Wrecking Ball

The sculpture on the left is in one of the fountains in Sofia, Bulgaria. Look at the balance! It was beautiful to look at. I love public art, even if it is just a giant clothespin like the sculpture in Philadelphia, pictured right.

Our meeting yesterday was very interesting and included the Ambassadors from the Netherlands and the Hellenic Republic, and a US organization that trains governments in how democracy works, i.e. holding committee meetings/parliamentary procedure (desperately needed, I might add), developing political parties that can actually compete with each other, etc. As it turns out, there is a women's political participation initiative coming up in time for the municipal elections in 2009 and I think I would do an excellent job helping out on this project. I introduced myself to the Director of the organization and he gave me his card so hopefully he will respond to my email (which I will send later today). Keep your fingers crossed. I imagine I would travel around to the rural parts of Macedonia to meet with community leaders and women as part of the job that I have created in my head. I also think it is important to get the youth involved in politics in order to bring some changes to how the parties work. I can completely understand why people are so disenchanted with politics and political parties here. The parties are perceived as corrupt and only out to serve/protect their own members. I don't know if the parties are ideologically based the way they are in the US. I guess I have some research to do. At least I know the 4 largest parties (2 Macedonian, 2 Albanian) and I understand, on a surface level, the split within the Albanian community. So we'll see what happens.

Today our manager from Bratislava comes, hurrah! Tomorrow is when my office and the regional manager actually discuss my baby, the women's economic rights program. I was walking with my new supervisor, Asya, to the meeting yesterday and we were talking about women's issues (surprise!). I told her about what I want to do, what I believe, etc. and she told me I am in the right place, working for UNIFEM. I know I just wrote about the women's political participation job, but if I could have it my way, I would just be hired by my office to continue to develop and manage our women's economic rights program. I know that is impossible, but I really like it here. I feel like full-fledged member of UNIFEM and our office team, even though I am a temporary intern.

Ok, back to the National Action Plan for Gender Equality. Do you see a theme? National Action Plan on...all these NAPs (National Action Plans) remind me of Stalin's five-year plans a bit, at least in terms of the time period and how there is a NAP for everything...I applaud the efforts to lay out plans, however, I am not sure how helpful the plans are when the indicators are vague. That being said, I have yet to see a NAP on Gender Equality or something similar in the US. We can debate if the NAPs provide some level of accountability or just provide the government with the answer of "we're working on it, we have a NAP" at a later time.