Agricultural season fails in Zimbabwe

I can't seem to find this story anywhere else, but the website Gant Daily has the following about Zimbabwe:

Amnesty International is alarmed over the risk of extreme hunger in Zimbabwe after a failed agricultural season. The economic difficulty of Zimbabweans is worsened by the ongoing political crisis in the country.

AI pointed out most of the victims of political violence after the March elections were subsistence farmers. Some became crippled because of secret police beatings that left them too weak to work in the fields. The bulk of the violent incidents were made by state security forces, AI said.

Simeon Mawanza, Zimbabwe researcher of AI, told BBC, "Every day that passes without a political solution, the living conditions for ordinary Zimbabweans become more and more desperate... If we think the food situation in Zimbabwe is bad now, just wait until the end of this year, when half of the popularity is likely to need aid."

Another threat to the country is a cholera outbreak after its first victim from Harare died Thursday, while 20 other natives were hospitalized. Outside the capital city, 27 people have died from cholera, a highly infectious intestinal ailment spread by bad food and water.

Taxing the earnings of the developmentally disabled

The province of Ontario has been working on ways to alleviate poverty despite tough economic times. But government admits it may slow down the work.

In looking into ways that government policies can be changed to eliminate poverty. A group has decried a government policy to tax the earnings of the developmentally disabled who find work. Also, half of the unemployed benefits are taken back.

As the Canadian Press reports, Liberal party leaders say these taxes condemn the developmentally disabled to a life of poverty.

The government takes back half the earnings of disabled people who find a job while collecting up to $999 a month under Ontario's disability support program, said NDP critic Michael Prue. The disabled have a hard enough time finding work that pays a decent wage without being punished for trying to better their lives, he said.

"We find this heinous," Prue said.

"What in effect it does, is it said that if you are born with a developmental disability, you for all times are destined to poverty - there's no way out."

Those who receive the benefit actually receive an additional $100 a month if they find work, said Children and Youth Services Minister Deb Matthews.

But the province deducts 50 cents from the monthly benefit for every dollar the recipient earns, she said.

"It's not a pension, like if you have a disability, you'll get it," Matthews said.

"It's a needs-based program, so there are asset tests and so on."

[..]

Of the nearly 250,000 people receiving assistance under the Ontario Disability Support Program, about 28,000, or 11 per cent, had employment earnings, up from eight per cent, or 16,273, in 2003, said Thomas Chanzy. About 41,500 recipients have a developmental disability.

A commentary on what comes after the year 2015

A lot of focus is put on the year 2015, because that is the year that the Millennium Development Goals were supposed to be met. But, were at the half way point from the millennium and most of the goals are not half way to achievement.

So it's clear that the work is going to continue well beyond the year 2015. What is the world going to do at that point?

We came across a good commentary that addresses this issue in The Guatemala News. The commentary was written by Jean-Michel Severino who works as CEO of the French Development Agency.

It is now halfway to the target date of 2015 for the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) - the ambitious blueprint, backed by the entire development community, for development in the world's poorest countries. In the wake of the global financial crisis, which is about to hit the developing world, it is time to ask the right questions about the international community's commitment to achieving these goals.

Sadly, we know that most countries will not meet the objectives by 2015. And the global food and financial crises threaten to stymie recent progress. If the global poverty reduction target is met, it will be due to high growth in emerging countries such as China or India rather than to a decline in absolute poverty in the neediest countries.

This is worrisome, because it is a symptom of two more significant ills. First, the international community seems to be suffering from schizophrenia: whereas all countries solemnly affirmed their commitment to the MDGs, few have provided the means to achieve them. The reality is that aid increased only slightly over the 2000-2006 period: because of massive debt write-offs, the substantial increase in official development assistance did not translate into new and available funds on the ground.

The MDGs were meant to help international solidarity move from a logic of inputs (how much aid do we give?) to one of outputs (what concrete impact are we aiming for?). But with deliverable aid levels remaining practically constant, and given strong population growth, notably in Africa, the international community has not given itself sufficient means to reach its ambitious targets.

Second, this poor performance shows how short-sighted the international community can be. Global responsibility to assist developing nations goes far beyond the MDGs - in both time and scale. The pace of sustainable development is necessarily slow. In areas such as health or education, the acceleration needed to meet the targets in many countries would be faster than anything we have witnessed in history. While more action is needed to accelerate progress, a failure to achieve the MDGs by 2015 would not mean that they are worthless, or that aid is inefficient. Achieving these goals is an important step on the slow path to lasting development.

Thus, by focusing on the (arbitrary) date of 2015, we fail to perceive the fundamental change that the MDGs represent. By aiming for targets that are far out of reach of the poorest countries' public finances, the international community has agreed to substitute itself for those states in providing essential social services through long-term financial transfers.

The current global inequalities in living standards are close to those that existed within our own societies over a century ago. Globalization has generated a new global market, but also global risks that beg for collective management. No single economic space has ever been created without the parallel establishment of solidarity mechanisms to handle these risks and care for those left behind.

Paying to get married when you are already broke

Bangladesh has a practice of a marriage dowry. In order to have their daughter get married, a family will pay money to the family with the prospective husband. The dowry is illegal in Bangladesh, but is still widely practiced.

A new study was conducted to determine the causing factors of poverty in Bangladesh. A release on the study was found on the website Science Daily.

The research found that those households with lower levels of education, that owned less land, had fewer assets and had many young children and elderly relatives, faced the most difficulty in escaping poverty.

The custom of paying a dowry to the future husband’s family when a daughter is married is illegal in Bangladesh, but is still practised by most families living in rural areas. Payment is normally upwards from 20,000 Taka (around £190 or $313 U.S.) and since typical earnings are only 100 Taka (94 pence) per day, this can be a major contributor to poverty for many families with daughters.

Dr Davis found that medical expenses involved in the care of elderly relatives were also a common issue for families living in poverty.

“Some families face a ‘double whammy’, having to pay wedding expenses and dowry for their daughters at the same time in life when elderly relatives are needing more expensive medical care,” said Dr Davis, who spent several months in the country training and working with researchers from DATA Bangladesh to conduct interviews with families for the study.

“Measures such as improving education, employment and health services could play a really significant role in alleviating poverty in these families.

“The government in Bangladesh has already taken positive steps in increasing the enrollment of girls in schools, which should decrease the practice of giving and demanding dowry.”

World Vision evacuates from Eastern Congo

With rebels approaching the city of Goma, World Vision staff fled the city to the Rwandan border. The staff there say the fighting is making a desperate humanitarian situation much worse. They are demanding that fighting stop and to be given safe access to the people in need.

As noted in the World Vision press release, while the workers in Goma made it, another city staff is being sheltered by the UN.

World Vision's Emergency Communications Advisor Michael Arunga reports from the calm but crowded Rwandan border that a group of eight international World Vision staff have arrived there safely after a high-speed drive from Goma tonight. Another dozen or so World Vision Congolese staff have returned to their families in Goma.

"We heard sounds of gunfire and witnessed scenes of panic near World Vision's Goma office, not long after the United Nation's OCHA issued an advisory this morning on the growing insecurity in Goma," Arunga added.

In addition, some 18 World Vision staff in Rutshuru a town about 70 km (44 miles) north of Goma that was overrun by rebels yesterday are currently being sheltered in a local compound of the UN peacekeeping force MONUC, after plans to evacuate them from the town failed yesterday.

Heavy fighting is being reported within about 6 miles of Goma, with small arms fire along one of two main roads leading out of town. Reports say that rebel forces are advancing on Goma and threatening to overwhelm government troops and a 17,000-strong UN force deployed to halt a return to all-out war.

