Poverty News Blog

Professor to give away half of future earnings

noreply@blogger.com (Kale) — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 14:59:00 +0000

An ethics professor from Oxford says he will give away 1 million dollars in future earnings to fight global poverty. The give away will be over half of his future salary.

From the Daily Mail, we hear from Dr Tory Ord on his reasons for doing this.

Dr Toby Ord, an academic at Oxford University, will give up 10 per cent of his annual salary, plus any yearly earnings above £20,000 for the rest of his career.

He calculated he should earn about £1.5 million and said he realised that if he was to continue living modestly he would be able to give away £1 million of this to help others.

Today's launch of his Giving What We Can society will encourage others to do the same, he said.

Dr Ord, a 30-year-old research associate at Oxford's Future of Humanity Institute, said: 'Life on my current income is very good.

'If I spent the extra money on myself I could go on holiday more often, get an iPhone, eat out at expensive restaurants. It would be nice, but not all that much better.

'So I have a choice between greatly improving the lives of tens of thousands of people or adding a few extras to my life. Put like that, it is an easy choice.

'Once you get used to the idea, it is actually not much of a burden.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1227766/Ethics-professor-pledges-away-1million-lifetime-earnings-help-fight-poverty-developing-world.html?ITO=1490&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+dailymail%2Fhome+%28Home+%7C+Mail+Online%29#ixzz0WqWabtLT

"the poor cannot eat promises."

noreply@blogger.com (Kale) — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 14:44:00 +0000

Aid organizations and even some arm's of the United Nations are expressing frustration over another missed opportunity. Next week, the World Food Summit will take place at the UN, but the aid groups say that not much action is likely. Most of the heads of state from the G-8 will not attend the meeting. Also, pledges might be made from the summit, but they are unlikely to include new measures or money.

The Food and Agriculture Organization has started an online petition for people to sign to show the summit that the world wants action, to take a look go to www.1billionhungry.org.

From the IPS, writer Paul Virgo surveys the frustration.

The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) is holding the summit to give fresh impetus to the fight against hunger, a scourge it says now affects over a billion people - almost a sixth of the global population.

United States President Barack Obama is not expected to attend the event, which will run from Monday to Wednesday at the FAO's Rome headquarters, and so far Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi is the only leader of a G8 country to confirm his presence.

"It's a tragedy that the world leaders are not going to attend the summit," Daniel Berman of health and humanitarian assistance NGO Medecins sans Frontieres told a news conference.

Many experts are also concerned that, as often happens at such meetings, after lots of fine talk there will be little that ties nations down to taking action at the end of the summit. Indeed, the first such food summit in 1996 set the goal of reducing hunger by half from around then 825 million sufferers at that time by 2015, but instead the world has moved in the opposite direction.

"We may get more good declarations, but what is the substance behind it? I doubt there will be specific financial commitments next week," Markus Giger of the University of Bern's Centre for Development and Environment tells IPS.

"The number of hungry and malnourished people is rising. Countries must do more. We are far from reaching our targets. It's unacceptable."

A draft of the summit declaration contains little that was not stated by the G8 group of the world's leading economic powers at the L'Aquila summit in July.

In L'Aquila the G8 promised to "act with the scale and urgency needed to achieve sustainable global food security", among other things by reducing trade distortions in negotiations at the World Trade Organisation and mobilising 20 billion dollars over the next three years for sustainable agriculture in developing countries.

But diplomatic sources told Reuters news agency that less than a quarter of that eye-catching figure will actually be fresh cash.

"The declaration is just a rehash of old platitudes," said Francisco Sarmento, the food rights coordinator of ActionAid. "It says hunger will be halved by 2015 but fails to commit any new resources to achieve this or provide any way of holding governments to account...Unfortunately the poor cannot eat promises."

Interview with Eugene Cho of One Day's Wages

noreply@blogger.com (Kale) — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 14:28:00 +0000

This video helps to promote the efforts of Eugene Cho, who started One Day's Wages. The website encourages people to donate one day of their year's wages to fight extreme global poverty.

In this CBS News video, Shira Lazar conducts the interview with Cho.

A small community that once received guaranteed income

noreply@blogger.com (Kale) — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 14:09:00 +0000

An almost forgotten experiment proved just how much a decent income can help people's health and education. A small community in Manitoba, Canada participated in a study back in the mid-70's where every person in the town received a living wage for five years. During those years, the student in the community stayed in school longer, and the residents rarely ever had to rely on Canada's health system.

From The Vancouver Sun, writer Norma Greenaway helped to unearth the almost forgotten study.

"Once upon a time in Canada, there was a town where no one was poor."

No, this is not the opening line of some yet to be written fairy tale. It's the opening line in the summary of a new report that contains some heartening news buried in a long ago and mostly forgotten experiment that ensured all residents in a small Manitoba community were guaranteed a minimum annual income for five years in the mid-1970s.

With Canada awash in flu fears, corporate bankruptcies, rising joblessness and pension woes, the gradual unearthing of a tiny piece of 'utopian' history seems a timely reminder of the benefits of daring to dream.

So far, researcher Evelyn Forget has discovered that from 1974 through 1978, the residents of Dauphin were less likely to draw on the medical system than a control group elsewhere in the province. Dauphin's young people also stayed in high school longer. Within years of the experiment shutting down, those trend lines disappeared, Forget says.

Forget is banking on learning more about what was known as the MINCOME experiment once she gets access to about 1,800 sealed boxes, which, among other things, are jammed with personal surveys of Dauphin residents who lived the experiment.
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While it lasted, about one-third of Dauphin's 10,000 poor residents got monthly cheques to boost their incomes.

