from World Vision
The humanitarian agency World Vision, in an effort to reduce infant mortality, has taken a bold initiative for a worldwide elimination of mosquitoes.
This was made known by its President, Rich Stearns in a statement, adding that the good news is that the elimination of malaria is possible as was done in the United States in 1951.
He pointed out that now it's time for the rest of the world to benefit from the U.S experience and that by God's mercy and in partnership with other humanitarian organizations and individuals, World Vision is determined to end malaria in the entire world.
"We have launched this initiative to: significantly increase private funding for anti-malaria programs; advocate for increased government commitments, including at least $1 billion per year from the U.S. government to combat malaria; develop corporate partnerships to leverage resources like bed nets and medication and to initially contribute to a 50 percent reduction in the number of malaria deaths by 2015 in countries where World Vision operates," he further said.
Stearns also said that while malaria is entirely preventable and treatable using inexpensive, proven solutions, those most at risk of malaria infection often lack access to these simple solutions and that to strategically address this threat, World Vision is at the moment scaling up its malaria prevention and treatment efforts.
These efforts, according to him, include the distribution of insecticide-treated bed nets, community health education, and provision of anti-malarial drugs and other treatments.
In his words: "However, no single response can defeat malaria. So we are part of a growing global movement to combat malaria with strong coordination between governments, businesses, non-governmental organizations, local citizens and supporters like you."
Stearns continued: "Last week, through the Roll Back Malaria Partnership, I joined world leaders in a discussion about the role each of us may play in fighting this deadly disease. At the event, a new global plan to combat malaria was announced. By partnering with communities, World Vision will play a crucial role in the implementation of the global plan and efforts to successfully achieve an end to malaria-efforts that you can be a part of."
He called on the body of Christ world-wide to partner with his organization in this critical and exciting endeavor to save the lives of millions of children, urging people to visit World Vision's End Malaria site in order to join a movement to stop this child killer in a lifetime. "For most of us, mosquitoes are a pesky nuisance; but for millions of children worldwide, this tiny menace poses a deadly threat."
He further stressed the need for Americans in particular to send proposals to Congress to advocate increased resources to fight malaria. "Donate to provide a family with bed nets and critical malaria prevention education and pray for those affected by malaria and for the will to end it and share the site with friends and colleagues to expand the movement."
World Vision is a Christian humanitarian organization dedicated to working with children, families, and their communities worldwide to reach their full potential by tackling the causes of poverty and injustice.
They serve close to 100 million people in nearly 100 countries around the world and serves all people, regardless of religion, race, ethnicity, or gender. For more on this visit World Vision website: www.worldvision.org
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Preparing to Get at Resources of the Poor
from IPS News
European Union officials are drawing up a new strategy for giving multinational companies greater access to minerals and wood located in poor countries.
With Europe importing up to 80 percent of the raw materials its firms use to manufacture goods, lawmakers in Brussels have identified taxes and other measures imposed by governments as an obstacle they should strive to remove.
In November, the EU's executive branch, the European Commission, is to issue a policy statement outlining how firms based on this continent can exploit the natural resources of other countries, including those where much of the population lives in poverty.
The strategy will address the 450 export restrictions in the world that the Commission has identified. These include taxes on exports which some governments levy in order to encourage processing of raw materials by domestic companies, subsidies, and limits on foreign investment.
Patrick Hennessy, a veteran official who has been involved in drafting the strategy, drew a distinction between differing groups of poor countries. Whereas rapid growing economies such as China and India have "huge requirements" for raw materials, countries in Africa have "huge resources but very acute problems," he said at a meeting in Brussels Monday.
Hennessy argued that it necessary for the EU to strike "a very delicate balance" in its relations with others. "It is important to try to convince them to see it our way," he added. "That sounds very condescending. But at least they should follow common rules as part of a sustainable industrial policy."
Some details of the new strategy -- known in Euro-speak as a 'communication' -- were outlined at a conference in Brussels Sep. 29, which was dominated by European officials and industrial lobbyists.
Peter Mandelson, the European commissioner for trade, said that the Commission is seeking to have clauses that will ban export restrictions included in all the free trade agreements it negotiates. Such provisions have already been placed in accords with Chile and Mexico, he added, while the EU is hoping to clinch similar deals with India and South Korea.
Mandelson noted that in industries like chemicals, plastics and wood, raw materials can account for one-third of the price of goods made in Europe. "The imposition of an export tax can price a European company out of the market overnight," he said.
But anti-poverty campaigners feel that many countries must retain the option of being able to restrict exports.
Marc Maes from the Belgian organisation 11.11.11 said it is "very worrying" that the Commission has been trying to convince African countries to scrap taxes on exports as part of free trade agreements it is negotiating with them.
"There are many reasons why developing countries in Africa should keep controls on exporting wood, for example," he said. "It is very important for the environment, for indigenous people and for local processors. We need to watch this communication carefully and we need to tell the Commission that eliminating restrictions is not good for these countries' development."
Chocolate offers a case study of how export taxes can be a vital source of revenue for poor countries. Nearly 60 percent of cocoa used by Europe's confectionary makers originates in just two west African countries: Ghana and Cote d'Ivoire.
Caobisco, the umbrella group for Europe's biscuit and chocolate industry, regards a 26 percent export tax on cocoa levied by Cote d'Ivoire as excessive. Yet the group's representative Tony Lass conceded that Cote d'Ivoire and Ghana "have few other export opportunities so you could say it is quite reasonable for them to tax cocoa."
Link to full article. May expire in future.
European Union officials are drawing up a new strategy for giving multinational companies greater access to minerals and wood located in poor countries.
With Europe importing up to 80 percent of the raw materials its firms use to manufacture goods, lawmakers in Brussels have identified taxes and other measures imposed by governments as an obstacle they should strive to remove.
In November, the EU's executive branch, the European Commission, is to issue a policy statement outlining how firms based on this continent can exploit the natural resources of other countries, including those where much of the population lives in poverty.
The strategy will address the 450 export restrictions in the world that the Commission has identified. These include taxes on exports which some governments levy in order to encourage processing of raw materials by domestic companies, subsidies, and limits on foreign investment.
Patrick Hennessy, a veteran official who has been involved in drafting the strategy, drew a distinction between differing groups of poor countries. Whereas rapid growing economies such as China and India have "huge requirements" for raw materials, countries in Africa have "huge resources but very acute problems," he said at a meeting in Brussels Monday.
Hennessy argued that it necessary for the EU to strike "a very delicate balance" in its relations with others. "It is important to try to convince them to see it our way," he added. "That sounds very condescending. But at least they should follow common rules as part of a sustainable industrial policy."
Some details of the new strategy -- known in Euro-speak as a 'communication' -- were outlined at a conference in Brussels Sep. 29, which was dominated by European officials and industrial lobbyists.
Peter Mandelson, the European commissioner for trade, said that the Commission is seeking to have clauses that will ban export restrictions included in all the free trade agreements it negotiates. Such provisions have already been placed in accords with Chile and Mexico, he added, while the EU is hoping to clinch similar deals with India and South Korea.
Mandelson noted that in industries like chemicals, plastics and wood, raw materials can account for one-third of the price of goods made in Europe. "The imposition of an export tax can price a European company out of the market overnight," he said.
But anti-poverty campaigners feel that many countries must retain the option of being able to restrict exports.
Marc Maes from the Belgian organisation 11.11.11 said it is "very worrying" that the Commission has been trying to convince African countries to scrap taxes on exports as part of free trade agreements it is negotiating with them.
"There are many reasons why developing countries in Africa should keep controls on exporting wood, for example," he said. "It is very important for the environment, for indigenous people and for local processors. We need to watch this communication carefully and we need to tell the Commission that eliminating restrictions is not good for these countries' development."
Chocolate offers a case study of how export taxes can be a vital source of revenue for poor countries. Nearly 60 percent of cocoa used by Europe's confectionary makers originates in just two west African countries: Ghana and Cote d'Ivoire.
Caobisco, the umbrella group for Europe's biscuit and chocolate industry, regards a 26 percent export tax on cocoa levied by Cote d'Ivoire as excessive. Yet the group's representative Tony Lass conceded that Cote d'Ivoire and Ghana "have few other export opportunities so you could say it is quite reasonable for them to tax cocoa."
Link to full article. May expire in future.
Slim and Yunus to offer credit to Mexico's poor
from Business Week
Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim and Bangladeshi Nobel Prize winner Muhammad Yunus are joining forces to offer credit to poor people in Mexico.
Slim and Yunus are creating Grameen-Carso, a lending institution that in its first phase will provide at least 80,000 loans.
Slim is committing at least US$45 million to the venture, which they expect to expand to other parts of Latin America.
Slim said Monday the institution will follow the model developed by Yunus' Grameen Bank.
Link to full article. May expire in future.
Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim and Bangladeshi Nobel Prize winner Muhammad Yunus are joining forces to offer credit to poor people in Mexico.
Slim and Yunus are creating Grameen-Carso, a lending institution that in its first phase will provide at least 80,000 loans.
Slim is committing at least US$45 million to the venture, which they expect to expand to other parts of Latin America.
Slim said Monday the institution will follow the model developed by Yunus' Grameen Bank.
Link to full article. May expire in future.
'Get smart' on child poverty, leaders told
from the Toronto Star
by Laurie Monsebraaten
Canada can either "get tough" on youth crime by handing out life sentences for 14-year-old criminals, as promised by the Conservatives, or "get smart" by developing strategies to fight child poverty, anti-poverty activists said yesterday.
"In contrast to building prisons, we should be building a national network of early learning and child-care centres and investing in a child benefit that would lift children out of poverty," said Ryerson University professor emeritus Marvyn Novick.
"It's not a question of being tough on crime or soft on crime. I say we can either get tough or get smart," said Novick, a founding member of Campaign 2000, a coalition of 120 groups committed to ending child and family poverty in Canada.
Stubbornly high child poverty rates in Canada's largest cities underscore the urgent need for all federal party leaders to tell voters how they would tackle the problem, said Novick and other coalition members who note that only the Tories have been silent on the issue.
Data from the 2006 census shows one in four children in Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver lives in poverty and one in five does so in Winnipeg, St. John's and Victoria.
Nationally, about 880,000 children are poor, or about one in eight, according to the coalition, which defines the poverty line as Statistics Canada's after-tax "low-income cut-off," which calculates the income level at which a family spends a greater portion of its income on shelter, food, and clothing than an average family.
"Child and family poverty in Canada has remained high during a time of unprecedented economic prosperity," Campaign 2000 spokesperson Laurel Rothman told reporters. "This will only get worse if the effects of the financial meltdown in the U.S. ripple into Canada's economy."
Four provinces – Quebec, Newfoundland, Ontario and Nova Scotia – with two-thirds of the Canadian population are acting on poverty reduction plans, Rothman said, but cannot do it without federal help.
Link to full article. May expire in future.
by Laurie Monsebraaten
Canada can either "get tough" on youth crime by handing out life sentences for 14-year-old criminals, as promised by the Conservatives, or "get smart" by developing strategies to fight child poverty, anti-poverty activists said yesterday.
"In contrast to building prisons, we should be building a national network of early learning and child-care centres and investing in a child benefit that would lift children out of poverty," said Ryerson University professor emeritus Marvyn Novick.
"It's not a question of being tough on crime or soft on crime. I say we can either get tough or get smart," said Novick, a founding member of Campaign 2000, a coalition of 120 groups committed to ending child and family poverty in Canada.
Stubbornly high child poverty rates in Canada's largest cities underscore the urgent need for all federal party leaders to tell voters how they would tackle the problem, said Novick and other coalition members who note that only the Tories have been silent on the issue.
Data from the 2006 census shows one in four children in Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver lives in poverty and one in five does so in Winnipeg, St. John's and Victoria.
Nationally, about 880,000 children are poor, or about one in eight, according to the coalition, which defines the poverty line as Statistics Canada's after-tax "low-income cut-off," which calculates the income level at which a family spends a greater portion of its income on shelter, food, and clothing than an average family.
"Child and family poverty in Canada has remained high during a time of unprecedented economic prosperity," Campaign 2000 spokesperson Laurel Rothman told reporters. "This will only get worse if the effects of the financial meltdown in the U.S. ripple into Canada's economy."
Four provinces – Quebec, Newfoundland, Ontario and Nova Scotia – with two-thirds of the Canadian population are acting on poverty reduction plans, Rothman said, but cannot do it without federal help.
Link to full article. May expire in future.
Tory party conference: Conservatives would cancel British aid to China
from the Telegraph
By Andrew Pierce
Britain's international aid budget to 115 countries, which costs more than £6 billion a year, will also be reviewed by a David Cameron administration.
But it is the aid budget to China, which this year spent £20 billion on the Beijing Olympics, which will be eliminated first. The money will be redirected to genuinely poorer countries in Africa.
Andrew Mitchell, the shadow international development secretary, will make the pledge in his speech at the party conference today.
"We have just marvelled at the spectacle of the Beijing Olympics and gloried in the success of our brilliant young sport stars. Those games did not come cheap – the price tag was a record £20 billion. Not a great surprise perhaps for a country that is powering out of poverty, had a trade surplus last year of £175 billion, and put a man in space last week.
"Many British taxpayers would be astonished to learn that we are still giving aid to China – and that last year, under Labour, China received in aid for the British taxpayer £38.6 million.
"Out aid budget is the fruit of hard work of the British people. It must be spent wisely. And that means it must be targeted on the countries and peoples who need it most. No money for China, more money for the very poorest people in the world."
Link to full article. May expire in future.
By Andrew Pierce
Britain's international aid budget to 115 countries, which costs more than £6 billion a year, will also be reviewed by a David Cameron administration.
But it is the aid budget to China, which this year spent £20 billion on the Beijing Olympics, which will be eliminated first. The money will be redirected to genuinely poorer countries in Africa.
Andrew Mitchell, the shadow international development secretary, will make the pledge in his speech at the party conference today.
"We have just marvelled at the spectacle of the Beijing Olympics and gloried in the success of our brilliant young sport stars. Those games did not come cheap – the price tag was a record £20 billion. Not a great surprise perhaps for a country that is powering out of poverty, had a trade surplus last year of £175 billion, and put a man in space last week.
"Many British taxpayers would be astonished to learn that we are still giving aid to China – and that last year, under Labour, China received in aid for the British taxpayer £38.6 million.
"Out aid budget is the fruit of hard work of the British people. It must be spent wisely. And that means it must be targeted on the countries and peoples who need it most. No money for China, more money for the very poorest people in the world."
Link to full article. May expire in future.
Monday, September 29, 2008
[comment] No Rescue for the Hungry
from the Washington Post
By Joel Berg
When social services advocates like me hear that the cost of the federal bailout of the finance sector might top a trillion dollars, we're not quite sure how to process such a massive figure.
Our country has been told that a gargantuan government rescue of the private sector is necessary because the collapse of major financial institutions would lead to unthinkable outcomes for society. Almost as if by magic, our nation's leaders conjure up vast sums to respond to this crisis.
Yet when advocates point out that our nation is facing an altogether different kind of crisis, one of soaring hunger and homelessness, and that a large-scale bailout is needed to prevent social service providers nationwide from buckling under the increasing load, we are told that the money these agencies need just doesn't exist.
In 2006, fully 35.5 million Americans, 4 million more than in 1999, lived in households that couldn't afford enough food, according to the Agriculture Department. Those households included more than 12 million children.
Last December, the U.S. Conference of Mayors reported that out of 23 major American cities, 80 percent had an increase in people using emergency soup kitchens and food pantries and 43 percent had an increase in the number of homeless children. All that happened between November 2006 and November 2007.
How did the federal government respond? It didn't.
The only federal program that provides cash to both emergency feeding programs and homelessness prevention services, the Federal Emergency Management Agency's Emergency Food and Shelter Program, wasn't expanded by a penny. Even though the program enables thousands of nonprofit agencies (many of which are faith-based) to aid millions of struggling people nationwide, its budget hasn't been increased for six years. Given that costs for food and housing have skyrocketed over that time, the program has, in effect, suffered from massive cuts; the charities that depend on this money are reeling from the strain, many teetering on the verge of collapse.
Even the farm bill's much-touted increase in federal nutrition assistance funding was nominal. The bill provided an extra billion dollars in funding annually, but that works out to less than $30 per year for every hungry American, an amount already lost to the spike in food prices. When we ask members of Congress and lobbyists to help obtain serious funding increases to meet the soaring needs, we are patronizingly praised for our good work but told that times are just too tough to increase budgets. Maybe there will be more money when the economy improves, they tell us, oblivious to the reality that funding for our programs is most needed when the economy is weakest.
In New York, where I live and work, the situation is bleak. The number of meals served by city-supported soup kitchens and food pantries was up 9 percent in the spring from a year earlier. While the City Council rebuffed Mayor Michael Bloomberg's proposal to cut funding to these agencies in June, Gov. David Paterson has persuaded the state Legislature to cut funding for emergency feeding programs twice in the past six months.
We're told to simply accept these cuts because everyone is suffering. But that's just not true. According to Forbes, there are 64 billionaires in New York City with a combined net worth of $344 billion, a staggering 469 percent more than the collective worth of the city's billionaires two years ago.
Just as it is unthinkable for the country to allow financial giants to go belly up, it should be unthinkable to look the other way as tens of millions of low-income Americans (the types of people who clean the offices of AIG and Fannie Mae at night) go without food or shelter. It's time to get our priorities in order.
Joel Berg is executive director of the New York City Coalition Against Hunger and author of the forthcoming book "All You Can Eat: How Hungry Is America?"
Link to full article. May expire in future.
By Joel Berg
When social services advocates like me hear that the cost of the federal bailout of the finance sector might top a trillion dollars, we're not quite sure how to process such a massive figure.
Our country has been told that a gargantuan government rescue of the private sector is necessary because the collapse of major financial institutions would lead to unthinkable outcomes for society. Almost as if by magic, our nation's leaders conjure up vast sums to respond to this crisis.
Yet when advocates point out that our nation is facing an altogether different kind of crisis, one of soaring hunger and homelessness, and that a large-scale bailout is needed to prevent social service providers nationwide from buckling under the increasing load, we are told that the money these agencies need just doesn't exist.
In 2006, fully 35.5 million Americans, 4 million more than in 1999, lived in households that couldn't afford enough food, according to the Agriculture Department. Those households included more than 12 million children.
Last December, the U.S. Conference of Mayors reported that out of 23 major American cities, 80 percent had an increase in people using emergency soup kitchens and food pantries and 43 percent had an increase in the number of homeless children. All that happened between November 2006 and November 2007.
How did the federal government respond? It didn't.
The only federal program that provides cash to both emergency feeding programs and homelessness prevention services, the Federal Emergency Management Agency's Emergency Food and Shelter Program, wasn't expanded by a penny. Even though the program enables thousands of nonprofit agencies (many of which are faith-based) to aid millions of struggling people nationwide, its budget hasn't been increased for six years. Given that costs for food and housing have skyrocketed over that time, the program has, in effect, suffered from massive cuts; the charities that depend on this money are reeling from the strain, many teetering on the verge of collapse.
Even the farm bill's much-touted increase in federal nutrition assistance funding was nominal. The bill provided an extra billion dollars in funding annually, but that works out to less than $30 per year for every hungry American, an amount already lost to the spike in food prices. When we ask members of Congress and lobbyists to help obtain serious funding increases to meet the soaring needs, we are patronizingly praised for our good work but told that times are just too tough to increase budgets. Maybe there will be more money when the economy improves, they tell us, oblivious to the reality that funding for our programs is most needed when the economy is weakest.
In New York, where I live and work, the situation is bleak. The number of meals served by city-supported soup kitchens and food pantries was up 9 percent in the spring from a year earlier. While the City Council rebuffed Mayor Michael Bloomberg's proposal to cut funding to these agencies in June, Gov. David Paterson has persuaded the state Legislature to cut funding for emergency feeding programs twice in the past six months.
We're told to simply accept these cuts because everyone is suffering. But that's just not true. According to Forbes, there are 64 billionaires in New York City with a combined net worth of $344 billion, a staggering 469 percent more than the collective worth of the city's billionaires two years ago.
Just as it is unthinkable for the country to allow financial giants to go belly up, it should be unthinkable to look the other way as tens of millions of low-income Americans (the types of people who clean the offices of AIG and Fannie Mae at night) go without food or shelter. It's time to get our priorities in order.
Joel Berg is executive director of the New York City Coalition Against Hunger and author of the forthcoming book "All You Can Eat: How Hungry Is America?"
Link to full article. May expire in future.
'Millions' of UK young in poverty
from the BBC
Millions of children in the UK are living in, or on the brink of, poverty, a report claims.
The Campaign to End Child Poverty says 5.5 million children are in families that are classed as "struggling" - 98% of children in some areas.
The campaign classes households as being in poverty if they are living on under £10 per person per day.
A government spokeswoman said it had lifted 600,000 children out of poverty and was committed to the cause.
The Campaign to End Child Poverty is a coalition of more than 130 organisations including Barnardo's, Unicef and the NSPCC.
According to its research, there are 4,634,000 children in England living in low income families, 297,000 in Wales, 428,000 in Scotland and 198,000 in Northern Ireland.
It says 174 of the 646 parliamentary constituencies in Britain have 50% or more of their child population in, or close to, the poverty line.
The parliamentary constituency with the highest number of children in or close to poverty is Birmingham Ladywood, with 81% (28,420 individuals).
'More likely to die'
She said: "There are currently 3,900,000 children in the UK that are classed as actually living in poverty, which impacts on every aspect of a child's life.
"A child in poverty is 10 times more likely to die in infancy, and five times more likely to die in an accident.
"Adults who lived in poverty as a child are 50 times more likely to develop a restrictive illness such diabetes or bronchitis."
Ms Fisher said some families could not afford school uniforms, and chose schools for their children based on uniform cost - which was "not acceptable".
She said: "The government has lifted 600,000 children out of poverty, but 100,000 have gone back for each of the last two years.
"If the government does not allocate £3bn in tax credits and benefits in the next budget, then their plans to reduce child poverty will fail."
A spokeswoman for the Department for Children, Schools and Families said the government was committed to the cause.
She said: "We have lifted 600,000 children out of poverty, we are introducing free nursery education for all two, three and four year olds and have seen an increase in educational outcomes at all ages."
Campaign director Hilary Fisher said the figures were "absolutely shocking".
She said local authorities and other service providers had to help it raise family incomes, encourage people to apply for tax credit and benefits and help parents work.
She said the latter was known to be one of the best ways for families to get out of poverty
Donald Hirsch, author of several reports on child poverty, said a single-wage couple with two children would stop getting Working Tax Credit when they were on £18,500 a year - leaving them just above the poverty line.
He said: "The official government measure of poverty is families below 60% of median income before housing costs, so families with this composition on Working Tax Credit will be close to the poverty line."
The report's figures are made up from Child Tax Credit and Working Tax Credit data, and have been calculated by the Centre for Economic and Social Inclusion.
Government pledge
Another area with high child poverty is Bethnal Green and Bow, which has 79% (23,450) of its children in low income families.
The constituency of Bradford West has 75% (24,900) of children in or near poverty, while Nottingham East has 68% (12,360).
An estimated 98% of children living in two zones in Glasgow Baillieston - Central Easterhouse and North Barlarnark and Easterhouse South - are either in poverty or in working families that are "struggling to get by".
And there are 58% of children in Swansea East (10,470) in families of this description.
The constituencies with the lowest levels of families in, or near, poverty are Buckingham and Sheffield Hallam, both with 17%.
At last week's Labour Party conference, Prime Minister Gordon Brown said child poverty "demeans Britain" and repeated his party's pledge to halve child poverty by 2010, and ultimately to end it.
During his speech he said: "The measures we have taken this year alone will help lift 250,000 children out of poverty.
"The economic times are tough - of course that makes things harder - but we are in this for the long haul. The complete elimination of child poverty by 2020."
'Broken Britain'
Harry Potter author JK Rowling recently donated £1m to the Labour Party, saying she was motivated by Labour's record on child poverty.
But shadow work and pensions secretary Chris Grayling said the figures "underline the vast social divide" within cities.
He added: "There are examples of wards within cities where hardly any children live in poverty but sitting alongside these wards are others where virtually every family lives below the poverty line.
"This just goes to show the extent to which Britain is truly broken."
Link to full article. May expire in future.
Millions of children in the UK are living in, or on the brink of, poverty, a report claims.
The Campaign to End Child Poverty says 5.5 million children are in families that are classed as "struggling" - 98% of children in some areas.
The campaign classes households as being in poverty if they are living on under £10 per person per day.
A government spokeswoman said it had lifted 600,000 children out of poverty and was committed to the cause.
The Campaign to End Child Poverty is a coalition of more than 130 organisations including Barnardo's, Unicef and the NSPCC.
According to its research, there are 4,634,000 children in England living in low income families, 297,000 in Wales, 428,000 in Scotland and 198,000 in Northern Ireland.
It says 174 of the 646 parliamentary constituencies in Britain have 50% or more of their child population in, or close to, the poverty line.
The parliamentary constituency with the highest number of children in or close to poverty is Birmingham Ladywood, with 81% (28,420 individuals).
'More likely to die'
She said: "There are currently 3,900,000 children in the UK that are classed as actually living in poverty, which impacts on every aspect of a child's life.
"A child in poverty is 10 times more likely to die in infancy, and five times more likely to die in an accident.
"Adults who lived in poverty as a child are 50 times more likely to develop a restrictive illness such diabetes or bronchitis."
Ms Fisher said some families could not afford school uniforms, and chose schools for their children based on uniform cost - which was "not acceptable".
She said: "The government has lifted 600,000 children out of poverty, but 100,000 have gone back for each of the last two years.
"If the government does not allocate £3bn in tax credits and benefits in the next budget, then their plans to reduce child poverty will fail."
A spokeswoman for the Department for Children, Schools and Families said the government was committed to the cause.
She said: "We have lifted 600,000 children out of poverty, we are introducing free nursery education for all two, three and four year olds and have seen an increase in educational outcomes at all ages."
Campaign director Hilary Fisher said the figures were "absolutely shocking".
She said local authorities and other service providers had to help it raise family incomes, encourage people to apply for tax credit and benefits and help parents work.
She said the latter was known to be one of the best ways for families to get out of poverty
Donald Hirsch, author of several reports on child poverty, said a single-wage couple with two children would stop getting Working Tax Credit when they were on £18,500 a year - leaving them just above the poverty line.
He said: "The official government measure of poverty is families below 60% of median income before housing costs, so families with this composition on Working Tax Credit will be close to the poverty line."
The report's figures are made up from Child Tax Credit and Working Tax Credit data, and have been calculated by the Centre for Economic and Social Inclusion.
Government pledge
Another area with high child poverty is Bethnal Green and Bow, which has 79% (23,450) of its children in low income families.
The constituency of Bradford West has 75% (24,900) of children in or near poverty, while Nottingham East has 68% (12,360).
An estimated 98% of children living in two zones in Glasgow Baillieston - Central Easterhouse and North Barlarnark and Easterhouse South - are either in poverty or in working families that are "struggling to get by".
And there are 58% of children in Swansea East (10,470) in families of this description.
The constituencies with the lowest levels of families in, or near, poverty are Buckingham and Sheffield Hallam, both with 17%.
At last week's Labour Party conference, Prime Minister Gordon Brown said child poverty "demeans Britain" and repeated his party's pledge to halve child poverty by 2010, and ultimately to end it.
During his speech he said: "The measures we have taken this year alone will help lift 250,000 children out of poverty.
"The economic times are tough - of course that makes things harder - but we are in this for the long haul. The complete elimination of child poverty by 2020."
'Broken Britain'
Harry Potter author JK Rowling recently donated £1m to the Labour Party, saying she was motivated by Labour's record on child poverty.
But shadow work and pensions secretary Chris Grayling said the figures "underline the vast social divide" within cities.
He added: "There are examples of wards within cities where hardly any children live in poverty but sitting alongside these wards are others where virtually every family lives below the poverty line.
"This just goes to show the extent to which Britain is truly broken."
Link to full article. May expire in future.
Witchcraft Increases Poverty, Says NGO
from All Africa
Byline: Dan Wandera
Communities that practice witchcraft or that believe in superstition and religious fanaticism have little chance to progress and fight poverty in the modern economy, an NGO leader has said.
The East African Representative for International Humanist and Ethical Union, Mr Deo Ssekitoleko told a press conference in Luweero last week that religious fanaticism, and superstition had left many people unable to scientifically reason and use their natural abilities to start income generating projects but were waiting for miracles to lift them.
"Witchcraft and superstition incapacitate people from free thinking and only enriches the few who have the ability to manipulate others to give in the little they have earned without questioning," Mr Ssekitoleko has said.
The International Humanists and Ethical Union has embarked on a programme to sensitise the youth in schools and communities to abandon belief in witchcraft and superstition.
Byline: Dan Wandera
Communities that practice witchcraft or that believe in superstition and religious fanaticism have little chance to progress and fight poverty in the modern economy, an NGO leader has said.
The East African Representative for International Humanist and Ethical Union, Mr Deo Ssekitoleko told a press conference in Luweero last week that religious fanaticism, and superstition had left many people unable to scientifically reason and use their natural abilities to start income generating projects but were waiting for miracles to lift them.
"Witchcraft and superstition incapacitate people from free thinking and only enriches the few who have the ability to manipulate others to give in the little they have earned without questioning," Mr Ssekitoleko has said.
The International Humanists and Ethical Union has embarked on a programme to sensitise the youth in schools and communities to abandon belief in witchcraft and superstition.
[comment] The World Bank and IMF response to the food crisis
from the Bretton Woods Project
By Nuria Molina, Eurodad and Bhumika Muchhala, Bank Information Center
Although conditions attached to food and fuel crisis lending are somewhat lighter, the Bank and the Fund should turn the crisis into an opportunity to learn that finance can be granted without the usual strings attached.
At the Food Summit in Rome last June, world leaders pledged to "eliminate hunger and secure food for all, today and tomorrow". Today is quite a tight deadline. According to the UN World Food Programme, $755 million is required to immediately address hunger. But $15 - $20 billion would be needed to implement measures to resurrect the hollowed-out agricultural sectors of low-income countries.
The World Bank came up with the Global Food Crisis Response Programme (GFRP) in May (see Update 61), which will fast-track up to $1.2 billion of the Bank's resources within the next three years; while the IMF has revamped its Exogenous Shocks Facility (ESF) and temporarily scaled up loan amounts to poor countries. However, IFI money almost never comes without policy conditionality and despite the magnitude and urgency of the crises, the Bank and Fund continue to dictate policies to developing countries.
Loosening conditionality?
The GFRP is partly financed by the newly established World Bank food price crisis response trust fund - using a transfer of Bank income (from the IBRD) - which is intended to "provide rapid assistance to the most fragile, poor and heavily-impacted countries." It has already approved loans for fifteen countries including Djibouti, Liberia, Haiti, Afghanistan, Sierra Leone and Niger. The rest of the programme is resourced with funding from a multi-donor trust fund. The vast majority of these operations are provided as grants. There is yet more good news: in general, the operations approved tend to have a very light conditionality framework.
A new development policy operation, a standard form of bank lending, for Djibouti approved in May contained only two policy conditions requiring the elimination of taxes on basic food items and an action plan to channel direct support to poor households - neither of which are particularly controversial. Policy matrices for new operations in Sierra Leona or Burundi are very similar. In cases when the Bank is topping up existing loans - such as Honduras, Liberia or Madagascar - no conditions are added. However, conditions attached to the existing loans do need to be fulfilled and no waivers are extended given the new circumstances.
New operations run in parallel with recent loans which may contain conditions which could be deemed sensitive. In Burundi, for example, an April loan required the privatisation and liberalisation of the coffee sector, a condition which will still have to be fulfilled despite the crisis.
The majority of operations approved are investment loans, provided on grant terms. They are intended for specific purposes, such as purchase of key agricultural inputs (seeds, fertilizers); funding safety nets (school feeding or cash transfer programmes); or compensating revenue lost by reducing taxes or import tariffs. These operations do not have conditionality attached, but include exhaustive guidelines on procurement (related to the purchase of the goods they are intended for) and often suggest changes to government policy.
The looser conditionality frameworks are due to the emergency situation not a trend towards loosening the institutional grip over poor countries. And investment loans do not necessarily increase the policy space available for recipient countries. The question remains whether countries will have the freedom to determine their own agricultural models (see Update 58)in order to secure food sovereignty.
IMF traditional recipes
Since April, the IMF has been warning that the gains made by developing countries in the last decade could be "totally destroyed" by the food crisis. In an early July seminar, IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn urged for a "broad cooperative approach" and assured that the Fund would respond through all three of its primary mechanisms: policy advice, technical assistance, and lending. However, at the G8 summit in Japan, Strauss-Kahn persuaded leaders that "inflation should be the top concern of policymakers confronted by higher food and fuel prices," not food security or meeting immediate needs through public spending.
The IMF's advice, spelled out in its end-June policy paper on the food and fuel crises, offers a distinctly free-market recipe for fiscal, monetary and trade policies. According to the IMF, the pass-through of food and fuel price increases to higher domestic prices is "ultimately unavoidable". The Fund's economists repeatedly underscore the importance of phasing out subsidies, reducing taxes and aligning public sector wage increases with that of the private sector. Recognising that such steps would intensify economic burdens on the poor in crisis-hit countries, the Fund argues for targeted social safety nets to protect the most vulnerable.
The Fund's monetary policy advice for low-income countries says that when "policy credibility" still remains to be established and inflation targeting is still nascent, the risk of losing growth and stability by hiking up interest rates is well worth taking. This is because the cost of "lower credibility if inflation objectives are missed" might be even greater than that of economic loss. This is consistent with the Fund's historical role in orchestrating the liberalisation of fuel and food imports, as it advocates that the global food market be kept open, export restrictions and taxes be avoided, and food production be boosted.
While some anticipated "a deluge of new business," so far the IMF has only increased lending to existing customers. Loans to low-income countries through the Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility (PRGF) have been augmented for 12 countries, most of them in sub-Saharan Africa. Conditionality on the fiscal deficit, long criticised for constraining public spending needed to meet the Millennium Development Goals and limiting long-term investments in health and education, has been loosened to allow public spending for food. However, these are temporary flexibilities and are unlikely to signify a long-term change in the Fund's macroeconomic conditionality.
The promised review of the Exogenous Shocks Facility (ESF) which was scheduled for June (see Update 61) took months to materialise. The ESF, which is supposed to provide rapid and accessible concessional support during sudden external shocks, has not been used since its inception in 2005 despite this year's food and fuel crises. The executive board discussion on the ESF was delayed to late August, and then mid-September amid rancour in the board.
Under the agreed revision, the first quarter of funds available from the ESF would carry little or no conditionality, but anything above that limit would carry conditionality and programme modalities that mimic that of the PRGF such as IMF field missions, negotiations with finance ministers and letters of intent. Conditionality is supposed to be limited to directly addressing the price or economic shock the country is facing, and should not extend to other areas of economic policy. According to an executive director from a developing country, ESF process modalities "do not respect the urgency of the commodity crises ... when it follows that of the PRGF".
Link to full article. May expire in future.
By Nuria Molina, Eurodad and Bhumika Muchhala, Bank Information Center
Although conditions attached to food and fuel crisis lending are somewhat lighter, the Bank and the Fund should turn the crisis into an opportunity to learn that finance can be granted without the usual strings attached.
At the Food Summit in Rome last June, world leaders pledged to "eliminate hunger and secure food for all, today and tomorrow". Today is quite a tight deadline. According to the UN World Food Programme, $755 million is required to immediately address hunger. But $15 - $20 billion would be needed to implement measures to resurrect the hollowed-out agricultural sectors of low-income countries.
The World Bank came up with the Global Food Crisis Response Programme (GFRP) in May (see Update 61), which will fast-track up to $1.2 billion of the Bank's resources within the next three years; while the IMF has revamped its Exogenous Shocks Facility (ESF) and temporarily scaled up loan amounts to poor countries. However, IFI money almost never comes without policy conditionality and despite the magnitude and urgency of the crises, the Bank and Fund continue to dictate policies to developing countries.
Loosening conditionality?
The GFRP is partly financed by the newly established World Bank food price crisis response trust fund - using a transfer of Bank income (from the IBRD) - which is intended to "provide rapid assistance to the most fragile, poor and heavily-impacted countries." It has already approved loans for fifteen countries including Djibouti, Liberia, Haiti, Afghanistan, Sierra Leone and Niger. The rest of the programme is resourced with funding from a multi-donor trust fund. The vast majority of these operations are provided as grants. There is yet more good news: in general, the operations approved tend to have a very light conditionality framework.
A new development policy operation, a standard form of bank lending, for Djibouti approved in May contained only two policy conditions requiring the elimination of taxes on basic food items and an action plan to channel direct support to poor households - neither of which are particularly controversial. Policy matrices for new operations in Sierra Leona or Burundi are very similar. In cases when the Bank is topping up existing loans - such as Honduras, Liberia or Madagascar - no conditions are added. However, conditions attached to the existing loans do need to be fulfilled and no waivers are extended given the new circumstances.
New operations run in parallel with recent loans which may contain conditions which could be deemed sensitive. In Burundi, for example, an April loan required the privatisation and liberalisation of the coffee sector, a condition which will still have to be fulfilled despite the crisis.
The majority of operations approved are investment loans, provided on grant terms. They are intended for specific purposes, such as purchase of key agricultural inputs (seeds, fertilizers); funding safety nets (school feeding or cash transfer programmes); or compensating revenue lost by reducing taxes or import tariffs. These operations do not have conditionality attached, but include exhaustive guidelines on procurement (related to the purchase of the goods they are intended for) and often suggest changes to government policy.
The looser conditionality frameworks are due to the emergency situation not a trend towards loosening the institutional grip over poor countries. And investment loans do not necessarily increase the policy space available for recipient countries. The question remains whether countries will have the freedom to determine their own agricultural models (see Update 58)in order to secure food sovereignty.
IMF traditional recipes
Since April, the IMF has been warning that the gains made by developing countries in the last decade could be "totally destroyed" by the food crisis. In an early July seminar, IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn urged for a "broad cooperative approach" and assured that the Fund would respond through all three of its primary mechanisms: policy advice, technical assistance, and lending. However, at the G8 summit in Japan, Strauss-Kahn persuaded leaders that "inflation should be the top concern of policymakers confronted by higher food and fuel prices," not food security or meeting immediate needs through public spending.
The IMF's advice, spelled out in its end-June policy paper on the food and fuel crises, offers a distinctly free-market recipe for fiscal, monetary and trade policies. According to the IMF, the pass-through of food and fuel price increases to higher domestic prices is "ultimately unavoidable". The Fund's economists repeatedly underscore the importance of phasing out subsidies, reducing taxes and aligning public sector wage increases with that of the private sector. Recognising that such steps would intensify economic burdens on the poor in crisis-hit countries, the Fund argues for targeted social safety nets to protect the most vulnerable.
The Fund's monetary policy advice for low-income countries says that when "policy credibility" still remains to be established and inflation targeting is still nascent, the risk of losing growth and stability by hiking up interest rates is well worth taking. This is because the cost of "lower credibility if inflation objectives are missed" might be even greater than that of economic loss. This is consistent with the Fund's historical role in orchestrating the liberalisation of fuel and food imports, as it advocates that the global food market be kept open, export restrictions and taxes be avoided, and food production be boosted.
While some anticipated "a deluge of new business," so far the IMF has only increased lending to existing customers. Loans to low-income countries through the Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility (PRGF) have been augmented for 12 countries, most of them in sub-Saharan Africa. Conditionality on the fiscal deficit, long criticised for constraining public spending needed to meet the Millennium Development Goals and limiting long-term investments in health and education, has been loosened to allow public spending for food. However, these are temporary flexibilities and are unlikely to signify a long-term change in the Fund's macroeconomic conditionality.
The promised review of the Exogenous Shocks Facility (ESF) which was scheduled for June (see Update 61) took months to materialise. The ESF, which is supposed to provide rapid and accessible concessional support during sudden external shocks, has not been used since its inception in 2005 despite this year's food and fuel crises. The executive board discussion on the ESF was delayed to late August, and then mid-September amid rancour in the board.
Under the agreed revision, the first quarter of funds available from the ESF would carry little or no conditionality, but anything above that limit would carry conditionality and programme modalities that mimic that of the PRGF such as IMF field missions, negotiations with finance ministers and letters of intent. Conditionality is supposed to be limited to directly addressing the price or economic shock the country is facing, and should not extend to other areas of economic policy. According to an executive director from a developing country, ESF process modalities "do not respect the urgency of the commodity crises ... when it follows that of the PRGF".
Link to full article. May expire in future.
Some Retailers Have Still Not Caught Up With Fair Trade Boom
from All Africa
Inter Press Service (Johannesburg)
By Teresa Robins
Seville
Fair trade has grown in leaps and bounds since the mid-1990s but retailers such as El Corte Ingles, the department store chain with the most sales in Europe, are still not giving consumers the choice to buy these products.
In 1996 the Spanish parliament introduced an initiative to encourage fair trade products, with regional governments introducing similar resolutions across Spain. The government became a consumer of fair trade products and encouraged local businesses and private and public organisations to follow suit.
Some interest groups have also worked to promote and regulate fair trade. Of these, InterMon Oxfam is a major importer of fair trade goods and has committed itself to promoting African goods, sold under their own "InterMon Oxfam Comercio Justo" (fair trade) label.
In 1997, the Fairtrade Labelling Organisations (FLO) International was set up to establish clear minimum criteria for importing fair trade goods from developing countries. It also set out to oversee standards to make sure these goods were traded at a fair price in the developed countries and were produced under ethical working conditions.
FLO sets a minimum price so producers are able to recover their costs. It also inspects and certifies the terms and conditions under which these small producers work and helps to provide support towards achieving economic self-sufficiency and improving their lives.
FLO has a wide variety of partner organisations involved in charitable, relief and development aid, including international religious, social and economic groups. Their work is divided into two parts to ensure impartiality and independence in its certification process.
The Spanish member of FLO, the Asociación del Sello de Productos de Comercio Justo (ASPCJ) (the Association of Fairtrade Label Products), was established in 2005. InterMon Oxfam is one of the founding members of Spain's ASPCJ.
ASPCJ's two main objectives are the licensing of the FLO certification mark in Spain and raising awareness to help boost sales of fair trade products. The ASPCJ confirms that licensed companies selling products under the "Comercio Justo" label have been examined to ensure they fulfil all the requirements.
InterMon Oxfam's puts the value of fair trade sales in Spain at 7,7 million euros for the year ending June 2007. Fernando Contreras Almela, head of fair trade marketing at InterMon Oxfam, says that 31 percent, or 2,4 million euros, of the sales are for goods from Africa. This is up from 25 percent in previous years.
Its fair trade goods are imported from Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Ghana, Nigeria, Mauritius, Mozambique, Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda.
"The volume of imports is complicated to calculate, as products such as handicrafts, food and so forth are valued in different currencies and with variable timescales. However, the net average margin is approximately 50 percent, from which costs and overheads are paid. If there is any profit, InterMon Oxfam reinvests this in the producers," according to Contreras Almela.
The following commodities are imported from Africa: batik from Burkina Faso and Uganda; wooden products from Cameroon and Kenya; soapstone carvings and tea from Kenya; cocoa from Ghana; sugar from Mauritius; and coffee from Ethiopia, Tanzania and Uganda. These products arrive in Spain via some 30 African co-operatives serving hundreds of small producers.
Oxfam Intermon regards Africa as a priority, which is why the percentage of goods sourced from Africa has increased. However, growth is difficult to achieve in Africa, says Contreras Almela.
African goods have been much slower in getting a foothold in the Spanish market but there have been significant signs of improvement. However, Contreras Almela told IPS that, "working with African producers is not easy. This is due to the lack of every type of infrastructure you can think of."
African producers are affected by numerous problems at the time of exporting. The most important of these are, according to Intermon Oxfam: high costs, as in many cases the merchandise must travel by air instead of sea, to ensure reasonable transit times and to maintain the quality of the products.
Second, lack of access to information about European markets, with the consequent lack of suitable adjustment between the designs and needs of the consumers and the supply of products.
Third, difficulty in communication. Fourth, problems of access to banking services such as credit. Fifth, difficulty in fulfilling the timescales established for importing the merchandise to ensure it is available for the important times of the year, such as Christmas.
Among retail outlets in Spain stocking fair trade products are the larger supermarket chains, such as Grupo Alcampo, Carrefour, Consum and Eroski. They all have special agreements with InterMon Oxfam to stock and promote these goods as part of their corporate social responsibility programmes.
The retailer Grupo Alcampo holds special promotional events called "quincedías", or "fifteen days", and have staff awareness events to ensure they can talk to customers about fair trade products and their origins.
One noticeable absence among these names is that of El Corte Ingles, Spain's largest department store group, having taken over the Galerias Group in 1995 which was its main competitor.
El Corte Ingles has large department stores in practically every major town or city, huge hypermarkets and supermarkets and 24-hour, seven-days-a-week shops across the whole of Spain.
On Sept 1, El Corte Ingles announced their annual profits, which showed an increase of 4,7 percent on the previous year, achieving annual sales for the group of 17,898 million euros. In Europe, this puts El Corte Ingles in first place among retailers, well ahead of UK company Marks & Spencer (which supports fair trade products) with its sales of 13,268 million euros.
In the third place is France's Groupe Galeries Lafayette with sales of 4,960 million euros. Worldwide, El Corte Ingles achieved third place in world ranking for the retail sector, behind U.S. companies Sears Holdings (37,010 million euros) and Macy's Group (19,207 million euros).
When asked about the absence of fair trade goods at El Corte Ingles's retail outlets, Diego Copado, director of communication and institutional relations, confirmed that the company had been "in discussions with InterMon Oxfam over some years but had been unable to reach agreement".
He added that, after the announcement of increased profits, El Corte Ingles had also launched its new corporate website which included a section on social responsibility. It is, he said, part of a continuing effort on behalf of El Corte Ingles, which include looking at fair trade.
So remember, if you want to be sure that what you are buying is a fair trade product and that your money is going exactly where you want it to go, check the label thoroughly.
Link to full article. May expire in future.
Inter Press Service (Johannesburg)
By Teresa Robins
Seville
Fair trade has grown in leaps and bounds since the mid-1990s but retailers such as El Corte Ingles, the department store chain with the most sales in Europe, are still not giving consumers the choice to buy these products.
In 1996 the Spanish parliament introduced an initiative to encourage fair trade products, with regional governments introducing similar resolutions across Spain. The government became a consumer of fair trade products and encouraged local businesses and private and public organisations to follow suit.
Some interest groups have also worked to promote and regulate fair trade. Of these, InterMon Oxfam is a major importer of fair trade goods and has committed itself to promoting African goods, sold under their own "InterMon Oxfam Comercio Justo" (fair trade) label.
In 1997, the Fairtrade Labelling Organisations (FLO) International was set up to establish clear minimum criteria for importing fair trade goods from developing countries. It also set out to oversee standards to make sure these goods were traded at a fair price in the developed countries and were produced under ethical working conditions.
FLO sets a minimum price so producers are able to recover their costs. It also inspects and certifies the terms and conditions under which these small producers work and helps to provide support towards achieving economic self-sufficiency and improving their lives.
FLO has a wide variety of partner organisations involved in charitable, relief and development aid, including international religious, social and economic groups. Their work is divided into two parts to ensure impartiality and independence in its certification process.
The Spanish member of FLO, the Asociación del Sello de Productos de Comercio Justo (ASPCJ) (the Association of Fairtrade Label Products), was established in 2005. InterMon Oxfam is one of the founding members of Spain's ASPCJ.
ASPCJ's two main objectives are the licensing of the FLO certification mark in Spain and raising awareness to help boost sales of fair trade products. The ASPCJ confirms that licensed companies selling products under the "Comercio Justo" label have been examined to ensure they fulfil all the requirements.
InterMon Oxfam's puts the value of fair trade sales in Spain at 7,7 million euros for the year ending June 2007. Fernando Contreras Almela, head of fair trade marketing at InterMon Oxfam, says that 31 percent, or 2,4 million euros, of the sales are for goods from Africa. This is up from 25 percent in previous years.
Its fair trade goods are imported from Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Ghana, Nigeria, Mauritius, Mozambique, Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda.
"The volume of imports is complicated to calculate, as products such as handicrafts, food and so forth are valued in different currencies and with variable timescales. However, the net average margin is approximately 50 percent, from which costs and overheads are paid. If there is any profit, InterMon Oxfam reinvests this in the producers," according to Contreras Almela.
The following commodities are imported from Africa: batik from Burkina Faso and Uganda; wooden products from Cameroon and Kenya; soapstone carvings and tea from Kenya; cocoa from Ghana; sugar from Mauritius; and coffee from Ethiopia, Tanzania and Uganda. These products arrive in Spain via some 30 African co-operatives serving hundreds of small producers.
Oxfam Intermon regards Africa as a priority, which is why the percentage of goods sourced from Africa has increased. However, growth is difficult to achieve in Africa, says Contreras Almela.
African goods have been much slower in getting a foothold in the Spanish market but there have been significant signs of improvement. However, Contreras Almela told IPS that, "working with African producers is not easy. This is due to the lack of every type of infrastructure you can think of."
African producers are affected by numerous problems at the time of exporting. The most important of these are, according to Intermon Oxfam: high costs, as in many cases the merchandise must travel by air instead of sea, to ensure reasonable transit times and to maintain the quality of the products.
Second, lack of access to information about European markets, with the consequent lack of suitable adjustment between the designs and needs of the consumers and the supply of products.
Third, difficulty in communication. Fourth, problems of access to banking services such as credit. Fifth, difficulty in fulfilling the timescales established for importing the merchandise to ensure it is available for the important times of the year, such as Christmas.
Among retail outlets in Spain stocking fair trade products are the larger supermarket chains, such as Grupo Alcampo, Carrefour, Consum and Eroski. They all have special agreements with InterMon Oxfam to stock and promote these goods as part of their corporate social responsibility programmes.
The retailer Grupo Alcampo holds special promotional events called "quincedías", or "fifteen days", and have staff awareness events to ensure they can talk to customers about fair trade products and their origins.
One noticeable absence among these names is that of El Corte Ingles, Spain's largest department store group, having taken over the Galerias Group in 1995 which was its main competitor.
El Corte Ingles has large department stores in practically every major town or city, huge hypermarkets and supermarkets and 24-hour, seven-days-a-week shops across the whole of Spain.
On Sept 1, El Corte Ingles announced their annual profits, which showed an increase of 4,7 percent on the previous year, achieving annual sales for the group of 17,898 million euros. In Europe, this puts El Corte Ingles in first place among retailers, well ahead of UK company Marks & Spencer (which supports fair trade products) with its sales of 13,268 million euros.
In the third place is France's Groupe Galeries Lafayette with sales of 4,960 million euros. Worldwide, El Corte Ingles achieved third place in world ranking for the retail sector, behind U.S. companies Sears Holdings (37,010 million euros) and Macy's Group (19,207 million euros).
When asked about the absence of fair trade goods at El Corte Ingles's retail outlets, Diego Copado, director of communication and institutional relations, confirmed that the company had been "in discussions with InterMon Oxfam over some years but had been unable to reach agreement".
He added that, after the announcement of increased profits, El Corte Ingles had also launched its new corporate website which included a section on social responsibility. It is, he said, part of a continuing effort on behalf of El Corte Ingles, which include looking at fair trade.
So remember, if you want to be sure that what you are buying is a fair trade product and that your money is going exactly where you want it to go, check the label thoroughly.
Link to full article. May expire in future.
NDP pledges to end poverty by 2020
from the Toronto Star
by Robert Benzie
A New Democratic government would eliminate poverty in Canada within 12 years, NDP Leader Jack Layton says.
Layton set the ambitious target in his party's $51.6 billion, 57-page election platform, released yesterday in Toronto.
"Don't you think it's time we finally put an end to the shame of child poverty?" he said to about 200 cheering supporters at a Broadview Ave. hall.
Speaking to reporters after his speech, Layton made no apologies for setting the aggressive 2020 deadline.
"This is the goal. You know something, if you don't set a goal you're never going to get there," he said.
The most expensive tool in the NDP's anti-poverty arsenal is a new $17.4 billion child-benefit plan that would pay low-income families up to $416 a month per child.