"We were forced to evacuate given the mounting dangers posed to our staff on the ground," explained Dr. Wilfred Mlay, World Vision's Africa vice president, "But we remain very concerned about the humanitarian crisis faced by people in Goma and Rutshuru. We call on the international community to do all it can to ensure their safety, along with an immediate ceasefire that will allow full access to civilians by humanitarian agencies, including World Vision."

How the global credit crisis is effecting Cambodia

The global credit crisis seems to effect the fortunes of developing nations in two ways. First, aid to those countries decrease. For countries like Cambodia, they depend on aid to meet their government budgets. Later, export sales will slow down. As the rich countries who were hit hard by the credit crisis will have less money to buy goods from the developed world.

Cambodia has had a respectable growth rate in recent years. However, the country has a steep inflation rate of 25%.

As found in the Phnom Penh Post, government officials explained why the credit crisis will keep them from sustaining their growth this year.

GLOBAL financial turmoil and rising domestic inflation likely will keep Cambodia from reaching its poverty-reduction target this year, Commerce Minister Cham Prasidh has said, adding that a worsening economy has pushed more Cambodians below the poverty line.

"Every year we have been able to lower poverty by one percent, but the global financial crisis could affect this," Cham Prasidh said.

While Cambodia continues to post impressive economic growth estimated at around 6.5 percent, roughly a third of the population are still living on less than US$1 a day.

Cham Prasidh, speaking Tuesday at a gathering of industry and trade officials, said that one percent of Cambodians - around 140,000 people - have fallen below the poverty line this year.

However, the Asian Development Bank, in an update of its 2008 economic outlook assessment released in September, presented a dramatically higher figure, saying, "preliminary evidence suggests that as many as two million people may have slipped below the poverty line, in addition to 4.5 million already in poverty".

Some officials fear the global market turmoil could impact the ability of donors to continue doling out massive aid packages to poor nations like Cambodia, which depends on international funds for a significant percentage of its national budget.

Clinton Global Initiative heads to Hong Kong

There's a meeting here, a meeting there. We tell you about quite a few meetings on the News Blog.

But most of these meetings are a lot of talk and no action. Sometimes there is a pledge for action, but no one is held to their pledge. We are seeing that all too clearly now.

Former US President Bill Clinton had that same frustration while he served as President. That's why with his Clinton Global Initiative the meetings go a step further.


Clinton insists that no one attend the meetings unless they pledge to aid the poor. If that promise isn't kept, they cant come back for the next meeting.

After years of holding Global Initiative talks in New York, they now expand to Asia. Reuters Michelle Nichols details a press conference that the former President held to announce the Hong Kong meeting.

Bill Clinton says the global financial crisis likely will hurt fundraising at his first philanthropic summit in Asia, but the former U.S. president still hopes to encourage a culture of giving in the region.

His Clinton Global Initiative is a summit that gathers heads of state, celebrities, business leaders and humanitarians in a bid to tackle issues of poverty, energy and climate change, healthcare and education.

Four annual meetings have been held so far in New York where nearly 1,200 pledges have been made to take action worth $46 billion aimed at improving more than 200 million lives in 150 countries.

While continuing to hold annual meetings in New York, the initiative is also branching out to Asia and will hold a summit in Hong Kong on December 2-3 to address the region's problems in education, energy and climate change and public health.

"Yes there will be some problems with the economy probably, but I hope that the exercise will serve to swell the ranks of nongovernmental action throughout Asia," Clinton told a news teleconference.

"It may cut down on how much money we can raise but I'm not so concerned about that right now," he said. "The main thing I am trying to do is increase this feeling of civil society."

An anti-poverty document unveiled in South Africa

South Africa is still trying to press on with poverty elimination. A series of meetings are going on now to come up with the governments strategy.

The South African government unveiled a new strategy document that provides plans to work on.

The South African newspaper theIndependent On-Line did a good job of detailing what the paper says.

Central to this is ending intergenerational poverty through improving the economic situation of households.

Critical elements of this includes maintaining overall economic growth, including through substantial investment in economic infrastructure and appropriate fiscal and monetary policies.

Government support will be targeted at measures to create economic opportunities on a mass scale, including through land reform and agrarian development, support for growth in sustainable, labour-intensive formal activities, and a substantial expansion in public employment schemes.

Thirdly, measures will be instituted to enhance the incomes in cash and kind earned from informal activities, the bulk of which takes place in agriculture, retail and services.

Interventions include expanding opportunities for employment and self-employment, providing quality education and skills and health care, promoting access to assets, including social capital, and promoting social cohesion.

Leaders tried their best to get everyone in on the act today. With sppeches aimed to remind everyone that a group effort is needed to reduce poverty. Deputy President Baleka Mbete was quoted by the South African paper The Times.

"What we are saying is that while government accepts the responsibility to address poverty in our country, it cannot on its own be able to achieve the eradication of poverty without the help of other players in society," said Mbete.

She was speaking at government’s draft anti-poverty strategy meeting held at the Union Buildings in Pretoria.

The discussion document aims to eradicate poverty by creating economic opportunities and enabling communities and individuals to access these.

She said one of things government realised was the need to address problems facing particular groups in society like women and the youth.

Mbete called on all South Africans including civil society and business to get involved in empowering the poor and getting them involved in the economy.

Analysis of state income taxes on families in poverty

For many years, the federal government here in the states has not charged income tax to families in poverty. But about half of the states still do charge income tax to single parent families.

One of our favorite think tanks the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has a dizzying array of stats and figures, so I will let them hand them to you in our snippet.

But let's highlight the point of all this. Not charging income taxes to those in poverty will help them get out of it. Also, it will make finding work more appealing. If they don't have income taxes, it will help offset the other costs of work, such as daycare or gas.

Some states levy income tax on working families in severe poverty. Nine states — Alabama, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Montana, Ohio and West Virginia — tax the income of two-parent families of four earning less than three-quarters of the poverty line ($15,902). And six states — Alabama, Hawaii, Louisiana, Michigan, Montana, and West Virginia —tax the income of one-parent families of three earning less than three-quarters of the poverty line ($12,398).

In some states, families living in poverty face income tax bills of several hundred dollars. A two-parent family of four in Alabama with income at the poverty line owes $423 in income tax, while such a family owes $409 in Hawaii, $325 in Oregon, and $258 in West Virginia. Such amounts can make a big difference to a family struggling to escape poverty. Other states levying tax of more than $200 on families with poverty-level incomes include Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, and Montana. At the other end of the spectrum, a growing number of states offer significant refunds to low-income working families, primarily through Earned Income Tax Credits.

Between 2006 and 2007, states’ tax treatment of poor families improved in a number of states, but worsened in others. Twelve states implemented measures to shield more low-income families from the income tax or to reduce the taxes they owe. Alabama, Arkansas, New Jersey, and West Virginia — which in 2006 levied some of the highest taxes on low-income families — made major improvements in 2007.

Unfortunately, a number of other states increased income taxes on poor families, though by smaller amounts. The reason for these tax increases is that provisions designed to protect low-income families from taxation — including standard deductions, personal exemptions, and low-income credits — were not increased to keep up with inflation.

Future years are set to bring continued improvement. A number of states have enacted reforms that will reduce taxes on low-income families in the near future. Between 2008 and 2010, the District of Columbia, Indiana, Louisiana, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, North Carolina, Oklahoma and West Virginia each will improve their income tax treatment of the poor. If these changes were in effect in 2007, the number of states taxing poor families of four would have been 15 rather than 18, and the number taxing poor families of three would have been 11 rather than 15.

