Incubators – What is in it for you as an entrepreneur?

* An incubator helps to build confidence and trust between you and the existing entrepreneurship community – i.e. facilitates creating your own business network
* Has Connections with local investment community i.e. the magic rolodex with contacts of where the money is. (Not really – but something close)
* sounding-board for ideas. Easy access to experienced mentors who could point out the pitfalls.

How do you make an incubator work?
According to Robynne Erwin, CEO of smartExchange, an ICT hub/ technology incubator in Durban South Africa said that it was a battle to find companies and people to volunteer to make an incubator work.
According to Erwin creating dialog platforms between government and industry that helps create a vibrant local industry is a key way to create a rich watershed to support small businesses. “Therefore, we are creating a windfall industry in one hand and give to the incubator on the other hand – that is working. But if you say here is an incubator, it would fail,”she said.

Jim Robbins stressed on the importance of having multiple revenue flows to sustain an incubator. He listed the following
* Equity stake in the business- “the one you have to be most patient on collecting” said Robbins.
* Government grants/ subsidies
* Universities – funded / subsidies
* Non-profit -use revenues fro
* Fees charged from start-up businesses.
* Royalty – percentage of actual sales

Incubation in Africa -the challenges
* One aim of incubators is to proactively reducing unemployment – Therefore, the assistance must be a more hands on approach since the target audience is not a “natural entreprenuers”
* Massive skill shortage – specially due to skill mismatch between graduates and what the industry wants. this specially refers to inadequate exposure to business and basic economic and technical knowledge required at the industry level.
* Digital divide – low internet penetration.
* No culture of lifelong leaning – due to an oppressive government that curtailed access to education to a large part of the population
* Lack of professionalism
* Emotional immaturity
* Poor time management
* Chasing cash – lack of focus
* Lack of business language sills
* Capacity to quickly upscale when markets open
* Financing the development of SMMEs – very few financiers are attracted to financing SMME’s due to the high risk
* Vulture capital – big companies wanting to acquire successful small players for nothing
* Lack of advocacy for SME products/ services – companies governments not using local products.
(Source – Robynne Erwin, CEO of smartExchange)

Opportunities (in Africa)- the bright-side
Govt. tenders must be open to small businesses
Several govt. agencies aiding small businesses
Govt. grants and subsidies entrepreneurs from under-represented communities.

The comments were made at the Africa Business Forum held at Stanford University on May 8, 2010
Resources:

* National business incubation Association - runs training and educational conferences –

* Santa Clara university’s Global Social benefits incubator - a good program for social entrepreneurship

* www.VC4afrcia.com – Africa-North America incubator alliance that encourages investments in african startups .

* World Bank- social entrepreneurship marketplace in Washington DC
* Infodev - incubator created by the World Bank that supports over 40 ICT incubators in developing countries. It supports incubators in 12 African countries –
* African incubation network –

“Obviously we have no money, We are going back. We cannot staying here anymore,” Jabbar Sattar said in a tired voice.

Jabbar a former Iraqi translator for the US military procurement unit embedded at the Iraqi Defense Ministry in Baghdad came to the US 14 months ago with his wife and two sons.

In 2006 the Bush administration amended the National Defense Authorization Act to create a special immigrant status for Afghan and Iraqi nationals whose families were in peril due to their work as translators or interpreters for the US military or diplomatic missions. Jabbar’s family was one of the 500 families that were resettled under this special visa category in 2009.

“A colleague lost his father in 2008. An unknown group beat his Abba to death with a baseball bat. We got constant death notices in our mail box,” Jabbar said in a phone interview. Jabbar started working for the American Military in 2003 and waited for almost two years to have his US visa processed.

The Office for Refugee Resettlement, a division of the Department of Health and Human Services in its 2009 report states that the cumulative number of Iraqi refugees shot up to 17,000 individuals in 2009 from 202 in 2006.

When Jabbar’s family arrived in the US, they were first settled in a one room apartment in Hernando, a crime riddled suburb in Tampa Bay, Florida. According to the 2009 International Rescue Committee annual report Florida resettles 25,000 to 28,000 refugees each year – three times more than any other state. The non-governmental aid agency that is a key stakeholder in the overall US Refugee Admission Program (USRAP) states that Tampa Bay is the second largest refugee resettlement area in Florida with over 10,000 refugees and asylum seekers from all across the world including Cuba, Bosnia, Sudan, Somalia, Burma, Colombia, Venezuela and Liberia.

Jabbar said that he found it “disorienting at first” to hear so many languages, and about not being able to communicate much with his neighbors despite his fluent English. “It was a total culture shock for my wife and I. We didn’t want to bring up our kids in such an environment,” he said.

