Activism Alerts - June 2006

• Who Knows About Cloth Diapers? [1]
• Help House of Babies [2]
• Tell Marketers to Ditch BusRadio! [3]
• FGM Hits Home [4]

Who Knows About Cloth Diapers?

When you first consider cloth diapers, you need a mentor. Many of us find neighbors, friends, or online support to answer our questions and encourage us. These supporters are usually our peers. But how did mothers learn to cloth diaper their new babies in the past? They didn't reinvent diapers with each child and every generation. They passed on the knowledge from grandmother to mother to daughter. So, who knows about cloth diapers? Your grandmother should know.

The Real Diaper Association [5] (RDA) is sponsoring a year-long project called Your Grandmother Should Know, collecting interviews and oral histories from our grandmothers, mothers, and any older friend who remembers how cloth diapering used to be done. RDA members are encouraged to participate by recording interviews, which will then be collected into one archive. Information gathered will be incorporated into RDA educational materials, as well as a larger oral history of cloth diapers.

The RDA doesn't believe knowledge of cloth diapers was ever lost, and knows that some of the most interesting information is still available, from our elders. Ask your grandmother about cloth diapers, and then share what you find with the RDA.

For more details, please check out the Project Guidelines [6]. If you use (or have used) cloths diapers, and are not yet a member of RDA, click here [7] to find out how and why to join this excellent, grass-roots organization.

Help House of Babies

Production for House of Babies on Discovery Health Channel has been completed for the 26 episodes of season one, according to Mary Ann Phillips, Vice President of Video Arts Studios.

As Mothering told you in February [8], this reality series follows the stories of midwives, students, and families as they experience the day to day joy and drama of natural childbirth at the Miami Maternity Center, in Miami, FL. Although the show has had good viewer response, the series has not yet been contracted for a second season.

House of Babies offers a prime opportunity to help educate a large audience about natural childbirth. Discovery Health Channel has a comments form that can be completed in just a few minutes. If you would like to see new episodes of House of Babies and a second season, please send your comments to this address: http://extweb.discovery.com/viewerrelations [9].

Tell Marketers to Ditch BusRadio!

The Washington Post reported [10] last week that a new company, BusRadio [11], plans to put radios with advertising on school buses. Every hour of programming will contain 8 minutes of ads. The ads will target children as young as six.

In September, BusRadio says it will advertise to captive audiences of schoolchildren in California, New York, Illinois, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts.

There are two obvious problems with BusRadio.

• It is wrong to force captive audiences of children to listen to advertising.
• Schools shouldn't discourage children from doing homework, relaxing or interacting socially on school buses.

Help create a lot of static for BusRadio. Let's stop the salesmen before they board the bus.

Sigma & Partners [12] is providing the venture capital for BusRadio. Click here [13] to tell them that they shouldn't fund BusRadio or any other project that forces schoolchildren to listen to advertising.

And click here [14] to tell your governor and state legislators to expel BusRadio from every school in your state.

Source: www.commercialalert.org [15]

FGM Hits Home

June 12th and 13th, Santa Fe will play honored host to some of the world's most prominent figures in the courageous and fierce fight against Female Genital Mutilation.

-Agnes Pareyio: United Nations in Kenya Person of the Year, the founder of the first African safe house for girls fleeing FGM

-Dr. Isatou Touray: the Secretary General for GAMCOTRAP, the Gambian Committee on Traditional Practices.

-Faiza Mohamed: director of the international women's rights organization, Equality Now, Nairobi office.

-Taina Bien-Aime: director of Equality Now's New York office.

Mothering magazine staffers Candace Walsh and Sally Blakemore were lucky to meet these women in Nairobi last October, during Equality Now's Annual Meeting of the Fund for Grassroots Activism to End FGM. Now, these modern-day heroines are here on Mothering's home turf, with an array of events that you can participate in even if you aren't in the area.

Monday, June 12th, at 6 p.m., at Santa Fe's Center for Contemporary Arts (CCA), 1050 Old Santa Fe Trail), an opening reception (featuring the marimba band Kumusha, food, and drink) will be followed by a screening of two short films about the activists' struggle to end FGM in Africa. The activists will take the stage in a riveting panel discussion afterwards.

Tuesday, June 13th, at 6 p.m., also at CCA, the film Moolade will be screened. Moolade is a feature film set in a small African village, about a strong-willed woman willing to stand up in opposition to harmful tradition, and protect young village girls from FGM. A discussion with the activists, and a closing reception, will follow the screening.

Suggested donation to each event is $10+, sliding scale.

Not in New Mexico? Go online and listen to KSFR 90.7 FM [16] at 8:00 a.m. mountain time on Tuesday, June 13th. Mary Charlotte Domandi will be interviewing the activists live on her morning show, taped at beloved coffee spot The Santa Fe Baking Company. You may not be able to sip a latte a few tables over, but Mary Charlotte is such an incisive and intimate interviewer that you will feel like you are right there with us.

For more information about the topic in general, see both www.equalitynow.org [17] and www.mothering.com/africablog/taking-on-fgm.html [18]. Any donation made at Equality Now's website will be met by a one hundred percent matching grant, from the Pond Foundation. Just think—even the cost of a muffin and latte, $6, becomes $12, which will go far to support the activists working within their communities in countries from Egypt to Mali.