The actual dollar figures from the period seem shockingly small in today's world. The formula for the guaranteed minimum income translated into incomes in 1974, for example, that ranged from $1,255 for a single person to about $4,000 for families of four or five people.

The program's costs ballooned as the 1970s progressed and inflation took off, spurred in particular by skyrocketing oil prices at the time.

Though there remains much to learn from the little-studied experiment, Forget says she's increasingly persuaded a guaranteed minimum income is a "more reasonable, more just, more efficient and cheaper way" of eliminating poverty than the current system of targeted support

A high profile donation to ACCION USA

noreply@blogger.com (Kale) — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 20:01:00 +0000

We found this mention of a donation to ACCION USA interesting. Craigslist founder Craig Newmark is a supporter of microcredit here in the states and worldwide.

From Microfinance Focus, we read more on the donation.

ACCION USA, a pioneer and leader in U.S. microfinance that provides critical capital and financial education to small businesses, has been awarded a gift by Craigslist founder Craig Newmark, to support its person-to-person microlending activities on the Website Kiva.org. Craigslist is a centralized network of online communities, featuring free online classified advertisements.

Mr. Newmark is a strong supporter of microfinance internationally. “ACCION USA’s work in providing microfinance to small business owners here in the United States is commendable,” said Mr. Newmark. “As a business owner myself, I understand that access to loans to grow a business is critical. I am proud to support ACCION USA’s Kiva lending program.”

According to Gina Harman, president and CEO at ACCION USA, the funds will help the organization continue its partnership with Kiva.org, a Website that connects entrepreneurs in need of business capital worldwide with individuals who make loans in $25 increments. Launched in June 2009, the partnership marked the first time that people could lend to entrepreneurs in the U.S. via the Kiva.org platform.

UN food summit next week

noreply@blogger.com (Kale) — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 18:59:00 +0000

Next week, the United Nations hosts a food summit. Ahead of the gathering officials are preparing a statement that will be ratified by Nation's members.

The draft of the document makes promises for all nations to make combating hunger a priority. Humanitarian aid groups say that the language within the draft is not tough enough.

From this Associated Press article that is hosted at Google News, writer Ariel David took a peek at the document.

A draft declaration for next week's U.N. food summit would commit world leaders to a new hunger-fighting strategy by pledging to increase agricultural development aid to help the world's 1 billion hungry people feed themselves.

However, the draft obtained Thursday by The Associated Press does not include a 2025 deadline for eradicating hunger, a goal sought by the United Nations.

Also missing are specific money commitments, such as the $44 billion in yearly agricultural aid that the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization says will be necessary in the coming decades.

Hunger now affects a record 1.02 billion people globally — or one in six — with the financial meltdown, high food prices, drought and war blamed for recent increases, the FAO says.
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Humanitarian groups said, however, that the document was weak, and that the three-day Rome summit starting Monday could fail if world leaders don't allocate new resources and come up with mechanisms to hold governments to their commitments.

Under the draft, developed countries would "commit to a crucial, decisive shift" that aims to "substantially increase the share" of aid invested in agriculture to help the world's poor become less dependent on direct food assistance.

20 million need food aid in East Africa

noreply@blogger.com (Kale) — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 15:22:00 +0000

20 million people in East Africa are in desperate need of food aid according to the United Nations. Drought and war have been the biggest contributing factors to the hunger.

From Reuters, writer Silvia Aloisi gives us the details of the UN report.

"The situation is very worrying due to expected crop and pasture failures from poor rains in several areas, the increase in conflicts, trade disruptions and continuing high food prices," the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said.

In its latest report on food and crop prospects (www.fao.org), FAO said delayed rains and dry spells often followed by floods had hurt crops and pastures in Kenya, Eritrea, Ethiopia and Uganda.

In Somalia and Sudan, poor weather has worsened a food emergency due to civil wars, with 3.6 million and 5.9 million people in need of food aid, respectively. In the case of Somalia, that is about 50 percent of the total population.

The U.N. agency is hosting a world food summit in Rome next week, hoping to win broad support for an increase in agricultural investments in poor countries to help them feed themselves.

Maize production in Kenya, east Africa's biggest economy, is expected to be 30 percent down on last year. About 3.8 million Kenyans, mainly living in pastoral and marginal agricultural areas, are in need of emergency food assistance, FAO said.

That number rises to 6.2 million people in Ethiopia, where late and erratic rains have damaged maize and sorghum crops and reduced availability of pastures in many parts of the country.

Monsanto, friend or foe?

noreply@blogger.com (Kale) — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 16:05:00 +0000

The debate on bio-tech foods and seeds wears on. Food production must double by 2050, and the only way to do that is with genetically modified foods. However, many critics say the foods only poison us and the earth.

Reuters has this exhaustive profile on Monsanto that we found at the Independent On-line. Monsanto is a leading agriculture company that is spending lots of money on improving seeds and yields in hopes that the farmers will turn to their products.

Writer Carey Gillam began the story by talking of a visit from Monsanto's Vice President of research Rob Fraley, with his friend Dr Norman Borlaug.

The topic of Fraley's final conversation with his friend that day underscored the unfolding of a modern era of global agriculture. In this new paradigm, traditional plant breeding is giving way to the high-tech tools of rich corporations like Monsanto, which are playing an increasingly powerful role in determining how and what the world eats. It is also generating controversy, as critics continue to question the safety of biotech crops, and fear increasing control of the global food supply by giant corporations.

Still, few dispute that something needs to be done. The United Nations has said that food production must double by 2050 to meet the demand of the world's growing population and that innovative strategies are needed to combat hunger and malnutrition that already afflict more than 1 billion people.