The New Democrats say the $17.4 billion price tag for the child-benefit plan is only $4.4 billion more than the $13 billion patchwork of Conservative benefits the NDP package would replace when it's fully phased in by 2012-13.
Speaking in Toronto, Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion was harshly critical of Layton's corporate tax plans, saying they would kill jobs, and of the child-benefit plan, which he called unrealistic. No country or any NDP provincial government is taxing corporations at the rate Layton plans, Dion told reporters.
"Jack Layton's old-fashioned socialist mentality is as backwards as Stephen Harper's old-fashioned conservative ideology," he said.
Speaking for the Conservatives, incumbent Pierre Poilievre, who is running in the riding of Nepean-Carleton, slammed the NDP program as "unaffordable."
The promises "will put Canada back into deficit and force taxes to go up," Poilievre said in an interview.
He called into question the NDP's strategy to reduce poverty, saying that cancelling corporate tax cuts would hammer Canadian businesses "with billions in new taxes that will kill jobs and create new risks for our economy.
"Driving Canada's economy into the ground through higher taxes and more debt will only lead to more poverty," he said.
Under the NDP child-benefit plan, a family with a household income of $38,000 or less would receive $416 a month per child under 18. Those with a household income of less than $188,000 would get between $73 and $330 a month per child, depending on income. Families earning more than $188,000 a year would receive $53 a month per child. The money would not be taxed.
Layton's platform document includes a slew of other measures designed to eliminate poverty, including an hourly minimum wage of $10 that would be indexed to inflation.
An NDP government would introduce a Poverty Elimination Act, setting firm reduction targets and making the government accountable for meeting those goals.
A progress report would have to be tabled every five years.
The NDP wants to reduce child poverty by more than 50 per cent and the overall poverty rate by more than 35 per cent in the first five years. The NDP defines the poverty line as Statistics Canada's "low income cut-off" or LICO, which calculates the income level at which a family may be in dire straits because it has to spend a greater portion of its income on shelter, food, and clothing than an average family. The LICO measurement varies, depending where in Canada a family resides.
Layton's platform goes on to address Premier Dalton McGuinty's quest for a fair deal from Ottawa by promising to reform employment insurance (EI). The party says it is working toward ensuring Ontario workers qualify for the same EI benefits as other Canadians.
McGuinty, who is remaining non-partisan in the campaign for the Oct. 14 election, says the average unemployed Ontario worker is shortchanged by $4,630 a year.
With files from Tonda MacCharles and Bruce Campion-Smith
Link to full article. May expire in future.
by Robert Benzie
A New Democratic government would eliminate poverty in Canada within 12 years, NDP Leader Jack Layton says.
Layton set the ambitious target in his party's $51.6 billion, 57-page election platform, released yesterday in Toronto.
"Don't you think it's time we finally put an end to the shame of child poverty?" he said to about 200 cheering supporters at a Broadview Ave. hall.
Speaking to reporters after his speech, Layton made no apologies for setting the aggressive 2020 deadline.
"This is the goal. You know something, if you don't set a goal you're never going to get there," he said.
The most expensive tool in the NDP's anti-poverty arsenal is a new $17.4 billion child-benefit plan that would pay low-income families up to $416 a month per child.
The New Democrats say the $17.4 billion price tag for the child-benefit plan is only $4.4 billion more than the $13 billion patchwork of Conservative benefits the NDP package would replace when it's fully phased in by 2012-13.
Speaking in Toronto, Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion was harshly critical of Layton's corporate tax plans, saying they would kill jobs, and of the child-benefit plan, which he called unrealistic. No country or any NDP provincial government is taxing corporations at the rate Layton plans, Dion told reporters.
"Jack Layton's old-fashioned socialist mentality is as backwards as Stephen Harper's old-fashioned conservative ideology," he said.
Speaking for the Conservatives, incumbent Pierre Poilievre, who is running in the riding of Nepean-Carleton, slammed the NDP program as "unaffordable."
The promises "will put Canada back into deficit and force taxes to go up," Poilievre said in an interview.
He called into question the NDP's strategy to reduce poverty, saying that cancelling corporate tax cuts would hammer Canadian businesses "with billions in new taxes that will kill jobs and create new risks for our economy.
"Driving Canada's economy into the ground through higher taxes and more debt will only lead to more poverty," he said.
Under the NDP child-benefit plan, a family with a household income of $38,000 or less would receive $416 a month per child under 18. Those with a household income of less than $188,000 would get between $73 and $330 a month per child, depending on income. Families earning more than $188,000 a year would receive $53 a month per child. The money would not be taxed.
Layton's platform document includes a slew of other measures designed to eliminate poverty, including an hourly minimum wage of $10 that would be indexed to inflation.
An NDP government would introduce a Poverty Elimination Act, setting firm reduction targets and making the government accountable for meeting those goals.
A progress report would have to be tabled every five years.
The NDP wants to reduce child poverty by more than 50 per cent and the overall poverty rate by more than 35 per cent in the first five years. The NDP defines the poverty line as Statistics Canada's "low income cut-off" or LICO, which calculates the income level at which a family may be in dire straits because it has to spend a greater portion of its income on shelter, food, and clothing than an average family. The LICO measurement varies, depending where in Canada a family resides.
Layton's platform goes on to address Premier Dalton McGuinty's quest for a fair deal from Ottawa by promising to reform employment insurance (EI). The party says it is working toward ensuring Ontario workers qualify for the same EI benefits as other Canadians.
McGuinty, who is remaining non-partisan in the campaign for the Oct. 14 election, says the average unemployed Ontario worker is shortchanged by $4,630 a year.
With files from Tonda MacCharles and Bruce Campion-Smith
Link to full article. May expire in future.
Friday, September 26, 2008
Forum highlights ‘new poverty’
from the Taipei Times
It’s time for the government to rethink its social security and immigration policy as the nation faces challenges such as “new poverty” and an increasing flow of immigrants through marriage, academics specializing in labor, social welfare and immigration issues told a forum in Taipei yesterday.
Wang Yung-tzu, a professor at National Taiwan Normal University’s (NTNU) Graduate Institute of Social work, pointed out that while poverty has always existed in Taiwan, rapid urbanization and interconnection in people’s economic lives have created a “new poverty” that needs to be dealt with differently.
“In the rapidly changing economic environment, people have developed different ideas on who is responsible for poverty,” Wang told the forum, which was organized by the Institute for National Policy Research and the Hsu Chao-ing Charity Foundation.
“In 1997, more than 50 percent of the people considered personal factors such as not working hard enough and spending too much money to be causes of poverty,” she said, citing figures from Academia Sinica.
Statistics also show that nearly 48 percent of people at the time believed “no employment opportunities” to be the cause of poverty — but the number increased to nearly 63 percent last year.
Meanwhile, more than 70 percent of people last year said that the government should work harder to create more job opportunities.
“This goes to show that when dealing with ‘new poverty,’ the government should not put responsibility completely on individuals and overlook social factors,” Wang said.
Saying that the government has not offered a complete social security system to help people escape poverty but only tried to hand out pensions, Cheng Li-chen, a social work professor at National Taiwan University, said that the government should quit its “patronizing” mentality and provide job training or assistance for families in poverty to participate in economic activities.
Link to full article. May expire in future.
It’s time for the government to rethink its social security and immigration policy as the nation faces challenges such as “new poverty” and an increasing flow of immigrants through marriage, academics specializing in labor, social welfare and immigration issues told a forum in Taipei yesterday.
Wang Yung-tzu, a professor at National Taiwan Normal University’s (NTNU) Graduate Institute of Social work, pointed out that while poverty has always existed in Taiwan, rapid urbanization and interconnection in people’s economic lives have created a “new poverty” that needs to be dealt with differently.
“In the rapidly changing economic environment, people have developed different ideas on who is responsible for poverty,” Wang told the forum, which was organized by the Institute for National Policy Research and the Hsu Chao-ing Charity Foundation.
“In 1997, more than 50 percent of the people considered personal factors such as not working hard enough and spending too much money to be causes of poverty,” she said, citing figures from Academia Sinica.
Statistics also show that nearly 48 percent of people at the time believed “no employment opportunities” to be the cause of poverty — but the number increased to nearly 63 percent last year.
Meanwhile, more than 70 percent of people last year said that the government should work harder to create more job opportunities.
“This goes to show that when dealing with ‘new poverty,’ the government should not put responsibility completely on individuals and overlook social factors,” Wang said.
Saying that the government has not offered a complete social security system to help people escape poverty but only tried to hand out pensions, Cheng Li-chen, a social work professor at National Taiwan University, said that the government should quit its “patronizing” mentality and provide job training or assistance for families in poverty to participate in economic activities.
Link to full article. May expire in future.
Religious groups target poverty
from the Buffalo News
By Harold McNeil
Members of the three Abrahamic faiths and other religious traditions broke bread together and endeavored to collectively address local poverty during an event Wednesday in the Islamic Society and Mosque, 745 Heim Road, Getzville.
The third annual "Tent of Abraham" coincides with the Muslim observance of Ramadan, a monthlong period of daily fasting. The aim, according to Dr. Khalid J. Qazi, president of the Muslim Public Affairs Council of Western New York, is to invite those of other faith traditions to join local Muslims in collecting nonperishable food items and cash donations for distribution to the area's needy through the Food Pantry of Western New York and Viva La Casa.
"The Muslim Public Affairs Council of Western New York started this two years ago to bring all faiths together under one roof to share the blessings of Ramadan with everyone," Qazi said.
"But at the same time, we also felt there was a need in the community that should be addressed simultaneously," he added.
A charitable response to poverty is a part of all religious faiths, said the Rev. Stan Bratton, executive director of the Network of Religious Communities. Bratton's organization had planned a joint venture with Catholic Charities of Western New York to collect food and raise money for the needy when it decided to join forces with the Muslim Public Affairs Council.
"Instead of two separate events, we merged the two into one," Bratton said. "So, we're trying to retain still the Tent of Abraham, but then it's as a religious response to poverty."
In addition to the three Abrahamic faiths, the Network of Religious Communities is made up of individuals from five other religious communities, including those of the Sikh, Hindu, Bahai, Unitarian and Buddhist faiths.
Bratton said the network is circulating a petition asking Gov. David A. Paterson to create a commission that will identify and address the needs of those in poverty, particularly in Western New York.
Those attending the event heard from several guest speakers who spoke about the duty to assist the poor.
By Harold McNeil
Members of the three Abrahamic faiths and other religious traditions broke bread together and endeavored to collectively address local poverty during an event Wednesday in the Islamic Society and Mosque, 745 Heim Road, Getzville.
The third annual "Tent of Abraham" coincides with the Muslim observance of Ramadan, a monthlong period of daily fasting. The aim, according to Dr. Khalid J. Qazi, president of the Muslim Public Affairs Council of Western New York, is to invite those of other faith traditions to join local Muslims in collecting nonperishable food items and cash donations for distribution to the area's needy through the Food Pantry of Western New York and Viva La Casa.
"The Muslim Public Affairs Council of Western New York started this two years ago to bring all faiths together under one roof to share the blessings of Ramadan with everyone," Qazi said.
"But at the same time, we also felt there was a need in the community that should be addressed simultaneously," he added.
A charitable response to poverty is a part of all religious faiths, said the Rev. Stan Bratton, executive director of the Network of Religious Communities. Bratton's organization had planned a joint venture with Catholic Charities of Western New York to collect food and raise money for the needy when it decided to join forces with the Muslim Public Affairs Council.
"Instead of two separate events, we merged the two into one," Bratton said. "So, we're trying to retain still the Tent of Abraham, but then it's as a religious response to poverty."
In addition to the three Abrahamic faiths, the Network of Religious Communities is made up of individuals from five other religious communities, including those of the Sikh, Hindu, Bahai, Unitarian and Buddhist faiths.
Bratton said the network is circulating a petition asking Gov. David A. Paterson to create a commission that will identify and address the needs of those in poverty, particularly in Western New York.
Those attending the event heard from several guest speakers who spoke about the duty to assist the poor.
G8, Other Rich Countries Need to Honor Commitments to Combat Global Poverty
from All Africa
Byline: Rose Mestika
Addis Ababa,- The Poverty Action Network of Civil Society Organizations in Ethiopia (PANE) announced plans to campaign in support of the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) and against poverty and inequality from October 17-19.
The organization called on the developed nations to respect the promises they pledged to fight poverty and help alleviate the suffering of poor people in developing countries.
The three days will be marked by meeting with Ambassadors, government officials, civil society members and others, PANE, collection of over 90civil society organizations representing various sectors and spheres disclosed yesterday.
The campaign will be having three main aims; to request for debt cancellation, to request for more and better aid and to have fair trade between the riches and the poorest country.
"Thirty-two years after many of the world's wealthy countries agreed that 0.7% of their gross national product (GNP) should be directed to international development, none of the G8 countries have reached anywhere near that level and the October 17 will be the day to reinforce them and to stand up for the success of MDGs" Eshetu Bekele Executive Director of PANE said.
PANE organized the half day event on yesterday in relation to the UN High Level Events to launch its work on the MDGs in particular and poverty reduction and development in general during the past few years.
Byline: Rose Mestika
Addis Ababa,- The Poverty Action Network of Civil Society Organizations in Ethiopia (PANE) announced plans to campaign in support of the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) and against poverty and inequality from October 17-19.
The organization called on the developed nations to respect the promises they pledged to fight poverty and help alleviate the suffering of poor people in developing countries.
The three days will be marked by meeting with Ambassadors, government officials, civil society members and others, PANE, collection of over 90civil society organizations representing various sectors and spheres disclosed yesterday.
The campaign will be having three main aims; to request for debt cancellation, to request for more and better aid and to have fair trade between the riches and the poorest country.
"Thirty-two years after many of the world's wealthy countries agreed that 0.7% of their gross national product (GNP) should be directed to international development, none of the G8 countries have reached anywhere near that level and the October 17 will be the day to reinforce them and to stand up for the success of MDGs" Eshetu Bekele Executive Director of PANE said.
PANE organized the half day event on yesterday in relation to the UN High Level Events to launch its work on the MDGs in particular and poverty reduction and development in general during the past few years.
Fighting to make a difference as hunger stalks Horn of Africa
from the Age
THE people are desperately hungry. Two thousand of them queue from early morning to see Australian nurse Alana Baker and her co-workers for the chance to escape from the grip of acute malnutrition.
Drizzling rain and cool temperatures do not deter them nor does the crowd-control man whipping people back into line with a branch. Their babies cry. They wait.
Ms Baker, 28, is in the second week of a three-month mission in southern Ethiopia with Medecins Sans Frontieres Belgium, working as an outreach nutritional nurse.
Thousands of people, mainly farmers, travel up to 250 kilometres to reach the mobile clinic where Ms Baker and up to 10 other staff work.
The team visits five locations each week, testing for malaria and screening the people for severe and moderately acute malnutrition. They were working in the small rural village of Allelu when these photographs were taken.
The team weighs, measures and tests the appetites of those who come to see them, registering them and giving nutritional supplements to those who need them.
Ms Baker, from Brisbane, has been a nurse for seven years. She has worked in remote locations in Australia, including Thursday Island and Derby in Western Australia, as well as London.
Her first mission with MSF was in Sri Lanka. Five months after coming home and working as an agency nurse, she flew to Ethiopia.
In May, the nutritional crisis in southern Ethiopia was dire, according to Ms Baker, but the clinics are making a difference. To see a child becoming healthier and gaining weight "makes your heart sing", she says.
Last week the UN estimated that up to 17 million people in the Horn of Africa urgently needed food, up from 9 million earlier this year, as drought, soaring food prices and conflict took a toll on the region.
An anti-poverty summit this week pledged nearly $US3 billion ($A3.58 billion) to fund an ambitious malaria control plan to save more than 4.2 million lives around the world. The funding, which includes $US1.1 billion from the World Bank, will be used to support rapid implementation of the first global malaria action plan.
It was announced at a summit called by UN chief Ban Ki-moon to re-energise the race to achieve eight poverty reduction goals by 2015.
Malaria affects half of the world's population — 3.3 billion people in 109 countries — and causes nearly 1 million deaths per year, according to UN officials.
Link to full article. May expire in future.
THE people are desperately hungry. Two thousand of them queue from early morning to see Australian nurse Alana Baker and her co-workers for the chance to escape from the grip of acute malnutrition.
Drizzling rain and cool temperatures do not deter them nor does the crowd-control man whipping people back into line with a branch. Their babies cry. They wait.
Ms Baker, 28, is in the second week of a three-month mission in southern Ethiopia with Medecins Sans Frontieres Belgium, working as an outreach nutritional nurse.
Thousands of people, mainly farmers, travel up to 250 kilometres to reach the mobile clinic where Ms Baker and up to 10 other staff work.
The team visits five locations each week, testing for malaria and screening the people for severe and moderately acute malnutrition. They were working in the small rural village of Allelu when these photographs were taken.
The team weighs, measures and tests the appetites of those who come to see them, registering them and giving nutritional supplements to those who need them.
Ms Baker, from Brisbane, has been a nurse for seven years. She has worked in remote locations in Australia, including Thursday Island and Derby in Western Australia, as well as London.
Her first mission with MSF was in Sri Lanka. Five months after coming home and working as an agency nurse, she flew to Ethiopia.
In May, the nutritional crisis in southern Ethiopia was dire, according to Ms Baker, but the clinics are making a difference. To see a child becoming healthier and gaining weight "makes your heart sing", she says.
Last week the UN estimated that up to 17 million people in the Horn of Africa urgently needed food, up from 9 million earlier this year, as drought, soaring food prices and conflict took a toll on the region.
An anti-poverty summit this week pledged nearly $US3 billion ($A3.58 billion) to fund an ambitious malaria control plan to save more than 4.2 million lives around the world. The funding, which includes $US1.1 billion from the World Bank, will be used to support rapid implementation of the first global malaria action plan.
It was announced at a summit called by UN chief Ban Ki-moon to re-energise the race to achieve eight poverty reduction goals by 2015.
Malaria affects half of the world's population — 3.3 billion people in 109 countries — and causes nearly 1 million deaths per year, according to UN officials.
Link to full article. May expire in future.
Bono praises McCain, Obama and Americans
from CNN
Global activist and U2 frontman Bono attended the United Nations General Assembly in New York to push world leaders to join his ONE campaign in fighting disease, poverty, and hunger. He talked to CNN's John Roberts on "American Morning" about recent successes and what's next.
ROBERTS: All this talk has been about the economy collapsing, $700 billion bailout. Congress is absolutely absorbed with that. Did that in any way affect what you were trying to do this week? Are people more focused on this economy than in helping out developing nations?
BONO: We got good news this week. I know normally I'm on your program with bad news -- the whingeing rock star -- but it's great. There's a disease, malaria -- it's 3,000 African kids die every day of mosquito bites. Sounds mad, but it's true. And people have committed and it looks like the funds are on the table so that that disease will be no more by 2015. That makes people like me punch the air and everyone who wears a ONE T-shirt and all our white band campaigners on college campuses all over the country -- it was a great day for them yesterday so we're celebrating that. I know it's extraordinary, that while you're having this meltdown on the markets, that people could even concentrate on this stuff, but I'm really grateful that they did. We had both [presidential] candidates make very powerful statements about the necessity for nonmilitary tools, for instance, in foreign policy. This is an America that both candidates want to show to the rest of the world -- the greatness of America.
ROBERTS: So you're hearing what you want to hear from these candidates?
BONO: Yeah. And you couldn't imagine a few years ago that you would have candidates so close to an election talking about this stuff, so yeah. Video Watch Bono say how he uses his star status on politicians »
ROBERTS: You were talking to Christine Romans outside the studio, who just did that piece for us a few minutes ago on what else could you do with $700 billion. What could you do with $700 billion?
BONO: We wouldn't be asking for that kind of money. These are serious matters, people have lost their jobs. But I think the bill for the whole world -- so America would be like a third of it -- for $25 billion you could absolutely change the world. You could put kids in school, most kids in school. You could eradicate diseases like malaria, as we're saying. We could change the water supplies. But what's important is that people who want to change the world, want to see their country, they see it as a patriotic act to show the world innovation of America, technology of America, pharmacology of America.
ROBERTS: For $25 billion, you could put every kid who's out of school in the world into school? That seems like a lot of people for $25 billion. Pretty good return on your investment.
BONO: It's a great return on investment. You heard me on your program before talking about debt cancellation. Strangely Americans don't know that because of debt cancellation there are already an extra 29 million African children in school. That's incredible. Because people got out on the streets on the (RED) campaign and stuff like that, there's now 2.5 million Africans on AIDS drugs, which are expensive. So your country is turning for me in the right direction on these issues.
ROBERTS: So you're hearing some of what you want to hear, particularly on the malaria issues. But the European Union had promised to increase aid by $50 billion between 2005 and 2010. It looks like they're going to fall $40 billion short.
BONO: They are, but they're still ahead of America. That's the bad news. You don't want to get me into the ring.
ROBERTS: Absolutely! Come on.
BONO: We've had meetings with Sarkozy this week as well as talking with McCain and Palin and as well as always talking with the Obama campaign. We do keep up the pressure on the Europeans, but the Europeans are way ahead of America on aid, just to put it in context. But you're right. They're not coming through on all of it. We will torture them too. That's our job.
ROBERTS: You talk a lot about these United Nations Millennium Development Goals. Let me go over a couple of those. It was supposed cut global poverty in half by the year 2015. Universal access to HIV/AIDS treatment by 2010. Begin to reverse the incidence of malaria by 2015. How far along that road are we?
BONO: The Millennium Development Goals are in a bit of trouble. It is astonishing to me ...
ROBERTS: Whose fault is that?
BONO: You know, politicians. They love signing checks, but they don't like cashing them. They love the photograph. These G-8 meetings, you'll see myself and my partner Bob Geldof arm-wrestling with politicians up against the wall.
Link to full article. May expire in future.
Global activist and U2 frontman Bono attended the United Nations General Assembly in New York to push world leaders to join his ONE campaign in fighting disease, poverty, and hunger. He talked to CNN's John Roberts on "American Morning" about recent successes and what's next.
ROBERTS: All this talk has been about the economy collapsing, $700 billion bailout. Congress is absolutely absorbed with that. Did that in any way affect what you were trying to do this week? Are people more focused on this economy than in helping out developing nations?
BONO: We got good news this week. I know normally I'm on your program with bad news -- the whingeing rock star -- but it's great. There's a disease, malaria -- it's 3,000 African kids die every day of mosquito bites. Sounds mad, but it's true. And people have committed and it looks like the funds are on the table so that that disease will be no more by 2015. That makes people like me punch the air and everyone who wears a ONE T-shirt and all our white band campaigners on college campuses all over the country -- it was a great day for them yesterday so we're celebrating that. I know it's extraordinary, that while you're having this meltdown on the markets, that people could even concentrate on this stuff, but I'm really grateful that they did. We had both [presidential] candidates make very powerful statements about the necessity for nonmilitary tools, for instance, in foreign policy. This is an America that both candidates want to show to the rest of the world -- the greatness of America.
ROBERTS: So you're hearing what you want to hear from these candidates?
BONO: Yeah. And you couldn't imagine a few years ago that you would have candidates so close to an election talking about this stuff, so yeah. Video Watch Bono say how he uses his star status on politicians »
ROBERTS: You were talking to Christine Romans outside the studio, who just did that piece for us a few minutes ago on what else could you do with $700 billion. What could you do with $700 billion?
BONO: We wouldn't be asking for that kind of money. These are serious matters, people have lost their jobs. But I think the bill for the whole world -- so America would be like a third of it -- for $25 billion you could absolutely change the world. You could put kids in school, most kids in school. You could eradicate diseases like malaria, as we're saying. We could change the water supplies. But what's important is that people who want to change the world, want to see their country, they see it as a patriotic act to show the world innovation of America, technology of America, pharmacology of America.
ROBERTS: For $25 billion, you could put every kid who's out of school in the world into school? That seems like a lot of people for $25 billion. Pretty good return on your investment.
BONO: It's a great return on investment. You heard me on your program before talking about debt cancellation. Strangely Americans don't know that because of debt cancellation there are already an extra 29 million African children in school. That's incredible. Because people got out on the streets on the (RED) campaign and stuff like that, there's now 2.5 million Africans on AIDS drugs, which are expensive. So your country is turning for me in the right direction on these issues.
ROBERTS: So you're hearing some of what you want to hear, particularly on the malaria issues. But the European Union had promised to increase aid by $50 billion between 2005 and 2010. It looks like they're going to fall $40 billion short.
BONO: They are, but they're still ahead of America. That's the bad news. You don't want to get me into the ring.
ROBERTS: Absolutely! Come on.
BONO: We've had meetings with Sarkozy this week as well as talking with McCain and Palin and as well as always talking with the Obama campaign. We do keep up the pressure on the Europeans, but the Europeans are way ahead of America on aid, just to put it in context. But you're right. They're not coming through on all of it. We will torture them too. That's our job.
ROBERTS: You talk a lot about these United Nations Millennium Development Goals. Let me go over a couple of those. It was supposed cut global poverty in half by the year 2015. Universal access to HIV/AIDS treatment by 2010. Begin to reverse the incidence of malaria by 2015. How far along that road are we?
BONO: The Millennium Development Goals are in a bit of trouble. It is astonishing to me ...
ROBERTS: Whose fault is that?
BONO: You know, politicians. They love signing checks, but they don't like cashing them. They love the photograph. These G-8 meetings, you'll see myself and my partner Bob Geldof arm-wrestling with politicians up against the wall.
Link to full article. May expire in future.
Fighting poverty makes business sense to companies
from the Los Angeles Times
By Richard Boudreaux,
UNITED NATIONS -- It's been a bad week for a global anti-poverty summit. Even before Wall Street's turmoil damped the generosity of donor countries, economists were predicting that food and fuel price shocks would drive 100 million people into destitution across the world.
But Thorleif Enger and Michael Landau see opportunity amid the gloom. They have launched investments aimed at helping some of Africa's poorest countries ease the crisis by producing more food.
Enger's Norwegian fertilizer giant, Yara International, and Landau's New York-based financial services company, Map International, announced the ventures this week in response to an appeal to corporate chiefs to join a United Nations campaign to reduce poverty in Asia, Africa and Latin America.
Unlike previous U.N. pitches to business executives, which played to their sense of social responsibility, this one asks them simply to look for profitable markets in underserved regions of poor countries.
"If you look at where is the biggest potential to increase agricultural production, it's Africa," Enger said in an interview. "We're there to make money. We make no secret about it."
Yara plans to spend $60 million to build two seaport terminals, in Tanzania and Mozambique, to speed shipments of its fertilizer to millions of African farmers, bypassing now-clogged government port facilities and lowering the product's cost.
Map expects to bring modern electronic banking to 1 million Ugandans within two years via low-cost, specially programmed mobile phones. Many of its target customers are long-isolated farmers, who would gain access to credit.
The commitments were among $16 billion in pledges announced this week by private companies, governments, charities and U.N. agencies during a summit of the world body's 192 member states to finance its anti-poverty goals.
Those pledges included $4.5 billion to get all the world's children in school by 2015, a $1-billion-a-year program to buy surplus crops from poor farmers and $3 billion to fight malaria.
More than 60 companies have signed commitments to invest in poor countries in support of the development goals, U.N. officials said. They include Coca-Cola, DuPont, Vodafone, Sumitomo Chemical and Microsoft.
U.N. officials gathered executives of 33 companies, many of which have not yet signed up, for lunch Wednesday. They heard an appeal by former President Clinton, who said the drive for self-sufficiency in poor countries facing food shortages offered "staggering" opportunities to invest in agriculture.
Executives said the credit crunch was not a serious obstacle to planned investments, although some said they would seek support from their governments to face the risks involved.
Private overseas investment in poor countries is often plagued by lawlessness and weak regulatory regimes. But Enger and Landau said they were not discouraged by conditions in Africa.
"There's a lot of goodwill on the part of governments there," Enger said.
Enger's company is offering to help link its port terminals to isolated farming regions by road or rail so that farmers could import fertilizer and move crops to market faster and more cheaply.
Link to full article. May expire in future.
By Richard Boudreaux,
UNITED NATIONS -- It's been a bad week for a global anti-poverty summit. Even before Wall Street's turmoil damped the generosity of donor countries, economists were predicting that food and fuel price shocks would drive 100 million people into destitution across the world.
But Thorleif Enger and Michael Landau see opportunity amid the gloom. They have launched investments aimed at helping some of Africa's poorest countries ease the crisis by producing more food.
Enger's Norwegian fertilizer giant, Yara International, and Landau's New York-based financial services company, Map International, announced the ventures this week in response to an appeal to corporate chiefs to join a United Nations campaign to reduce poverty in Asia, Africa and Latin America.
Unlike previous U.N. pitches to business executives, which played to their sense of social responsibility, this one asks them simply to look for profitable markets in underserved regions of poor countries.
"If you look at where is the biggest potential to increase agricultural production, it's Africa," Enger said in an interview. "We're there to make money. We make no secret about it."
Yara plans to spend $60 million to build two seaport terminals, in Tanzania and Mozambique, to speed shipments of its fertilizer to millions of African farmers, bypassing now-clogged government port facilities and lowering the product's cost.
Map expects to bring modern electronic banking to 1 million Ugandans within two years via low-cost, specially programmed mobile phones. Many of its target customers are long-isolated farmers, who would gain access to credit.
The commitments were among $16 billion in pledges announced this week by private companies, governments, charities and U.N. agencies during a summit of the world body's 192 member states to finance its anti-poverty goals.
Those pledges included $4.5 billion to get all the world's children in school by 2015, a $1-billion-a-year program to buy surplus crops from poor farmers and $3 billion to fight malaria.
More than 60 companies have signed commitments to invest in poor countries in support of the development goals, U.N. officials said. They include Coca-Cola, DuPont, Vodafone, Sumitomo Chemical and Microsoft.
U.N. officials gathered executives of 33 companies, many of which have not yet signed up, for lunch Wednesday. They heard an appeal by former President Clinton, who said the drive for self-sufficiency in poor countries facing food shortages offered "staggering" opportunities to invest in agriculture.
Executives said the credit crunch was not a serious obstacle to planned investments, although some said they would seek support from their governments to face the risks involved.
Private overseas investment in poor countries is often plagued by lawlessness and weak regulatory regimes. But Enger and Landau said they were not discouraged by conditions in Africa.
"There's a lot of goodwill on the part of governments there," Enger said.
Enger's company is offering to help link its port terminals to isolated farming regions by road or rail so that farmers could import fertilizer and move crops to market faster and more cheaply.
Link to full article. May expire in future.
Stringing together strangers
from the Herald Mail
By CRYSTAL SCHELLE
BOONSBORO - Sally Poole will never meet the women who make the necklaces and other handmade jewelry she's selling on their behalf through BeadforLife.
To Poole, who lives in Boonsboro, it doesn't matter that those women live a world away in East Africa.
"I think we need to care for each other around the world," Poole said.
Poole will sell the beads from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 27, as part of the Fall Fest at Mount Lena United Methodist Church. The event will feature food and crafts. All of the money collected from the sale of the jewelry will be sent to BeadforLife to benefit Ugandan bead makers.
Since BeadforLife was founded in Colorado in 2004, it has been helping women of Uganda find a market for the paper beads they've been creating for years. In North America, BeadforLife is recognized as a nonprofit organization.
It was Poole's sister-in-law, Evonne Cave, who introduced her to BeadforLife, whose mission is "Eradicating poverty one bead at a time." Poole said Cave's church had used BeadforLife as an outreach program last Christmas and suggested Poole use it for her own church.
Poole said with her sister-in-law's recommendation, she logged online to find out more about the nonprofit program.
"I just loved it. I thought it was amazing," she said. "And the fact that they are a Fair Trade Federation member is just wonderful."
Fair Trade Federation provides fair wages for disadvantaged persons.
After Poole signed up, BeadforLife provided her with a box of jewelry and other items, a price list and information about the organization. She said she didn't have to make a monetary investment for any of the products.
"It's a really nice program. You sell what you can and send back what you haven't sold," she said.
Pieces range in cost from $5 for a simple bangle bracelet to $30 for multiple-strand necklaces. In addition to beads, she has other products, including a CD, note cards and soft jewelry bag. Poole said the shorter necklaces are the most popular.
Unlike similar programs, Poole doesn't receive any special incentive to sell the product. "I don't get a piece of jewelry just to be a hostess," she said.
On first sight, the jewelry looks like beads made of stone or a molded bead. Actually, each bead is handmade from strips of paper. The Ugandan beaders cut long triangular pieces of paper from colorful pieces of magazine paper.
According to BeadforLife literature, it takes 30 seconds for a beader to roll each individual bead. Once the paper is tightly rolled, a drop of glue keeps the paper together. Than each bead is treated with sealant to give the bead a shiny appearance and also to make the jewelry water resistant. It takes the women about two weeks to string a complex necklace.
The result is a piece of jewelry that Poole said people have a hard time believing is made of paper.
The organization is careful to show that all proceeds support the women, their communities and the BeadforLife program. According to the organization's 2006 financial overview, for every $10 necklace sold, $2.10 goes directly to the beader, $1.70 supports community development work in Uganda to fight extreme poverty, $2.40 supports work in North America to educate people about the program, 70 cents is spent between administrative costs in Uganda and North America and fundraising in North America, and $3.10 is allocated for future investment in community development.
BeadforLife reports that the average beader now makes on average $1,200 a year for their work. By comparison, they used to make less than $1 a day.
Wearing a few purchased pieces herself, Poole said she has had many comments from others, asking where did she get the necklaces. One woman, Poole said, told her that the long, single-strand necklace "felt really light" around her neck compared to heavier wooden beads.
With the response she's received from the beads, Poole's hoping to accomplish her goal.
"I'll be able to send back $2,000 if we're able to sell every piece of jewelry," Poole said. Previously she sold more than $300 worth of beads in one day.
Those who want to do more than purchase jewelry can also sponsor a student through BeadforLife, or host a bead party to sell the beads from home.
Link to full article. May expire in future.
By CRYSTAL SCHELLE
BOONSBORO - Sally Poole will never meet the women who make the necklaces and other handmade jewelry she's selling on their behalf through BeadforLife.
To Poole, who lives in Boonsboro, it doesn't matter that those women live a world away in East Africa.
"I think we need to care for each other around the world," Poole said.
Poole will sell the beads from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 27, as part of the Fall Fest at Mount Lena United Methodist Church. The event will feature food and crafts. All of the money collected from the sale of the jewelry will be sent to BeadforLife to benefit Ugandan bead makers.
Since BeadforLife was founded in Colorado in 2004, it has been helping women of Uganda find a market for the paper beads they've been creating for years. In North America, BeadforLife is recognized as a nonprofit organization.
It was Poole's sister-in-law, Evonne Cave, who introduced her to BeadforLife, whose mission is "Eradicating poverty one bead at a time." Poole said Cave's church had used BeadforLife as an outreach program last Christmas and suggested Poole use it for her own church.
Poole said with her sister-in-law's recommendation, she logged online to find out more about the nonprofit program.
"I just loved it. I thought it was amazing," she said. "And the fact that they are a Fair Trade Federation member is just wonderful."
Fair Trade Federation provides fair wages for disadvantaged persons.
After Poole signed up, BeadforLife provided her with a box of jewelry and other items, a price list and information about the organization. She said she didn't have to make a monetary investment for any of the products.
"It's a really nice program. You sell what you can and send back what you haven't sold," she said.
Pieces range in cost from $5 for a simple bangle bracelet to $30 for multiple-strand necklaces. In addition to beads, she has other products, including a CD, note cards and soft jewelry bag. Poole said the shorter necklaces are the most popular.
Unlike similar programs, Poole doesn't receive any special incentive to sell the product. "I don't get a piece of jewelry just to be a hostess," she said.
On first sight, the jewelry looks like beads made of stone or a molded bead. Actually, each bead is handmade from strips of paper. The Ugandan beaders cut long triangular pieces of paper from colorful pieces of magazine paper.
According to BeadforLife literature, it takes 30 seconds for a beader to roll each individual bead. Once the paper is tightly rolled, a drop of glue keeps the paper together. Than each bead is treated with sealant to give the bead a shiny appearance and also to make the jewelry water resistant. It takes the women about two weeks to string a complex necklace.
The result is a piece of jewelry that Poole said people have a hard time believing is made of paper.
The organization is careful to show that all proceeds support the women, their communities and the BeadforLife program. According to the organization's 2006 financial overview, for every $10 necklace sold, $2.10 goes directly to the beader, $1.70 supports community development work in Uganda to fight extreme poverty, $2.40 supports work in North America to educate people about the program, 70 cents is spent between administrative costs in Uganda and North America and fundraising in North America, and $3.10 is allocated for future investment in community development.
BeadforLife reports that the average beader now makes on average $1,200 a year for their work. By comparison, they used to make less than $1 a day.
Wearing a few purchased pieces herself, Poole said she has had many comments from others, asking where did she get the necklaces. One woman, Poole said, told her that the long, single-strand necklace "felt really light" around her neck compared to heavier wooden beads.
With the response she's received from the beads, Poole's hoping to accomplish her goal.
"I'll be able to send back $2,000 if we're able to sell every piece of jewelry," Poole said. Previously she sold more than $300 worth of beads in one day.
Those who want to do more than purchase jewelry can also sponsor a student through BeadforLife, or host a bead party to sell the beads from home.
Link to full article. May expire in future.
U.N. Receives New Pledges of Aid Totaling $16 Billion
from the New York Times
By NEIL MacFARQUHAR
UNITED NATIONS — Ban Ki-moon, the United Nations secretary general, announced on Thursday that the organization had received an additional $16 billion in pledges to fight a host of global ills like hunger and malaria, calling it an important signal that the world financial crisis would not impair aid efforts.
“That expression of the global commitment is all the more remarkable because it comes against the background of a global crisis,” Mr. Ban said at a news conference.
But his optimism was not shared universally, with some other senior officials suggesting that the ripple effects from the credit crisis would eventually force governments to cut back the amount of money they actually donate.
The new pledges emerged from a special series of meetings attended by 96 heads of state or heads of government, which were held on the sidelines of the annual General Assembly, all focused on a series of eight development goals. They included $4.5 billion for education, $3 billion to combat malaria and $1.75 billion in aid to prevent starvation in the Horn of Africa.
Some of the bigger donations came from oil powers. Norway pledged $1 billion over 10 years to reduce child and infant mortality, while Saudi Arabia committed $500 million toward enrolling an additional 24 million children in primary school by 2010.
China offered to provide a battery of programs to improve agricultural yields, health care and education, as well as to promote clean energy in Africa. On the extended list of new pledges released by the United Nations, the only donation listed from the United States was $61 million over five years to help African farmers get better seeds.
A spokesman for the United States Mission to the United Nations said it was checking the figure, which was released late on Thursday.
Gordon Brown, the British prime minister who shared the podium with Mr. Ban at the news conference, said an economic crisis was precisely the wrong time to reduce development aid. Given the rising cost of food, fertilizer and fuel, for example, it was more important than ever to help African farmers improve their yields, he said.
But other officials said people expecting the latest commitments to be met were kidding themselves because the financial crisis was likely to cause Western governments to cut their budgets. “Promising to get people more money for development?” Bernard Kouchner, the French foreign minister, said during a breakfast with reporters on Thursday. “This is not true. We are lying.”
The Group of 8 industrialized nations pledged in 2005 to donate more than $25 billion to Africa by 2010, but figures released by the United Nations this month showed that only $4 billion had actually been provided.
Link to full article. May expire in future.
By NEIL MacFARQUHAR
UNITED NATIONS — Ban Ki-moon, the United Nations secretary general, announced on Thursday that the organization had received an additional $16 billion in pledges to fight a host of global ills like hunger and malaria, calling it an important signal that the world financial crisis would not impair aid efforts.
“That expression of the global commitment is all the more remarkable because it comes against the background of a global crisis,” Mr. Ban said at a news conference.
But his optimism was not shared universally, with some other senior officials suggesting that the ripple effects from the credit crisis would eventually force governments to cut back the amount of money they actually donate.
The new pledges emerged from a special series of meetings attended by 96 heads of state or heads of government, which were held on the sidelines of the annual General Assembly, all focused on a series of eight development goals. They included $4.5 billion for education, $3 billion to combat malaria and $1.75 billion in aid to prevent starvation in the Horn of Africa.
Some of the bigger donations came from oil powers. Norway pledged $1 billion over 10 years to reduce child and infant mortality, while Saudi Arabia committed $500 million toward enrolling an additional 24 million children in primary school by 2010.
China offered to provide a battery of programs to improve agricultural yields, health care and education, as well as to promote clean energy in Africa. On the extended list of new pledges released by the United Nations, the only donation listed from the United States was $61 million over five years to help African farmers get better seeds.
A spokesman for the United States Mission to the United Nations said it was checking the figure, which was released late on Thursday.
Gordon Brown, the British prime minister who shared the podium with Mr. Ban at the news conference, said an economic crisis was precisely the wrong time to reduce development aid. Given the rising cost of food, fertilizer and fuel, for example, it was more important than ever to help African farmers improve their yields, he said.
But other officials said people expecting the latest commitments to be met were kidding themselves because the financial crisis was likely to cause Western governments to cut their budgets. “Promising to get people more money for development?” Bernard Kouchner, the French foreign minister, said during a breakfast with reporters on Thursday. “This is not true. We are lying.”
The Group of 8 industrialized nations pledged in 2005 to donate more than $25 billion to Africa by 2010, but figures released by the United Nations this month showed that only $4 billion had actually been provided.
Link to full article. May expire in future.
Thursday, September 25, 2008
YouTube, Will.i.am lend names to anti-poverty fight
from AFP via Google
Video-sharing website YouTube and Black Eyed Peas frontman Will.i.am launched an initiative called "In My Name" on Thursday aimed at raising awareness about efforts to fight global poverty.
In what it described as a "video petition," YouTube set up a new channel where contributors can post their own videos urging world leaders to step up their efforts to end poverty.
"This is your chance to join the video petition to end world hunger," YouTube said in an announcement on the site's blog (youtube.com/blog).
The initiative was timed to concide with a summit being held at the United Nations, where world leaders are meeting this week to discuss the UN Millennium Development Goals aimed at ending global poverty by 2015.
The YouTube drive is led by Will.i.am and non-profits Oxfam, Global Call to Action Against Poverty, Save the Children and Comic Relief.
Singers John Legend, Annie Lennox and Fergie, actresses Scarlett Johansson and Mischa Barton and Jordan's Queen Rania were among the celebrities lending their names to the project.
YouTube said it would accept submissions through November 1 at youtube.com/inmyname and that a mash-up of the best entries would be put together and shown to world leaders at the UN General Assembly.
Link to full article. May expire in future.
Video-sharing website YouTube and Black Eyed Peas frontman Will.i.am launched an initiative called "In My Name" on Thursday aimed at raising awareness about efforts to fight global poverty.
In what it described as a "video petition," YouTube set up a new channel where contributors can post their own videos urging world leaders to step up their efforts to end poverty.
"This is your chance to join the video petition to end world hunger," YouTube said in an announcement on the site's blog (youtube.com/blog).
The initiative was timed to concide with a summit being held at the United Nations, where world leaders are meeting this week to discuss the UN Millennium Development Goals aimed at ending global poverty by 2015.
The YouTube drive is led by Will.i.am and non-profits Oxfam, Global Call to Action Against Poverty, Save the Children and Comic Relief.
Singers John Legend, Annie Lennox and Fergie, actresses Scarlett Johansson and Mischa Barton and Jordan's Queen Rania were among the celebrities lending their names to the project.
YouTube said it would accept submissions through November 1 at youtube.com/inmyname and that a mash-up of the best entries would be put together and shown to world leaders at the UN General Assembly.
Link to full article. May expire in future.
Australia private sector encouraged to help end global poverty
from the ABC
Australia's private sector has been being encouraged to take a bigger role in ending global poverty at the launch of Make Poverty History's 2008 campaign in Sydney.
The launch was timed to coincide with the United Nations' Millennium Development Goals Summit, a meeting of more than 180 UN member nations in New York.
The chairman of Business for Millennium Development, Simon McKeon, says businesses need to think outside the square and invest in projects to end poverty in developing countries.
"There is money to be made in poverty and I don't think we should be embarrassed about that," he said.
"Tens of millions of the poorest people in the world over the last two decades have been lifted out of abject poverty simply by the workings of the market.
"Many of them are in China and we need to learn from that and actually just spread it around."
Link to full article. May expire in future.
Australia's private sector has been being encouraged to take a bigger role in ending global poverty at the launch of Make Poverty History's 2008 campaign in Sydney.
The launch was timed to coincide with the United Nations' Millennium Development Goals Summit, a meeting of more than 180 UN member nations in New York.
The chairman of Business for Millennium Development, Simon McKeon, says businesses need to think outside the square and invest in projects to end poverty in developing countries.
"There is money to be made in poverty and I don't think we should be embarrassed about that," he said.
"Tens of millions of the poorest people in the world over the last two decades have been lifted out of abject poverty simply by the workings of the market.
"Many of them are in China and we need to learn from that and actually just spread it around."
Link to full article. May expire in future.
Clinton calls on business to end hunger
from Forbes
By MICHAEL ASTOR
Former President Bill Clinton and activist-rocker Bob Geldof called on business leaders to do their part to help solve the international food crisis that pushed 75 million people into hunger and poverty last year alone.
Clinton said businesses could help solve the problem by providing farm credits, help improve agricultural productivity and foster storage and distribution systems in developing countries.
"This is not a thing that government can do alone. We have to have heavy private sector involvement," Clinton said. "The money here is not going to be massive and the payoff is going to be great."
He said he believed the future would see much more food produced locally and that would help reduce world hunger.
"The energy prices and supply reality alone, the inevitable necessity to get the developing world involved with the developed world in the fight against climate change, all of these things are going to drive us toward more agricultural self-sufficiency," Clinton said.
Clinton and Geldof spoke at a luncheon Wednesday devoted to bringing the private sector into a partnership with government and civil society to help meet the UN millennium development goal of halving the number of hungry people on Earth by 2015.
Currently there are some 923 million people going hungry on the planet and world food production will have to double by 2050 to keep up with population growth, according to the UN.
Geldof challenged the private sector to look at the problem - especially in Africa, the world's poorest continent, as a business opportunity rather than a charity case.
"There should be a logical approach to the business of Africa, a continent that has yet to be built and is open for business," he said. "There's nothing that means you have to go there with a bleeding heart, anything different than just creating profit, opportunity and growth."
Link to full article. May expire in future.
By MICHAEL ASTOR
Former President Bill Clinton and activist-rocker Bob Geldof called on business leaders to do their part to help solve the international food crisis that pushed 75 million people into hunger and poverty last year alone.
Clinton said businesses could help solve the problem by providing farm credits, help improve agricultural productivity and foster storage and distribution systems in developing countries.
"This is not a thing that government can do alone. We have to have heavy private sector involvement," Clinton said. "The money here is not going to be massive and the payoff is going to be great."
He said he believed the future would see much more food produced locally and that would help reduce world hunger.
"The energy prices and supply reality alone, the inevitable necessity to get the developing world involved with the developed world in the fight against climate change, all of these things are going to drive us toward more agricultural self-sufficiency," Clinton said.
Clinton and Geldof spoke at a luncheon Wednesday devoted to bringing the private sector into a partnership with government and civil society to help meet the UN millennium development goal of halving the number of hungry people on Earth by 2015.
Currently there are some 923 million people going hungry on the planet and world food production will have to double by 2050 to keep up with population growth, according to the UN.
Geldof challenged the private sector to look at the problem - especially in Africa, the world's poorest continent, as a business opportunity rather than a charity case.
"There should be a logical approach to the business of Africa, a continent that has yet to be built and is open for business," he said. "There's nothing that means you have to go there with a bleeding heart, anything different than just creating profit, opportunity and growth."
Link to full article. May expire in future.
World leaders to give new impetus to fight against poverty
from AFP via Google
UNITED NATIONS — UN chief Ban Ki-moon was Thursday to host a summit here to galvanize world support for achieving key poverty-reduction goals by 2015 despite soaring energy and food prices compounded by the financial crisis.
Nearly 100 world leaders are to join top private sector officials, including billionaire Microsoft founder Bill Gates, foundations and civil society, to pledge new commitments to revive the flagging battle to the achieve Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
Among those expected at the plenary session and 40 partners events on malaria, education and health will be British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, his Chinese counterpart Wen Jiabao, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, World Health Organization head Margaret Chan, World Bank President Robert Zoellick and U2 singer and global anti-poverty campaign Bono.
In 2000, the United Nations adopted eight goals to be met by all the world's countries by 2015.
They include eradicating extreme poverty and hunger, achieving universal primary education, promoting gender equality, reducing child mortality, improving maternal health, combating diseases such as HIV/AIDS, ensuring environmental sustainability and creating global partnerships for development.
Despite some progress, "We're still significantly off track on a number of MDGs," British Secretary of State for International Development Douglas Alexander told reporters Wednesday, citing "the 75 million kids without no classroom and teachers to teach them, more 55 percent of them young girls."
In other setbacks, more than 500,000 mothers in developing countries die in childbirth or from pregnancy complications every year and almost half of the developing world population still lacks sanitation facilities.
"I hope the meeting would mark an occasion whereby words of commitments can be turned into plans for action," Alexander said. "We will be keen to see at the conclusion of the summit practical actions being taken by a number of different states to make sure that we step up our commitments at this point, half way through 2015."
Monday a high-level meeting on Africa's development ended with call for rich countries to honor their pledge to double their annual aid to the continent, which is trailing the rest of the world in achieving the MDGs.
"We are concerned that, at the current rate, the commitment of doubling aid to Africa by 2010 as articulated at the (2005) G8 summit in Gleneagles (Scotland) will not be reached," a statement issued at the end of the meeting said.
"We call for the fulfillment of all official development assistance-related commitments, including the commitments made by many developed countries to achieve the target of 0.7 percent of gross national income for official development assistance by 2015," it added.
The OECD said rich countries were behind in their aid commitments and needed to increase the level by 12 percent by 2010.
Link to full article. May expire in future.
UNITED NATIONS — UN chief Ban Ki-moon was Thursday to host a summit here to galvanize world support for achieving key poverty-reduction goals by 2015 despite soaring energy and food prices compounded by the financial crisis.
Nearly 100 world leaders are to join top private sector officials, including billionaire Microsoft founder Bill Gates, foundations and civil society, to pledge new commitments to revive the flagging battle to the achieve Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
Among those expected at the plenary session and 40 partners events on malaria, education and health will be British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, his Chinese counterpart Wen Jiabao, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, World Health Organization head Margaret Chan, World Bank President Robert Zoellick and U2 singer and global anti-poverty campaign Bono.
In 2000, the United Nations adopted eight goals to be met by all the world's countries by 2015.
They include eradicating extreme poverty and hunger, achieving universal primary education, promoting gender equality, reducing child mortality, improving maternal health, combating diseases such as HIV/AIDS, ensuring environmental sustainability and creating global partnerships for development.
Despite some progress, "We're still significantly off track on a number of MDGs," British Secretary of State for International Development Douglas Alexander told reporters Wednesday, citing "the 75 million kids without no classroom and teachers to teach them, more 55 percent of them young girls."
In other setbacks, more than 500,000 mothers in developing countries die in childbirth or from pregnancy complications every year and almost half of the developing world population still lacks sanitation facilities.
"I hope the meeting would mark an occasion whereby words of commitments can be turned into plans for action," Alexander said. "We will be keen to see at the conclusion of the summit practical actions being taken by a number of different states to make sure that we step up our commitments at this point, half way through 2015."
Monday a high-level meeting on Africa's development ended with call for rich countries to honor their pledge to double their annual aid to the continent, which is trailing the rest of the world in achieving the MDGs.
"We are concerned that, at the current rate, the commitment of doubling aid to Africa by 2010 as articulated at the (2005) G8 summit in Gleneagles (Scotland) will not be reached," a statement issued at the end of the meeting said.
"We call for the fulfillment of all official development assistance-related commitments, including the commitments made by many developed countries to achieve the target of 0.7 percent of gross national income for official development assistance by 2015," it added.
The OECD said rich countries were behind in their aid commitments and needed to increase the level by 12 percent by 2010.
Link to full article. May expire in future.
Child poverty website piloted in the Valleys
from Wales Online
by Katie Bodinger,
AN INNOVATIVE website to help lift children out of poverty has been piloted and launched in Rhondda Cynon Taf.
