California Conservative

Women working for women’s welfare

While dirt-covered construction workers toil to rebuild Iraq’s decimated infrastructure, two Iraqi-born women more accustomed to “basic black with pearls”, are busy erecting a different type of foundation for their female counterparts in Iraq. Their work may take place out of the limelight, yet both are highly determined in their endeavors and dedicated to realizing their goals. The first woman, Dr. Azhar Al-Shakhly leads the Iraqi State Ministry for Woman Affairs. The previous government established the office that, unlike most ministries, does not have a budget.
The other woman, Azza Humadi is the Women’s Issue Coordinator for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Gulf Region Division (GRD). Through the GRD’s work funded with Iraq Relief and Reconstruction Fund (IRRF) monies, many Iraqi women-owned businesses have been highly successful in the Iraq reconstruction efforts. Humadi contributes to this accomplishment and has assumed the lead in establishing an Iraqi women’s database with over 200 registered, women-owned businesses.
She also regularly meets with 250 Iraqi women’s organizations and other non-government offices to enhance women’s participation in Iraq reconstruction. Additionally, she hosted a series of three highly successful Contracting Outreach Conferences and two round-table meetings for women during 2005. The word quickly spread about the Outreach Conferences and participation rose from 120 at the first conference, to more than 400 at the last conference held.

Read the entire article.

More Sewers for Mosul

In a city with a population over 1.75 million, sewer upgrade projects seem to come in small steps. Most residents may not even notice the improvement unless it is their street that just received the sewer install. That is the case in a subdivision neighborhood within the largest city of northern Iraq, Mosul. A new pipe has been buried which carries away the waste from 6,000 residents of the neighborhood. The only evidence of the activity is a stretch of new pavement down the middle of the road.

Bit by bit, these types of projects are changing living conditions in Iraq. This isn’t the time to get antsy.

Cross-post at LetFreedomRing

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 2nd, 2006 at 12:54 pm and is filed under Author: Gary Gross, Iraq, Military. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.