Amid this dire outlook, St Louis, Missouri-based Monsanto - along with its biggest corporate rivals, charitable foundations, public researchers and others - is forming a loose coalition of interests instigating a second Green Revolution.

"What we do builds on what he started," Fraley said of Borlaug, who died in September at the age of 95.

Founded in 1901 as a maker of saccharine, Monsanto has undergone several evolutions of its own.

The company spends an estimated $2-million a day on agriculture research and development - more than any other company.

It employs about 400 scientists in four St Louis-area research facilities, applying an array of new technologies to plant genetics, with a goal of doubling yields in major crops, such as corn and soybeans, between now and 2030.

"If we do that successfully, it won't just be good for Monsanto, it will be good for the world," Fraley said.

As it positions itself to be a leader in advancing a global fight against hunger, Monsanto has started working with nonprofit organisations in poor nations, donating research and genetics to help needy farmers.

The moves run parallel to Monsanto's commercial sales of high-priced seeds and agricultural chemicals to farmers in wealthy nations, which has made the company a darling of Wall Street and helped it post record net sales of $11,7-billion and net income of $2,1-billion for fiscal 2009.

The US Department of Agriculture and governments around the world are encouraging Monsanto - as well as rivals DuPont, Dow Chemical, BASF and other corporate interests - to work with academics, foundations and public institutions on how to increase food production globally.

Drought-tolerant crops, particularly corn, are high on the agenda amid concerns about a changing climate. Improved wheat is also a major goal.

Corn and wheat account for about 40 percent of the world's food and 25 percent of calories consumed in developing countries, and millions of people get more than half of their daily calories from corn and wheat alone, according to the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organisation.

"We want to encourage the private sector to help shape research. These are important issues for all Americans and the world," said Roger Beachy, President Barack Obama's newly appointed director of the US National Institute of Food and Agriculture.

Anti-poverty activist Robert Corad passes away

noreply@blogger.com (Kale) — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 14:54:00 +0000

An anti-poverty activist who helped to build one of the biggest agencies for the poor was laid to rest yesterday. Robert Corad pushed policy makers in Washington and in Massachusetts to help the people that Action for Boston Community Development served.

From the Boston Globe, writer Adrian Walker attended the funeral.

Coard, who died last week at the age of 82, has been celebrated as the guiding force behind Action for Boston Community Development, the city’s largest and most influential antipoverty agency.

But Coard’s friends, allies, and admirers gathered not only to celebrate his life, but perhaps get a glimpse of the private and elusive man behind the good works.

Representative Edward Markey, who had shared a close relationship with Coard for many years, delivered a lengthy eulogy that sought to capture the scale of Coard’s influence.

He invoked Edward M. Kennedy’s famous tribute to his fallen brother, Robert: “a good and decent man who saw wrong and tried to right it, saw suffering and tried to heal it.’’

But he also remembered a man who struck respect, if not fear, into the elected officials he called upon to do the agency’s bidding in Washington and at the State House.

“For generations of Boston politicians . . . Ed Markey included, ABCD didn’t stand for Action for Boston Community Development; it stood for Anything Bob Coard Desires,’’ Markey said.

Nationally, Coard helped engineer legislation nearly 30 years ago requiring federal funding for community action programs, ensuring that the movement ABCD exemplifies would survive, regardless of which party was in power.

Hiding beggars

noreply@blogger.com (Kale) — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 13:41:00 +0000

New Delhi, India is in a cleaning up process before the Commonwealth Games next summer. The city has already erected walls around the city's slums to visitors can't see them. Now, the city is rounding up beggars and hiding them in jail. However, even the New Delhi's best efforts to "clean up" gets tied up in bureaucracy.

From Australia's The Age, a reporter went for a ride in one of the clean up vans.

There are beggars aplenty in the Indian capital - an estimated 58,000 of them, according to a 2006 Office of Social Welfare survey, although many charities working with street people say that figure is laughably low.

The squad members - four plainclothes constables and a supervising inspector - do not walk more than a block before they spot the first beggars, a pair of elderly women.

The police stop, survey them, then move on. They pause to make note of a few older men squatted on a sidewalk, hands outstretched to passersby. Then some children. The police do not, however, actually arrest anyone.

The magistrate who travels in their van, poised to process the mendicants and dispatch them instantly to alms houses, sits reading newspapers and sweating in his black suit and tie.

"The judge ordered us to leave the lepers," says Const. Ashok Kokhar, as he steps around a half-dressed man exposing sores to beg for coins outside a mosque that is a huge tourist attraction.

"He doesn't want anyone contagious in the van."

They pass more old women, whom they leave in their alley.

"Anyone who looks old - 70 or 80 - we are leaving them, because what would they do in jail," Const. Usha Rani says.
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Many of those who work to help Delhi's street poor say the mobile courts - and indeed the law that criminalises begging - are misguided at best and barbaric at worst.

"The person arrested is being punished for being poor, but poverty is caused by state policies," says Paramjeet Kaur, director of Ashray Adhikar Abhiyan, a shelter that provides street people with legal help.

"But instead of looking at that, or addressing real needs of people on the street, they just put them away in locked homes."

Meanwhile, the government offers no shelters that people can access without being arrested, she says.

The courts mostly detain "people who do not have the power to question or challenge why they have been picked up".

FAO: conditions 'ripe' for another food crisis

noreply@blogger.com (Kale) — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 18:57:00 +0000

The Food and Agriculture Organization is warning that another food crisis could occur soon. The FAO says that food production in the under-developed world needs increase to protect those countries from sharp hikes in food prices.

From Reuters, writer Daniel Flynn attended a speech made by FAO director Jacques Diouf.

In an interview ahead of a global summit on food security in Rome next week, FAO Director-General Jacques Diouf said more aid was needed to curb the rising number of hungry people in the world, which topped 1 billion for the first time this year.