Council leader Russell Roberts joined the Minister for Social Justice & Local Government, Dr Brian Gibbons, at the launch of the Child Poverty Solutions Wales website.
The bilingual site was created to offer essential advice, support and information to councils and their partner agencies as they work together to change the future of children and young people, through innovative practice and working within the law.
It also includes training modules for councillors to help them understand the causes and effects of child poverty and how local authorities can tackle the issues.
A first of its kind in Wales, it was vital it was tested by the people who will benefit most from it before being launched across the country.
As a result, following its development by the Save the Children in Wales and the Welsh Local Government Association, it was introduced in a number of authorities, including RCT, for a trial run.
Following its success, the Welsh Assembly Government-funded site was launched at the award-winning Rhydyfelin Integrated Children’s Centre this month.
Mr Roberts, who is also WLGA improvement spokesman, said: “Every child in Wales deserves the best start chances in life and the opportunity to live life to his or her full potential.
“Tackling child poverty is a key priority for every council in Wales and this toolkit shows local authorities’ seriousness and commitment to ensuring the best possible outcomes for the most vulnerable children and young people across their communities.
“Furthermore, it is an example of real partnership working at its best with all partners striving towards the same goal in delivering responsive services for those who need them the most.”
Link to full article. May expire in future.
by Katie Bodinger,
AN INNOVATIVE website to help lift children out of poverty has been piloted and launched in Rhondda Cynon Taf.
Council leader Russell Roberts joined the Minister for Social Justice & Local Government, Dr Brian Gibbons, at the launch of the Child Poverty Solutions Wales website.
The bilingual site was created to offer essential advice, support and information to councils and their partner agencies as they work together to change the future of children and young people, through innovative practice and working within the law.
It also includes training modules for councillors to help them understand the causes and effects of child poverty and how local authorities can tackle the issues.
A first of its kind in Wales, it was vital it was tested by the people who will benefit most from it before being launched across the country.
As a result, following its development by the Save the Children in Wales and the Welsh Local Government Association, it was introduced in a number of authorities, including RCT, for a trial run.
Following its success, the Welsh Assembly Government-funded site was launched at the award-winning Rhydyfelin Integrated Children’s Centre this month.
Mr Roberts, who is also WLGA improvement spokesman, said: “Every child in Wales deserves the best start chances in life and the opportunity to live life to his or her full potential.
“Tackling child poverty is a key priority for every council in Wales and this toolkit shows local authorities’ seriousness and commitment to ensuring the best possible outcomes for the most vulnerable children and young people across their communities.
“Furthermore, it is an example of real partnership working at its best with all partners striving towards the same goal in delivering responsive services for those who need them the most.”
Link to full article. May expire in future.
Illinois legislature overrides Blagojevich on hospital discounts
from the Chicago Tribune
By Judith Graham
A groundbreaking bill extending hospital discounts to people without health insurance has become law after the legislature overturned Gov. Rod Blagojevich's amendatory veto.
The Illinois House voted 97-0 Tuesday to endorse the original measure, which was passed unanimously in June. The Senate's vote Monday was 55-0. The legislation requires hospitals to offer significant discounts to uninsured Illinoisans. Instead of paying the full sticker price—typically two to three times the actual cost of care—consumers will pay charges based on the actual cost plus a 35 percent markup.
To qualify for discounts, consumers have to meet financial criteria. In urban areas, families who earn up to six times the federal poverty level—$127,200 for a family of four—will be eligible for price breaks. In rural areas, the eligibility limit is set at three times the poverty level, or $63,600 for a family of four. According to one estimate, about 775,000 Illinois families will qualify under those standards.
Link to full article. May expire in future.
By Judith Graham
A groundbreaking bill extending hospital discounts to people without health insurance has become law after the legislature overturned Gov. Rod Blagojevich's amendatory veto.
The Illinois House voted 97-0 Tuesday to endorse the original measure, which was passed unanimously in June. The Senate's vote Monday was 55-0. The legislation requires hospitals to offer significant discounts to uninsured Illinoisans. Instead of paying the full sticker price—typically two to three times the actual cost of care—consumers will pay charges based on the actual cost plus a 35 percent markup.
To qualify for discounts, consumers have to meet financial criteria. In urban areas, families who earn up to six times the federal poverty level—$127,200 for a family of four—will be eligible for price breaks. In rural areas, the eligibility limit is set at three times the poverty level, or $63,600 for a family of four. According to one estimate, about 775,000 Illinois families will qualify under those standards.
Link to full article. May expire in future.
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
45 Pct of Puerto Ricans living below poverty line
from Comtex
San Juan, - Almost half of Puerto Ricans last year lived below the poverty line, according to a U.S. Census Bureau report released Tuesday.
The median household income in the U.S. commonwealth last year was $17,741, though the figure for families including a married couple was $26,930.
The data published by the Census Bureau show that the 45.5 percent of Puerto Ricans living in poverty included 11.2 percent of the island's college graduates and more than 62 percent of people who didn't complete high school.
The report also states that in 2007, 66 percent of the population over 25 years of age had a high school diploma, while in 2000 the figure had been 60 percent.
Among the 25-34 age group, the percentage of those who had a high school diploma was 82.5 percent, compared with 37.1 percent among residents over 65.
San Juan, - Almost half of Puerto Ricans last year lived below the poverty line, according to a U.S. Census Bureau report released Tuesday.
The median household income in the U.S. commonwealth last year was $17,741, though the figure for families including a married couple was $26,930.
The data published by the Census Bureau show that the 45.5 percent of Puerto Ricans living in poverty included 11.2 percent of the island's college graduates and more than 62 percent of people who didn't complete high school.
The report also states that in 2007, 66 percent of the population over 25 years of age had a high school diploma, while in 2000 the figure had been 60 percent.
Among the 25-34 age group, the percentage of those who had a high school diploma was 82.5 percent, compared with 37.1 percent among residents over 65.
Rising Food Prices Affect World's Poor
from the Voice of America
By Véronique LaCapra
Worldwide, the demand for food is increasing. According to Janet Larsen, director of research at the Earth Policy Institute, the world population is growing by more than 70 million people each year. The institute is an environmental research organization that focuses on sustainable development.
"Around the world there are four billion people trying to move up the food chain, consuming more grain-intensive livestock products," says Larsen. She also blames the increasing diversion of food to fuel to run our growing automobile fleets.
Expert Says Not Enough Money Invested in Agriculture
Global food production has not been keeping pace with increased demand. Larsen says that in seven of the last eight years, the world has consumed more grain than it has produced.
Ann Tutwiler, the managing director for trade and development at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, says inadequate investment in agriculture by developing country governments and international aid agencies is a major reason why today food demand is outstripping supply.
"Spending on farming as a share of public spending fell by half between 1980 and 2004," says Tutweiler. "While official development assistance has almost doubled in the last five years, the agricultural share of that official development assistance has fallen from about 20 to 15 percent."
Rising Food Prices Hurt World's Poor
With demand already exceeding production, the recent spike in food prices has been a disaster for the world's poor. David Beckmann, president of the hunger relief organization Bread for the World, says that the impact has been most severe in 35 low-income countries that depend heavily on imports for food, many of them in sub-Saharan Africa.
"Those 35 countries are spending $60 billion more on food imports this year than they did in 2006," he said.
The World Bank estimates that the surge in food prices could push 100 million more people deeper into poverty.
And according to Janet Larsen, environmental problems will exacerbate the crisis. "We're looking at a future of water shortages," she says.
Larsen says that irrigation is the primary culprit, accounting for about 70 percent of all water use worldwide. "Irrigation has tripled since 1950," says Larsen, "but we have tripled our irrigation by over-pumping underground water resources, diverting rivers so that they no longer make it to the sea."
Link to full article. May expire in future.
By Véronique LaCapra
Worldwide, the demand for food is increasing. According to Janet Larsen, director of research at the Earth Policy Institute, the world population is growing by more than 70 million people each year. The institute is an environmental research organization that focuses on sustainable development.
"Around the world there are four billion people trying to move up the food chain, consuming more grain-intensive livestock products," says Larsen. She also blames the increasing diversion of food to fuel to run our growing automobile fleets.
Expert Says Not Enough Money Invested in Agriculture
Global food production has not been keeping pace with increased demand. Larsen says that in seven of the last eight years, the world has consumed more grain than it has produced.
Ann Tutwiler, the managing director for trade and development at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, says inadequate investment in agriculture by developing country governments and international aid agencies is a major reason why today food demand is outstripping supply.
"Spending on farming as a share of public spending fell by half between 1980 and 2004," says Tutweiler. "While official development assistance has almost doubled in the last five years, the agricultural share of that official development assistance has fallen from about 20 to 15 percent."
Rising Food Prices Hurt World's Poor
With demand already exceeding production, the recent spike in food prices has been a disaster for the world's poor. David Beckmann, president of the hunger relief organization Bread for the World, says that the impact has been most severe in 35 low-income countries that depend heavily on imports for food, many of them in sub-Saharan Africa.
"Those 35 countries are spending $60 billion more on food imports this year than they did in 2006," he said.
The World Bank estimates that the surge in food prices could push 100 million more people deeper into poverty.
And according to Janet Larsen, environmental problems will exacerbate the crisis. "We're looking at a future of water shortages," she says.
Larsen says that irrigation is the primary culprit, accounting for about 70 percent of all water use worldwide. "Irrigation has tripled since 1950," says Larsen, "but we have tripled our irrigation by over-pumping underground water resources, diverting rivers so that they no longer make it to the sea."
Link to full article. May expire in future.
Gates Foundation to Fund Experimental Food Aid Program
from the Washington Post
By Philip Rucker
UNITED NATIONS, - The world's largest philanthropy on Wednesday announced an initiative to transform the way the U.N. World Food Program purchases food by helping poor, small-scale farmers in undernourished countries of Africa and Latin America sell their surplus crops at competitive prices.
The Purchase for Progress program is designed to help combat hunger and poverty in the developing world by giving farmers, many of them women with little or no access to commercial markets, opportunities to reach reliable buyers, including the World Food Program. In a five-year pilot period, the $76 million program hopes to increase the incomes of 350,000 such farmers in 21 countries, including 15 in sub-Saharan Africa.
The program, to be administered by the World Food Program, is being funded largely by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the world's biggest grantmaker, and also is being supported by the Howard G. Buffett Foundation and the government of Belgium. It is the latest initiative focusing on small farmers for the Gates Foundation, which has committed more than $900 million to its agricultural development programs.
Purchase for Progress is one of several public-private hunger initiatives expected to be announced this week in New York, as world leaders converge at the U.N. General Assembly to draw attention to efforts to meet the Millennium Development Goals, a series of benchmarks aimed at slashing the poverty levels in the world's poorest countries by 2015.
Bill Gates, the Microsoft founder and co-chair of his foundation, said in a statement that the Purchase for Progress program is "a major step toward sustainable change that could eventually benefit millions of poor rural households in sub-Saharan Africa and other regions."
"This is exactly the kind of innovative public-private partnership we need to advance the Millennium Development Goals and address extreme hunger and poverty around the world," said Gates, who will address a special session of the U.N. General Assembly on Thursday.
The World Food Program, a humanitarian aid branch of the United Nations, feeds about 90 million people worldwide who do not have enough food. David Stevenson, the agency's director of policy, planning and strategy, said the new initiative will allow the agency to purchase more locally-raised food.
"Purchase for Progress is not about charity," Stevenson said. "In fact, far from it. It's about rewarding small-scale farmers, hard-working farmers, the majority of whom are women who are out every day working from sunrise, planting their fields in very difficult circumstances."
Hunger around the world is so chronic it far outstrips the financial resources committed to fight it, some scholars said. The World Food Program has warned of a surge in hunger that could plunge more than 100 million of the world's poorest people deeper into poverty.
The problem could grow more perilous against the backdrop of a food price shock that has been roiling world markets and igniting street riots. Over the past three years, world food prices were estimated to have surged by 80 percent -- outpacing even the 78 percent jump during the Soviet grain emergency of 1972-75.
"There's a need for a much larger international response," said Jeffrey D. Sachs, an economist and founder of the Millennium Promise Alliance, an anti-poverty nonprofit organization. "The Gates Foundation is playing an important role in helping people become aware of this, but in this case no single action is going to be decisive and what's really important is a scaling up of overall financing and support."
About 1.1 billion people live on $1 a day or less, and more than seven in 10 people around the world depend on work in agriculture for food and income, said Rajiv Shah, agriculture development director of the Gates Foundation.
"In order to help farmers and small farmers in part move out of poverty, you need to help them improve productivity," Shah said. "But you also need to improve access to markets and create the financial and commercial incentives so that farmers are rewarded for their additional efforts."
Shah said a preliminary test of the Purchase for Progress program in Uganda last year had "dramatic" results.
"For the first time, they had the incentive and the reward for participating in a formal and commercial market and that was transforming the way they thought about farming and agriculture and their ability to invest in their children," Shah said.
Link to full article. May expire in future.
By Philip Rucker
UNITED NATIONS, - The world's largest philanthropy on Wednesday announced an initiative to transform the way the U.N. World Food Program purchases food by helping poor, small-scale farmers in undernourished countries of Africa and Latin America sell their surplus crops at competitive prices.
The Purchase for Progress program is designed to help combat hunger and poverty in the developing world by giving farmers, many of them women with little or no access to commercial markets, opportunities to reach reliable buyers, including the World Food Program. In a five-year pilot period, the $76 million program hopes to increase the incomes of 350,000 such farmers in 21 countries, including 15 in sub-Saharan Africa.
The program, to be administered by the World Food Program, is being funded largely by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the world's biggest grantmaker, and also is being supported by the Howard G. Buffett Foundation and the government of Belgium. It is the latest initiative focusing on small farmers for the Gates Foundation, which has committed more than $900 million to its agricultural development programs.
Purchase for Progress is one of several public-private hunger initiatives expected to be announced this week in New York, as world leaders converge at the U.N. General Assembly to draw attention to efforts to meet the Millennium Development Goals, a series of benchmarks aimed at slashing the poverty levels in the world's poorest countries by 2015.
Bill Gates, the Microsoft founder and co-chair of his foundation, said in a statement that the Purchase for Progress program is "a major step toward sustainable change that could eventually benefit millions of poor rural households in sub-Saharan Africa and other regions."
"This is exactly the kind of innovative public-private partnership we need to advance the Millennium Development Goals and address extreme hunger and poverty around the world," said Gates, who will address a special session of the U.N. General Assembly on Thursday.
The World Food Program, a humanitarian aid branch of the United Nations, feeds about 90 million people worldwide who do not have enough food. David Stevenson, the agency's director of policy, planning and strategy, said the new initiative will allow the agency to purchase more locally-raised food.
"Purchase for Progress is not about charity," Stevenson said. "In fact, far from it. It's about rewarding small-scale farmers, hard-working farmers, the majority of whom are women who are out every day working from sunrise, planting their fields in very difficult circumstances."
Hunger around the world is so chronic it far outstrips the financial resources committed to fight it, some scholars said. The World Food Program has warned of a surge in hunger that could plunge more than 100 million of the world's poorest people deeper into poverty.
The problem could grow more perilous against the backdrop of a food price shock that has been roiling world markets and igniting street riots. Over the past three years, world food prices were estimated to have surged by 80 percent -- outpacing even the 78 percent jump during the Soviet grain emergency of 1972-75.
"There's a need for a much larger international response," said Jeffrey D. Sachs, an economist and founder of the Millennium Promise Alliance, an anti-poverty nonprofit organization. "The Gates Foundation is playing an important role in helping people become aware of this, but in this case no single action is going to be decisive and what's really important is a scaling up of overall financing and support."
About 1.1 billion people live on $1 a day or less, and more than seven in 10 people around the world depend on work in agriculture for food and income, said Rajiv Shah, agriculture development director of the Gates Foundation.
"In order to help farmers and small farmers in part move out of poverty, you need to help them improve productivity," Shah said. "But you also need to improve access to markets and create the financial and commercial incentives so that farmers are rewarded for their additional efforts."
Shah said a preliminary test of the Purchase for Progress program in Uganda last year had "dramatic" results.
"For the first time, they had the incentive and the reward for participating in a formal and commercial market and that was transforming the way they thought about farming and agriculture and their ability to invest in their children," Shah said.
Link to full article. May expire in future.
LaBruzzo: Sterilization plan fights poverty
from the New Orleans Times Picayune
By Mark Waller
Worried that welfare costs are rising as the number of taxpayers declines, state Rep. John LaBruzzo, R-Metairie, said Tuesday he is studying a plan to pay poor women $1,000 to have their Fallopian tubes tied.
"We're on a train headed to the future and there's a bridge out," LaBruzzo said of what he suspects are dangerous demographic trends. "And nobody wants to talk about it."
LaBruzzo said he worries that people receiving government aid such as food stamps and publicly subsidized housing are reproducing at a faster rate than more affluent, better-educated people who presumably pay more tax revenue to the government. He said he is gathering statistics now.
"What I'm really studying is any and all possibilities that we can reduce the number of people that are going from generational welfare to generational welfare," he said.
He said his program would be voluntary. It could involve tubal ligation, encouraging other forms of birth control or, to avoid charges of gender discrimination, vasectomies for men.
It also could include tax incentives for college-educated, higher-income people to have more children, he said.
LaBruzzo, 38, is white, married to a lawyer, has a toddler daughter and holds a bachelor's degree from Louisiana State University.
His 81st House District runs from Old Metairie north to Bucktown and west along Lake Pontchartrain to the Suburban Canal. In a somewhat different configuration, it is the same district that sent white supremacist David Duke to the Legislature in 1989.
LaBruzzo described the tube-tying incentive as a brainstorming exercise that has yet to take form as a bill for the Legislature to consider. He said it already has drawn critics who argue the idea is racist, sexist, unethical and immoral. He said more white people are on welfare than black people, so his proposal is not targeting race.
LaBruzzo said other, mainstream strategies for attacking poverty, such as education reforms and programs informing people about family planning issues, have repeatedly failed to solve the problem. He said he is simply looking for new ways to address it.
Link to full article. May expire in future.
By Mark Waller
Worried that welfare costs are rising as the number of taxpayers declines, state Rep. John LaBruzzo, R-Metairie, said Tuesday he is studying a plan to pay poor women $1,000 to have their Fallopian tubes tied.
"We're on a train headed to the future and there's a bridge out," LaBruzzo said of what he suspects are dangerous demographic trends. "And nobody wants to talk about it."
LaBruzzo said he worries that people receiving government aid such as food stamps and publicly subsidized housing are reproducing at a faster rate than more affluent, better-educated people who presumably pay more tax revenue to the government. He said he is gathering statistics now.
"What I'm really studying is any and all possibilities that we can reduce the number of people that are going from generational welfare to generational welfare," he said.
He said his program would be voluntary. It could involve tubal ligation, encouraging other forms of birth control or, to avoid charges of gender discrimination, vasectomies for men.
It also could include tax incentives for college-educated, higher-income people to have more children, he said.
LaBruzzo, 38, is white, married to a lawyer, has a toddler daughter and holds a bachelor's degree from Louisiana State University.
His 81st House District runs from Old Metairie north to Bucktown and west along Lake Pontchartrain to the Suburban Canal. In a somewhat different configuration, it is the same district that sent white supremacist David Duke to the Legislature in 1989.
LaBruzzo described the tube-tying incentive as a brainstorming exercise that has yet to take form as a bill for the Legislature to consider. He said it already has drawn critics who argue the idea is racist, sexist, unethical and immoral. He said more white people are on welfare than black people, so his proposal is not targeting race.
LaBruzzo said other, mainstream strategies for attacking poverty, such as education reforms and programs informing people about family planning issues, have repeatedly failed to solve the problem. He said he is simply looking for new ways to address it.
Link to full article. May expire in future.
[comment] Markets should not rule us
from the New Statesman
by Nick Dearden
Bailing out the banks without progress on the world's problems such as poverty and climate change is like socialism for the rich. It's time for proper regulation...
Gordon Brown’s conversion to financial regulation this weekend is certainly better late than never. He has joined a wide range of statesmen who, despite their role in maintaining “hands off” global finance, have come to see the error of their ways.
In May the great and the good of European social democracy, led by Jacques Delors and Jacques Santer, both former Presidents of the European Commission, declared in a letter that “Financial markets can not govern us!”.
In fact much of the world has been governed by financial markets for decades, and the severe poverty which still exists in so many developing (and indeed developed) counties can in no small measure be laid at the door of all-powerful financial globalisation. Indeed the freeing up of the financial sector – to be as reckless as it chooses – has been the real essence of the globalisation project over nearly 30 years.
Real progress towards solving the world’s problems, poverty or climate change most prominently, would mean that the vast bailouts and injections of money that have been announced in recent days were not merely another form of ‘socialism for the rich’, but used to fundamentally reform global financial architecture.
A little discussed conference taking place in Doha in late November is a perfect opportunity for Brown to show his new-found credentials. The UN’s second Financing for Development conference will discuss the principles that should underlie aid, debt relief and funding for climate change. While campaigners currently fear the conference may represent a step backwards from the first conference held in Monterrey in 2002, it does have the potential to show the ‘have-nots’ of the world that global leaders are serious.
The starting point is the fact that financial globalisation allows massive transfers of money from developing to developed countries, with unprecedented ease. What in times past would have required guns boats and armies can now be achieved with a few clicks of a mouse.
To give a few examples, $160 billion is lost to the developing world every year through tax evasion, based on the fact that most trade takes place within global corporations and those corporations now have the ability to move that money around the world with few restrictions or questions asked. $250 billion is lost because $11.5 trillion of global assets are currently held in tax havens, like the UK, one of the centres of financial globalisation.
The global money markets turn over a mind-blowing $3.2 trillion every day – much of which is so-called ‘hot money’, speculative capital which moves very rapidly in and out of countries and currencies, causing immense damage. Indeed currency speculation played a large role in the South East Asian crash in 1997. Another $1.6 billion a day is transferred from poor to rich countries in debt ‘repayments’, based largely on loans recklessly thrust on newly independent countries in the 1960s and 70s by financial institutions which promptly raised interest rates to extortionate levels.
Needless to say these gigantic sums dwarf aid budgets.
Solutions to run-away finance are out there. A Currency Transaction Tax could be introduced to reduce volatility on the money markets or a restriction placed on the selling of developing country debt on secondary markets which would prevent ‘vulture funds’ profiting from the misery of developing countries.
It would be possible to prevent ‘capital flight’ removing the ability of countries to effectively tax corporate and individual activities within their jurisdiction through better policing and control of financial flows, allowing the international community to effectively shut down tax havens. A fair, transparent and participative mechanism could be introduced to work-out debt disputes and reduce the dependence of developing countries on financial markets and unelected, unaccountable organisations like the Paris Club.
These would be just the first reforms that would be necessary to put finance back in its box, return sovereignty to nations, and ensure a more equitable future for everyone.
Nick Dearden is director of the Jubilee Debt Campaign
Link to full article. May expire in future.
by Nick Dearden
Bailing out the banks without progress on the world's problems such as poverty and climate change is like socialism for the rich. It's time for proper regulation...
Gordon Brown’s conversion to financial regulation this weekend is certainly better late than never. He has joined a wide range of statesmen who, despite their role in maintaining “hands off” global finance, have come to see the error of their ways.
In May the great and the good of European social democracy, led by Jacques Delors and Jacques Santer, both former Presidents of the European Commission, declared in a letter that “Financial markets can not govern us!”.
In fact much of the world has been governed by financial markets for decades, and the severe poverty which still exists in so many developing (and indeed developed) counties can in no small measure be laid at the door of all-powerful financial globalisation. Indeed the freeing up of the financial sector – to be as reckless as it chooses – has been the real essence of the globalisation project over nearly 30 years.
Real progress towards solving the world’s problems, poverty or climate change most prominently, would mean that the vast bailouts and injections of money that have been announced in recent days were not merely another form of ‘socialism for the rich’, but used to fundamentally reform global financial architecture.
A little discussed conference taking place in Doha in late November is a perfect opportunity for Brown to show his new-found credentials. The UN’s second Financing for Development conference will discuss the principles that should underlie aid, debt relief and funding for climate change. While campaigners currently fear the conference may represent a step backwards from the first conference held in Monterrey in 2002, it does have the potential to show the ‘have-nots’ of the world that global leaders are serious.
The starting point is the fact that financial globalisation allows massive transfers of money from developing to developed countries, with unprecedented ease. What in times past would have required guns boats and armies can now be achieved with a few clicks of a mouse.
To give a few examples, $160 billion is lost to the developing world every year through tax evasion, based on the fact that most trade takes place within global corporations and those corporations now have the ability to move that money around the world with few restrictions or questions asked. $250 billion is lost because $11.5 trillion of global assets are currently held in tax havens, like the UK, one of the centres of financial globalisation.
The global money markets turn over a mind-blowing $3.2 trillion every day – much of which is so-called ‘hot money’, speculative capital which moves very rapidly in and out of countries and currencies, causing immense damage. Indeed currency speculation played a large role in the South East Asian crash in 1997. Another $1.6 billion a day is transferred from poor to rich countries in debt ‘repayments’, based largely on loans recklessly thrust on newly independent countries in the 1960s and 70s by financial institutions which promptly raised interest rates to extortionate levels.
Needless to say these gigantic sums dwarf aid budgets.
Solutions to run-away finance are out there. A Currency Transaction Tax could be introduced to reduce volatility on the money markets or a restriction placed on the selling of developing country debt on secondary markets which would prevent ‘vulture funds’ profiting from the misery of developing countries.
It would be possible to prevent ‘capital flight’ removing the ability of countries to effectively tax corporate and individual activities within their jurisdiction through better policing and control of financial flows, allowing the international community to effectively shut down tax havens. A fair, transparent and participative mechanism could be introduced to work-out debt disputes and reduce the dependence of developing countries on financial markets and unelected, unaccountable organisations like the Paris Club.
These would be just the first reforms that would be necessary to put finance back in its box, return sovereignty to nations, and ensure a more equitable future for everyone.
Nick Dearden is director of the Jubilee Debt Campaign
Link to full article. May expire in future.
[comment] Will Canadian leaders keep promise to world's children?
from the Toronto Star
by Dave Toycen
Canadian elections are times to make promises and, hopefully, times to keep promises that are on the verge of being broken.
Tomorrow, Canada will have another critical opportunity to keep its promises as more than 100 world leaders gather at UN headquarters in New York City. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon is convening them for a high-level event to re-energize their earlier commitment to meet the eight Millennium Development Goals by 2015.
Reducing by 50 per cent the number of people living in extreme poverty and cutting the child mortality rate by two-thirds are among the goals that leaders set in 2000 and promised to fulfill.
While some headway has been made since 191 countries, including Canada, established the goals in 2000, the current economic crisis along with recent soaring food and fuel prices threaten a halt to further inroads.
A new World Vision report on progress of the two goals related to child and maternal health to date, to be released at the UN summit, notes that more than 9 million children under the age of 5 still die annually from easily preventable causes.
Shocking as that number is, it marks an improvement from three decades ago when one in four children failed to celebrate their fifth birthday. Today, this number is less than one in 10.
Still, 62 countries are in danger of failing to meet the goal of reducing their child mortality rate by two-thirds.
Africa presents a special challenge – half of the continent's countries have shown either no change or an increase in their child mortality rates. Without a major boost in help from Canada and other developed nations, these countries will fail to meet their targets – and millions of children will needlessly die.
Preventing this tragedy requires neither unrealistic outlays nor medical breakthroughs. Most children die from diarrhea, malaria or respiratory illness, often in a lethal combination with malnutrition. Investments in safe water, anti-malaria nets and nutrition programs cost little and are proven lifesavers. The World Health Organization estimates that an additional $5.6 billion (U.S.) annually would save the lives of 4.3 million children in 2015 alone.
We know that leaders can raise almost $1 trillion in short order to respond to the global financial crisis. Why can't they find that same political will – and far less cash – to help the world's children?
We believe that Canadians want our country to be a leader in addressing poverty. In my conversations with many of World Vision's 600,000 supporters, I am struck by their concern for the poor. They keep their promises to children in developing countries through their generous support. Shouldn't our leaders do the same?
In June 2005, all parties backed a House of Commons resolution to increase foreign aid so that it would reach 0.5 per cent of our gross national income (GNI) by 2010, and 0.7 per cent by 2015. Currently, our foreign aid budget is a paltry 0.28 per cent of the national income, ranking 16th out of 22 OECD nations.
Canada first endorsed the 0.7 per cent level in 1970 shortly after Lester Pearson established that target. Denmark, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden have achieved that goal, but the best Canada has done is 0.53 per cent–and that was more than 30 years ago, in 1975.
The Paul Martin government agreed to increase foreign aid spending by 8 per cent per year until 2010. Prime Minister Stephen Harper has maintained that commitment, but it has not been enough. Our contribution as a percentage of gross national income has fallen further from the 0.7 per cent objective, declining to the current 0.28 per cent over the past three years.
Dave Toycen is president and CEO of World Vision Canada.
Link to full article. May expire in future.
by Dave Toycen
Canadian elections are times to make promises and, hopefully, times to keep promises that are on the verge of being broken.
Tomorrow, Canada will have another critical opportunity to keep its promises as more than 100 world leaders gather at UN headquarters in New York City. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon is convening them for a high-level event to re-energize their earlier commitment to meet the eight Millennium Development Goals by 2015.
Reducing by 50 per cent the number of people living in extreme poverty and cutting the child mortality rate by two-thirds are among the goals that leaders set in 2000 and promised to fulfill.
While some headway has been made since 191 countries, including Canada, established the goals in 2000, the current economic crisis along with recent soaring food and fuel prices threaten a halt to further inroads.
A new World Vision report on progress of the two goals related to child and maternal health to date, to be released at the UN summit, notes that more than 9 million children under the age of 5 still die annually from easily preventable causes.
Shocking as that number is, it marks an improvement from three decades ago when one in four children failed to celebrate their fifth birthday. Today, this number is less than one in 10.
Still, 62 countries are in danger of failing to meet the goal of reducing their child mortality rate by two-thirds.
Africa presents a special challenge – half of the continent's countries have shown either no change or an increase in their child mortality rates. Without a major boost in help from Canada and other developed nations, these countries will fail to meet their targets – and millions of children will needlessly die.
Preventing this tragedy requires neither unrealistic outlays nor medical breakthroughs. Most children die from diarrhea, malaria or respiratory illness, often in a lethal combination with malnutrition. Investments in safe water, anti-malaria nets and nutrition programs cost little and are proven lifesavers. The World Health Organization estimates that an additional $5.6 billion (U.S.) annually would save the lives of 4.3 million children in 2015 alone.
We know that leaders can raise almost $1 trillion in short order to respond to the global financial crisis. Why can't they find that same political will – and far less cash – to help the world's children?
We believe that Canadians want our country to be a leader in addressing poverty. In my conversations with many of World Vision's 600,000 supporters, I am struck by their concern for the poor. They keep their promises to children in developing countries through their generous support. Shouldn't our leaders do the same?
In June 2005, all parties backed a House of Commons resolution to increase foreign aid so that it would reach 0.5 per cent of our gross national income (GNI) by 2010, and 0.7 per cent by 2015. Currently, our foreign aid budget is a paltry 0.28 per cent of the national income, ranking 16th out of 22 OECD nations.
Canada first endorsed the 0.7 per cent level in 1970 shortly after Lester Pearson established that target. Denmark, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden have achieved that goal, but the best Canada has done is 0.53 per cent–and that was more than 30 years ago, in 1975.
The Paul Martin government agreed to increase foreign aid spending by 8 per cent per year until 2010. Prime Minister Stephen Harper has maintained that commitment, but it has not been enough. Our contribution as a percentage of gross national income has fallen further from the 0.7 per cent objective, declining to the current 0.28 per cent over the past three years.
Dave Toycen is president and CEO of World Vision Canada.
Link to full article. May expire in future.
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Poverty blamed for parents forcing children into work
from Arab News
by Badea Abu Al-Naja
MAKKAH: The need for money sometimes drive parents to force their children to work in order to help them earn a living, despite a general consensus that child labor is wrong. Still, poverty can lead to the practice of utilizing child labor, including using kids as beggars.
Arab News visited a center in Makkah for children found begging on the streets and interviewed some of the kids living in the shelter.
Mukhtar Mahrani, a nine-year-old Burmese child, said his father compelled him to work to earn some money in order to help the family. He said he bought a wheelchair to rent for SR50 to the old and disabled who want to circumambulate the Kaaba in the Grand Mosque. While there are wheelchairs freely available, Mahrani says there is an occasional demand at peak times.
“When there are too many people the government chairs are not sufficient, so it is our chance to rent out wheelchairs,” he said.
Mahrani said since the guards at the gates of the Holy Mosques will not allow him to enter with his wheelchair, he usually volunteers to pick up an elderly or a disabled man or woman free of charge and pushes him or her right into the Haram. He would sometimes ask his father or mother to push the chair and turn it over to him inside the mosque.
Mahrani said his average daily income is SR500 but it doubles or triples at peak seasons.
Mahrani would not tell officials at the center the location of his parents lest they be arrested.
“I told them that I did not know my house as I always stay at the Holy Mosque. This way they cannot reach my parents,” he said.
Fawaz Ibrahim, a 10-year-old Afghan child, said his father has made him sell water bottles near a traffic light in the holy city. He said he would buy a carton containing 28 bottles of cold water at SR14 and sell them for SR1 apiece for SR14 profit. He said he starts work before Maghreb prayer and continues until close to Fajr prayer. “I am so tired. I cannot even fast. I hate my father for making me do this,” he said.
Hussain Shafie, a 13-year-old with no nationality, said when he refused to sell water, his father rented him to another man who made him sell water.
Majed Hassan, a 14-year-old Burmese kid, said he is working for himself and does not give his father a single riyal from his business of selling potable water. “I am better off now at the center. I forgot the pain of work when I came here,” he said.
Link to full article. May expire in future.
by Badea Abu Al-Naja
MAKKAH: The need for money sometimes drive parents to force their children to work in order to help them earn a living, despite a general consensus that child labor is wrong. Still, poverty can lead to the practice of utilizing child labor, including using kids as beggars.
Arab News visited a center in Makkah for children found begging on the streets and interviewed some of the kids living in the shelter.
Mukhtar Mahrani, a nine-year-old Burmese child, said his father compelled him to work to earn some money in order to help the family. He said he bought a wheelchair to rent for SR50 to the old and disabled who want to circumambulate the Kaaba in the Grand Mosque. While there are wheelchairs freely available, Mahrani says there is an occasional demand at peak times.
“When there are too many people the government chairs are not sufficient, so it is our chance to rent out wheelchairs,” he said.
Mahrani said since the guards at the gates of the Holy Mosques will not allow him to enter with his wheelchair, he usually volunteers to pick up an elderly or a disabled man or woman free of charge and pushes him or her right into the Haram. He would sometimes ask his father or mother to push the chair and turn it over to him inside the mosque.
Mahrani said his average daily income is SR500 but it doubles or triples at peak seasons.
Mahrani would not tell officials at the center the location of his parents lest they be arrested.
“I told them that I did not know my house as I always stay at the Holy Mosque. This way they cannot reach my parents,” he said.
Fawaz Ibrahim, a 10-year-old Afghan child, said his father has made him sell water bottles near a traffic light in the holy city. He said he would buy a carton containing 28 bottles of cold water at SR14 and sell them for SR1 apiece for SR14 profit. He said he starts work before Maghreb prayer and continues until close to Fajr prayer. “I am so tired. I cannot even fast. I hate my father for making me do this,” he said.
Hussain Shafie, a 13-year-old with no nationality, said when he refused to sell water, his father rented him to another man who made him sell water.
Majed Hassan, a 14-year-old Burmese kid, said he is working for himself and does not give his father a single riyal from his business of selling potable water. “I am better off now at the center. I forgot the pain of work when I came here,” he said.
Link to full article. May expire in future.
Somalia ranked world's most corrupt
from Yahoo News
Somalia remains rooted to the bottom of a global corruption index that also features Iraq and Afghanistan , an international watchdog's annual report said.
Rich European countries such as Britain and Italy also have slipped, Transparency International's annual Corruption Perceptions Index said. The report said Denmark, Sweden and New Zealand share the honour of being the world's least corrupt countries.
There was little change at the bottom from last year - with Somalia closely followed, as in 2007, by Myanmar , Iraq and Haiti. Just ahead of them was Afghanistan , which slipped to 176th place from 172nd.
Berlin-based Transparency said the index "highlights the fatal link between poverty, failed institutions and graft." The ranking measures perceived levels of public sector corruption in 180 countries and draws on surveys of businesses and experts.
"In the poorest countries, corruption levels can mean the difference between life and death, when money for hospitals or clean water is in play," Transparency chairwoman Huguette Labelle said in a statement, describing the combination of corruption and poverty as "an ongoing humanitarian disaster."
Somalia has lacked an effective central government since 1991, leaving the country in the grip of violence and anarchy.
There were some bright spots in the new report - African powerhouse Nigeria improving to 121st place from 147th last year, reflecting increasingly positive perceptions of the country's new government.
Georgia rose to 67th place from 79th, showing that the government's "early reform efforts were highly effective in earning public confidence and improving the country's international image," the report said. But it added that, while petty corruption is generally agreed to have declined, grand corruption is a "persistent concern".
The report pointed to worsening performances by Britain, which slipped to 16th from 12th, and Italy, down to 55th from 41st.
It said Britain's perceived anti-corruption credentials suffered from a decision by its anti-fraud agency to halt an inquiry into whether one of the world's largest arms dealers offered bribes in exchange for lucrative contracts in Saudi Arabia ; while fraud and corruption cases in the public health system weighed on Italy.
Another decliner in the European Union was Bulgaria - described as "still wary of tackling political corruption" - which slipped to 72nd from 64th. Finland, tied for first place last year, slid to fifth because of "a lack of transparency in election campaign finance".
The US was in 18th place, compared with 20th last year. The report noted that it remains among the lowest-ranked leading industrial countries.
Link to full article. May expire in future.
Somalia remains rooted to the bottom of a global corruption index that also features Iraq and Afghanistan , an international watchdog's annual report said.
Rich European countries such as Britain and Italy also have slipped, Transparency International's annual Corruption Perceptions Index said. The report said Denmark, Sweden and New Zealand share the honour of being the world's least corrupt countries.
There was little change at the bottom from last year - with Somalia closely followed, as in 2007, by Myanmar , Iraq and Haiti. Just ahead of them was Afghanistan , which slipped to 176th place from 172nd.
Berlin-based Transparency said the index "highlights the fatal link between poverty, failed institutions and graft." The ranking measures perceived levels of public sector corruption in 180 countries and draws on surveys of businesses and experts.
"In the poorest countries, corruption levels can mean the difference between life and death, when money for hospitals or clean water is in play," Transparency chairwoman Huguette Labelle said in a statement, describing the combination of corruption and poverty as "an ongoing humanitarian disaster."
Somalia has lacked an effective central government since 1991, leaving the country in the grip of violence and anarchy.
There were some bright spots in the new report - African powerhouse Nigeria improving to 121st place from 147th last year, reflecting increasingly positive perceptions of the country's new government.
Georgia rose to 67th place from 79th, showing that the government's "early reform efforts were highly effective in earning public confidence and improving the country's international image," the report said. But it added that, while petty corruption is generally agreed to have declined, grand corruption is a "persistent concern".
The report pointed to worsening performances by Britain, which slipped to 16th from 12th, and Italy, down to 55th from 41st.
It said Britain's perceived anti-corruption credentials suffered from a decision by its anti-fraud agency to halt an inquiry into whether one of the world's largest arms dealers offered bribes in exchange for lucrative contracts in Saudi Arabia ; while fraud and corruption cases in the public health system weighed on Italy.
Another decliner in the European Union was Bulgaria - described as "still wary of tackling political corruption" - which slipped to 72nd from 64th. Finland, tied for first place last year, slid to fifth because of "a lack of transparency in election campaign finance".
The US was in 18th place, compared with 20th last year. The report noted that it remains among the lowest-ranked leading industrial countries.
Link to full article. May expire in future.
World on brink of eliminating malaria death says UN
from EGov Monitor
Leading figures from government, business and civil society will meet next week in New York to highlight how close the world is to ending malaria deaths by the target date of 2015, a goal that the United Nations special envoy for the disease says is clearly within reach.
According to a report released by the World Health Organization yesterday, progress in malaria control has accelerated dramatically since 2006, particularly in the wake of the Secretary-General’s call for universal malaria control coverage by the end of 2010.
“If we accomplish the Secretary-General’s goal then we will be able to bring malaria deaths to near zero by 2015 at the latest,” Ray Chambers, the Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for Malaria, said in an interview with the UN News Centre.
“I’m very optimistic that it will happen sooner than that. We’re on the brink of bringing it under control and eliminating deaths,” he stated, adding that funding, awareness-raising and partnerships, particularly to increase access to bed nets and medicines, have been key to the success achieved so far.
Mr. Chambers noted that an “unprecedented” amount of funding is being given to malaria, which kills about 3,000 children every day and claims one million lives every year.
“I believe we have the funding, and are likely to have the funding, to complete the Secretary-General’s call for universal coverage by the end of 2010,” he said.
On 25 September, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and General Assembly President Miguel D’Escoto Brockmann are convening a high-level gathering to review progress to date, identify gaps and commit to concrete steps to ensure that all countries can achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
The Goals, with a target date of 2015, range from eradicating extreme poverty and hunger, and achieving universal primary education, to reducing child mortality and combating HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases.
Link to full article. May expire in future.
Leading figures from government, business and civil society will meet next week in New York to highlight how close the world is to ending malaria deaths by the target date of 2015, a goal that the United Nations special envoy for the disease says is clearly within reach.
According to a report released by the World Health Organization yesterday, progress in malaria control has accelerated dramatically since 2006, particularly in the wake of the Secretary-General’s call for universal malaria control coverage by the end of 2010.
“If we accomplish the Secretary-General’s goal then we will be able to bring malaria deaths to near zero by 2015 at the latest,” Ray Chambers, the Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for Malaria, said in an interview with the UN News Centre.
“I’m very optimistic that it will happen sooner than that. We’re on the brink of bringing it under control and eliminating deaths,” he stated, adding that funding, awareness-raising and partnerships, particularly to increase access to bed nets and medicines, have been key to the success achieved so far.
Mr. Chambers noted that an “unprecedented” amount of funding is being given to malaria, which kills about 3,000 children every day and claims one million lives every year.
“I believe we have the funding, and are likely to have the funding, to complete the Secretary-General’s call for universal coverage by the end of 2010,” he said.
On 25 September, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and General Assembly President Miguel D’Escoto Brockmann are convening a high-level gathering to review progress to date, identify gaps and commit to concrete steps to ensure that all countries can achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
The Goals, with a target date of 2015, range from eradicating extreme poverty and hunger, and achieving universal primary education, to reducing child mortality and combating HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases.
Link to full article. May expire in future.
Monday, September 22, 2008
Circle program grads ready to fight poverty
from the Tribune Review
Vickie Allman said she was in the midst of a tough time in her life emotionally and financially as a divorce left her a single mom with four kids ranging in age from 5 to 17. "I was at that point in my life that I needed to do something. I wasn't sure what exactly I needed to do," she said.
Today she is one of four Jeannette residents who are the first to graduate from a program called Circles, presented by Westmoreland Community Action. It's geared toward ending poverty and changing the mind-set and goals of a community. The four graduates are known as "leaders" in the Circles program.
"It's a real good feeling, because we had a chance of losing our house," said Eugene Smorey, who is involved in the program with his wife, Tina. "We learned a whole lot from the program. There's so many programs out there (that can help us); we just didn't know they were there."
His wife said their involvement in Circles will benefit their daughters -- ages 3 and 4. "We want them to look at us differently," she said.
The training period -- called the Getting Ahead curriculum -- began with nine participants. Only four remained throughout the entire 15 weeks, meeting Wednesday nights at the Salvation Army in Jeannette's West End.
"It was pretty impressive. Even though they're done with the class, they don't want to not meet every Wednesday," said Tay Waltenbaugh, Westmoreland Community Action's chief executive officer. "They still want to get together and work on their plans."
Tika Carter said her two kids -- a 19-year old daughter and 12-year old son -- were her motivation to stick with it. "I want them to have a better life than I did growing up, not that it was bad, but it wasn't perfect," Carter said. "They see me doing it, going back to school after 20 years of trying to finish a degree. I'm still struggling a little, but not as bad." "I was needing the extra budgeting,"
Allman said of the difficult time she faced. "This kind of came at the proper time." Next, the leaders will be matched with "allies," who usually come from middle-class backgrounds.
"We're looking for more allies, but right now we have some that can start with the group that's here," said Marilyn Fox, Circles coordinator. Leaders and allies meet to build friendships and work on the circle leaders' dreams, plans and goals. Allies can fill many roles, such as helping the leaders with transportation, education and even financial questions.
Funding for the program was presented by the Westmoreland Now & Forever Fund for the Community Foundation of Westmoreland County, the state departments of Public Welfare and Community and Economic Development.
Jeannette was chosen as the starting point for Circles because it is one of the county's neediest communities. Of Westmoreland's 17 school districts, Monessen, New Kensington-Arnold and Jeannette have the highest percentage of low-income students at 56 percent, 51 percent and 49 percent, respectively, according to the Census Bureau.
The three school districts have the highest percentage of students eligible for free or reduced lunches. Another Circles program is expected to start in Monessen in the near future. A coordinator has been hired and funding is in place.
Vickie Allman said she was in the midst of a tough time in her life emotionally and financially as a divorce left her a single mom with four kids ranging in age from 5 to 17. "I was at that point in my life that I needed to do something. I wasn't sure what exactly I needed to do," she said.
Today she is one of four Jeannette residents who are the first to graduate from a program called Circles, presented by Westmoreland Community Action. It's geared toward ending poverty and changing the mind-set and goals of a community. The four graduates are known as "leaders" in the Circles program.
"It's a real good feeling, because we had a chance of losing our house," said Eugene Smorey, who is involved in the program with his wife, Tina. "We learned a whole lot from the program. There's so many programs out there (that can help us); we just didn't know they were there."
His wife said their involvement in Circles will benefit their daughters -- ages 3 and 4. "We want them to look at us differently," she said.
The training period -- called the Getting Ahead curriculum -- began with nine participants. Only four remained throughout the entire 15 weeks, meeting Wednesday nights at the Salvation Army in Jeannette's West End.
"It was pretty impressive. Even though they're done with the class, they don't want to not meet every Wednesday," said Tay Waltenbaugh, Westmoreland Community Action's chief executive officer. "They still want to get together and work on their plans."
Tika Carter said her two kids -- a 19-year old daughter and 12-year old son -- were her motivation to stick with it. "I want them to have a better life than I did growing up, not that it was bad, but it wasn't perfect," Carter said. "They see me doing it, going back to school after 20 years of trying to finish a degree. I'm still struggling a little, but not as bad." "I was needing the extra budgeting,"
Allman said of the difficult time she faced. "This kind of came at the proper time." Next, the leaders will be matched with "allies," who usually come from middle-class backgrounds.
"We're looking for more allies, but right now we have some that can start with the group that's here," said Marilyn Fox, Circles coordinator. Leaders and allies meet to build friendships and work on the circle leaders' dreams, plans and goals. Allies can fill many roles, such as helping the leaders with transportation, education and even financial questions.
Funding for the program was presented by the Westmoreland Now & Forever Fund for the Community Foundation of Westmoreland County, the state departments of Public Welfare and Community and Economic Development.
Jeannette was chosen as the starting point for Circles because it is one of the county's neediest communities. Of Westmoreland's 17 school districts, Monessen, New Kensington-Arnold and Jeannette have the highest percentage of low-income students at 56 percent, 51 percent and 49 percent, respectively, according to the Census Bureau.
The three school districts have the highest percentage of students eligible for free or reduced lunches. Another Circles program is expected to start in Monessen in the near future. A coordinator has been hired and funding is in place.
Treatment programme woes in Swaziland
from IRIN
Shortages of antiretroviral (ARV) and other drugs in public health facilities in Swaziland have been among a long list of grievances cited by protesters during several weeks of unprecedented political unrest ahead of parliamentary polls on Friday.
Health department officials have admitted that supplies of some ARV drugs ran low in July and August, but insist that the problem has been resolved.
"I can appreciate that people on treatment get very panicky when there are rumours about short supply, but there are people with a political agenda as well, who are using the drug issue to discredit government," said Dr Derek Von Wissel, director of the National Emergency Response Committee on HIV/AIDS (NERCHA).
NERCHA oversees the procurement of ARVs, making use of funds from both the government and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. "There's now a steady supply; stocks are good," he added.
However, Maphangisa Dlamini, a home-based care nurse with Swaziland Positive Living for Life (SWAPOL), an AIDS support organisation whose members have joined some of the demonstrations, told IRIN/PlusNews that a number of health facilities were still experiencing shortages of ARVs and medicines for treating opportunistic infections.
Dlamini said the ARV drug regimens of patients had been changed because certain items were out of stock. "People are complaining; you'll find someone has been on a regimen for four years and then they're changed to a new drug, which might cause side-effects, and they don't know whether to adhere or not."
He claimed that the ARV shortage started three months ago but that hospitals had lacked drugs to treat common infections in people living with HIV, such as oral ulcers, since November 2007. "You have to go to a pharmacist to buy the drugs a doctor has prescribed and poverty is high in Swaziland; people can't afford to buy drugs."
Dr Velephi Okello, ARV therapy coordinator for Swaziland's National AIDS Programme (SNAP), told IRIN/PlusNews that some patients had been switched to other first-line ARV drugs, partly because of the supply problem, but also in response to the latest treatment guidelines from the World Health Organisation.
"The drugs are there," she said. "We have had a challenge of very low stock, but we didn't send anyone home, we just had to ration the drugs to two-week supplies instead of a month."
She admitted that having to make an extra trip to the clinic was a serious obstacle to patients who struggled to afford the bus fare for even one trip a month.
Poverty impeding adherence
With the highest HIV prevalence in the world - 26 percent of adults - Swaziland has a worryingly high default rate for ARV treatment. According to Von Wissel, about 31 percent of patients drop out of treatment in their first year on the medication.
Dlamini is concerned that the drug supply issue may contribute to the high default rate and increase the number of people who develop drug resistance as a result of interrupting their treatment.
"My fear is that now we'll have an HIV that is very resistant to the drugs," he said. "It'll be difficult to treat these drug-resistant strains because second-line drugs are more expensive and not available everywhere."
Okello cited other reasons why people stopped taking their medication. "There's a vicious cycle of poverty and HIV in Swaziland: first you're retrenched [laid off] from work because you're too weak, and then you lack money to buy food, so most of the patients become like beggars; if they find they don't have food, they don't take the medicine," she said. Taking ARVs without food can increase the side effects of the medication.
Two-thirds of Swaziland's people live in chronic poverty, according to the UN Development Programme, and a majority of the population - 600,000 out of less than one million people - depend on food aid from international donor organisations.
Most of the clinics distributing ARVs give patients food supplements provided by the World Food Programme, but Okello noted that hungry family members quickly consumed the monthly rations meant to help HIV-positive patients.
Link to full article. May expire in future.
Shortages of antiretroviral (ARV) and other drugs in public health facilities in Swaziland have been among a long list of grievances cited by protesters during several weeks of unprecedented political unrest ahead of parliamentary polls on Friday.
Health department officials have admitted that supplies of some ARV drugs ran low in July and August, but insist that the problem has been resolved.
"I can appreciate that people on treatment get very panicky when there are rumours about short supply, but there are people with a political agenda as well, who are using the drug issue to discredit government," said Dr Derek Von Wissel, director of the National Emergency Response Committee on HIV/AIDS (NERCHA).
NERCHA oversees the procurement of ARVs, making use of funds from both the government and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. "There's now a steady supply; stocks are good," he added.
However, Maphangisa Dlamini, a home-based care nurse with Swaziland Positive Living for Life (SWAPOL), an AIDS support organisation whose members have joined some of the demonstrations, told IRIN/PlusNews that a number of health facilities were still experiencing shortages of ARVs and medicines for treating opportunistic infections.
Dlamini said the ARV drug regimens of patients had been changed because certain items were out of stock. "People are complaining; you'll find someone has been on a regimen for four years and then they're changed to a new drug, which might cause side-effects, and they don't know whether to adhere or not."
