validates the efforts of people who have invested their time and energy to learn how to implement a certain standard or best practice. And certifications are a very powerful tool for driving market adoption of a standard or skill set.

But how do organizations — including for-profit companies, nonprofit consortia and others — determine that they need a certification program in the first place? Moreover, what factors should an organization consider before putting a certification program together?

Key Considerations
There are a number of considerations an organization should undertake before setting up a certification program. The chief ones are the program’s foundation, scale, legal issues, pricing and the need to anticipate problems before they appear.

• Foundation: Building a strong foundation is crucial because, by their nature, certifications are intended to alter the way people buy and sell goods and services, so a solid sense of the program’s goal must be present from the beginning. The foundation should establish the standard competence level.
• Scale: When setting up a certification program, an organization should expect to interact with an entirely new set of customers and, if it’s a consortium, perform an entirely different set of services. The organization will be opening itself up to the possibility of interacting with anyone who wants to be in its marketplace, not just its existing members. Therefore, it must consider and anticipate the potential reach of its program and how far and wide it would like it to spread. The organization should consider some of the following questions: How large a program do we want to implement? How many people can we feasibly put through the process? Can we promote the certification to a larger group of people? Can we create and maintain a registry of who is certified?
• Legal issues: A robust certification program will offer legal guarantees of conformance. The end goal is for the organization to minimize legal risk while establishing a program that has sufficient teeth to impact the market. It can be helpful in this arena to use a third-party consulting group, since they typically have the experience and know-how to help ensure legal compliance.
• Pricing: An oft-overlooked consideration when establishing a certification program is pricing. Companies don’t want their programs to be priced too high because the certification should be as widely available as possible. Too low of a price, however, makes the program simply a rubber stamp and will not help people identify the right practices in the market — nor will it drive revenue for the organization.
• A mechanism for problem solving: During the certification process, an organization can most certainly expect a problem or two to arise. It could be that a vendor or piece of equipment did not pass a test. Perhaps there’s a problem in communicating the data to the certification agency. Or it could be that there is an issue with the underlying standard that makes the certification process imprecise. In other words, anticipate problems and exceptions to the rule! It’s extremely important that organizations have a mechanism in place to handle exceptions in a timely fashion.

Using Third-Party Providers
Given the above considerations, it may make financial and legal sense — as well as save time — to engage a third party to help set up your certification program. In addition to providing for a shared-cost infrastructure — whereby your organization benefits from pre-established processes used by other companies that have gone through the same experience — an independent, vendor-neutral third party also can help with planning for the evolution of the certification.

A certification must be able to stand the test of the marketplace and evolve over time. Feedback on how to evolve the program will most certainly come from the people who are implementing the standard and who work with it on a daily basis. This feedback is invaluable for growing and evolving the standard so that it continues to meet the needs of the marketplace. Organizations should plan to adapt the certification to the changing demands of the marketplace.

Methods of Certification
There are numerous ways in which organizations can execute certification processes. It all depends on what they are certifying and their market objectives.

For example, when certifying people — as opposed to technologies — the best programs often use a combination of written examination and in-person evaluation. This can be preferential over using a written test as it allows for a more comprehensive assessment and also takes into account experience gained over the course of an individual’s career.
On the technology side, certifying methods can range widely. A word of caution: When certifying technologies, people often get hung up on the complexity of the testing process. But it is only one component. When testing and certifying programs in the IT world, there are two salient facts to keep in mind:

1. No test has complete coverage. You can never test all of a technology’s tasks or possible interactions. The test will never tell you the complete story.
2.  It is impossible to test quality at the end of a manufacturing process. Quality has to be assessed throughout the process, and the earlier you start doing quality assessments, the less expensive it will be to deploy a quality product.

Companies should incorporate testing or conformance checks as far upstream in the development process as possible. The Open Group’s Collaboration Services branch has seen numerous examples of organizations using third-party testing to validate processes at the end of the development cycle. This hinders market adoption because when there are glitches along the way, you have to go back to the drawing board to weed them out. This ultimately slows down time to market and increases product cost.

Finally, bear in mind that it is more important that people agree to conform and stand behind the certification program or standard. The strength of that guarantee is always more important than the testing itself.

Benefits of Certification
The chief benefit of certification is simple: A certification program creates a preference in the marketplace for people who have taken the time to do it right. When people or organizations have invested in themselves, their skills and their experience, it pays off. For individuals in particular, becoming certified can be invaluable because it provides portable proof of their abilities.

Ultimately, developing a well-thought-out certification program helps an organization’s employees, customers and members advance the organization’s interests, as well as their own. It is arguably the best way to create confidence in the marketplace.


Dave Lounsbury is vice president of The Open Group’s Collaboration Services, which assists companies and organizations in creating and governing collaborations; guiding the development of standards; and the use of standards and best practices to impact the market  and improve operations. He can be reached at editor@certmag.com.

AL SHARPTON'S CHICAGO TOWN HALL ERUPTS INTO REVOLT AGAINST MACHINE POLITICS

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/12/21/Al-Sharpton-s-Chicago-Town-Hall-Erupts-into-Revolt-against-Machine-Politics

Copyright © 2013 Breitbart

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On Thursday, a town hall meeting hosted by Al Sharpton and the National Action Network to address gun violence exploded into a revolt against “Chicago Machine” politics, Mayor Rahm Emanuel, and the aldermen in City Hall, with panel and audience members calling to vote out their elected officials. 

One 82-year-old preacher even called for “Tea Party” style meetings in some of Chicago’s south side communities such as Altgeld Gardens and Trumbull Park.

“This was a historic event,” Paul McKinley of V.O.T.E. (Voices of the Ex-Offender) and former 2nd Congressional District GOP nominee to replace Jesse Jackson, Jr. told Breitbart News. “Not because of Al Sharpton coming to town,” he continued. “This was first time since electing Mayor Harold Washington in the eighties that all of these grassroots groups and community organizers have come together under one roof to talk about the problems plaguing our community.”

While the stated goal for Sharpton was to bring the many different groups together to discuss solutions to the city’s violence epidemic, he may not have gotten the types of responses he was looking for. Calls for more gun control laws and getting guns off the streets were nonexistent and not mentioned by residents throughout the session.

Instead, attendees offered solutions addressing the problems facing their community as a whole rather than just taking on “gun violence” itself. Audience members addressed the need for jobs and solving the foreclosure crisis plaguing Chicago’s south and west sides. Perhaps the loudest message—and one that Reverend Al or the Chicago media have yet to report on—echoed by several different people in attendance as well as panel members was that it is time for the black community to start voting differently.

“The manner in which we have been voting needs to change,” Wendy Pearson, an activist against Chicago school closings, told the room. “I’m here to say to you that we have been trained to vote in a specific manner… we need to start looking at the manner in which our elected officials have been voting… if they have not voted in a manner that is beneficial to you, yours, and your community, then you need to start voting them out.”

McKinley told the room, “Stop blaming just anybody for the violence in the city of Chicago. Blame the right people, not just white people, but the right people. Because it’s not just white folks a part of this, but it is on the fifth floor. The fifth floor took your schools, the fifth floor just took your jobs that he said that he gave to the ex-offender… and every single alderman was a part of this criminal process.”

McKinley called on President Obama to help the grassroots by discontinuing aid and government grants that go through Chicago’s political machine to “name-brand-blue-ribbon-negro-organizations” such as the NAACP and Urban League. McKinley told Breitbart News those groups “are poverty pimps, and are part of the problem and not the solution.”