nomad9

I have to share this information with the world and my fellows.The first All-African Amputee Football Tournament is taking place in Sierra Leone. Many players lost their limbs as a result of atrocities during wars, gun-shot wounds or land-mines.Sierra Leone are the experienced favourites, but Ghana and Liberia have been training hard and could cause an upset. The winners go throught to the world cup, later this year.

Please check out this wonderful event through pictures at the BBC web-site. click here 

edited by jose pascal da rocha 

the second article in our series of interculturaliy in the world, i would like to present you something on how immigrants are effectively shaping a local economy by their energy and thrive.

this article has been edited from a herald tribune news magazine.

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Immigrant entrepreneurs shape a new economy
By Nina Bernstein
Tuesday, February 6, 2007

Manuel Miranda was 8 when his family immigrated to New York from Bogotá. His parents, who had been lawyers, turned to selling home-cooked food from the trunk of their car. Manuel pitched in after school, grinding corn by hand for traditional Colombian flatbreads called arepas.
Today Miranda, 32, runs a family business with 16 employees, producing 10 million arepas a year in the Maspeth section of the borough of Queens. But the burst of Colombian immigration to the city has slowed; arepas customers are spreading through the suburbs, and competition for them is fierce. Now, he says, his eye is on a vast, untapped market: the rest of the country.In the long run, as with bagels, "you're going to have arepas in every store," predicted Miranda, whose innovations include a "toaster-friendly" version (square instead of round), and an experimental Web site that offers online sales nationwide. "But I don't have the connections. I don't know the people who can advise how to take us to the next level."
As the flow of immigrants to suburban and small-town America outpaces the growth of bustling ethnic centers in New York, many foreign-born entrepreneurs like the Mirandas are facing an unfamiliar crossroads. In the city, rising rents and density hamper growth, while swelling ethnic enclaves in the suburbs generate competitors. Yet in other places, opportunity beckons as never before, as immigrants expand the tastes of mainstream America.
Whether these businesses exploit the new chances to break out or succumb to the new perils, the city's economy will feel the effects."Immigrants have been the entrepreneurial spark plugs of cities from New York to Los Angeles," said Jonathan Bowles, the director of the Center for an Urban Future, a private, nonprofit research organization that has studied the dynamics of immigrant businesses that turned decaying neighborhoods into vibrant commercial hubs in recent decades. "These are precious and important economic generators for New York City, and there's a risk that we might lose them over the next decade."
A report issued by the center Tuesday highlights both the potential and the challenge for cities full of immigrant entrepreneurs, who often face language barriers, difficulties getting credit and problems connecting with mainstream agencies that help businesses grow. The report identifies a generation of immigrant-founded enterprises poised for the big time — or already there, like the Lams Group, one of the city's most aggressive hotel developers, or Delgado Travel, with about $1 billion in annual revenues.

In Los Angeles, at least 22 of the 100 fastest-growing companies in 2005 were created by first-generation immigrants. In Houston, a telecommunications company started by a Pakistani man topped the 2006 list of the city's most successful small businesses.
But even in those cities and New York, where immigrant-friendly mayors have promoted programs to help small business, the report contends that immigrant entrepreneurs have been overlooked in long-term strategies for economic development.Some are doing just fine anyway. Lowell Hawthorne, the Jamaican-born chief executive of Golden Krust Caribbean Bakery, has parlayed a single bakery, opened in the Bronx in 1989, into more than 100 franchise restaurants nationwide.
Other companies, like Rajbhog Foods, which started as a mom-and-pop Indian sweets shop in Jackson Heights, Queens, seem to be on the edge of a similar breakthrough, even as they struggle with rising costs and shifting immigration patterns.
"Two steps forward and then back one step," said Sachin Mody, the chief executive and son of the founders. "That is the hardest part, to keep hurdling and keep evolving."Mody said the company had about 70 employees and three plants and sold its vegetarian products to stores in 41 states and Canada. Its catering operation handles Indian weddings and conventions for as many as 10,000. But six years ago, in recognition of a changing market, it began opening franchise stores in places like Jersey City and Hicksville, on Long Island, where Indians have settled in large numbers.
In some ways, New York may have a head start on the growing pains of immigrant businesses. The nation's recent surge of newcomers started earlier in the state and peaked by the mid-1990s, when immigration was still growing rapidly elsewhere.

Now, some children of the early influx are trying to build on their parents' success — success that has increased the cost of doing business, by driving up rents and creating congestion.
One example is Jay Joshua, a Manhattan company that designs souvenirs and then has them manufactured in Asia and imported. Jay Chung, who arrived from South Korea in 1981 as a graduate student in design, started printing his designs for New York logos and peddling them to local T-shirt shops. His company is now one of the city's leading suppliers of tourist items, from New York-loving coffee mugs to taxicab Christmas ornaments.But frustration mixes with pride when the Chungs, both U.S. citizens now, discuss the company's growth.
Thirty years ago their wholesale district was desolate. Now hundreds of importers are there, said Chung, a leader of the Korean-American business association. Members face a blizzard of parking tickets and high commercial rents — nearly $20,000 a month for 1,400 square feet, or 130 square meters, he said.
Seeking to relocate the wholesale site, the association made a deal with the city for a redevelopment in the College Point section of Queens, only to have the city back out eight months later. Older, white residents had expressed fear that the area would become like Chinatown or Flushing."It was a disaster for us — not only financially, but our image," Chung said.
Apologetic city officials offered five other locations, and the group is negotiating for a private project in the Jamaica section of Queens that could yield a 13- story center in four years. But the episode underscores the importance of partnerships with the city — and the pitfalls.

Immigrant entrepreneurs seem ambivalent about getting more attention from the city. Some are leery of red tape, though they would welcome, say, a municipal parking garage. Others cite concrete help they have received from city agencies.
When Mr. Miranda's arepas company, Delicias Andinas, was struggling with high trash bills two years ago, he said, a city agent in an industry retention program referred him to a recycler. Now much of the company's garbage — mostly corn leftovers — is sold to hog farms."They helped us out to a win-win situation," said Mr. Miranda, now an American citizen who calls himself "a dyed-in-the-wool New Yorker."
"For us, it was a big deal. Right now, I don't need money. I need knowledge."

edited by globalnomad