He claimed that the ARV shortage started three months ago but that hospitals had lacked drugs to treat common infections in people living with HIV, such as oral ulcers, since November 2007. "You have to go to a pharmacist to buy the drugs a doctor has prescribed and poverty is high in Swaziland; people can't afford to buy drugs."
Dr Velephi Okello, ARV therapy coordinator for Swaziland's National AIDS Programme (SNAP), told IRIN/PlusNews that some patients had been switched to other first-line ARV drugs, partly because of the supply problem, but also in response to the latest treatment guidelines from the World Health Organisation.
"The drugs are there," she said. "We have had a challenge of very low stock, but we didn't send anyone home, we just had to ration the drugs to two-week supplies instead of a month."
She admitted that having to make an extra trip to the clinic was a serious obstacle to patients who struggled to afford the bus fare for even one trip a month.
Poverty impeding adherence
With the highest HIV prevalence in the world - 26 percent of adults - Swaziland has a worryingly high default rate for ARV treatment. According to Von Wissel, about 31 percent of patients drop out of treatment in their first year on the medication.
Dlamini is concerned that the drug supply issue may contribute to the high default rate and increase the number of people who develop drug resistance as a result of interrupting their treatment.
"My fear is that now we'll have an HIV that is very resistant to the drugs," he said. "It'll be difficult to treat these drug-resistant strains because second-line drugs are more expensive and not available everywhere."
Okello cited other reasons why people stopped taking their medication. "There's a vicious cycle of poverty and HIV in Swaziland: first you're retrenched [laid off] from work because you're too weak, and then you lack money to buy food, so most of the patients become like beggars; if they find they don't have food, they don't take the medicine," she said. Taking ARVs without food can increase the side effects of the medication.
Two-thirds of Swaziland's people live in chronic poverty, according to the UN Development Programme, and a majority of the population - 600,000 out of less than one million people - depend on food aid from international donor organisations.
Most of the clinics distributing ARVs give patients food supplements provided by the World Food Programme, but Okello noted that hungry family members quickly consumed the monthly rations meant to help HIV-positive patients.
Link to full article. May expire in future.
Africa focus of UN forum but Pacific fares worse
from the Sydney Morning Herald
by Kirsty Needham
AFRICA will take centre stage at a United Nations forum this week as world leaders mark the halfway point to the Millennium Development Goals' target date of eradicating poverty by 2015, amid spiralling food and fuel prices.
The Pacific region is also lagging badly in meeting the goals, and Australia's approach towards aid for the region has again been criticised.
Just before a September 25 UN meeting at which governments are expected to increase their commitments to meeting the millennium goals, a Lowy Institute report says Australian aid is ineffective in helping Pacific countries meet the goals.
Fifty per cent of the population of Papua New Guinea live below the poverty line, compared to 41 per cent in sub-Sahara Africa, the report says. "Papua New Guinea is on Africa standards, if not higher, and it is quite worrying for Australia, given they are our nearest neighbour," said the Melanesia program director at the Lowy Institute, Jenny Hayward-Jones.
Ms Hayward-Jones said she welcomed the shift in rhetoric by the Rudd Government to Pacific partnerships that tied aid to improved governance, but she said this "doesn't get away from the problem that aid continues to be delivered from government to government".
Australia will spend $999.5 million on aid in the Pacific this year, but only a small proportion of that will go towards private sector initiatives. Half of the aid money is spent on technical assistance. Ms Hayward-Jones says investing in small businesses, microcredit schemes, and public-private partnerships to maintain roads and ports and provide health and education services, would produce more tangible benefits.
Following the lead of the US and Britain, the Australian Government could encourage corporate sector investment in its developing neighbours, she said.
The head of the UN Development Program's Pacific centre, Gary Wiseman, told the Fiji Times the Pacific had been quite weak in meeting the millennium goals, and food and fuel price rises had made things worse.
Link to full article. May expire in future.
by Kirsty Needham
AFRICA will take centre stage at a United Nations forum this week as world leaders mark the halfway point to the Millennium Development Goals' target date of eradicating poverty by 2015, amid spiralling food and fuel prices.
The Pacific region is also lagging badly in meeting the goals, and Australia's approach towards aid for the region has again been criticised.
Just before a September 25 UN meeting at which governments are expected to increase their commitments to meeting the millennium goals, a Lowy Institute report says Australian aid is ineffective in helping Pacific countries meet the goals.
Fifty per cent of the population of Papua New Guinea live below the poverty line, compared to 41 per cent in sub-Sahara Africa, the report says. "Papua New Guinea is on Africa standards, if not higher, and it is quite worrying for Australia, given they are our nearest neighbour," said the Melanesia program director at the Lowy Institute, Jenny Hayward-Jones.
Ms Hayward-Jones said she welcomed the shift in rhetoric by the Rudd Government to Pacific partnerships that tied aid to improved governance, but she said this "doesn't get away from the problem that aid continues to be delivered from government to government".
Australia will spend $999.5 million on aid in the Pacific this year, but only a small proportion of that will go towards private sector initiatives. Half of the aid money is spent on technical assistance. Ms Hayward-Jones says investing in small businesses, microcredit schemes, and public-private partnerships to maintain roads and ports and provide health and education services, would produce more tangible benefits.
Following the lead of the US and Britain, the Australian Government could encourage corporate sector investment in its developing neighbours, she said.
The head of the UN Development Program's Pacific centre, Gary Wiseman, told the Fiji Times the Pacific had been quite weak in meeting the millennium goals, and food and fuel price rises had made things worse.
Link to full article. May expire in future.
PV students sleep in boxes to raise funds for the needy
from the Chillicothe Gazette
By JONA ISON
BAINBRIDGE - As Pike County prepared to walk for hunger, a group of Paint Valley High School students emerged from cardboard boxes in an effort to raise money for the same cause.
The fundraisers were for CROP - Communities Responding to Overcome Poverty - which was begun in 1947 by Church World Service. CROP is an officially endorsed charity of the Ohio FFA, which is how students at Paint Valley became involved.
Instead of doing a walk, the traditional fundraiser for CROP, FFA advisor John Peters has been doing a "Cardboard City" for the last 12 years. When he started at Paint Valley, he brought the concept with him and has had between 40 and 50 students volunteer each year to sleep in a cardboard box overnight in front of the school for a minimum $20 sponsor.
"Those who do sleep on the front lawn have a better appreciation (of what they have)," Peters said.
While the event raises money for CROP and half goes to the food bank in Bainbridge, it also teaches students about giving back and community service along with an appreciation of those who are less fortunate.
The event goes on each year regardless of the weather, and senior McKenzie Reutinger, chapter president, recalled her first year when there was a misty rain throughout the night.
"It really made me appreciate that I had a warm bed to sleep in. At 2 a.m., they woke me up because my box had sunken in (because of the rain) ... It makes the students realize how blessed they really are. You realize you can't always have what you want," she said.
The dinner students had Saturday night wasn't the normal fare either - each student brought a can of something and it all was put into a kettle and cooked over the fire, a kind of "hobo stew." Jim Everhart, chapter reporter, recalled his first experience with "hobo stew."
"It was pretty interesting. It wasn't as bad as I expected," he said.
Although it's a learning experience, the event also creates a social environment where the group can bond.
Friday, Kim Norman, chapter treasurer, was looking forward to her first time participating.
"I'm kind of excited because it sounds like fun sleeping in a box, and it gives you the experience of not having a place to sleep," she said.
Link to full article. May expire in future.
By JONA ISON
BAINBRIDGE - As Pike County prepared to walk for hunger, a group of Paint Valley High School students emerged from cardboard boxes in an effort to raise money for the same cause.
The fundraisers were for CROP - Communities Responding to Overcome Poverty - which was begun in 1947 by Church World Service. CROP is an officially endorsed charity of the Ohio FFA, which is how students at Paint Valley became involved.
Instead of doing a walk, the traditional fundraiser for CROP, FFA advisor John Peters has been doing a "Cardboard City" for the last 12 years. When he started at Paint Valley, he brought the concept with him and has had between 40 and 50 students volunteer each year to sleep in a cardboard box overnight in front of the school for a minimum $20 sponsor.
"Those who do sleep on the front lawn have a better appreciation (of what they have)," Peters said.
While the event raises money for CROP and half goes to the food bank in Bainbridge, it also teaches students about giving back and community service along with an appreciation of those who are less fortunate.
The event goes on each year regardless of the weather, and senior McKenzie Reutinger, chapter president, recalled her first year when there was a misty rain throughout the night.
"It really made me appreciate that I had a warm bed to sleep in. At 2 a.m., they woke me up because my box had sunken in (because of the rain) ... It makes the students realize how blessed they really are. You realize you can't always have what you want," she said.
The dinner students had Saturday night wasn't the normal fare either - each student brought a can of something and it all was put into a kettle and cooked over the fire, a kind of "hobo stew." Jim Everhart, chapter reporter, recalled his first experience with "hobo stew."
"It was pretty interesting. It wasn't as bad as I expected," he said.
Although it's a learning experience, the event also creates a social environment where the group can bond.
Friday, Kim Norman, chapter treasurer, was looking forward to her first time participating.
"I'm kind of excited because it sounds like fun sleeping in a box, and it gives you the experience of not having a place to sleep," she said.
Link to full article. May expire in future.
World leaders to take stock of Africa's development
from AFP via Google
UNITED NATIONS — World leaders meet here Monday to assess Africa's development at a time when the resource-rich continent, reeling from high energy and food prices, lags behind the rest of the world in meeting poverty-reduction goals.
Representatives of more than 160 countries, among them French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Tanzanian President Jakaya Kikwete, and UN chief Ban Ki-moon are to attend the high-level gathering.
The meeting, which kicks off at 9:00 am (1300 GMT), comes a day before the 192-member UN General Assembly is to open its annual general debate.
Last week, Cheick Sidi Diarra, Ban Ki-moon's special adviser on Africa, said Monday's meeting would serve to help streamline actions and upgrade priorities toward implementing the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD).
NEPAD, launched in 2001 with international backing, is an ambitious blueprint for good governance that aims to help boost Africa's economic performance.
Diarra, however, warned that Africa's economic development still faced huge hurdles, including festering conflicts, internal public mismanagement and in some cases a lack of international support.
He stressed the need for "resolution and leadership ... to turn existing African and international commitments into results" and urged the world community to show greater support.
In a report unveiled September 11, Ban warned that poverty reduction goals agreed by world leaders eight years ago might not be met by the 2015 target date, particularly in Africa.
His Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) Report 2008 was released ahead of another high-level meeting specifically on the MDGs, scheduled for Thursday, on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly session.
It noted improved data from the World Bank confirming that between 1990 and 2005, the number of people living in extreme poverty dropped from 1.8 to 1.4 billion and that the 1990 global poverty rate was likely to be halved by 2015.
But it highlighted the fact that many countries, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, were lagging in the race to achieve their development goals.
Ban also lamented a shortfall of 10 billion dollars (seven billion euros) in donors' commitments.
Total net aid from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries came to only 0.28 percent of their combined Gross National Income, as opposed to the UN target of 0.7 percent, he noted.
But the recent meltdown of the global financial industry that led to a proposed 700-billion-dollar US government bailout is likely to make donors even less willing to offer more help.
Link to full article. May expire in future.
UNITED NATIONS — World leaders meet here Monday to assess Africa's development at a time when the resource-rich continent, reeling from high energy and food prices, lags behind the rest of the world in meeting poverty-reduction goals.
Representatives of more than 160 countries, among them French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Tanzanian President Jakaya Kikwete, and UN chief Ban Ki-moon are to attend the high-level gathering.
The meeting, which kicks off at 9:00 am (1300 GMT), comes a day before the 192-member UN General Assembly is to open its annual general debate.
Last week, Cheick Sidi Diarra, Ban Ki-moon's special adviser on Africa, said Monday's meeting would serve to help streamline actions and upgrade priorities toward implementing the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD).
NEPAD, launched in 2001 with international backing, is an ambitious blueprint for good governance that aims to help boost Africa's economic performance.
Diarra, however, warned that Africa's economic development still faced huge hurdles, including festering conflicts, internal public mismanagement and in some cases a lack of international support.
He stressed the need for "resolution and leadership ... to turn existing African and international commitments into results" and urged the world community to show greater support.
In a report unveiled September 11, Ban warned that poverty reduction goals agreed by world leaders eight years ago might not be met by the 2015 target date, particularly in Africa.
His Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) Report 2008 was released ahead of another high-level meeting specifically on the MDGs, scheduled for Thursday, on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly session.
It noted improved data from the World Bank confirming that between 1990 and 2005, the number of people living in extreme poverty dropped from 1.8 to 1.4 billion and that the 1990 global poverty rate was likely to be halved by 2015.
But it highlighted the fact that many countries, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, were lagging in the race to achieve their development goals.
Ban also lamented a shortfall of 10 billion dollars (seven billion euros) in donors' commitments.
Total net aid from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries came to only 0.28 percent of their combined Gross National Income, as opposed to the UN target of 0.7 percent, he noted.
But the recent meltdown of the global financial industry that led to a proposed 700-billion-dollar US government bailout is likely to make donors even less willing to offer more help.
Link to full article. May expire in future.
Literacy a 'ticket out of poverty'
from the Calgary Herald
by Graeme Morton
For Dariel Bateman, helping students improve their reading skills goes beyond improved grades and an enhanced enjoyment of leisure time.
"I passionately believe that literacy is the most reliable ticket out of poverty," says Bateman, executive director of Calgary Reads, one of five agencies which will benefit from this year's Canwest Raise-a-Reader campaign.
Volunteers will take to downtown Calgary streets early Wednesday morning, offering copies of the Herald in exchange for donations to support local literacy agencies as part of the 2008 Calgary Herald Raise-A-Reader campaign.
The national Canwest campaign has raised more than $10 million for literacy programs in the past seven years while $659,000 has been raised locally for city programs.
Calgary Reads was launched in 1998 as an initiative to help youngsters in Grade 2 who needed a boost in both their reading confidence and competency.
"There is ample research which shows that Grade 2 is really a crucial year for children in their reading development," says Bateman, a teacher and principal for almost 30 years before retiring.
"If you can catch and correct problems at that vital age, students won't fall behind their peers, which can lead to all kinds of problems down the road."
As an example, she cites Maria Abdel Rahman, a Grade 3 student at Valley View School. When her family moved to Calgary from Sudan three years ago, she could speak English but not read it. With the help of a Calgary Reads volunteer who tutored the little girl for four months, she now can't remember what it was like not to read.
Trained volunteers meet with their youthful partners in a quiet corner of their schools for 30 minutes twice a week for 16 weeks.
"That twice-a-week reinforcement is very important in the child's development," says Bateman. "It's not uncommon to see the students gaining a full year in their reading level during their time with their mentor."
What began as 27 student-mentor pairs a decade ago has grown into more that 450 partnerships in 65 public and Catholic elementary schools. Calgary Reads is also expanding into the Rocky View and Golden Hills school divisions.
To volunteer for Calgary Reads, call 403-777-8254.
More information is available on www.calgaryreads.com.
Link to full article. May expire in future.
by Graeme Morton
For Dariel Bateman, helping students improve their reading skills goes beyond improved grades and an enhanced enjoyment of leisure time.
"I passionately believe that literacy is the most reliable ticket out of poverty," says Bateman, executive director of Calgary Reads, one of five agencies which will benefit from this year's Canwest Raise-a-Reader campaign.
Volunteers will take to downtown Calgary streets early Wednesday morning, offering copies of the Herald in exchange for donations to support local literacy agencies as part of the 2008 Calgary Herald Raise-A-Reader campaign.
The national Canwest campaign has raised more than $10 million for literacy programs in the past seven years while $659,000 has been raised locally for city programs.
Calgary Reads was launched in 1998 as an initiative to help youngsters in Grade 2 who needed a boost in both their reading confidence and competency.
"There is ample research which shows that Grade 2 is really a crucial year for children in their reading development," says Bateman, a teacher and principal for almost 30 years before retiring.
"If you can catch and correct problems at that vital age, students won't fall behind their peers, which can lead to all kinds of problems down the road."
As an example, she cites Maria Abdel Rahman, a Grade 3 student at Valley View School. When her family moved to Calgary from Sudan three years ago, she could speak English but not read it. With the help of a Calgary Reads volunteer who tutored the little girl for four months, she now can't remember what it was like not to read.
Trained volunteers meet with their youthful partners in a quiet corner of their schools for 30 minutes twice a week for 16 weeks.
"That twice-a-week reinforcement is very important in the child's development," says Bateman. "It's not uncommon to see the students gaining a full year in their reading level during their time with their mentor."
What began as 27 student-mentor pairs a decade ago has grown into more that 450 partnerships in 65 public and Catholic elementary schools. Calgary Reads is also expanding into the Rocky View and Golden Hills school divisions.
To volunteer for Calgary Reads, call 403-777-8254.
More information is available on www.calgaryreads.com.
Link to full article. May expire in future.
Friday, September 19, 2008
Chasing the Cheetahs
from Ode Magazine
In the centre of Harare, Zimbabwe, a two-story retail shop is filled to the brim with the hopes of African parents for their children. Stacked neatly in storage cubicles that line the walls of Enbee Stores are the multicoloured uniforms of area schools. Parents come to this shop, or the 25 other Enbee outlets around the country, to purchase what’s often the best set of clothing their children will own.
In 1958, local entrepreneur Natu Patel got the idea to create a school uniform business. When he saw the children returning from school on the streets of Harare, Patel realized there must be a huge market for school uniforms—so he started manufacturing them. These days, the primary store in downtown Harare has two stories of pressed shirts, shorts, skirts and ties in all the colours of area schools. A complete wardrobe for a new student can run $500, and must be replaced every other year.
Even in a tight economic environment, parents have proved reluctant to cut back on their children’s educations. A school uniform is a matter of pride. For workers with good jobs, employers will often contribute to school fees and costs. In a country with high birth rates and parents who place a premium on educating their children, Enbee’s market is sure to grow.
And Enbee isn’t the only company to benefit from a youth market on a continent where the people are growing younger every day. With 41 percent of its population under the age of 15, Africa is one of the youngest markets in the world, according to the Population Reference Bureau’s 2007 World Population Data Sheet. That’s compared to 33 percent for India and 28 percent for Brazil. The developed world, in contrast, is aging rapidly. Just 20 percent of the North American population is under 15; those figures are 16 percent for Europe and 14 percent for Japan. Whereas much of the developed world is worried about a birth dearth, Africa’s population explosion is redefining the future of its consumer market. There, youth are a force that’s changing politics and driving economics.
These young Africans are different from their parents, and from peers in the West. Ghanaian economist George Ayittey has called them "the cheetah generation" because they move faster than "the hippo generation," the group that’s in power but mired in the past.
The hippos are still complaining about colonialism and imperialism, while the fast-moving cheetahs are demanding democracy, transparency and an end to corruption. Ayittey says the future of Africa rests "on the backs of these cheetahs." Here are some of their other signature characteristics:
They’re motivated. When American talk show host Oprah Winfrey was criticized for donating $40 million to build a school for girls in South Africa instead of donating the money to inner-city schools in the U.S., she talked about the difference in attitudes. "If you ask the kids [in the U.S.] what they want or need, they will say an iPod or some sneakers," she told Newsweek. "In South Africa, they don’t ask for money or toys. They ask for uniforms so they can go to school." This may go a long way toward accelerating the progress of the next generation in Africa.
Its members have values. A study by The Coca-Cola Company found African youth draw their role models from intellectual and artistic leaders. In Morocco, youth point to their new king; in Kenya, poets and artists; in South Africa, Nelson Mandela. Their heroes are determined by the value systems of their countries.
They combine old and new. In every country, young people have their own language. In Kenya, for example, youth might speak in Swahili when talking about their everyday lives, but turn to English for discussions of jobs or philosophy, while Sheng—a hybrid of Swahili and English along with other Kenyan dialects—is the dominant language of rappers on music videos playing on the plasma screens in the newer matatus (minibuses) that crisscross Nairobi. In an article in National Geographic, Kenyan writer Binyavanga Wainaina discussed the "dual personalities" of Nairobi youth. "This is the tension that best defines Nairobi: to try (and often fail) to live within the world views of our traditional nations; to try (and often fail) to be seamless, Western-educated people; to try (and often fail) to be Kenyans—still a new and bewildering idea." African youth have a complex and textured experience, connected to global trends and local traditions. Old and new exist side by side the way English and Swahili come together to create Sheng.
Youth are fast and connected. A Television commercial for engineering conglomerate Siemens A.G. illustrates the impact of cellular phone networks. A native of a Tanzanian village returns from abroad sporting a new "leopard" hairstyle, his head painted with spots. He calls his family on a mobile phone from the airport saying he has a surprise for them. But admirers with cellphone cameras take his photo in the city and send the image across the country, even to his home village. While he’s in transit, all the salons begin offering leopard hairstyles. By the time he arrives home by bus, everyone in his village is sporting the same hairstyle. When his family asks him about his surprise, he just shrugs. Through connections and speed, the young generation has gained a different view of the world. One cheetah (or leopard, in this case), connected with a cellphone, can transform an entire society.
Rising aspirations and the demographics of a youth market have created a tremendous demand for education. This can be seen not just in the need for uniforms, as demonstrated by Enbee’s business in Zimbabwe, but for colleges and universities.
New educational technologies are spreading across the continent, thanks in part to public-private partnerships. The New Partnership for Africa’s Development launched a project to bring technology to 600,000 "e-schools" in more than 16 African countries in a decade. The project was designed to provide schools with equipment such as computers, TVs, radios and telephones with the help of corporate partners including Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft, Oracle and Cisco. The goal is to equip African youth with the knowledge and skills to participate in the global economy.
Demand is also growing for universities. The highly selective American University in Cairo, Egypt, has more than 80,000 students, but the nearby University of Cairo has 350,000—a small city. Some beginning classes there have as many as 7,000 students enrolled, and it isn’t uncommon to have several students with identical names. These aren’t classes, but conventions. Still, there aren’t enough schools to meet the demand. The problem of illegal colleges, a concern in many African countries, is a sign of the magnitude of the unmet need.
Universities and business schools are expanding across Africa. Guy Pfeffermann, director of the International Finance Corporation’s Global Business School Network, notes, "Stronger business schools can be important tools for contributing to economic growth in African countries. The new association will create opportunities for professional networking in three dimensions: North-South, South-South and perhaps most important, among African schools themselves."
Meanwhile, business schools in the U.S. and Europe are showing new interest in Africa, as they did in China and India several years ago. Top U.S. business schools are inviting faculty to their campuses, setting up African exchange and degree programs and holding alumni programs in Africa.
Vijay Mahajan holds the John P. Harbin Centennial Chair in Business at McCombs School of Business within the University of Texas at Austin. This is an edited excerpt from his book, Africa Rising: How 900 Million African Consumers Offer More Than You Think, which will be published in September by Wharton School Publishing.
Link to full article. May expire in future.
In the centre of Harare, Zimbabwe, a two-story retail shop is filled to the brim with the hopes of African parents for their children. Stacked neatly in storage cubicles that line the walls of Enbee Stores are the multicoloured uniforms of area schools. Parents come to this shop, or the 25 other Enbee outlets around the country, to purchase what’s often the best set of clothing their children will own.
In 1958, local entrepreneur Natu Patel got the idea to create a school uniform business. When he saw the children returning from school on the streets of Harare, Patel realized there must be a huge market for school uniforms—so he started manufacturing them. These days, the primary store in downtown Harare has two stories of pressed shirts, shorts, skirts and ties in all the colours of area schools. A complete wardrobe for a new student can run $500, and must be replaced every other year.
Even in a tight economic environment, parents have proved reluctant to cut back on their children’s educations. A school uniform is a matter of pride. For workers with good jobs, employers will often contribute to school fees and costs. In a country with high birth rates and parents who place a premium on educating their children, Enbee’s market is sure to grow.
And Enbee isn’t the only company to benefit from a youth market on a continent where the people are growing younger every day. With 41 percent of its population under the age of 15, Africa is one of the youngest markets in the world, according to the Population Reference Bureau’s 2007 World Population Data Sheet. That’s compared to 33 percent for India and 28 percent for Brazil. The developed world, in contrast, is aging rapidly. Just 20 percent of the North American population is under 15; those figures are 16 percent for Europe and 14 percent for Japan. Whereas much of the developed world is worried about a birth dearth, Africa’s population explosion is redefining the future of its consumer market. There, youth are a force that’s changing politics and driving economics.
These young Africans are different from their parents, and from peers in the West. Ghanaian economist George Ayittey has called them "the cheetah generation" because they move faster than "the hippo generation," the group that’s in power but mired in the past.
The hippos are still complaining about colonialism and imperialism, while the fast-moving cheetahs are demanding democracy, transparency and an end to corruption. Ayittey says the future of Africa rests "on the backs of these cheetahs." Here are some of their other signature characteristics:
They’re motivated. When American talk show host Oprah Winfrey was criticized for donating $40 million to build a school for girls in South Africa instead of donating the money to inner-city schools in the U.S., she talked about the difference in attitudes. "If you ask the kids [in the U.S.] what they want or need, they will say an iPod or some sneakers," she told Newsweek. "In South Africa, they don’t ask for money or toys. They ask for uniforms so they can go to school." This may go a long way toward accelerating the progress of the next generation in Africa.
Its members have values. A study by The Coca-Cola Company found African youth draw their role models from intellectual and artistic leaders. In Morocco, youth point to their new king; in Kenya, poets and artists; in South Africa, Nelson Mandela. Their heroes are determined by the value systems of their countries.
They combine old and new. In every country, young people have their own language. In Kenya, for example, youth might speak in Swahili when talking about their everyday lives, but turn to English for discussions of jobs or philosophy, while Sheng—a hybrid of Swahili and English along with other Kenyan dialects—is the dominant language of rappers on music videos playing on the plasma screens in the newer matatus (minibuses) that crisscross Nairobi. In an article in National Geographic, Kenyan writer Binyavanga Wainaina discussed the "dual personalities" of Nairobi youth. "This is the tension that best defines Nairobi: to try (and often fail) to live within the world views of our traditional nations; to try (and often fail) to be seamless, Western-educated people; to try (and often fail) to be Kenyans—still a new and bewildering idea." African youth have a complex and textured experience, connected to global trends and local traditions. Old and new exist side by side the way English and Swahili come together to create Sheng.
Youth are fast and connected. A Television commercial for engineering conglomerate Siemens A.G. illustrates the impact of cellular phone networks. A native of a Tanzanian village returns from abroad sporting a new "leopard" hairstyle, his head painted with spots. He calls his family on a mobile phone from the airport saying he has a surprise for them. But admirers with cellphone cameras take his photo in the city and send the image across the country, even to his home village. While he’s in transit, all the salons begin offering leopard hairstyles. By the time he arrives home by bus, everyone in his village is sporting the same hairstyle. When his family asks him about his surprise, he just shrugs. Through connections and speed, the young generation has gained a different view of the world. One cheetah (or leopard, in this case), connected with a cellphone, can transform an entire society.
Rising aspirations and the demographics of a youth market have created a tremendous demand for education. This can be seen not just in the need for uniforms, as demonstrated by Enbee’s business in Zimbabwe, but for colleges and universities.
New educational technologies are spreading across the continent, thanks in part to public-private partnerships. The New Partnership for Africa’s Development launched a project to bring technology to 600,000 "e-schools" in more than 16 African countries in a decade. The project was designed to provide schools with equipment such as computers, TVs, radios and telephones with the help of corporate partners including Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft, Oracle and Cisco. The goal is to equip African youth with the knowledge and skills to participate in the global economy.
Demand is also growing for universities. The highly selective American University in Cairo, Egypt, has more than 80,000 students, but the nearby University of Cairo has 350,000—a small city. Some beginning classes there have as many as 7,000 students enrolled, and it isn’t uncommon to have several students with identical names. These aren’t classes, but conventions. Still, there aren’t enough schools to meet the demand. The problem of illegal colleges, a concern in many African countries, is a sign of the magnitude of the unmet need.
Universities and business schools are expanding across Africa. Guy Pfeffermann, director of the International Finance Corporation’s Global Business School Network, notes, "Stronger business schools can be important tools for contributing to economic growth in African countries. The new association will create opportunities for professional networking in three dimensions: North-South, South-South and perhaps most important, among African schools themselves."
Meanwhile, business schools in the U.S. and Europe are showing new interest in Africa, as they did in China and India several years ago. Top U.S. business schools are inviting faculty to their campuses, setting up African exchange and degree programs and holding alumni programs in Africa.
Vijay Mahajan holds the John P. Harbin Centennial Chair in Business at McCombs School of Business within the University of Texas at Austin. This is an edited excerpt from his book, Africa Rising: How 900 Million African Consumers Offer More Than You Think, which will be published in September by Wharton School Publishing.
Link to full article. May expire in future.
Sea of hope and desperation
from the Age
by Paola Totaro
THE SMELL will remain imprinted forever, an acrid cocktail of sweat, urine and sheer exhaustion, the odour of hope and the stench of despair. In surreal, dignified silence, men, women and tiny children hobble down the gangplank, a sea of haunted faces clutching little more than each other or a plastic water bottle, long since sucked dry.
An infernal scene, it is played out daily on the vast concrete wharf that dominates the tiny Italian port of Lampedusa. There is no moaning, no wailing, just the deep drone of boat engines churning water, the shout of coast guards mooring, a seagull's cry. On land, safe and at last shaded from the vicious 40-plus-degree heat, the relief is palpable, if fleeting.
Between January and August, nearly 20,000 people made the perilous overland journey to the coasts of Libya or Tunisia, to cross the Mediterranean and land on Italy's southernmost territory, the islet of Lampedusa. Many have already spent weeks, months and even years on the road and once on the coast, must entrust what little money they have left to the local criminal syndicates that traffic in human beings, and smaller and ever more dangerous boats.
So far in 2008 an estimated 600 souls have perished at sea trying to get to Italy, while more than 18,000 are estimated to have disappeared or died en route from Africa to Europe since the mid-1990s. Today, the fishermen and commercial trawlers that work the waters between North Africa, Sicily and Malta haul in human remains with horrible regularity but admit that they no longer bother to report their finds to the authorities. Lampedusa's fishermen state openly, if anonymously, that they simply can't afford the loss of a day's income while the slow grind of bureaucracy works through the grisly paperwork.
Dr Marinella Cantalice, of Lampedusa's Medecins Sans Frontieres, says the provenance of the "clandestini" (illegals) has changed over the past two years: "It used to be that they came primarily from the Mahgreb (Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco, Sudan). Now, 70% are from the sub-Saharan regions and 30% of those from the Horn of Africa: Eritrea, Ethiopia, Somalia. They arrive after long journeys, dehydrated, stiff, sore, with swollen feet and sometimes burned by the mix of salt, urine, petrol."
Laura Boldrini, spokeswoman for the UN's High Commissioner for Refugees, says that in the past year, the number of women and children arriving on the boats has doubled. This year, 678 minors have reached Lampedusa alone, without family.
"The characteristics, the profile of the African immigrant has changed. It is no longer merely about finding work and a better economic life but about surviving war, persecution, famine," she says. "The Mediterranean is increasingly Africa's roadway to political asylum … we cannot pretend that this is not happening, nor can we ignore the phenomenon any longer."
We are asked over and over again by asylum seekers: "What is it like in Australia? Is it like here? Is it true that they let people, even children, drown when they come on the boats? Come, come and see what we do."
THE SIGHTINGS come at all times of the day. During summer, the seas are flat and calm and traffic increases dramatically: The Age spent a week on call with Medecins Sans Frontieres and the Guardia Costiera (Italian Coast Guard), and on the Wednesday, no less than seven boats arrived on the island.
The largest, a 15-metre wooden fishing vessel was reported early in the morning by a yacht that radioed its position to the coast guard. Within half an hour, a launch loaded with water and medical supplies steamed out of port with a crew of seven including Order of Malta medical volunteers, a doctor and specialist nurse.
The boat's commander, Gildo Damanti, estimated it would take close to two hours to reach the stricken boat: "All we know is that there are many, many people on board. We have water and some food but we cannot make a decision on what to do and how to get them in until we get there."
The trip, under a baking sun, seemed interminable, the gallows humour of the crew and medical staff made clear the high tension. When binoculars discerned two pinpricks on the horizon — the white sails of the yacht within a discreet distance of a light-blue wooden boat — the launch buzzed into frenetic activity. An aerial swoop by the coast guard's plane radioed details and the crew and medical back-up donned rubber gloves, sterile suits and masks. Once the boat came into view, a hush fell over the launch.
"Dear God, how many?" whispered a crewman.
The sight was unforgettable, an almost impossible number of human beings perched on the deck, on the roof, on the sides, hanging over rails, below deck and sitting on top of each other. The desperation was visible, dry cracked lips, shouts for "water, water", but when bottles were thrown over, fights broke out, leading the boat to list dangerously and prompting the coast guards to wave axe handles and a wooden oar above the men's heads in a distressing — but necessary — attempt to restore order. The sheer numbers, 332 men and women, meant it was impossible for one launch to take them all, and an attempt to start the fishing boat's engine and tow it to shore was thwarted by the refugees. Terrified they might be abandoned, they threw the engine keys into the sea. It took another three hours before a second launch arrived, let alone to calm the migrants enough to bail water while they waited. Women, 45 in total, were transferred first: most were from Nigeria and had been travelling for weeks — one said three months — before they began their sea journey. They had been without water or food since they sailed from Africa four days before.
Exhausted, dead-eyed, they spoke of fleeing violence: "I have my brother, my daughter … my parents dead, they shoot my mother, I decide to run," Eli, a 36-year-old Nigerian woman told The Age.
Said 26-year-old Charity before dissolving into sobs: "My father was a soldier. He was shot in the war and he was dead and my mother had nobody to take care of me and my brother and two children … I don't know what has brought me to this place, I don't know, I don't know."
Despite the difficulty of the task, the crew showed extraordinary compassion. One sat on the front deck, in the baking heat and smell, singing songs to keep the men's spirits up on the long, slow limp back to port. "Being useful to other human beings is half the satisfaction of the job," said one of the crew, Giovanni Iuculano.
"Our work means something … this boat alone has saved 2000 people during the last three years. We fish out 10 to 15,000 out of the sea every year," said his colleague, Vincenzo Caracausi.
On land, after triage by the Medecins Sans Frontieres crew, the new arrivals are quickly loaded onto buses and ferried to a rocky valley once used to bury American troops during World War II. Here, out of sight of tourists and in a centre rebuilt a year ago with European Union money — originally it was just a cluster of rundown military barracks — migrants are given clean clothes, shoes and a telephone card. They are photographed, identified (if possible) and after a few days' rest, are sent, by air, ferry or hydrofoil to one of Italy's mainland centres, where they await the process of applications for papers and asylum.
Sebastiano Maccarrone, the centre's director, is ferocious when I use the words "detention centre" during our first visit. His charges are "ospiti" (guests) and they are not held against their will, he insists.
"These poor desperate people come to us, to Europe to find a new life and to find succour. This is a welcome centre."
Behind big metal gates, guarded by armed soldiers and police, locked in their hundreds into hot, concrete, segregated yards, the word "welcome" seems hollow. And yet a couple of days later, when we visit again to try to find the young women we interviewed on the coast guard launch, they are clean, rested and manage to smile despite their anxiety.
The Lampedusa operation costs Italian taxpayers an estimated 50 million euros ($A91 million) a year, a cost that has increasingly infuriated the island's locals. Their own town centre is reminiscent of a Third World shantytown, with decrepit buildings, potholed roads, a crumbling school, ancient desalinator and no hospital. Lampedusa's administration falls within the prefecture of Agrigento in Sicily — which happens to be 250 kilometres away — while Tunisia is just 113 kilometres away.
The irony is that while locals complain, the African exodus has created a state-funded service industry in which local contractors vie to win multimillion-dollar tenders to provide clothes, food, security and transport services to the centre each year.
Then there is the hypocrisy of the Government of Silvio Berlusconi and the anti-immigration Northern League, who gleefully whip up xenophobia as a campaign tool but stay silent about the exploitation of African illegal immigrants who pick the fruit and crops produced by southern Italy to feed the north.
The Italian Medecins Sans Frontieres recently prepared a major — and horrifying — report about conditions for these workers. (Aptly, they titled it The Fruits of Hypocrisy).
On Lampedusa, in its restaurants, its bars, its shops, the locals preface their observations with "I am not racist, but …" before delivering diatribes about the boat people's effect on tourism. The local Mayor, Bernardino de Reubis, told an Italian newspaper last week that he is "not a racist", while observing that "the stench of Negro flesh stinks even when it is washed".
In an interview with The Age a couple of days later, he was mortified, insisting he had been taken out of context: "I was talking about what happened last month when 1900 people were crammed into the centre in 40-degree heat … in such terrible conditions, white flesh, any flesh would smell."
De Reubis said that as a Catholic, offering help to the less fortunate is an imperative. But now, the island's own people need help too. Angela Maraventano, his deputy, is a senator for the anti-immigration Northern League who has not only called for the immigration centre to be moved to a ship offshore but echoed a call by league leader Umberto Bossi, who argues the best way to stop the exodus from Africa is to shoot over boat people's heads "just as a warning".
SEEKING REFUGE
■Italy has an estimated 3.7 million legal immigrants.
■Estimates of illegal immigrants range from 600,000 to more than 800,000.
■13% of illegal immigrants arrive by sea.
■250,000 are estimated to have arrived via Lampedusa since 1993.
■Italy began anti-immigration military swoops in May and expulsions rose 15%.
■20,000 of Italy's 55,000 prisoners are immigrants.
Paola Totaro is Europe correspondent.
Link to full article. May expire in future.
by Paola Totaro
THE SMELL will remain imprinted forever, an acrid cocktail of sweat, urine and sheer exhaustion, the odour of hope and the stench of despair. In surreal, dignified silence, men, women and tiny children hobble down the gangplank, a sea of haunted faces clutching little more than each other or a plastic water bottle, long since sucked dry.
An infernal scene, it is played out daily on the vast concrete wharf that dominates the tiny Italian port of Lampedusa. There is no moaning, no wailing, just the deep drone of boat engines churning water, the shout of coast guards mooring, a seagull's cry. On land, safe and at last shaded from the vicious 40-plus-degree heat, the relief is palpable, if fleeting.
Between January and August, nearly 20,000 people made the perilous overland journey to the coasts of Libya or Tunisia, to cross the Mediterranean and land on Italy's southernmost territory, the islet of Lampedusa. Many have already spent weeks, months and even years on the road and once on the coast, must entrust what little money they have left to the local criminal syndicates that traffic in human beings, and smaller and ever more dangerous boats.
So far in 2008 an estimated 600 souls have perished at sea trying to get to Italy, while more than 18,000 are estimated to have disappeared or died en route from Africa to Europe since the mid-1990s. Today, the fishermen and commercial trawlers that work the waters between North Africa, Sicily and Malta haul in human remains with horrible regularity but admit that they no longer bother to report their finds to the authorities. Lampedusa's fishermen state openly, if anonymously, that they simply can't afford the loss of a day's income while the slow grind of bureaucracy works through the grisly paperwork.
Dr Marinella Cantalice, of Lampedusa's Medecins Sans Frontieres, says the provenance of the "clandestini" (illegals) has changed over the past two years: "It used to be that they came primarily from the Mahgreb (Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco, Sudan). Now, 70% are from the sub-Saharan regions and 30% of those from the Horn of Africa: Eritrea, Ethiopia, Somalia. They arrive after long journeys, dehydrated, stiff, sore, with swollen feet and sometimes burned by the mix of salt, urine, petrol."
Laura Boldrini, spokeswoman for the UN's High Commissioner for Refugees, says that in the past year, the number of women and children arriving on the boats has doubled. This year, 678 minors have reached Lampedusa alone, without family.
"The characteristics, the profile of the African immigrant has changed. It is no longer merely about finding work and a better economic life but about surviving war, persecution, famine," she says. "The Mediterranean is increasingly Africa's roadway to political asylum … we cannot pretend that this is not happening, nor can we ignore the phenomenon any longer."
We are asked over and over again by asylum seekers: "What is it like in Australia? Is it like here? Is it true that they let people, even children, drown when they come on the boats? Come, come and see what we do."
THE SIGHTINGS come at all times of the day. During summer, the seas are flat and calm and traffic increases dramatically: The Age spent a week on call with Medecins Sans Frontieres and the Guardia Costiera (Italian Coast Guard), and on the Wednesday, no less than seven boats arrived on the island.
The largest, a 15-metre wooden fishing vessel was reported early in the morning by a yacht that radioed its position to the coast guard. Within half an hour, a launch loaded with water and medical supplies steamed out of port with a crew of seven including Order of Malta medical volunteers, a doctor and specialist nurse.
The boat's commander, Gildo Damanti, estimated it would take close to two hours to reach the stricken boat: "All we know is that there are many, many people on board. We have water and some food but we cannot make a decision on what to do and how to get them in until we get there."
The trip, under a baking sun, seemed interminable, the gallows humour of the crew and medical staff made clear the high tension. When binoculars discerned two pinpricks on the horizon — the white sails of the yacht within a discreet distance of a light-blue wooden boat — the launch buzzed into frenetic activity. An aerial swoop by the coast guard's plane radioed details and the crew and medical back-up donned rubber gloves, sterile suits and masks. Once the boat came into view, a hush fell over the launch.
"Dear God, how many?" whispered a crewman.
The sight was unforgettable, an almost impossible number of human beings perched on the deck, on the roof, on the sides, hanging over rails, below deck and sitting on top of each other. The desperation was visible, dry cracked lips, shouts for "water, water", but when bottles were thrown over, fights broke out, leading the boat to list dangerously and prompting the coast guards to wave axe handles and a wooden oar above the men's heads in a distressing — but necessary — attempt to restore order. The sheer numbers, 332 men and women, meant it was impossible for one launch to take them all, and an attempt to start the fishing boat's engine and tow it to shore was thwarted by the refugees. Terrified they might be abandoned, they threw the engine keys into the sea. It took another three hours before a second launch arrived, let alone to calm the migrants enough to bail water while they waited. Women, 45 in total, were transferred first: most were from Nigeria and had been travelling for weeks — one said three months — before they began their sea journey. They had been without water or food since they sailed from Africa four days before.
Exhausted, dead-eyed, they spoke of fleeing violence: "I have my brother, my daughter … my parents dead, they shoot my mother, I decide to run," Eli, a 36-year-old Nigerian woman told The Age.
Said 26-year-old Charity before dissolving into sobs: "My father was a soldier. He was shot in the war and he was dead and my mother had nobody to take care of me and my brother and two children … I don't know what has brought me to this place, I don't know, I don't know."
Despite the difficulty of the task, the crew showed extraordinary compassion. One sat on the front deck, in the baking heat and smell, singing songs to keep the men's spirits up on the long, slow limp back to port. "Being useful to other human beings is half the satisfaction of the job," said one of the crew, Giovanni Iuculano.
"Our work means something … this boat alone has saved 2000 people during the last three years. We fish out 10 to 15,000 out of the sea every year," said his colleague, Vincenzo Caracausi.
On land, after triage by the Medecins Sans Frontieres crew, the new arrivals are quickly loaded onto buses and ferried to a rocky valley once used to bury American troops during World War II. Here, out of sight of tourists and in a centre rebuilt a year ago with European Union money — originally it was just a cluster of rundown military barracks — migrants are given clean clothes, shoes and a telephone card. They are photographed, identified (if possible) and after a few days' rest, are sent, by air, ferry or hydrofoil to one of Italy's mainland centres, where they await the process of applications for papers and asylum.
Sebastiano Maccarrone, the centre's director, is ferocious when I use the words "detention centre" during our first visit. His charges are "ospiti" (guests) and they are not held against their will, he insists.
"These poor desperate people come to us, to Europe to find a new life and to find succour. This is a welcome centre."
Behind big metal gates, guarded by armed soldiers and police, locked in their hundreds into hot, concrete, segregated yards, the word "welcome" seems hollow. And yet a couple of days later, when we visit again to try to find the young women we interviewed on the coast guard launch, they are clean, rested and manage to smile despite their anxiety.
The Lampedusa operation costs Italian taxpayers an estimated 50 million euros ($A91 million) a year, a cost that has increasingly infuriated the island's locals. Their own town centre is reminiscent of a Third World shantytown, with decrepit buildings, potholed roads, a crumbling school, ancient desalinator and no hospital. Lampedusa's administration falls within the prefecture of Agrigento in Sicily — which happens to be 250 kilometres away — while Tunisia is just 113 kilometres away.
The irony is that while locals complain, the African exodus has created a state-funded service industry in which local contractors vie to win multimillion-dollar tenders to provide clothes, food, security and transport services to the centre each year.
Then there is the hypocrisy of the Government of Silvio Berlusconi and the anti-immigration Northern League, who gleefully whip up xenophobia as a campaign tool but stay silent about the exploitation of African illegal immigrants who pick the fruit and crops produced by southern Italy to feed the north.
The Italian Medecins Sans Frontieres recently prepared a major — and horrifying — report about conditions for these workers. (Aptly, they titled it The Fruits of Hypocrisy).
On Lampedusa, in its restaurants, its bars, its shops, the locals preface their observations with "I am not racist, but …" before delivering diatribes about the boat people's effect on tourism. The local Mayor, Bernardino de Reubis, told an Italian newspaper last week that he is "not a racist", while observing that "the stench of Negro flesh stinks even when it is washed".
In an interview with The Age a couple of days later, he was mortified, insisting he had been taken out of context: "I was talking about what happened last month when 1900 people were crammed into the centre in 40-degree heat … in such terrible conditions, white flesh, any flesh would smell."
De Reubis said that as a Catholic, offering help to the less fortunate is an imperative. But now, the island's own people need help too. Angela Maraventano, his deputy, is a senator for the anti-immigration Northern League who has not only called for the immigration centre to be moved to a ship offshore but echoed a call by league leader Umberto Bossi, who argues the best way to stop the exodus from Africa is to shoot over boat people's heads "just as a warning".
SEEKING REFUGE
■Italy has an estimated 3.7 million legal immigrants.
■Estimates of illegal immigrants range from 600,000 to more than 800,000.
■13% of illegal immigrants arrive by sea.
■250,000 are estimated to have arrived via Lampedusa since 1993.
■Italy began anti-immigration military swoops in May and expulsions rose 15%.
■20,000 of Italy's 55,000 prisoners are immigrants.
Paola Totaro is Europe correspondent.
Link to full article. May expire in future.
EU aid study critical of efforts to fight poverty
from the Associated Press via Google
By CONSTANT BRAND
BRUSSELS, Belgium — A food crisis and economic turmoil are threatening to scuttle U.N. goals to halve extreme poverty around the world by 2015, according to an EU report released Friday.
The report, written by a group of researchers from European and U.S. universities, urged top global donors such as the 27-nation EU bloc, the United States and others to meet their aid promises and make sure their aid is spent effectively.
At a time of tight national budgets and the U.S. financial crisis, "Progress needs to be accelerated and this requires stronger policy coherence at all levels," said Francois Bourguignon, from the Paris School of Economics, who chaired the group.
Despite some advances, the researchers warned donors to adapt their aid policies quickly to meet new problems ahead.
The group painted a dire picture for the world's poorest nations, especially those in sub-Saharan Africa, which see the highest rates of poverty and deprivation.
The surge in food prices was partly due to the production of bio-fuels in the EU and United States, the group said, adding it is "undoubtedly slowing down, and possibly reversing poverty reduction."
The report said progress to date had been "highly uneven," with Asian nations such as India, China and Indonesia moving ahead, thanks to strong economic growth, but others in Africa staying behind because little has been done to ensure aid programs are drawn up better to address specific problems they face.
It also urged donors to start drawing up aid goals beyond the 2015 target, warning that many of the poorest countries will not be able to meet the goals in seven years time. The report said the location and distribution of poor people is changing due to a rapid shift of populations from rural areas to cities and changing economic times.
The EU's Development Aid Commissioner Louis Michel has told member states they must increase their assistance to poor countries, if they want to meet the U.N. goals.
Statistics in April showed the EU as a whole slipped below 2006 aid levels last year. It was the first time that had happened since it committed itself in 2000 to raising aid spending on a yearly basis.
The 27 EU nations spent 0.38 percent of their gross national income on development aid in 2007, compared with 0.41 percent in 2006. That amounted to 47.7 billion euros ($69.2 billion) in 2006, and euro46.1 billion ($66.9 billion) in 2007.
Link to full article. May expire in future.
By CONSTANT BRAND
BRUSSELS, Belgium — A food crisis and economic turmoil are threatening to scuttle U.N. goals to halve extreme poverty around the world by 2015, according to an EU report released Friday.
The report, written by a group of researchers from European and U.S. universities, urged top global donors such as the 27-nation EU bloc, the United States and others to meet their aid promises and make sure their aid is spent effectively.
At a time of tight national budgets and the U.S. financial crisis, "Progress needs to be accelerated and this requires stronger policy coherence at all levels," said Francois Bourguignon, from the Paris School of Economics, who chaired the group.
Despite some advances, the researchers warned donors to adapt their aid policies quickly to meet new problems ahead.
The group painted a dire picture for the world's poorest nations, especially those in sub-Saharan Africa, which see the highest rates of poverty and deprivation.
The surge in food prices was partly due to the production of bio-fuels in the EU and United States, the group said, adding it is "undoubtedly slowing down, and possibly reversing poverty reduction."
The report said progress to date had been "highly uneven," with Asian nations such as India, China and Indonesia moving ahead, thanks to strong economic growth, but others in Africa staying behind because little has been done to ensure aid programs are drawn up better to address specific problems they face.
It also urged donors to start drawing up aid goals beyond the 2015 target, warning that many of the poorest countries will not be able to meet the goals in seven years time. The report said the location and distribution of poor people is changing due to a rapid shift of populations from rural areas to cities and changing economic times.
The EU's Development Aid Commissioner Louis Michel has told member states they must increase their assistance to poor countries, if they want to meet the U.N. goals.
Statistics in April showed the EU as a whole slipped below 2006 aid levels last year. It was the first time that had happened since it committed itself in 2000 to raising aid spending on a yearly basis.
The 27 EU nations spent 0.38 percent of their gross national income on development aid in 2007, compared with 0.41 percent in 2006. That amounted to 47.7 billion euros ($69.2 billion) in 2006, and euro46.1 billion ($66.9 billion) in 2007.
Link to full article. May expire in future.
Thursday, September 18, 2008
Indo President Calls For Concrete Steps to Overcome Poverty
from Asia Pulse
MAJENANG, Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono called on all parties on Thursday to overcome poverty and unemployment with concrete steps and not just slogans.
"It is not enough to put up only ads but there must be concrete steps to overcome it," he said in a dialogue with local community members and micro-businessmen.
The head of state said prosperity, marked by the decreasing number of poor people and the unemployed, would not come from heaven but had to be achieved through efforts by all parties.
"Difficult it may be but we must not surrender nor remain idle. We must continue to strive to achieve it by all the ways and means at our disposal," he said.
According to the president, one of the fields that could promote development of economic ventures was micro-businesses such as household craftsmanship.
"The government will give support with credit and other facilities but on the other hand businessmen must be tough and willing to work hard," he said.
President Yudhoyono's visit to the region was part of his Ramadhan tour of a number of towns in Central and West Java. The Majenang district is known for its cottage industrial products such as bamboo crafts, banana, eels, cassava chips and other kinds of food products.
MAJENANG, Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono called on all parties on Thursday to overcome poverty and unemployment with concrete steps and not just slogans.
"It is not enough to put up only ads but there must be concrete steps to overcome it," he said in a dialogue with local community members and micro-businessmen.
The head of state said prosperity, marked by the decreasing number of poor people and the unemployed, would not come from heaven but had to be achieved through efforts by all parties.
"Difficult it may be but we must not surrender nor remain idle. We must continue to strive to achieve it by all the ways and means at our disposal," he said.
According to the president, one of the fields that could promote development of economic ventures was micro-businesses such as household craftsmanship.
"The government will give support with credit and other facilities but on the other hand businessmen must be tough and willing to work hard," he said.
President Yudhoyono's visit to the region was part of his Ramadhan tour of a number of towns in Central and West Java. The Majenang district is known for its cottage industrial products such as bamboo crafts, banana, eels, cassava chips and other kinds of food products.
