Overseas Aid Committee of the Council of Ministers Annual Report 2005 - 2006 External Relations Division Government Office, Bucks Road Douglas, Isle of Man IM1 3PN December 2006 Price: £5.30 GD 037/06 Price Band F Overseas Aid Committee of the Council of Ministers Woman farmer with her new goat. © Africa Now Annual Report 2005 - 2006 Contents Introduction 1 Development aid project reports by charity or individual Action Village India 2 Africa Now 3 AGROFOREP 4 Ashram International 5 BasicNeeds UK Trust 6 BookPower 7 British Red Cross 8 CAFOD 10 Care International UK 12 Children in Crisis 13 Christian Aid 14 CINI UK 16 Concern Universal 17 Concern Worldwide 18 Dhaka Ahsania Mission 20 Dr Naranchimeg Jamiyanjamts 21 Excellent Development 22 Farm Africa 23 Grace Third World Fund 24 Gwalior Children’s Hospital Charity 25 Habitat for Humanity 26 Hand of Hope 27 Harvest Help 28 HelpAge International 30 ICT (International Children’s Trust) 31 Ingwavuma Orphan Care 32 International Care and Relief (ICR) 33 International Childcare Trust 34 International Service 35 Jeevika (formerly India Development Group) 36 Karen Hilltribes Trust 37 1 Karuna Trust 38 Koru Hospital Fund 38 LEPRA 39 The Leprosy Mission 40 LINK Community Development 41 Manx Landmine Action Appeal 42 Manx – Romanian Projects Trust 43 Marie Stopes International 44 Medecins du Monde 45 Medical Aid for Palestinians 46 Merlin 47 Mission Aviation Fellowship (MAF) 48 Mullavitu Hospital 49 Namaste Children’s House 50 Ockenden International 51 Out of Afrika 53 Plan UK 56 Powerful Information 58 Practical Action (formerly ITDG) 59 Progressio (formerly CIIR) 60 Save the Children 61 SCIAF 62 Sense International 63 Shimwell–Mayo, Mrs Pamela 64 Sightsavers International 65 SOS Sahel 66 Sunarma UK 67 Target TB 68 Task Brazil 69 TB Alert 70 Tearfund 72 Tools for Solidarity 73 Toybox 74 Traidcraft 75 Tree Aid 76 UNICEF 77 Village Aid 78 VSO (Volunteer Services Overseas) 79 2 War on Want 80 WaterAid 81 Womankind Worldwide 82 World Medical Fund 83 Emergency aid project reports by charity British Red Cross 8 DEC (Disasters Emergency Committee) 19 Harvest Help 28 Ockenden International 52 Oxfam 54 Plan UK 56 Appendices Appendix A – Expenditure of the Overseas Aid Committee 2005-06 84 Appendix B – Breakdown of expenditure by charity 85 Appendix C – Breakdown of expenditure by country 91 Appendix D – Breakdown of expenditure by region 98 Appendix E – Breakdown of expenditure by aid category 99 Appendix F – Remit and application guidelines 2005-06 101 Appendix G – Tynwald motions of December 2004 and January 2005 105 List of abbreviations 106 Images and logos are used within this report with the kind permission of their respective copyright holders. 3 Introduction The Overseas Aid Committee of the Council of Ministers is the Isle of Man Government body with responsibility for the funding of development and emergency aid projects. In the 2005-06 financial year the Committee received a budget of £1 million, a significant milestone in the Committee’s history and a sign of the Isle of Man Government’s commitment to overseas aid. Following the Asian Earthquake in July 2005 the Committee also channelled a further £75,000 of the Chief Minister’s emergency aid payments1 to several charities operating in the region. This report therefore covers total overseas aid expenditure of £1,075,000 for the 2005-06 financial year, of which £850,000 was used to fund development aid projects and £225,000 for emergency aid projects. This record level of expenditure allowed the Committee to fund its greatest ever number of projects. In the 2005-06 financial year the Committee gave grants supporting 90 overseas aid projects from 77 different organisations and individuals. Of these 79 were development aid projects while the remaining 11 were emergency aid projects. The majority of these projects were in Africa (44) and Asia (35) with the remainder located in South America (7), Europe (2), North America (1) and worldwide (1). Of the development aid projects supported by the Committee 27 were fully funded, 45 were part-funded and 7 received £ for £ funding. This £ for £ funding continued to be a significant fundraising incentive, encouraging the contribution of donations totalling £68,303 from the Island’s public in support of these projects. The Asian Earthquake had a significant impact on the overall level of emergency aid expenditure. From grants provided by the Committee and emergency aid payments from the Chief Minister, four charities received grants totalling £125,000 for the provision of emergency aid supplies for the survivors of this disaster. The remaining £100,000 was used to fund emergency aid projects for famine relief in various countries across Africa; provide emergency shelter for the people evicted from the slums in Zimbabwe and emergency aid for the victims of Hurricane Stan in the Caribbean. However, these natural