States seeking to reduce or eliminate income taxes on low-income families can choose from an array of mechanisms to do so. These mechanisms include state Earned Income Tax Credits (EITCs) and other low-income tax credits, no-tax floors, and personal exemptions and standard deductions that are adequate to shield poverty-level income from taxation. Some states go beyond exempting poor families from income tax by making their EITCs or other low-income credits refundable. These policies provide a substantial income supplement to families struggling to escape poverty, and they are relatively inexpensive to states, since these families have little income to tax.

The link to the full study can be found here.

Food price inflation causing 'devastation' across Asia

A new study confirms the effect of increasing food prices in Asia. In fact, the authors of this report say it is "devastating" the continent.

Experts from universities in Britain and India, as well as officials from the United Nations authored the report.

They say that rising prices of rice and wheat are slowing the economy of Asia. The rising prices are also increasing the income inequality in the continent. This could cause social unrest and will increase the numbers who are starving by 3 billion people.

India ENews provides the following quotes and stats from the study:

"Food price inflation is the most regressive of all taxes and is causing devastation across the whole continent of Asia," said Katsushi Imai of the University of Manchester's Brooks World Poverty Institute.

"Rising food prices have played an important role in the acceleration of inflation across Asia and the Pacific region during 2007, and especially during the early months of 2008.

"This has important effects on people's lives in terms of basic subsistence and it's the poorest, the landless and women, who suffer the most.'

He said that the most extreme effect is on malnutrition: according to new World Bank figures, the malnourished will increase by 44 million to 967 million people by the end of 2008 - and that is largely down to food price inflation.

The team says rising global per capita incomes, increasing demand for meat and dairy products and developing food markets have resulted in global demand outpacing domestic production capacity.

The team recommended a review of World Trade Organization rules on trade barriers; a re-examination of subsidies and tariff protection of biofuel production in light of their effects on food security; and regional procurement of food aid by government agencies to reduce transportation costs and boost local agricultural markets.

The annual Jeffrey Sachs student lecture aimed at rich nations

Every year Jeffrey Sachs presents an annual lecture for the student body of Columbia University. Sachs is a professor at Columbia and directs the University's Earth Institute and it's Millennium Villages project. The villages are a sort of test lab for how to pull people out of poverty.

Jeffrey Sachs used this years student lecture to lament the fact that the rich nations are not hearing the cries of the poor, and the millions of people who stand up for them. He especially singled out the Bush administration.

The Columbia Spectator's Maureen Stimola reports that Sachs says that people in the Villages cannot escape poverty without aid.

Sachs stressed the need for more outside intervention. A major difficulty, he said, is the “poverty trap,” a phenomenon brought on by extended periods of extremely low productivity. Villagers often cannot escape the “trap” without aid.

But with five years of “investment, investment, investment, and community involvement with a holistic approach,” a base of economic productivity can form, he said. The following five years will be devoted to institutionalizing the project, and involving villages in business on a larger commercial scale.

Sach’s concerns come at a time when the project is entering what he calls a “critical, big-money phase.”

“Highly cost-effective solutions are abound,” Sachs said, “but the poorest of the poor can’t afford them, and the richest of the rich are often blind to them.”

Even so, the effects of the initial investments are already evident.

In the 12 existing Millennium Villages, locals have seen a rapid increase in agricultural productivity. Relatively low-cost bed nets have effectively stalled the spread of malaria. And with the advent of these successes, Sachs said they are arriving at the second phase of the project.

Sachs predicted that with more extensive “official aid” from economically successful nations, such as current sponsors Japan, Korea, and Norway, the project will be able to reach a level of self-sustainability.

A new method to measure poverty

Methods to measure poverty usually just take into account what people spend or earn. But Nicky Pouw has developed a different method to measure poverty.

Pouw a researcher based in the Netherlands, uses what people own instead of what their earn to measure poverty. They hope this measurement can help predict food shortages accurately.

Here is how a story in Phys Org explains the new methodology:

Development planners and policymakers in developing countries need accurate information about the poverty of the population. The risk of food shortages or other poverty-related problems is an ever present threat. This is certainly the case in rural Uganda where there is a lot of poverty among smallholder farmers. However, the usual method of assessing poverty in terms of expenditure often fails to work here, as the farmers frequently produce for their own consumption.

Therefore in order to make statements about the economic status of the population in these regions, Pouw developed a method for measuring possessions instead of expenditure. She itemised the different categories of possessions in the rural areas of Kabarole, Mpigi and Kapchorwa. In this system each category has its own hierarchy. For example, in the case of sustainable household goods, the priority of most households is the acquisition of basic goods such as chairs, a table, a bed, blankets and a mattress. The more luxury goods such as a fridge, TV or car are only acquired once the basic needs have been met. Pouw applied a similar highlighting to the other categories, namely clothing, housing quality, food consumption, land ownership, agricultural equipment and livestock.

Some differences were observed in terms of what people consider to be valuable. For example, female farmers were found to attach more value to certain agricultural equipment than male farmers and some Ugandan cultures consider it inappropriate for a woman to own a bike. In addition, the most important basic requirements were equally spread over the three regions, with firstly the welfare characteristic sustainable possessions, followed by agricultural equipment and thirdly clothing.

The research did a lot to clarify the type of poverty that prevailed in the regions concerned. Whereas in Kapchorwa district the farmers mainly suffered from a shortage in housing, land and sustainable possessions, people in Kabarole had relatively little clothing and in Mpigi there was a relative deprivation in food consumption. This type of information can be of immediate importance for development planners and policymakers at the district level. It reveals the most pressing problems in a given area at a certain moment in time. For example, the information about food consumption can be used as an early warning system for food uncertainty. As soon as households only have maize and beans to eat, this can be a sign of imminent food shortages.

Kenya fails to resettle citizens after election violence

A report that comes a human rights group says that Kenya is doing a poor job in resettling people who were displaced after violence.

Riots broke out earlier this year after Kenya' election. Over 283,000 people had to flee their homes due to the violence. 80 percent of those people still live in the refugee camps.

However, the government of Kenya says that only 5,000 people remain in camps, and they are being taken care of.

According to the Associated Press' Tom Odula, the background over the current state of Kenya's displaced is a storied one. Our snippet comes from the Oregon Live.

In May, the government began its resettlement program following a power-sharing deal President Mwai Kibaki signed with his then rival, Raila Odinga, to end the violence that claimed more than 1,000 lives. Odinga became prime minister under the deal.

Deep divisions over poverty, land, ethnicity and other issues became exposed during the postelection violence and saw businesses lose up to $1 billion. The tourism sector, a key foreign exchange earner for Kenya, saw reservations plummet within days.

The Kenya Human Rights Commission report said there are allegations of corruption in a compensation program for the displaced people and that the government is trying to force people out of the camps by blocking aid agencies from reaching them.

The human rights group prepared the report after five months of research and monitoring the government program. Other organizations have also said the government has downplayed the number of people in the camps and closed many camps irrespective of whether people are ready to return to their homes.

The government has constantly denied this.

Poverty summit for Illinois

A summit has been called in Illinois by Gov. Rod Blagojevich. The first "Illinois Poverty Summit" will talk about ways to help the people of the state out of poverty.

Earlier this year, Governor Blagojevich signed a law that created a state poverty commission. The commission is charged with creating a plan that will reduce poverty in the state by 50 percent.

In told in this article, found in the Lincoln Daily News the summit hopes to kick the commissions work into high gear.

As part of the ongoing effort to help Illinoisans through the tough economic times, Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich announced Monday that his administration will convene the first Illinois Poverty Summit, entitled "Opportunities for Change: Taking Action to End Extreme Poverty in Illinois," on Dec. 9 and 10. The summit will be hosted in partnership with Northwestern University's Institute for Policy Research in Evanston. People interested in attending the summit can register online at www.illinois.gov/povertysummit.