Pasurian Tragedy Negates Government Claim of Reduced Poverty?
from Asia Pulse
By Andi Abdussalam Jakarta,
The Pasuruan tragedy in East Java in which 21 people were trampled to death on Monday in a rush to receive tithes has prompted the opposition party to criticize the government's poverty reduction program.
The Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDIP)'s faction in the House of Representatives abruptly picked up its gun and used the incident as a 'bullet' to open fire at the president.
"This is a real condition that indicates increasing poverty in our society. It contradicts the president's statement in his state-of-the nation address last August that the poverty rate this year is the lowest so far," Hasto Kristanto, PDIP faction member, told a House plenary session on Tuesday.
President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono in his state-of-the-nation speech at a House of Representatives (DPR)' plenary session last August 15, 2008 had stated the poverty rate in 2008 was the lowest in the past 10 years.
The poverty rate had declined from 17.7 percent in 2006 to 15.4 percent in March 2008. The open unemployment rate in 2006 was recorded at 10.5 percent. It dropped to 8.5 percent in February 2008, according to the president.
Yet, the Pasuran tragedy, Hasto Kristanto said, itself negated the president's claim of reduced poverty rate in the country.
Twenty-one women were killed and dozens of others injured in a stampede in the remote East Java district of Pasuruan on Monday as crowds rushed to receive a cash tithe of Rp20,000 from philanthropist Syaichon.
Kristianto noted that the number of people who died so far after they were trampled on in a stampede had reached 24 in the past two years, breaking down the number into 21 deaths at Pasuruan and three others in Pasar Minggu, South Jakarta during a tithe distribution last year.
According to Police General Sutanto, such an incident had taken place four times since 2003. In 2003, four persons died under other peole's feet in a rush to receive handouts in Pejaten, also in South Jakarta.
"In contradiction to the claimed decrease in poverty, we see factual indicators of increasing poverty, an increase of 11.3 percent in food prices and of 8.8 percent in the cost of education. So, we are convinced that the president's claim in his August 16, 2008 address has been denied by realities," Kritianto said.
The office of the International Labor Organization (ILO) released a report recently that one in two workers in Indonesia was paid US$2 a day, indicating that poverty is still a major problem for Indonesian workers. But the ILO also pointed out that Indonesia's economy within 2000 and 2007 showed healthy indicators.
Therefore, Kristanto suggested that the government reexamine its data on the country's poverty rate, instead of unilaterally claiming reduced poverty to complement its eforts to 'charm' the people.
Kristanto's data might just be valid. But the objectivity of his argument on the death of 21 people in the tragedy is also questionable if he takes it as a means of measuring the extent of poverty in Indonesia, which has a population of about 228 million. After all, he is a politician of an opposition party.
The Indonesian government doesn't see any correlation between the Pasuruan tragedy with the country's poverty rate. According to Minister/State Secretary Hatta Radjasa, the tragedy has not in any way negated or disproved the government's recent pronouncement that the poverty rate was dropping.
"It (the tragedy) doesn't show anything. Our poverty rate is declining. The tragedy doesn't negate our data. Therefore, it should not be linked to the number of the country's poor," he said.
It could be true that Indonesia is today in much better economic conditions than in previous years. However, it needs to restructure its economic policies to boost the real sector and solve its poverty and unemployment problems.
Rachmat Gobel of the Indonesian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (Kadin) said the Indonesian economy was currently in much better shape than 10 years ago when the country was hit by a monetary crisis in 1998.
"According to latest studies by the World Bank in 2008, the commodity price hikes had a positive impact on Indonesia, and on the other hand, it negatively affected China, Thailand, the Philippines, Lao and Cambodia which suffered great losses," Gobel said recently.
That's why Indonesia was lucky that it was rich in natural resources and had a vast domestic market so it was not so badly affected by the world's oil and food price hikes compared to other developing countries. Yet, poverty and unemployment still remain a problem. Therefore, the government has set a poverty reduction target of 12-14 percent in 2009 because the poverty rate had in reality already reached 15.4 percent by March 2008.
Latif Adam, a researcher at the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI), said however, that the unemployment rate in Indonesia now stood at 8.5 percent. It was expected to grow by 0.5 percent to 9 percent in 2009 while the government's target was 7-8 percent. The government will therefore continue to make efforts to lower the poverty rate.
"The poverty graph or trend in Indonesia has steadily decreased. The poverty rate in 2008, both in percentage and absolute numbers, is the lowest in the last 10 years," said presidential spokesman Andi Mallarangeng.
By Andi Abdussalam Jakarta,
The Pasuruan tragedy in East Java in which 21 people were trampled to death on Monday in a rush to receive tithes has prompted the opposition party to criticize the government's poverty reduction program.
The Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDIP)'s faction in the House of Representatives abruptly picked up its gun and used the incident as a 'bullet' to open fire at the president.
"This is a real condition that indicates increasing poverty in our society. It contradicts the president's statement in his state-of-the nation address last August that the poverty rate this year is the lowest so far," Hasto Kristanto, PDIP faction member, told a House plenary session on Tuesday.
President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono in his state-of-the-nation speech at a House of Representatives (DPR)' plenary session last August 15, 2008 had stated the poverty rate in 2008 was the lowest in the past 10 years.
The poverty rate had declined from 17.7 percent in 2006 to 15.4 percent in March 2008. The open unemployment rate in 2006 was recorded at 10.5 percent. It dropped to 8.5 percent in February 2008, according to the president.
Yet, the Pasuran tragedy, Hasto Kristanto said, itself negated the president's claim of reduced poverty rate in the country.
Twenty-one women were killed and dozens of others injured in a stampede in the remote East Java district of Pasuruan on Monday as crowds rushed to receive a cash tithe of Rp20,000 from philanthropist Syaichon.
Kristianto noted that the number of people who died so far after they were trampled on in a stampede had reached 24 in the past two years, breaking down the number into 21 deaths at Pasuruan and three others in Pasar Minggu, South Jakarta during a tithe distribution last year.
According to Police General Sutanto, such an incident had taken place four times since 2003. In 2003, four persons died under other peole's feet in a rush to receive handouts in Pejaten, also in South Jakarta.
"In contradiction to the claimed decrease in poverty, we see factual indicators of increasing poverty, an increase of 11.3 percent in food prices and of 8.8 percent in the cost of education. So, we are convinced that the president's claim in his August 16, 2008 address has been denied by realities," Kritianto said.
The office of the International Labor Organization (ILO) released a report recently that one in two workers in Indonesia was paid US$2 a day, indicating that poverty is still a major problem for Indonesian workers. But the ILO also pointed out that Indonesia's economy within 2000 and 2007 showed healthy indicators.
Therefore, Kristanto suggested that the government reexamine its data on the country's poverty rate, instead of unilaterally claiming reduced poverty to complement its eforts to 'charm' the people.
Kristanto's data might just be valid. But the objectivity of his argument on the death of 21 people in the tragedy is also questionable if he takes it as a means of measuring the extent of poverty in Indonesia, which has a population of about 228 million. After all, he is a politician of an opposition party.
The Indonesian government doesn't see any correlation between the Pasuruan tragedy with the country's poverty rate. According to Minister/State Secretary Hatta Radjasa, the tragedy has not in any way negated or disproved the government's recent pronouncement that the poverty rate was dropping.
"It (the tragedy) doesn't show anything. Our poverty rate is declining. The tragedy doesn't negate our data. Therefore, it should not be linked to the number of the country's poor," he said.
It could be true that Indonesia is today in much better economic conditions than in previous years. However, it needs to restructure its economic policies to boost the real sector and solve its poverty and unemployment problems.
Rachmat Gobel of the Indonesian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (Kadin) said the Indonesian economy was currently in much better shape than 10 years ago when the country was hit by a monetary crisis in 1998.
"According to latest studies by the World Bank in 2008, the commodity price hikes had a positive impact on Indonesia, and on the other hand, it negatively affected China, Thailand, the Philippines, Lao and Cambodia which suffered great losses," Gobel said recently.
That's why Indonesia was lucky that it was rich in natural resources and had a vast domestic market so it was not so badly affected by the world's oil and food price hikes compared to other developing countries. Yet, poverty and unemployment still remain a problem. Therefore, the government has set a poverty reduction target of 12-14 percent in 2009 because the poverty rate had in reality already reached 15.4 percent by March 2008.
Latif Adam, a researcher at the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI), said however, that the unemployment rate in Indonesia now stood at 8.5 percent. It was expected to grow by 0.5 percent to 9 percent in 2009 while the government's target was 7-8 percent. The government will therefore continue to make efforts to lower the poverty rate.
"The poverty graph or trend in Indonesia has steadily decreased. The poverty rate in 2008, both in percentage and absolute numbers, is the lowest in the last 10 years," said presidential spokesman Andi Mallarangeng.
[comment] War on poverty can be won
from The Age
by Tim Costello
NEXT week political leaders will meet in New York to try to get the world's assault on poverty back on track. No doubt few business leaders in Australia will pay much heed to the United Nations General Assembly on the Millennium Development Goals. They should. The outcome of these goals will have a profound impact on corporate Australia.
Amid the turmoil gripping world economic markets triggered by the credit crunch, it is very easy to miss the importance of this event. But the fight against poverty has great implications for the future growth of the global economy and nowhere will the impact be felt more than in Asia.
It is why Prime Minister Kevin Rudd is right to take a leadership role in attending the NY meeting and why those critical of his decision to miss Parliament to attend are simply wrong.
Geographically, Australia has front-row tickets to the war on poverty. The Asian region is home to more people living on less than $US2 a day than any other part of the world. It is also the epicentre of a surge in economic growth that has jettisoned tens of millions of people out of poverty.
To witness the Olympic Games opening ceremony last month was to witness the crowning glory of China's emergence as a world superpower. China is now critical to Australia's economy. It is also critical to the growth of many Australian companies.
Yet a little more than three decades ago, few Australian companies dared invest in China. It was a poor country bedevilled by corruption and a lack of transparency, and was struggling under crumbling infrastructure. Today countries such as Vietnam and Cambodia loom as the next frontier for Australian business.
This business opportunity is underpinned by the realisation that the vast majority of products and services are developed exclusively for the richest 10% of the world's customers.
Business now understands the 5 billion people at the bottom of the world's economic pyramid not as "a problem" but as a massive, untapped, potential market.
It is why in Australia companies such as IBM, KPMG, Visy, IAG Insurance and the Grey Group set up the Business for Millennium Development alliance to highlight how Australian companies can do more to reduce poverty while developing business with emerging markets in the Asia-Pacific region.
And this is where the Millennium Development Goals are so critical. The MDGs aim to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger. They commit developing countries to boost education, health and environmental outcomes. The MDGs commit rich nations to boost aid spending to a modest 0.7 % of gross national income by 2015.
Of course boosting overseas aid is not going to create jobs, prosperity or national economic growth in the world's poorest countries. Yet it is wrong to dismiss the MDGs as a bureaucratic-driven folly in central planning.
Aid helps to create an enabling environment for business. It creates the air that business breathes. Business cannot survive if a country's workforce is blighted by hunger and disease or is poorly educated, if there is no infrastructure, if corruption thrives and if the rule of law or property rights are flouted.
Critics argue aid doesn't work. The reality is too little aid doesn't work. Today the world provides just over $US100 billion in aid for the billions who live in dire poverty. The US and its allies will spend $US150 billion this year in Iraq and Afghanistan alone to finance a "war on terror".
Tim Costello is chief executive of World Vision Australia.
The Business for Millennium Development Summit, to be held at the Park Hyatt Melbourne on October 24, will outline how business can create new opportunities in the developing world and meet the UN Millennium Development Goals. For more information, visit www.b4md.com.au
Link to full article. May expire in future.
by Tim Costello
NEXT week political leaders will meet in New York to try to get the world's assault on poverty back on track. No doubt few business leaders in Australia will pay much heed to the United Nations General Assembly on the Millennium Development Goals. They should. The outcome of these goals will have a profound impact on corporate Australia.
Amid the turmoil gripping world economic markets triggered by the credit crunch, it is very easy to miss the importance of this event. But the fight against poverty has great implications for the future growth of the global economy and nowhere will the impact be felt more than in Asia.
It is why Prime Minister Kevin Rudd is right to take a leadership role in attending the NY meeting and why those critical of his decision to miss Parliament to attend are simply wrong.
Geographically, Australia has front-row tickets to the war on poverty. The Asian region is home to more people living on less than $US2 a day than any other part of the world. It is also the epicentre of a surge in economic growth that has jettisoned tens of millions of people out of poverty.
To witness the Olympic Games opening ceremony last month was to witness the crowning glory of China's emergence as a world superpower. China is now critical to Australia's economy. It is also critical to the growth of many Australian companies.
Yet a little more than three decades ago, few Australian companies dared invest in China. It was a poor country bedevilled by corruption and a lack of transparency, and was struggling under crumbling infrastructure. Today countries such as Vietnam and Cambodia loom as the next frontier for Australian business.
This business opportunity is underpinned by the realisation that the vast majority of products and services are developed exclusively for the richest 10% of the world's customers.
Business now understands the 5 billion people at the bottom of the world's economic pyramid not as "a problem" but as a massive, untapped, potential market.
It is why in Australia companies such as IBM, KPMG, Visy, IAG Insurance and the Grey Group set up the Business for Millennium Development alliance to highlight how Australian companies can do more to reduce poverty while developing business with emerging markets in the Asia-Pacific region.
And this is where the Millennium Development Goals are so critical. The MDGs aim to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger. They commit developing countries to boost education, health and environmental outcomes. The MDGs commit rich nations to boost aid spending to a modest 0.7 % of gross national income by 2015.
Of course boosting overseas aid is not going to create jobs, prosperity or national economic growth in the world's poorest countries. Yet it is wrong to dismiss the MDGs as a bureaucratic-driven folly in central planning.
Aid helps to create an enabling environment for business. It creates the air that business breathes. Business cannot survive if a country's workforce is blighted by hunger and disease or is poorly educated, if there is no infrastructure, if corruption thrives and if the rule of law or property rights are flouted.
Critics argue aid doesn't work. The reality is too little aid doesn't work. Today the world provides just over $US100 billion in aid for the billions who live in dire poverty. The US and its allies will spend $US150 billion this year in Iraq and Afghanistan alone to finance a "war on terror".
Tim Costello is chief executive of World Vision Australia.
The Business for Millennium Development Summit, to be held at the Park Hyatt Melbourne on October 24, will outline how business can create new opportunities in the developing world and meet the UN Millennium Development Goals. For more information, visit www.b4md.com.au
Link to full article. May expire in future.
UK to spend over $10 billion in aid to Africa by 2010
from Walta Info
The United Kingdom will spend over £6 billion ($10 billion) in official development assistance in Africa by 2010, the UK government announced on Tuesday.
By 2010, UK will have spent cumulatively an additional £12.5 billion over half of which will be spent in Africa, the government said in a report sent to APA.
The announcement was made in connection with the UN general assembly meeting to be held next week in New York where the millennium development goals (MDGs) and climate change will dominate the meeting.
The UK government also said it is currently spending £400 million to tackle the rising food price increase and in agriculture research in the developing countries including Africa.
"Almost 90 % of UK bilateral assistance is spent in low-income countries. We are on track to spend 0.7% of national income on development by 2013, two years ahead of the European Union target,\" the UK government said.
The UN general assembly meeting in New York on the MDGs is an important opportunity for the international community to set out how it plans to keep its promises to the world\’s poor to meet the MDGs and halve poverty by 2015.
Link to full article. May expire in future.
The United Kingdom will spend over £6 billion ($10 billion) in official development assistance in Africa by 2010, the UK government announced on Tuesday.
By 2010, UK will have spent cumulatively an additional £12.5 billion over half of which will be spent in Africa, the government said in a report sent to APA.
The announcement was made in connection with the UN general assembly meeting to be held next week in New York where the millennium development goals (MDGs) and climate change will dominate the meeting.
The UK government also said it is currently spending £400 million to tackle the rising food price increase and in agriculture research in the developing countries including Africa.
"Almost 90 % of UK bilateral assistance is spent in low-income countries. We are on track to spend 0.7% of national income on development by 2013, two years ahead of the European Union target,\" the UK government said.
The UN general assembly meeting in New York on the MDGs is an important opportunity for the international community to set out how it plans to keep its promises to the world\’s poor to meet the MDGs and halve poverty by 2015.
Link to full article. May expire in future.
Billions 'wasted in emergency aid'
from the Press Association
Billions of pounds in emergency aid money will be wasted if it continues to be spent in the wrong way, according to a new report.
Aid agency Care International is calling for an overhaul of the system where "aid is too late and too short-term".
Their report also says aid is too focused on saving lives and should concentrate more on protecting people's livelihoods, with investment in food production and reducing the risk of disaster.
The report, Living on the edge of emergency: Paying the price of inaction, comes ahead of next week's UN summit on tackling global poverty. The event in New York will assess progress on the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) which promised to halve extreme poverty and hunger by 2015.
The reports says by that time £100 billion will have been spent this century fighting food emergencies.
According to the World Food Programme the number of people at risk of starvation has almost doubled since 2006 to 220 million.
Geoffrey Dennis, chief executive of Care International UK, said: "The world's inaction on food emergencies has proved costly and it is the world's poorest people - stripped of enough to eat - who are paying the price."
The report says progress has been made since 2006, when Care first called for an overhaul of the international aid system.
But it says: "Over the last two years, inaction by governments, donors, the UN and aid agencies has been at the cost of millions of people driven further into poverty. And many of those, for example in Niger, Ethiopia and Somalia, have been driven to the brink of emergency again."
Link to full article. May expire in future.
Billions of pounds in emergency aid money will be wasted if it continues to be spent in the wrong way, according to a new report.
Aid agency Care International is calling for an overhaul of the system where "aid is too late and too short-term".
Their report also says aid is too focused on saving lives and should concentrate more on protecting people's livelihoods, with investment in food production and reducing the risk of disaster.
The report, Living on the edge of emergency: Paying the price of inaction, comes ahead of next week's UN summit on tackling global poverty. The event in New York will assess progress on the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) which promised to halve extreme poverty and hunger by 2015.
The reports says by that time £100 billion will have been spent this century fighting food emergencies.
According to the World Food Programme the number of people at risk of starvation has almost doubled since 2006 to 220 million.
Geoffrey Dennis, chief executive of Care International UK, said: "The world's inaction on food emergencies has proved costly and it is the world's poorest people - stripped of enough to eat - who are paying the price."
The report says progress has been made since 2006, when Care first called for an overhaul of the international aid system.
But it says: "Over the last two years, inaction by governments, donors, the UN and aid agencies has been at the cost of millions of people driven further into poverty. And many of those, for example in Niger, Ethiopia and Somalia, have been driven to the brink of emergency again."
Link to full article. May expire in future.
Geldof urges leaders to keep promises on aid to Africa
from The Georgia Straight
By Travis Lupick
Lifting half of the world’s poorest people out of poverty could unleash the creativity, dynamism, and intellectualism of hundreds of millions of people. This would not only save people’s lives in Africa but would also contribute to the world’s economy and cultures on an unprecedented scale.
That is the message that musician and activist Bob Geldof, a member of Tony Blair’s Commission for Africa and a former Georgia Straight music editor, is planning on taking to the United Nations on Thursday (September 25).
Speaking to the Straight from London, Geldof made an impassioned argument for an increase in aid to the world’s poorest continent.
“In principle, aid should work; in actuality, it does work,” Geldof said. “I’m constantly doing questions about whether aid works. Yes, it does. Do you want figures? We’ve got figures coming out of our fucking ass.”
The 2008 report of the Africa Progress Panel—a monitoring agency that grew out of the Commission for Africa and of which Geldof is a member—notes that Africa has received consistently higher levels of aid since 2002. In that same time, the report states, government revenues in Africa have steadily increased and African governments have committed more resources to tackling poverty.
In 2000, UN member states signed on to the Millennium Development Goals and pledged to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger by 2015. Almost eight years later, the UN is convening a high-level conference in New York City to focus on Africa’s “special development needs”.
Geldof said he plans to work the corridors at the UN meeting to hold world leaders accountable for the promises they have made in the past. In one Millennium Development goal, the world’s richest nations promised to allocate 0.7 percent of their gross national incomes to foreign aid. According to statistics published by the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development, only five countries—Denmark, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden—reached or exceeded that target in 2007. Canada allocated only 0.28 percent of its GNI to aid, and the U.S. only 0.16 percent.
“It is very frustrating to have to, every year, re-argue with them [leaders] and insist that they didn’t sign their personal names on this,” Geldof said. “They signed the dignity and honour of their country. And they seem to forget that.”
But not everybody agrees that more aid is the key to freeing Africa from the constraints of poverty.
Aweis Issa, a Somali-born UBC graduate who has helped expose Somali war criminals living in Canada, said that the number-one item for the UN’s meeting on Africa should be a conversation on how to hold Africa’s leaders accountable for their actions.
“Africa is not a poor continent; Africa has a lot of natural resources,” Issa told the Straight in an interview. “The continent of Africa is poor because we don’t have good leaders, we don’t have good education systems, we have too many people committed to the wrong things.”
As an example of the UN’s inefficiencies, Issa recalled watching the UN’s World Food Programme deliver food aid to Somalia during the country’s 1986 harvest. At a time when farmers were preparing to sell their crops, the market was flooded with food aid and prices dropped below market value.
“Africans really have to understand that dependency and food aid does not help,” Issa said. “It sounds very harsh, but if we are waiting for handouts, that is not a responsible society.…Begging for food is a lost cause, for human dignity and for human civilization.”
Geldof has never said that aid should come unconditionally. Asked if the people of Zimbabwe—who have suffered under the brutal rule of President Robert Mugabe since 1980—can be helped by aid, Geldof replied, “It is impossible.…All you can do is sit by and watch this crazed old thug destroy a once-thriving and beautiful country.”
Geldof listed a military invasion of Zimbabwe as a possible solution to the country’s seemingly endless woes, if such an action was not “politically impossible and inappropriate”.
Only hours after Geldof’s interview with the Straight, Mugabe’s ruling Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front party and Zimbabwe’s opposition party, Movement for Democratic Change, reached a power-sharing agreement aimed at ending months of political deadlock and violence. A text message from Geldof followed the news: “Zim wl hv 2 find its own solutions.”
In recent years, Africa’s geography has emerged as an argument in itself for why development on the continent has historically been such a challenge.
“Africa has 15 landlocked countries,” Geldof noted emphatically, “more than the rest of the world put together.” As a result, land transportation is crucial to trade. Geldof explained that when one of these 15 countries does produce something, there is no easy way for it to move products to international markets.
Roads from one country to the next are often in disrepair, washed out by floods, or dotted with costly checkpoints, Geldof said. The result is a long and often expensive journey in which each border crossing leaves both producer and transporter with a diminished profit margin. “By the time you get to your ports with your goods, they’ve been outpriced by the market, and the price that you have to charge isn’t worth it,” Geldof concluded.
Link to full article. May expire in future.
By Travis Lupick
Lifting half of the world’s poorest people out of poverty could unleash the creativity, dynamism, and intellectualism of hundreds of millions of people. This would not only save people’s lives in Africa but would also contribute to the world’s economy and cultures on an unprecedented scale.
That is the message that musician and activist Bob Geldof, a member of Tony Blair’s Commission for Africa and a former Georgia Straight music editor, is planning on taking to the United Nations on Thursday (September 25).
Speaking to the Straight from London, Geldof made an impassioned argument for an increase in aid to the world’s poorest continent.
“In principle, aid should work; in actuality, it does work,” Geldof said. “I’m constantly doing questions about whether aid works. Yes, it does. Do you want figures? We’ve got figures coming out of our fucking ass.”
The 2008 report of the Africa Progress Panel—a monitoring agency that grew out of the Commission for Africa and of which Geldof is a member—notes that Africa has received consistently higher levels of aid since 2002. In that same time, the report states, government revenues in Africa have steadily increased and African governments have committed more resources to tackling poverty.
In 2000, UN member states signed on to the Millennium Development Goals and pledged to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger by 2015. Almost eight years later, the UN is convening a high-level conference in New York City to focus on Africa’s “special development needs”.
Geldof said he plans to work the corridors at the UN meeting to hold world leaders accountable for the promises they have made in the past. In one Millennium Development goal, the world’s richest nations promised to allocate 0.7 percent of their gross national incomes to foreign aid. According to statistics published by the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development, only five countries—Denmark, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden—reached or exceeded that target in 2007. Canada allocated only 0.28 percent of its GNI to aid, and the U.S. only 0.16 percent.
“It is very frustrating to have to, every year, re-argue with them [leaders] and insist that they didn’t sign their personal names on this,” Geldof said. “They signed the dignity and honour of their country. And they seem to forget that.”
But not everybody agrees that more aid is the key to freeing Africa from the constraints of poverty.
Aweis Issa, a Somali-born UBC graduate who has helped expose Somali war criminals living in Canada, said that the number-one item for the UN’s meeting on Africa should be a conversation on how to hold Africa’s leaders accountable for their actions.
“Africa is not a poor continent; Africa has a lot of natural resources,” Issa told the Straight in an interview. “The continent of Africa is poor because we don’t have good leaders, we don’t have good education systems, we have too many people committed to the wrong things.”
As an example of the UN’s inefficiencies, Issa recalled watching the UN’s World Food Programme deliver food aid to Somalia during the country’s 1986 harvest. At a time when farmers were preparing to sell their crops, the market was flooded with food aid and prices dropped below market value.
“Africans really have to understand that dependency and food aid does not help,” Issa said. “It sounds very harsh, but if we are waiting for handouts, that is not a responsible society.…Begging for food is a lost cause, for human dignity and for human civilization.”
Geldof has never said that aid should come unconditionally. Asked if the people of Zimbabwe—who have suffered under the brutal rule of President Robert Mugabe since 1980—can be helped by aid, Geldof replied, “It is impossible.…All you can do is sit by and watch this crazed old thug destroy a once-thriving and beautiful country.”
Geldof listed a military invasion of Zimbabwe as a possible solution to the country’s seemingly endless woes, if such an action was not “politically impossible and inappropriate”.
Only hours after Geldof’s interview with the Straight, Mugabe’s ruling Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front party and Zimbabwe’s opposition party, Movement for Democratic Change, reached a power-sharing agreement aimed at ending months of political deadlock and violence. A text message from Geldof followed the news: “Zim wl hv 2 find its own solutions.”
In recent years, Africa’s geography has emerged as an argument in itself for why development on the continent has historically been such a challenge.
“Africa has 15 landlocked countries,” Geldof noted emphatically, “more than the rest of the world put together.” As a result, land transportation is crucial to trade. Geldof explained that when one of these 15 countries does produce something, there is no easy way for it to move products to international markets.
Roads from one country to the next are often in disrepair, washed out by floods, or dotted with costly checkpoints, Geldof said. The result is a long and often expensive journey in which each border crossing leaves both producer and transporter with a diminished profit margin. “By the time you get to your ports with your goods, they’ve been outpriced by the market, and the price that you have to charge isn’t worth it,” Geldof concluded.
Link to full article. May expire in future.
8m To Receive Medicines under new initiative to fight diseases
from Peace FM Online, Ghana
Ghana and the United States, starting this September, would begin distributing medicines to about eight million people as part of a new initiative to fight neglected tropical diseases, President George Bush, has announced.The two countries, he said, stood as one in their work to free people from diseases.
President Bush was speaking after bilateral talks at the Oval Office in the White House with President John Agyekum Kufuor, who is on a four-day State Visit to the country.
The visit at the invitation of President Bush is to re-enforce the strong and enduring ties of friendship between the two countries. Their discussions centred on the promotion of economic opportunities, education and the fight against malaria and other diseases plaguing Africa.
President Bush lauded the leadership of President Kufuor and said his country was proud to stand by Ghana "to secure freedom from poverty.” “Ghana's leaders are governing justly, fighting corruption and investing in their people.”
It was on account of this that they were supporting the country"s efforts through the Millennium Challenge Account Compact and promoting trade as a powerful engine of prosperity. Ghana-US trade last year, was valued at more than $600 million, an increase of more than 55 per cent since 2001.
President Bush also recognised Ghana’s contribution towards the promotion of global peace with more than 3,000 of its soldiers serving on peacekeeping missions from Liberia to Congo to Kosovo and Georgia. On his part, President Kufuor urged the US to provide the necessary leadership to deal with the global challenges of climate change and the turmoil on the international financial market.
He said the country should be the vanguard of finding solutions to these problems, which were hurting the economies of developing nations particularly in Africa and eroding the modest economic gains they were making.
President Kufuor expressed appreciation to President Bush for what he said were his administration’s “humanitarian policies to Africa”, from which Ghana has been a major beneficiary.
Link to full article. May expire in future.
Ghana and the United States, starting this September, would begin distributing medicines to about eight million people as part of a new initiative to fight neglected tropical diseases, President George Bush, has announced.The two countries, he said, stood as one in their work to free people from diseases.
President Bush was speaking after bilateral talks at the Oval Office in the White House with President John Agyekum Kufuor, who is on a four-day State Visit to the country.
The visit at the invitation of President Bush is to re-enforce the strong and enduring ties of friendship between the two countries. Their discussions centred on the promotion of economic opportunities, education and the fight against malaria and other diseases plaguing Africa.
President Bush lauded the leadership of President Kufuor and said his country was proud to stand by Ghana "to secure freedom from poverty.” “Ghana's leaders are governing justly, fighting corruption and investing in their people.”
It was on account of this that they were supporting the country"s efforts through the Millennium Challenge Account Compact and promoting trade as a powerful engine of prosperity. Ghana-US trade last year, was valued at more than $600 million, an increase of more than 55 per cent since 2001.
President Bush also recognised Ghana’s contribution towards the promotion of global peace with more than 3,000 of its soldiers serving on peacekeeping missions from Liberia to Congo to Kosovo and Georgia. On his part, President Kufuor urged the US to provide the necessary leadership to deal with the global challenges of climate change and the turmoil on the international financial market.
He said the country should be the vanguard of finding solutions to these problems, which were hurting the economies of developing nations particularly in Africa and eroding the modest economic gains they were making.
President Kufuor expressed appreciation to President Bush for what he said were his administration’s “humanitarian policies to Africa”, from which Ghana has been a major beneficiary.
Link to full article. May expire in future.
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Micro-finance helps women to become self-earners
from the New Nation
Md. Mahbubur Rahman Bulbul
Huge number of MFIs are operating micro finance program in Bangladesh and World-wide with their good activities. Their prime focus is, to positive change of poor and help-less people in Bangladesh by their financial assistance and to make a poverty-free Bangladesh. ASA is one of them. ASA is the biggest MFI in the world.
ASA is working their responsible job by the micro finance program with land-less poor people for their positive change in Bangladesh from 1992, as usual. AS a result in that time, ASA already has achieved a great success in MFI sector of Bangladesh, even all over the world. Now the total number of ASA's borrowers is 90 lacks.
It is high performance in Bangladesh. Not only micro credit, ASA is doing their job for the development in small business and industrial area of Bangladesh with their Small Entrepreneur Lending (SEL) loan, Small business loan and agro-business development loan program. In this area, ASA already has been great successful.
Total number of ASA's SEL loan members is 30114. This report is up to February, 2008. Most of the borrowers of this program are women. They are heist benefited from ASA's SEL loan program. There is a huge number of successful case stories in Bangladesh those are 100% self-sustainable by the assistance of ASA's microfinance program. Here, a successful case story has been showed as for example:
Mrs. Josna begum is a self-sustainable woman in Bangladesh who is ASA's SEL loan borrower. She is 28 years old. Her husband's name is Mr. Nasir Hossain. She is a great mother for one daughter.
She married to Mr. Nashir Uddin before 7 years. The year is 2000. Now, she is a rich and successful woman entrepreneur in Bangladesh by the assistance of ASA's SEL loan program. She is owner of a mini-garment in Sonargaon area. She is a representative of all self-sustainable women micro entrepreneurs in Bangladesh.
But her previous status was very poor. They have been living in the village of darigaon of shamvupura union under sanergaon Thana of Narayanganj District for permanently. She is a hard worker and high ambitious woman. So, she did not stay at her husband's house without work at a moment.
Her husband's business was very poor. Because, there was no sufficient financial support at her business purpose. For getting financial support, at first Josna Begum became admitted as a group member in 'Diganto landless woman shamiti' under ASA's hussainpur Branch of Naraynganj District in the year of 2002.
At first installment, she got 10,000 TK. as micro loan from Diganto shamiti of ASA. She financed all money in their garments area. That was the turning point in their business. She was paying her weekly installment very nicely at just time after their all profit. The condition of their business increased day by day.
At last, she received 26,000 TK. from diganto shamiti as a micro loan by the 5th time in the year of 2006. Branch Manager of hussainpur Branch Niger shultana highly pleased for the develop of their business. She took plan for the big financial support in their business area under SEL loan program of ASA.
For this purpose, Branch Manager proposed her superior authority regional manager of sonargaon area Md. Waliar Rahman and wanted all cooperation for giving 50,000 TK. under SEL loan program. Regional Manager Mr. Waliar Rahman visited their business area and finally, he gave instruction her to disburse 50,000 TK. in the mini-garment of josna Begum. At 1st installment under SEL loan program, Josna Begum gets 50,000 TK. as usual.
With the part of her profit from their business she invested 50,000 taka for the building-up a mini-garments at her home area. There are number of 15 machines in their garments. The name of machines are log, over log, pele etc. There are number of 20 male/female workers always involved in their garments. The salary range of all workers 1200 TK. per week. Baby set, Ganji, T-shirt, magi half Ganji, pant etc, have been making in their garments.
Her husband Nasir supplied all garment products at his hole sale center of piar ali market of Naraynganj district Sadar. Not only that area, he supplied their products at Dhaka Shadarghat market, New market, kaliganj Bajar and others commercial area.
Their monthly net profit without all cost from that business is 20,000TK. to 25,000 TK. At last, Josna Begum Received 70,000 TK. from ASA, Hossainpur Branch under SEL loan program. Her dream, She will build-up a big garments industry within very soon by the financial support from ASA.
Now it is very important that her mother-in-law shaharbanu is previous member of ASA. The inspiration of her mother-in-law, she had been interested to involve in ASA's loan program. Now Josna Begum is a self-sustainable woman and she represents the all successful women entrepreneurs in Bangladesh. She is a great story.
Link to full article. May expire in future.
Md. Mahbubur Rahman Bulbul
Huge number of MFIs are operating micro finance program in Bangladesh and World-wide with their good activities. Their prime focus is, to positive change of poor and help-less people in Bangladesh by their financial assistance and to make a poverty-free Bangladesh. ASA is one of them. ASA is the biggest MFI in the world.
ASA is working their responsible job by the micro finance program with land-less poor people for their positive change in Bangladesh from 1992, as usual. AS a result in that time, ASA already has achieved a great success in MFI sector of Bangladesh, even all over the world. Now the total number of ASA's borrowers is 90 lacks.
It is high performance in Bangladesh. Not only micro credit, ASA is doing their job for the development in small business and industrial area of Bangladesh with their Small Entrepreneur Lending (SEL) loan, Small business loan and agro-business development loan program. In this area, ASA already has been great successful.
Total number of ASA's SEL loan members is 30114. This report is up to February, 2008. Most of the borrowers of this program are women. They are heist benefited from ASA's SEL loan program. There is a huge number of successful case stories in Bangladesh those are 100% self-sustainable by the assistance of ASA's microfinance program. Here, a successful case story has been showed as for example:
Mrs. Josna begum is a self-sustainable woman in Bangladesh who is ASA's SEL loan borrower. She is 28 years old. Her husband's name is Mr. Nasir Hossain. She is a great mother for one daughter.
She married to Mr. Nashir Uddin before 7 years. The year is 2000. Now, she is a rich and successful woman entrepreneur in Bangladesh by the assistance of ASA's SEL loan program. She is owner of a mini-garment in Sonargaon area. She is a representative of all self-sustainable women micro entrepreneurs in Bangladesh.
But her previous status was very poor. They have been living in the village of darigaon of shamvupura union under sanergaon Thana of Narayanganj District for permanently. She is a hard worker and high ambitious woman. So, she did not stay at her husband's house without work at a moment.
Her husband's business was very poor. Because, there was no sufficient financial support at her business purpose. For getting financial support, at first Josna Begum became admitted as a group member in 'Diganto landless woman shamiti' under ASA's hussainpur Branch of Naraynganj District in the year of 2002.
At first installment, she got 10,000 TK. as micro loan from Diganto shamiti of ASA. She financed all money in their garments area. That was the turning point in their business. She was paying her weekly installment very nicely at just time after their all profit. The condition of their business increased day by day.
At last, she received 26,000 TK. from diganto shamiti as a micro loan by the 5th time in the year of 2006. Branch Manager of hussainpur Branch Niger shultana highly pleased for the develop of their business. She took plan for the big financial support in their business area under SEL loan program of ASA.
For this purpose, Branch Manager proposed her superior authority regional manager of sonargaon area Md. Waliar Rahman and wanted all cooperation for giving 50,000 TK. under SEL loan program. Regional Manager Mr. Waliar Rahman visited their business area and finally, he gave instruction her to disburse 50,000 TK. in the mini-garment of josna Begum. At 1st installment under SEL loan program, Josna Begum gets 50,000 TK. as usual.
With the part of her profit from their business she invested 50,000 taka for the building-up a mini-garments at her home area. There are number of 15 machines in their garments. The name of machines are log, over log, pele etc. There are number of 20 male/female workers always involved in their garments. The salary range of all workers 1200 TK. per week. Baby set, Ganji, T-shirt, magi half Ganji, pant etc, have been making in their garments.
Her husband Nasir supplied all garment products at his hole sale center of piar ali market of Naraynganj district Sadar. Not only that area, he supplied their products at Dhaka Shadarghat market, New market, kaliganj Bajar and others commercial area.
Their monthly net profit without all cost from that business is 20,000TK. to 25,000 TK. At last, Josna Begum Received 70,000 TK. from ASA, Hossainpur Branch under SEL loan program. Her dream, She will build-up a big garments industry within very soon by the financial support from ASA.
Now it is very important that her mother-in-law shaharbanu is previous member of ASA. The inspiration of her mother-in-law, she had been interested to involve in ASA's loan program. Now Josna Begum is a self-sustainable woman and she represents the all successful women entrepreneurs in Bangladesh. She is a great story.
Link to full article. May expire in future.
More Locals Face Poverty in Uganda
from All Africa
By Anne Mugisa and Ganzi Muhanguzi
Kampala, - Experts have warned that more people in Uganda are likely to slip into the chronic poverty category.
Currently 26% of the population is living in chronic poverty. A total of 31% live under the poverty line, surviving on less than sh1,600 a day.
International researchers and experts said at the launch of the Chronic Poverty Report for 2008/2009 last week, that those living above the poverty line are also at risk.
The report, launched at Protea Hotel in Kampala, was drawn from a research done by the UK based Chronic Poverty Research Centre.
The experts complained that many programmes aimed at poverty eradication are short term and are drawn without consulting the target groups.
They advocated for looking at society as a whole and warned against handouts and cash transfers to individuals.
However, the Minister for Investment, Ssemakula Kiwanuka, said cash transfers could be used to facilitate poor people and increase their income.
By Anne Mugisa and Ganzi Muhanguzi
Kampala, - Experts have warned that more people in Uganda are likely to slip into the chronic poverty category.
Currently 26% of the population is living in chronic poverty. A total of 31% live under the poverty line, surviving on less than sh1,600 a day.
International researchers and experts said at the launch of the Chronic Poverty Report for 2008/2009 last week, that those living above the poverty line are also at risk.
The report, launched at Protea Hotel in Kampala, was drawn from a research done by the UK based Chronic Poverty Research Centre.
The experts complained that many programmes aimed at poverty eradication are short term and are drawn without consulting the target groups.
They advocated for looking at society as a whole and warned against handouts and cash transfers to individuals.
However, the Minister for Investment, Ssemakula Kiwanuka, said cash transfers could be used to facilitate poor people and increase their income.
Economic road bumps no excuse to slow down on poverty reduction
from CNW Group
A coalition of over 100 organizations across Ontario are urging Premier Dalton McGuinty to follow through on his promise to actively and comprehensively address poverty in this province.
"The threat of an economic downturn makes leadership on poverty reduction more important than ever," said 25 in 5 spokesperson Jacquie Maund, of Ontario Campaign 2000. "And it's a signal that we can't afford to delay implementation of a plan."
Responding to Premier McGuinty's comments today in which he suggested economic conditions may delay the implementation of a provincial Poverty Reduction Strategy, the 25 in 5 Network for Poverty Reduction said investing in poverty reduction now is smart economic policy, and decisive action is especially necessary in an ailing economy.
"We know public investments can provide a critical booster shot to stimulate economic activity in hard times," said Maund. "That's why we're calling for a significant down-payment on poverty reduction in the 2009 budget, with larger investments phased-in over the five year life of the plan."
25 in 5 says Ontario families are looking for political leadership on poverty, as a report released by Poverty Watch Ontario last week clearly demonstrated.
"As the Premier himself has said, we need all hands on deck. If we are going to ride out this slowdown and remain competitive we need everyone at their best - we must support Ontario families through job losses, reductions in hours of work, and other financial stresses," said Janet Gasparini, Chair of the Social Planning Network of Ontario. "We can pay now or we can pay later with increased health care, criminal justice, and social services costs."
The 25 in 5 Network advocates a bold, multi-year plan focused on three areas of action: ensuring sustaining employment, so that people who work don't live in poverty; reforming social assistance, so that people who can't work get the support they need; and providing for strong community supports, to give opportunity and inclusion to all.
"The time to act is now, and we expect the Premier to introduce the government's plan, including clear targets and timelines to deliver measurable results, by December of this year," said Gasparini. "That's political leadership, and we hope Premier McGuinty lives up to his promise."
A coalition of over 100 organizations across Ontario are urging Premier Dalton McGuinty to follow through on his promise to actively and comprehensively address poverty in this province.
"The threat of an economic downturn makes leadership on poverty reduction more important than ever," said 25 in 5 spokesperson Jacquie Maund, of Ontario Campaign 2000. "And it's a signal that we can't afford to delay implementation of a plan."
Responding to Premier McGuinty's comments today in which he suggested economic conditions may delay the implementation of a provincial Poverty Reduction Strategy, the 25 in 5 Network for Poverty Reduction said investing in poverty reduction now is smart economic policy, and decisive action is especially necessary in an ailing economy.
"We know public investments can provide a critical booster shot to stimulate economic activity in hard times," said Maund. "That's why we're calling for a significant down-payment on poverty reduction in the 2009 budget, with larger investments phased-in over the five year life of the plan."
25 in 5 says Ontario families are looking for political leadership on poverty, as a report released by Poverty Watch Ontario last week clearly demonstrated.
"As the Premier himself has said, we need all hands on deck. If we are going to ride out this slowdown and remain competitive we need everyone at their best - we must support Ontario families through job losses, reductions in hours of work, and other financial stresses," said Janet Gasparini, Chair of the Social Planning Network of Ontario. "We can pay now or we can pay later with increased health care, criminal justice, and social services costs."
The 25 in 5 Network advocates a bold, multi-year plan focused on three areas of action: ensuring sustaining employment, so that people who work don't live in poverty; reforming social assistance, so that people who can't work get the support they need; and providing for strong community supports, to give opportunity and inclusion to all.
"The time to act is now, and we expect the Premier to introduce the government's plan, including clear targets and timelines to deliver measurable results, by December of this year," said Gasparini. "That's political leadership, and we hope Premier McGuinty lives up to his promise."
Poverty Gap Among States Widens
from Kansas City Info Zine
By Christine Vestal
Even as the economy pushes more people into poverty, revenue-strapped states can be expected to make further cutbacks in social welfare spending, particularly in poor states where people need it most.
That's according to a new report by the Rockefeller Institute of Government, which tracked state and local spending on all forms of low-income assistance programs from 1977 to 2006.
"As states deal with the economic downturn in 2009, I would expect more cuts in social welfare programs while the reported number of poor people is increasing," Thomas Gais, lead researcher on the study, told Stateline.org.
Making matters worse, he said, states will be trimming welfare budgets that already are lower on a per-person, inflation-adjusted basis than at any time since 1983 - the end of a severe recession that started in the early 1980s.
The study, published Sept. 15, shows a steady decline in state spending on all welfare services over the last three decades with the steepest reductions in the poorest states.
Federal cutbacks have affected all states, Gais said, "but individual state spending decisions have created growing divisions between wealthy and non-wealthy states. And the gap is likely to get worse."
For example, Connecticut, which had the highest per capita income between 2002 and 2006, increased spending on non-cash social welfare programs, such as child care and job training, by $785 per low-income individual, bringing the total to $3,527 for each welfare recipient in 2006. Mississippi, with the lowest per-capita income, went in the opposite direction, cutting non-cash assistance programs by $924 per person, reducing the total to $702 per person.
After federal welfare reform rules took effect in the mid-1990s, states began helping people find work rather than continuing to give them cash assistance. As a result, all states saw a decline in spending under the federal-state Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program.
But to varying degrees, states used the savings from TANF to fund other programs - such as child care, energy-assistance, employment services, state earned-income tax credits and child welfare services - for low income families and individuals.
In total, states spend $25 billion of their own revenues annually on social welfare programs that serve about 20 percent of the population, according to the American Public Human Services Association.
Medicaid, the federal-state health care program for the poor, accounts for the lion's share of low-income assistance spending - $314.7 billion in state and federal money in 2005, the latest numbers available from the federal government - and has increased dramatically since 1977, rising from a national average of $2,000 per individual to more than $7,000 in 2006.
In contrast, TANF cash assistance has declined from a national average of almost $1,700 per person in 1977 to less than $600 per person in 2006, according to the report. At the same time, non-cash social welfare programs grew from a national average of about $1,200 per person in 1977 to $2,400 per person in 2002, but have declined since then to about $2,100 per person.
Link to full article. May expire in future.
By Christine Vestal
Even as the economy pushes more people into poverty, revenue-strapped states can be expected to make further cutbacks in social welfare spending, particularly in poor states where people need it most.
That's according to a new report by the Rockefeller Institute of Government, which tracked state and local spending on all forms of low-income assistance programs from 1977 to 2006.
"As states deal with the economic downturn in 2009, I would expect more cuts in social welfare programs while the reported number of poor people is increasing," Thomas Gais, lead researcher on the study, told Stateline.org.
Making matters worse, he said, states will be trimming welfare budgets that already are lower on a per-person, inflation-adjusted basis than at any time since 1983 - the end of a severe recession that started in the early 1980s.
The study, published Sept. 15, shows a steady decline in state spending on all welfare services over the last three decades with the steepest reductions in the poorest states.
Federal cutbacks have affected all states, Gais said, "but individual state spending decisions have created growing divisions between wealthy and non-wealthy states. And the gap is likely to get worse."
For example, Connecticut, which had the highest per capita income between 2002 and 2006, increased spending on non-cash social welfare programs, such as child care and job training, by $785 per low-income individual, bringing the total to $3,527 for each welfare recipient in 2006. Mississippi, with the lowest per-capita income, went in the opposite direction, cutting non-cash assistance programs by $924 per person, reducing the total to $702 per person.
After federal welfare reform rules took effect in the mid-1990s, states began helping people find work rather than continuing to give them cash assistance. As a result, all states saw a decline in spending under the federal-state Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program.
But to varying degrees, states used the savings from TANF to fund other programs - such as child care, energy-assistance, employment services, state earned-income tax credits and child welfare services - for low income families and individuals.
In total, states spend $25 billion of their own revenues annually on social welfare programs that serve about 20 percent of the population, according to the American Public Human Services Association.
Medicaid, the federal-state health care program for the poor, accounts for the lion's share of low-income assistance spending - $314.7 billion in state and federal money in 2005, the latest numbers available from the federal government - and has increased dramatically since 1977, rising from a national average of $2,000 per individual to more than $7,000 in 2006.
In contrast, TANF cash assistance has declined from a national average of almost $1,700 per person in 1977 to less than $600 per person in 2006, according to the report. At the same time, non-cash social welfare programs grew from a national average of about $1,200 per person in 1977 to $2,400 per person in 2002, but have declined since then to about $2,100 per person.
Link to full article. May expire in future.
[comment] Malaria and the Limits of Good Intentions
from Foreign Policy in Focus
by Joseph Kaifala
When it comes to saving Africa, there's no shortage of ideas in the West. Most committees organized in the West on African issues are often run by Africans who have been away from the continent for decades and have lost contact with reality on the ground. Ideas conceived in the West, such as the Millennium Development Goals and other HIV/AIDS initiatives, often encounter difficult challenges when implemented in Africa. This is because beneficiaries in individual African countries are sometimes not consulted about solutions to their problems and ideas are often implemented universally across the continent, ignoring the cultural, economic, and geographical diversity.
The President's Malaria Initiative (PMI), launched by President George W. Bush last year, is one of many good-intentioned initiatives geared towards saving Africa that offers very limited promise of improving health conditions for Africans in the long run. According to the PMI, at least one million infants and children under the age of five in sub-Saharan Africa die each year from malaria. In order words, one child dies almost every 30 seconds. The initiative pledged to tackle this problem by increasing U.S. malaria funding by more than $1.2 billion over a five-year period to reduce deaths due to malaria by 50% in 15 African countries.
At the end of July, Bush signed the "Tom Lantos and Henry J. Hyde Global Leadership on HIV/ AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria Reauthorization Act of 2008." The bill authorized $48 billion to be spent over five years, including $5 billion to fight malaria. The funding is intended to combat the disease by contributing to the strengthening of health systems and health policies of partner countries. The bill also authorized the president to appoint a malaria coordinator to operate internationally through nongovernmental organizations and other partners in order to carry out prevention, care, treatment, support, capacity development, and other activities to reduce the prevalence, mortality, and incidence of malaria.
Wrong Approach
Bush's pledge brings hope to sub-Saharan Africa, where the toll of illnesses and deaths from malaria is dragging down economic productivity. But his initiative and many other approaches towards saving Africa from malaria have very few prospects for preventing the disease. The President's Malaria Initiative is using a comprehensive four-dimensional approach to prevent and treat malaria — indoor spraying of homes with insecticides, insecticide-treated mosquito nets, lifesaving anti-malarial drugs, and treatment to prevent malaria in pregnant women. While insecticides, anti-malarial drugs, and mosquito nets are temporary measures to cure already infected people and protect those at risk, they can't eradicate malaria.
Malaria is transmitted from person to person through the bite of a female anopheles mosquito. This kind of mosquito breeds in pools of stagnant waters, shallow lakes, and moisture from waste depositories. The densely populated slum areas of most sub-Saharan African cities provide breeding environments for mosquitoes. People treated with anti-malarial drugs often return to these mosquito-infested slums. Mosquito nets provided free-of-charge by aid workers are often sold by beneficiaries to feed their families. Some families simply can't use the nets because they aren't large enough to cover a large group of family members sharing the floor of a corrugated zinc shelter.
According to the Roll Back Malaria (RBM) initiative, malaria parasites are developing an unacceptable level of resistance to many drugs; most insecticides are also no longer useful against mosquitoes transmitting the disease, and an effective vaccine is at best many years away. Hence, those interested in solving Africa's malaria problem should devote their resources not only to curing infected people, but also to alleviating the breeding spaces of female anopheles mosquitoes, which are responsible for the spread of the malaria parasite and the disease.
Those who have visited a major city in sub-Saharan Africa can remember seeing that pile of garbage on the side of the road, the waste depository just outside the city, or the dumping of waste into gutters when it rains. Most of the waste dumped in gutters flows and settles into many sections of a city, allowing mosquitoes to breed and enter homes. No anti-malarial drug can prevent mosquito bites unless the root transmitters of the parasite are contained. Female anopheles mosquitoes must be driven away from densely populated areas.
It's high time the international community became realistic about addressing Africa's problems. While it's very tempting and self-gratifying to treat the continent's major problems as an emergency, we must be aware of the fact that the problem of malaria can't be solved by relief intervention. Sometimes the practical solution to a widespread medical problem might not lay in cure, but in tackling poverty and other root causes.
Perhaps we can end the vicious cycle of malaria by concentrating aid on helping sub-Saharan African countries to establish efficient waste-disposal mechanisms and expediting the achievement of goal seven of the Millennium Development Goals, which calls for a significant improvement in the lives of at least 100 million slum-dwellers by 2020. As the Liberian saying goes, unless the rotten tooth is removed, the mouth must chew with caution — even when painkillers are abundant. The deplorable image of Africa's death toll can sometimes ignite the desire for emergency relief interventions, but most of the continent's problems, unlike natural disasters and some other seasonal outbreaks, require long-term efforts to eliminate the source of the problem and put the continent on a path to sustainable development.
