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href="http://www.webwag.com/wwgthis.php?url=http%3A%2F%2Ffeeds.feedburner.com%2FTheRoadToTheHorizon" src="http://www.webwag.com/images/wwgthis.gif">Subscribe with Webwag</feedburner:feedFlare><atom10:link xmlns:atom10="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" rel="hub" href="http://pubsubhubbub.appspot.com" /><item><title>Snapped: Lake Bracciano</title><link>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheRoadToTheHorizon/~3/BJ8jXPz59wA/snapped-lake-bracciano.html</link><category>snapped</category><category>Italy</category><category>travel</category><category>pictures</category><author>peter@theroadtothehorizon.org (Peter)</author><pubDate>Sun, 08 Nov 2009 10:16:00 PST</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21629351372307923.post-9126388476364259359</guid><description>&lt;center&gt;&lt;img style="display:block; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 410px; height: 308px;" src="http://theroadtothehorizon.net/photo/lake%20bracciano.jpg" border="0" alt="Lago Bracciano" /&gt;&lt;/center&gt;&lt;br /&gt;40 minutes away from where I live, in the center of Italy lays a lake with memories.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.theroadtothehorizon.org/search/label/snapped"&gt;Snapped&lt;/a&gt; is a series of posts with pictures taken with my mobile phone.&lt;div class="blogger-post-footer"&gt;&lt;img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/21629351372307923-9126388476364259359?l=www.theroadtothehorizon.org'/&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="feedflare"&gt;
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&lt;/div&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TheRoadToTheHorizon/~4/BJ8jXPz59wA" height="1" width="1"/&gt;</description><app:edited xmlns:app="http://www.w3.org/2007/app">2009-11-08T19:16:00.564+01:00</app:edited><thr:total xmlns:thr="http://purl.org/syndication/thread/1.0">0</thr:total><feedburner:origLink>http://www.theroadtothehorizon.org/2009/11/snapped-lake-bracciano.html</feedburner:origLink></item><item><title>Snapped: Never enough of a sunset</title><link>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheRoadToTheHorizon/~3/zYoJnze2ZuU/snapped-never-enough-of-sunset.html</link><category>snapped</category><category>Italy</category><category>travel</category><category>pictures</category><author>peter@theroadtothehorizon.org (Peter)</author><pubDate>Fri, 06 Nov 2009 22:48:00 PST</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21629351372307923.post-5995881370241064788</guid><description>&lt;center&gt;&lt;img style="display:block; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 410px; height: 308px;" src="http://theroadtothehorizon.net/photo/snapped%20the%20sunset.jpg" border="0" alt="sunset in Italy" /&gt;&lt;/center&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I live 100 meters from the beach here in Italy. I try to -at least once per week- to catch the sun setting over the Mediterranean. Which is really more like a pond than a sea, but we will leave that discussion for another time..&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.theroadtothehorizon.org/search/label/snapped"&gt;Snapped&lt;/a&gt; is a series of posts with pictures taken with my mobile phone.&lt;div class="blogger-post-footer"&gt;&lt;img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/21629351372307923-5995881370241064788?l=www.theroadtothehorizon.org'/&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="feedflare"&gt;
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&lt;/div&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TheRoadToTheHorizon/~4/zYoJnze2ZuU" height="1" width="1"/&gt;</description><app:edited xmlns:app="http://www.w3.org/2007/app">2009-11-07T07:48:00.191+01:00</app:edited><thr:total xmlns:thr="http://purl.org/syndication/thread/1.0">0</thr:total><feedburner:origLink>http://www.theroadtothehorizon.org/2009/11/snapped-never-enough-of-sunset.html</feedburner:origLink></item><item><title>Snapped: Italian Tuk-Tuk</title><link>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheRoadToTheHorizon/~3/fXg40wtl4EQ/snapped-italian-tuk-tuk.html</link><category>snapped</category><category>Rome</category><category>Italy</category><category>travel</category><category>pictures</category><author>peter@theroadtothehorizon.org (Peter)</author><pubDate>Thu, 05 Nov 2009 22:55:00 PST</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21629351372307923.post-1942569141259638632</guid><description>&lt;center&gt;&lt;img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 410px; height: 309px;" src="http://theroadtothehorizon.net/photo/Italian%20tuktuk.jpg" border="0" alt="" /&gt;&lt;/center&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I think Italy is the only country in Western Europe where the "Tuk-Tuk" or "Treewheela" (as they are called in many places around Asia), are still widely used. Here is one at a traffic light in the center of Rome. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.theroadtothehorizon.org/search/label/snapped"&gt;Snapped&lt;/a&gt; is a series of posts with pictures taken with my mobile phone.&lt;div class="blogger-post-footer"&gt;&lt;img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/21629351372307923-1942569141259638632?l=www.theroadtothehorizon.org'/&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="feedflare"&gt;
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&lt;/div&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TheRoadToTheHorizon/~4/fXg40wtl4EQ" height="1" width="1"/&gt;</description><app:edited xmlns:app="http://www.w3.org/2007/app">2009-11-06T07:55:00.074+01:00</app:edited><thr:total xmlns:thr="http://purl.org/syndication/thread/1.0">2</thr:total><feedburner:origLink>http://www.theroadtothehorizon.org/2009/11/snapped-italian-tuk-tuk.html</feedburner:origLink></item><item><title>Snapped: This way !</title><link>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheRoadToTheHorizon/~3/5vguimGZv8k/snapped-this-way.html</link><category>snapped</category><category>Italy</category><category>travel</category><category>pictures</category><author>peter@theroadtothehorizon.org (Peter)</author><pubDate>Wed, 04 Nov 2009 23:03:00 PST</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21629351372307923.post-8457668655519594200</guid><description>&lt;center&gt;&lt;img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 410px; height: 308px;" src="http://theroadtothehorizon.net/photo/traffic%20sign%20covered%20with%20flowers.jpg" border="0" alt="Traffic sign covered with flowers" /&gt;&lt;/center&gt;&lt;br /&gt;A traffic sign just around the corner from my house.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.theroadtothehorizon.org/search/label/snapped"&gt;Snapped&lt;/a&gt; is a series of posts with pictures taken with my mobile phone.&lt;div class="blogger-post-footer"&gt;&lt;img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/21629351372307923-8457668655519594200?l=www.theroadtothehorizon.org'/&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="feedflare"&gt;
&lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?a=5vguimGZv8k:8mK4YgUQlYw:yIl2AUoC8zA"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?a=5vguimGZv8k:8mK4YgUQlYw:F7zBnMyn0Lo"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?i=5vguimGZv8k:8mK4YgUQlYw:F7zBnMyn0Lo" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?a=5vguimGZv8k:8mK4YgUQlYw:bcOpcFrp8Mo"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?d=bcOpcFrp8Mo" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?a=5vguimGZv8k:8mK4YgUQlYw:gIN9vFwOqvQ"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?i=5vguimGZv8k:8mK4YgUQlYw:gIN9vFwOqvQ" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?a=5vguimGZv8k:8mK4YgUQlYw:qj6IDK7rITs"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?a=5vguimGZv8k:8mK4YgUQlYw:TzevzKxY174"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?d=TzevzKxY174" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TheRoadToTheHorizon/~4/5vguimGZv8k" height="1" width="1"/&gt;</description><app:edited xmlns:app="http://www.w3.org/2007/app">2009-11-05T08:03:00.079+01:00</app:edited><thr:total xmlns:thr="http://purl.org/syndication/thread/1.0">0</thr:total><feedburner:origLink>http://www.theroadtothehorizon.org/2009/11/snapped-this-way.html</feedburner:origLink></item><item><title>The Silent Twilight</title><link>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheRoadToTheHorizon/~3/M-zb6lZchps/silent-twilight.html</link><category>lyrics</category><category>quotes</category><author>peter@theroadtothehorizon.org (Peter)</author><pubDate>Tue, 03 Nov 2009 01:14:51 PST</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21629351372307923.post-2568617815906597186</guid><description>&lt;center&gt;&lt;img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="http://theroadtothehorizon.net/photo/twilight%20in%20Lazio.jpg" border="0" alt="Twilight in Lazio" /&gt;&lt;/center&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;Sitting in the silent twilight&lt;br /&gt;The purple half light&lt;br /&gt;Of the twilight&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Wrap the night around me&lt;br /&gt;Blanket of black on my back&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I feel safe in the darkness.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;From "Purple", by Crustation&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;div class="blogger-post-footer"&gt;&lt;img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/21629351372307923-2568617815906597186?l=www.theroadtothehorizon.org'/&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="feedflare"&gt;
&lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?a=M-zb6lZchps:J0WtFdVt43s:yIl2AUoC8zA"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?a=M-zb6lZchps:J0WtFdVt43s:F7zBnMyn0Lo"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?i=M-zb6lZchps:J0WtFdVt43s:F7zBnMyn0Lo" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?a=M-zb6lZchps:J0WtFdVt43s:bcOpcFrp8Mo"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?d=bcOpcFrp8Mo" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?a=M-zb6lZchps:J0WtFdVt43s:gIN9vFwOqvQ"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?i=M-zb6lZchps:J0WtFdVt43s:gIN9vFwOqvQ" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?a=M-zb6lZchps:J0WtFdVt43s:qj6IDK7rITs"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?a=M-zb6lZchps:J0WtFdVt43s:TzevzKxY174"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?d=TzevzKxY174" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TheRoadToTheHorizon/~4/M-zb6lZchps" height="1" width="1"/&gt;</description><app:edited xmlns:app="http://www.w3.org/2007/app">2009-11-03T10:14:51.432+01:00</app:edited><thr:total xmlns:thr="http://purl.org/syndication/thread/1.0">0</thr:total><feedburner:origLink>http://www.theroadtothehorizon.org/2009/11/silent-twilight.html</feedburner:origLink></item><item><title>10 seconds standing still</title><link>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheRoadToTheHorizon/~3/zwvUcNeOWA0/10-seconds-standing-still.html</link><category>video</category><category>Italy</category><author>peter@theroadtothehorizon.org (Peter)</author><pubDate>Sun, 01 Nov 2009 17:44:00 PST</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21629351372307923.post-913928359085248022</guid><description>&lt;center&gt;&lt;object width="320" height="265"&gt;&lt;param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/qhhVx4p094M&amp;hl=en&amp;fs=1&amp;"&gt;&lt;/param&gt;&lt;param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"&gt;&lt;/param&gt;&lt;param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"&gt;&lt;/param&gt;&lt;embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/qhhVx4p094M&amp;hl=en&amp;fs=1&amp;" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="320" height="265"&gt;&lt;/embed&gt;&lt;/object&gt;&lt;/center&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Sometimes, it is worth while to stand still for a few seconds and just admire the world around us. &lt;br /&gt;A shot of a garden by the beach close to where I live, near Rome.&lt;div class="blogger-post-footer"&gt;&lt;img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/21629351372307923-913928359085248022?l=www.theroadtothehorizon.org'/&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="feedflare"&gt;
&lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?a=zwvUcNeOWA0:QDtKsWINTHg:yIl2AUoC8zA"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?a=zwvUcNeOWA0:QDtKsWINTHg:F7zBnMyn0Lo"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?i=zwvUcNeOWA0:QDtKsWINTHg:F7zBnMyn0Lo" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?a=zwvUcNeOWA0:QDtKsWINTHg:bcOpcFrp8Mo"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?d=bcOpcFrp8Mo" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?a=zwvUcNeOWA0:QDtKsWINTHg:gIN9vFwOqvQ"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?i=zwvUcNeOWA0:QDtKsWINTHg:gIN9vFwOqvQ" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?a=zwvUcNeOWA0:QDtKsWINTHg:qj6IDK7rITs"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?a=zwvUcNeOWA0:QDtKsWINTHg:TzevzKxY174"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?d=TzevzKxY174" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TheRoadToTheHorizon/~4/zwvUcNeOWA0" height="1" width="1"/&gt;</description><app:edited xmlns:app="http://www.w3.org/2007/app">2009-11-02T02:44:00.141+01:00</app:edited><thr:total xmlns:thr="http://purl.org/syndication/thread/1.0">0</thr:total><feedburner:origLink>http://www.theroadtothehorizon.org/2009/11/10-seconds-standing-still.html</feedburner:origLink></item><item><title>Wrap-up of our Philippines fundraiser</title><link>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheRoadToTheHorizon/~3/nRZMUzLV9r4/wrap-up-of-our-philippines-fundraiser.html</link><category>Philippines</category><category>social project</category><category>micro-financing</category><category>Kiva</category><author>peter@theroadtothehorizon.org (Peter)</author><pubDate>Sun, 01 Nov 2009 14:14:10 PST</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21629351372307923.post-4921480742677003310</guid><description>&lt;center&gt;&lt;img style="display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="http://theroadtothehorizon.net/photo/philippines%20flooding%20areal%20view.JPG" alt="Philippines flooding" border="0" /&gt;&lt;/center&gt;&lt;br /&gt;After &lt;a href="http://humanitariannews.org/search/node/Philippines%20AND%20typhoon" target="_blank"&gt;the Philippines was hit by two consecutive typhoons&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href="http://www.haveimpact.org/philippines-floods-affect-microfinance-projects/" target="_blank"&gt;I started a project&lt;/a&gt; to raise the awareness of both the scale of the devastation and the impact it had on individual people. At the same time, I wanted to mobilize people to issue microfinance loans to entrepreneurs in the Philippines.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I described the devastation and outline the project &lt;a href="http://www.haveimpact.org/philippines-floods-affect-microfinance-projects/" target="_blank"&gt;on the kickoff post&lt;/a&gt;, asking people to comment. I committed to raise $5 per comment left on that post. Little did I know how it would take off.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Last night was the fundraising deadline. In about 11 days time, the post received 1,211 comments (!). That is good enough for US$6,055. Needless to say that on the 1st anniversary of &lt;a href="http://www.theroadtothehorizon.org/2008/11/rumble-change-starts-here-roads-social.html"&gt;Change Starts Here&lt;/a&gt;, The Road's social project, I could not be more proud...&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span id="fullpost"&gt;It probably could not have been more timely, as sadly this weekend, &lt;a href="http://humanitariannews.org/blog/20091101/latest-typhoon-hit-philippines-claimed-14-lives" target="_blank"&gt;a third typhoon&lt;/a&gt; hit the Philippines.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;While, for the Philippines project, we allocated already over $4,400 new loans (check &lt;a href="http://www.haveimpact.org/our-first-loans-to-the-philippines-after-the-typhoons/" target="_blank"&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href="http://www.haveimpact.org/more-microfinance-loans-to-the-philippines/" target="_blank"&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href="http://www.haveimpact.org/new-microfinanceloans-to-the-philippines/" target="_blank"&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;), in the past year the 76 members of &lt;a href="http://www.kiva.org/team/theroad" target="_blank"&gt;our Kiva lenders team&lt;/a&gt; issued US$21,000 in microfinance loans to 520 different people all over the world (check &lt;a href="http://www.haveimpact.org/scorecard/" target="_blank"&gt;the score card&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;To change is possible! Why don't you &lt;a href="http://www.kiva.org/community/joinTeam_process?team_id=2415" target="_blank"&gt;join our Kiva Lenders team too&lt;/a&gt;?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Picture courtesy &lt;a href="http://blog.wfplogistics.org/" target="_blank"&gt;WFP Logistics&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;div class="blogger-post-footer"&gt;&lt;img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/21629351372307923-4921480742677003310?l=www.theroadtothehorizon.org'/&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="feedflare"&gt;
&lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?a=nRZMUzLV9r4:NYi20gteGgc:yIl2AUoC8zA"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?a=nRZMUzLV9r4:NYi20gteGgc:F7zBnMyn0Lo"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?i=nRZMUzLV9r4:NYi20gteGgc:F7zBnMyn0Lo" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?a=nRZMUzLV9r4:NYi20gteGgc:bcOpcFrp8Mo"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?d=bcOpcFrp8Mo" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?a=nRZMUzLV9r4:NYi20gteGgc:gIN9vFwOqvQ"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?i=nRZMUzLV9r4:NYi20gteGgc:gIN9vFwOqvQ" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?a=nRZMUzLV9r4:NYi20gteGgc:qj6IDK7rITs"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?a=nRZMUzLV9r4:NYi20gteGgc:TzevzKxY174"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?d=TzevzKxY174" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TheRoadToTheHorizon/~4/nRZMUzLV9r4" height="1" width="1"/&gt;</description><app:edited xmlns:app="http://www.w3.org/2007/app">2009-11-01T23:14:10.670+01:00</app:edited><thr:total xmlns:thr="http://purl.org/syndication/thread/1.0">0</thr:total><feedburner:origLink>http://www.theroadtothehorizon.org/2009/11/wrap-up-of-our-philippines-fundraiser.html</feedburner:origLink></item><item><title>Snapped: Another road to the horizon</title><link>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheRoadToTheHorizon/~3/qhdl1ZmqvXs/snapped-another-road-to-horizon.html</link><category>snapped</category><category>Italy</category><category>picture of the day</category><author>peter@theroadtothehorizon.org (Peter)</author><pubDate>Sun, 01 Nov 2009 06:21:25 PST</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21629351372307923.post-960300022102789272</guid><description>&lt;center&gt;&lt;img style="display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 410px; height: 308px;" src="http://theroadtothehorizon.net/photo/a%20road%20to%20the%20horizon.jpg" alt="Another road to the horizon" border="0" /&gt;&lt;/center&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I snapped this "Road to the Horizon" yesterday, while walking on the beach...&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;More in The Road's &lt;a href="http://www.theroadtothehorizon.org/search/label/snapped"&gt;Snapped!&lt;/a&gt; series.&lt;div class="blogger-post-footer"&gt;&lt;img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/21629351372307923-960300022102789272?l=www.theroadtothehorizon.org'/&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="feedflare"&gt;
&lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?a=qhdl1ZmqvXs:s3CJgiG2Np4:yIl2AUoC8zA"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?a=qhdl1ZmqvXs:s3CJgiG2Np4:F7zBnMyn0Lo"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?i=qhdl1ZmqvXs:s3CJgiG2Np4:F7zBnMyn0Lo" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?a=qhdl1ZmqvXs:s3CJgiG2Np4:bcOpcFrp8Mo"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?d=bcOpcFrp8Mo" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?a=qhdl1ZmqvXs:s3CJgiG2Np4:gIN9vFwOqvQ"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?i=qhdl1ZmqvXs:s3CJgiG2Np4:gIN9vFwOqvQ" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?a=qhdl1ZmqvXs:s3CJgiG2Np4:qj6IDK7rITs"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?a=qhdl1ZmqvXs:s3CJgiG2Np4:TzevzKxY174"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?d=TzevzKxY174" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TheRoadToTheHorizon/~4/qhdl1ZmqvXs" height="1" width="1"/&gt;</description><app:edited xmlns:app="http://www.w3.org/2007/app">2009-11-01T15:21:25.534+01:00</app:edited><thr:total xmlns:thr="http://purl.org/syndication/thread/1.0">2</thr:total><feedburner:origLink>http://www.theroadtothehorizon.org/2009/11/snapped-another-road-to-horizon.html</feedburner:origLink></item><item><title>10 seconds in the life of a leaf</title><link>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheRoadToTheHorizon/~3/1v8u-aqduV8/10-seconds-in-life-of-leaf.html</link><category>video</category><author>peter@theroadtothehorizon.org (Peter)</author><pubDate>Sat, 31 Oct 2009 05:06:13 PDT</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21629351372307923.post-5186262133743423923</guid><description>&lt;center&gt;&lt;object height="265" width="320"&gt;&lt;param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/KgLcVm1ORXY&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;fs=1&amp;amp;"&gt;&lt;param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"&gt;&lt;param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"&gt;&lt;embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/KgLcVm1ORXY&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;fs=1&amp;amp;" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" height="265" width="320"&gt;&lt;/embed&gt;&lt;/object&gt;&lt;/center&gt;&lt;div class="blogger-post-footer"&gt;&lt;img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/21629351372307923-5186262133743423923?l=www.theroadtothehorizon.org'/&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="feedflare"&gt;
&lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?a=1v8u-aqduV8:75srzA1J9Go:yIl2AUoC8zA"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?a=1v8u-aqduV8:75srzA1J9Go:F7zBnMyn0Lo"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?i=1v8u-aqduV8:75srzA1J9Go:F7zBnMyn0Lo" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?a=1v8u-aqduV8:75srzA1J9Go:bcOpcFrp8Mo"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?d=bcOpcFrp8Mo" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?a=1v8u-aqduV8:75srzA1J9Go:gIN9vFwOqvQ"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?i=1v8u-aqduV8:75srzA1J9Go:gIN9vFwOqvQ" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?a=1v8u-aqduV8:75srzA1J9Go:qj6IDK7rITs"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?a=1v8u-aqduV8:75srzA1J9Go:TzevzKxY174"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?d=TzevzKxY174" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TheRoadToTheHorizon/~4/1v8u-aqduV8" height="1" width="1"/&gt;</description><app:edited xmlns:app="http://www.w3.org/2007/app">2009-10-31T13:06:13.204+01:00</app:edited><thr:total xmlns:thr="http://purl.org/syndication/thread/1.0">0</thr:total><feedburner:origLink>http://www.theroadtothehorizon.org/2009/10/10-seconds-in-life-of-leaf.html</feedburner:origLink></item><item><title>Attack us where we work, attack us where we sleep.</title><link>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheRoadToTheHorizon/~3/5MKfrSHSWeE/attack-us-where-we-work-attack-us-where.html</link><category>aid worker</category><category>aid work</category><category>UN</category><category>Afghanistan</category><category>security</category><author>peter@theroadtothehorizon.org (Peter)</author><pubDate>Wed, 28 Oct 2009 15:53:15 PDT</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21629351372307923.post-1113436965463561291</guid><description>&lt;center&gt;&lt;img style="display:block; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 410px; height: 284px;" src="http://theroadtothehorizon.net/photo/UN%20staff%20attacked%20in%20Kabul.jpg" border="0" alt="UN staff attacked in Kabul" /&gt;&lt;/center&gt;&lt;br /&gt;After &lt;a href="http://www.theroadtothehorizon.org/2009/10/we-lost-five-colleagues-in-islamabad.html"&gt;the devastating suicide bomb in our office in Islamabad&lt;/a&gt; three weeks ago, I knew it was going to be bad day when the first Twitter message I saw this morning was: &lt;span style="font-style:italic;"&gt;"UN guesthouse in Kabul attacked, 5 staff dead"&lt;/span&gt;.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;From the NY Times:&lt;blockquote&gt;The guests were still sleeping when the gunmen, dressed in police uniforms, arrived early Wednesday. In the dark, they shot the guards, scaled the front gate of the guest house and began firing grenades, the beginning of a terrifying two-hour siege that showed just how little it takes for the Taliban to trap foreigners in central Kabul.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;By the end of the siege, at least five United Nations employees, two Afghan security officials and the brother-in-law of a prominent Afghan politician were dead, as were their three attackers. (&lt;a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/29/world/asia/29afghan.html?