"There is a lack of priority in fighting hunger and poverty at the highest political level, not only in developed countries but in developing countries," Diouf told Reuters on Monday.

"The fundamentals that led to the crisis in 2007-2008 are almost all still there, except for oil prices," he added, citing climate change shocks like droughts in Africa, strong population growth in developing countries and use of bio-fuels.

Prices of food staples like cereals doubled in many parts of the world in 2007-2008, sparking protests and rioting.

Rich nations responded by raising output by 13 percent, but developing countries were only able to manage a 2.7 percent increase, Diouf said. Excluding China, India and Brazil, the rise in output was an anaemic 0.7 percent.

"No wonder that in those countries prices have remained very high," said Diouf, noting that food prices had barely eased from their peaks of last year in many developing nations.

Rich nations needed to raise the share of aid earmarked for agriculture to 17 percent, from 5 percent at present, to provide farmers in poor nations with irrigation, fertilizers, disease-resistant seeds, storage for their crops and roads to take them to market, Diouf said.

WHO: AIDS is leading cause of death for women

noreply@blogger.com (Kale) — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 16:36:00 +0000

The leading cause of death for women is AIDS according to the World Health Organization. AIDS effects women aged 15 to 44 more than any other disease. The WHO also says that 15 percent of woman's deaths are from childbirth complications.

From RedOrbit, this Associated Press story contains the WHO's statement.

The WHO said that unsafe sex is the leading risk factor in developing countries for these women of childbearing age, with others including lack of access to contraceptives and iron deficiency. This was the WHO's first study of women's health around the globe.

According to the U.N. agency, one in five deaths among women throughout the world in this age group is linked to unsafe sex.

"Women who do not know how to protect themselves from such infections, or who are unable to do so, face increased risks of death or illness," the WHO said in a 91-page report. "So do those who cannot protect themselves from unwanted pregnancy or control their fertility because of lack of access to contraception."

The data was included in a report that highlights the unequal health treatment a female faces from childbirth through infancy carrying on into old age.

Dr. Margaret Chan, WHO’s chief, said that women enjoy a biological advantage because they tend to live six to eight years longer than men. However, she said that throughout the world they suffer serious disadvantages because of poverty, poorer access to health care and cultural norms that put a priority on the well being of men.

The Catch 22 of natural disasters for poor countries

noreply@blogger.com (Kale) — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 15:32:00 +0000

Weekend events gave us another example of a poor nation who has trouble taking preventative measures against natural disasters. Instead, when the disaster happens, it spends all of it's resources cleaning up the damage. It becomes a cyclical pattern that a country is unable to stop.

El Salvador suffered severe flooding over the weekend. Downpours of rain caused giant mudslides. The death toll from the flooding now stands at 130. In addition, 7,500 people are without homes.

From the IPS, writer Edgardo Ayala explains the poor warning systems that need to be upgraded.

Environmentalist Ángel Ibarra, president of the Unidad Ecológica Salvadoreña (Salvadoran Ecological Unit, or UNES), cited a World Bank study which estimates that 90 percent of the population lives in areas at high relative risk of death from two or more natural hazards.

But Ibarra said the problem of natural disasters is magnified in the country because of the serious environmental deterioration on one hand, and the lack of policies to pull people out of poverty and social exclusion on the other.

Most of the victims of catastrophes like flooding and mudslides are poor people who live in shacks in dangerous areas along riverbanks or hillsides.

He also told IPS that El Salvador lacks adequate disaster prevention and preparedness policies. "When these problems happen, it's always as if it were the first time. We have a 'picking up the dead' policy. We only react after something happens."

So although El Salvador, located on the earthquake-prone Ring of Fire and in the path of hurricanes, frequently suffers natural disasters, followed up by reports calling for an improved early warning system and other prevention measures, the system rarely functions when it is needed.

"We also suffer from socio-environmental and institutional vulnerability," added Ibarra, pointing to the dearth of coordination between the different state agencies.

Starting last Wednesday, the weather reports were forecasting heavy rain over the weekend, and the government declared a "green alert." But the alert was not upgraded to orange until late Sunday morning, when deaths had already been reported in several parts of the country.

The national meteorological service, SNET, forecast 100 mm of rain. But late Saturday night and early Sunday morning, 355 mm fell in just four hours – a downpour even worse than the rainfall that accompanied Hurricane Mitch in 1998, when 400 mm fell in four days.

Corruption continues to increase in Nigeria

noreply@blogger.com (Kale) — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 13:46:00 +0000

In Nigeria, efforts to fight corruption have been increasing by each successive government. However, the amount of corruption that goes on has increased as well. Nigeria actually has a lot of anti-corruption laws on the books, but the problem only seems to worsen.

From the Vanguard, corruption expert Dr. Peter Langsett weighed in on the problem.

An Anti-Corruption expert, Dr. Peter Langsett who stated this at a two-day Anti-Corruption and Financial Crimes Summit in Abuja, maintained that unless there is a considerable improvement in the per-capita income of the average citizenry, corruption would continue to undermine the socio-economic and political development of the country.

While advocating for the establishment of State Anti-Corruption agencies to complement the efforts of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC), Dr.Langsett tasked these anti-graft agencies to be more proactive and to go after those he described as the ‘big fishes’ whom he said should be held responsible for not only plundering the nation’s economy but for the geometric rise in poverty induced crimes in the country today.

According to him, “it is a pity that a recent survey indicated that Nigeria’s GDP per capital, is much lower than what obtained in the 1970’s due to corruption which is a major predicate of money laundering, what baffles me however, is that this country has the highest number of laws and anti-graft institutions in the whole world.”