The summit, co-sponsored by the Illinois Department of Human Services and Heartland Alliance for Human Needs & Human Rights and hosted with Northwestern University, will bring together leaders and advocates to develop recommendations to bring about a substantive decrease in the numbers of Illinoisans living in extreme poverty.

"With the tough economic times, many families are now in crisis; those in extreme poverty live their daily lives in crisis," Blagojevich said. "The Illinois Poverty Summit will be a positive turning point with regard to the levels of extreme poverty in Illinois."

Marian Wright Edelman, founder and president of the Children's Defense Fund, who has been an advocate for disadvantaged Americans for over 30 years, will serve as keynote speaker in the summit’s opening plenary session. She is the author of the No. 1 New York Times best-seller "The Measure of Our Success: A Letter to My Children and Yours" and has released her new book, "The Sea is So Wide and My Boat is So Small: Charting a Course for the Next Generation." She is also the winner of many awards for her work, including a MacArthur Fellowship, the Albert Schweitzer Humanitarian Award, a Heinz Award and a Niebuhr Award. In 2000, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Robert F. Kennedy Lifetime Achievement Award for her writings.

Capping the minimum wage in Indonesia

The Indonesian government has made a move that could raise the numbers in poverty.

Australian radio reports that the minimum wage in Indonesia has been capped at a rate less than inflation.

The cap is at 6 percent while inflation in the country is expected to be 10 percent.

As the Australian Network notes, industry applauds the move while trade unions are not so sure.

There's concern poverty will rise in Indonesia after the Government decided to cap minimum wage increases to less than inflation.

Radio Australia's Karon Snowdon reports that wage increases for the lowest paid have been capped at six per cent instead of the usual compensation for inflation which is running at about ten per cent.

The national government has set the maximum in the face of the slowing global economy.

The move has been welcomed by industry groups and some but not all trade unions as a way to prevent job losses.

The International Labour Organisation's Director for Indonesia, Alan Boulton says continuing high inflation will cause hardship.

"It could cause quite a lot of people living on a dollar or two dollars a day to fall below poverty lines," he said."

Urging Tanzania to fight corruption

There almost seems to be a direct link between corruption and poverty. We say almost because, we don't know if it's been conclusively proven. But government corruption does slow down economic growth, as it puts money in the pockets of thieves instead of going to help people.

A good place to go to see who has a lot of corruption and who doesn't is the Global Corruption index from Transparency International. Their latest report came out earlier this month. No country is completely free of corruption.

A leader for the Millennium Challenge Corporation went on the record to challenge the corruption in Tanzania. IPP media recorded the statement.

The Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) Resident Country Director Karl Fickenscher has challenged the Tanzanian government to seriously fight corruption if ``is seriously committed to reducing poverty and promoting sustainable economic growth.``

Fickenscher says the commitment in fighting corruption in the country ``should be very clear to the leadership in power.``

``If Tanzania's political leadership is seriously committed to reducing poverty and promoting sustainable economic growth, then it must also show its clear commitment to fighting corruption,`` said the MCC Resident Country Director.

Fickenscher said the American people, through the MCC were proud to join with Tanzanians who believe that controlling corruption is an essential prerequisite to building long-term prosperity.

``We know all too well how corruption can undermine poverty reduction and cripple economic growth. It drains funds away from health and education, discourages investment and business development, and reduces confidence in public institutions,`` said the MCC country head, adding:

``Corruption harms development, diverts monies away from much-needed schools, roads, and health clinics. Businesses bear extra costs, undermining their profitability and limiting the number of jobs they can create.``

UN pulls sponsorship from a film about the MDG's

A film that compiles different stories about each of the Millennium Development Goals is making film festivals now. The film premiered in Rome last Thursday.

The film titled '8' gathers eight different film-makers to do a story on a different MDG.

The film is premiering with a little controversy. The United Nations originally planned to sponsor the film, but has now withdrawn it's support.

The withdrawal is due to concern with a story that the UN fears may be insulting to Islam.

News 24 reports on what the story depicts, and why it caused the UN worry.

But it is Indian director Mira Nair's take on gender equality that sparked a row with the United Nations Development Programme, which eventually withdrew its support from the project.

Nair's short film portrays a Muslim woman living in New York who decides to leave her husband and young son because she is in love with a married man.

"In April 2008, the UNDP came to us and demanded that we pull Mira Nair's film or they would withdraw their logo from the project. They said it risked insulting Islam," French producer Marc Oberon said after a press screening in Rome.

"We decided we could not take it out, so they pulled out."

UNDP spokesperson Adam Rogers told Reuters the agency had felt Nair's work "would get caught up in controversy".

"We were afraid it would bring the wrong kind of attention to the cause of promoting gender equality," Rogers said by phone from Geneva. He said the European Union had also backed out of the project. Nair, in Rome to promote 8, defended her choice, saying it was about a woman's right to express herself.

"It's a storm in a teacup frankly. It's not what the film deserved," she said.

"My film is inspired by a true story and was written by the person who lived that story. Freedom does not come neatly packaged. It comes with pain," she said.

Zimbabwe politics update

We're using this post as an update on Zimbabwe politics. We try to stay away from government leadership struggles, but many Zimbabweans believe that an agreement would bring the country out of it's economic collapse.

Those hopes are being threatened now with the delays and pettiness of the two leaders who are trying to share power.

80% of Zimbabwean people are in poverty, and the country has the world's highest inflation rate at 231%. The people hope that once an agreement is finalized, the new government can begin to tackle the problems.

Activists demonstrated Monday at a meeting about the power sharing talks. Police fired tear gas into the crowd and arrested 100 people, about half the group. As told to Mail and Guardian, activists sum up why this should be finished quickly.

"Conclude the talks. We are dying of hunger," the activists from the Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition said in a statement.

Mugabe's lead negotiator, Patrick Chinamasa, told state media that he was "cautiously optimistic" of reaching a deal, saying the summit "will end the saga over the allocation of ministries".

The security organ of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) organised the summit in Harare after Tsvangirai boycotted talks one week ago in Swaziland to protest delays in receiving his travel papers from Mugabe's government.

Just six weeks ago, regional leaders had come to Harare to celebrate the signing of the power-sharing deal, which calls for 84-year-old Mugabe to remain as president while Tsvangirai becomes prime minister.

But Mugabe and Tsvangirai have failed to agree on which party should control the most important ministries, particularly home affairs, which oversees the police force.

South African President Kgalema Motlanthe, Mozambican President Armando Emilio Guebuza, Swaziland Prime Minister Barnabas Dlamini and Angolan Foreign Minister Assuncao dos Anjos hope to pressure the two sides into an agreement on Monday to salvage the deal.

Video: Jolie visits Afghan Refugees

Analysis of the EU preparations for the next Doha meeting

The next big international meeting on development and trade is coming up in December in Doha, Qatar.

The meetings sponsored by the United Nations hope to develop finance for the world's poor. But the recession felt thought the world may carry the agenda instead.

A great article today in IPS talks about the preparations that EU member states have put into the upcoming meetings. Writer David Cronin gathers the opinions of aid groups and NGO's on what the European Union is doing.

For past meetings similar to this, the EU was widely praised for their leadership, but now they are being criticized.

Last week Jeffery Sachs gave what he would like to see on the meetings agenda.

Today, we wanted to highlight the subject of tax havens from the IPS article.

One of the most contentious issues on the Doha agenda concerns how taxation regimes in Europe are depriving poor countries of sorely needed resources.

A new report by the Centre for Research on Multinational Corporations (known by its Dutch acronym SOMO) in Amsterdam notes that revenue generated from tax accounted for just 13 percent of national income in countries classified as low-income in 2000. By contrast, the average level for industrialised countries belonging to the 30-member Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) was 36 percent.

