Caledon woman furthers human rights in Africa

Caledon's Rebecca Smith is seen at the gates of Women for Change in Zambia.

A Caledon woman is spending the next six months in Zambia, trying to further human rights.

Cheltenham native Rebecca Smith, is on a student internship through the Canadian International Development Agency's annual International Youth Internship Program. The internships are administered through Canadian nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and give youth aged 18-30 the ability to do six months of paid work in developing countries.

She's working as a human rights program assistant in Lusaka, Zambia. For the next six months, she will be working with Women for Change, a Zambian NGO that focuses on poverty reduction and the promotion of human rights.

"An important area of my work with Women for Change will involve doing workshops on human rights and gender equality with traditional leaders in rural Zambian communities, to give them the skills needed to empower rural citizens and improve their standard of living," she said. "By educating men and women in remote rural areas, Women for Change seeks to give them the skills and knowledge needed to effect positive and sustainable change in their own communities, so that Zambians can better enjoy their civil, social, and economic human rights."

Other areas in which WfC works include assisting orphans and vulnerable children, HIV/AIDS prevention and education, advocacy, and the development of income generating activities in rural areas.

Zambia is a landlocked nation of approximately 11 million people that is located in southern Africa. Surrounded by countries that have experienced civil strife in recent decades, Zambians pride themselves on being a peaceful and democratic country with low levels of violence. Since 2006, Zambia's large copper mining industry has been benefiting from rising world copper prices, attracting many foreign investors including Canadian and Chinese corporations. Today, approximately 70% of Zambians live below the poverty line, and the HIV/AIDS rate is estimated at a devastating 17%, climbing even higher in urban centres. According to a recent study by UNICEF, young women in Zambia are three times more likely to contract HIV than young men.

Zambia qualified for debt relief in 2005 under the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Initiative, but still struggles with challenges such as government corruption and decreasing life expectancy - only 38 years, according to 2004 estimates.

During the next six months, Smith will be sharing both the highlights and the challenges of working in this context with Citizen readers.

"There is much we can learn from other cultures, and programs like this help young Canadians to better understand the world and to develop a sense of interconnectedness and global citizenship. I plan to continue to work in the field of human rights and gender equality in the future, and I am very grateful for this opportunity to gain grassroots field experience," she added.

More information on the sponsoring organizations can be found at www.videa.ca, www.wfc.org.zm, and www.acdi- cida.gc.ca/internships.

As part of her studies at Queen's University, she organized a cross-cultural exchange and spent six weeks studying and volunteering with children with learning disabilities in Nicaragua. After graduating, she moved to Ottawa to do my M.A. International Affairs at the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs at Carleton University. At Carleton, her research interests included development in Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa, as well as peacebuilding, foreign policy development, and gender issues. Smith spent the summer of 2006 doing community education workshops with youth in Guyana with the organization Youth Challenge International. Upon returning from Guyana, she began working for the political communications group AMGP Canada, monitoring and reporting on parliamentary committee meetings. Smith then worked for Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada as a gender equality policy officer, which gave me the opportunity to be a member of the Canadian delegation to the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women in March 2007.