More on what motivates China

noreply@blogger.com (Kale) — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 21:26:00 +0000

As always the IPS has a great analysis on the new pledges of aid from China. It is not a part of our snippet below but it ther is an uncomfortable quote from Zimbabwe president Robert Mugabe praising the aid pledges.

Reporter Antoaneta Bezlova tells us about a proposal that was recently debated in China's government to send Chinese workers into Africa to grow rice.

Beijing has always denied it harbours any intentions of replicating the West’s colonial expansion in Africa. But earlier this year, delegates to the annual session of China’s parliament debated a proposal to seek employment for up to one million Chinese in various African countries.

The proposal was put forward by delegate Zhao Zhihai, a researcher with the Zhangjiakou Academy of Agricultural Sciences in China’s breadbasket province of Hebei.

Zhao, who had visited Ethiopia and Guinea to explore possibilities for agricultural cooperation in cultivating hybrid rice on the continent, told delegates that Africa’s vast land and underdeveloped agriculture could provide employment for up to one million Chinese labourers.

"In the current economic climate, with so many of our people unemployed, China can benefit from finding jobs for them and Africa can benefit from our expertise in developing any type of land and crop," Zhao told the parliament.

He suggested Beijing should draft a long-term strategy of dispatching Chinese labourers to Africa in order to solve two of China’s greatest challenges—food security and unemployment.

Zhao’s proposal may have not been endorsed at the top level, but its having been publicised by the media has provoked comments of approval in some of the popular Internet forums here.

"At last we have heard of something useful from our delegates to the parliament," wrote one netizen in a sarcastic jab at China’s National People’s Congress, often derided here as a "rubber stamp".

Another, writing in ‘tianya’ forum (www.tianya.cn), suggested that Angola, Congo and Equatorial Guinea should be developed as "outposts" of China’s overall strategy of transforming Africa into a "China-friendly backyard" and Beijing should seek to buy land and send labourers to those countries in order to relieve China’s "food and land bottlenecks".

Voucher program for child birth care in Uganda

noreply@blogger.com (Kale) — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 16:48:00 +0000

For mothers-to-be in remote villages of Uganda bringing a baby to the world can be very difficult. Walks can be long to any hospital, so the thought of receiving any prenatal care is out of the question, let alone going to the hospital for the delivery itself. Besides, who could afford any of the care or supplies the hospital would charge you?

An article in All Africa today examines a new voucher program that gives full pregnancy care at a reduced cost. The funds for the voucher program are put up by the World Bank and the German Development Bank. However, the drawback to the card program is not everyone can afford it, even with the reduced cost.

New Vision writer Irene Nabusoba examines the voucher program.

EVERY pregnant woman has one foot in the grave," goes an African adage. This may sound crude today but it is the reality for many rural poverty-stricken women like Consolata Kebikali, 38. She has survived death nine times during childbirth, but has traded her luck for four of the babies she was trying to give life.

With a small plot just enough for their two-roomed house in Kibale village, Ndeijja sub-county in Mbarara district, Kebikali had never known the inside of a health facility or a gloved hand of a midwife during childbirth.

Her labour suite had always been the banana plantation, under the instruction of an elderly neighbour and at some extremes by herself. What with the nearest government health facility - Itojo Hospital, 25 miles away?

Besides, she could not afford sh35,000 - sh50,000 charged by Kathe Medical Care Clinic located on Kabale Road (17 miles from her home). Thus from conception, through pregnancy to childbirth, everything is 'up to God to see her through'.

But thanks to the health baby vouchers under the Out-put Based Aid (OBA) project, Kebikali's last-born baby, now aged two months, was born in hospital, guaranteeing it a safe arrival.

She says: "I went to Kathe Clinic earlier than necessary because of false labour. I was referred to Mbarara Hospital where I was told my baby was okay after a scan. All expenses were paid courtesy of the card."

What is 'the card'?

The German Development Bank (KfW) and the Global Partnership on Output Based Aid (GPOBA), a World Bank-managed trust fund, are jointly financing a three-year Reproductive Health Voucher project for the management of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) and provision of safe delivery services in Mbarara, Kiruhura, Isingiro and Ibanda districts.

Under the project managed by Marie Stopes International, a UK-based health and social marketing organisation that advocates for quality reproductive health care, patients buy a card at sh3,000 to access STI screening and treatment (health life vouchers) or medical care during pregnancy and delivery (health baby vouchers), at accredited health facilities.

"The card entitles a mother to four antenatal visits, malaria screening and prophylaxis, STI and HIV screening, delivery (normal and C-section), transportation for referral in case of emergency and post-natal care within six weeks after delivery," says Richard Semujju, the project coordinator.

He says only 15% of mothers in Isingiro give birth at health units, about 20% in Kiruhura, 30% in Mbarara, while Ibanda hardly has any statistics on skilled deliveries. Nationally, 42% of mothers deliver in health units under skilled care.

Angela Mbahwejje, a midwife and proprietor of Angela Domiciliary Clinic in Kashari sub-county, who has participated in the project since its inception in 2006 with the STI vouchers, says: "So far, we have attended to 231 mothers.

We have had 43 deliveries, three emergency deliveries which were referrals to Mbarara Hospital and three mothers returning for post-natal care."

World of Good still doing it through the recession

noreply@blogger.com (Kale) — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 14:56:00 +0000

The global recession hasn't avoided fair trade businesses. World of Good has had to cut back on staff here in US, but they have avoided any cutbacks in purchasing from their artisans across the globe.

From the San Francisco Chronicle, reporter Carolyn Said has this profile on the fair trade company.