_r=1&amp;partner=rss&amp;emc=rss" target="_blank"&gt;Full&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span id="fullpost"&gt;2008 was a record year in terms of casualties amongst aid workers. 2009 promises to be even worse. I keep track of most of these attacks on &lt;a href="http://petercasier.newsvine.com" target="_blank"&gt;The Road Daily&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;It is only weeks ago I wrote:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;It is strange.. It is only after the hours go by that the cruelty and the reality of the act today really seeps through... And the consciousness that if we are to work in a higher risk environment, there actually is not one place, where one is totally safe. Where would that be? In the office? They drive a truck through the gates and blow it up. In the guesthouse or the hotel? Same thing...(&lt;a href="http://www.theroadtothehorizon.org/2009/10/we-lost-five-colleagues-in-islamabad.html"&gt;Full&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;br /&gt;This is the dilemma we, aidworkers, face today: We are nowhere safe anymore. Terrorism, banditry, sheer violence. And we can not isolate ourselves from the communities we are suppose to serve. We can not lock ourselves up in fortresses, as the US did with their embassies worldwide after the bombings in Dar es Salaam and Nairobi. We need to be "there", we need to be where the aid is required. We need to do the assessments, we need to monitor to ensure the aid goes where it is supposed to go. But slowly, the violence makes it impossible to do our work properly. And who suffers? Those in need. As always.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Picture courtesy Altaf Qadri/Associated Press&lt;/span&gt;&lt;div class="blogger-post-footer"&gt;&lt;img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/21629351372307923-1113436965463561291?l=www.theroadtothehorizon.org'/&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="feedflare"&gt;
&lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?a=5MKfrSHSWeE:i6QfHFC-1-c:yIl2AUoC8zA"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?a=5MKfrSHSWeE:i6QfHFC-1-c:F7zBnMyn0Lo"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?i=5MKfrSHSWeE:i6QfHFC-1-c:F7zBnMyn0Lo" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?a=5MKfrSHSWeE:i6QfHFC-1-c:bcOpcFrp8Mo"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?d=bcOpcFrp8Mo" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?a=5MKfrSHSWeE:i6QfHFC-1-c:gIN9vFwOqvQ"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?i=5MKfrSHSWeE:i6QfHFC-1-c:gIN9vFwOqvQ" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?a=5MKfrSHSWeE:i6QfHFC-1-c:qj6IDK7rITs"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?a=5MKfrSHSWeE:i6QfHFC-1-c:TzevzKxY174"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?d=TzevzKxY174" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TheRoadToTheHorizon/~4/5MKfrSHSWeE" height="1" width="1"/&gt;</description><app:edited xmlns:app="http://www.w3.org/2007/app">2009-10-28T23:53:15.723+01:00</app:edited><thr:total xmlns:thr="http://purl.org/syndication/thread/1.0">0</thr:total><feedburner:origLink>http://www.theroadtothehorizon.org/2009/10/attack-us-where-we-work-attack-us-where.html</feedburner:origLink></item><item><title>Snapped: Sunset at Fregene</title><link>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheRoadToTheHorizon/~3/zpN72tlzmHk/snapped-sunset-at-fregene.html</link><category>snapped</category><category>Fregene</category><category>Italy</category><category>pictures</category><author>peter@theroadtothehorizon.org (Peter)</author><pubDate>Tue, 27 Oct 2009 11:45:54 PDT</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21629351372307923.post-1377062828943445876</guid><description>I left the office a bit earlier this evening, so I enjoy the sunset of this glorious Indian summer evening... and could snap the sunset with &lt;a href="http://www.theroadtothehorizon.org/2009/10/moving-into-21st-century-with-my-iphone.html"&gt;my brand new iPhone&lt;/a&gt;... &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;center&gt;&lt;img style="display:block;  text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="http://theroadtothehorizon.net/photo/fregene%20sunset%201.jpg" border="0" alt="sunset at Fregene, Italy" /&gt;&lt;/center&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span id="fullpost"&gt;&lt;center&gt;&lt;img style="display:block;  text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="http://theroadtothehorizon.net/photo/fregene%20sunset%202.jpg" border="0" alt="sunset at Fregene, Italy" /&gt;&lt;/center&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;center&gt;&lt;img style="display:block;  text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="http://theroadtothehorizon.net/photo/fregene%20sunset%203.jpg" border="0" alt="sunset at Fregene, Italy" /&gt;&lt;/center&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;center&gt;&lt;object width="320" height="265"&gt;&lt;param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/225QC0q019s&amp;hl=en&amp;fs=1&amp;"&gt;&lt;/param&gt;&lt;param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"&gt;&lt;/param&gt;&lt;param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"&gt;&lt;/param&gt;&lt;embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/225QC0q019s&amp;hl=en&amp;fs=1&amp;" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="320" height="265"&gt;&lt;/embed&gt;&lt;/object&gt;&lt;/center&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;More in this &lt;a href="http://www.theroadtothehorizon.org/search/label/snapped"&gt;Snapped&lt;/a&gt; series.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;div class="blogger-post-footer"&gt;&lt;img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/21629351372307923-1377062828943445876?l=www.theroadtothehorizon.org'/&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="feedflare"&gt;
&lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?a=zpN72tlzmHk:couDHRDJECA:yIl2AUoC8zA"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?a=zpN72tlzmHk:couDHRDJECA:F7zBnMyn0Lo"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?i=zpN72tlzmHk:couDHRDJECA:F7zBnMyn0Lo" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?a=zpN72tlzmHk:couDHRDJECA:bcOpcFrp8Mo"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?d=bcOpcFrp8Mo" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?a=zpN72tlzmHk:couDHRDJECA:gIN9vFwOqvQ"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?i=zpN72tlzmHk:couDHRDJECA:gIN9vFwOqvQ" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?a=zpN72tlzmHk:couDHRDJECA:qj6IDK7rITs"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?a=zpN72tlzmHk:couDHRDJECA:TzevzKxY174"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?d=TzevzKxY174" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TheRoadToTheHorizon/~4/zpN72tlzmHk" height="1" width="1"/&gt;</description><app:edited xmlns:app="http://www.w3.org/2007/app">2009-10-27T19:45:54.035+01:00</app:edited><thr:total xmlns:thr="http://purl.org/syndication/thread/1.0">0</thr:total><feedburner:origLink>http://www.theroadtothehorizon.org/2009/10/snapped-sunset-at-fregene.html</feedburner:origLink></item><item><title>Moving into the 21st century with my iPhone</title><link>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheRoadToTheHorizon/~3/ADCDEW2uVK0/moving-into-21st-century-with-my-iphone.html</link><category>ICT</category><category>technology</category><author>peter@theroadtothehorizon.org (Peter)</author><pubDate>Mon, 26 Oct 2009 13:06:59 PDT</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21629351372307923.post-8771904744801056810</guid><description>&lt;center&gt;&lt;img style="display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 240px; height: 180px;" src="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/221/501803263_7b6cb21cbe_m.jpg" alt="Palm III" border="0" /&gt;&lt;/center&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Remember &lt;a href="http://www.theroadtothehorizon.org/2007/05/my-life-in-four-bags.html"&gt;this post&lt;/a&gt;, where I described the things I always travel with? My faithful Palm III PDA was one of them.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I celebrated my birthday recently and the guys at work gave me my present last week: an iPhone...!&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;center&gt;&lt;img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 226px; height: 400px;" src="http://theroadtothehorizon.net/photo/peter%20loves%20his%20iPhone.jpg" alt="Peter loves his iPhone" border="0" /&gt;&lt;/center&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span id="fullpost"&gt;I could not believe it. I had been looking at an iPhone for ages, glued to the window like a kid in front of a candy story. And finally, I had one.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;My team said "We know how attached you are to your Palm III, but you can not really head a technology team using a 1997 piece of 'wannabe PDA'... So we're bringing you into the 21st century"...&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;It is true, in a way. At work, we have a "museum"glass cupboard displaying all pieces of old technology we used in the past 20 years. From a manual of WordStar (remember that?) to old VHF radios, a keyboard from a 1970's IBM mainframe and... a Palm III. Many people could not believe my faithful Palm III survived all the travel, the dust roads I drove on, all the remote places I've been to, and all the emergency operations I have served in. It stored my agenda with appointments going back to 1997. It held all the business contacts of people I met in the past 12 years, and all the notes I took while on mission. And it still did its job.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;So I spent much of last weekend exploring my brand new iPhone 3GS, figuring out how to use it and the applications I wanted.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Here is my rundown of the things I love about it:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;ul&gt;&lt;li&gt;the user interface, the way the different applications are working&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;its display (it is color, yay!), the resolution, the touch screen&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;the integration of wireless LAN connectivity and all web applications is out of this world&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;the speed in which it discovers and registers to wireless LANs.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;the vast amount of applications you can download&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;the speed of the applications&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;the quality of pictures and video is great. I always cursed the poor quality of both on my old Nokia phone. Just this is a real plus for me, as it will make the iPhone a great tool to take ad hoc snapshots to post on my blog.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;for the first time, I can have all I wanted of a PDA, iPod, compact digital camera/videocam, telephone,.. in one&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;I can Twitter, Skype, Email etc... to my heart's content, which for a social media addict like me is a definitive plus&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul&gt;The things I would like to have improved:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;ul&gt;&lt;li&gt;it seems Bluetooth is not used to connect the iPhone to the computer's iTunes. I need to have the cable (or did I miss something here?). I also seem to have problems to get my computer pick up the Bluetooth connection from my iPhone and vice versa.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;iTunes is heavy on a PC (maybe I should finally by a Mac?), it is slow, takes ages to load, and has a horrible user interface. It seems to only be a beefed up version of a music library, but does not feel intuitive at all.&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;I also hated the fact I needed to register my credit card while subscribing to the iTunes store. Even if I did not want to buy anything...&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;the battery runs down in less than 24 hours&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;I did not find a way to define the resolution for the camera.&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;and the worst part, unfortunately, is the "phone" part of the iPhone: its GSM sensitivity is ways below what my Nokia offers. In a GSM-signal poor country like Italy, this means I no longer have coverage where I used to have it. And that includes my apartment. A real bummer.&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;it took some tweaking to have the phone work on data-over-GSM. Luckily some hacker-friends gave me a patch where I could define the data-configuration for my GSM carrier, but somehow this should have been more transparent for the user.&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul&gt;More to come. But for the time being, I love the iPhone, if they could only increase the GSM sensitivity! Thanks again guys! You should not have done this...&lt;/span&gt;&lt;div class="blogger-post-footer"&gt;&lt;img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/21629351372307923-8771904744801056810?l=www.theroadtothehorizon.org'/&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="feedflare"&gt;
&lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?a=ADCDEW2uVK0:HoWmnVlndNA:yIl2AUoC8zA"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?a=ADCDEW2uVK0:HoWmnVlndNA:F7zBnMyn0Lo"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?i=ADCDEW2uVK0:HoWmnVlndNA:F7zBnMyn0Lo" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?a=ADCDEW2uVK0:HoWmnVlndNA:bcOpcFrp8Mo"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?d=bcOpcFrp8Mo" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?a=ADCDEW2uVK0:HoWmnVlndNA:gIN9vFwOqvQ"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?i=ADCDEW2uVK0:HoWmnVlndNA:gIN9vFwOqvQ" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?a=ADCDEW2uVK0:HoWmnVlndNA:qj6IDK7rITs"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?a=ADCDEW2uVK0:HoWmnVlndNA:TzevzKxY174"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?d=TzevzKxY174" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TheRoadToTheHorizon/~4/ADCDEW2uVK0" height="1" width="1"/&gt;</description><app:edited xmlns:app="http://www.w3.org/2007/app">2009-10-26T21:06:59.152+01:00</app:edited><thr:total xmlns:thr="http://purl.org/syndication/thread/1.0">2</thr:total><feedburner:origLink>http://www.theroadtothehorizon.org/2009/10/moving-into-21st-century-with-my-iphone.html</feedburner:origLink></item><item><title>How could I have missed this: World Sight Day</title><link>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheRoadToTheHorizon/~3/NC1ETzaMefI/how-could-i-have-missed-this-world.html</link><category>Ethiopia</category><category>development</category><category>humanitarian work</category><author>peter@theroadtothehorizon.org (Peter)</author><pubDate>Mon, 26 Oct 2009 13:05:57 PDT</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21629351372307923.post-7856061554466430232</guid><description>&lt;center&gt;&lt;object width="320" height="265"&gt;&lt;param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/rSNAsCHDlHY&amp;hl=en&amp;fs=1&amp;"&gt;&lt;/param&gt;&lt;param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"&gt;&lt;/param&gt;&lt;param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"&gt;&lt;/param&gt;&lt;embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/rSNAsCHDlHY&amp;hl=en&amp;fs=1&amp;" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="320" height="265"&gt;&lt;/embed&gt;&lt;/object&gt;&lt;/center&gt;&lt;br /&gt;October 8th was World Sight Day... and I missed it. Let's catch up:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;45 million children and adults are blind worldwide, two-thirds being women and girls… and every year between 1 and 2 million more will lose their sight. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span id="fullpost"&gt;What makes these facts even more upsetting is that 75 percent of cases could have been prevented, or their eyesight restored, if only people had access to proper eye care. Unless steps are taken now, it is estimated that by the year 2020 blindness will affect more than 76 million people! &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;As one of the organisations trying to do something about it, &lt;a href="http://www.orbis-eyereports.org/" target="_blank"&gt;ORBIS&lt;/a&gt; carries out programs onboard its Flying Eye Hospital and at hospitals in developing countries to help the blind see. While they are in these countries, ORBIS also trains local doctors and nurses in the latest sight-saving techniques so that they may gain the tools and knowledge needed to carry on the work that is done.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;div class="blogger-post-footer"&gt;&lt;img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/21629351372307923-7856061554466430232?l=www.theroadtothehorizon.org'/&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="feedflare"&gt;
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&lt;/div&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TheRoadToTheHorizon/~4/NC1ETzaMefI" height="1" width="1"/&gt;</description><app:edited xmlns:app="http://www.w3.org/2007/app">2009-10-26T21:05:57.049+01:00</app:edited><thr:total xmlns:thr="http://purl.org/syndication/thread/1.0">0</thr:total><feedburner:origLink>http://www.theroadtothehorizon.org/2009/10/how-could-i-have-missed-this-world.html</feedburner:origLink></item><item><title>Microfinancing at work in the Philippines after the typhoons</title><link>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheRoadToTheHorizon/~3/q0OBdsQPGo8/update-from-philippines-after-typhoons.html</link><category>Philippines</category><category>flooding</category><category>Asia</category><category>micro-financing</category><category>humanitarian work</category><author>peter@theroadtothehorizon.org (Peter)</author><pubDate>Mon, 26 Oct 2009 12:16:19 PDT</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21629351372307923.post-450665777460561819</guid><description>&lt;center&gt;&lt;img style="display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 244px;" src="http://theroadtothehorizon.net/photo/philippines%20flooding.JPG" alt="" border="0" /&gt;&lt;/center&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;a href="http://mrkiva123.wordpress.com/" target="_blank"&gt;Mary&lt;/a&gt; is a &lt;a href="http://www.kiva.org/about/fellows-program/" target="_blank"&gt;Kiva Fellow&lt;/a&gt; who is currently in the Philippines. She works with &lt;a href="http://www.kiva.org/about/aboutPartner?id=123" target="_blank"&gt;ASKI&lt;/a&gt;, one of the Kiva's local microfinance partners. ASKI operates 24 branches of which Ilagan, Tugugraro and Cayaun were the hardest hit by the recent typhoons.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Of the 60,037 ASKI Clients, 5,943 (about 10%) were affected by the typhoons. The total damage, both personal and businesses amounts to US$1,405,808...&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;She wrote me an update:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span id="fullpost"&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;The standing crops were damaged due to “VERY” strong wind. Rice crops were totally damaged and lost. Vegetables crops and fishing business were totally washed out... The above villages are still in recovery especially in the village of Antagan 1 &amp;amp; 2 which were the most affected.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The typhoon caused a lot of damages in the people's livelihood. Most of their ricefields which were ready to harvest, were totally wash out due to flash floods. Hundreds of cows and carabaos were also found dead.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;ASKI is made up of 2 arms: an Micro Finance Institute and a foundation. When things like the typhoon hits, the MFI taps on the shoulders of the Foundation so they can offer as many contingencies as possible to lenders and still remain solvent.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;ASKI has responded to the storms in an amazing way: quickly and compassionately they personally delivered $26,000 of relief goods in dangerous ares to all affected communities in Central and Northen Luzon, based on need. The Foundation has also set up a Disaster Council for future financial and logistical planning.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;ASKI recently implemented mandatory crop insurance (PCIP) from the government of the Philippines for all agricultural loans. They are now speeding up implementation. The ASKI board has just approved the following loan contingency plans. Together, clients and loan Officers will decide which of 3 options makes sense for each situation: a loan moratorium, a loan restructuring or a refinance.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;br /&gt;In the mean time, &lt;a href="http://www.haveimpact.org/philippines-floods-affect-microfinance-projects/" target="_blank"&gt;our project raising funds for the microfinance entrepreneurs affected by the recent Asian typhoons&lt;/a&gt; generated $2,500 so far. For every comment left on &lt;a href="http://www.haveimpact.org/philippines-floods-affect-microfinance-projects/" target="_blank"&gt;this post&lt;/a&gt;, I will fund US$5 for entrepreneurs in the area.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Picture courtesy Philippe Martou of &lt;a href="http://blog.wfplogistics.org/" target="_blank"&gt;WFP Logistics&lt;/a&gt;, which set up an extensive relief operation in the region.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;div class="blogger-post-footer"&gt;&lt;img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/21629351372307923-450665777460561819?l=www.theroadtothehorizon.org'/&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="feedflare"&gt;
&lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?a=q0OBdsQPGo8:ECGCfioRv9w:yIl2AUoC8zA"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?a=q0OBdsQPGo8:ECGCfioRv9w:F7zBnMyn0Lo"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?i=q0OBdsQPGo8:ECGCfioRv9w:F7zBnMyn0Lo" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?a=q0OBdsQPGo8:ECGCfioRv9w:bcOpcFrp8Mo"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?d=bcOpcFrp8Mo" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?a=q0OBdsQPGo8:ECGCfioRv9w:gIN9vFwOqvQ"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?i=q0OBdsQPGo8:ECGCfioRv9w:gIN9vFwOqvQ" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?a=q0OBdsQPGo8:ECGCfioRv9w:qj6IDK7rITs"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?a=q0OBdsQPGo8:ECGCfioRv9w:TzevzKxY174"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?d=TzevzKxY174" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TheRoadToTheHorizon/~4/q0OBdsQPGo8" height="1" width="1"/&gt;</description><app:edited xmlns:app="http://www.w3.org/2007/app">2009-10-26T20:16:19.428+01:00</app:edited><thr:total xmlns:thr="http://purl.org/syndication/thread/1.0">2</thr:total><feedburner:origLink>http://www.theroadtothehorizon.org/2009/10/update-from-philippines-after-typhoons.html</feedburner:origLink></item><item><title>Let's do something for those affected by the floods in the Philippines</title><link>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheRoadToTheHorizon/~3/m-aeAJflxag/lets-do-something-floods-in-philippines.html</link><category>Philippines</category><category>micro-financing</category><category>Kiva</category><author>peter@theroadtothehorizon.org (Peter)</author><pubDate>Thu, 22 Oct 2009 16:41:58 PDT</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21629351372307923.post-2119627208144685189</guid><description>&lt;center&gt;&lt;img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 306px;" src="http://theroadtothehorizon.net/photo/Leoncia%20Arellano.jpg" alt="" border="0" /&gt;&lt;/center&gt;&lt;br /&gt;In the past weeks, &lt;a href="http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/rwb.nsf/db900SID/EDIS-7WVNZE?OpenDocument&amp;amp;RSS20=22-P" target="_blank"&gt;two deadly storms struck the Philippines&lt;/a&gt; killed more than 700 people and destroyed the livelihoods of millions.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Unfortunately, many of the entrepreneurs we support through &lt;a href="http://www.haveimpact.org/" target="_blank"&gt;our microfinance project&lt;/a&gt; have been affected. One of them was Leoncia (picture).&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;To do my part in helping these courageous people recover, for each comment left on &lt;a href="http://www.haveimpact.org/philippines-floods-affect-microfinance-projects/" target="_blank"&gt;this post&lt;/a&gt;, I will donate US$5 to microfinance entrepreneurs in the affected areas.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="color: rgb(51, 102, 255);"&gt;So go now&lt;/span&gt;, and help in two easy steps which take no more than one minute of your time:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;ol&gt;&lt;li&gt;Read &lt;a href="http://www.haveimpact.org/philippines-floods-affect-microfinance-projects/" target="_blank"&gt;this post&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;Leave a comment there.&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ol&gt;Let's help where we can.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Peter&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="color: rgb(51, 102, 255);"&gt;Update Oct 22:&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;In 24 hours, we got 230 comments. We are on a roll...! Please spread the message through your blog, Twitter, Facebook,... and link to &lt;a href="http://www.haveimpact.org/philippines-floods-affect-microfinance-projects/" target="_blank"&gt;this post&lt;/a&gt;.... If we stretch the limit of my personal finances, I have some sponsors lined up that will chip in. Keep the comments coming!&lt;div class="blogger-post-footer"&gt;&lt;img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/21629351372307923-2119627208144685189?l=www.theroadtothehorizon.org'/&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="feedflare"&gt;
&lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?a=m-aeAJflxag:SmQd0k7MMVk:yIl2AUoC8zA"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?a=m-aeAJflxag:SmQd0k7MMVk:F7zBnMyn0Lo"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?i=m-aeAJflxag:SmQd0k7MMVk:F7zBnMyn0Lo" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?a=m-aeAJflxag:SmQd0k7MMVk:bcOpcFrp8Mo"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?d=bcOpcFrp8Mo" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?a=m-aeAJflxag:SmQd0k7MMVk:gIN9vFwOqvQ"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?i=m-aeAJflxag:SmQd0k7MMVk:gIN9vFwOqvQ" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?a=m-aeAJflxag:SmQd0k7MMVk:qj6IDK7rITs"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?a=m-aeAJflxag:SmQd0k7MMVk:TzevzKxY174"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?d=TzevzKxY174" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TheRoadToTheHorizon/~4/m-aeAJflxag" height="1" width="1"/&gt;</description><app:edited xmlns:app="http://www.w3.org/2007/app">2009-10-23T00:41:58.369+01:00</app:edited><feedburner:origLink>http://www.theroadtothehorizon.org/2009/10/lets-do-something-floods-in-philippines.html</feedburner:origLink></item><item><title>Customized humanitarian news</title><link>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheRoadToTheHorizon/~3/reTIjr0Zt80/customized-humanitarian-news.html</link><category>internal</category><category>media</category><author>peter@theroadtothehorizon.org (Peter)</author><pubDate>Tue, 20 Oct 2009 15:12:26 PDT</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21629351372307923.post-5378158586950635972</guid><description>&lt;center&gt;&lt;img style="display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 420px; height: 178px;" src="http://theroadtothehorizon.net/photo/humanitariannewsorg.jpg" alt="humanitariannews.org" border="0"&gt;&lt;/center&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I wrote &lt;a href="http://www.theroadtothehorizon.org/2009/10/humanitarian-news-updates.html"&gt;before&lt;/a&gt; about &lt;a href="http://www.humanitariannews.org" target="_blank"&gt;Humanitarian News&lt;/a&gt;, which imports the latest updates from 600+ news sites and blogs.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Humanitarian News already featured an extensive set of &lt;a href="http://humanitariannews.org/subscriptions" target="_blank"&gt;RSS feeds&lt;/a&gt;, split up per section, but now you can generate your own RSS feed customized with the subjects YOU are interested in. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;You simply execute any search, and click on the "XML" icon to generate a feed out of it. Check out &lt;a href="http://humanitariannews.org/subscriptions" target="_blank"&gt;the subscriptions page&lt;/a&gt; for more details.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I use it quite extensively at work, to check the latest updates of certain events or subjects I am following. As Humanitarian News keeps track of more news sources than any other site, and all sources are hand picked, the searches go deeper and are more relevant than what e.g. Google News Search would offer you.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Enjoy!&lt;div class="blogger-post-footer"&gt;&lt;img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/21629351372307923-5378158586950635972?l=www.theroadtothehorizon.org'/&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="feedflare"&gt;
&lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?a=reTIjr0Zt80:aFEHBIbHD2E:yIl2AUoC8zA"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?a=reTIjr0Zt80:aFEHBIbHD2E:F7zBnMyn0Lo"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?i=reTIjr0Zt80:aFEHBIbHD2E:F7zBnMyn0Lo" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?a=reTIjr0Zt80:aFEHBIbHD2E:bcOpcFrp8Mo"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?d=bcOpcFrp8Mo" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?a=reTIjr0Zt80:aFEHBIbHD2E:gIN9vFwOqvQ"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?i=reTIjr0Zt80:aFEHBIbHD2E:gIN9vFwOqvQ" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?a=reTIjr0Zt80:aFEHBIbHD2E:qj6IDK7rITs"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?a=reTIjr0Zt80:aFEHBIbHD2E:TzevzKxY174"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?d=TzevzKxY174" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TheRoadToTheHorizon/~4/reTIjr0Zt80" height="1" width="1"/&gt;</description><app:edited xmlns:app="http://www.w3.org/2007/app">2009-10-20T23:12:26.914+01:00</app:edited><thr:total xmlns:thr="http://purl.org/syndication/thread/1.0">0</thr:total><feedburner:origLink>http://www.theroadtothehorizon.org/2009/10/customized-humanitarian-news.html</feedburner:origLink></item><item><title>Emily becomes UN Citizen Ambassador and has a message for us</title><link>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheRoadToTheHorizon/~3/SZAWx_tcL60/emily-becomes-un-citizen-ambassador-and.html</link><category>video</category><category>humanitarian</category><category>interview</category><category>UN</category><category>advocacy</category><author>peter@theroadtothehorizon.org (Peter)</author><pubDate>Mon, 19 Oct 2009 11:06:10 PDT</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21629351372307923.post-9091672295212433065</guid><description>On September 22, UN Secretary Ban ki-Moon launched a challenge: &lt;span style="font-style:italic;"&gt;"Use your voice as a global citizen and tell these leaders in a short video what you think needs to be done to make this world a better and safer place. Be a Citizen Ambassador to the UN."&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;center&gt;&lt;object width="400" height="245"&gt;&lt;param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/b4bYwz-cgxo&amp;hl=en&amp;fs=1&amp;"&gt;&lt;/param&gt;&lt;param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"&gt;&lt;/param&gt;&lt;param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"&gt;&lt;/param&gt;&lt;embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/b4bYwz-cgxo&amp;hl=en&amp;fs=1&amp;" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="400" height="245"&gt;&lt;/embed&gt;&lt;/object&gt;&lt;/center&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Emily Troutman &lt;a href="http://www.theroadtothehorizon.org/2009/09/advocacy-other-way-why-congo-matters.html"&gt;which we featured before on The Road&lt;/a&gt; thought of her core message: &lt;span style="font-style:italic;"&gt;"I want us both to agree to say one true thing out loud everyday. To remember one real person. To remind ourselves that our tragedies—yours and mine—are lived and felt one person at a time; just like our hope, our renewal, our future can also be lived and carried out into the world, one person at a time. You have a chance to be that person."&lt;/span&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;center&gt;&lt;object width="400" height="245"&gt;&lt;param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/Zo3gydiUy64&amp;hl=en&amp;fs=1&amp;"&gt;&lt;/param&gt;&lt;param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"&gt;&lt;/param&gt;&lt;param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"&gt;&lt;/param&gt;&lt;embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/Zo3gydiUy64&amp;hl=en&amp;fs=1&amp;" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="400" height="245"&gt;&lt;/embed&gt;&lt;/object&gt;&lt;/center&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span id="fullpost"&gt;It was one of five selected out of more than 450 screened by top leaders at the UN. As a result of winning the contest, &lt;a href="http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=32591&amp;Cr=akasaka&amp;Cr1=" target="_blank"&gt;Emily will be named a "UN Citizen Ambassador"&lt;/a&gt;, get to travel to New York to attend the UN Day Concert, and meet Secretary General Ban ki-Moon.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;So, time to have another chat with Emily: &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="font-weight:bold;"&gt;Photographer, videographer,... What are you now?&lt;br /&gt;Emily:&lt;/span&gt; The lines are blurring between the photographer and the videographer. Which for me, opens up the possibility to create really robust narratives. I'm still just a baby in this process, my work leans more towards automated slideshows, but in the future, I expect more and more online articles to contain video instead of still shots.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="font-weight:bold;"&gt;From the narrative in the video, it seems you are not only good in visuals, but also in wording it.&lt;br /&gt;Emily:&lt;/span&gt; People who know me, know that I began my career as a writer through poetry. And even at a young age, was very successful at that. The study and craft of poetry taught me a lot about how to draw a line from complex intellectual constructs into emotion.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="font-weight:bold;"&gt;And then comes the humanitarian aspect..&lt;br /&gt;Emily:&lt;/span&gt; Humanitarian work is considered the next frontier for me. There is a tremendous need for high quality communications tools that also maximize the potential of the internet to bring people together around important issues.&lt;br /&gt; &lt;br /&gt;Although I have a Master's Degree in Public Policy, it was really through my blog that I really learned how to talk to people about complicated issues. In 2005, I traveled to Iraq while conducting research for my graduate thesis on democracy. While there, I witnessed the first post-Saddam elections and emailed my friends about what I saw and how it made me feel. I had no idea that the emails would be more important than the thesis, but somehow, I managed to tell real stories about people I met and the lives that touched mine.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;From those early emails, I created my blog: who we are / how we live, and really started to embrace an unusual avocation-- to write and talk about complicated problems in a personal way. I tried never to forget my original audience: my little sister, my mom, policy wonks, colleagues.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="font-weight:bold;"&gt;And then came this video you made for the UN. What message did you try to bring?&lt;br /&gt;Emily:&lt;/span&gt; For this project, I genuinely asked myself, "What do *I* want to say to world leaders?" I knew I didn't want to put forward any particular policy or opinion, but instead, to call on them, and all of us, to connect with something true and real. To think less about politics and more about people, actual people that we know. I think this is something humanitarian workers in the field do regularly. When they talk about Iraq, they tell stories about people they know there. When they talk about hunger, they tell stories about hungry people.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;It's a subtle but profound shift in thinking. Through this video, and all of my work, I hope to remind myself and others that power is personal. Real change is only created by hope and empathy, by strength and commitment, by listening to others and acknowledging that quiet voice, in my own heart, telling me what needs to be done. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span style="font-weight:bold;"&gt;So what's next?&lt;br /&gt;Emily:&lt;/span&gt; For now, my professional goals as a writer and photographer are just to get better at what I'm doing and learn more. I have some local projects planned here in Baltimore and DC, but I'm hoping to head back to Africa in the winter. I'm always looking for interesting projects and people to collaborate with. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Check also &lt;a href="www.emilytroutman.com" target="_blank"&gt;Emily's website&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href="http://www.emilytroutman.blogspot.com" target="_blank"&gt;her blog&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Read &lt;a href="http://www.theroadtothehorizon.org/search/label/interview"&gt;other interviews&lt;/a&gt; on The Road.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;div class="blogger-post-footer"&gt;&lt;img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/21629351372307923-9091672295212433065?l=www.theroadtothehorizon.org'/&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="feedflare"&gt;
&lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?a=SZAWx_tcL60:0LaR7QZm_Ok:yIl2AUoC8zA"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?a=SZAWx_tcL60:0LaR7QZm_Ok:F7zBnMyn0Lo"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?i=SZAWx_tcL60:0LaR7QZm_Ok:F7zBnMyn0Lo" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?a=SZAWx_tcL60:0LaR7QZm_Ok:bcOpcFrp8Mo"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?d=bcOpcFrp8Mo" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?a=SZAWx_tcL60:0LaR7QZm_Ok:gIN9vFwOqvQ"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?i=SZAWx_tcL60:0LaR7QZm_Ok:gIN9vFwOqvQ" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?a=SZAWx_tcL60:0LaR7QZm_Ok:qj6IDK7rITs"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?a=SZAWx_tcL60:0LaR7QZm_Ok:TzevzKxY174"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?d=TzevzKxY174" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TheRoadToTheHorizon/~4/SZAWx_tcL60" height="1" width="1"/&gt;</description><app:edited xmlns:app="http://www.w3.org/2007/app">2009-10-19T19:06:10.576+01:00</app:edited><thr:total xmlns:thr="http://purl.org/syndication/thread/1.0">0</thr:total><feedburner:origLink>http://www.theroadtothehorizon.org/2009/10/emily-becomes-un-citizen-ambassador-and.html</feedburner:origLink></item><item><title>Snapped: One week and a world of difference</title><link>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheRoadToTheHorizon/~3/M6EcINhU6nk/one-week-and-world-of-difference.html</link><category>snapped</category><category>Fregene</category><category>Italy</category><category>pictures</category><author>peter@theroadtothehorizon.org (Peter)</author><pubDate>Tue, 27 Oct 2009 11:42:23 PDT</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21629351372307923.post-4619101171671830998</guid><description>&lt;center&gt;&lt;img style="display:block; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 410px; height: 308px;" src="http://theroadtothehorizon.net/photo/last%20week%20on%20the%20beach.jpg" border="0" alt="Fregene beach" /&gt;&lt;/center&gt;&lt;br /&gt;This is last week Sunday, on the beach near my house here in Italy. It was 29°C. The beach was crowded, people were sun bathing and swimming in the water.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;This was the same beach today: &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;center&gt;&lt;img style="display:block; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 410px; height: 308px;" src="http://theroadtothehorizon.net/photo/today%20on%20the%20beach.jpg" border="0" alt="Fregene beach" /&gt;&lt;/center&gt;&lt;br /&gt;There were three people and a dog on the beach. I was one of them. And I was not the dog. Even though it sunny, the northern wind kept the temperature as low as 9°C.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Yep, summer is definitively over.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;More in this &lt;a href="http://www.theroadtothehorizon.org/search/label/snapped"&gt;Snapped&lt;/a&gt; series.&lt;div class="blogger-post-footer"&gt;&lt;img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/21629351372307923-4619101171671830998?l=www.theroadtothehorizon.org'/&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="feedflare"&gt;
&lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?a=M6EcINhU6nk:t7EZNLbrSr8:yIl2AUoC8zA"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?a=M6EcINhU6nk:t7EZNLbrSr8:F7zBnMyn0Lo"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?i=M6EcINhU6nk:t7EZNLbrSr8:F7zBnMyn0Lo" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?a=M6EcINhU6nk:t7EZNLbrSr8:bcOpcFrp8Mo"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?d=bcOpcFrp8Mo" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?a=M6EcINhU6nk:t7EZNLbrSr8:gIN9vFwOqvQ"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?i=M6EcINhU6nk:t7EZNLbrSr8:gIN9vFwOqvQ" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?a=M6EcINhU6nk:t7EZNLbrSr8:qj6IDK7rITs"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?a=M6EcINhU6nk:t7EZNLbrSr8:TzevzKxY174"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?d=TzevzKxY174" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TheRoadToTheHorizon/~4/M6EcINhU6nk" height="1" width="1"/&gt;</description><app:edited xmlns:app="http://www.w3.org/2007/app">2009-10-27T19:42:23.873+01:00</app:edited><thr:total xmlns:thr="http://purl.org/syndication/thread/1.0">0</thr:total><feedburner:origLink>http://www.theroadtothehorizon.org/2009/10/one-week-and-world-of-difference.html</feedburner:origLink></item><item><title>For the aidworkers amongst you: participate in the IASC survey</title><link>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheRoadToTheHorizon/~3/QPCZKD-7Cy0/for-aidworkers-amongst-you-participate.html</link><category>aid work</category><category>humanitarian</category><author>peter@theroadtothehorizon.org (Peter)</author><pubDate>Sun, 18 Oct 2009 05:08:00 PDT</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21629351372307923.post-157324620436973938</guid><description>&lt;center&gt;&lt;img src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3220/2960532023_7a229fee2d_o.jpg" width="267" height="400" alt="Hurricane Ike" /&gt;&lt;/center&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Since 1992, the Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC) has issued policy statements, guidelines, and manuals, which help to set the normative frameworks, common standards and good practice for humanitarian community.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The IASC is now reviewing a selection of IASC products to find out if these products are known and used, and how they can be made more accessible.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Humanitarian workers are invited to give their views on IASC products using &lt;a href="http://www.humanitarianinfo.org/iasc/pageloader.aspx?page=content-products-common&amp;tempid=83" target="_blank"&gt;several short on-line surveys&lt;/a&gt;, available in English, French and Spanish.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;All surveys remain open until Friday, 23rd, October 2009.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Picture courtesy Logan Abassi (MINUSTAH)&lt;div class="blogger-post-footer"&gt;&lt;img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/21629351372307923-157324620436973938?l=www.theroadtothehorizon.org'/&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="feedflare"&gt;
&lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?a=QPCZKD-7Cy0:zZMaJT5uAR0:yIl2AUoC8zA"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?a=QPCZKD-7Cy0:zZMaJT5uAR0:F7zBnMyn0Lo"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?i=QPCZKD-7Cy0:zZMaJT5uAR0:F7zBnMyn0Lo" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?a=QPCZKD-7Cy0:zZMaJT5uAR0:bcOpcFrp8Mo"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?d=bcOpcFrp8Mo" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?a=QPCZKD-7Cy0:zZMaJT5uAR0:gIN9vFwOqvQ"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?i=QPCZKD-7Cy0:zZMaJT5uAR0:gIN9vFwOqvQ" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?a=QPCZKD-7Cy0:zZMaJT5uAR0:qj6IDK7rITs"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?a=QPCZKD-7Cy0:zZMaJT5uAR0:TzevzKxY174"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?d=TzevzKxY174" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TheRoadToTheHorizon/~4/QPCZKD-7Cy0" height="1" width="1"/&gt;</description><app:edited xmlns:app="http://www.w3.org/2007/app">2009-10-18T13:08:00.481+01:00</app:edited><thr:total xmlns:thr="http://purl.org/syndication/thread/1.0">0</thr:total><feedburner:origLink>http://www.theroadtothehorizon.org/2009/10/for-aidworkers-amongst-you-participate.html</feedburner:origLink></item><item><title>Asia typhoons: Curing is more costly than preparing</title><link>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheRoadToTheHorizon/~3/gtisAejdxps/asia-typhoons-curing-is-more-costly.html</link><category>Philippines</category><category>news item</category><category>flooding</category><category>climate change</category><category>humanitarian</category><author>peter@theroadtothehorizon.org (Peter)</author><pubDate>Sat, 17 Oct 2009 04:54:52 PDT</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21629351372307923.post-7376034249555723220</guid><description>&lt;center&gt;&lt;img style="display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 410px; height: 277px;" src="http://theroadtothehorizon.net/photo/Philippines%20typhoons.jpg" alt="Philippines typhoon" border="0" /&gt;&lt;/center&gt;&lt;br /&gt;In 2008, the world spent US$12 billion on humanitarian responses to disasters. 99% of those killed by natural phenomena were in the Asia Pacific region, according to John Holmes, the UN Emergency Relief Coordinator.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Holmes said 10% of what we spend on response or even on development should go into disaster risk reduction to limit the consequences of natural disasters, especially given the impact of climate change. (&lt;a href="http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/JAK544894.htm#" target="_blank"&gt;Full&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span id="fullpost"&gt;In the past weeks, two deadly storms struck the Philippines killing more than 700 people. The flooding disaster affected more than 7 million people. (&lt;a href="http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/rwb.nsf/db900SID/EDIS-7WVNZE?OpenDocument&amp;amp;RSS20=22-P" target="_blank"&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;While &lt;a href="http://blog.wfplogistics.org/wfp-charters-boeing-747-deliver-critical-humanitarian-supplies-philippines/" target="_blank"&gt;the humanitarian community's response is in full swing&lt;/a&gt;, tropical storm Lupit is forming in the Pacific, having all the potential to turn into the a super typhoon. Lupit is predicted to hit the same areas previously affected by typhoons Parma and Ketsana. (&lt;a href="http://humanitariannews.org/blog/20091017/new-storm-threatens-typhoon-devastated-areas-philippines" target="_blank"&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;One good example of disaster mitigation is Bangladesh, where over a 100-year period, 508 cyclones have hit the Bay of Bengal region. After the disastrous effect of &lt;a href="http://www.theroadtothehorizon.org/2007/11/news-cyclone-sidr-in-bangladesh.html"&gt;Cyclone Sidr in 2007&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href="http://www.theroadtothehorizon.org/2008/05/news-bangladesh-trees-to-stop-cyclones.html" target="_blank"&gt;the government planted 100 million trees&lt;/a&gt; as a natural coastal barrier for floods and cyclones. They extended their weather watch centres, expanded the network of volunteers to warn people of upcoming threats and increased their shelters in high risk areas.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Meanwhile, Humanitarian News monitors &lt;a href="http://humanitariannews.org/search/node/%22Philippines%20floods%22%20OR%20%22Philippines%20typhoon%22" target="_blank"&gt;the latest news updates on the Philippines flooding&lt;/a&gt;. You can use &lt;a href="http://humanitariannews.org/search/node/%22Philippines%20floods%22%20OR%20%22Philippines%20typhoon%22" target="_blank"&gt;this RSS feed&lt;/a&gt; with the latest updates.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Picture courtesy Jay Directo (AFP/Getty Images)&lt;/span&gt;&lt;div class="blogger-post-footer"&gt;&lt;img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/21629351372307923-7376034249555723220?l=www.theroadtothehorizon.org'/&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="feedflare"&gt;
&lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?a=gtisAejdxps:MiYEm589i6A:yIl2AUoC8zA"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?a=gtisAejdxps:MiYEm589i6A:F7zBnMyn0Lo"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?i=gtisAejdxps:MiYEm589i6A:F7zBnMyn0Lo" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?a=gtisAejdxps:MiYEm589i6A:bcOpcFrp8Mo"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?d=bcOpcFrp8Mo" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?a=gtisAejdxps:MiYEm589i6A:gIN9vFwOqvQ"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?i=gtisAejdxps:MiYEm589i6A:gIN9vFwOqvQ" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?a=gtisAejdxps:MiYEm589i6A:qj6IDK7rITs"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?a=gtisAejdxps:MiYEm589i6A:TzevzKxY174"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?d=TzevzKxY174" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TheRoadToTheHorizon/~4/gtisAejdxps" height="1" width="1"/&gt;</description><app:edited xmlns:app="http://www.w3.org/2007/app">2009-10-17T12:54:52.354+01:00</app:edited><thr:total xmlns:thr="http://purl.org/syndication/thread/1.0">0</thr:total><feedburner:origLink>http://www.theroadtothehorizon.org/2009/10/asia-typhoons-curing-is-more-costly.html</feedburner:origLink></item><item><title>Blog Action Day: Drought and floods hit the poorest</title><link>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheRoadToTheHorizon/~3/e6KyYvU6-2w/blog-action-day-drought-and-floods-hit.html</link><category>flooding</category><category>Africa</category><category>climate change</category><category>poverty</category><category>Kenya</category><category>drought</category><author>peter@theroadtothehorizon.org (Peter)</author><pubDate>Wed, 14 Oct 2009 15:25:16 PDT</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21629351372307923.post-2521383338632145733</guid><description>&lt;center&gt;&lt;img style="display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 286px;" src="http://theroadtothehorizon.net/photo/kenya%20drought.jpg" alt="Kenya drought" border="0" /&gt;&lt;/center&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Fewer and fewer people who believe "Climate Change" is fiction. The hard evidence the climate *is* changing, is in our face: Hurricanes and typhoons become more frequent and more violent. Extensive droughts are followed by devastating floods.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Unfortunately, the poorest are hit the hardest. Look at what &lt;a href="http://www.humanitariannews.org/search/node/Ketsana" target="_blank"&gt;Typhoon Ketsana&lt;/a&gt; recently did in the Philippines, Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. Followed a few days later by &lt;a href="http://humanitariannews.org/search/node/typhoon%20parma" target="_blank"&gt;Typhoon Parma&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;For months now, the humanitarian community has been warning about &lt;a href="http://www.humanitariannews.org/search/node/Kenya%20Drought" target="_blank"&gt;the droughts in Kenya&lt;/a&gt;, which is now taking its full toll. What is said &lt;a href="http://blogs.reuters.com/africanews/2009/10/07/is-kenyas-drought-a-climate-changing-warning/" target="_blank"&gt;to be the worst in the country since 1996&lt;/a&gt;, with &lt;a href="http://www.wfp.org/stories/farmers-herders-rely-wfp-get-through-drought" target="_blank"&gt;3.8 million people now tumbling over the poverty line and becoming dependent on food aid&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span id="fullpost"&gt;&lt;center&gt;&lt;object width='400' height='225'&gt;&lt;param name='movie' value='http://news.sky.com/sky-news/app/skynewsflash/OBU_Player.swf?type=embedded&amp;baseColor=6710886&amp;highlightColor=16711680&amp;channel_key=News&amp;ad_channel=2169867&amp;ad_alias=pre_skynews_skynews_Home_World_News&amp;networkId=999.1&amp;unique_id=2062344&amp;media_title=Drought Fuels New Food Crisis In E Africa&amp;attrib_url=http://news.sky.com&amp;smoothing=true&amp;tracking_account=DM530320KARC&amp;video_url=http://static1.sky.com//feeds/skynews/latest/flash/act-bb-su-p17287-drought.flv'&gt;&lt;/param&gt;&lt;param name='allowFullScreen' value='true'&gt;&lt;/param&gt;&lt;param name='allowScriptAccess' value='always'&gt;&lt;/param&gt;&lt;embed src='http://news.sky.com/sky-news/app/skynewsflash/OBU_Player.swf?type=embedded&amp;baseColor=6710886&amp;highlightColor=16711680&amp;channel_key=News&amp;ad_channel=2169867&amp;ad_alias=pre_skynews_skynews_Home_World_News&amp;networkId=999.1&amp;unique_id=2062344&amp;media_title=Drought Fuels New Food Crisis In E Africa&amp;attrib_url=http://news.sky.com&amp;video_url=http://static1.sky.com//feeds/skynews/latest/flash/act-bb-su-p17287-drought.flv&amp;smoothing=true&amp;tracking_account=DM530320KARC' type='application/x-shockwave-flash' allowFullScreen='true' allowScriptAccess='always' width='400' height='225'&gt;&lt;/embed&gt;&lt;/object&gt;&lt;/center&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The misery is not over, as &lt;a href="http://humanitariannews.org/blog/20090828/floods-sweep-across-africa" target="_blank"&gt;floods are kicking off the rainy season&lt;/a&gt; in many parts of Africa.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The frustrating part is that even those who previously were able to sustain themselves independently, are pushed again to become dependent on aid. One step forward, two backwards. And the answer is in the hands of the richer countries, to impose proper limits on pollution. Is that not tragic?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Unless we can turn around the causes of climate change, it will only get worse.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;This post is part of &lt;a href="http://www.blogactionday.org/" target="_blank"&gt;Blog Action Day&lt;/a&gt;, which concentrates on Climate Change this year.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Picture courtesy BBC&lt;/span&gt;&lt;div class="blogger-post-footer"&gt;&lt;img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/21629351372307923-2521383338632145733?l=www.theroadtothehorizon.org'/&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="feedflare"&gt;
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&lt;/div&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TheRoadToTheHorizon/~4/e6KyYvU6-2w" height="1" width="1"/&gt;</description><app:edited xmlns:app="http://www.w3.org/2007/app">2009-10-14T23:25:16.671+01:00</app:edited><thr:total xmlns:thr="http://purl.org/syndication/thread/1.0">3</thr:total><feedburner:origLink>http://www.theroadtothehorizon.org/2009/10/blog-action-day-drought-and-floods-hit.html</feedburner:origLink></item><item><title>Humanitarian News updates</title><link>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheRoadToTheHorizon/~3/_RSd1UeKDDU/humanitarian-news-updates.html</link><category>internal</category><category>media</category><author>peter@theroadtothehorizon.org (Peter)</author><pubDate>Wed, 14 Oct 2009 09:56:32 PDT</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21629351372307923.post-1603264963744183058</guid><description>&lt;center&gt;&lt;img style="display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 420px; height: 178px;" src="http://theroadtothehorizon.net/photo/humanitariannewsorg.jpg" alt="humanitariannews.org" border="0"&gt;&lt;/center&gt;&lt;br /&gt;September was the first full month for my new site &lt;a href="http://www.humanitariannews.org/" target="blank"&gt;Humanitarian News&lt;/a&gt;. In our first month, it fetched and stored 13,000 articles from +- 600 different hand selected nonprofit sources:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;ul&gt;&lt;li&gt;news about humanitarian issues&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;news about the environment&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;blogs by aidworkers&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;the latest press releases by humanitarian agencies&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;updates from websites specializing in development&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;the latest posts from over 300 nonprofit blogs&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul&gt;The site fetches its updates automatically every 15 minutes and publishes a searchable summary with a link to the original article.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I spent a lot of time updating the 600+ sites I get the input from, to ensure the updates are relevant and up-to-date.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span id="fullpost"&gt;I split up the RSS feeds for each of the sections of Humanitarian News, and &lt;a href="http://humanitariannews.org/subscriptions" target="_blank"&gt;you can now subscribe to them&lt;/a&gt; individually, either using the site's RSS feed, or via Feedburner.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;You can also &lt;a href="http://humanitariannews.org/subscriptions" target="_blank"&gt;get daily updates via Email&lt;/a&gt; for each of the sections individually, or for the whole site. &lt;a href="http://theroadtothehorizon.net/text/Humanitarian%20News%20-%20AidNews%20posts.htm" target="_blank"&gt;Here is an example&lt;/a&gt; how an email update looks like.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Two nights ago, I made &lt;a href="http://www.humanitariannews.org/widgets" target="_blank"&gt;news widgets&lt;/a&gt; you can add to your blog or website, displaying the latest updates.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;center&gt;&lt;a target="_blank" href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/HumanitarianNews-AidNews/~6/3"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/HumanitarianNews-AidNews.3.gif" alt="Humanitarian News - AidNews posts" style="border:0"&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/center&gt;&lt;br /&gt;If you are on Twitter, updates from the latest posts are published via &lt;a href="http://twitter.com/humanitynews" target="_blank"&gt;@humanitynews&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Because of the vast quantity of articles being updates, it has proven to be quite a resource, even for us at work, as all content can be searched. As an example, check out the latest on &lt;a href="http://humanitariannews.org/search/node/Philippines%20Storm" target="_blank"&gt;the Philippines storms&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;If you want an instantaneous overview of the latest posts, check out &lt;a href="http://theotherworldnews.blogspot.com/" target="_blank"&gt;The Other World News&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href="http://petercasier.be/" target="_blank"&gt;My Home on the Road&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Enjoy!&lt;/span&gt;&lt;div class="blogger-post-footer"&gt;&lt;img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/21629351372307923-1603264963744183058?l=www.theroadtothehorizon.org'/&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="feedflare"&gt;
&lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?a=_RSd1UeKDDU:ZA_kGNKpcag:yIl2AUoC8zA"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?a=_RSd1UeKDDU:ZA_kGNKpcag:F7zBnMyn0Lo"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?i=_RSd1UeKDDU:ZA_kGNKpcag:F7zBnMyn0Lo" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?a=_RSd1UeKDDU:ZA_kGNKpcag:bcOpcFrp8Mo"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?d=bcOpcFrp8Mo" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?a=_RSd1UeKDDU:ZA_kGNKpcag:gIN9vFwOqvQ"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?i=_RSd1UeKDDU:ZA_kGNKpcag:gIN9vFwOqvQ" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?a=_RSd1UeKDDU:ZA_kGNKpcag:qj6IDK7rITs"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?a=_RSd1UeKDDU:ZA_kGNKpcag:TzevzKxY174"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?d=TzevzKxY174" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TheRoadToTheHorizon/~4/_RSd1UeKDDU" height="1" width="1"/&gt;</description><app:edited xmlns:app="http://www.w3.org/2007/app">2009-10-14T17:56:32.239+01:00</app:edited><thr:total xmlns:thr="http://purl.org/syndication/thread/1.0">0</thr:total><feedburner:origLink>http://www.theroadtothehorizon.org/2009/10/humanitarian-news-updates.html</feedburner:origLink></item><item><title>Picks of the week: Project 10 to the 100, 350, peace x peace...</title><link>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheRoadToTheHorizon/~3/vE-sqUliPgo/picks-of-week-project-10-to-100-350.html</link><category>picks of the week</category><category>humanitarian</category><category>micro-financing</category><category>advocacy</category><author>peter@theroadtothehorizon.org (Peter)</author><pubDate>Mon, 12 Oct 2009 23:53:05 PDT</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21629351372307923.post-4922614716241798105</guid><description>&lt;img style="display:block;  text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 410px; height: 308px;" src="http://theroadtothehorizon.net/photo/oranjes.jpg" border="0" alt="oranges on tree" /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Here are the interesting links I harvested last week:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;ul&gt;&lt;li&gt;Last fall, Google.org's &lt;a href="http://www.project10tothe100.com/vote.html"&gt;Project 10^100&lt;/a&gt; called for ideas to change the world by helping as many people as possible. Thousands of people from more than 170 countries submitted more than 150,000 ideas. Now is your time to help selecting the best.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.350.org/en" target="_blank"&gt;350.org&lt;/a&gt; is an international campaign dedicated to building a movement to unite the world around solutions to the climate crisis--the solutions that science and justice demand.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.vittana.org/" target="_blank"&gt;Vittana&lt;/a&gt; is a microfinance site, like &lt;a href="http://www.kiva.org" target="_blank"&gt;Kiva&lt;/a&gt;, bringing student loans to the developing world through the power of person-to-person micro-lending. The difference is that Vittana borrowers are students who are in need of capital to finance their education.  After the student finishes school and finds work, they pay the lenders back. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://peacexpeace.org" target="_blank"&gt;Peace X Peace&lt;/a&gt; is connects women across cultures for friendship, support, and action for peace.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.dailygood.org" target="_blank"&gt;Daily Good&lt;/a&gt; is a community blog delivering an inspiring quote, a related good-news story, and a simple action. "Good" does not have to be "big".&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;br /&gt;More &lt;a href="http://www.theroadtothehorizon.org/search/label/picks%20of%20the%20week?updated-max=20010-10-18T08%3A59%3A00%2B01%3A00&amp;amp;max-results=50"&gt;Picks of the Week&lt;/a&gt; on The Road.&lt;div class="blogger-post-footer"&gt;&lt;img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/21629351372307923-4922614716241798105?l=www.theroadtothehorizon.org'/&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="feedflare"&gt;
&lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?a=vE-sqUliPgo:bfsPKy2w8AI:yIl2AUoC8zA"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?a=vE-sqUliPgo:bfsPKy2w8AI:F7zBnMyn0Lo"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?i=vE-sqUliPgo:bfsPKy2w8AI:F7zBnMyn0Lo" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?a=vE-sqUliPgo:bfsPKy2w8AI:bcOpcFrp8Mo"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?d=bcOpcFrp8Mo" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?a=vE-sqUliPgo:bfsPKy2w8AI:gIN9vFwOqvQ"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?i=vE-sqUliPgo:bfsPKy2w8AI:gIN9vFwOqvQ" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?a=vE-sqUliPgo:bfsPKy2w8AI:qj6IDK7rITs"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?a=vE-sqUliPgo:bfsPKy2w8AI:TzevzKxY174"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheRoadToTheHorizon?d=TzevzKxY174" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TheRoadToTheHorizon/~4/vE-sqUliPgo" height="1" width="1"/&gt;</description><app:edited xmlns:app="http://www.w3.org/2007/app">2009-10-13T07:53:05.166+01:00</app:edited><thr:total xmlns:thr="http://purl.org/syndication/thread/1.0">0</thr:total><feedburner:origLink>http://www.theroadtothehorizon.org/2009/10/picks-of-week-project-10-to-100-350.html</feedburner:origLink></item><item><title>Our microfinance project runs as a train</title><link>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheRoadToTheHorizon/~3/QdSEw-2RL34/our-microfinance-project-runs-as-train.html</link><category>social project</category><category>poverty</category><category>micro-financing</category><category>Kiva</category><author>peter@theroadtothehorizon.org (Peter)</author><pubDate>Mon, 12 Oct 2009 12:02:36 PDT</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21629351372307923.post-2540397618641273071</guid><description>&lt;center&gt;&lt;img style="display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 410px; height: 308px;" src="http://theroadtothehorizon.net/photo/girl%20painting.jpg" alt="girl painting" border="0" /&gt;&lt;/center&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;In between the negativity of the tragic news of &lt;a href="http://www.theroadtothehorizon.org/2009/10/we-lost-five-colleagues-in-islamabad.html"&gt;bombings in Islamabad&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href="http://www.theroadtothehorizon.org/2009/10/picture-of-day-suicide-bomb-in-peshawar.html"&gt;Peshawar&lt;/a&gt; this week, the continuing &lt;a href="http://humanitariannews.org/search/node/Indonesia%20earthquake" target="_blank"&gt;earthquakes&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href="http://humanitariannews.org/search/node/floods%20Asia" target="_blank"&gt;floods&lt;/a&gt; in Asia, &lt;a href="http://humanitariannews.org/search/node/drought%20East%20Africa" target="_blank"&gt;the droughts in East Africa&lt;/a&gt;, and &lt;a href="http://humanitariannews.org/search/node/el%20nino%20Africa" target="_blank"&gt;warnings of upcoming floods in Africa&lt;/a&gt; later this year, here is a bit of positive news.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Almost a year ago, I used The Road to the Horizon to kick off &lt;a href="http://www.theroadtothehorizon.org/2008/11/rumble-change-starts-here-roads-social.html"&gt;"Change Starts Here"&lt;/a&gt;, our micro finance project.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Little did I know that 11 months later, the project would take that high a flight... I started it as an "I need to do more" project, donating $1 for each comment on &lt;a href="http://www.theroadtothehorizon.org/2008/11/rumble-change-starts-here-roads-social.html"&gt;the kickoff post&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Soon, colleagues at work joined, and we held &lt;a href="http://www.haveimpact.org/kiva-project-2-the-essofalafia-in-togo/"&gt;several evening dinners&lt;/a&gt;, where people contributed to the project.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Then &lt;a href="http://www.haveimpact.org/from-antarctica-to-africas-micro-financing-a-small-step/" target="_blank"&gt;friends from our Antarctic expedition team joined&lt;/a&gt; in, and brought the total to over US$3,000.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span id="fullpost"&gt;From time to time, an individual stepped up and had the project take a leap. Like &lt;a href="http://www.haveimpact.org/we-raised-1000-in-a-day/" target="_blank"&gt;Ekram who asked people to allocate a loan to Kiva as a birthday present&lt;/a&gt;, rather than gifts. Just this week, another Friend joined and gave US$300 from her mission allowance &lt;a href="http://www.haveimpact.org/new-loans-for-the-middle-east-and-south-america/" target="_blank"&gt;to these loans&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Our &lt;a href="http://www.kiva.org/team/theroad" target="_blank"&gt;Kiva Lenders team&lt;/a&gt; gradually expanded to 25 active members who have contributed US$4,614 to date.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;As time went by, Kiva entrepreneurs paid back loans to us, which we reinvested. The total of re-allocated loans comes to US$5,141.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;In May, I started a new blog, &lt;a href="http://www.haveimpact.org/" target="_blank"&gt;Have Impact!&lt;/a&gt;, where I post all updates and new loans.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The project has issued over &lt;span style="font-weight:bold;"&gt;300 loans&lt;/span&gt;, for a total value of &lt;span style="font-weight:bold;"&gt;US$14,475&lt;/span&gt;. Our Kiva lenders team has &lt;span style="font-weight:bold;"&gt;25 members&lt;/span&gt;. Not bad, after 11 months, hey?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;As we will soon celebrate the one year anniversary of our project, I am preparing a small competition and fundraiser. Stay tuned!&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Meanwhile, check out &lt;a href="http://www.haveimpact.org/category/project-scorecard/" target="_blank"&gt;the project score card&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;a href="http://www.kiva.org/community/joinTeam_process?team_id=2415" target="_blank"&gt;Join&lt;/a&gt; our Kiva team.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;div class="blogger-post-footer"&gt;&lt;img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/21629351372307923-2540397618641273071?l=www.theroadtothehorizon.org'/&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="feedflare"&gt;
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&lt;/div&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TheRoadToTheHorizon/~4/QdSEw-2RL34" height="1" width="1"/&gt;</description><app:edited xmlns:app="http://www.w3.org/2007/app">2009-10-12T20:02:36.565+01:00</app:edited><thr:total xmlns:thr="http://purl.org/syndication/thread/1.0">0</thr:total><feedburner:origLink>http://www.theroadtothehorizon.org/2009/10/our-microfinance-project-runs-as-train.html</feedburner:origLink></item><item><title>The Killing Fields of Sri Lanka</title><link>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheRoadToTheHorizon/~3/Yr4tu93vbnM/killing-fields-of-sri-lanka.html</link><category>news item</category><category>genocide</category><category>humanitarian</category><category>Sri Lanka</category><category>war</category><author>peter@theroadtothehorizon.org (Peter)</author><pubDate>Sun, 11 Oct 2009 07:35:25 PDT</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="false">tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21629351372307923.post-5554313019837377956</guid><description>&lt;center&gt;&lt;img style="display:block;  text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 410px; height: 246px;" src="http://theroadtothehorizon.net/photo/Sri%20Lanka%20refugees.jpg" border="0" alt="" /&gt;&lt;/center&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;Tens of thousands of detained refugees from the war in Sri Lanka are threatened by the imminent arrival of monsoon rains in the north of the country, according to an internal United Nations document.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The UN believes that about 66,000 people held in the vast Menik Farm internment camp since May face a humanitarian disaster when the rains start, bringing the spectre of disease. Officials have urged the government to move those whose tents are most likely to be flooded by a mixture of rain and sewage. (&lt;a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/oct/11/sri-lanka-monsoon-flooding-refugees#" target="_blank"&gt;Full&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Something in that picture hit me in the face. These are not refugees, but Internally Displaced People (IDPs). Refugees are people driven from their homes to cross a border, "hosted" on foreign soil. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The ethnic Tamil population locked up behind barbed wire and sharpened sticks as fences, are Sri Lankan civilians, on Sri Lanka soil. They were first held as human shields by the LTTE (the "Tamil Tigers") during &lt;a href="http://www.theroadtothehorizon.org/2009/05/picture-of-day-sri-lanka-war-is-over.html"&gt;the last weeks of the civil war&lt;/a&gt;, and are now kept as prisoners by the government.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;What kind of government locks up tens of thousands of their own civilians in inhumane circumstances? Maybe this video explains what government we are dealing with here...&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;span id="fullpost"&gt;&lt;embed src="http://c.brightcove.com/services/viewer/federated_f8/1184614595" bgcolor="#FFFFFF" flashVars="videoId=35256686001&amp;playerId=1184614595&amp;viewerSecureGatewayURL=https://console.brightcove.com/services/amfgateway&amp;servicesURL=http://services.brightcove.com/services&amp;cdnURL=http://admin.brightcove.com&amp;domain=embed&amp;autoStart=false&amp;" base="http://admin.brightcove.com" name="flashObj" width="400" height="350" seamlesstabbing="false" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" swLiveConnect="true" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/shockwave/download/index.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=ShockwaveFlash"&gt;&lt;/embed&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;And when one UN official spoke up in the press about the condition of children in the camps, &lt;a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/asiapcf/09/06/sri.lanka.unicef/index.html?eref=rss_world" target="_blank"&gt;he was expelled from the country&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;According &lt;a href="http://www.humanitarianinfo.org/srilanka_hpsl/Files/Situation%20Reports/Joint%20Humanitarian%20Update/LKRN030_090912-090925-SL-IA-Sitreps-Joint_Humanitarian_Update-09.pdf" target="_blank"&gt;to the latest OCHA humanitarian report&lt;/a&gt;, "253,567 people are accommodated in temporary camps" across Northern Sri Lanka. Since the conflict only "7,835 people have been released from temporary camps"... &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Picture courtesy David Gray/Reuters. Video discovered via &lt;a href="http://genocide.change.org/blog" target="_blank"&gt;Stop Genocide&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;div class="blogger-post-footer"&gt;&lt;img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/21629351372307923-5554313019837377956?l=www.theroadtothehorizon.org'/&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class="feedflare"&gt;
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&lt;/div&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TheRoadToTheHorizon/~4/Yr4tu93vbnM" height="1" width="1"/&gt;</description><app:edited xmlns:app="http://www.w3.org/2007/app">2009-10-11T15:35:25.223+01:00</app:edited><thr:total xmlns:thr="http://purl.org/syndication/thread/1.0">0</thr:total><feedburner:origLink>http://www.theroadtothehorizon.org/2009/10/killing-fields-of-sri-lanka.html</feedburner:origLink></item></channel></rss>