Once the food stamps from the county dried up after the first three months and after witnessing several forced break-ins in his neighborhood, Jabbar contacted Chris Wiley, an instructor at the joint Iraq-US defense academy in Baghdad and a procurements specialist at the US military unit embedded in the Iraq ministry of defense.

Wiley had just returned to her home in Los Gatos after an year-long stint in the “international green zone” in Baghdad, where she worked with Jabbar to create procurement manuals in English and Arabic.

“Chris said that the situation in her home town was a bit better. She invited us to her home. We packed our bags in two weeks and left Florida,” he said. Jabbar moved with his family to Los Gatos in May 2009.

However according to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 11.2 percent of the labor force in Santa Clara county, where Los Gatos is located, were unemployed as at Dec. 31, 2009. In this majority white town tucked away in the foothills of the Santa Cruz mountains in the San Francisco Bay Area, 4.3 percent of the population were also below the poverty line.

“I came with a lot of hopes, a lot of dreams. But now there is nothing. But I understand. I understand that I came at a bad time. There are no opportunities here now,” Jabbar said. “I have a degree in Electrical Engineering. But there are a lot of people without jobs now in America. There are no opportunities here now.”

Reza Odabaee, a Program Director at Catholic Charities in San Jose, has worked with Special Immigrant Visa cases since 2006. His organization resettled almost 60 percent of the 162 Iraqi’s that trickled into the Santa Clara county in 2009.

“Unemployment among refugees has spiked to almost 70 percent. It is the worst I have seen in the past 15 years,” he said.

Odabaee also noted that state funding for employment assistance programs run by resettlement agencies have dried up.

“We provide courses on English as a second language, resume clinics and even job hunting expeditions, where we take groups to malls or small businesses where they can interact with employers directly and understand the social interaction skills. But most of these programs reply on state funding, sometimes up to 60 percent,” he said.

Santa Clara County Refugee Relief Co-ordinator Phaivanh Khowong said that county’s 2010 budget for refugee employment assistance has been slashed by almost half to $458,000 from $ 700,000 the year before.

Khowong, who fled Laos and came to the US in 1986 said that the average time for a refugee to find their first entry level job in the Santa Clara area has increased to 13 months from 7 months since the recession kicked in.
“With so many people unemployed, it is very difficult for refugees who have no employment history in the US to find work. In the Bay Area employers mainly rely on their personal networks for recruitment. They don’t even advertise jobs. It takes years for resettled families to build up those networks,” she added.

“Jabbar always said that things will get better for him once he finds a job,” Chris Wiley, a procurement consultant for the US military in Iraq, who hosted Jabbar’s family in Los Gatos said.

“I tried to introduce him to friends and even got a membership to attend Los Gatos Business Club meetings. But he didn’t understand networking. My problem with resettlement agencies is that they give them handouts, but do not try to teach them the cultural differences,” she added.

Ms. Wiley said that Jabbar would leave the house when she pushed him to go out and look for jobs. “Later I found that he had parked the car somewhere and slept and returned after a few hours. Once I found a wanted sign at Cosco and told him about it. I think he felt it was beneath him to apply for that kind of job. But most of those who are resettled only get entry level jobs,” she said.

Santa Clara County Refugee Co-ordinator Khowong agreed that “there was a sense of disillusionment” specially among the new wave of Iraqi’s coming to the US under the special Visa category. “Those who are being resettled are professional with many years of experience and academic qualifications. There is a shortcoming in the refugee awareness process, that fails to inform them that their qualifications may not be valid in the US or the nature of the work that they are most likely to find here. This creates problems later on both for families and for case workers in charge of them,” she said.

Jabbar abruptly left Los Gatos in early February. When contacted via telephone, he refused to divulge his current location. Now Jabbar is planning to return to Iraq in three weeks.

“It is still dangerous to go back. But I have no other option. All the money I brought is over. We have to spend $1500 to $2000 per month here. I asked my family to send me more money but even that is coming to an end now,” he said.

“I have come with my wife and children. It is not like when you come alone. If I came alone I could have slept on the road or lived with someone else. But now there is no other option. We have to go back,” Jabbar said.

“It is my wrong calculation. I suppose I have to better know the situation here. May be it will get better in America in 4-5 years and may be I come back then. I don’t know,” he added.

According to the Khowong, the Santa Clara County Refugee Coordinator, the State provides subsidized medical facilities via MediCal, food stamps and cash aid for both refugees and low income families and individuals. “But there is a limitation on the services available for those who fall under the Special Immigration Visa Category. If the refugee who holds this visa comes alone to the US, then the state benefits will only be available for eight months. But for other refugees, who come alone these benefits are available for up to two years,” she said.

“This is mainly because the special visa holders get their Green Card within a month from arriving in the US, while it takes 12 to 18 months for those with an ordinary refugee status. But now many individuals are finding it almost impossible to find work in the first six months, and they are left without any welfare after eight months,” she added.