Estimates for the amount of money that poor countries lose as a result of capital flight -- the expatriation of taxable revenue -- vary from 350 billion dollars to 500 billion dollars per year, several times more than what those countries receive in development aid. A large amount of this 'hot money', as it is sometimes called, ends up in tax havens either on EU territory or on territories answerable to its member states. Such havens include the City of London, the Cayman Islands, the Channel Islands, Cyprus and Luxembourg.

To remedy this situation, anti-poverty campaigners are demanding a crackdown against these tax havens, as well as the establishment of robust international accountancy standards that require major firms to report precisely how much they earn in every country where they operate, and what they do with the sums involved.

These calls are being resisted by treasury officials in Britain, who are eager not to subject the City of London to rigorous controls.

"Closing down tax havens is a European responsibility," said Molina. "Many of the tax havens are in European jurisdictions."

Poor teens four times more likely to attempt suicide

Teens from poor neighborhoods are twice as likely to have suicidal thoughts and are four times as likely to attempt suicide. These findings are from a new study that is published in the journal Physcological Medicine.

The published study on poor teens and suicide was conducted by a pair of universities in Canada and the US.

Sylvain-Jacques Desjardins of the University Université de Montréal reports that the study still can not determine why poor teens have a greater risk.

The study showed that late teens from disadvantaged neighbourhoods had higher levels of depressive symptoms along with lower levels of social support, but these factors could not fully explain why these Youths were at an increased risk to consider ending their own lives. "Rather, they were more vulnerable because difficult events, such as personally knowing someone who has committed suicide or experiencing a painful breakup with a romantic partner, apparently led to increased suicidal thoughts or attempts," says Véronique Dupéré, lead author and a post-doctoral fellow at Tufts University who completed the research at the Université de Montréal. "In other words, difficult events seemed to have a more dramatic impact on these teenagers."

For this study, 2779 teens were surveyed as part of Canada's National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth. Poverty levels in the neighbourhood were measured in early and mid adolescence based on Census data. Suicidal thoughts and attempts were assessed later, when participants were 18 or 19 years old. Participants were asked, "During the past 12 months, did you seriously consider attempting suicide?" Those who responded yes were then asked, "During the past 12 months how many times did you attempt suicide?"

Among teenagers from across all socioeconomic backgrounds, the research team found that hyperactivity and impulsivity, depression, substance use, low social support, exposure to suicide and negative life events increased vulnerability to suicide thoughts and attempts. "But among youth in disadvantaged neighbourhoods, hyperactivity and impulsivity was even more strongly associated with suicidal behaviours," says Éric Lacourse, senior author of the study and a Université de Montréal sociology professor. "We observed that community adversity could amplify a young person's vulnerability to consider suicide."

Here is a link to the full press release from the University Université de Montréal.

120 Cholera deaths in Zimbabwe

As if you didn't need any more proof about how bad it is in Zimbabwe right now.

80 percent of Zimbabwe's population lives below the poverty line. Inflation spirals up so quickly it causes many more to become poor every day.

Not only has the economy collapsed but also has public health. Last month, Save the Children reported that kids were eating rats to hold off starvation.

To top it all off, sanitation infrastructure has collapsed. 120 people have died of cholera in this past year.

South Africa's newspaper The Times fills in the details on how the disease is being spread.

"The government has grossly underestimated the impact that infrastructure breakdown is having on public health," the Zimbabwe Association of Doctors for Human Rights said in a statement.

Over just the last two months, the waterborne disease has hit the capital Harare, as well as towns in the northern and western parts of the country, the group said.

"Water supply is irregular or completely absent in most urban areas, burst sewage pipes continue to be left unattended and there is a lack of refuse collection," the statement said.

"About 120 cholera-related deaths have been cumulatively recorded this year," it added.

Cholera is caused by intestinal bacteria that causes serious diarrhoea and vomiting leading to dehydration. With a short incubation period, it can be fatal. But the disease is easily prevented and can be cured if diagnosed promptly.

The doctors’ group urged the government to provide access to proper sanitation and clean running water to prevent the outbreak of disease.

High School dropouts in Pennsylvania

A group called Pennsylvania Partnerships for Children has released a report examining high school dropout rates in the state. The report also examines what high school dropouts typically earn in contrast to other workers.

The study gives more proof to the need of education for a better salary. In fact, the study shows a larger number of high school dropouts earn a wage that keeps them below the poverty line.

Pennsylvania Partnerships for Children says dropouts are twice as likely to be in poverty than those who have graduated. The average wage for dropouts is $14,982 in Pennsylvania's Lackawanna county.

Here are some other points made in the study as found in Sarah Hofius Hall's article in The Scranton Times Tribune.

In Luzerne County, dropouts earn $16,850, less than half of the $40,333 someone earns with a bachelor’s degree. Monroe County dropouts earn $25,013.

The study cites data from the 2007 American Community Survey by the U.S. Census Bureau. Statistics were not provided for the other Northeast Pennsylvania counties.

Other highlights included:

■ Lackawanna’s unemployment rate is 4 percent for those whose furthest education is a high school diploma or general equivalency diploma. The rate for someone with a bachelor’s degree or higher is 2.9 percent.

■ The gap widens in Luzerne and Monroe counties. In Luzerne, 10.9 percent of high school dropouts were unemployed, compared to 3.8 percent of high school graduates. In Monroe County, 22.3 percent of high school dropouts were unemployed, compared to 1.6 percent who had a bachelor’s degree.

■ Almost 25 percent of Lackawanna residents who did not complete high school lived in poverty, compared to 6 percent among those who have a bachelor’s degree. The 2008 federal poverty income guideline is $21,200 for a family of four.

■ In Luzerne County, 16.9 percent of high school dropouts live in poverty, more than double the percentage of those who live in poverty who attended some college or have an associate degree.

Clinton praises Bush on food aid

On World Food Day that was held on October 16th, former US President Bill Clinton admitted getting the issue of food security for poor nations wrong.

A lot of aid that goes into poor countries is food. But that makes it even harder for the small farmers of poor countries to stay profitable. In recent years, imports of food to poor nations rose, making them even more dependent on aid. If aid was ever removed, God forbid, the poor nations would be unable to sustain themselves.

Former President Clinton actually praised our current President Bush for getting food security right, but he has been stopped by politics in the US. In this Associated Press article, writer Charles Hanley has quotes from President Clinton on improving aid effectiveness to the developing world.

Former President Clinton told a U.N. gathering Thursday that the global food crisis shows 'we all blew it, including me,' by treating food crops 'like color TVs' instead of as a vital commodity for the world's poor.

Addressing a high-level event marking Oct. 16's World Food Day, Clinton also saluted President Bush _ 'one thing he got right' _ for pushing to change U.S. food aid policy. He scolded the bipartisan coalition in Congress that killed the idea of making some aid donations in cash rather than in food.

Clinton criticized decades of policymaking by the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and others, encouraged by the U.S., that pressured Africans in particular into dropping government subsidies for fertilizer, improved seed and other farm inputs as a requirement to get aid. Africa's food self-sufficiency declined and food imports rose.

Now skyrocketing prices in the international grain trade _ on average more than doubling between 2006 and early 2008 _ have pushed many in poor countries deeper into poverty.

'Food is not a commodity like others,' Clinton said. 'We should go back to a policy of maximum food self-sufficiency. It is crazy for us to think we can develop countries around the world without increasing their ability to feed themselves.'

He noted that food aid from wealthy nations could itself be a tool for bolstering agriculture in poor countries. Canada, for example, requires that 50 percent of its aid go as cash _ not as Canadian grain _ to buy crops grown locally in Africa and other recipient countries.