Joseph Kaifala, a Foreign Policy In Focus contributor, is a Davis United World College Fellow from Sierra Leone at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies.
by Joseph Kaifala
When it comes to saving Africa, there's no shortage of ideas in the West. Most committees organized in the West on African issues are often run by Africans who have been away from the continent for decades and have lost contact with reality on the ground. Ideas conceived in the West, such as the Millennium Development Goals and other HIV/AIDS initiatives, often encounter difficult challenges when implemented in Africa. This is because beneficiaries in individual African countries are sometimes not consulted about solutions to their problems and ideas are often implemented universally across the continent, ignoring the cultural, economic, and geographical diversity.
The President's Malaria Initiative (PMI), launched by President George W. Bush last year, is one of many good-intentioned initiatives geared towards saving Africa that offers very limited promise of improving health conditions for Africans in the long run. According to the PMI, at least one million infants and children under the age of five in sub-Saharan Africa die each year from malaria. In order words, one child dies almost every 30 seconds. The initiative pledged to tackle this problem by increasing U.S. malaria funding by more than $1.2 billion over a five-year period to reduce deaths due to malaria by 50% in 15 African countries.
At the end of July, Bush signed the "Tom Lantos and Henry J. Hyde Global Leadership on HIV/ AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria Reauthorization Act of 2008." The bill authorized $48 billion to be spent over five years, including $5 billion to fight malaria. The funding is intended to combat the disease by contributing to the strengthening of health systems and health policies of partner countries. The bill also authorized the president to appoint a malaria coordinator to operate internationally through nongovernmental organizations and other partners in order to carry out prevention, care, treatment, support, capacity development, and other activities to reduce the prevalence, mortality, and incidence of malaria.
Wrong Approach
Bush's pledge brings hope to sub-Saharan Africa, where the toll of illnesses and deaths from malaria is dragging down economic productivity. But his initiative and many other approaches towards saving Africa from malaria have very few prospects for preventing the disease. The President's Malaria Initiative is using a comprehensive four-dimensional approach to prevent and treat malaria — indoor spraying of homes with insecticides, insecticide-treated mosquito nets, lifesaving anti-malarial drugs, and treatment to prevent malaria in pregnant women. While insecticides, anti-malarial drugs, and mosquito nets are temporary measures to cure already infected people and protect those at risk, they can't eradicate malaria.
Malaria is transmitted from person to person through the bite of a female anopheles mosquito. This kind of mosquito breeds in pools of stagnant waters, shallow lakes, and moisture from waste depositories. The densely populated slum areas of most sub-Saharan African cities provide breeding environments for mosquitoes. People treated with anti-malarial drugs often return to these mosquito-infested slums. Mosquito nets provided free-of-charge by aid workers are often sold by beneficiaries to feed their families. Some families simply can't use the nets because they aren't large enough to cover a large group of family members sharing the floor of a corrugated zinc shelter.
According to the Roll Back Malaria (RBM) initiative, malaria parasites are developing an unacceptable level of resistance to many drugs; most insecticides are also no longer useful against mosquitoes transmitting the disease, and an effective vaccine is at best many years away. Hence, those interested in solving Africa's malaria problem should devote their resources not only to curing infected people, but also to alleviating the breeding spaces of female anopheles mosquitoes, which are responsible for the spread of the malaria parasite and the disease.
Those who have visited a major city in sub-Saharan Africa can remember seeing that pile of garbage on the side of the road, the waste depository just outside the city, or the dumping of waste into gutters when it rains. Most of the waste dumped in gutters flows and settles into many sections of a city, allowing mosquitoes to breed and enter homes. No anti-malarial drug can prevent mosquito bites unless the root transmitters of the parasite are contained. Female anopheles mosquitoes must be driven away from densely populated areas.
It's high time the international community became realistic about addressing Africa's problems. While it's very tempting and self-gratifying to treat the continent's major problems as an emergency, we must be aware of the fact that the problem of malaria can't be solved by relief intervention. Sometimes the practical solution to a widespread medical problem might not lay in cure, but in tackling poverty and other root causes.
Perhaps we can end the vicious cycle of malaria by concentrating aid on helping sub-Saharan African countries to establish efficient waste-disposal mechanisms and expediting the achievement of goal seven of the Millennium Development Goals, which calls for a significant improvement in the lives of at least 100 million slum-dwellers by 2020. As the Liberian saying goes, unless the rotten tooth is removed, the mouth must chew with caution — even when painkillers are abundant. The deplorable image of Africa's death toll can sometimes ignite the desire for emergency relief interventions, but most of the continent's problems, unlike natural disasters and some other seasonal outbreaks, require long-term efforts to eliminate the source of the problem and put the continent on a path to sustainable development.
Joseph Kaifala, a Foreign Policy In Focus contributor, is a Davis United World College Fellow from Sierra Leone at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies.
Rising prices tip another 75-million towards starvation
from the Mail and Guardian
Global numbers afflicted by acute hunger rose from 850-million to 925-million by the start of 2008 because of rising prices, the head of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) said on Wednesday.
The number of people suffering from malnutrition, before the worst effects of global price rises, "rose just in 2007 by 75-million", Jacques Diouf, director general of the Rome-based agency, told an Italian Parliament committee, according to ANSA news agency.
An FAO prices index showed global food price rises of 12% in 2006, 24% in 2007 and 50% over the first eight months of 2008, Diouf added -- suggesting the number affected is likely to top one billion by the end of the year.
"$30-billion per year must be invested to double food production and eliminate hunger," Diouf said, calling the figure "modest" in comparison with the amount many countries spend on arms and agriculture.
An FAO summit vowed in June to halve global hunger by 2015 and take "urgent" action over the global food crisis, but only after going into overtime at the fractious gathering.
In a final declaration at the summit -- which saw about $6,5-billion pledged but which exposed strains, notably over biofuels -- world leaders also agreed to boost food production in poor countries.
The declaration restated similar conclusions from food summits in 1996 and 2002.
Diouf said previously that "under the current trends, that objective would be obtained in 2150 instead of 2015."
Rising food prices have pushed 100-million people below the poverty line, the World Bank has estimated, and have sparked protests and even riots in some parts of the world, while also threatening world economic growth.
Link to full article. May expire in future.
Global numbers afflicted by acute hunger rose from 850-million to 925-million by the start of 2008 because of rising prices, the head of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) said on Wednesday.
The number of people suffering from malnutrition, before the worst effects of global price rises, "rose just in 2007 by 75-million", Jacques Diouf, director general of the Rome-based agency, told an Italian Parliament committee, according to ANSA news agency.
An FAO prices index showed global food price rises of 12% in 2006, 24% in 2007 and 50% over the first eight months of 2008, Diouf added -- suggesting the number affected is likely to top one billion by the end of the year.
"$30-billion per year must be invested to double food production and eliminate hunger," Diouf said, calling the figure "modest" in comparison with the amount many countries spend on arms and agriculture.
An FAO summit vowed in June to halve global hunger by 2015 and take "urgent" action over the global food crisis, but only after going into overtime at the fractious gathering.
In a final declaration at the summit -- which saw about $6,5-billion pledged but which exposed strains, notably over biofuels -- world leaders also agreed to boost food production in poor countries.
The declaration restated similar conclusions from food summits in 1996 and 2002.
Diouf said previously that "under the current trends, that objective would be obtained in 2150 instead of 2015."
Rising food prices have pushed 100-million people below the poverty line, the World Bank has estimated, and have sparked protests and even riots in some parts of the world, while also threatening world economic growth.
Link to full article. May expire in future.
High input costs putting farmers out of business in Uganda
from the Daily Monitor
by Ephraim Kasozi
In Uganda, over 80 per cent of the population lives in rural areas and agriculture is their major economic activity but the policies set by the government have not benefited them for transformation.
As a result, the importance and need to involve the farmers in the policy formulation process so that the negative impacts of some policies can be minimised while implementation is enhanced is underscored.
Small-scale farmers lament that when the government liberalised the economy and divested itself from doing business, it left them at the mercy of traders.
“Since then, the prices of agricultural inputs have steadily been rising and they have now reached a point where the inputs are unaffordable to small holder farmers. The prices of inputs have either doubled or tripled,” says Ms Victoria Kakoko-Ssebagereka, the Chairperson of Kayunga District Farmers’ Association.
According to Ms Ssebagereka, a 50kg bag of nitrogen fertilisers has risen from Shs45,000 four years ago to over Shs140,000, a hand hoe from Shs2,500 to Shs4,500 and an ox-plough from Shs125,000 to Shs250,000 and a day-old chick from Shs500 to Shs1,000, making it difficult for a small scale farmer to access the productivity enhancing technologies leading to the vicious circle of poverty.
Ms Ssebagereka who is also the publicist of the Uganda National Farmers Federation said that the food and nutrition policy does not spell out in tangible terms how smallholder farmers are to be supported to attain food and nutrition security since farmers need to be supported in accessing the necessary inputs like fertilisers and pesticides.
The failure by the government to set up strategic food grain reserves is also a big concern to the farmers because they do not have good storage facilities yet if the government buys and stores the food grains in the central storage systems , it serves as an assurance that the farmer can access the food in case of crop failure, she said.
“There is no policy to ensure that the smallholder farmers use good quality seeds, planting and stocking materials. Often times, the seeds are fake with low germination percentages, the agrochemicals and livestock such as diary cows, piglets, and chicken are of very low grade making losses for smallholder farmers,” Ms Ssebagereka said.
She was speaking during the National Public Hearing on Agricultural Policy Issues affecting smallholder farmers organised by Food Rights Alliance (FRA) held at Hotel Africana, Kampala on Friday September 12.
FRA is a network organisation that brings together over 30 non-governmental organisations working in the agricultural sector.
Mr Onesmus Mugyenyi, the Acting Executive Director of Advocates Coalition for Development and Environment said the public hearing that brings farmers’ representatives countrywide together was aimed at raising issues affecting farmers and addressing them to policy makers.
She argued that water, the basic resource for agricultural production is not being given adequate attention yet droughts are very common and farmers lose crops and animals.
Mr Julius Musimenta, a farmer in Wakiso said the high food prices are a result of the significant decline in the agricultural sector due to lack of support.
“The agricultural sector is frustrated because farmers’ interests have not been catered for. As a result, many people have withdrawn from farming due to market failures and high input with low yields. This is unhealthy to the economy,” Mr Musimenta, also the Assistant Coordinator of Agency for Integrated Rural Development, Wakiso said.
He said the exploitative private entrepreneurs who earn more compared to the farmers’ yields have also discouraged the smallholder farmers.
The agriculture sector share of 3.4 per cent in the national budget is too small to develop the sector that constitutes the backbone of the economy, he said. Ms Rehema Kaaya, a farmer from Kalagala in Luwero District attributed the high food prices to lack of machinery to increase farm production.
Link to full article. May expire in future.
by Ephraim Kasozi
In Uganda, over 80 per cent of the population lives in rural areas and agriculture is their major economic activity but the policies set by the government have not benefited them for transformation.
As a result, the importance and need to involve the farmers in the policy formulation process so that the negative impacts of some policies can be minimised while implementation is enhanced is underscored.
Small-scale farmers lament that when the government liberalised the economy and divested itself from doing business, it left them at the mercy of traders.
“Since then, the prices of agricultural inputs have steadily been rising and they have now reached a point where the inputs are unaffordable to small holder farmers. The prices of inputs have either doubled or tripled,” says Ms Victoria Kakoko-Ssebagereka, the Chairperson of Kayunga District Farmers’ Association.
According to Ms Ssebagereka, a 50kg bag of nitrogen fertilisers has risen from Shs45,000 four years ago to over Shs140,000, a hand hoe from Shs2,500 to Shs4,500 and an ox-plough from Shs125,000 to Shs250,000 and a day-old chick from Shs500 to Shs1,000, making it difficult for a small scale farmer to access the productivity enhancing technologies leading to the vicious circle of poverty.
Ms Ssebagereka who is also the publicist of the Uganda National Farmers Federation said that the food and nutrition policy does not spell out in tangible terms how smallholder farmers are to be supported to attain food and nutrition security since farmers need to be supported in accessing the necessary inputs like fertilisers and pesticides.
The failure by the government to set up strategic food grain reserves is also a big concern to the farmers because they do not have good storage facilities yet if the government buys and stores the food grains in the central storage systems , it serves as an assurance that the farmer can access the food in case of crop failure, she said.
“There is no policy to ensure that the smallholder farmers use good quality seeds, planting and stocking materials. Often times, the seeds are fake with low germination percentages, the agrochemicals and livestock such as diary cows, piglets, and chicken are of very low grade making losses for smallholder farmers,” Ms Ssebagereka said.
She was speaking during the National Public Hearing on Agricultural Policy Issues affecting smallholder farmers organised by Food Rights Alliance (FRA) held at Hotel Africana, Kampala on Friday September 12.
FRA is a network organisation that brings together over 30 non-governmental organisations working in the agricultural sector.
Mr Onesmus Mugyenyi, the Acting Executive Director of Advocates Coalition for Development and Environment said the public hearing that brings farmers’ representatives countrywide together was aimed at raising issues affecting farmers and addressing them to policy makers.
She argued that water, the basic resource for agricultural production is not being given adequate attention yet droughts are very common and farmers lose crops and animals.
Mr Julius Musimenta, a farmer in Wakiso said the high food prices are a result of the significant decline in the agricultural sector due to lack of support.
“The agricultural sector is frustrated because farmers’ interests have not been catered for. As a result, many people have withdrawn from farming due to market failures and high input with low yields. This is unhealthy to the economy,” Mr Musimenta, also the Assistant Coordinator of Agency for Integrated Rural Development, Wakiso said.
He said the exploitative private entrepreneurs who earn more compared to the farmers’ yields have also discouraged the smallholder farmers.
The agriculture sector share of 3.4 per cent in the national budget is too small to develop the sector that constitutes the backbone of the economy, he said. Ms Rehema Kaaya, a farmer from Kalagala in Luwero District attributed the high food prices to lack of machinery to increase farm production.
Link to full article. May expire in future.
Childhood poverty increasing in Massachusetts
from the Boston Globe
By David Abel,
The number of children in the state living in poverty is increasing, pushing Massachusetts lower in the ranking of states with children in need, according to a new report.
The report, released yesterday by Massachusetts Citizens for Children, highlights new data from the US Census Bureau that show 182,000 children, 13 percent of all children under age 18 in Massachusetts, lived below the federal poverty line last year, 4,000 more than in 2006.
The state last year ranked 11th in the percentage of children living in poverty, below Alaska, Connecticut, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Maryland, Hawaii, Minnesota, Utah, Virginia, and Wyoming. In 2006, Massachusetts ranked fifth.
"These 182,000 children would form an unbroken line the entire length of the 138-mile Massachusetts Turnpike," said Jetta Bernier, executive director of Massachusetts Citizens for Children.
"A legislator driving on the Mass. Pike from his or her district to the State House would pass by a child who is poor every four feet, or 1,300 children every mile."
Even worse, in a state with one of the nation's highest median family incomes (about $60,000 in 2006), about 87,000 children lived in extreme poverty, or families of four earning less than $10,600 a year.
Bernier said that Massachusetts has the third widest divide between the rich and poor in the nation and that the divide is growing at the fourth fastest rate.
"The chasm is threatening to undermine our state's bright future," she said.
The report suggested that the Census Bureau focus on the federal poverty line, in effect, conceals the true number of people living in poverty.
The federal poverty level - about $20,000 for a family of four - uses a decades-old formula that doesn't take into account the rapid increase in the costs of housing, transportation, education, and fuels, among other things.
Link to full article. May expire in future.
By David Abel,
The number of children in the state living in poverty is increasing, pushing Massachusetts lower in the ranking of states with children in need, according to a new report.
The report, released yesterday by Massachusetts Citizens for Children, highlights new data from the US Census Bureau that show 182,000 children, 13 percent of all children under age 18 in Massachusetts, lived below the federal poverty line last year, 4,000 more than in 2006.
The state last year ranked 11th in the percentage of children living in poverty, below Alaska, Connecticut, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Maryland, Hawaii, Minnesota, Utah, Virginia, and Wyoming. In 2006, Massachusetts ranked fifth.
"These 182,000 children would form an unbroken line the entire length of the 138-mile Massachusetts Turnpike," said Jetta Bernier, executive director of Massachusetts Citizens for Children.
"A legislator driving on the Mass. Pike from his or her district to the State House would pass by a child who is poor every four feet, or 1,300 children every mile."
Even worse, in a state with one of the nation's highest median family incomes (about $60,000 in 2006), about 87,000 children lived in extreme poverty, or families of four earning less than $10,600 a year.
Bernier said that Massachusetts has the third widest divide between the rich and poor in the nation and that the divide is growing at the fourth fastest rate.
"The chasm is threatening to undermine our state's bright future," she said.
The report suggested that the Census Bureau focus on the federal poverty line, in effect, conceals the true number of people living in poverty.
The federal poverty level - about $20,000 for a family of four - uses a decades-old formula that doesn't take into account the rapid increase in the costs of housing, transportation, education, and fuels, among other things.
Link to full article. May expire in future.
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Haiti could face new food crisis after storms
from Reuters
By Matthew Bigg
PORT-AU-PRINCE - Haiti faces a deepening crisis after storms destroyed much of the impoverished country's rice crop, sparking fears of a repeat of the deadly food riots earlier this year that brought down the government.
The storms killed hundreds of people and forced tens of thousands out of their homes in the port city of Gonaives. The city is the capital of the country's rice bowl region of Artibonite, which suffered severe storm damage.
Charity Christian Aid estimates that roughly one third of the country's 60,000-ton annual production of rice may have been ruined by floods.
Farm tools, seeds to plant next year's crop, livestock that farmers live off and irrigation systems vital for rice production were also destroyed.
The damage is all the more serious because it came at harvest time. The losses will be most keenly felt by the poorest farmers, who plant and harvest later and who lack the capital to reinvest.
It could also have a big impact on the overall food economy.
"There could be price disruptions that could cause unrest and a situation similar to that in April. The population could get really frustrated," said Prospery Raymond, the representative of Christian Aid in Haiti.
Food is a sensitive political issue in the Caribbean nation, the poorest country in the Western hemisphere. Malnutrition is rampant in Haiti, where many people live on less than $2 a day.
Riots in April over an increase in food prices killed at least five people, including a member of the U.N. peacekeeping force, and collapsed the government of Prime Minister Jacques Edouard Alexis, an ally of President Rene Preval.
The soaring cost of rice, beans, cooking oil and other staples was caused by grains being diverted into ethanol production, a growing demand for meat as India and China became wealthier, high global oil prices and, to some extent, market speculation. But in Haiti many people blamed the government.
PRODUCTION SLASHED
Less than two decades ago, Haiti was almost self-sufficient in rice production. In the mid-1990s, the country slashed tariffs on imported rice in response to pressure from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.
As a result, cheap subsidized rice from the United States came to dominate the market, causing national production to plummet, according to a report in June by the British-based aid agency Oxfam.
"Haiti is now importing 80 percent of the rice it consumes just as world prices have doubled," the report said.
Critics argue that international lending organizations helped worsen hunger in Haiti by pursuing free market policies that undermined domestic rice production and turned the country into a market for U.S. rice.
Supporters of trade liberalization say there is little alternative and it is the best way to transform the country's economy after decades of mismanagement and dictatorships.
Link to full article. May expire in future.
By Matthew Bigg
PORT-AU-PRINCE - Haiti faces a deepening crisis after storms destroyed much of the impoverished country's rice crop, sparking fears of a repeat of the deadly food riots earlier this year that brought down the government.
The storms killed hundreds of people and forced tens of thousands out of their homes in the port city of Gonaives. The city is the capital of the country's rice bowl region of Artibonite, which suffered severe storm damage.
Charity Christian Aid estimates that roughly one third of the country's 60,000-ton annual production of rice may have been ruined by floods.
Farm tools, seeds to plant next year's crop, livestock that farmers live off and irrigation systems vital for rice production were also destroyed.
The damage is all the more serious because it came at harvest time. The losses will be most keenly felt by the poorest farmers, who plant and harvest later and who lack the capital to reinvest.
It could also have a big impact on the overall food economy.
"There could be price disruptions that could cause unrest and a situation similar to that in April. The population could get really frustrated," said Prospery Raymond, the representative of Christian Aid in Haiti.
Food is a sensitive political issue in the Caribbean nation, the poorest country in the Western hemisphere. Malnutrition is rampant in Haiti, where many people live on less than $2 a day.
Riots in April over an increase in food prices killed at least five people, including a member of the U.N. peacekeeping force, and collapsed the government of Prime Minister Jacques Edouard Alexis, an ally of President Rene Preval.
The soaring cost of rice, beans, cooking oil and other staples was caused by grains being diverted into ethanol production, a growing demand for meat as India and China became wealthier, high global oil prices and, to some extent, market speculation. But in Haiti many people blamed the government.
PRODUCTION SLASHED
Less than two decades ago, Haiti was almost self-sufficient in rice production. In the mid-1990s, the country slashed tariffs on imported rice in response to pressure from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.
As a result, cheap subsidized rice from the United States came to dominate the market, causing national production to plummet, according to a report in June by the British-based aid agency Oxfam.
"Haiti is now importing 80 percent of the rice it consumes just as world prices have doubled," the report said.
Critics argue that international lending organizations helped worsen hunger in Haiti by pursuing free market policies that undermined domestic rice production and turned the country into a market for U.S. rice.
Supporters of trade liberalization say there is little alternative and it is the best way to transform the country's economy after decades of mismanagement and dictatorships.
Link to full article. May expire in future.
Green activists 'are keeping Africa poor'
from FOX News
Mark Henderson, Science Editor
Western do-gooders are impoverishing Africa by promoting traditional farming at the expense of modern scientific agriculture, according to Britain's former chief scientist.
Anti-science attitudes among aid agencies, poverty campaigners and green activists are denying the continent access to technology that could improve millions of lives, Professor Sir David King will say today.
Non-governmental organisations (NGOs) from Europe and America are turning African countries against sophisticated farming methods, including GM crops, in favour of indigenous and organic approaches that cannot deliver the continent's much needed “green revolution”, he believes.
Speaking before a keynote lecture tonight to the British Association for the Advancement of Science, of which he is president, Sir David said that the slow pace of African development was linked directly to Western influence. “I'm going to suggest, and I believe this very strongly, that a big part has been played in the impoverishment of that continent by the focus on nontechnological agricultural techniques, on techniques of farming that pertain to the history of that continent rather than techniques that pertain to modern technological capability. Why has that continent not joined Asia in the big green revolutions that have taken place over the past few decades? The suffering within that continent, I believe, is largely driven by attitudes developed in the West which are somewhat anti-science, anti-technology - attitudes that lead towards organic farming, for example, attitudes that lead against the use of genetic technology for crops that could deal with increased salinity in the water, that can deal with flooding for rice crops, that can deal with drought resistance.”
Sir David, who stepped down in December as the Government's Chief Scientific Adviser, will use his presidential address to the BA Festival of Science in Liverpool to accuse governments and NGOs of confused thinking about African development.
“Solutions will only emerge if full use is made of modern agricultural technology methods, under progressive, scientifically informed regulation,” he will say. “The most advanced form of plant breeding, using modern genetic techniques, is now available to us. Plant breeding needs to meet a range of demands, including defences against evolving plant diseases, drought resistance, saline resistance, and flood tolerance. The problem is that the Western-world move toward organic farming - a lifestyle choice for a community with surplus food - and against agricultural technology in general and GM in particular, has been adopted across Africa, with the exception of South Africa, with devastating consequences.”
His remarks will place him in direct opposition to former Whitehall colleagues. The Government endorsed recently the International Assessement of Agricultural Science and Technology, a report from 400 scientists and development experts published in April, which championed small-scale farming and traditional knowledge. The exercise was led by Professor Bob Watson, the chief scientist at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. Sir David said that its findings were short-sighted. “I hesitate to criticise Bob Watson, who I admire enormously, but I think that we have been overwhelmed by attitudes to Africa that for some reason are qualitatively different to attitudes elsewhere.
“We have the technology to feed the population of the planet. The question is do we have the ability to understand that we have it, and to deliver?” Sir David, who was born and brought up in South Africa, added: “I think there is a tremendous groundswell of feeling that we need to support tradition in Africa. What that actually means in practice is if you go to a marketplace in a lovely town like Livingstone in Zambia, near Victoria Falls, you will see hundreds of people with little piles of their crops for sale.
“This is an extremely inefficient process. The sort of thing we're seeing existed in this country hundreds of years ago. I don't believe that will lead to the economic development of Africa.”
He will cite the example of rice that can resist flooding, which has been developed by the International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines. Its development has been held up for several years because scientists felt they could not use GM techniques, such is the scale of Western-influenced opposition to the technology.
Link to full article. May expire in future.
Mark Henderson, Science Editor
Western do-gooders are impoverishing Africa by promoting traditional farming at the expense of modern scientific agriculture, according to Britain's former chief scientist.
Anti-science attitudes among aid agencies, poverty campaigners and green activists are denying the continent access to technology that could improve millions of lives, Professor Sir David King will say today.
Non-governmental organisations (NGOs) from Europe and America are turning African countries against sophisticated farming methods, including GM crops, in favour of indigenous and organic approaches that cannot deliver the continent's much needed “green revolution”, he believes.
Speaking before a keynote lecture tonight to the British Association for the Advancement of Science, of which he is president, Sir David said that the slow pace of African development was linked directly to Western influence. “I'm going to suggest, and I believe this very strongly, that a big part has been played in the impoverishment of that continent by the focus on nontechnological agricultural techniques, on techniques of farming that pertain to the history of that continent rather than techniques that pertain to modern technological capability. Why has that continent not joined Asia in the big green revolutions that have taken place over the past few decades? The suffering within that continent, I believe, is largely driven by attitudes developed in the West which are somewhat anti-science, anti-technology - attitudes that lead towards organic farming, for example, attitudes that lead against the use of genetic technology for crops that could deal with increased salinity in the water, that can deal with flooding for rice crops, that can deal with drought resistance.”
Sir David, who stepped down in December as the Government's Chief Scientific Adviser, will use his presidential address to the BA Festival of Science in Liverpool to accuse governments and NGOs of confused thinking about African development.
“Solutions will only emerge if full use is made of modern agricultural technology methods, under progressive, scientifically informed regulation,” he will say. “The most advanced form of plant breeding, using modern genetic techniques, is now available to us. Plant breeding needs to meet a range of demands, including defences against evolving plant diseases, drought resistance, saline resistance, and flood tolerance. The problem is that the Western-world move toward organic farming - a lifestyle choice for a community with surplus food - and against agricultural technology in general and GM in particular, has been adopted across Africa, with the exception of South Africa, with devastating consequences.”
His remarks will place him in direct opposition to former Whitehall colleagues. The Government endorsed recently the International Assessement of Agricultural Science and Technology, a report from 400 scientists and development experts published in April, which championed small-scale farming and traditional knowledge. The exercise was led by Professor Bob Watson, the chief scientist at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. Sir David said that its findings were short-sighted. “I hesitate to criticise Bob Watson, who I admire enormously, but I think that we have been overwhelmed by attitudes to Africa that for some reason are qualitatively different to attitudes elsewhere.
“We have the technology to feed the population of the planet. The question is do we have the ability to understand that we have it, and to deliver?” Sir David, who was born and brought up in South Africa, added: “I think there is a tremendous groundswell of feeling that we need to support tradition in Africa. What that actually means in practice is if you go to a marketplace in a lovely town like Livingstone in Zambia, near Victoria Falls, you will see hundreds of people with little piles of their crops for sale.
“This is an extremely inefficient process. The sort of thing we're seeing existed in this country hundreds of years ago. I don't believe that will lead to the economic development of Africa.”
He will cite the example of rice that can resist flooding, which has been developed by the International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines. Its development has been held up for several years because scientists felt they could not use GM techniques, such is the scale of Western-influenced opposition to the technology.
Link to full article. May expire in future.
Foreclosure crisis forces rental crisis
from The Salinas Californian
This is a little off topic, but it was an angle of the foreclosure crisis that I haven't seen explored before. - Kale
By NICK RAHAIM
After a few, futile months of perusing classified ads, talking to property managers and checking out houses for rent, it took a connection through a family friend for Penny and Tom Bubnis to find a place to live.
"It was a major pain to find an affordable, clean house in a good neighborhood," Tom Bubnis said.
The Bubnises - like thousands of other families in Salinas - entered the rental market after their house was foreclosed upon.
"Rental units are in high demand at this point," said Michael Rodriguez, broker/owner of Platinum Capital Mortgage & Estate. "The folks who were displaced outnumber the number of rental units available."
In 2007, roughly 24 percent of Salinas residents were renters, but the number skyrocketed to 46 percent in 2008, Rodriguez said.
While the market may be tough for those looking for housing, it's great for landlords. Salinas was recently ranked the sixth-strongest rental market in the country by AXIOMetrics, a Dallas-based research company.
A typical, one-bedroom apartment now goes for $1,400 to $1,600, and two-bedroom apartments go for $1,600 to $2,000, Rodriguez said. Rent has increased by 5.6 percent in Salinas from 2007 to 2008, and the vacancy rate - the lowest in the nation - has dropped to 2.4 percent, down from 4.3 percent two years ago.
The family friend who helped the Bubnises is a Realtor who had a vacant house in south Salinas that the owners didn't want to sell at current market prices. For a "steal" at $1,800 a month, the Bubnises now live in a three-bedroom, two-bath house. They keep up the landscaping that became disheveled after more than a year of vacancy and perform other small household repairs as a condition of "cheap" rent.
As recently as October 2007, many property managers advertised they would pay the first month rent on a month-to-month lease to fill rental units, Rodriguez said. Now, those same units come with a 14-month minimum lease, first and last months' rent and a long waiting line, he said.
Sally Backus, owner of Backus Property Management, said she only has one vacancy out of her 370-rental unit portfolio, and the apartment prices have increased 5 to 10 percent in the last year.
Increased demand for rental housing in Salinas has also put a squeeze on low-income renters.
Former homeowners can afford higher rent, which has put additional upward pressure on rental prices, said Jean Goebel, director of housing management for the Housing Authority of Monterey County.
The Housing Authority received more than 5,000 applications for Section 8 housing assistance during the application filing period in July, Goebel said, significantly higher than the number received in years past.
Foreclosure ripple effect.
Link to full article. May expire in future.
This is a little off topic, but it was an angle of the foreclosure crisis that I haven't seen explored before. - Kale
By NICK RAHAIM
After a few, futile months of perusing classified ads, talking to property managers and checking out houses for rent, it took a connection through a family friend for Penny and Tom Bubnis to find a place to live.
"It was a major pain to find an affordable, clean house in a good neighborhood," Tom Bubnis said.
The Bubnises - like thousands of other families in Salinas - entered the rental market after their house was foreclosed upon.
"Rental units are in high demand at this point," said Michael Rodriguez, broker/owner of Platinum Capital Mortgage & Estate. "The folks who were displaced outnumber the number of rental units available."
In 2007, roughly 24 percent of Salinas residents were renters, but the number skyrocketed to 46 percent in 2008, Rodriguez said.
While the market may be tough for those looking for housing, it's great for landlords. Salinas was recently ranked the sixth-strongest rental market in the country by AXIOMetrics, a Dallas-based research company.
A typical, one-bedroom apartment now goes for $1,400 to $1,600, and two-bedroom apartments go for $1,600 to $2,000, Rodriguez said. Rent has increased by 5.6 percent in Salinas from 2007 to 2008, and the vacancy rate - the lowest in the nation - has dropped to 2.4 percent, down from 4.3 percent two years ago.
The family friend who helped the Bubnises is a Realtor who had a vacant house in south Salinas that the owners didn't want to sell at current market prices. For a "steal" at $1,800 a month, the Bubnises now live in a three-bedroom, two-bath house. They keep up the landscaping that became disheveled after more than a year of vacancy and perform other small household repairs as a condition of "cheap" rent.
As recently as October 2007, many property managers advertised they would pay the first month rent on a month-to-month lease to fill rental units, Rodriguez said. Now, those same units come with a 14-month minimum lease, first and last months' rent and a long waiting line, he said.
Sally Backus, owner of Backus Property Management, said she only has one vacancy out of her 370-rental unit portfolio, and the apartment prices have increased 5 to 10 percent in the last year.
Increased demand for rental housing in Salinas has also put a squeeze on low-income renters.
Former homeowners can afford higher rent, which has put additional upward pressure on rental prices, said Jean Goebel, director of housing management for the Housing Authority of Monterey County.
The Housing Authority received more than 5,000 applications for Section 8 housing assistance during the application filing period in July, Goebel said, significantly higher than the number received in years past.
Foreclosure ripple effect.
Link to full article. May expire in future.
Ontario Group rallies for Rwanda
from the Simcoe Reformer
By Barbara Simpson
Young Rwandan adults are mastering carpentry, tailoring and farming -- the very skills needed to build lives for themselves -- thanks to the Port Ryerse community.
A six-member committee in the community fundraised $58,000 to help build a vocational school in the remote village of Vunga in 2007. Now they're back to fundraising again to help upgrade the school with new equipment, in addition to offsetting the cost of tuition for 30 needy students and salaries for 11 staff members.
The 3R Road Rally for Rwanda featuring vintage vehicles and wine tasting was held in Port Ryerse on Sunday afternoon. Drivers took off with their hot rods around the community to search for clues in an Amazing Race style adventure. Their travels led them to the answers -- as well as playing cards for a later poker game -- spread out along the route. When drivers returned, they were treated to hors d'oeuvres and local wine from Florence Estates Winery. There was also a small silent auction of donated prizes valued at $2,200.
But the purpose behind the lavish event wasn't lost between the fancy cars and the bubbly. A slideshow of photographs from the yet-to-be-named committee's Rwandan travels played in the small Port Ryerse church.
"That's one of my favourite pictures," said committee member JoAnne Easton, pointing to a snapshot of young children huddled together.
It was Easton's 2006 trip to Rwanda with the Sharing of Ministries Aboard organization that spurred the interest in helping build a vocational school. The mass genocide has left 100,000 men in jail since 1995, leaving their families in a "double whammy" situation -- having to look after both themselves and their imprisoned relatives, explained Easton's husband Bob.
"It's the family's responsibility to look after extended family in jail," said Bob, chair of the committee.
That's why vocational schools are desperately needed in struggling Rwanda, to educate the abandoned women and children who desperately need jobs to fill their families' bellies.
There are now 87 students enrolled in the school with a whopping 60 per cent of them women. Farming teachers even take the time to visit their students' home farms where they offer them advice.
"What hit me is that they increased their yield 10 per cent," Easton said.
The next step is ensuring that the school can flourish with better equipment, say, advanced tools for the carpentry and tailoring classes, while also simply maintaining its operational budget. The cost of new equipment is running about $50,000 with an additional $40,000 required for simply keeping the school up and running, said Rev. Tony Bouwmeester, a committee member.
They were hoping to raise about $5,000 at Sunday's road rally towards their expenses.
But what still strikes Easton to this day is the spirit of the Rwandan people. She had the chance to visit several churches run by dedicated leaders during her first visit. She was amazed at how the locals rose to their feet to sing and dance during their church services. This despite living in poverty with their loved ones either jailed or dead.
Link to full article. May expire in future.
By Barbara Simpson
Young Rwandan adults are mastering carpentry, tailoring and farming -- the very skills needed to build lives for themselves -- thanks to the Port Ryerse community.
A six-member committee in the community fundraised $58,000 to help build a vocational school in the remote village of Vunga in 2007. Now they're back to fundraising again to help upgrade the school with new equipment, in addition to offsetting the cost of tuition for 30 needy students and salaries for 11 staff members.
The 3R Road Rally for Rwanda featuring vintage vehicles and wine tasting was held in Port Ryerse on Sunday afternoon. Drivers took off with their hot rods around the community to search for clues in an Amazing Race style adventure. Their travels led them to the answers -- as well as playing cards for a later poker game -- spread out along the route. When drivers returned, they were treated to hors d'oeuvres and local wine from Florence Estates Winery. There was also a small silent auction of donated prizes valued at $2,200.
But the purpose behind the lavish event wasn't lost between the fancy cars and the bubbly. A slideshow of photographs from the yet-to-be-named committee's Rwandan travels played in the small Port Ryerse church.
"That's one of my favourite pictures," said committee member JoAnne Easton, pointing to a snapshot of young children huddled together.
It was Easton's 2006 trip to Rwanda with the Sharing of Ministries Aboard organization that spurred the interest in helping build a vocational school. The mass genocide has left 100,000 men in jail since 1995, leaving their families in a "double whammy" situation -- having to look after both themselves and their imprisoned relatives, explained Easton's husband Bob.
"It's the family's responsibility to look after extended family in jail," said Bob, chair of the committee.
That's why vocational schools are desperately needed in struggling Rwanda, to educate the abandoned women and children who desperately need jobs to fill their families' bellies.
There are now 87 students enrolled in the school with a whopping 60 per cent of them women. Farming teachers even take the time to visit their students' home farms where they offer them advice.
"What hit me is that they increased their yield 10 per cent," Easton said.
The next step is ensuring that the school can flourish with better equipment, say, advanced tools for the carpentry and tailoring classes, while also simply maintaining its operational budget. The cost of new equipment is running about $50,000 with an additional $40,000 required for simply keeping the school up and running, said Rev. Tony Bouwmeester, a committee member.
They were hoping to raise about $5,000 at Sunday's road rally towards their expenses.
But what still strikes Easton to this day is the spirit of the Rwandan people. She had the chance to visit several churches run by dedicated leaders during her first visit. She was amazed at how the locals rose to their feet to sing and dance during their church services. This despite living in poverty with their loved ones either jailed or dead.
Link to full article. May expire in future.
Fewer Germans Living in Poverty But Risks Remain, Study Shows
from Deutsche Welle
For the first time in ten years, Germany has witnessed a fall in the number of households under the poverty line, according to a new report published on Tuesday, Sept. 15.
The German Institute for Economic Research (DIW) report stated that the percentage of Germans living in poverty fell to 16.5 percent in 2006, down from 18 percent in the previous year. That works out to be more than a million people less.
The 2006 figures are the most recent available, the DIW added in its report.
The DIW credited the reforms in the employment sector with the drop in the poverty figures.
However, the report added that those who have been living in poverty run the risk of remaining poor for longer and that unemployment continued to play the biggest role in poverty in Germany.
The long-term unemployed and those without occupational training continued to be most at risk.
The DIW study showed that the number of families which have lived below the breadline for at least two years has risen in the last decade from around six percent to 12 percent in 2007.
And while the situation in the job market continues to improve, and the divide between high and low income earners begins to slow, the risk of unemployment still remains, DIW chief Klaus Zimmermann said.
The DIW considers as poor those who are single and who earn less than 891 euro-per-month, and couples who earn less than 1871 euro-per-month together with two children. That applies to almost 60 percent of middle income, employed people in Germany.
Link to full article. May expire in future.
For the first time in ten years, Germany has witnessed a fall in the number of households under the poverty line, according to a new report published on Tuesday, Sept. 15.
The German Institute for Economic Research (DIW) report stated that the percentage of Germans living in poverty fell to 16.5 percent in 2006, down from 18 percent in the previous year. That works out to be more than a million people less.
The 2006 figures are the most recent available, the DIW added in its report.
The DIW credited the reforms in the employment sector with the drop in the poverty figures.
However, the report added that those who have been living in poverty run the risk of remaining poor for longer and that unemployment continued to play the biggest role in poverty in Germany.
The long-term unemployed and those without occupational training continued to be most at risk.
The DIW study showed that the number of families which have lived below the breadline for at least two years has risen in the last decade from around six percent to 12 percent in 2007.
And while the situation in the job market continues to improve, and the divide between high and low income earners begins to slow, the risk of unemployment still remains, DIW chief Klaus Zimmermann said.
The DIW considers as poor those who are single and who earn less than 891 euro-per-month, and couples who earn less than 1871 euro-per-month together with two children. That applies to almost 60 percent of middle income, employed people in Germany.
Link to full article. May expire in future.
Roma poverty a major issue for EU
from the BBC
By Nick Thorpe
The European Union's freedom of movement laws mean Eastern Europe's large population of Roma (Gypsies) is now spreading west.
The effect of this influx on national economies, as well as the deep poverty of the EU's Roma, are high on the agenda as the first summit on Roma integration within the EU begins in Brussels.
Italy and Spain have received the most Roma, mainly from Romania, Bulgaria and Slovakia, where they make up more than 10% of the population.
Italy has witnessed the most serious effects - murders blamed on Roma, and revenge attacks by vigilante groups, followed by controversial government attempts to fingerprint Roma immigrants.
In Hungary, there is tension between Roma and non-Roma, after a teacher was beaten to death by a Roma mob in one village, and attacks on a lorry driver and his family in another - both after road traffic accidents involving Roma children.
The creation of a "Hungarian Guard", by far-right groups who arrive in villages after such incidents, is fuelling fears of an explosion.
Integration key
"I don't really know how the EU could help," said Andras Ujlaky, head of the Chance for Children Foundation in Hungary.
"But perhaps they could start by pressurising national governments to implement their own declared policies in housing, employment and education."
In Hungary, an earlier policy to give money to schools for the mentally disabled, to which a disproportionate number of Roma were sent, was abandoned when it was realised that it encouraged segregation.
Now funds are focused on mainstream schools which accept more Roma - though they impose limits of 25% Roma in a class.
There has been a wave of school closures in recent years in Hungary, as population figures fall.
That cuts both ways for the Roma. When Roma ghetto schools close, and the children are redistributed among schools with an ethnic Hungarian majority, it helps integration efforts.
The town of Hodmezovasarhely in south-eastern Hungary has been a pioneer, with five out of 11 primary schools closed last year alone.
But in far-flung villages with a majority Roma population, Roma and non-Roma parents alike are upset when local schools close and children are bussed off each day to towns.
Police drive
In eastern Hungary poverty is so endemic - with the Roma blamed for widespread petty theft - that the head of the Hungarian Poultry Board recently complained that people are no longer raising hens in several counties.
One new initiative for Roma integration in Budapest is being run by Gyorgy Makula, a policeman of Roma origin.
Giant placards will be placed at strategic points around Budapest, to try to encourage more Roma to consider a police career.
Data protection laws make it impossible to measure how many Roma police there are in Hungary, but Gyorgy Makula estimates no more than 200, in a police force of 38,000.
"We should show to the Hungarian people, to the majority, among them the police staff, that there are really excellent people in this community who have been working for the police, who are not criminals of course.
"So we would like to change the mind of the people," said Capt Makula.
Link to full article. May expire in future.
By Nick Thorpe
The European Union's freedom of movement laws mean Eastern Europe's large population of Roma (Gypsies) is now spreading west.
The effect of this influx on national economies, as well as the deep poverty of the EU's Roma, are high on the agenda as the first summit on Roma integration within the EU begins in Brussels.
Italy and Spain have received the most Roma, mainly from Romania, Bulgaria and Slovakia, where they make up more than 10% of the population.
Italy has witnessed the most serious effects - murders blamed on Roma, and revenge attacks by vigilante groups, followed by controversial government attempts to fingerprint Roma immigrants.
In Hungary, there is tension between Roma and non-Roma, after a teacher was beaten to death by a Roma mob in one village, and attacks on a lorry driver and his family in another - both after road traffic accidents involving Roma children.
The creation of a "Hungarian Guard", by far-right groups who arrive in villages after such incidents, is fuelling fears of an explosion.
Integration key
"I don't really know how the EU could help," said Andras Ujlaky, head of the Chance for Children Foundation in Hungary.
"But perhaps they could start by pressurising national governments to implement their own declared policies in housing, employment and education."
In Hungary, an earlier policy to give money to schools for the mentally disabled, to which a disproportionate number of Roma were sent, was abandoned when it was realised that it encouraged segregation.
Now funds are focused on mainstream schools which accept more Roma - though they impose limits of 25% Roma in a class.
There has been a wave of school closures in recent years in Hungary, as population figures fall.
That cuts both ways for the Roma. When Roma ghetto schools close, and the children are redistributed among schools with an ethnic Hungarian majority, it helps integration efforts.
The town of Hodmezovasarhely in south-eastern Hungary has been a pioneer, with five out of 11 primary schools closed last year alone.
But in far-flung villages with a majority Roma population, Roma and non-Roma parents alike are upset when local schools close and children are bussed off each day to towns.
Police drive
In eastern Hungary poverty is so endemic - with the Roma blamed for widespread petty theft - that the head of the Hungarian Poultry Board recently complained that people are no longer raising hens in several counties.
One new initiative for Roma integration in Budapest is being run by Gyorgy Makula, a policeman of Roma origin.
Giant placards will be placed at strategic points around Budapest, to try to encourage more Roma to consider a police career.
Data protection laws make it impossible to measure how many Roma police there are in Hungary, but Gyorgy Makula estimates no more than 200, in a police force of 38,000.
"We should show to the Hungarian people, to the majority, among them the police staff, that there are really excellent people in this community who have been working for the police, who are not criminals of course.
"So we would like to change the mind of the people," said Capt Makula.
Link to full article. May expire in future.
Monday, September 15, 2008
Plan to disperse poverty moves forward, faces hurdles.
from the Wisconsin State Journal
By Matthew DeFour
Mayor Dave Cieslewicz's plan to disperse Madison's pockets of poverty around the county is moving forward this week, though legal issues could limit the mayor's proposal to merge city and county public housing operations.
Cieslewicz in April floated the idea to create a regional housing authority by joining the Dane County Housing Authority and Madison's Housing Operations division, which is overseen by the Community Development Authority.
A regional authority could ensure that poor families aren't concentrated in Madison's public school system and would save money by reducing duplicated services, Cieslewicz said during his state of the city address.
Since then, City Attorney Michael May issued an opinion that the city and county agencies can't legally merge, because there is nothing in state law that allows for that to happen. Instead, the city would have to dissolve the Community Development Authority's role as a housing agency and allow the county agency to administer its program, something Middleton did earlier this year.
The two agencies also could possibly coordinate some of their services, May said, but they would have to maintain separate governing bodies.
The housing authorities support first-time buyers and handle public housing and federal Section 8 vouchers used by low-income residents that offset rent payments.
Cieslewicz is introducing a resolution to the City Council Tuesday that would create an 11-member committee to develop a regional housing strategy and explore the possibility of coordinated operations between the city and county agencies.
The legal issues of merging the agencies is something the committee will have to explore, Cieslewicz's spokeswoman Rachel Strauch-Nelson said.
Carolyn Parham, executive director of the Dane County Housing Authority, said the idea of merging operations has come up numerous times in her 19 years with the authority.
"The topic has been brought up time and time again," Parham said. "This is the first time it's gone to a committee being formed to look at the issue."
Dane County Housing Authority Chairwoman Judy Wilcox and Ald. Tim Bruer, 14th District, a member of the Community Development Authority, have been tabbed to co-chair the committee. The resolution asks for the committee to come up with recommendations by the end of 2009.
By Matthew DeFour
Mayor Dave Cieslewicz's plan to disperse Madison's pockets of poverty around the county is moving forward this week, though legal issues could limit the mayor's proposal to merge city and county public housing operations.
Cieslewicz in April floated the idea to create a regional housing authority by joining the Dane County Housing Authority and Madison's Housing Operations division, which is overseen by the Community Development Authority.
A regional authority could ensure that poor families aren't concentrated in Madison's public school system and would save money by reducing duplicated services, Cieslewicz said during his state of the city address.
Since then, City Attorney Michael May issued an opinion that the city and county agencies can't legally merge, because there is nothing in state law that allows for that to happen. Instead, the city would have to dissolve the Community Development Authority's role as a housing agency and allow the county agency to administer its program, something Middleton did earlier this year.
The two agencies also could possibly coordinate some of their services, May said, but they would have to maintain separate governing bodies.
The housing authorities support first-time buyers and handle public housing and federal Section 8 vouchers used by low-income residents that offset rent payments.
Cieslewicz is introducing a resolution to the City Council Tuesday that would create an 11-member committee to develop a regional housing strategy and explore the possibility of coordinated operations between the city and county agencies.
The legal issues of merging the agencies is something the committee will have to explore, Cieslewicz's spokeswoman Rachel Strauch-Nelson said.
Carolyn Parham, executive director of the Dane County Housing Authority, said the idea of merging operations has come up numerous times in her 19 years with the authority.
"The topic has been brought up time and time again," Parham said. "This is the first time it's gone to a committee being formed to look at the issue."
Dane County Housing Authority Chairwoman Judy Wilcox and Ald. Tim Bruer, 14th District, a member of the Community Development Authority, have been tabbed to co-chair the committee. The resolution asks for the committee to come up with recommendations by the end of 2009.
Engineer, Inventor, Capitalist Martin Fisher, Soldier in Fight against Global Poverty
from the Voice of America
By Maura Farrelly
Engineer and inventor Martin Fisher has applied his passion for improving things to the challenge of eliminating poverty in rural Africa. As Maura Farrelly reports, his non-profit organization is transforming the lives of thousands of poor African farmers through a combination of technological innovation and business development.
When Martin Fisher completed his doctoral degree in mechanical engineering at the prestigious Stanford University in northern California, he had no idea what he wanted to do with his life. All he knew was that he didn't want to teach or work for the government or oil industry – which is what everyone else who graduated from his program back in 1985 was doing.
Instead, Fisher took a soul-searching trip to Peru and for the first time, really saw what poverty means in a developing country. He recalls, "I started thinking maybe there's something that can be done with engineering and poverty."
He came back to the United States and applied for a Fulbright Fellowship to return to Peru. Because he didn't speak Spanish, he didn't get the fellowship. But the Fulbright committee decided to send him to Kenya instead. Fisher initially planned on spending just ten months there. He ended up staying for 17 years.
Lessons from the effort to relieve poverty
During his first five years, he worked for a British non-profit agency and, he says, learned a lot about what doesn't work. "One of the things I did was establish a very large rural water program, where we went into villages, and we would build a well and put a pump on it and get nice, clean water. It looks like a great project; everybody celebrates. The trouble is, you come back a couple of years later, the pump is broken down." Although it was a community resource, no one would take the individual responsibility for fixing it. "Africa is literally littered with tens of thousands of broken-down community water systems."
The conclusion Fisher came to is that charity doesn't work – at least not in circumstances like this. People need to feel a sense of individual ownership over the technology that makes their lives better – and just giving a pump to an entire group of people isn't going to do that.
Fisher says he learned another important lesson during his first five years in Kenya. "A poor person's number one need – and in fact their only need – is a way to make more money. If a poor person can make more money, they're no longer poor, they can afford education, they can afford healthcare, they can afford clean water."
And so with those two lessons learned, Martin Fisher and his colleague, Nick Moon, set out in 1991 to found KickStart. It's a non-profit organization that develops agricultural technology that is then bought and sold by entrepreneurs in Kenya and Tanzania.
Providing ingredients for starting a business
The organization's biggest success story is something called the Money Maker Pump. It's a human-powered irrigation system that can pull water up from as deep as 7 meters underground – and then irrigate one hectare of land. There's also something called the Super Money Maker Pump. It's a little more expensive, but it can actually pull water uphill, making it ideal for steeply sloping land where the water source may be at the bottom.
"Eighty percent of the people in Africa are poor, rural farmers," Fisher observes. "And the best business that they can start is to move from subsistence farming – where they basically wait for the rain once a year, or maybe twice a year, and they grow a staple crop – move away from that to commercial irrigated farming, where suddenly with irrigation, they can grow high-value crops like fruits and vegetables throughout the year and, most importantly, bring them out in the long dry season, when nobody else has any crops, and the prices are very, very high."
The pumps cost around $34 – which is a lot of money for a poor farmer living on just $500 a year. But the typical farmer's income increases to about $1,500 a year after purchasing the pump, and there are also 550 local retailers in Kenya, Tanzania, and Mali who are profiting off the sale of these pumps.
Link to full article. May expire in future.
By Maura Farrelly
Engineer and inventor Martin Fisher has applied his passion for improving things to the challenge of eliminating poverty in rural Africa. As Maura Farrelly reports, his non-profit organization is transforming the lives of thousands of poor African farmers through a combination of technological innovation and business development.