Neither the county nor the resettlement agencies collect statistics on individuals or families who leave the US after being resettled refugees.

However, Reza Odabee, who was with Catholic charities since 1993 confirms that a few Iraqi families are slowly trickling back to Jordan, Syria and other neighboring countries.

“Refugees who come under the Special Immigrant Visa category rarely go back to Iraq. But some are going back to other Arab countries. But there they face greater discrimination based on the Sunni – Shia ethnic divide. But we are slowly seeing people loosing hope about making it in America,” he said.

By Poornima Weerasekara in Ambepussa

“Kindness will help you make friends,” the bold print hung on a lime green wall is the first thing that grips your attention as one enters the administration building at the Ambepussa rehabilitation centre for ex-child combatants.

Tucked away in a lush green alcove, in Wahawita Ambepussa, about two and a half hours away from the capital Colombo the centre houses 76 children. Abducted, forcibly recruited or allured by the fake bravado of the LTTE, these children have served as front line fighters, cooks, drivers or even messengers in the most ruthless terror regime in Asia.

As the curtain falls on the three decade long bloody civil conflict in Sri Lanka, between the government and the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), the stage has been set for these children to shed their former lives and redefine themselves as envoys of peace and become the most potent symbol of hope in post war Sri Lanka.

Grappling with inner ghosts

But learning to cope with painful memories is a daily struggle. According to the Ambepussa Centre Manager Major Fernando, the children have made a remarkable turnaround. But there are still a few who suffer from epileptic seizures, mainly due to post traumatic stress.

Senthuran*, one of the children who suffer seizures was injured in a shell attack four months ago, while fighting in the LTTE front line for the first time. He was captured by the army, produced before courts and brought to the centre. However Senthuran says that he still has shrapnel’s left in his skull and his shoulder and that has resulted in fits and fainting spells.

“I only saw my mother once after being captured from the clutches of the LTTE. I want to see my mum. I will only be happy if I can see her,” he urged. Senthuran’s mother and two sisters are currently in a camp for the displaced in Vavuniya.

Senthuran’s hometown is Vavuniya. Their family fled to Vanni after being displaced due to fighting. It was then that he dropped out of school, in grade five and started working as a mechanic.

“We were all afraid of the LTTE. They were a brutal outfit. We are happy and safe here. But I want to see my mother,” he said.

This is a common request amongst many children who were part of the newest batch of over 50 kids who arrived at the centre about two months ago in a bus at about 3.00 a.m. They were mainly children who were either captured while fighting with the LTTE orthose who had surrendered at the Omanthei checkpoint, the main cross over point from the former rebel held Vanni to government controlled areas.

Unicef is making arrangements to facilitate parents in Internally Displaced camps to visit their children at Ambepussa soon.

“We have also urged the Unicef to increase the communication facilities available for the their parents at the displacement camps, so that they can be in touch with the children more often. But at our end, we have only one phone, so the kids queue up on Sundays to wait for their call,” Major Fernando, the centre manager said.

The children’s day starts early at about 5.00 a.m. “One measure of progress is based on how our water bills increase. The children, specially the girls, like to bath twice a day,” he chuckles.

Everyone assembles at 7.30 at the play ground, to begin the day by hoisting the national flag and singing the national anthem.

According to Major Fernando one child is appointed as the leader each day, and that person is responsible for hoisting the flag. Regular classes commence at 9.00 a.m. At present the vocational training courses include aluminium fabrication and welding, tailoring, cookery and basic computing. A retired teacher also comes to teach Maths and English. The children are also taught spoken Sinhalese.

The classes usually end with a song and an appraisal of each student’s performance that day. Then its time for lunch. “Each meal we give them is a daily ration of a soldier, which ensures they get a balanced diet. For instance lunch consists of 4 vegetables and either fish or chicken every day,” he said.

Group games like cricket and netball follow. Then the children are free to read books, newspapers and watch TV until the light are switched off at 10.00 p.m.

“A routine helps children adjust quickly. Most children settled down soon,” Major Fernando, a veteran teacher at the Combat training school said.

At first he was apprehensive of the task at hand. “My wife was a little jittery when I said I’ll be working with former child combatants. That was because of the misconceptions about these children. But after coming here I have realized that they are no different from my own kids. Even the boys put powder and you’ll see that quite a few of them have even painted their nails. They are trying to relive the childhood that was snatched away from them,” he said.

At first glance one may wonder why military personnel have been deployed as rehabilitation officers. However, all the rehabilitation officials at centre are from the Army cadet corpse. They are trained teachers, with extensive teaching experience in civil setups, before volunteering to become part of the cadet corpse.

Hunting for their families

We met chirpy 17 year old Devi while she was engrossed in her sewing lessons.