U.S. law, however, requires that almost all U.S. aid be American-grown food, which benefits U.S. farmers but undercuts local food crops. Bush proposed earlier this year that 25 percent of future U.S. aid be given in cash.

'A bipartisan coalition (in Congress) defeated him,' Clinton said. 'He was right and both parties that defeated him were wrong.'

Clinton also criticized the heavy U.S. reliance on corn to produce ethanol, which increased demand for the crop and helped drive up grain prices worldwide.

"Stand Up Against Poverty" inspires a new U2 song

It was the largest demonstration that the world has ever seen. It broke a Guinness World Record for the "for the biggest mass mobilization on a single issue".

Yet it failed to make headlines here in the US. Was there any coverage on the 24 hour news networks about "Stand Up Against Poverty"?

Anyway, the protest has inspired Bono to write a new song on exactly what the protest was about, standing up to the leaders of the developed world, and make them be accountable to the promises they made.

Reuters interviewed Bono on carrying on the theme of "Stand Up Against Poverty in song. Lesley Wroughton talked with the rock star/activist.

"It's not finished yet but it's inspired by this concept of stand up. It's a little diamond, though," Bono said, speaking by telephone from Los Angeles.

"It's not a 'let's hold hands and the world is a better place sort of song.' It's more kick down the door of your own hypocrisy," he said.

"Although they were not a legal contract, and we wish they were, there is a moral contract that was made," Bono said.

"To break a promise to yourself, to your partner, to your family, a politician to his constituents, are all bad things to do -- but it's a heinous crime to make a promise to the poorest most vulnerable people on earth and break it. That's just not acceptable," he said.

He said while the MDGs may be "the worst acronym in the history of activism," the Stand Up and Take Action events around the world on Oct 17 to 19 showed that people knew what they stand for.

"The numbers show that people are aware that those promises were made and why politicians can't think 'oh we can get away with it because no one really knows about it'" Bono said.

Kenya will not meet Millenium Development Goals

Out of the eight Millennium Development Goals, Kenya will only be able to meet 2 of them by the target year of 2015.

Wycliffe Oparanya, a minister for development for Kenya, gave the update on meeting the goals in a speech Wednesday.

The goals that Kenya says they will be able to meet are universal primary education and battling diseases like HIV/AIDS and malaria.

For not being able to meet the others, Kenya blames the lack of funds from the developed world. Only Sweden, Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg give the amount aid that is needed for all developing countries to meet the Development Goals.

Our snippet contains what Kenya is still lacking. Alphonce Shiundu And Benjamin Muindi, writers for the Nation tell us what Kenya still has to take care of. We found this story from All Africa.

"The key challenge is inadequate financial resources... the donors' inability to honour their millennium declaration commitments," the minister said.

Mr Oparanya told the Nation that the country could beat the deadline if the donor countries "invested more in Kenya's economy."

"We are not interested in aid, all we need is for them to open up foreign trade for our goods and foreign investment in our country ... we need to create more jobs," he said.

The minister also disclosed that poverty levels had fallen from 56 per cent in 2003 to 46 per cent in 2006. "But the recent post-election skirmishes have pushed up this figure," he said.

The report paints a grim picture with regard to the state of the nation in 2015, with only eight years left.

Poverty, food insecurity, gender inequality, high unemployment, child and maternal mortality, according to the report, remain high on the list of challenges to be tackled.

Involving corporations into poverty alleviation in Australia

This Friday, Australian corporate leaders will meet to discuss how they can reduce poverty.

Australia as a whole tries to take a lead in developing the whole Asia Pacific region. This alliance of business leaders was formed in 2006 to try to do more to develop the entire area. The try to combine meeting the Millenium Development Goals with business sucsess.

Anneli Knight gives the details of the summit in this article from Australia's Business Day.

Australia's corporate leaders will congregate in Melbourne tomorrow for the Business for Millennium Development summit. The key aims of this meeting are to raise awareness in the Australian business community about the United Nations Millennium Development Goals, which focus on reducing poverty and improving human rights.

Macquarie Bank, ANZ, IBM, IAG and KPMG will be among the corporate giants at the summit, discussing how corporations can do business with the poorest members of society in a way that helps alleviate poverty and bring profits to business. The presentations will include a live link-up with former World Bank president James Wolfensohn.

"The summit is designed to be a catalyst, to spark interest. And to transplant a global movement here to Australia," says Business for Millennium Development chief executive Mark Ingram.

Mr Ingram says the second phase for the Business for Millennium Development initiative, after Friday's summit, is to hold a partnership forum, and bring NGOs and corporations together to work towards the Millennium Development Goals.

ANZ will reveal a case study at the meeting of its pilot program, partnering with World Vision, to offer financial transactions via mobile phones to some of the lowest-paid workers in Cambodia, Ingram says.

Here is a link to the Business for Millennium Development Summit site. It includes who will speak at the summit and an agenda.

All this makes me wonder if there is something similar here in the States?

Stand Up Against Poverty wrapup

If you participated in a Stand Up Against Poverty event over this past weekend, pat your self on the back.

World records were shattered, with over three times the amount of people participating compared to last year.

Stand Up Against Poverty was a collection of hundreds of events around the world, hoping to catch the eye of world leaders. Events were held during the entire span of the weekend, October 17-19. Events ranged from peaceful protests and concerts, to distributing books and collecting signatures for petitions.

But who really deserves some congratulations is the Philippines. As the ABS-CBN reports the numbers of people who showed up in that country was truly astounding. Our clip of the article gives us the numbers.

One out of every three Filipinos or a total of 35.2 million Filipinos mobilized at events all over the country last October 17 to 19 as part of the "Stand Up, Take Action" global initiative to end poverty, the National Anti-Poverty Commission said Wednesday.

In a statement, NAPC Assistant Secretary Dolores de Quiros Castillo said a total of 35,264,652 Filipinos attended the events. The numbers were announced after a two-day tabulation by SGV & Co., largest auditing firm in the country, and verified by Guinness World Records.

"Our objective this year was to mobilize at least 15 million Filipinos in the Philippine Stand Up, Take Action Campaign. We not only exceeded our target by some 20 million participants, we also topped the world record in terms of percentage to population and absolute numbers," Castillo said in a statement.

According to Guinness World Records, a total of 116,993,629 people participated in 7,777 events around the world to set a new Guinness World Record, topping last year’s 43 million count.

The Philippines delivered the largest number of participants both in terms of percentage to population and in absolute terms. Overall, Asia produced 73,151,847 participants.

The struggle to stay warm in Massachusetts

We are seeing way too many of these kinds of story's.

In the cold weather climates, many poor people will not be able to stay warm this year. It's not only a problem in the US but worldwide.

The demand for help is growing and those who have worked in assistance programs have never seen the demand this high.

Chris Cassidy, a writer for the The Salem News in Massachuseets, examines how the US recession is effecting people's need to stay warm.

"We're seeing more people applying for (fuel assistance) than we have in many, many years. More people than I've seen in the 15 years I've been here," said Beth Hogan, executive director of North Shore Community Action Programs, an anti-poverty agency in Peabody. "We're averaging about 300 calls a day, and we're doing our best to keep up with those calls."

The food pantry at the Salem Mission had to close twice last week because it ran out of food, marking only the second and third time in the last few years that's happened, said the shelter's executive director, Mark Cote.

"It's pretty desperate right now," Cote said. "I've never seen this kind of demand for food. It really is kind of overwhelming that we cannot keep the shelves stocked."
[..]
Still, there are signs of good news. The federal government will increase the amount of money it devotes to fuel assistance this year, and Social Security benefits are expected to rise.

But leaders of North Shore nonprofits say more has to be done and called on the community for help.