When Martin Fisher completed his doctoral degree in mechanical engineering at the prestigious Stanford University in northern California, he had no idea what he wanted to do with his life. All he knew was that he didn't want to teach or work for the government or oil industry – which is what everyone else who graduated from his program back in 1985 was doing.
Instead, Fisher took a soul-searching trip to Peru and for the first time, really saw what poverty means in a developing country. He recalls, "I started thinking maybe there's something that can be done with engineering and poverty."
He came back to the United States and applied for a Fulbright Fellowship to return to Peru. Because he didn't speak Spanish, he didn't get the fellowship. But the Fulbright committee decided to send him to Kenya instead. Fisher initially planned on spending just ten months there. He ended up staying for 17 years.
Lessons from the effort to relieve poverty
During his first five years, he worked for a British non-profit agency and, he says, learned a lot about what doesn't work. "One of the things I did was establish a very large rural water program, where we went into villages, and we would build a well and put a pump on it and get nice, clean water. It looks like a great project; everybody celebrates. The trouble is, you come back a couple of years later, the pump is broken down." Although it was a community resource, no one would take the individual responsibility for fixing it. "Africa is literally littered with tens of thousands of broken-down community water systems."
The conclusion Fisher came to is that charity doesn't work – at least not in circumstances like this. People need to feel a sense of individual ownership over the technology that makes their lives better – and just giving a pump to an entire group of people isn't going to do that.
Fisher says he learned another important lesson during his first five years in Kenya. "A poor person's number one need – and in fact their only need – is a way to make more money. If a poor person can make more money, they're no longer poor, they can afford education, they can afford healthcare, they can afford clean water."
And so with those two lessons learned, Martin Fisher and his colleague, Nick Moon, set out in 1991 to found KickStart. It's a non-profit organization that develops agricultural technology that is then bought and sold by entrepreneurs in Kenya and Tanzania.
Providing ingredients for starting a business
The organization's biggest success story is something called the Money Maker Pump. It's a human-powered irrigation system that can pull water up from as deep as 7 meters underground – and then irrigate one hectare of land. There's also something called the Super Money Maker Pump. It's a little more expensive, but it can actually pull water uphill, making it ideal for steeply sloping land where the water source may be at the bottom.
"Eighty percent of the people in Africa are poor, rural farmers," Fisher observes. "And the best business that they can start is to move from subsistence farming – where they basically wait for the rain once a year, or maybe twice a year, and they grow a staple crop – move away from that to commercial irrigated farming, where suddenly with irrigation, they can grow high-value crops like fruits and vegetables throughout the year and, most importantly, bring them out in the long dry season, when nobody else has any crops, and the prices are very, very high."
The pumps cost around $34 – which is a lot of money for a poor farmer living on just $500 a year. But the typical farmer's income increases to about $1,500 a year after purchasing the pump, and there are also 550 local retailers in Kenya, Tanzania, and Mali who are profiting off the sale of these pumps.
Link to full article. May expire in future.
Priest forges Boise-Haiti bond
from the Idaho Statesman
BY ANNA WEBB
Rick Frechette wears sandals and carries a rosary in his pocket. The rosary, its beads woven from brown thread, is nearly weightless. Frechette's skin is ruddy, a sharp contrast to the white vestments he wore Saturday when he helped lead mass at St. John's Cathedral.
Frechette, a priest and medical doctor, made his annual visit to Boise from Haiti this weekend. The visits cement a connection between the Valley and a country infamous for its poverty.
This time around, his travel plans were nearly derailed by the hurricanes that struck the Caribbean and had "Father Rick" wading through mud, bringing water to stranded people and helping nuns trapped on rooftops.
Over 15 years, Saint Alphonsus Regional Medical Center's "Project Haiti" has given more than $1 million for lab and X-ray equipment at Saint Damien, a children's hospital founded by Frechette in the capital, Port-au-Prince.
Frechette finds an easy explanation for the connection between Idaho and Haiti.
"We didn't make it. God did. He finds a way of putting good people together."
Frechette has developed something of a cult status among the Boiseans who know him. Descriptors range from "pied piper," to "the most charismatic person you will ever meet," to "almost diabolically winning."
Saturday, after the St. John's mass, a group of children stood in the pews. Clearly beside themselves with giddiness, they were trying to catch Frechette's eye, and were crestfallen when the wrong adult saw them first and waved instead of Frechette.
The priest has a formidable sense of humor. He refers to the useless items people donate in the name of goodwill as "junk for Jesus," and quipped that the only thing worse than changing diapers, "is changing diapers in a blackout."
But his stories give the sense of how dire life is in Haiti, where most people don't live to see their 50th birthday, and environmental degradation is such that an aerial photograph of the border looks like a swath of watery, brown paint next to the thick, green felt of the Dominican Republic.
Frechette and his staff must regularly face dilemmas like whether it's better to run a breathing machine to keep one child alive, or use the fuel to run a water purifier for the benefit of every patient instead.
"As it says in the Gospels, you leave the 99 sheep and go for the one," Frechette said. He ran the breathing machine. The next day, by chance - or some other power - more fuel arrived.
Link to full article. May expire in future.
BY ANNA WEBB
Rick Frechette wears sandals and carries a rosary in his pocket. The rosary, its beads woven from brown thread, is nearly weightless. Frechette's skin is ruddy, a sharp contrast to the white vestments he wore Saturday when he helped lead mass at St. John's Cathedral.
Frechette, a priest and medical doctor, made his annual visit to Boise from Haiti this weekend. The visits cement a connection between the Valley and a country infamous for its poverty.
This time around, his travel plans were nearly derailed by the hurricanes that struck the Caribbean and had "Father Rick" wading through mud, bringing water to stranded people and helping nuns trapped on rooftops.
Over 15 years, Saint Alphonsus Regional Medical Center's "Project Haiti" has given more than $1 million for lab and X-ray equipment at Saint Damien, a children's hospital founded by Frechette in the capital, Port-au-Prince.
Frechette finds an easy explanation for the connection between Idaho and Haiti.
"We didn't make it. God did. He finds a way of putting good people together."
Frechette has developed something of a cult status among the Boiseans who know him. Descriptors range from "pied piper," to "the most charismatic person you will ever meet," to "almost diabolically winning."
Saturday, after the St. John's mass, a group of children stood in the pews. Clearly beside themselves with giddiness, they were trying to catch Frechette's eye, and were crestfallen when the wrong adult saw them first and waved instead of Frechette.
The priest has a formidable sense of humor. He refers to the useless items people donate in the name of goodwill as "junk for Jesus," and quipped that the only thing worse than changing diapers, "is changing diapers in a blackout."
But his stories give the sense of how dire life is in Haiti, where most people don't live to see their 50th birthday, and environmental degradation is such that an aerial photograph of the border looks like a swath of watery, brown paint next to the thick, green felt of the Dominican Republic.
Frechette and his staff must regularly face dilemmas like whether it's better to run a breathing machine to keep one child alive, or use the fuel to run a water purifier for the benefit of every patient instead.
"As it says in the Gospels, you leave the 99 sheep and go for the one," Frechette said. He ran the breathing machine. The next day, by chance - or some other power - more fuel arrived.
Link to full article. May expire in future.
Progress Towards Millennium Development Goals
from All Africa
The Mozambican government believes that it is on track for meeting one of the key targets of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), that of reducing by half the percentage of people living on less than a dollar a day.
The government's balance sheet on economic and social progress in the first half of this year is optimistic that, at the current rate of poverty reduction, the number of people living below the poverty line will fall from the 2003 figure of 54.1 per cent to 45 per cent in 2009, and to 40 per cent by 2015.
This will meet the MDG target, the government says. That assumes that, in 1990, 80 per cent of the population were living below the poverty line. Due to the war of destabilisation, accurate figures for that year are impossible to obtain - the first reliable figure is from the household survey of the mid-1990s, which put the number of people below the poverty line in 1997 at 67 per cent.
The government admits that there are serious challenges to be faced, especially in the area of nutrition. The generic title of the first MDG is "Eradicate Extreme Poverty and Hunger" - but current statistics show alarming levels of child malnutrition.
The number of children suffering from insufficient growth, as measured by their weight, fell from 23.7 per cent in 2003 to 20.5 per cent in 2006. But this is still well above the "acceptable" level of 16 per cent, and the target of 17 per cent which the government has set for 2015.
Worse, the level of "moderate and severe acute malnutrition" among children under five years old rose over the same period from 4.1 per cent to 4.5 per cent. "Moderate and severe chronic malnutrition" in the same age group rose from 41 per cent in 2003 to 46.2 per cent in 2006.
(Chronic malnutrition generally results from poor food intake over a long period, resulting in stunting. Acute malnutrition is a medical emergency, with a severe loss of weight and the threat of death from starvation).
Progress has been made in the MDGs concerning child mortality. The MDG target is to reduce mortality among under fives by two thirds by 2015. This looks achievable, although once again there is no figure for the base year of 1990. The government's figures show that mortality among under fives fell from 147 per 1,000 live births in 1997 to 105 in 2006, a decline of 29 per cent.
For maternal mortality, the MDG target is to reduce the rate by three quarters by 2015. Yet the number of women who die from complications related to pregnancy and childbirth remains unacceptably high - 214 per 100,000 live births in 2005, and 253 per 100,000 live births in 2006. Illnesses related to the reproductive system account for a third of all deaths among women of child-bearing age.
At the current rate of progress, the government admits, this MDG will be missed. Key targets, such as the number of women giving birth in institutions rather than at home, are being missed.
On HIV/AIDS, the MDGs call for halting, and beginning to reverse the spread of the disease. The good news here is that HIV prevalence among adults aged between 15 and 49 seems to have stabilized at around 16 per cent. But this is still a very high figure, and the government warns that AIDS remains "one of the greatest threats to Mozambique's development".
In terms of prevention the government reported a sharp increase in the distribution of condoms. 4.3 million were distributed in the first half of the year, compared with 2.8 million in the first six months of 2007.
As for the anti-retroviral (ARV) drugs that prolong the lives of HIV-positive people, the target for this year is to reach 132,280 people undergoing ARV therapy. By the end of June 74.5 per cent of this figure had been achieved. Meeting the target means putting another 5,600 people a month on ARVs in the second half of the year.
As for paediatric ARV treatment, the target is 10,582 children receiving this therapy by the end of the year. 67 per cent of the target had been met by the end of June.
In the fight against malaria, about three million mosquito nets treated with long lasting insecticide were distributed in the first quarter of the year - which still comes nowhere near meeting the target of at least two nets per household.
The key environmental MDG is to reduce by half, again by 2015, the percentage of people without sustainable access to clean drinking water. Substantial investments in water supply mean that this goal looks feasible. The government's figures show that the percentage of rural dwellers with access to clean water rose from 36.5 per cent in 2001 to 48.5 per cent in 2007. Surprisingly, the coverage in urban areas is only 40 per cent.
In the first half of 2008, 20 new wells were built, 230 new boreholes were drilled, and 131 water sources were rehabilitated. This was 25.4 per cent of the government's target of 1,500 new and rehabilitated sources for the year.
Progress in the cities was faster than expected. There were 23,721 new connections to the water system (almost twice the target of 12,086), and 474 new public standpipes were installed rather than the 150 planned.
In education, the Millennium Goal is that, by 2015, every boy and girl can achieve complete primary education. Mozambique's net attendance rate in first level primary education (EP1 - covering grades one to five) rose from 44 per cent in 1997 to 100.2 per cent this year (rates of over 100 per cent are possible, because many children older than the theoretical primary school age are attending the classes).
For all of primary education (up to grade seven), the attendance rate rose from 94.1 per cent in 2007 to 99.2 per cent in 2008 (96.2 per cent in the case of girls).
Link to full article. May expire in future.
The Mozambican government believes that it is on track for meeting one of the key targets of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), that of reducing by half the percentage of people living on less than a dollar a day.
The government's balance sheet on economic and social progress in the first half of this year is optimistic that, at the current rate of poverty reduction, the number of people living below the poverty line will fall from the 2003 figure of 54.1 per cent to 45 per cent in 2009, and to 40 per cent by 2015.
This will meet the MDG target, the government says. That assumes that, in 1990, 80 per cent of the population were living below the poverty line. Due to the war of destabilisation, accurate figures for that year are impossible to obtain - the first reliable figure is from the household survey of the mid-1990s, which put the number of people below the poverty line in 1997 at 67 per cent.
The government admits that there are serious challenges to be faced, especially in the area of nutrition. The generic title of the first MDG is "Eradicate Extreme Poverty and Hunger" - but current statistics show alarming levels of child malnutrition.
The number of children suffering from insufficient growth, as measured by their weight, fell from 23.7 per cent in 2003 to 20.5 per cent in 2006. But this is still well above the "acceptable" level of 16 per cent, and the target of 17 per cent which the government has set for 2015.
Worse, the level of "moderate and severe acute malnutrition" among children under five years old rose over the same period from 4.1 per cent to 4.5 per cent. "Moderate and severe chronic malnutrition" in the same age group rose from 41 per cent in 2003 to 46.2 per cent in 2006.
(Chronic malnutrition generally results from poor food intake over a long period, resulting in stunting. Acute malnutrition is a medical emergency, with a severe loss of weight and the threat of death from starvation).
Progress has been made in the MDGs concerning child mortality. The MDG target is to reduce mortality among under fives by two thirds by 2015. This looks achievable, although once again there is no figure for the base year of 1990. The government's figures show that mortality among under fives fell from 147 per 1,000 live births in 1997 to 105 in 2006, a decline of 29 per cent.
For maternal mortality, the MDG target is to reduce the rate by three quarters by 2015. Yet the number of women who die from complications related to pregnancy and childbirth remains unacceptably high - 214 per 100,000 live births in 2005, and 253 per 100,000 live births in 2006. Illnesses related to the reproductive system account for a third of all deaths among women of child-bearing age.
At the current rate of progress, the government admits, this MDG will be missed. Key targets, such as the number of women giving birth in institutions rather than at home, are being missed.
On HIV/AIDS, the MDGs call for halting, and beginning to reverse the spread of the disease. The good news here is that HIV prevalence among adults aged between 15 and 49 seems to have stabilized at around 16 per cent. But this is still a very high figure, and the government warns that AIDS remains "one of the greatest threats to Mozambique's development".
In terms of prevention the government reported a sharp increase in the distribution of condoms. 4.3 million were distributed in the first half of the year, compared with 2.8 million in the first six months of 2007.
As for the anti-retroviral (ARV) drugs that prolong the lives of HIV-positive people, the target for this year is to reach 132,280 people undergoing ARV therapy. By the end of June 74.5 per cent of this figure had been achieved. Meeting the target means putting another 5,600 people a month on ARVs in the second half of the year.
As for paediatric ARV treatment, the target is 10,582 children receiving this therapy by the end of the year. 67 per cent of the target had been met by the end of June.
In the fight against malaria, about three million mosquito nets treated with long lasting insecticide were distributed in the first quarter of the year - which still comes nowhere near meeting the target of at least two nets per household.
The key environmental MDG is to reduce by half, again by 2015, the percentage of people without sustainable access to clean drinking water. Substantial investments in water supply mean that this goal looks feasible. The government's figures show that the percentage of rural dwellers with access to clean water rose from 36.5 per cent in 2001 to 48.5 per cent in 2007. Surprisingly, the coverage in urban areas is only 40 per cent.
In the first half of 2008, 20 new wells were built, 230 new boreholes were drilled, and 131 water sources were rehabilitated. This was 25.4 per cent of the government's target of 1,500 new and rehabilitated sources for the year.
Progress in the cities was faster than expected. There were 23,721 new connections to the water system (almost twice the target of 12,086), and 474 new public standpipes were installed rather than the 150 planned.
In education, the Millennium Goal is that, by 2015, every boy and girl can achieve complete primary education. Mozambique's net attendance rate in first level primary education (EP1 - covering grades one to five) rose from 44 per cent in 1997 to 100.2 per cent this year (rates of over 100 per cent are possible, because many children older than the theoretical primary school age are attending the classes).
For all of primary education (up to grade seven), the attendance rate rose from 94.1 per cent in 2007 to 99.2 per cent in 2008 (96.2 per cent in the case of girls).
Link to full article. May expire in future.
Bloomington poverty rate tops 41 percent
from The Star Press
A new U.S. Census Bureau report which found 41 percent of Bloomington residents living in poverty is somewhat misleading because of the city's large population of college students, officials say.
The report, which includes Indiana University students in its figures, found that Bloomington's poverty rate grew from 34.7 percent in 2006 to 41.6 percent 2007 — a nearly 7 percent rise.
But the numbers are skewed because many IU students either have no incomes or paltry paychecks from part-time jobs, said Barry Lessow, executive director of United Way of Monroe County.
"These numbers reflect the reality that poverty is certainly an issue in our community," he said. "But as we look at the poverty numbers, we're also cognizant that they are impacted by the large number of IU students included in the census figures."
In 2007, the federal government considered a single person making less than $10,210 a year — or a family of four making less than $20,650 — to be in poverty.
Therefore, any student making less than $10,210 a year would be considered living in poverty.
Mayor Mark Kruzan said that regardless of the fact that IU's student population contributes to the high poverty number assigned to Bloomington, poverty is a reality for too many people in the city of about 70,000 residents.
"In addition to job loss and export, federal and state assistance programs have continually been cut as need for those services increases," he said in an e-mail statement.
Link to full article. May expire in future.
A new U.S. Census Bureau report which found 41 percent of Bloomington residents living in poverty is somewhat misleading because of the city's large population of college students, officials say.
The report, which includes Indiana University students in its figures, found that Bloomington's poverty rate grew from 34.7 percent in 2006 to 41.6 percent 2007 — a nearly 7 percent rise.
But the numbers are skewed because many IU students either have no incomes or paltry paychecks from part-time jobs, said Barry Lessow, executive director of United Way of Monroe County.
"These numbers reflect the reality that poverty is certainly an issue in our community," he said. "But as we look at the poverty numbers, we're also cognizant that they are impacted by the large number of IU students included in the census figures."
In 2007, the federal government considered a single person making less than $10,210 a year — or a family of four making less than $20,650 — to be in poverty.
Therefore, any student making less than $10,210 a year would be considered living in poverty.
Mayor Mark Kruzan said that regardless of the fact that IU's student population contributes to the high poverty number assigned to Bloomington, poverty is a reality for too many people in the city of about 70,000 residents.
"In addition to job loss and export, federal and state assistance programs have continually been cut as need for those services increases," he said in an e-mail statement.
Link to full article. May expire in future.
Saturday, September 13, 2008
Root of Mindanao violence is poverty — EC ambassador
from the Manilla Bulletin
Charissa M. Luci
The root of violence in Mindanao is not religion or secessionism, it is the poverty of the people involved in the armed conflict, Ambassador Alistair MacDonald, head of the European Commission delegation in Manila, said the other night.
MacDonald, who just came back from Europe, said he was "saddened" by the continuous violence in the troubled southern Philippines that has killed a number of people and displaced thousands of local residents.
"It was very sad to hear that it (peace process) seemed to be interrupted. I can only hope that may be a temporary interruption and that the dialogue will resume again shortly," he said in an interview shortly before the opening of the Cine Europa 11 at the Shangri-La Plaza Hotel in Mandaluyong City.
"We don’t want to see the development of Mindanao put at risk because of the renewed conflict. We really do hope that a dialogue leading to a peace agreement can be resumed as soon as possible and in particular, that the violence will be brought to an end so that people can return to their homes," MacDonald said.
He said that over the last 10 years, EU has been giving a lot of development support for Mindanao amounting to almost R8 billion.
He urged the government to implement more development projects in Mindanao, saying that the region has a tremendous potential to develop for the benefit of its people and of the Philippines as a whole,.
"But without peace, development can’t happen," he said.
"When you look at some of the human development indicators for parts in Mindanao, things like health, nutrition, education, the Philippines should be ashamed of such low levels of basic social indicators," he said.
French Ambassador Gérard Chesnel also condemned the violence and expressed hopes that the Philippine government and the Muslim rebels would return to the negotiating table.
The month-long conflict in the South was fired up by the Supreme Court’s temporary restraining order barring the signing of a memorandum of agreement on ancestral domain.
"Unfortunately, some people have become impatient and resort to violence. Of course, we condemn violence wherever it comes from. But, we hope that the dialogue can resume very soon and that will have an agreement signed as soon as possible," he said.
Chesnel said he is "moderately optimistic" that the peace process will move forward "because I saw that on both sides, people have been very responsible" and both sides don’t "want to create a situation which will be irreversible."
He said the situation in Mindanao is certainly not irreversible and both the Philippine government and the MILF are really trying to resume dialogue.
Link to full article. May expire in future.
Charissa M. Luci
The root of violence in Mindanao is not religion or secessionism, it is the poverty of the people involved in the armed conflict, Ambassador Alistair MacDonald, head of the European Commission delegation in Manila, said the other night.
MacDonald, who just came back from Europe, said he was "saddened" by the continuous violence in the troubled southern Philippines that has killed a number of people and displaced thousands of local residents.
"It was very sad to hear that it (peace process) seemed to be interrupted. I can only hope that may be a temporary interruption and that the dialogue will resume again shortly," he said in an interview shortly before the opening of the Cine Europa 11 at the Shangri-La Plaza Hotel in Mandaluyong City.
"We don’t want to see the development of Mindanao put at risk because of the renewed conflict. We really do hope that a dialogue leading to a peace agreement can be resumed as soon as possible and in particular, that the violence will be brought to an end so that people can return to their homes," MacDonald said.
He said that over the last 10 years, EU has been giving a lot of development support for Mindanao amounting to almost R8 billion.
He urged the government to implement more development projects in Mindanao, saying that the region has a tremendous potential to develop for the benefit of its people and of the Philippines as a whole,.
"But without peace, development can’t happen," he said.
"When you look at some of the human development indicators for parts in Mindanao, things like health, nutrition, education, the Philippines should be ashamed of such low levels of basic social indicators," he said.
French Ambassador Gérard Chesnel also condemned the violence and expressed hopes that the Philippine government and the Muslim rebels would return to the negotiating table.
The month-long conflict in the South was fired up by the Supreme Court’s temporary restraining order barring the signing of a memorandum of agreement on ancestral domain.
"Unfortunately, some people have become impatient and resort to violence. Of course, we condemn violence wherever it comes from. But, we hope that the dialogue can resume very soon and that will have an agreement signed as soon as possible," he said.
Chesnel said he is "moderately optimistic" that the peace process will move forward "because I saw that on both sides, people have been very responsible" and both sides don’t "want to create a situation which will be irreversible."
He said the situation in Mindanao is certainly not irreversible and both the Philippine government and the MILF are really trying to resume dialogue.
Link to full article. May expire in future.
Battle against hunger unites diverse faiths
from the Toledo Blade
By DAVID YONKE
On the seventh anniversary of a terrorist attack by religious extremists, a multifaith group assembled in a Toledo church last night to express unity in alleviating hunger and poverty.
Representatives of Christian, Muslim, Jewish, and Hindu faiths participated in the third annual Interfaith Hunger Awareness Service, attended by about 100 people at Epiphany Lutheran Church in South Toledo.
Scriptures from four holy books - the Jewish Torah, the Christian New Testament, the Islamic Qur'an, and the Hindu Bhagavad Gita - were read, commanding followers to aid the poor and feed the hungry.
The program included music, prayer, and two children's skits as well as short sermons by Muslim and Christian clerics.
In one skit, seven children representing the continents read statistics on hunger and poverty. North America has 6 percent of the world's population, for example, but consumes 22 percent of the food. Asia, on the other hand, has 58 percent of the world's population and consumes 23 percent of the food.
Dawud Walid, who is an imam, or Islamic spiritual leader, in Detroit and is the executive director of the Michigan chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, told the audience that "I am a hungry person right now."
But he was hungry, he said, because he was observing the Muslim practice of fasting from dawn until dark during Ramadan, the ninth lunar month.
Millions of people in the world are hungry, not by choice, he said, but because they lack the resources to feed themselves.
Mr. Walid said the Prophet Mohammed, founder of Islam, said a person is not a believer if he goes to bed with a full stomach while his neighbor is hungry.
And the Prophet defined a neighbor as someone who lives within 40 homes to the left, right, front, or back of one's home - meaning the whole community, Mr. Walid said.
Link to full article. May expire in future.
By DAVID YONKE
On the seventh anniversary of a terrorist attack by religious extremists, a multifaith group assembled in a Toledo church last night to express unity in alleviating hunger and poverty.
Representatives of Christian, Muslim, Jewish, and Hindu faiths participated in the third annual Interfaith Hunger Awareness Service, attended by about 100 people at Epiphany Lutheran Church in South Toledo.
Scriptures from four holy books - the Jewish Torah, the Christian New Testament, the Islamic Qur'an, and the Hindu Bhagavad Gita - were read, commanding followers to aid the poor and feed the hungry.
The program included music, prayer, and two children's skits as well as short sermons by Muslim and Christian clerics.
In one skit, seven children representing the continents read statistics on hunger and poverty. North America has 6 percent of the world's population, for example, but consumes 22 percent of the food. Asia, on the other hand, has 58 percent of the world's population and consumes 23 percent of the food.
Dawud Walid, who is an imam, or Islamic spiritual leader, in Detroit and is the executive director of the Michigan chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, told the audience that "I am a hungry person right now."
But he was hungry, he said, because he was observing the Muslim practice of fasting from dawn until dark during Ramadan, the ninth lunar month.
Millions of people in the world are hungry, not by choice, he said, but because they lack the resources to feed themselves.
Mr. Walid said the Prophet Mohammed, founder of Islam, said a person is not a believer if he goes to bed with a full stomach while his neighbor is hungry.
And the Prophet defined a neighbor as someone who lives within 40 homes to the left, right, front, or back of one's home - meaning the whole community, Mr. Walid said.
Link to full article. May expire in future.
UN Report: Bio-Fuels Adding to Food Crisis
from the Voice of America
By Lisa Schlein
The U.N. Special Investigator on the Right To Food says soaring food prices have declined somewhat, but the crisis remains and the problems are exacerbated by the production of bio-fuels. The expert submitted a report to the U.N. Human Rights Council as a follow-up to the Special Session convened on the Global Food Crisis in May. Lisa Schlein reports for VOA from the conference in Geneva.
The Special Session in May was called to deal with the negative impact of soaring food prices on the world's poor. U.N. Investigator on the Right To Food, Olivier De Schutter, says the concerns people had then still remain.
He says prices of food commodities in international markets have decreased from their peak levels of last spring. But, he notes they remain much higher than they were before the crisis and predictions indicate they will remain high for several years.
"Before the crisis, it was estimated by the FAO [Food and Agriculture Organization] that 854 million people were hungry in the world, not receiving sufficient calorie intake per day," he said. "And, two billion were malnourished. As a result of the crisis, it is estimated that at least 50 million more people have grown hungry. And, it is estimated that probably 100 million more people have fallen into extreme poverty."
De Schutter says the poor are hungry and malnourished not because there is no food, but because they cannot afford to buy the food that is available. He says governments must take steps to protect their people from the emerging threats to the right to adequate food.
For example, he says they must protect land users from the risk of eviction, provide their poor with social safety nets and make sure rural women have the same rights as men to access land and other productive resources.
The report notes speculation in the futures market of primary agricultural commodities is behind much of the volatility in food prices. It suggests measures be adopted to decrease the resulting vulnerability, particularly for net food importing developing countries.
The report says the whole issue of agro-fuels has to be rethought. It says there is growing evidence that many agro-fuels consume too much fertile land, use massive amounts of water and energy and, therefore, are not a long-term alternative to fossil fuels.
De Schutter says with the possible exception of sugarcane in countries such as Brazil, the environmental impact of other agro-fuels currently produced from food crops is not particularly positive.
"I am not opposed as a matter of principle to agro-fuels," he said. "Although, I think their environmental benefits in many cases have been widely overestimated. And, I believe particularly bio-fuels produced from maize as is the case in the U.S. is quite detrimental to the environment. But, having said this, I am not excluding in the future that agro-fuels may continue to be produced, but there needs to be some form of international discipline imposed on States."
Link to full article. May expire in future.
By Lisa Schlein
The U.N. Special Investigator on the Right To Food says soaring food prices have declined somewhat, but the crisis remains and the problems are exacerbated by the production of bio-fuels. The expert submitted a report to the U.N. Human Rights Council as a follow-up to the Special Session convened on the Global Food Crisis in May. Lisa Schlein reports for VOA from the conference in Geneva.
The Special Session in May was called to deal with the negative impact of soaring food prices on the world's poor. U.N. Investigator on the Right To Food, Olivier De Schutter, says the concerns people had then still remain.
He says prices of food commodities in international markets have decreased from their peak levels of last spring. But, he notes they remain much higher than they were before the crisis and predictions indicate they will remain high for several years.
"Before the crisis, it was estimated by the FAO [Food and Agriculture Organization] that 854 million people were hungry in the world, not receiving sufficient calorie intake per day," he said. "And, two billion were malnourished. As a result of the crisis, it is estimated that at least 50 million more people have grown hungry. And, it is estimated that probably 100 million more people have fallen into extreme poverty."
De Schutter says the poor are hungry and malnourished not because there is no food, but because they cannot afford to buy the food that is available. He says governments must take steps to protect their people from the emerging threats to the right to adequate food.
For example, he says they must protect land users from the risk of eviction, provide their poor with social safety nets and make sure rural women have the same rights as men to access land and other productive resources.
The report notes speculation in the futures market of primary agricultural commodities is behind much of the volatility in food prices. It suggests measures be adopted to decrease the resulting vulnerability, particularly for net food importing developing countries.
The report says the whole issue of agro-fuels has to be rethought. It says there is growing evidence that many agro-fuels consume too much fertile land, use massive amounts of water and energy and, therefore, are not a long-term alternative to fossil fuels.
De Schutter says with the possible exception of sugarcane in countries such as Brazil, the environmental impact of other agro-fuels currently produced from food crops is not particularly positive.
"I am not opposed as a matter of principle to agro-fuels," he said. "Although, I think their environmental benefits in many cases have been widely overestimated. And, I believe particularly bio-fuels produced from maize as is the case in the U.S. is quite detrimental to the environment. But, having said this, I am not excluding in the future that agro-fuels may continue to be produced, but there needs to be some form of international discipline imposed on States."
Link to full article. May expire in future.
MOH pledges to eradicate malaria
Ghana Dot
This year's health summit of Health Development Partners opened in Accra on Tuesday with a pledge by the Ministry of Health to completely eradicate malaria which had an estimated total economic cost of 772.4 million US dollars per annum.
Major Courage Quashigah (Rtd), Minister of Health, who opened the summit, said the amount was equivalent to the MOH’s annual budget for 2008 and that if urgent actions were not taken, the disease, being the number one cause of morbidity and mortality, would erode the National Health Insurance Fund as well.
During the three-day summit, stakeholders would agree on the 2008 priorities after reviewing progress and lessons in 2007, and the vision of the future as captured in the Health Policy five-year programme of work from 2007- 2011 as well as Ghana Growth and Poverty Reduction Strategy.
Major Quashigah said the calculation of the treatment of malaria, which translated to GH 30.04 cedis or 32.65 dollars per capita, was based on the number of reported cases alone and was thought to be an underestimation.
"For this reason, in 2008, we will continue with the distribution of insecticide treated nets and promote the intermittent treatment of malaria among pregnant women as well as the proper case management of those with malaria,” he said.
Major Quashigah said as part of the intervention, the high impact rapid delivery programme was being complemented with other programmes to scale up the control of malaria as well as Tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS with funds from the Global Fund and other development partners.
The Health Minister said the government would be working with stakeholders to develop a medium-term strategy to eliminate malaria as a public health problem in addition to polio and measles.
He said documentation for certification of Ghana as a polio-free country had been accepted by the Africa Regional Commission on Polio Certification and for the past four years measles cases had fallen below 500 with no deaths reported.
He said improvements in the maternal, infant and neonatal care would help reduce maternal and child mortality and this could be achieved if pregnant women delivered under supervision in health facilities with those with complications receiving caesarean section and safe blood.
Major Quashigah said there was the need for adequate numbers of health workers and well-equipped facilities in the remotest parts of the country to achieve the Millennium Development Goals.
He said regenerative health and nutrition was another priority the MOH was undertaking to address risk factors for ill-health and that it had been piloted in 10 districts and would be scaled-up in 2008.
Regenerative health aims at promoting health literacy, healthy lifestyles and healthy environment to renew strength and prevent diseases.
Touching on the National Health Insurance Scheme, Major Quashigah said it was one of the most important pro-poor social policies to be implemented by government which was operational in all districts with 55 per cent coverage as at September this year.
He said to make it sustainable, a closer look would be taken on the financing of the fund, and improve access and quality of service by improving the timeliness of claims and monitoring of supporting hospitals to manage resources efficiently.
He mentioned the three challenges that the health sector faced as the availability and productivity of the human resource for health delivery; availability and accessibility of health infrastructure; and ensuring adequate and predictable financing of the programme of work.
As the first step, the Ministry would consolidate the programme for rationalising salaries of health workers and initiate a programme to enhance workforce productivity.
"I see 2008 to be a challenging and busy year. It is for this reason that I declare 2008 as a ‘Year of Action’ for the health sector" he said, and called on all partners and stakeholders to help to make a difference.
Ms Lidi Remmelzwaal, Ambassador of the Netherlands, who represented the development partners, said all stakeholders must work in a coordinated manner to complement one another.
She said the MOH must complement the work of the District Assemblies in the provision of social services like water, education and sanitation to make the regenerative health aims a reality.
She called for collaboration between the Ministries of Health, Finance and Economic Planning, Education, Water Resources, Works and Housing and the Local Government and Rural Development in promoting health for all and that the development partners would strive to support and participate in their endeavours.
Link to full article. May expire in future.
This year's health summit of Health Development Partners opened in Accra on Tuesday with a pledge by the Ministry of Health to completely eradicate malaria which had an estimated total economic cost of 772.4 million US dollars per annum.
Major Courage Quashigah (Rtd), Minister of Health, who opened the summit, said the amount was equivalent to the MOH’s annual budget for 2008 and that if urgent actions were not taken, the disease, being the number one cause of morbidity and mortality, would erode the National Health Insurance Fund as well.
During the three-day summit, stakeholders would agree on the 2008 priorities after reviewing progress and lessons in 2007, and the vision of the future as captured in the Health Policy five-year programme of work from 2007- 2011 as well as Ghana Growth and Poverty Reduction Strategy.
Major Quashigah said the calculation of the treatment of malaria, which translated to GH 30.04 cedis or 32.65 dollars per capita, was based on the number of reported cases alone and was thought to be an underestimation.
"For this reason, in 2008, we will continue with the distribution of insecticide treated nets and promote the intermittent treatment of malaria among pregnant women as well as the proper case management of those with malaria,” he said.
Major Quashigah said as part of the intervention, the high impact rapid delivery programme was being complemented with other programmes to scale up the control of malaria as well as Tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS with funds from the Global Fund and other development partners.
The Health Minister said the government would be working with stakeholders to develop a medium-term strategy to eliminate malaria as a public health problem in addition to polio and measles.
He said documentation for certification of Ghana as a polio-free country had been accepted by the Africa Regional Commission on Polio Certification and for the past four years measles cases had fallen below 500 with no deaths reported.
He said improvements in the maternal, infant and neonatal care would help reduce maternal and child mortality and this could be achieved if pregnant women delivered under supervision in health facilities with those with complications receiving caesarean section and safe blood.
Major Quashigah said there was the need for adequate numbers of health workers and well-equipped facilities in the remotest parts of the country to achieve the Millennium Development Goals.
He said regenerative health and nutrition was another priority the MOH was undertaking to address risk factors for ill-health and that it had been piloted in 10 districts and would be scaled-up in 2008.
Regenerative health aims at promoting health literacy, healthy lifestyles and healthy environment to renew strength and prevent diseases.
Touching on the National Health Insurance Scheme, Major Quashigah said it was one of the most important pro-poor social policies to be implemented by government which was operational in all districts with 55 per cent coverage as at September this year.
He said to make it sustainable, a closer look would be taken on the financing of the fund, and improve access and quality of service by improving the timeliness of claims and monitoring of supporting hospitals to manage resources efficiently.
He mentioned the three challenges that the health sector faced as the availability and productivity of the human resource for health delivery; availability and accessibility of health infrastructure; and ensuring adequate and predictable financing of the programme of work.
As the first step, the Ministry would consolidate the programme for rationalising salaries of health workers and initiate a programme to enhance workforce productivity.
"I see 2008 to be a challenging and busy year. It is for this reason that I declare 2008 as a ‘Year of Action’ for the health sector" he said, and called on all partners and stakeholders to help to make a difference.
Ms Lidi Remmelzwaal, Ambassador of the Netherlands, who represented the development partners, said all stakeholders must work in a coordinated manner to complement one another.
She said the MOH must complement the work of the District Assemblies in the provision of social services like water, education and sanitation to make the regenerative health aims a reality.
She called for collaboration between the Ministries of Health, Finance and Economic Planning, Education, Water Resources, Works and Housing and the Local Government and Rural Development in promoting health for all and that the development partners would strive to support and participate in their endeavours.
Link to full article. May expire in future.
Friday, September 12, 2008
World Bank head urges help for "fragile" states
from the International Herald Tribune
World Bank President Robert Zoellick warned Friday that international community must work harder in aiding so-called "fragile" states, home to about 20 percent of the world's population, or risk them becoming the safe havens for terrorists.
Zoellick said such nations, which range from Afghanistan to Timor, can become the weak link in the global security chain if they are infiltrated by terrorists, who take advantage of the political instability there to recruit and train new followers.
"Only by securing development can we put down roots deep enough to break the cycle of fragility and development," Zoellick told a conference of international security experts in Geneva. A text of his remarks was made available in Washington.
He said the international community must put greater emphasis on securing development in these countries to help them overcome the effects of failed governments, persistent poverty and civil war.
"This is not security as usual or development as usual," Zoellick said.
"Nor is it about what we have to come think of as peacekeeping or peace-building," he said. "This is about securing development...first to smooth the transition from conflict to peace and then to embed stability so that development can take hold over a decade and beyond."
Without such cooperation, efforts to save fragile states are likely to fail "and we will all pay the consequences," he said, noting that what was needed in those states was a different framework to build security, legitimacy, governance and their economies.
Zoellick said the World Bank has committed more than $3 billion in 2008 to countries affected by fragility and conflict.
He said when states are breaking down, or overcome by conflict they pose waves of danger, threatening people living there with death and disease, economic stagnation and environmental degradation.
Link to full article. May expire in future.
World Bank President Robert Zoellick warned Friday that international community must work harder in aiding so-called "fragile" states, home to about 20 percent of the world's population, or risk them becoming the safe havens for terrorists.
Zoellick said such nations, which range from Afghanistan to Timor, can become the weak link in the global security chain if they are infiltrated by terrorists, who take advantage of the political instability there to recruit and train new followers.
"Only by securing development can we put down roots deep enough to break the cycle of fragility and development," Zoellick told a conference of international security experts in Geneva. A text of his remarks was made available in Washington.
He said the international community must put greater emphasis on securing development in these countries to help them overcome the effects of failed governments, persistent poverty and civil war.
"This is not security as usual or development as usual," Zoellick said.
"Nor is it about what we have to come think of as peacekeeping or peace-building," he said. "This is about securing development...first to smooth the transition from conflict to peace and then to embed stability so that development can take hold over a decade and beyond."
Without such cooperation, efforts to save fragile states are likely to fail "and we will all pay the consequences," he said, noting that what was needed in those states was a different framework to build security, legitimacy, governance and their economies.
Zoellick said the World Bank has committed more than $3 billion in 2008 to countries affected by fragility and conflict.
He said when states are breaking down, or overcome by conflict they pose waves of danger, threatening people living there with death and disease, economic stagnation and environmental degradation.
Link to full article. May expire in future.
T-shirts cover aid for Ugandan children
from the Burlington Free Press
By Gail Callahan
SHELBURNE -- Kristine Owens sometimes finds inspiration in her Chevrolet Tahoe. A notebook is easily accessible so the Shelburne woman can keep track of ideas.
"I keep a pad handy in case I think of something," said Owens, 42. "I jot it down if I think it pertains to the mission of a project."
In most cases, the ideas wind up on the front of a T-shirt with a message that grabs people's attention. About a year ago, Owens brought her marketing and design skills to TOUCH Uganda, a local nonprofit organization overseen by a five-member board that supports Ugandan communities with medical care for sick or abandoned children.
"I've always had a soft spot for children in need," said Owens, who is the vice president of TOUCH Uganda (Touch One Ugandan Child).
Owens' community outreach starts with a black T-shirt. The question, "whataugandado?" is embossed across the front in multi-colored lettering.
"The T-shirt is meant to spread awareness about Uganda, and the person is the conduit," Owens said.
The project has netted $3,500 for TOUCH Uganda, and Owens said about 175 shirts were sold. "Selfishly, it feels really good to help," she said.
The small African nation is known as the "pearl of Africa." It is battling poverty, civil unrest, illness and food shortages, Owens said.
The idea for TOUCH Uganda came more than two years ago. Sheila Morrissey, 45, of Shelburne visited Uganda and was moved by what she saw. She met a 2-year-old boy in Entebbe, and she was startled by his condition.
He weighed less than 10 pounds, suffered from a host of ailments, including malaria and severe malnourishment. The boy recovered after several months of proper medical attention, Morrissey said.
The organization donated $40,000 to outfit the Bwindi Health Center's new pediatric unit. "The mission is to go to Uganda communities that need financial assis- tance," Morrissey said.
Get a T-shirt
T-shirts from TOUCH Uganda are available for $20 in sizes for children, men and women. Onesies with the same message are teamed with yoga pants for $25. The line is expected to expand next month, Kristine Owens said.
For more information on TOUCH Uganda, visit www.touchuganda.org.
Link to full article. May expire in future.
By Gail Callahan
SHELBURNE -- Kristine Owens sometimes finds inspiration in her Chevrolet Tahoe. A notebook is easily accessible so the Shelburne woman can keep track of ideas.
"I keep a pad handy in case I think of something," said Owens, 42. "I jot it down if I think it pertains to the mission of a project."
In most cases, the ideas wind up on the front of a T-shirt with a message that grabs people's attention. About a year ago, Owens brought her marketing and design skills to TOUCH Uganda, a local nonprofit organization overseen by a five-member board that supports Ugandan communities with medical care for sick or abandoned children.
"I've always had a soft spot for children in need," said Owens, who is the vice president of TOUCH Uganda (Touch One Ugandan Child).
Owens' community outreach starts with a black T-shirt. The question, "whataugandado?" is embossed across the front in multi-colored lettering.
"The T-shirt is meant to spread awareness about Uganda, and the person is the conduit," Owens said.
The project has netted $3,500 for TOUCH Uganda, and Owens said about 175 shirts were sold. "Selfishly, it feels really good to help," she said.
The small African nation is known as the "pearl of Africa." It is battling poverty, civil unrest, illness and food shortages, Owens said.
The idea for TOUCH Uganda came more than two years ago. Sheila Morrissey, 45, of Shelburne visited Uganda and was moved by what she saw. She met a 2-year-old boy in Entebbe, and she was startled by his condition.
He weighed less than 10 pounds, suffered from a host of ailments, including malaria and severe malnourishment. The boy recovered after several months of proper medical attention, Morrissey said.
The organization donated $40,000 to outfit the Bwindi Health Center's new pediatric unit. "The mission is to go to Uganda communities that need financial assis- tance," Morrissey said.
Get a T-shirt
T-shirts from TOUCH Uganda are available for $20 in sizes for children, men and women. Onesies with the same message are teamed with yoga pants for $25. The line is expected to expand next month, Kristine Owens said.
For more information on TOUCH Uganda, visit www.touchuganda.org.
Link to full article. May expire in future.
Disease, poverty in India's tribal camps
from NDTV
by Mohuya Chaudhuri
At least 39 children have died in the last month of malaria and diarrhoea in a refugee camp in Tripura.
The camp, where Reang tribals took shelter after being driven out from Mizoram has been around since 1997. Neither Mizoram nor Tripura wanted them. Since then they've been living in camps, which are meant to be temporary shelters.
However, with no one willing to accept them, these temporary homes became permanent. Thirty five thousand Reangs are today living on the brink of starvation and living a life of absolute poverty.
There's nothing available for them in the camp, no food, jobs or health care, except the shadow of starvation.
At least, 19 women have died in one year alone and last month, 39 children, who were severely malnourished, lost their lives to malaria and diarrhoea.
A surprise visit by the National Commission for the Protection of Child Rights stumbled upon this camp.
"There are more than two lakh people in Assam, who are living in these permanently temporary camps, again without access to nutrition, security, sanitation. Children have scabies, pneumonia, malaria and dengue," said Shantha Sinha, chairperson, NCPCR.
"These deaths occurred not among 35,000 people but among 1,600 household, because there is no healthcare here. This is something not acceptable," she added.
Link to full article. May expire in future.
by Mohuya Chaudhuri
At least 39 children have died in the last month of malaria and diarrhoea in a refugee camp in Tripura.
The camp, where Reang tribals took shelter after being driven out from Mizoram has been around since 1997. Neither Mizoram nor Tripura wanted them. Since then they've been living in camps, which are meant to be temporary shelters.
However, with no one willing to accept them, these temporary homes became permanent. Thirty five thousand Reangs are today living on the brink of starvation and living a life of absolute poverty.
There's nothing available for them in the camp, no food, jobs or health care, except the shadow of starvation.
At least, 19 women have died in one year alone and last month, 39 children, who were severely malnourished, lost their lives to malaria and diarrhoea.
A surprise visit by the National Commission for the Protection of Child Rights stumbled upon this camp.
"There are more than two lakh people in Assam, who are living in these permanently temporary camps, again without access to nutrition, security, sanitation. Children have scabies, pneumonia, malaria and dengue," said Shantha Sinha, chairperson, NCPCR.
"These deaths occurred not among 35,000 people but among 1,600 household, because there is no healthcare here. This is something not acceptable," she added.
Link to full article. May expire in future.
Irrigation Promises to Increase Food Security in Malawi
from IPS
By Pilirani Semu-Banda
LILONGWE, - Wyson Chandanga, a small-holder Malawian farmer from the northern district of Mzimba, does not care if the country receives enough rain this year. He is also not concerned on whether the rains come on time or not.
Chandanga’s attitude is at first surprising, since Malawi is an agricultural economy which greatly depends on rain-fed farming. The country derives up to 70 percent of its foreign exchange revenue from agricultural production and 85 percent of the country’s population depend on the same sector for their livelihood.
However, Chandanga says adverse weather, including erratic rains, experienced in the country in recent years, has persuaded him to find ways to reduce his dependence on rainfall.
Malawi has recently experienced three major episodes of drought; one in 1991, another in 2000 and the most recent happened in 2005. The country has also faced major flooding in some parts of the country -- last year, half of Malawi’s 28 districts were hit by heavy flooding and most crops were swept away.
Looking dirty and tired but content after finishing a day’s work cultivating his plot of land, Chandanga declares that he will be a more successful farmer now that he no longer cares for the rains.
"I have now ventured into irrigation farming and I grow maize twice a year even in the dry season. I could only produce the staple food once in a year when I practiced rain-fed agriculture and the yield was not enough for my family," says the farmer.
Chandanga is one of the 29,000 farmers being assisted by the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) to intensify farm production by developing small-scale irrigation systems and water harvesting schemes in Malawi’s northern region.
The farmers are being trained to improve food security, diversify sources of household income, prevent waterborne diseases in water points and pit latrines, improve their dietary intake and conserve natural resources, according to FAO communications officer Muwuso Chawinga.
"Up to 90 percent of Malawi’s agriculture is rain-fed but we need to diversify into more irrigation farming practices if we have to attain food security for the country," says Chawinga.
Seven out of 10 households in Malawi typically run out of food before the harvesting season, mainly because of drought and floods, according to Chawinga. "It is therefore important that the country should now be maximising on all the seasons and grow their crops even in the dry season and avoid the drought or flooding which may destroy their crops," says Chawinga.
The irrigation programme, which only started in January this year, is already showing signs of having promoted crop diversification in a country that is highly reliant on maize as a staple food. Chandanga, for example, is now also cultivating potatoes, beans and rice to supplement the maize that he has been growing.
The farmers involved in the irrigation project are provided with treadle pumps and water pipes which they use to pump water through canals from dams, rivers and streams closest to them.
Apart from irrigation, the farmers are being taught skills in water management, development of agro-business, promotion of afforestation and natural resource conservation.
The irrigation programme was kick-started following a Poverty Rural Assessment (PRA) exercise which FAO carried out in May 2007. The assessment highlighted low crop yield and low income levels among rural households – the findings were mostly attributed to lack of irrigation opportunities, erratic rainfall and drought.
Malawi is only irrigating 72,000 of 400,000 hectares of irrigable land, according to the government. However the country’s president Bingu wa Mutharika, who is also Minister of Agriculture, told reporters at an August press conference that government is creating a "green belt" along Lake Malawi, which will entail the creation of irrigation schemes along the lake. Lake Malawi is a fresh water lake -- the ninth largest lake in the world, it extends the length of the country.
Small-holder farmers will be assisted by government to establish irrigation schemes along the lake. In Malawi’s 2008/2009 national budget, the allocation to the Ministry of Irrigation and Water Development has been increased by 50 percent to $55 million.
Link to full article. May expire in future.
By Pilirani Semu-Banda
LILONGWE, - Wyson Chandanga, a small-holder Malawian farmer from the northern district of Mzimba, does not care if the country receives enough rain this year. He is also not concerned on whether the rains come on time or not.
Chandanga’s attitude is at first surprising, since Malawi is an agricultural economy which greatly depends on rain-fed farming. The country derives up to 70 percent of its foreign exchange revenue from agricultural production and 85 percent of the country’s population depend on the same sector for their livelihood.
However, Chandanga says adverse weather, including erratic rains, experienced in the country in recent years, has persuaded him to find ways to reduce his dependence on rainfall.
Malawi has recently experienced three major episodes of drought; one in 1991, another in 2000 and the most recent happened in 2005. The country has also faced major flooding in some parts of the country -- last year, half of Malawi’s 28 districts were hit by heavy flooding and most crops were swept away.
Looking dirty and tired but content after finishing a day’s work cultivating his plot of land, Chandanga declares that he will be a more successful farmer now that he no longer cares for the rains.
"I have now ventured into irrigation farming and I grow maize twice a year even in the dry season. I could only produce the staple food once in a year when I practiced rain-fed agriculture and the yield was not enough for my family," says the farmer.
Chandanga is one of the 29,000 farmers being assisted by the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) to intensify farm production by developing small-scale irrigation systems and water harvesting schemes in Malawi’s northern region.
The farmers are being trained to improve food security, diversify sources of household income, prevent waterborne diseases in water points and pit latrines, improve their dietary intake and conserve natural resources, according to FAO communications officer Muwuso Chawinga.
"Up to 90 percent of Malawi’s agriculture is rain-fed but we need to diversify into more irrigation farming practices if we have to attain food security for the country," says Chawinga.
Seven out of 10 households in Malawi typically run out of food before the harvesting season, mainly because of drought and floods, according to Chawinga. "It is therefore important that the country should now be maximising on all the seasons and grow their crops even in the dry season and avoid the drought or flooding which may destroy their crops," says Chawinga.
The irrigation programme, which only started in January this year, is already showing signs of having promoted crop diversification in a country that is highly reliant on maize as a staple food. Chandanga, for example, is now also cultivating potatoes, beans and rice to supplement the maize that he has been growing.
The farmers involved in the irrigation project are provided with treadle pumps and water pipes which they use to pump water through canals from dams, rivers and streams closest to them.
Apart from irrigation, the farmers are being taught skills in water management, development of agro-business, promotion of afforestation and natural resource conservation.
The irrigation programme was kick-started following a Poverty Rural Assessment (PRA) exercise which FAO carried out in May 2007. The assessment highlighted low crop yield and low income levels among rural households – the findings were mostly attributed to lack of irrigation opportunities, erratic rainfall and drought.
Malawi is only irrigating 72,000 of 400,000 hectares of irrigable land, according to the government. However the country’s president Bingu wa Mutharika, who is also Minister of Agriculture, told reporters at an August press conference that government is creating a "green belt" along Lake Malawi, which will entail the creation of irrigation schemes along the lake. Lake Malawi is a fresh water lake -- the ninth largest lake in the world, it extends the length of the country.