Devi’s mother had abandoned her family and gone abroad when Devi was a mere toddler of two. She was bought up by her aunt in Yatiyanthota, and studied in a Sinhala medium school until grade 5. Then she had gone back to the North, to live with her younger aunt.

Devi was abducted when she was 16, in a white van and put into a make-shift jungle kitchen to churn out food and deliver it to carders fighting in the front line amidst the shelling.

“I was given weapons training but they put me to the kitchen after I started having fits and fainting spells. There were several children some as young as 12 with their heads shaved,” Devi said.

“The LTTE camps were in a thick jungle in Pudumattalan. We were really afraid, because we could hear constant explosions. Five of us were plotting to escape and one morning we ran away, when the commanders allowed us to go to the toilet in the morning,” Devi recalled.

She managed to go back home to her aunt. But she was separated from her family at the Omanthei checkpoint, amidst the exodus of civilians who were fleeing LTTE controlled areas.

“The army called for persons who were with the LTTE to come and register. So I went to this big tent. They took my information and handed me over to the police. Then I was produced before the Vavuniya magistrate and brought here. But my aunt doesn’t know I’m here,” she said. The International Red Cross has promised to find Devi’s aunt.

“Some children receive letters from their parents. Some parents come to visit. But many children don’t here from their parent’s at all.” She said.

The Bureau of the Commissioner General for Rehabilitation is attempting to setup the next rehabilitation centre in Vavuniya, to house another 250 ex-child combatants who are currently with their families in IDP camps. The decision was made to locate this centre in Vavuniya to ensure that the children are living in close proximity to their families.

The Ambepussa centre was started in March 2008, mainly to rehabilitate children who were freed from the clutches of the TMVP, a breakaway group of the LTTE which fought in the Eastern province.

About 99 persons freed from the TMVP, including 21 children, 3 adult females and 75 adult males who were former TMVP cardres have already been released from the centre.

Five others, who had joined the TMVP as children but are now above 18 are waiting to go abroad for employment opportunities. Vageesh, who came to the centre 26 months ago, is one of them.

“The LTTE caught my brothers and sisters as well, but they escaped. I was the only one who joined the movement. At first I didn’t realize the seriousness of this move. But I had to suffer a lot. My life was totally different to that of my brothers and sisters who were with my parents,” he said.

“After I joined the LTTE I ran away. But then they took my sister forcibly. So I went back to get her released. Later on I escaped again. But this time they came and assaulted my father. They took my family members hostage for 4 months. Therefore I had to rejoin,” he added.

“I was in the Mannar LTTE camp and food was scarce. Three of us decided to surrender to the army and then we were bought to Vavuniya. We surrendered in 2005 and was first taken to the rehabilitation centre in Pallekele and was then bought to Ambeypussa. My father came to visit me once. I haven’t seen my parents since,” Vageesh continued.

His father and sister were killed in a shell attack on his village in Killinochchi. His 11 year old brother lost one leg and had to insert a plate to the other. Only his mother was spared.

“I couldn’t even go to put soil on my father’s grave because the war was raging at that time. All I want to do now is to look after my family the same way my late father did. If I can work abroad for five years, that’s enough. I need to save money to secure the future of my younger brother and sisters. One of my sisters is 18 and I have to collect the dowry for her,” Vageesh said.

About his life with the LTTE Vageesh said “I don’t want recall that life. I want to forget it. It was two years of suffering. If I was told to shoot I shot, if I was told to cut I’ll cut. I did what they asked. I want to have my own family. I want to have my own life now.”

“I even have a girl friend now,” he said, with a shy smile.

Ragu, another experienced fighter, who joined the movement when he was 12 and had risen up the LTTE hierarchy to reach a ‘major’ rank, is also awaiting his visa to go abroad.

He has been in rehabilitation for 23 months and has followed three courses in tailoring, landscaping and another basic compute skills program. “Before I came here I didn’t know much about the outside world. But now I regret what I had done,” this young man of 28, who had been a front-liner fighter with the LTTE for 12 years said.

Ragu had participated in several major operations and lead a group of 150 carders. However, disillusionment set in after a group of senior leaders jumped to Switzerland during the ceasefire period. However, he was too involved in the movement to escape at this time. But Ragu seized the opportunity when the Karuna group split from the LTTE and surrendered to the army with a five others.

“Two of my friends were also rehabilitated at the centre here. They have gone back home and one had married. I have two elder sisters and one younger sister. Our parents abandoned us when we were small,” Ragu said.

Ragu’s birth wasn’t registered by his parents and he didn’t have a birth certificate. It was the officers at the rehabilitation centre that helped him to get a birth certificate and a passport with the aid of a doctor who estimated his age.