For Indian beadworkers who craft intricate necklaces and earrings, Haitian metalworkers who recycle oil drums into sculptures, and Guatemalan weavers who make rainbow-hued tapestries, the economic downturn that has choked off consumer spending could mean a devastating plunge back into poverty.

Priya Haji is determined to stop that from happening.

As CEO and co-founder of World of Good, a small Emeryville company that creates market opportunities for craftspeople from the developing world, Haji has acted nimbly to respond to the recession without slashing the orders her far-flung workers depend on.

"Other retailers can quickly turn off their factories to reduce excess inventories, but fair traders can't do that," said Haji, 39, whose calm demeanor belies her fervent sense of purpose. "We have a commitment to pay a fair price and fair wages to producer groups."

Thousands of artisans in 70 countries from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe fabricate the handmade jewelry, clothing, housewares and art that World of Good sells online and in stores.
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Don Shaffer, CEO of San Francisco's RSF Social Finance, which provides financing to World of Good, said he appreciated that Haji refused to cut corners at the expense of her artisans. RSF expanded its loans to the company so it could continue to prefinance its inventory.

"They have stuck to their commitments through good times and bad, which a lot of other folks wouldn't do," he said. "World of Good is a shining example of a fair-trade organization functioning at a very high level as a business and having a tremendous social impact."

Some coping mechanisms have been painful. Haji said she had to trim staff, bringing the Emeryville workforce to its current size of about 25 people.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2009/11/09/MNE71AF93P.DTL#ixzz0WNHJxzJW

China pledges to go 'all out' to help Africa

noreply@blogger.com (Kale) — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 13:37:00 +0000

Over the weekend, China pledged another 10 billion dollars in conditional loan money to governments across the African continent. China says they are making the pledge to help Africa's agriculture and infrastructure.

However, many say the Chinese are only making the loans to improve their power within the continent. Human rights advocates are concerned that China may give the loans to corrupt officials.

From this AFP story that we found at Google News, writer Samer al-Atrush attended the Chinese announcement of the loans.

Wen said the new measures would focus on reducing poverty and assistance in infrastructure and agriculture, while China is also vowing to remove tariffs on most goods from the least developed African countries.

China's assistant commerce minister, Fu Ziying, said on Sunday that China would build a permanent exhibition centre for African products.

It will also set up "three to five modern logistical centres to help African entrepreneurs to increase logistical capacity to ship out African products," Fu said.

The pledges have been received with enthusiasm by African delegations, but China is fighting off accusations that it is only interested in Africa for its resources.

An assistant foreign minister, Zhai Jun, insisted that China was not seeking to impose its "hegemony" in the continent.

China "will not treat Africa in an imperialist way. China will not be pointing fingers or bullying African countries," he said on Sunday, adding that his country would not "practice colonialism in African countries."

Ahead of the launch of a more robust diplomatic involvement in African conflicts, he denied that China throws a lifeline to leaders accused of human rights violations such as Sudan President Omar al-Beshir.

IdeaAid: the worldwide brainstorm

noreply@blogger.com (Kale) — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 13:00:00 +0000

We received the following press release from Heifer International about a unique global brainstorming event. The event called IdeaAid will gather people around the globe to think of ways to solve the world's problems. The first problem on the agenda; how to raise a billion dollars a year to bring the world's poor out of poverty.

Set to launch on Nov. 14, the first Idea Aid™ challenge seeks to find novel ways to raise $1 billion annually to help eradicate global hunger and poverty. Ideas will come from people all over the world who will brainstorm online and share their best thinking with Heifer International, a global nonprofit dedicated to ending world hunger and poverty.

“We believe the time is right for Idea Aid,” said Mensa Process Managing Director David Wynett. “It’s a revolutionary way to identify potential solutions to problems, and it’s especially relevant in today’s economic climate, when people may not be able to donate money, but still want to give back.”

Idea Aid is sponsored by Mensa Process, a brain trust that helps its corporate clients solve complex problems and identify new growth opportunities. Mensa Process works with some of the world’s brightest minds — members of Mensa, an international organization of 100,000+ people, open to the top 2 percent in intelligence.

For Idea Aid, Mensa Process is inviting everyone, everywhere, to help change the world. Mensa members, along with technology, finance, development and public health experts, students, educators and informed consumers, will brainstorm online to find new solutions. Mensa Process believes that combining high intelligence, creative minds and cause-directed energy will generate remarkable results.

How Idea Aid Works
For a single week — Nov. 14-21, 2009 — people around the world will come together online to brainstorm about the complex problem of global poverty. Those interested in participating can register at www.ideaaid.com. Ideas will be collected, assessed and refined and then shared for implementation.

What’s needed to put an end to global poverty? According to Heifer International, one of the things that make a big difference is money. At this point, however, there’s no single way to efficiently and consistently generate the level of funds necessary to combat hunger and poverty.

“The problem demands new ideas and new methods of collection to make giving easier and more efficient,” said Tom Peterson, director of Innovation for Heifer International. “We need methods, ideas that can be used online, offline, globally, locally. Something simple that everyone, anyone can participate in,”

Donating Ideas to Change the World
Mensa members are also excited about the challenge. “Many Mensa members are active in volunteering in their communities through our service programs,” said Pam Donahoo, executive director of American Mensa. “Idea Aid gives us a unique way to use our knowledge to serve the world.” Idea Aid is open to everyone. Those interested can register at www.ideaaid.com.

