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ISSUE NO 31 USEFUL WEBSITES AND DISCUSSION LISTS

AFRIPROMOTE WEB SITE AWARDS FOR CULTURAL EXCELLENCE

The Life in Africa ACE (an award for cultural excellence) was designed to recognize the best of African content on the world wide web, and to help to promote it to as wide an audience as possible. The Life in Africa ACE is one of several free promotional resources now available through AfriPromote! from the Life in Africa Foundation. http://LifeInAfrica.com/AfriPromote/> in association with Balancing Act.

The following websites have just been awarded the Life in Africa Award for Cultural Excellence in the category of AFRICAN STORIES AND TALES. All very different, they are each very interesting and worth having a look at:

Deep in the Bush, Where People Rarely Ever Go http://members.nbci.com/PMartin/liberia/homepage.htm
Using folk tales can be an excellent way to bring African culture alive in the classroom. This lovely site includes a lesson plan for using three Liberian folk tales to teach students about African culture in creative, interactive ways. Even if you're not a teacher, it's worth visiting this site for the folktales and Liberian recipes alone!

Fiction by John Nagamichi Cho
http://pemtropics.mit.edu/~jcho/fiction.html
As a Peace Corps volunteer in West Africa, literary award winner John Nagamichi Cho wrote several short stories about Africa which are featured on this page. John also has some excellent African travel stories at http://pemtropics.mit.edu/~jcho/travel.html

SPECIAL MENTION:
African Proverbs, Sayings and Stories Website
http://www.afriprov.org

Further awards will be made in the following categories: News and information (October 18-27), the arts (November 1-10 November 15-24: religion Nov 29-Dec 8: Photography December 13-22: Travelogues January 3 - 10: African Life . Please send you nominations to info@balancingact-africa.com.

STRENGTHENING HUMAN RIGHTS IN AFRICA

Fahamu undertook an extensive survey of the training needs of human rights and advocacy organisations in eight southern African countries (Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Zambia, Zimbabwe). More than one hundred organisations were interviewed. The study formed the basis upon which the Adilisha project was initiated. This version of the report is due to be published shortly in a book that is part of the UN Non-Governmental Liaison Service (NGLS) "Voices from Africa" series published by UNCTAD. The paper is available as a pdf file at fahamu's website http://www.fahamu.org/ and follow the links to the Social Policy section.

News Update is a free e-letter produced by Balancing Act that covers African internet content and infrastructure developments, It goes out to government, the private sector, education and NGOs. To subscribe, send a message saying "I want to subscribe" to info@balancingact-africa.com