Ragu had joined the LTTE after being allured by the bravado claimed by the tigers during a cultural show in Batticaloa. But with time he realized the hollowness of his decision. “Sometimes when small children used to come and voluntarily join the movement, I would give them cash and ask them to go back home,” Ragu, a sensitive soul according to many, said.

According to Captain Chanaka Weerasinghe, a rehabilitation officer, Ragu still has childish ways.

“He dressed as a Vedda at the fancy dress competition we organised for the Sinhala and Hindu New Year in April. The child in him sometimes comes out all of a sudden and then it feels as if he is trying to relive the childhood that he never had,” he said.

“His girl friend came to visit him once. Now he is looking forward to settling down after returning from Malaysia,” Captain Weerasinghe added.

The rehabilitation officers accompany those who go abroad for jobs to the airport. According to statistics from the Rehabilitation Commissioner’s Bureau over 50 rehabilitated persons have been facilitated with finding jobs abroad.

Catch up Education

While many are encouraged to find jobs after rehabilitation, steps will be taken to provide ‘catch up education facilities’ for younger children, who are keen to pursue formal studies.

“There is one promising child who was trained as a Black tiger. He was an orphan living in the Senchollai orphanage. He was allowed to continue with his education but was given weapons training intermittently during school holidays. He was captured by intelligence officers when he was sent to Vavuniya on a suicide mission. He had just sat for his Ordinary Level exams. He had learnt that his exam results had just come out, while on his way to the suicide mission,” Captain Weerasinghe said.

Now the Bureau of the Rehabilitation Commissioner General is taking steps to help this bright spark, restart his advance level studies.

“He had succeeded in scoring a B for mathematics in his OL’s despite being shifted from place to place and his education being interrupted by intermittent training periods. The Commissioner General is keen on getting him into a good school in Colombo, where he will be given all the facilities to proceed with his ALs,” Captain Weerasinghe added.

The “three day” cadre

Not all the children at the centre had experienced active combat. Some children had been with the LTTE for a few days, some for a few months. Forcible abductions had sky rocketed in the past two-three months of the battle as the Tigers made a desperate attempt at replenishing their dwindling cadre base.

Karthik is chided by his friends as the “three day LTTEier.” He was abducted from his temporary hut in Puthukudirrpu.

We met Ganesh, the youngest son in a Mahaveera family at the netball court. The children are encouraged to engage in group games like cricket and netball after the regular classes finish.

“In the final days people were dying of hunger. The LTTE killed one of my brothers and dumped his body on a cross road because he broke into an LTTE flour store, where they stockpiled food relief sent for civilians. It was meant as a lesson for other civilians who were demanding the LTTE to release the food rations that were coming,” he said describing the agony of the civilians stuck in the thin strip of land designated as the no-fire zone in Puthukudirruppu.

“My father was a trader in Settikulam. One of my elder brothers was a martyr. The LTTE forcibly took me and my sister. I escaped after nine days in captivity. My sister also managed to run away after 15 days,” he said.

“But they came after me again and dragged me to their fighting line in Putumattalan. Five of us decided to run away after realizing that the LTTE refused to treat children injured in battle if they had once attempted to run away before. The LTTE fired at us as we tried to escape. I surrendered to the army in Valayanmadam,” he said.

* Names have been changed to protect the identity of the children.

Life after rehabilitation

According to Unicef Child Protection Officer Andi Brookes, Sri Lanka has made real progress in the area of rehabilitating child-soldiers by taking a series of constructive steps.

“Firstly, the push to rehabilitate children, separately from adults as per the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the involvement of children in armed conflict was realized by setting up of the centre in Ambepussa, that mainly focuses on children” he said.

“Furthermore, there was a memorandum of understanding signed between the government, the TMVP and the Unicef, to release all child combatants recruited by this breakaway faction of the LTTE. This was then translated into an action plan from December,” he said.

He also noted that the Emergency regulation issued by the Presidential Secretariat on December 15, was a progressive step that translates Sri Lanka’s global commitment as one of the first signatories of the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the involvement of children in armed conflict into national law.

Unicef is also engaged in monitoring and doing a follow-up on children once they are reunited with their families.

“Probation officers continue to report on the child after an year of being released from rehabilitation. The key to ensuring their smooth reintegration is ensuring access to healthcare, education and other opportunities. A community based rehabilitation effort also runs in parallel to ensure smooth reintegration,” he said.

According to Brookes, the children who return may have a higher security risk than normal children.

“There is a threat that they might be victims of acts of revenge or remobilization. However, it is being viewd through a child safety lens and not a military lens,” he added.

As a key stakeholder in the rehabilitation process Unicef made a significant investment in the entire rehabilitation process by funding road repairs to improve access and covering certain running expenses. They had also helped organise several trips for the children including a visit to the zoo in Colombo, the botanical gardens, and the elephant orphanage in Pinnawale.