Small-holder farmers will be assisted by government to establish irrigation schemes along the lake. In Malawi’s 2008/2009 national budget, the allocation to the Ministry of Irrigation and Water Development has been increased by 50 percent to $55 million.
Link to full article. May expire in future.
Perea, Swearengin Address Poverty
from KMPH
Organizers of the Mayoral Forum on Poverty and Possibilities cite a recent study by the Brookings Institute that says the nation's highest concentration of poverty is right here in Fresno.
The group brought candidates Henry T. Perea and Ashley Swearengin together to hear their plans to help.
Both candidates say solving it won't be easy.
"There are so many issues that go hand in hand with the issue of poverty," Swearengin said.
"Were talking about the real concentrated poverty that has held this city back for a long time," Perea said.
Swearengin and Perea each have plans for lifting their Fresno neighbors out of poverty.
Highlights of Swearengin's plan include ways to: help private business to create jobs, improve city bus service to help people get to work, and more job training programs, and partner with schools and community groups to create high quality programs for kids and teens. Lastly, fight crime with after-school programs and the addition of an independent police auditor.
Perea's vision also calls for putting more people to work through public-private partnerships and job training, expanding the Conservation Corps to work with disadvantaged kids, make public transit work to re-evaluate the FAX bus system to get people more places faster, and create opportunity neighborhoods, areas of the city where services are consolidated and improved.
Link to full article. May expire in future.
Organizers of the Mayoral Forum on Poverty and Possibilities cite a recent study by the Brookings Institute that says the nation's highest concentration of poverty is right here in Fresno.
The group brought candidates Henry T. Perea and Ashley Swearengin together to hear their plans to help.
Both candidates say solving it won't be easy.
"There are so many issues that go hand in hand with the issue of poverty," Swearengin said.
"Were talking about the real concentrated poverty that has held this city back for a long time," Perea said.
Swearengin and Perea each have plans for lifting their Fresno neighbors out of poverty.
Highlights of Swearengin's plan include ways to: help private business to create jobs, improve city bus service to help people get to work, and more job training programs, and partner with schools and community groups to create high quality programs for kids and teens. Lastly, fight crime with after-school programs and the addition of an independent police auditor.
Perea's vision also calls for putting more people to work through public-private partnerships and job training, expanding the Conservation Corps to work with disadvantaged kids, make public transit work to re-evaluate the FAX bus system to get people more places faster, and create opportunity neighborhoods, areas of the city where services are consolidated and improved.
Link to full article. May expire in future.
Thursday, September 11, 2008
Minister bemoans poverty in post-apartheid South Africa
from the AFP via Google
JOHANNESBURG — South African Finance Minister Trevor Manuel Thursday bemoaned despair and poverty among many of its 48 million population more than 14 years after the demise of white-only apartheid regime.
"The harsh and ugly truth that confronts us is that... almost 15 years into democracy, the everyday lives of many of our people remain as uninspired and as filled with despair as it was then," he said at a public lecture.
The lecture was organised in memory of Steve Biko, an anti-apartheid activist and leader of South Africa's Black Consciousness Movement, who died in apartheid prison on September 12, 1977.
More than four million South Africans live below the poverty line, according to government figures.
Manuel said that despite independence, squalor in many townships and run-down communities, "stark inequalities," diseases, violence, crime, poverty and mediocrity still dominated the nation's landscape.
Link to full article. May expire in future.
JOHANNESBURG — South African Finance Minister Trevor Manuel Thursday bemoaned despair and poverty among many of its 48 million population more than 14 years after the demise of white-only apartheid regime.
"The harsh and ugly truth that confronts us is that... almost 15 years into democracy, the everyday lives of many of our people remain as uninspired and as filled with despair as it was then," he said at a public lecture.
The lecture was organised in memory of Steve Biko, an anti-apartheid activist and leader of South Africa's Black Consciousness Movement, who died in apartheid prison on September 12, 1977.
More than four million South Africans live below the poverty line, according to government figures.
Manuel said that despite independence, squalor in many townships and run-down communities, "stark inequalities," diseases, violence, crime, poverty and mediocrity still dominated the nation's landscape.
Link to full article. May expire in future.
UN chief unveils report on flagging world fight against poverty
from the Economic Times, India
UN chief Ban Ki-moon on Thursday unveiled a report warning that poverty reduction goals agreed by world leaders eight years ago may not be met by the 2015 target date, particularly in Africa.
The UN's Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) Report 2008 was released ahead of a summit meeting on the MDGs, scheduled for September 25 on the margins of the UN General Assembly session.
It noted that improved data from the World Bank confirmed that between 1990 and 2005, the number of people living in extreme poverty dropped from 1.8 to 1.4 billion and that the 1990 global poverty rate was likely to be halved by 2015.
"But while most of this decline occurred in East Asia, particularly China, other regions had much smaller decreases in the poverty rate and only modest falls in the number of poor," it said.
"Sub-Saharan Africa and the former Soviet republics actually saw the number of poor increase between 1990 and 2005."
The September 25 gathering, which will be held three days after a high-level meeting here focused on Africa's development, will be the first summit on the MDGs since 2000.
Ban told a press conference that 150 countries, including more than 90 heads of state or government, would be represented at the two gatherings which he said were aimed at really working "more for the poorest of the poor, the bottom billion trapped in poverty."
In 2000, world leaders gathered at a UN summit here agreed on eight development goals to be implemented by all countries by 2015, including halving the number of people living below the poverty line - now set at $ 1.25 a day - between 1990 and 2015.
Other MDGs focus on achieving universal primary education, promoting gender equality, reducing child mortality, improving maternal health, combating diseases such as HIV/AIDS, ensuring environmental sustainability and creating global partnerships for development.
Link to full article. May expire in future.
UN chief Ban Ki-moon on Thursday unveiled a report warning that poverty reduction goals agreed by world leaders eight years ago may not be met by the 2015 target date, particularly in Africa.
The UN's Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) Report 2008 was released ahead of a summit meeting on the MDGs, scheduled for September 25 on the margins of the UN General Assembly session.
It noted that improved data from the World Bank confirmed that between 1990 and 2005, the number of people living in extreme poverty dropped from 1.8 to 1.4 billion and that the 1990 global poverty rate was likely to be halved by 2015.
"But while most of this decline occurred in East Asia, particularly China, other regions had much smaller decreases in the poverty rate and only modest falls in the number of poor," it said.
"Sub-Saharan Africa and the former Soviet republics actually saw the number of poor increase between 1990 and 2005."
The September 25 gathering, which will be held three days after a high-level meeting here focused on Africa's development, will be the first summit on the MDGs since 2000.
Ban told a press conference that 150 countries, including more than 90 heads of state or government, would be represented at the two gatherings which he said were aimed at really working "more for the poorest of the poor, the bottom billion trapped in poverty."
In 2000, world leaders gathered at a UN summit here agreed on eight development goals to be implemented by all countries by 2015, including halving the number of people living below the poverty line - now set at $ 1.25 a day - between 1990 and 2015.
Other MDGs focus on achieving universal primary education, promoting gender equality, reducing child mortality, improving maternal health, combating diseases such as HIV/AIDS, ensuring environmental sustainability and creating global partnerships for development.
Link to full article. May expire in future.
Asia poverty level down, child health poor - U.N. report
from Reuters India
By Melanie Lee
NEW DELHI - Asia is making progress in reducing extreme poverty but faces an uphill battle to improve child nutrition and lower child mortality rates, the United Nations said on Thursday.
The U.N.'s annual Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) report, released on Thursday in New Delhi, showed East Asia and Southeast Asia making the most progress in reducing poverty levels, although South Asia lagged behind.
In South Asia, progress was slow in India, with the number of people living in extreme poverty rising by 20 million between 1990 and 2005, the report said. But it did manage to lower its poverty levels to 41 percent from 52 percent in the same period, officials said.
The World Bank defines extreme poverty as living with less than $1.25 a day and poverty as living on less than $2 a day.
The MDGs are eight social and economic development benchmarks set by the world body for nations to accomplish by 2015. They include reducing poverty levels, increasing universal education and fighting the spread of AIDS.
India is not on track to meet half its MDGs by 2015, experts presenting the report said. More political will is required to reduce extreme poverty and hunger, improve maternal health and combat diseases.
"Policies are not the issues, there are very many good policies, it's all about the implementation," Maxine Olson, the U.N. resident coordinator, said in New Delhi during the launch.
By Melanie Lee
NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Asia is making progress in reducing extreme poverty but faces an uphill battle to improve child nutrition and lower child mortality rates, the United Nations said on Thursday.
The U.N.'s annual Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) report, released on Thursday in New Delhi, showed East Asia and Southeast Asia making the most progress in reducing poverty levels, although South Asia lagged behind.
In South Asia, progress was slow in India, with the number of people living in extreme poverty rising by 20 million between 1990 and 2005, the report said. But it did manage to lower its poverty levels to 41 percent from 52 percent in the same period, officials said.
The World Bank defines extreme poverty as living with less than $1.25 a day and poverty as living on less than $2 a day.
The MDGs are eight social and economic development benchmarks set by the world body for nations to accomplish by 2015. They include reducing poverty levels, increasing universal education and fighting the spread of AIDS.
India is not on track to meet half its MDGs by 2015, experts presenting the report said. More political will is required to reduce extreme poverty and hunger, improve maternal health and combat diseases.
"Policies are not the issues, there are very many good policies, it's all about the implementation," Maxine Olson, the U.N. resident coordinator, said in New Delhi during the launch.
Link to full article. May expire in future.
By Melanie Lee
NEW DELHI - Asia is making progress in reducing extreme poverty but faces an uphill battle to improve child nutrition and lower child mortality rates, the United Nations said on Thursday.
The U.N.'s annual Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) report, released on Thursday in New Delhi, showed East Asia and Southeast Asia making the most progress in reducing poverty levels, although South Asia lagged behind.
In South Asia, progress was slow in India, with the number of people living in extreme poverty rising by 20 million between 1990 and 2005, the report said. But it did manage to lower its poverty levels to 41 percent from 52 percent in the same period, officials said.
The World Bank defines extreme poverty as living with less than $1.25 a day and poverty as living on less than $2 a day.
The MDGs are eight social and economic development benchmarks set by the world body for nations to accomplish by 2015. They include reducing poverty levels, increasing universal education and fighting the spread of AIDS.
India is not on track to meet half its MDGs by 2015, experts presenting the report said. More political will is required to reduce extreme poverty and hunger, improve maternal health and combat diseases.
"Policies are not the issues, there are very many good policies, it's all about the implementation," Maxine Olson, the U.N. resident coordinator, said in New Delhi during the launch.
By Melanie Lee
NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Asia is making progress in reducing extreme poverty but faces an uphill battle to improve child nutrition and lower child mortality rates, the United Nations said on Thursday.
The U.N.'s annual Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) report, released on Thursday in New Delhi, showed East Asia and Southeast Asia making the most progress in reducing poverty levels, although South Asia lagged behind.
In South Asia, progress was slow in India, with the number of people living in extreme poverty rising by 20 million between 1990 and 2005, the report said. But it did manage to lower its poverty levels to 41 percent from 52 percent in the same period, officials said.
The World Bank defines extreme poverty as living with less than $1.25 a day and poverty as living on less than $2 a day.
The MDGs are eight social and economic development benchmarks set by the world body for nations to accomplish by 2015. They include reducing poverty levels, increasing universal education and fighting the spread of AIDS.
India is not on track to meet half its MDGs by 2015, experts presenting the report said. More political will is required to reduce extreme poverty and hunger, improve maternal health and combat diseases.
"Policies are not the issues, there are very many good policies, it's all about the implementation," Maxine Olson, the U.N. resident coordinator, said in New Delhi during the launch.
Link to full article. May expire in future.
Amidst Hard Work, Poverty Still Rules Sierra Leone's Interior
from All Africa
Byline: Mariama Kandeh
Freetown, - It is ironical to see a set of people working extremely hard for their daily survival and for the development of their communities all to no avail as poverty has prevailed over their lives thus making their struggle very difficult.
This is the situation of many residents in the rural areas of Sierra Leone. From Kayakoh in Koinadugu to Buedu in Kailahun, Sefadu in Kono, Wala in Port Loko and Kamalo in Bombali, people are working hard but because of lack of proper management skills, lack of incentives and non-availability of improved farming techniques, most of their efforts are wasted.
Kamalo is one of the many villages in Sierra Leone that are completely cut off from civilization. The village is situated in the Sanda-Loko chiefdom about 47 miles from Makeni and it takes two and a half hours for a forerunner jeep to reach the village.
Two and a half hours through ditches, potholes and fallen trees across the road. Villagers, especially women, are seen carrying babies on their backs with huge piles of farm produce on their heads. Some others carry bundles of clothes as they move from one village to the other.
Women whose bare breasts dangle on their chests like oranges could also be seen at rivers as they launder dirty clothes for their husbands and numerous children.
This recent trip to that part of Sierra Leone made me believe that the myth that Sierra Leoneans are lazy was not only a folktale but also based on assumption and myopia.
In the rural areas, women and men work on their farms from dawn to dusk. It is hard for one to set eyes on able-bodied adults and youths in those villages during the day as most of them would have gone to their farms. Instead, one will only see young children and the aged around. Yet, the people are poor, hungry and filthy so I had to ask myself why.
Along the roads from Pailla to Kamalo and Makali going to Kamakwie, poverty is visible on the faces of the people. Along the way, I saw naked children and some with patched clothes manning check points to collect one hundred leones from vehicles that ply the route.
Most of these children do run to the bush whenever a vehicle tries to scare them away. Reminiscing on this act by these children, I remember the roles played by children during the war and my heart beats for the future of Sierra Leone.
Even the outlook of minibuses that drive through the road shows the high level of detachment of the area from civilization. Despite the presence of police officers at some of the check points along the way, 'poda podas' still get overloaded sometimes and teenagers sit on their carriers.
"The road is bad. We have to overload to cover up for the fuel we burn while traveling through this kind of a road," Mohamed Kamara, a driver said to me. But does that mean endangering the lives of the passengers on board? I asked myself with a nod.
According to the 2004 census report, Makali has a population of about 473 people and Kamalo slightly over 800. These numbers have significantly increased over the years. The villages lack potable water, power supply, good roads, and sanitary system.
It is common in those parts of Sierra Leone for young men of ages between 20 and 30 years having three to four wives with children ranging from 6 to 13. Can there be any proper care for the family with such a big size and little income? No! Local councils need to increase their sensitization drive for a proper family setup.
Mohamed B. Sesay, a farmer, said the village is home to many senior citizens of the country. It is also the paternal home of President Ernest Bai Koroma and bank governor, Samura Kamara but the village has been abandoned by succeeding governments including the incumbent.
"Kamalo has given birth to many great people. Most of them are in the city. They own farms here but have turned a blind eye to the realities of their people. One of the most common epidemics here is diarrhea and the major reason for that is because we drink from the Marwolkoh River which is not healthy," he said.
Apparently, farming is the swiftest means of becoming wealthy in the world today but in Sierra Leone this is not the case. Farmers constitute the poorest in the country. In Kamalo and Makali, farming is done in large scale but unfortunately this has not reflected in the lives of the people. Many of them cannot afford good housing and thus live in thatch houses.
Farmers grow rice, beans, pepper, groundnut and benni on a land space ranging between four and thirty five acres but their health situation is terrible. Most of their children have protruding stomachs which is not too healthy for them. They drink, bathe and use river water for domestic purposes.
Chairman of Ataya base farmers association, Chernoh Kamara, claimed that they are being exploited by those who buy their farm produce. "Those who take the strain to come through this difficult road to buy our crops are making huge profits. After harvesting, we do drying but we lack storage facility. Late marketing is also causing low quality and slow profit," he said.
Kamara said a bag of pepper is bought from them at Le 40, 000 and sold for Le 100,000 in big towns. Earlier this year, farmers in Kamalo harvested okra and bitter balls which cost over millions but were left to destroy because there were no markets for the crops.
Extension Coordinator, Alpha Yayah Mansaray explained that the dilapidated state of Sanda Loko chiefdom is largely because the farmers are not practicing mechanized farming but subsistence.
"They also need incentives to buy seeds and other equipments to hasten the farming process," he said adding that farmers need proper education on how to market their farm produce in order to maximize profit.
The deteriorating situation does not only affect the farming sector but also the health, education and infrastructural development of the Sanda Loko chiefdom. While residents have lost hope of ever having power or water supply, there is little or no medical care for residents in the area.
Yeabu Turay told me that she lost her mother after a quack doctor injected her with crystalline when the old woman had a heart attack. "I felt sorry for the 'pepper doctor' and I could not report him to the police," she said.
The education sector is no exception. Children walk miles to go to the only primary school in the area. Sometimes they had to cross rivers to go to the school. They put on rags and appear very untidy in school.
The RC Primary School, which is the only in an area called Madina Fullah, sent 30 pupils for the last National Primary School Examination (NPSE). Parents of some of these pupils grumbled that they were being asked by the head teacher Peter K. Sesay to give Le 5,000 and a fowl in order to get their results.
But a teacher from the school, Abdul Kamara, denied the allegation saying: "I have just collected the results. I am going to take the results from house to house," displaying one of the results to me from a transparent polyethylene bag.
I was surprised on my first night at Makali to see group of villagers running to the house where I was lodged to watch television. When I asked the care taker of the house, she told me that some of the people are coming from as far as two to three miles from the house just to watch a movie.
"Well this is the only well-constructed house here and the only one with a generator, video and television so whenever we put the generator on, you will see them coming in huge numbers," Aunty Fatty said adding that the people lack basic social amenities so whenever they get half of such an opportunity, they always grab it.
She also confirmed to me that most of the villagers that were present that night were pregnant women or nursing mothers. "Some get pregnant while in class 5 or 6. Parents here are very poor and cannot take care of their children. They will rather give their female children away for as low as a pan of groundnut. They cannot control their kids because respect goes with money," she said.
Byline: Mariama Kandeh
Freetown, - It is ironical to see a set of people working extremely hard for their daily survival and for the development of their communities all to no avail as poverty has prevailed over their lives thus making their struggle very difficult.
This is the situation of many residents in the rural areas of Sierra Leone. From Kayakoh in Koinadugu to Buedu in Kailahun, Sefadu in Kono, Wala in Port Loko and Kamalo in Bombali, people are working hard but because of lack of proper management skills, lack of incentives and non-availability of improved farming techniques, most of their efforts are wasted.
Kamalo is one of the many villages in Sierra Leone that are completely cut off from civilization. The village is situated in the Sanda-Loko chiefdom about 47 miles from Makeni and it takes two and a half hours for a forerunner jeep to reach the village.
Two and a half hours through ditches, potholes and fallen trees across the road. Villagers, especially women, are seen carrying babies on their backs with huge piles of farm produce on their heads. Some others carry bundles of clothes as they move from one village to the other.
Women whose bare breasts dangle on their chests like oranges could also be seen at rivers as they launder dirty clothes for their husbands and numerous children.
This recent trip to that part of Sierra Leone made me believe that the myth that Sierra Leoneans are lazy was not only a folktale but also based on assumption and myopia.
In the rural areas, women and men work on their farms from dawn to dusk. It is hard for one to set eyes on able-bodied adults and youths in those villages during the day as most of them would have gone to their farms. Instead, one will only see young children and the aged around. Yet, the people are poor, hungry and filthy so I had to ask myself why.
Along the roads from Pailla to Kamalo and Makali going to Kamakwie, poverty is visible on the faces of the people. Along the way, I saw naked children and some with patched clothes manning check points to collect one hundred leones from vehicles that ply the route.
Most of these children do run to the bush whenever a vehicle tries to scare them away. Reminiscing on this act by these children, I remember the roles played by children during the war and my heart beats for the future of Sierra Leone.
Even the outlook of minibuses that drive through the road shows the high level of detachment of the area from civilization. Despite the presence of police officers at some of the check points along the way, 'poda podas' still get overloaded sometimes and teenagers sit on their carriers.
"The road is bad. We have to overload to cover up for the fuel we burn while traveling through this kind of a road," Mohamed Kamara, a driver said to me. But does that mean endangering the lives of the passengers on board? I asked myself with a nod.
According to the 2004 census report, Makali has a population of about 473 people and Kamalo slightly over 800. These numbers have significantly increased over the years. The villages lack potable water, power supply, good roads, and sanitary system.
It is common in those parts of Sierra Leone for young men of ages between 20 and 30 years having three to four wives with children ranging from 6 to 13. Can there be any proper care for the family with such a big size and little income? No! Local councils need to increase their sensitization drive for a proper family setup.
Mohamed B. Sesay, a farmer, said the village is home to many senior citizens of the country. It is also the paternal home of President Ernest Bai Koroma and bank governor, Samura Kamara but the village has been abandoned by succeeding governments including the incumbent.
"Kamalo has given birth to many great people. Most of them are in the city. They own farms here but have turned a blind eye to the realities of their people. One of the most common epidemics here is diarrhea and the major reason for that is because we drink from the Marwolkoh River which is not healthy," he said.
Apparently, farming is the swiftest means of becoming wealthy in the world today but in Sierra Leone this is not the case. Farmers constitute the poorest in the country. In Kamalo and Makali, farming is done in large scale but unfortunately this has not reflected in the lives of the people. Many of them cannot afford good housing and thus live in thatch houses.
Farmers grow rice, beans, pepper, groundnut and benni on a land space ranging between four and thirty five acres but their health situation is terrible. Most of their children have protruding stomachs which is not too healthy for them. They drink, bathe and use river water for domestic purposes.
Chairman of Ataya base farmers association, Chernoh Kamara, claimed that they are being exploited by those who buy their farm produce. "Those who take the strain to come through this difficult road to buy our crops are making huge profits. After harvesting, we do drying but we lack storage facility. Late marketing is also causing low quality and slow profit," he said.
Kamara said a bag of pepper is bought from them at Le 40, 000 and sold for Le 100,000 in big towns. Earlier this year, farmers in Kamalo harvested okra and bitter balls which cost over millions but were left to destroy because there were no markets for the crops.
Extension Coordinator, Alpha Yayah Mansaray explained that the dilapidated state of Sanda Loko chiefdom is largely because the farmers are not practicing mechanized farming but subsistence.
"They also need incentives to buy seeds and other equipments to hasten the farming process," he said adding that farmers need proper education on how to market their farm produce in order to maximize profit.
The deteriorating situation does not only affect the farming sector but also the health, education and infrastructural development of the Sanda Loko chiefdom. While residents have lost hope of ever having power or water supply, there is little or no medical care for residents in the area.
Yeabu Turay told me that she lost her mother after a quack doctor injected her with crystalline when the old woman had a heart attack. "I felt sorry for the 'pepper doctor' and I could not report him to the police," she said.
The education sector is no exception. Children walk miles to go to the only primary school in the area. Sometimes they had to cross rivers to go to the school. They put on rags and appear very untidy in school.
The RC Primary School, which is the only in an area called Madina Fullah, sent 30 pupils for the last National Primary School Examination (NPSE). Parents of some of these pupils grumbled that they were being asked by the head teacher Peter K. Sesay to give Le 5,000 and a fowl in order to get their results.
But a teacher from the school, Abdul Kamara, denied the allegation saying: "I have just collected the results. I am going to take the results from house to house," displaying one of the results to me from a transparent polyethylene bag.
I was surprised on my first night at Makali to see group of villagers running to the house where I was lodged to watch television. When I asked the care taker of the house, she told me that some of the people are coming from as far as two to three miles from the house just to watch a movie.
"Well this is the only well-constructed house here and the only one with a generator, video and television so whenever we put the generator on, you will see them coming in huge numbers," Aunty Fatty said adding that the people lack basic social amenities so whenever they get half of such an opportunity, they always grab it.
She also confirmed to me that most of the villagers that were present that night were pregnant women or nursing mothers. "Some get pregnant while in class 5 or 6. Parents here are very poor and cannot take care of their children. They will rather give their female children away for as low as a pan of groundnut. They cannot control their kids because respect goes with money," she said.
Poverty draws Chinese to unsafe but lucrative mines
from Reuters India
By Ben Blanchard
TASHAN, China - Why anyone would choose to work in China's often deadly mining industry must surely be a mystery until you talk to people like Lu Renyan.
For him, poverty is the motivating factor, given the potential financial rewards.
Lu lives and works just a few hundred metres (yards) from the site of Monday's massive mudslide caused by a collapsed mining slag heap in China's gritty northern province of Shanxi, killing at least 128 people with the toll expected to rise significantly.
The official China Daily on Thursday quoted work safety chief Wang Jun as saying there was little hope for hundreds feared buried under the mud. It also cited witnesses as saying the village buried was home to around 1,000 people.
"I can earn 1,000 yuan ($146), 3,000 yuan or up to 5,000 yuan a month working here," Lu said, pointing to the entrance to a distinctly unsafe looking iron ore mine, which local officials say is almost certainly illegal.
Not a bad sum in a county where last year the annual net rural income was only a little more than 4,000 yuan.
"The work is hard, but it's worth it," added Lu, from a poor rural part of the southwestern metropolis of Chongqing, hundreds of kilometres from where he stands, in the foothills of Tashan.
Stagnating rural incomes have for many years fuelled a massive exodus from the Chinese countryside to wealthy coastal regions, where poorly educated farmers have flocked to work on building sites that are transforming cities such as Shanghai.
But others have gone to work in the coal, iron ore and other mines that dot the huge country, whose raw materials are needed to feed China's insatiable economic boom, despite almost constant reports of disasters in these very mines.
"This is a lot safer than working in a coal mine," said iron ore miner Pang Wenxu, in a thick country accent. "There are no gas explosions there. I'm not worried, despite this accident."
Officials earlier this year announced plans to crack down on reckless mining in this polluted region that is scattered with small mines and smelters. Yet local governments often lack the power or will to police companies that provide jobs and revenue.
Beijing has now ordered urgent checks on mines throughout the country to stem a recent upsurge in accidents, Communist Party newspaper the People's Daily said on Thursday.
The president and premier had also both promised legal action against those found responsible for the Tashan disaster, Xinhua news agency added.
SOARING PRICES
China's mines are the world's most dangerous, killing nearly 3,800 people last year, as the high demand for raw materials pushes managers to cut safety corners.
Most victims are coal miners. But strong iron ore demand has encouraged miners to dig up even low-grade ore, often with little regard for safety or the environment.
Soaring commodity prices have drawn workers in, and made it worthwhile for unscrupulous people to take the risk of running mines the government has refused to license for safety reasons.
Many of the dead at Tashan were migrant workers, whose identities might never be known -- if their bodies are ever recovered -- as they worked in a shady industry not known for keeping accurate records of its staff or their next of kin.
Link to full article. May expire in future.
By Ben Blanchard
TASHAN, China - Why anyone would choose to work in China's often deadly mining industry must surely be a mystery until you talk to people like Lu Renyan.
For him, poverty is the motivating factor, given the potential financial rewards.
Lu lives and works just a few hundred metres (yards) from the site of Monday's massive mudslide caused by a collapsed mining slag heap in China's gritty northern province of Shanxi, killing at least 128 people with the toll expected to rise significantly.
The official China Daily on Thursday quoted work safety chief Wang Jun as saying there was little hope for hundreds feared buried under the mud. It also cited witnesses as saying the village buried was home to around 1,000 people.
"I can earn 1,000 yuan ($146), 3,000 yuan or up to 5,000 yuan a month working here," Lu said, pointing to the entrance to a distinctly unsafe looking iron ore mine, which local officials say is almost certainly illegal.
Not a bad sum in a county where last year the annual net rural income was only a little more than 4,000 yuan.
"The work is hard, but it's worth it," added Lu, from a poor rural part of the southwestern metropolis of Chongqing, hundreds of kilometres from where he stands, in the foothills of Tashan.
Stagnating rural incomes have for many years fuelled a massive exodus from the Chinese countryside to wealthy coastal regions, where poorly educated farmers have flocked to work on building sites that are transforming cities such as Shanghai.
But others have gone to work in the coal, iron ore and other mines that dot the huge country, whose raw materials are needed to feed China's insatiable economic boom, despite almost constant reports of disasters in these very mines.
"This is a lot safer than working in a coal mine," said iron ore miner Pang Wenxu, in a thick country accent. "There are no gas explosions there. I'm not worried, despite this accident."
Officials earlier this year announced plans to crack down on reckless mining in this polluted region that is scattered with small mines and smelters. Yet local governments often lack the power or will to police companies that provide jobs and revenue.
Beijing has now ordered urgent checks on mines throughout the country to stem a recent upsurge in accidents, Communist Party newspaper the People's Daily said on Thursday.
The president and premier had also both promised legal action against those found responsible for the Tashan disaster, Xinhua news agency added.
SOARING PRICES
China's mines are the world's most dangerous, killing nearly 3,800 people last year, as the high demand for raw materials pushes managers to cut safety corners.
Most victims are coal miners. But strong iron ore demand has encouraged miners to dig up even low-grade ore, often with little regard for safety or the environment.
Soaring commodity prices have drawn workers in, and made it worthwhile for unscrupulous people to take the risk of running mines the government has refused to license for safety reasons.
Many of the dead at Tashan were migrant workers, whose identities might never be known -- if their bodies are ever recovered -- as they worked in a shady industry not known for keeping accurate records of its staff or their next of kin.
Link to full article. May expire in future.
EU committee votes to scale back biofuels target
from the Daily Press
By CONSTANT BRAND
BRUSSELS, Belgium - EU lawmakers voted Thursday to cut in half an ambitious target for using crop-based biofuels for 10 percent of its road transport needs by 2020.
The vote by the European Parliament's industry committee deals a blow to climate change goals agreed to by EU leaders last year to try to cut carbon dioxide emissions.
Environmental and aid groups had criticized the EU's 10 percent biofuels target, claiming it harmed efforts to fight global poverty and effectively tackle carbon emissions, and caused deforestation.
The biofuels target is part of an ambitious climate change package the 27 EU leaders embraced last year, which they hope to enact by year's end.
The overall aim is for the EU to draw 20 percent of all its energy from renewable sources by 2020 — up from 8.5 percent now.
Lawmakers pushed EU governments to move away from so-called first generation biofuels, which use food crops to make transport fuels, and instead use more alternative green technologies such as electric and hydrogen powered vehicles.
An amended climate change bill now goes to the full European Parliament for a vote and back to EU governments for further negotiations. EU governments and the EU assembly all have to agree on the climate change plan before it becomes law.
France, which currently holds the EU presidency, wants the legislative measures in place before international climate change talks in December.
The European Commission, which drafted the original climate change bill, had steadfastly ignored critics who said the 10 percent biofuels target contributed to rising food prices.
Link to full article. May expire in future.
By CONSTANT BRAND
BRUSSELS, Belgium - EU lawmakers voted Thursday to cut in half an ambitious target for using crop-based biofuels for 10 percent of its road transport needs by 2020.
The vote by the European Parliament's industry committee deals a blow to climate change goals agreed to by EU leaders last year to try to cut carbon dioxide emissions.
Environmental and aid groups had criticized the EU's 10 percent biofuels target, claiming it harmed efforts to fight global poverty and effectively tackle carbon emissions, and caused deforestation.
The biofuels target is part of an ambitious climate change package the 27 EU leaders embraced last year, which they hope to enact by year's end.
The overall aim is for the EU to draw 20 percent of all its energy from renewable sources by 2020 — up from 8.5 percent now.
Lawmakers pushed EU governments to move away from so-called first generation biofuels, which use food crops to make transport fuels, and instead use more alternative green technologies such as electric and hydrogen powered vehicles.
An amended climate change bill now goes to the full European Parliament for a vote and back to EU governments for further negotiations. EU governments and the EU assembly all have to agree on the climate change plan before it becomes law.
France, which currently holds the EU presidency, wants the legislative measures in place before international climate change talks in December.
The European Commission, which drafted the original climate change bill, had steadfastly ignored critics who said the 10 percent biofuels target contributed to rising food prices.
Link to full article. May expire in future.
Failing Wheat Crop Causes Afghan Food Crisis
from NPR
The link to the full story below also includes the audio transcript. - Kale
by Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson
In Afghanistan, a lingering drought has led to the smallest wheat harvest in the country in years. Officials say the shortfall is nearly 1.7 million tons. Compounding the dilemma is a global spike in food prices.
Millions of Afghans are now in danger of going hungry, and the international community is responding to the crisis.
The U.S. recently donated 50,000 tons of wheat, but experts warn this kind of crisis will happen again unless the Afghan government and international donors start paying more attention to the country's farmers.
Frustration Growing
The only thing growing in a village in northern Kunduz province is frustration. Farmers complain the drought has left them without enough wheat to eat, let alone sell, this winter.
This is the worst drought any one can remember, and looking at the brown fields it is easy to see why farmers are distressed. One field was a wheat field, but there was not enough rain and water in the canal, so farmers tried planting okra and melons. Those crops didn't take either, so now the field is just mounds of dirt that stretch for acres.
Mohammad Yusuf heads an informal farmers' cooperative called "Beggars' Gathering." He takes his anger out on dried okra stems sticking out of the dirt by snapping them in half.
Yusuf says rain touched their fields maybe twice this year, and he says other than providing some seed, his government has done nothing to help.
Abdul Aziz Nikzad, the agricultural director in Kunduz province, says he empathizes with Yusuf.
Nikzad says his province used to be called the wheat warehouse of Afghanistan, but not anymore.
Mistrust In The Ministries
Nikzad blames the drought and the government in Kabul for not acting more quickly to help farmers. He says the various ministries don't trust one another: When his superiors at the Agriculture Ministry told him to rent tankers five months ago to help get water to dying livestock, he is still waiting for the Finance Ministry to give him the money.
"The ministries with money act like warlords guarding their personal coffers," Nikzad says. "There's so much red tape and micromanaging that there's little I can do to help the farmers."
Nikzad is still waiting to hear whether they will give him money to dig the three wells he needs to keep his 250-acre government farm alive. He says he has to dig those wells by next month or he'll miss the deadline for planting next season's wheat.
For now, the only water at the farm is pumped through a four-inch fire hose donated by the French. The water comes from the farm's lone well.
A farm worker uses the water to plant a small field of almond, apricot and other saplings. It's the only field in sight where anything is growing.
'A Blessing In Disguise'
Tekeste Ghebray Tekie, the U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization representative based in Kabul, says of the billions of foreign dollars spent on rebuilding Afghanistan, only a few hundred million have gone to improving agriculture.
But, Tekie says, the drought and soaring wheat prices served as a wake up call about the dangers of ignoring agriculture in a country where 80 percent of the population is dependent on farming.
"I call it a blessing in disguise," Tekie says. "For one thing, it brought attention to agriculture. For another, farmers may switch from poppy to growing crops or wheat. So maybe there's an opportunity there from the crisis."
Many say that wheat at this stage is becoming more lucrative than opium poppy, and the key is to help poppy farmers make the switch. Still, there are a lot of questions about what Afghan agriculture should look like.
U.S. officials are interested in seeing farmers focus more on cash crops like fruit and nuts that grow better and will boost the economy.
Link to full article. May expire in future.
The link to the full story below also includes the audio transcript. - Kale
by Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson
In Afghanistan, a lingering drought has led to the smallest wheat harvest in the country in years. Officials say the shortfall is nearly 1.7 million tons. Compounding the dilemma is a global spike in food prices.
Millions of Afghans are now in danger of going hungry, and the international community is responding to the crisis.
The U.S. recently donated 50,000 tons of wheat, but experts warn this kind of crisis will happen again unless the Afghan government and international donors start paying more attention to the country's farmers.
Frustration Growing
The only thing growing in a village in northern Kunduz province is frustration. Farmers complain the drought has left them without enough wheat to eat, let alone sell, this winter.
This is the worst drought any one can remember, and looking at the brown fields it is easy to see why farmers are distressed. One field was a wheat field, but there was not enough rain and water in the canal, so farmers tried planting okra and melons. Those crops didn't take either, so now the field is just mounds of dirt that stretch for acres.
Mohammad Yusuf heads an informal farmers' cooperative called "Beggars' Gathering." He takes his anger out on dried okra stems sticking out of the dirt by snapping them in half.
Yusuf says rain touched their fields maybe twice this year, and he says other than providing some seed, his government has done nothing to help.
Abdul Aziz Nikzad, the agricultural director in Kunduz province, says he empathizes with Yusuf.
Nikzad says his province used to be called the wheat warehouse of Afghanistan, but not anymore.
Mistrust In The Ministries
Nikzad blames the drought and the government in Kabul for not acting more quickly to help farmers. He says the various ministries don't trust one another: When his superiors at the Agriculture Ministry told him to rent tankers five months ago to help get water to dying livestock, he is still waiting for the Finance Ministry to give him the money.
"The ministries with money act like warlords guarding their personal coffers," Nikzad says. "There's so much red tape and micromanaging that there's little I can do to help the farmers."
Nikzad is still waiting to hear whether they will give him money to dig the three wells he needs to keep his 250-acre government farm alive. He says he has to dig those wells by next month or he'll miss the deadline for planting next season's wheat.
For now, the only water at the farm is pumped through a four-inch fire hose donated by the French. The water comes from the farm's lone well.
A farm worker uses the water to plant a small field of almond, apricot and other saplings. It's the only field in sight where anything is growing.
'A Blessing In Disguise'
Tekeste Ghebray Tekie, the U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization representative based in Kabul, says of the billions of foreign dollars spent on rebuilding Afghanistan, only a few hundred million have gone to improving agriculture.
But, Tekie says, the drought and soaring wheat prices served as a wake up call about the dangers of ignoring agriculture in a country where 80 percent of the population is dependent on farming.
"I call it a blessing in disguise," Tekie says. "For one thing, it brought attention to agriculture. For another, farmers may switch from poppy to growing crops or wheat. So maybe there's an opportunity there from the crisis."
Many say that wheat at this stage is becoming more lucrative than opium poppy, and the key is to help poppy farmers make the switch. Still, there are a lot of questions about what Afghan agriculture should look like.
U.S. officials are interested in seeing farmers focus more on cash crops like fruit and nuts that grow better and will boost the economy.
Link to full article. May expire in future.
Data Points: Poverty Rate in US
from US News and World Report
Non-Hispanic whites have the lowest poverty rate
--8.2%: Poverty rate in 2007 for non-Hispanic whites
--24.5%: ...for blacks
--21.5%: ...for Hispanics
--10.2%: ...for Asians
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2007 (http://www.census.gov/prod/2008pubs/p60-235.pdf)
Non-Hispanic whites have the lowest poverty rate
--8.2%: Poverty rate in 2007 for non-Hispanic whites
--24.5%: ...for blacks
--21.5%: ...for Hispanics
--10.2%: ...for Asians
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2007 (http://www.census.gov/prod/2008pubs/p60-235.pdf)
UK Public backs action on poverty
from the Press Association
Political parties have been urged to do more to tackle poverty after new research showed public support for action.
A survey of 2,000 adults for a new coalition of more than 50 charities and faith groups showed that more than a third wanted government intervention to help the poorest.
Just over half said they would be more inclined to vote for a party which took serious measures to eradicate poverty.
The new coalition, Get Fair, is made up of groups including Help the Aged, Oxfam, Shelter and Save the Children.
Chairman Fran Beckett said: "These results send a clear warning that voters want and expect our political parties to set out exactly how they will address poverty so that we have a real social safety net.
"Making Britain a fairer place should be one of the key political issues that parties discuss during their conferences over the next few weeks."
Vice-chairman Vanessa Stanislas, chief executive of the Disability Alliance, said: "The UK is becoming richer but not fairer, with one in five people now living in poverty in the world's fifth richest country.
"The majority of British people want a fairer society and this poll suggests that they will reward the political party which has the confidence to tackle poverty."
Shelter chief executive Adam Sampson said: "Every day Shelter sees more and more ordinary people who are falling into poverty after becoming victims of Britain's economic downturn.
Link to full article. May expire in future.
Political parties have been urged to do more to tackle poverty after new research showed public support for action.
A survey of 2,000 adults for a new coalition of more than 50 charities and faith groups showed that more than a third wanted government intervention to help the poorest.
Just over half said they would be more inclined to vote for a party which took serious measures to eradicate poverty.
The new coalition, Get Fair, is made up of groups including Help the Aged, Oxfam, Shelter and Save the Children.
Chairman Fran Beckett said: "These results send a clear warning that voters want and expect our political parties to set out exactly how they will address poverty so that we have a real social safety net.
"Making Britain a fairer place should be one of the key political issues that parties discuss during their conferences over the next few weeks."
Vice-chairman Vanessa Stanislas, chief executive of the Disability Alliance, said: "The UK is becoming richer but not fairer, with one in five people now living in poverty in the world's fifth richest country.
"The majority of British people want a fairer society and this poll suggests that they will reward the political party which has the confidence to tackle poverty."
Shelter chief executive Adam Sampson said: "Every day Shelter sees more and more ordinary people who are falling into poverty after becoming victims of Britain's economic downturn.
Link to full article. May expire in future.
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
Arms Race Damages UN Poverty Struggle, Says German Minister
from Deutsche Welle
Germany's development minister slammed the US plan to build a missile defense shield in eastern Europe as well as billions being diverted from fighting poverty to new weaponry, triggered by the Caucasus crisis.
"We must avoid falling back into a situation where we have a new arms race," said German Minister for Development Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul at an informal conference in Berlin on the UN's Millennium Development Goals (MDG), which aims to boost developmental aid and slash poverty by the year 2015.
Wieczorek-Zeul was referring to billions of dollars being spent on new weaponry triggered by the Georgia-Russia crisis last month that was diverting funds much needed funds to fight hunger and disease.
"The arms race is a distraction," the Social Democrat minister added. "The world needs to protect itself against hunger, poverty and illness. We have to mobilise our finances for that."
Wieczorek-Zeul attacked a U.S. plan to build a missile defense shield in eastern Europe which Washington claims is intended to protect the West against attacks by “rogue states” such as Iran, which is presumably building up a nuclear arsenal.
"The world certainly does not need new shields or whatever in Europe," she said. "Everything in the world depends on dialogue and solving problems through dialogue. Cooperation is what people in poverty need."
Reducing world poverty was one of eight targets agreed to by U.N. member states in the year 2000. Although donor countries have increased their annual developmental aid since 2000, that level has declined in recent years, by nearly five percent in 2006 and by 8.4 percent in 2007, according to a U.N. report published last week.
Link to full article. May expire in future.
Germany's development minister slammed the US plan to build a missile defense shield in eastern Europe as well as billions being diverted from fighting poverty to new weaponry, triggered by the Caucasus crisis.
"We must avoid falling back into a situation where we have a new arms race," said German Minister for Development Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul at an informal conference in Berlin on the UN's Millennium Development Goals (MDG), which aims to boost developmental aid and slash poverty by the year 2015.
Wieczorek-Zeul was referring to billions of dollars being spent on new weaponry triggered by the Georgia-Russia crisis last month that was diverting funds much needed funds to fight hunger and disease.
"The arms race is a distraction," the Social Democrat minister added. "The world needs to protect itself against hunger, poverty and illness. We have to mobilise our finances for that."
Wieczorek-Zeul attacked a U.S. plan to build a missile defense shield in eastern Europe which Washington claims is intended to protect the West against attacks by “rogue states” such as Iran, which is presumably building up a nuclear arsenal.
"The world certainly does not need new shields or whatever in Europe," she said. "Everything in the world depends on dialogue and solving problems through dialogue. Cooperation is what people in poverty need."
Reducing world poverty was one of eight targets agreed to by U.N. member states in the year 2000. Although donor countries have increased their annual developmental aid since 2000, that level has declined in recent years, by nearly five percent in 2006 and by 8.4 percent in 2007, according to a U.N. report published last week.
Link to full article. May expire in future.
Migrant bodies washed up in Yemen
from the BBC
Twenty-nine bodies have been found washed up on the beaches of Yemen, Medecins Sans Frontieres says.
The medical charity says the people died attempting to cross the sea from Somalia in an effort to escape the country's extreme poverty and warfare.
Survivors said the smugglers who transported them stopped the boats off the Yemeni coast and forced them to swim to the shore at gunpoint.
On Tuesday, the UN warned that the number of Somalis fleeing was rising.
The UN refugee agency (UNHCR) said that 59 boats brought more than 1,700 people to Yemen last month - almost triple the number for the same period last year.
So far this year, the agency says more than 24,000 people have made the perilous journey across the Gulf of Aden.
'Children overboard'
According to a 23-year-old Somali refugee from the capital, Mogadishu, who survived the journey, 120 people were on the boat that left Somalia from the port of Bossasso.
"We did not receive food, nor water; some of us were placed in the hull; several people died because of asphyxia; some others were thrown overboard, among them two children," the survivor told MSF.
"In order to intimidate us, they beat us heavily with their belts. One of the smugglers threw petrol on us and showed off his lighter."
Link to full article. May expire in future.
Twenty-nine bodies have been found washed up on the beaches of Yemen, Medecins Sans Frontieres says.
The medical charity says the people died attempting to cross the sea from Somalia in an effort to escape the country's extreme poverty and warfare.
Survivors said the smugglers who transported them stopped the boats off the Yemeni coast and forced them to swim to the shore at gunpoint.
On Tuesday, the UN warned that the number of Somalis fleeing was rising.
The UN refugee agency (UNHCR) said that 59 boats brought more than 1,700 people to Yemen last month - almost triple the number for the same period last year.
So far this year, the agency says more than 24,000 people have made the perilous journey across the Gulf of Aden.
'Children overboard'
According to a 23-year-old Somali refugee from the capital, Mogadishu, who survived the journey, 120 people were on the boat that left Somalia from the port of Bossasso.
"We did not receive food, nor water; some of us were placed in the hull; several people died because of asphyxia; some others were thrown overboard, among them two children," the survivor told MSF.
"In order to intimidate us, they beat us heavily with their belts. One of the smugglers threw petrol on us and showed off his lighter."
Link to full article. May expire in future.
Bishop to fast in poverty campaign
from the Press Association
The Bishop of London is to undergo a day's fasting as part of an attempt to raise awareness about ambitious targets to halve world poverty by 2015, it has been announced.
The Rt Rev Richard Chartres will forego food on September 24, the day before a key meeting at the United Nations in New York to discuss the lack of progress in implementing the Millennium Development Goals.
The eight goals, including eradicating extreme poverty and hunger by 2015, were set by world leaders in 2000. The day of fasting will be the culmination of a 10-day period of prayer and reflection launched this Sunday by Dr Chartres alongside Micah Challenge, a coalition of Christian groups to fight global poverty.
The Bishop of London is to undergo a day's fasting as part of an attempt to raise awareness about ambitious targets to halve world poverty by 2015, it has been announced.
The Rt Rev Richard Chartres will forego food on September 24, the day before a key meeting at the United Nations in New York to discuss the lack of progress in implementing the Millennium Development Goals.
The eight goals, including eradicating extreme poverty and hunger by 2015, were set by world leaders in 2000. The day of fasting will be the culmination of a 10-day period of prayer and reflection launched this Sunday by Dr Chartres alongside Micah Challenge, a coalition of Christian groups to fight global poverty.
New Panhandling Bill in Atlanta Wants People to Give Money to Charities Not Individuals
from My Fox Atlanta and writer Justin Gray
City of Atlanta officials plan to announce a new plan to help fight panhandling within the city. In 2005, the city made it illegal for people to ask for food or money in the downtown Atlanta district. Now, officials want to take it a step further.
It's called 'Give Change That Makes Sense'. But some say the plan doesn't make any sense at all.
"When a man gets hungry he's going to do what you have to do to eat," said J.J. Harvest.
J.J. Harvest has been homeless for six years. He knows about begging for money. And he knows about aggressive panhandlers.
"The aggressiveness is a little bit too much some time, but I don't know how hungry a man is," said Harvest.
City councilman Kwanza Hall says panhandling is out of control in Atlanta.
"Even homeless people complain about the panhandlers," said Hall. "Panhandlers do aggressive things and make people be frightened not to give. It's almost like strong armed robbery."
Hall said he's looking forward to Atlanta's new strategy to combat the problem. Hotels and businesses will be handing out flyers encouraging people not to give to individuals. Instead they should give to agencies that help people get back on their feet.
Ex-Cabinet exec warns vs ‘tipping point’ of poverty
from the Inquirer
By Thea Alberto
MANILA, Philippines -- Despite dole-outs and subsidies, the government has still failed to help the poor, as shown by a poverty-stricken mother who killed her own children and committed suicide, a former government official said.
"It is very alarming, and this is not the first we've heard of mothers and fathers harming their own children out of desperation. It tells [us] that we are approaching a situation of poverty where people are falling off the brick," said Corazon "Dinky" Soliman, former social welfare secretary, after the forum on Social Welfare and Poverty Reduction attended by representatives of the World Bank, Asian Development Bank, non-government organizations, the academe, among others.
On Tuesday, Janeth Ponce, 32, forced three of her children to drink a bottle of liquid toilet bowl cleaner before drinking the same substance herself in Magdalena town in Laguna province. Television reports said Ponce's husband worked as a construction worker in Manila and has not been able to send them money for over a month.
"[They have] reached a tipping point and instead of violence against a perpetrator, it is horizontal violence that’s happening. It’s violence against even your loved ones and it’s really an act of desperation," said Soliman.
"Why is it alarming? It is because that means we are not able to reach people like them and provide them hope," she added.
Soliman said it was high-time the government provided long-term solutions, including "good governance."
Link to full article. May expire in future.
By Thea Alberto
MANILA, Philippines -- Despite dole-outs and subsidies, the government has still failed to help the poor, as shown by a poverty-stricken mother who killed her own children and committed suicide, a former government official said.
"It is very alarming, and this is not the first we've heard of mothers and fathers harming their own children out of desperation. It tells [us] that we are approaching a situation of poverty where people are falling off the brick," said Corazon "Dinky" Soliman, former social welfare secretary, after the forum on Social Welfare and Poverty Reduction attended by representatives of the World Bank, Asian Development Bank, non-government organizations, the academe, among others.
On Tuesday, Janeth Ponce, 32, forced three of her children to drink a bottle of liquid toilet bowl cleaner before drinking the same substance herself in Magdalena town in Laguna province. Television reports said Ponce's husband worked as a construction worker in Manila and has not been able to send them money for over a month.
"[They have] reached a tipping point and instead of violence against a perpetrator, it is horizontal violence that’s happening. It’s violence against even your loved ones and it’s really an act of desperation," said Soliman.
"Why is it alarming? It is because that means we are not able to reach people like them and provide them hope," she added.
Soliman said it was high-time the government provided long-term solutions, including "good governance."
Link to full article. May expire in future.
Nonprofits create plan to help families save in California
from the Bakersfield Californian
A $300,000 program to encourage low-income Kern residents to save money with matching funds is launching Wednesday morning at a United Way of Kern County press conference.
Funding comes from a federal grant of nearly $153,000 and contributions from United Way and three local donors.
The Pusateri Family Trust donated $100,000. Wells Fargo Bank kicked in $30,000. Union Bank of California gave $20,000.
Participants who meet savings goals of $1,000 to $2,000 will receive $2 of matching funds for every dollar saved.
The savings accounts can be used to help buy a first home, start or capitalize a small business or get higher education or job training.
Federal funds are provided through the Department of Health and Human Services. The accounts, known as “Individual Development Accounts,” are meant to help families out of poverty through an “assets-based” approach, a department information sheet says.
The so-called “Assets for Independence” program had about $24 million worth of grants to hand out nationwide last year.
Link to full article. May expire in future.
A $300,000 program to encourage low-income Kern residents to save money with matching funds is launching Wednesday morning at a United Way of Kern County press conference.
Funding comes from a federal grant of nearly $153,000 and contributions from United Way and three local donors.
The Pusateri Family Trust donated $100,000. Wells Fargo Bank kicked in $30,000. Union Bank of California gave $20,000.
Participants who meet savings goals of $1,000 to $2,000 will receive $2 of matching funds for every dollar saved.
The savings accounts can be used to help buy a first home, start or capitalize a small business or get higher education or job training.
Federal funds are provided through the Department of Health and Human Services. The accounts, known as “Individual Development Accounts,” are meant to help families out of poverty through an “assets-based” approach, a department information sheet says.
The so-called “Assets for Independence” program had about $24 million worth of grants to hand out nationwide last year.
Link to full article. May expire in future.