"I think people really need to be more thoughtful and cognizant of the people that they do live with in their neighborhoods and think about things like whether they have food or heat," Hogan said. "This could be a very difficult year for folks."

The story also has a unique perspective from fire fighters who are concerned that high heating oil prices will lead people to do something unsafe. They site examples such as wood stoves needing permits to install, and floor heaters requiring special electric cords.

Commentary on Microcredit

Microcredit has come up smelling like a rose in this credit crisis.

A big contrast: small loans to people with little collateral or assets, but they get payd back 98% of the time. Meanwhile, home loans gave people a lot of money upfront, then many were unable to pay of the loan after then blew the money on other stuff (maybe other bills).

Yes, we need to have more microcredit in this world. A commentary written by Misty Novitch was published in the Atlanta Journal Constitution. It shows the successes of microcredit, and also encourages participating in a letter drive to tell the World Bank to do more with microcredit. That part of the commentary is what we will focus on for our clip.

Although microcredit ranks as one of the leading foreign aid success stories, the World Bank — whose stated mission is reducing poverty — devotes less than 1 percent of its budget to this innovative strategy.

Despite the World Bank’s own research citing microcredit’s effectiveness, it has failed to put its money where its research shows the greatest promise.

Fortunately, congressional champions of microcredit are pushing the World Bank to do better. Letters are circulating in the U.S. House and Senate asking World Bank President Robert Zoellick to:

• Set up a grant facility for MFIs trying to reach the very poor.

• Set up Centers of Excellence at MFIs like Grameen and Jamii Bora for other providers to study and emulate.

• Create a sub-Saharan African apex fund, allowing MFIs working to reach the poorest access to needed funds.

So far, Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) has signed on to the letter. Other members of the Georgia delegation should be encouraged to do likewise.

Global leaders are now scrambling to put the world’s economic house in order after greed and speculation brought the system to the brink of disaster.

It’s time for our financial institutions, starting with the World Bank, to start making smarter investments. The poor have demonstrated that the smart money should be riding on them.

Income inequality rising in the developed world

More proof that the rich are getting richer while everyone else stays the same was released today. The Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development released a new study called "Growing Unequal?"

The spread between the rich and the poor is important for two reasons. The wider the spread, the harder it is for people to move up the income ladder. A wide spread also means there are more people in poverty.

The OCED says there are several factors that have increased the spread between the rich and poor. The attribute it to more low skill and poorly educated people being out of work. Another factor is the rise in the number of single parent homes or those living alone.

The OCED report is one you have to buy. So here is a link to their page that has many summaries. Our clip contains the key findings found in their press release.

Why is the gap between rich and poor growing?
In most countries the gap is growing because rich households have done significantly better than middle-class and poor households. Changes in the structure of the population and in the labour market over the past 20 years have contributed greatly to this rise in inequality.

*Wages have been improving for those people who were already well paid.
*Employment rates have been dropping among less-educated people.
*And, there are more single-adult and single-family households.

Who is most affected?
Statisticians and economists assess poverty in relation to average incomes. Typically, they take the poverty line to be equivalent to one-half of the median income in a given country.

* Since 1980, poverty among the elderly has fallen in OECD countries.
* By contrast, poverty among young adults and families with children has increased.
* On average, one child out of every eight living in an OECD country in 2005 was living in poverty.

What does this mean for future generations?
Social mobility is generally higher in countries where income inequalities are relatively low. In countries with high income inequalities, by contrast, mobility tends to be lower.

* Children living in countries where there is large gap between rich and poor are less likely to improve on the education and income attainments of their parents than children living in countries with low income inequality.
* Countries like Denmark and Australia have higher social mobility, while the United States, United Kingdom and Italy have lower mobility.

What can be done?
In some cases, government policies of taxation and redistribution of income have helped to counteract widening inequalities, but this cannot be their only response. Governments must also improve their policies in other areas.

*Education policies should aim to equip people with the skills they need in today’s labour market.
*Active employment policies are needed to help unemployed people find work.
*Access to paid employment is key to reducing the risk of poverty, but getting a job does not necessarily mean you are in the clear. Growing Unequal? found that over half of all households in poverty have at least some income from work.
*Welfare-in-work policies can help hard-pressed working families to have a decent standard of living by supplementing their incomes.

Jeffery Sachs on the reforming of the financial system

Jeffery Sachs says that the credit crisis is a clear indication that the international financial system is broken. But he also says it's broken in other ways. Such as a billion people being cut of from the system because of where they live, and no energy supply plan to address demand and climate change.

The next big international meeting is in December. In his latest commentary, Jeffery Sachs proposes an agenda for the meeting, as found in the Guardian.

Here, then, is an agenda for Bretton Woods II. First, we need to restructure global finance, based on an expanded system of capital adequacy standards, financial reporting, system-wide risk management, and new lender-of-last-resort capacities. Derivatives traders, hedge funds, and broker dealers would be brought under regulatory control. The IMF would be empowered to be a true global lender of last resort (as I urged a dozen years ago, warning of the threat of self-fulfilling panics). To make this possible, a small tax on financial transactions - a Tobin tax - would be implemented to expand the IMF's war chest in case of crisis and to fund other urgent international needs.

Second, the new global financial structure should help to rescue the world from human-induced climate change. A straightforward tax on the carbon content of fossil fuels, levied by all countries, would do the job, and much better than the enormously cumbersome emission-trading system concocted and championed by the same financial engineers who brought us our current banking crisis. Most of the carbon-tax revenues would stay at home in each country, to help finance low-emission technologies. Some would be directed to finance three global public goods: research and development on sustainable energy; transfer of sustainable-energy technology to low-income countries; and climate-change adaptation.

Third, the World Bank should be refocused with clear goals, and accountability for their success. Specifically, the bank should have one overarching assignment: helping the poorest countries achieve the millennium development goals to reduce poverty, hunger and disease. The bank is poorly organised for such leadership today. Like any bureaucracy, it avoids being held accountable for measurable results. With a tighter focus on the MDGs, the bank should also be supported with much larger financial resources from new revenue sources (such as the Tobin tax), so that the bank can better help the poorest countries expand vital infrastructure (power, roads, water, sanitation and broadband networks).

Fourth, the global trade agenda should be integrated with the finance, and environment objectives. The Doha trade round has failed because the world could not see any urgent reasons for its success. A trade agreement worthy of the effort would do two main things. Importantly, it would help the poorest countries to be more productive so that they can be full participants in the global trading system. "Aid for trade" would help these countries to build the skills, roads, bridges and clean power grids to support increased trade. In addition, global trade would promote environmental sustainability, to help enforce compliance with reduced carbon emissions and protection of endangered biodiversity.

All these reforms are vital for long-term sustainable growth and development. If the political leaders focus only on financial-sector stability, but neglect the long-term problems of energy supplies, climate change, food production, disease control and extreme poverty, then global growth might be restored in the short term, only to succumb quickly to another global bout of rising energy and food prices, and geopolitical instability.

Installing toilets could do the most to reduce poverty

Sometimes, our priorities are backward.

In developing countries you can often get a cell phone signal, but can't find anywhere to go to the bathroom. We'll we know why that is, you can make a buck on cell phones, a lot more than on human waste.

The United Nations University says today that good sanitation and water can do more to reduce poverty than anything else.

Unable to find the actual press release, we went to IPS, and writer Stephen Leahy for our snippet.

"Water problems, caused largely by an appalling absence of adequate toilets in many places, contribute tremendously to some of the world's most punishing problems, foremost among them the inter-related afflictions of poor health and chronic poverty," said Zafar Adeel, director of the U.N. University's Canadian-based International Network on Water, Environment and Health.