Original article was published in www.DailyMirror.lk – An English language national daily in Sri Lanka

MENLO PARK – Mayor Richard Cline recently said that a group of downtown business owners have launched a “silent but stealthy cold war” on two key development projects in the city.

Downtown businesses and property owners that have dominated the cityscape for decades are resisting high density office and real estate development along Santa Cruz avenue, the main artery running through the heart of the town and along El Camino Real, the highway connecting Menlo Park to the Silicon Valley. Both projects have languished in the backburner waiting for council approval for several years due to this.

“This is the fourth time we are trying to come up with a blueprint to develop the downtown area. When the 2020 visioning process began in 2007 we had planned to finalize the proposals in 18 months. But now after almost two years we are still stuck with a set of proposals with nothing concrete,” he said.

According to Mr. Cline, the downtown plan includes a two-phase, 20-year implementation program, with costs split between the city, property owners, and commercial tenants. The first phase includes re-allocating 168 surface parking areas alongside Santa Cruz avenue for high-density office and retail purposes. Three multistory parking structures would be built to compensate for the lost space.

The city has now stretched its deadline to October 2010. It estimates that this three-and-a-half year planning cycle would cost $1.16 million.

Mr. Cline said that the first attempt to remodel the downtown area in 1972 was shelved after the Draeger’s market and Flegel’s Fine Furniture, two of the oldest businesses in the area, refused to come on board.
“The issues that residents are now debating haven’t changed much from that 1970 study. Should the city allow for taller buildings, if it results in more open spaces? Should it widen sidewalks at the risk of increasing traffic congestion? Should it build parking structures, and figure out some other use for some of the 45 acres of surface parking lots downtown and along El Camino? The debate has stayed the same because the city’s development has stagnated in the past 30 years,” he added.

The “Center City” design guidelines drawn up in the mid-1990s have sat on a shelf ever since. The ambitious “Smart Growth” planning effort in the late 90’s crashed even before the report was finished, when the consultant Marcia McNally quit over pressure to justify her conclusions.

The planning efforts for downtown Menlo Park have largely been restricted to the city’s general plan, adopted in 1952 and revised several times since. The maximum allowable building height of 30 feet in the downtown area and along El Camino Real has not changed since the 1967 revision, according to assistant city planner Thomas Rogers.

Rogers said that this helped sustain the “serene small town quality” of the city, with an estimated population of just over 30,000 with a median family income of $133,251 per anum according to 2008 census estimates.

But the city has struggled to buttress its sales tax base after four auto dealerships folded in 2005 and 2006. The downtown merchants have also expressed concerns about plans to develop these sites, that were left vacant for several years.

The city approved the development of a 3.4 acres plot north of Oak Grove Avenue, a former Cadillac dealership last October after sending the developer back to the drawing board twice.

Jeff Warmoth, a Development Partner at Sand Hill Property Co., said that his company acquired this 1300 El Camino Real property in 2005 and had to change their development plans several times because the city caved under pressure from opposition groups.

“We submitted our first proposal for the plot in February 2007. We were trying to move fast because we had a contract with Whole Foods to develop a 58,00 square foot retail space, with housing. But we couldn’t get the approvals on time to deliver according to the client’s requirements,” Mr. Warmoth said.

The Los Alto based developer now plans to build 51,000 square feet of retail space and 59,000 square feet of office space.

“The proposal envisions a combination of retailers, restaurants and a gym,” he added. The developers dropped the project’s housing component during the second revision.

Richard Dreager, Vice President of Operations at Draeger’s market raised concerns about scratching the housing component off the 1300 El Camino real site.

“Menlo Park has ignored the housing standards specified in the regional housing needs assessment for the past seven years. The housing deficit has rocketed to1900 units,” he said.

He also feared that adding more grocery stores to Menlo Park would not add to the city’s sales tax revenue. “If you crowd out the market with two many similar players, you are only diluting your tax base not increasing it,” he said.

He added that Safeway, a national grocery chain just added 13,000 square feet to its Menlo Park outlet last year, making it the biggest retailer in the area. “The Draegers market is only 24,000 square feet. So Safeway just added almost half the size of our store to their operation,” he said. The family business that started in Menlo Park in 1952 also faced competition from Trader Joe’s, located just two blocks away.

Mr. Draeger noted that the new El Camino site would triple the retail space in the downtown area. He feared that the family-run store may have to fold its Menlo Park operations if increased competition made the business unfeasible.

“The city has not even studied whether there’s a market for additional retail,” he said.
In 2006, Draeger’s and Beltramo’s Wine spearheaded a movement that successfully kept a nationwide retailer Beverages & More (BevMo) out of Menlo Park.