About Mensa Process
Mensa Process is the only consulting firm in the world with exclusive access to the unrivaled brainpower of Mensa — a highly respected, international organization whose membership represents some of the world’s most intelligent people. By tapping into this group’s unparalleled intellect and combining it with the creativity of other bright minds, Mensa Process helps businesses grow, innovate and solve problems. www.mensaprocess.com

About Heifer International
Heifer International’s mission is to end hunger and poverty while caring for the earth. Since 1944, Heifer International has provided livestock and environmentally sound agricultural training to improve the lives of those who struggle daily for reliable sources of food and income. Heifer is currently working in 50 countries, including the United States, to help families and communities become more self-reliant. http://www.heifer.org

About Mensa
Founded in 1946 in Oxford, England, Mensa is a respected international organization whose membership is open to individuals scoring in the top 2% on accepted, standardized intelligence tests. Mensa members are geographically and occupationally diverse, representing more than 100 countries and thousands of professions and passions. www.mensa.org, www.us.mensa.org, http://www.mensa.org.uk

The 58 well challenge

noreply@blogger.com (Kale) — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 21:30:00 +0000

An engineering club at Montana State University had an immense challenge. Build wells for each of the 58 school districts in Khwisero, Kenya.

The students had no idea where to start, but have come around to build six wells so far. Future classes of the engineering club will continue the work.

From the Bozeman Daily Chronicle, writer Gail Schontzler describes the joy that one such well brought to a village.

Fresh, clean water gushed from the new water pump, and J.J. Larsen took a drink.

"Obulayi muno," which means "very good" in Kiluhya, he said to the Kenyan villagers gathered around him. "They all cheered."

And with that, the people of Mwisena celebrated their new water well with speeches, dancing and a chicken feast.

The well is the sixth installed by students from the Engineers Without Borders chapter at Montana State University.

Larsen, a 27-year-old from Seattle who just earned his master's degree in mechanical engineering from MSU, was co-project manager this summer. He was one of 19 MSU students who traveled to Kenya to tackle one little part of the vast problem of poverty in Africa.

The new well is another step toward the MSU students' long-term goal of bringing clean water to all 58 primary schools in the Khwisero district of western Kenya.

Installing wells means villagers no longer have to drink from muddy watering holes that can carry water-borne diseases. It means children, especially girls, no longer have to miss out on hours of school while walking miles to fetch water in cans carried on their heads.

"Being a college student, you can still make a difference somewhere in the world," Larsen said. "That just feels good, feels right."

The MSU chapter of Engineers Without Borders has come a long ways in five years. When the first MSU students expressed interest in 2004, the national EWB handed them a huge assignment -- answer a plea from Nairobi architect Ronald Omyonga to help children in his home district get clean water and a better chance at an education.

The students started from scratch, with no organization, no money and no idea where to begin.

Since then, students have learned a lot -- how to get wells drilled, build latrines, collaborate with Africans and raise money back home (each well costs $15,000 to $25,000). They have managed to build a student organization that keeps going, despite constant turnover and graduation, passing on inspiration and lessons learned to each new generation of student members.

This summer, in addition to one new well, the MSU students installed two sanitary composting latrines, ran a health clinic, distributed 200 eyeglasses, researched a water pipeline system and oversaw construction of the group's first bio-gas latrine, based on design work done last year by an MSU engineering class.

A Chinese way to fight malaria, with friends

noreply@blogger.com (Kale) — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 19:31:00 +0000

A plant that is found in China is being used by it's government in diplomacy with the African continent. A wormwood shrub that is prevalent in Asia contains artemisinin, one of the drugs used to fight malaria. The Chinese government ships artemisinin to countries that it has diplomatic relationships with. However, the Chinese are reluctant to teach Africans how to grow the shrub on their own.

From Reuters, reporter Tan Ee Lyn explains how this health issue becomes international diplomacy instead.

China hopes to improve and use the drug as a uniquely Chinese weapon to fight malaria not on its own soil, where the deadly disease has been sharply pruned back, but in Africa, where it still kills one child every 30 seconds.

Already, a Chinese-backed eradication programme on a small island off Africa has proven a huge success.

Away from its practical application, scientists back in the lab in Guangzhou are also achieving results. In one of the lab's refrigerators sit a dozen triangular test-tubes holding seedlings of the sweet wormwood shrub, also called Artemisia annua, which has only been found in the wild in China, Vietnam and border areas in Myanmar.

"There are about 0.6 parts of artemisinin in every 100 parts of the plant in the wild, but we have managed to increase the artemisinin content to between 1.2 and 1.8," said Feng Liling, assistant professor at the Tropical Medicine Institute in Guangzhou University of Traditional Chinese Medicine.

China pledged to help Africa fight malaria at the triennial Forum on China and Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) in 2006 and has since set up 30 anti-malaria and prevention units. The next FOCAC meeting is in Egypt on November 8-9.

Helping developing countries eradicate malaria will help China project its influence and prestige as a global power, said politics professor Joseph Cheng at City University in Hong Kong.
...

Tanzania, Kenya and Nigeria have begun farming hybrids of the sweet wormwood shrub with Chinese and Vietnamese ancestry, said Li Guoqiao at the Tropical Medicine Institute.

"I inspected the plantations and the plants are growing well," Li told Reuters in an interview.

Asked if China would export the high-yielding Artemisia annua to Africa, Li said: "We want to grow them in China and whatever we export depends on bilateral relationships."

A perspective on LBJ's launch of the 'War on Poverty'

noreply@blogger.com (Kale) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 14:33:00 +0000

We thought this was a good perspective on a piece of American history. From West Virginia's State Journal we find this interview with Barbara Bayes, a woman who has spent a lifetime helping the poor in the Appalachian Mountains. The interview focuses on the start of the "War on Poverty" when President Lyndon Johnson created programs to try to help the poor.

Writer Christine Miller Ford had Bayes recall when college aged strangers arrived to Appalachia in the 1960's.

Growing up in eastern Kentucky, 60-year-old Bayes got her first glimpse of LBJ’s anti-poverty initiative when she and fellow teens began to spot Volunteers In Service To America, or VISTA, workers in their community.

