Chomba Kaluba ’10 gives the presentation Literacy and Microfinance for Sustainable Development and Peace, explaining his work with a Zambian nonprofit organization that he founded and directs, in a Homecoming Weekend presentation at 7:30 p.m. Friday, Oct. 29, in the Keck Classroom (G52), Pettengill Hall, 4 Andrews Road (Alumni Walk).

Kaluba, of Mpika, Zambia, launched the Kachlite Foundation to empower communities to help themselves through sustainable microfinance projects involving livestock and agriculture. The foundation also promotes literacy as a tool to wipe out hardship and bring sustainable development and peace.

Growing up in Zambia, he was inspired by the work of Peace Corps volunteers from Maine. As a ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ student, he seized opportunities to make a difference in both Maine and struggling communities abroad.

At ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, Kaluba twice received national Davis Projects for Peace awards. In 2008, he shared an award with other students to help establish a community garden in Mwanza, Tanzania, to fight the food-for-sex trade. A 2010 award enabled him to advance a microfinancing initiative and a literacy initiative for elderly widows in rural Zambia during the summer.

In his talk at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, Kaluba will discuss his experiences in Zambia and his plans for the foundation. Students interested in volunteering with the Kachlite Foundation can arrange a meeting with him at this chomba@kachlitefoundation.org.

Kaluba today is pursuing a master’s degree in conflict and development at the School for International Training, and hopes to make his career in international and human rights law.

Two ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College students have received 2010 Davis Projects for Peace awards to fund development initiatives in Zambia and Afghanistan.

Mustafa Basij-Rasikh, a sophomore from Kabul, Afghanistan, and Chomba Kaluba, senior from Mpika, Zambia, each received a $7,250 grant. The money will support Basij-Rasikh’s project for empowering people disabled by land mines in Afghanistan, and Kaluba’s literary and microfinance programs for development in rural Zambia.
The projects reflect the importance of economic opportunity to a stable society. As Kaluba wrote in his Projects for Peace proposal, “The dissatisfaction of one sector of a society with the unequal access to opportunity and prosperity is always cause for unrest and violence.”

Their projects are among more than 100 initiatives supported by the Projects for Peace program. At the age of 103, founder and philanthropist Kathryn W. Davis funds the program to encourage college students to undertake innovative, meaningful projects that promote peace in the world.

Beginning with the Soviet invasion in 1979, unceasing conflict has made Afghanistan one of the world’s most heavily mined countries. An average of 40 Afghans are killed or maimed by mine explosions each month. Basij-Rasikh, who has witnessed firsthand the devastation wrought by mines, designed a project to help reintegrate mine victims into society.

See a video about Chomba Kaluba ’10.

Victims are often among the most marginalized because of pre-existing poverty, gender discrimination and the social stigma attached to disabilities. Often they were the sole breadwinners for their families before they were injured. “I feel I must help them,” says Basij-Rasikh.

He will supply tricycles and carts to mine victims, train these individuals to repair and use them, and provide small grants to begin a business. The tricycles will promote independence by affording mobility, and the carts will serve as stands for selling goods such as vegetables, fruit or clothing.

Basij-Rasikh will undertake the work in the provinces of Kabul, Herat, Parwan, Bulkh and Nangarhar. These provinces are home to many of Afghanistan’s disabled people and have many paved roads, which provide easier transportation and a better market for the disabled to sell their goods.

The Davis grant will allow Basij-Rasikh to purchase parts for tricycles and carts, hire assistants and give startup financing for mine victims. As he puts it, “With a little money and a tricycle, a disabled person can start an independent and prosperous life.”

Kaluba also feels a strong personal connection to his project. He seeks to promote peace in rural communities in Zambia through empowerment programs. There are two parts to his project: a microfinancing initiative using livestock and a literacy initiative.

The microfinance element focuses on goats as an income source. Goat meat is popular in Zambia and goats are a good source of income and protein. Goats will be provided to impoverished households and volunteers will teach recipients how to make best use of them. Participants will be required to give the first offspring of their goats to another family in need, form registered associations and establish banking systems.

With formal education out of reach for many Zambians, the second part focuses on improving literacy through the Kachlite Foundation, which Kaluba founded and directs. Volunteers will facilitate study circles with members of the community. Materials for this project will be donated by the Zambian Ministry of Education in Mpika, along with book donations from Maine. The rest of the supplies will be funded by the Davis grant.

This is not Kaluba’s first initiative in these fields. In 2008 he shared a Projects for Peace grant with two other ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ students to create a community garden in Tanzania that offers street children a survival alternative to a pervasive sex-for-food trade. In 2009 Kaluba received a ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College Philips Fellowship grant supporting a project in Guatemala that promoted the making of salable art to fight poverty.

ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ students have won a award every year since the program’s inception, in 2007. .

If you apply for a job cleaning houses or rounding up shopping carts, should a high school diploma or General Educational Development certificate be an essential qualification?

Yes, according to employers in Lewiston and elsewhere in Maine. “Employers assume a basic level of literacy if you have that,” says Chip Morrison, president of the Androscoggin County Chamber of Commerce.

No, say many members of Lewiston-Auburn’s growing Somali community.

Since 2001, some 3,500 refugees from violence in Somalia have settled in Lewiston, and the GED requirement imposed by some employers often bars these new Mainers from work they’re well-equipped — even overqualified — to perform. “You don’t actually need the GED to push carts at Hannaford,” says Ismail Ahmed, a Somali immigrant and consultant to employers seeking to hire Somalis.

These contrasting perspectives provide evidence of a cultural divide that ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ students explored in a high-profile research project last fall. Their work followed on the heels of a that found severe unemployment among Somalis of working age, with only 49 percent finding work between 2001 and 2006.

Wanting better insight into the obstacles facing Somalis in the job market, the Chamber and Lewiston’s branch of the state-run Maine CareerCenter asked members of a senior anthropology seminar at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ to investigate.

Supported by $2,000 in grants from the Harward Center for Community Partnerships, the students spent weeks asking Somali job-seekers and employers about impediments to regular employment for the Somalis. And the students’ report, could be summed up by the famous line in Cool Hand Luke: What we’ve got here is a failure to communicate.

Employers and would-be employees alike cited the Somalis’ lack of English skills as the single biggest employment barrier. (Perhaps surprisingly in a society still aching after Sept. 11, religious prejudice was not termed a major obstacle, although certain Muslim beliefs such as the untouchability of pork did pose practical problems for some employers.)

But there are other differences that create barriers to Somali employment.

Maine employers are integral members of a U.S. economy that’s money-based, heavily systematized, rigorously clock-oriented. The Somalis, in contrast, as the report notes, have a “flexible, spiraling” sense of time that doesn’t play well in the world of the time clock.

And they come from a system of exchange based less on the bottom line and more on personal forms of reciprocity such as swapping goods or favors. For instance, Somalis are more likely than most Americans to lend each other money at no interest, buy groceries together in bulk, or arrange work shifts so that parents can trade off minding the children, says Julia Merriman ’09 of Villanova, Pa., who served as one of two principal investigators on the project.

“It’s less about competitiveness, and more about pooling resources to gain as a community,” she says.

For these new Mainers, the employment situation feels urgent. “They have families to take care of,” says the other investigator, Daisy Hackett ’09 of Ipswich, Mass. For them, getting a GED can’t be a top priority. “They’d rather just get menial jobs that they can do without even speaking English.” (The report also says that English literacy isn’t always an issue, citing a pharmacy technician whose non-U.S. degrees aren’t recognized here.)

This cultural divide — “a big clash,” in the words of associate professor Elizabeth Eames, an anthropologist who led the Perceived Barriers project — afforded an excellent case study for the 17 students in Eames’ “Production and Reproduction” seminar, which studies comparative economics.

Working primarily with 20-member focus groups, the students interviewed job-seekers from the Somali community, local employers, and mediators between employers and potential immigrant employees.

Toward easing the situation, the report advocated “best practices” devised by some employers, such as “conversation partners,” native English speakers who pair up with a Somali employee to help relieve communication difficulties.

Among the employers she interviewed, Merriman says, “people were happy to share what worked and what didn’t, and that was just a great forum for conversation.”

The class presented its findings publicly at a Chamber luncheon in December, and the printed report appeared in January — by which time the deepening economic recession had moved the goalposts way down the field.

The overall unemployment rate locally jumped from 4.7 percent in December 2007 to 7.4 percent a year later. And with growing numbers of well-qualified workers in the unemployment lines, barriers to Somali employment that were high to start with suddenly grew even taller.

Still, the report and its recommendations for helping employ Somalis will remain viable beyond the economic slump. “This report should not collect dust on the shelves of the powers that be,” says Ismail Ahmed.

In fact, in the state with the nation’s oldest population, immigrants like these will eventually become essential to Maine’s workforce — although that doesn’t help Somali families who need jobs now. “Here is a workforce that is just working in,” says Ahmed. “It will take awhile, but they will be very productive in the long run.”
By Doug Hubley, photograph by Phyllis Graber Jensen