disasters account for only a small amount of the preventable deaths each year. Millions of people die due to diseases such as HIV/AIDs and malaria, or in areas of conflicts like the Middle East and the Darfur region of Sudan. The Committee would particularly like to recognise the hard work and sacrifice of the international aid agencies and their staff working in these afflicted areas. This report details the funding given to charities and individuals working on projects alleviating poverty and supporting emergency aid efforts around the world on behalf of the Island’s Government and its public. From the information set out in this report it is clear that these projects have made a significant difference to the lives of some of the world’s most vulnerable people. The Committee is grateful for the increase of around 350% to its budget over the last five years and hopes for future substantial increases so as to reduce the impact of the world’s biggest killer – poverty. Chairman ……………………………… Mr G H Waft BSc (Hons) MLC Karl Cubbon Secretary December 2006 1 As per the Tynwald resolution of January 2005 the Chief Minister is empowered to make emergency aid payments of up £100,000 in relation to any one disaster and no more than £200,000 in any one financial year. See Appendix G. 1 Promoting the lives of the poor and women, Maduranthagam region, Tamil Nadu, India Action Village India (AVI) was originally founded in 1988 as Friends of ASSEFA to support the work of the Association of Sarva Seva Farms. The name subsequently changed as the charity took on more partners and today AVI works with six organisations across India. AVI is a partner led organisation with the projects it supports being devised and managed by the locally based organisations. These partners in rural India seek to work with the most marginalised, creating village self-sufficiency to reduce the flight to cities and promote non-violent change. For this project AVI worked with its original partner organisation ASSEFA, an organisation that has now been operating for over 35 years and has been active in the Maduranthagam region for the past decade. AVI approached the Committee with this project after its partner organisation had identified deficiencies in the impact of livelihood development programmes in this region. To address these issues ASSEFA devised a three year project aimed at strengthening ongoing development programmes through a mobile school as well as providing small scale infrastructure for the development of an effective milk marketing scheme. To help this project continue the Committee provided a grant of £8,000 towards the overall budget of £22,826 for the second year. Some of the funding provided ensured the education in dairy enterprise, vegetable cultivation and small business management to over 2,000 women. The remaining funding was used to help purchase mill churns and coolers to help increase income generation from dairy produce. In co-ordination with other aspects of ASSEFA’s work in the region, this project has helped make a significant improvement to the abilities of families to generate income and lift themselves out of poverty. However, although it has exceeded targets in many areas, some of the project’s work was delayed as ASSEFA staff concentrated on providing emergency aid following the Tsunami. This led to an under spend in the project’s overall budget which will be used towards the project’s final year of activities. Further information on this charity can be found at www.actionvillageindia.org.uk 2 Improved dairy goat project, Kenya Africa Now was established in 1981 with the aim of tackling poverty in Africa through helping small-scale producers and promoting ethical trade. Today Africa Now has established operations in Kenya, Zimbabwe, Zambia and Namibia. On the recommendation of a former Manx resident the charity approached the Committee for the first time with a request for funding for the above project. This project was proposed as the charity had noted that, from its work in the area, the livelihoods of the people of the region were under threat due to land degradation. Through rearing goats the region’s population could generate further income without further land degradation. The Committee agreed to the allocation of a grant of £10,000 towards the project’s overall budget of £24,992. This funding, combined with grants from other organisations, enabled the charity to purchase and distribute 30 goats to farmers in the region. These farmers were chosen by a technical committee formed to help manage the project. In addition to a goat, each farmer received training in goat rearing and dairy loan procedures. The latter was important as each goat generates a substantial amount of milk that raises income for the farmer. This income from milk sales, plus later earnings from the sale of kids, enabled the farmers to generate reliable earnings all year around.