During the public hearings for 1300 El Camino Real last year, John Beltramos, a co-owner of Beltramos Wine complained that high-density projects pushed out small scale developers that opted for low scale constructions. “The city council’s regulations state that 10 percent of all development projects should be allocated for Below Market rate housing. This puts a greater burden on smaller developers as their unit cost shoots up. So the city council should either change this rule or not encourage high density development,” he said. Beltramos wine located 1540 El Camino, just a few blocks away from the proposed development site at 1300 El Camino, had earlier planned to expand their retails space and add a few low density commercial housing units to their property in the area. But Mr. Beltramos said that the commercial housing component would now have to be scrapped because high density development had poached any profits he could have made from that plan.

The business owners group have complained to the city council about the “lack of community participation” in the development decision making process.

“We have requested for meetings with council members but only one out of the five have even replied to this request,” said Mark Flegel, second generation owner of Flegel’s Furniture. “They are simply trying to sidestep the concerns of the community and steamroll projects that would completely change the characteristic of Menlo Park,” he added.

The group recently collected over 1000 petitions against the downtown development proposals for Santa Cruz avenue.

The 1300 El Camino project has also got stuck due to a legal issue. Developer Jeff Warmoth said that to an unnamed party had launched an information lawsuit, requesting for more data on how the project’s environmental impact assessment was carried out.

Mr. Warmoth calls it “greenmailing”. “These are simply tactics used by disgruntled groups just trying to stall the development with what ever means they can,” he said.

But why – for what?
all for the glory of scientific discovery -
of the “physiological and psychological effects of nuclear arms on man”!
To feed proof to the twisted high minds that spewed out the doctrine of nuclear deterrence!
To ensure that La république could launch a counterstrike after a freak nuke attack maims a part of it?

Are you aware!
Did you know?
That the French govt. may have knowingly exposed their soldiers to nuclear tests
These men are still fighting to get legislation passed**
To provide broader compensation
After years of suffering

But worse
The French carried out 17 nuclear tests in the Algerian Sahara in the 1960s.
They later switched testing to French Polynesia, where a further 193 tests were completed before it ended the practice in 1996. ***
Did they do the environmental clean-ups?
How did it affect the natives?
Who will speak for them?

Don’t you think its time to rethink the following lines
Aux armes, citoyens,
Formez vos bataillons,
Marchons, marchons !

for a righteous state
void of state inflicted violence.

** The French parliament approved a limited bill to compensate veterans last month.

*** source : French soldiers ‘deliberately exposed’ to nuclear tests – BBC

Earlier they settled in New York, Minneapolis and even Fort Wayne, Texas.

But in recent times, more Burmese refugees are being settled in the West Coast, mainly Oakland, in the East Bay area.

This resettlement has been a mixed blessing for these refugees, who have fled the tyranny of a military junta and have usually languished for many years in refugee camps in Thailand, under the constant threat of deportation.

However, being planted in crime riddled neighborhoods with high unemployment and lacking good public amenities does not fit in to the notion of the “land of freedom” promised to these refugees by resettlement organizations.

The East Bay Express in its  recent article titled Still Seeking Refuge tells us the story of Ale Sho, who had been in the US for just three weeks when he and his neighbor were accosted while returning to their apartments from an Asian grocery.

“We had many, many hard times in Burma,” said Ale Sho, a lanky man in his thirties who spent the prior fourteen years in a Thai refugee camp. “When we came to the US we thought it will be free, so we feel more upset about [the robbery]. We thought we would be released from the hard times, but we are still unsafe.”

In the last three years alone, about 2,000 such refugees have arrived in California, with more than 300 resettling in the East Bay, most of them in Oakland. What does their future hold?

The politics of resettlement

The US Assistant Secretary of State for Population, Refugees, and Migration Eric Schwartz last month announced that The United States Refugee Admissions Program  (USRAP) would almost double the amount of the grants given to NGO’s to resettle political refugees.

“The Reception and Placement per capita grant has been increased from $900 to $1,800, which will be effective as of January 1, 2010. This is intended to address challenges refugees face in their first 30-90 days in the United States. It will directly benefit refugees and the network of local non-profit affiliates that serve them.” Mr. Schwartz said in a letter to nongovernmental organizations linked with the resettlement process.

But the catch is “Affiliates providing aid to refugees will have some flexibility in how those funds are allocated, and will also be able to use up to $700 per capita to meet costs related to management of this program. This $700 figure — about a 50% increase over the current management ceiling — should address the need to lower client-to-staff ratios..” and other capacity building initiatives to strengthen the quality of support given to those who resettle.

Whether this would simply increase the number being resettled or actually improve the quality of support rendered is yet to be seen.

Recent reporting on the global plight of Burmese Refugees

Burmese Refugees Persecuted in Bangladesh – NY TIMES

MYANMAR: Where the refugees are

From Burma to New York

Deforestation, desertification and water issues are at the heart of civil conflicts that have been ravaging in Darfur, Kashmir and many other parts of Africa, Asia ad Latin America for several decades.