“We started noticing these young college kids coming around who didn’t talk like us or look like us,” said Bayes, a lifelong social worker who heads the Good News Mountaineer Garage, the statewide program that provides motor vehicles to low-income West Virginians. “They’d come through asking for directions, and we loved to send them off the wrong way. Our reaction was, ‘Who are you to look down on us because we’re different? Because we have an outhouse?’”

But with each repaired roof, free meal program and other project completed by the young people involved in the VISTA program — a domestic version of the Peace Corps created through Johnson’s Economic Opportunity Act of 1964 — Bayes said she and her neighbors began to see these visitors in a new light.

“We saw how much good they were doing for people who were really struggling,” she said.

Now thanks to the range of programs begun with the War on Poverty and Johnson’s Great Society, low-income citizens, seniors and others can live more dignified lives, Bayes said.

“So many of the programs begun in the 1960s have become so integrated into society that we don’t think about what life would be like without them,” said Bayes, who has lived in Charleston since 1984. “But before the War on Poverty, there was no mechanism for low-income senior citizens to have nursing home care paid for. Grants and loans weren’t available for low-income students to go to college. No job training for a displaced homemaker trying to get back on her feet. No legal aid for a woman trying to leave an abusive marriage. No money for winterizing an elderly person’s home for fuel efficiency. It’s a long, long list.”

Video: Tunnel con-men in the West Bank

noreply@blogger.com (Kale) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 01:21:00 +0000

From CNN comes this story of con-men taking advantage of desperate Palestinians. Tunnels that run into Egypt try to step around the Israeli blockade. New tunnels need to be built often because Israel keeps blowing up any they want. Con-men often look for investors for the new tunnels, but don't plan on paying them back.

New head of IFAD wants food that provides more than sustenance

noreply@blogger.com (Kale) — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 21:12:00 +0000

In an interview with the Christian Science Monitor, the UN's International Fund for Agricultural Development Kanayo Nwanze talks about food production as a security issue. Nwanze wants to guide the IFAD past simply raising production of food into food production that provides income.

Writer Howard LaFranchi interviewed Nwanze on his goals for the IFAD.

"People now have a clear sense of the linkages between food security and national security," says Dr. Nwanze. That understanding is helping bring questions of hunger and rural development to a broader audience, he says, "as well as to some very high places."

Hunger now can mean increased cross-border and international migration. And the riots that accompanied recent food shortages and price hikes in several parts of the world show how hunger can destabilize governments in regions of critical importance to the international battle against extremism.

That's why issues of rural hunger and food security are increasingly cropping up in venues ranging from the US Congress to the G-8 group of industrialized countries, Nwanze says. It is the emergence of food as an international security issue, Nwanze adds, that raises the odds that the international community will help developing countries come up with sustainable answers to food production challenges.

"Sustainability is determined inside a country, the answers to food production and development have to come from within," says the agronomist who studied in Kansas State University and who is recognized for developing a high-yield, drought-resistant rice for Africa. "But we also need the participation of the broader international community to answer these challenges that today have an impact on everyone."

In Washington recently in advance of this month's World Summit on Food Security in Rome, Nwanze noted that the security dimension of hunger and food production is translating into greater interest in places like the US capital. IFAD, which Nwanze describes as a cooperative among 160 countries that provides grants for rural development projects, benefited from a US-led initiative this year to increase the organization's funding by two-thirds to about $100 million.

At the same time, the US Congress is considering the Global Food Security Act, a five-year authorization that seeks to improve US response to food crises, provide new funding for university research in agriculture and for rural development projects.

Comment: Why aid never reaches the poor

noreply@blogger.com (Kale) — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 20:17:00 +0000

A very controversial opinion piece that is going viral asks why aid never seems to reach the poor. Writers Caroline Boin and Julian Harris accuse the British government on giving aid dollars to pet projects instead on those that would do the most good. The duo recently wrote the book "Fake Aid: how foreign aid is being used to support the self-serving political activities of NGOs."

Our snippet of the piece comes from All Africa.

Aid activists Oxfam complained recently that "it is time for G20 leaders to stand up and deliver the money needed to protect poor people," as heads of the world's biggest economies met in Pittsburgh in September.

The real problem is that aid is actually rising but much of it never reaches poor countries and, when it does, it causes economic, social and political damage.

In fact, over $119 billion was budgeted for aid from rich to poor countries this year, up $16 billion from last year.

But about half of that stays with donors in "tied aid" and other domestic spending.

"Almost 50p of every pound of donor aid fails to target poverty, but instead aims to meet other donor priorities," charity and pressure-group ActionAid said in 2006, an estimate largely confirmed in 2008 by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

Britain budgeted $8 billion for aid to countries such as Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania last year but recent research has uncovered numerous examples of waste and mismanagement within government.

The British government pays pressure groups to campaign and lobby governments abroad and citizens at home, at the expense of actual aid projects.

This year alone, the Department for International Development (DfID) put Â£140 million (about US$170 million) in its "communications" budget -- much of it propaganda within the UK. By 2011, a total of Â£1 billion ($1.2 billion) of public money will have been spent on this.

Most of it is given away in unrestricted grants to hand-picked activist groups, with little accountability and transparency - and, worse, little evidence that the programmes are helping the poor.

Many of these are at best controversial and often hostile to development.

ActionAid, for example, doing the "other donor priorities" mentioned above, used government funds to campaign against free trade, on one occasion stating: "There is very little evidence to support claims that free trade lifts people out of poverty."

This assertion simply ignores all the millions of people around the world who have been allowed to escape poverty through freer trade after decades of economic oppression.