Beginning with this issue we want to feature some of the many and varied activities the members of our Board of Directors engage in. Today we present Johnson Makoba and Berch Berberoglu

For Johnson W. Makoba charity and peace involvement begins at home. The Ugandan-born associate professor of sociology has launched an aggressive and impressive effort to help hundreds of his former homeland to break the circle of poverty.

Up to now, Uganda’s rural poor had no access to financial resources or credit to start small businesses. Dr. Makoba’s program creates self-managed credit associations to provide Ugandans with start-up funds for businesses. The initial cash loans are small--perhaps $50--but enough to start income-generating projects which can make a big impact like raising chickens, basket making, beekeeping or growing and selling fruits and vegetables. Along with the loan comes training in how to make the ventures work.

A second component of this program provides field staff to teach rural Ugandans about improving the health and nutrition, as well as family planning and ways to prevent AIDS among the population. The program is jointly funded by Dr. Makoba’s Reno-based Foundation for Credit and Community Assistance (FOCCAS), Freedom from Hunger of Davis, California and the Uganda Cooperative Savings and Credit Union, Ltd. Funding also comes from the United Nations and from UNICEF/Uganda. Makoba hopes to initiate similar programs in other eastern and southern African countries.

You may sometimes ask yourself when Berch Berberoglu has time to sleep. Dr. Berberoglu not only is a professor of sociology, the chair of his department and the director of the Institute for International Studies, he is also the author and editor of fourteen books and numerous articles. For his many scholarly accomplishments he was recently named Foundation Professor, the highest honor bestowed on select faculty members of the University of Nevada, Reno.

The most recent book he edited, The National Question--Nationalism, Ethnic Conflict and Self-Determination in the 20th Century, was published by Temple University Press in Philadelphia. The book examines the volatile nature and complex dynamics of national movements and ethnic conflicts around the world. The contributors sort out the class forces that come to play a central role in directing movements in different socio-economic, temporal and geographic settings. The case studies in this volume include the political history of nationalist movements in Palestine, Kurdistan, South Africa, Northern Ireland, Puerto Rico, the Basque Country and in Quebec. Included are provocative essays on the role of women in liberation movements in the Third World.

The book has been widely reviewed and is available in the UNR library.