According to Prof. Jeffery Sachs, Director of The Earth Institute at Colombia University, most of these issues are triggered due to a lack of equitable and sustainable development.

“When there is violence or terrorism we put it to political or ideological prisms, whereas often at the core are hungry and poor people and societies in disarray because they are already experiencing the leading edge of  climate change or environmental degradation of other sorts,” he said at the recent Arrow Lecture Series, organized by the Stanford Center for Ethics in Society.

Can the current “market-oriented” system deal with these issues?

Prof. Sachs stressed that the current market driven economic model is insufficient to resolve these issues because

1)   Poverty and environmental degradation are global problems : For example,  green house gas emissions from anywhere uniformly mix in the atmosphere within about 30 days, Therefore in the end it doesn’t matter where the emissions come from. Climate change is the sum of a truly “global” phenomena.

2)   The intensity and nature of the issues evolve over time: e.g.: – Habitat destruction and the loss of bio diversity has been accelerating for decades and in some cases the damage is irreversible once certain tipping points are crossed. E.g: – However, sometimes the vision of institutions particular the political apparatus, that designs policies to resolve these issues, operate from one election cycle to the next. Therefore, the long-term vision and consistent effort to address these global concerns are lacking.

3)   The Problems involve ecosystems – an area that is ignored by the traditional notion of a market economy. “A market economy is all about well defined private property rights and separable individualist ownership. Nothing about an ecosystem is of that character,” Prof. Sachs said. “

4)   Profound uncertainty: We do not still fully understand how earth’s systems work and how human behavior influences them. “It is almost by coincidence that we detected the Ozone depleting effects of chlorofluorocarbons,” Prof. Sachs said. “No one was looking for this at all until 1970 when someone asked the question whether the water vapor from supersonic jets would affect the ozone layer.”

5)   Ramifications of population growth: The global population up to now has grown almost 10 times more than what it was during the industrial revolution. We are adding 75- 80 million new people to the population every year. The inability to limit fertility rates to a replacement level – i.e. enough births to replace the number dying – specially in the poorest quarters of the world are putting excessive pressure on the already stretched resources

6)   Solutions involve large scale technological transformations: “Here too markets are not all effective because the economics of information and technological change shows that, markets fail to induce technological change where it is most needed (i.e. At the bottom of the income pyramid),” Prof. Sachs said.

Three Strategies to achieve sustainable growth

• Containing population growth: the solution – NOT aid handouts by faith based NGOs -but better healthcare to cut down infant mortality, female literacy (the most potent tool for bringing down fertility rates) and access to family planning.
• Sustainable agriculture: Ecological technical changes that intensifies agriculture while at the same time reducing the amount of nitrogen used (one of the biggest causes of greenhouse emissions) through better agricultural practices like micro-dozing. Technology to improve yields from existing cultivated land through better landscaping, soil and water management are also available. “But the poorest farmers who amount to over 1.5 billion people in the world cannot afford any of this technology. That is where the conventional market system fails them and alternative means have to be devised,” Prof. Sachs said.
• Dietary and behavioral change: Changing the use and throw culture promoted by producers and changing from a mainly beef/ meat based diet that is too resource intensive for the earth to bear.

Jeffrey Sachs is the Director of The Earth Institute, Quetelet Professor of Sustainable Development, and Professor of Health Policy and Management at Columbia University. He is also Special Advisor to United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. From 2002 to 2006, he was Director of the UN Millennium Project and Special Advisor to United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan on the Millennium Development Goals, the internationally agreed goals to reduce extreme poverty, disease, and hunger by the year 2015.

Last week A South African community challenged German homeopathic giant Schwabe Pharmaceuticals in court in Munich over a traditional medicine the company is seeking to patent. The small community won in the David vs. Goliath battle. Schwabe wanted to patent a method for producing extracts from the roots of Pelargonium sidoides and Pelargonium reniforme to make cough and cold syrups. The community, in Alice in the Eastern Cape, said the extraction method has been used for generations by traditional healers and Schwabe has no right to patent it.The company has also hit problems in India over alleged bioprospecting.

This attracted my attention to the issue. Knowledge is generally perceived as a “free public good” in our cultures, where its passed down usually orally from generation to generation. How do we protect that tradition from the western hawkish ideals of privatizing everything – including knowledge?

Here is a snapshot of some interesting sources on the biopiracy issue

Tsunami Victims take over Govt. premises in Eastern Sri Lanka

Also, do you feel lost when reading some international news cos you don’t know what has happened b4?

Strip news (or world news comics) is an attempt to make it fun to follow key international developments (whether it is the growing tension between china and the US or deteriorating situ in Afghanistan)

Enjoy! and give your feedback