The UNU analysis says better water and sanitation reduces poverty by boosting individual productivity, reducing public health costs and creating new business opportunities for local entrepreneurs.

Every dollar invested in sanitation generates eight to 10 dollars in reduced costs and increased productivity Adeel told IPS.

So why is it that there are mobile phone networks and not sanitation networks?

"Experts have not done a good job of explaining the consequences of poor sanitation to the public or policy makers," Adeel said.

For that reason developing countries are more interested in generating exports or economic development and ignore the costs of poor sanitation. Donor countries and aid agencies have a similar focus, choosing to improve drug delivery or develop new drugs instead of making sanitation a top priority.

The Gates Foundation is trying to develop a cholera vaccine when the easiest, fastest way to reduce the spread of cholera is to improve water treatment, Adeel said. "That is how the developed world stopped cholera. There is a real disconnect here."

Globally, almost 900 million people lack access to safe water supplies and 2.5 billion people live without access to improved sanitation, at least 80 percent of whom live in rural areas.

Defender of the poor, Sister Emmanuelle dies at 99

One of France's most beloved nun's has passed away.

Sister Emmanuelle died in her sleep at a retirement home in France Monday.

She helped an outcast people in Cairo, who eked out living collecting garbage. The residents of Cairo's slums had no rights of there own before Sister Emmanuelle met them.

She then spent two decades building schools, clinics and gardens for the people. The organization she began now helps the poor in 8 different countries.

This snippet from the AP story found on KFMB, gives her obituary, and more details on her life's work.

Born Madeleine Cinquin in Brussels on Nov. 16, 1908, she spent her childhood between the Belgian capital, Paris and London, according to the association's Web site. A member of the Notre Dame de Sion order, she lived many years in France.

Sister Emmanuelle initiated development efforts in the Muqattam, a peripheral Cairo slum, founding a primary school and providing scavengers with vehicles to haul garbage.

She eventually attracted broader attention to their plight, which led to new schools, health care projects and income-generating strategies for the slum dwellers.

"She was living right among them, the garbage collectors, the pigs, the whole mess. I had never seen anything like this in my life," said Dr. Mounir Neamatalla, a leading Egyptian expert in environmental science and poverty reduction who worked closely with her throughout the 1980s.

Neamatalla worked with the nun on a composting plant to process the vast amounts of manure produced by the garbage collectors' pigs, which was then processed and sold as fertilizer.

Upon her return to France in 1993, Sister Emmanuelle continued to speak out for the needy, regularly appearing on French television, her white hair swept up into a gray habit and her eyes sparkling behind large glasses.

The Appalachia mountains grow thru politics

Over 40 years ago, President Lyndon Johnson began the war on poverty. He made the speech to introduce the "war" from the Appalachian Mountains. An area in the eastern US that has had deep problems with poverty for generations.

A great story from the Associated Press explains the Appalachian Regional Commission, a federal program that tries to fight poverty in the mountain region.

Thru the years the area served by this commission has expanded. It grows either to get the necessary votes to pass the funding. Or by politician who want to get that same funding into their districts.

The Appalachian Regional Commission now spreads to areas in Kentucky, Ohio, Virginia and Tennessee, that do not have the deep seeded problems of the mountain.

Our snippet wont do the story justice, so I encourage you to read the entire piece from Roger Alford. Our clip explains how expanding the area effect who it was originally intended for.

The Appalachia served by the ARC is political, not geographical, said Ron Eller said, an Appalachian scholar and former director of the University of Kentucky's Appalachian Center.

Eller said Johnson recognized that when in 1965 he agreed to add portions of New York to get enough votes to push the Appalachian Regional Development Act through Congress. The geographical expansions have helped the ARC politically by increasing its clout in Washington.

The legislation signed this month not only expands Appalachia's boundaries, but also calls for $510 million to be spent in the region over the next five years to build roads, install water lines, fund educational improvement projects, encourage economic development, even purchase computers for poor children. The proposed spending total is a $64 million increase over the last 5-year allotment.

That could have meant more money for core Appalachian counties, Eller said, if politicians hadn't opted to spread it across a larger area. "When you continue to expand the counties, ultimately it creates a smaller pool of resources for use in the most severely distressed areas of the region," he said.

Nicholas County's top elected administrative official, Judge-Executive Larry Tincher, has been lobbying for the past seven years to get the communities he represents declared part of Appalachia so that they can tap into the funding source. He said job losses in Kentucky's textile industry have hit Carlisle hard over the past decade. The state has lost more than 7,000 jobs since 2001 in apparel manufacturing.

Eller doesn't dispute that the additional counties have economic problems that may even rival conditions in the heart of Appalachia. But, he said, the core Appalachian counties have had long-standing problems.

Fair Trade Candy this Holloween

Here is a great idea to spread awareness of fair trade.

A group in Wisconsin will ad something to trick or treating this year. The children will also be handing out candy, but it's fair trade candy.

It's called "Reverse Trick or Treating". Sara Boyd a writer for the Green Bay Press Gazette tells us about the organisation with the great idea.

A Better Footprint is a local fair trade organization that aims to educate others in the benefits of organic, eco-friendly or ethically sourced goods. Fair trade is a movement that advocates paying fair price as well as meeting social and environmental standards in the production of a wide variety of goods.

"It really is an awareness campaign," she said. "With a lot of our food, a lot of people never think of where it comes from."

Most of the world's chocolate comes from cocoa grown on small plantation farms in Africa or Latin America, where children between 5 and 17 work long hours in hard labor instead of going to school, she said.

Paul said the idea behind the national Reverse Trick or Treating is to spread the word on one of the largest chocolate consumption days of the year.

"Halloween is a great time when people are buying chocolate, eating chocolate and thinking about it," she said. "It's doubly powerful then when you have kids saying to adults, 'Hey, there's a positive solution to this.'"

Urging Ontario to keep their commitments

The group the Ontario Coalition for Social Justice is urging the Ontario government to keep their commitments to reducing poverty. The group even says to even got into the red to do it.

Our snippet comes from the Toronto Star. Rob Ferguson fills us in on the what the group says.

With less than a week until next Wednesday's fall economic statement, the lobby group said yesterday that hard economic times make it increasingly important to provide more help for the province's 1.3 million poor.

Premier Dalton McGuinty has promised a poverty-reduction plan will be introduced by the end of the year but has already warned it may have to be watered down or delayed because of financial pressures.

But only substantial infusions of cash – such as a 30 per cent increase in welfare rates to make up for the 1995 cuts by former Progressive Conservative premier Mike Harris – will put a serious dent in poverty, the coalition told a news conference.

"We've heard many times that they don't plan to spend any extra money on reducing poverty, that it's a matter of re-allocating and changing policies as opposed to investing more," said spokesperson Josephine Grey.

Majority of people want their governments to give more money.

0.7% is all it would take. Just 0.7% of the gross national product, or total of all the goods and services a country makes. That's all it would take to meet the goal of lifting half of the world people out of poverty.

Yet the US only gives .22%, Canada only gives .33%, the UK .48%

A new study out today shows a majority of people in the developed world believes we should give more.

The study conducted by World Public Opinion asked something like the following... If you gave x amount of dollars knowing it would lift half of the people worldwide out of poverty, knowing the rest of the developed world would pay a similar amount, would you do it?


A large majority said yes,



The survey also asked if you thought that the developed world had a responsibility to help the undeveloped.



Here is a snippet with more info on the survey. From a press release issued by World Public Opinion

Respondents were presented a necessary annual per person contribution toward meeting this goal, adjusted for national income, ranging from $10 for Turks to $56 for Americans. In every case, and in most cases by a large margin, majorities of respondents say they are willing to personally pay the amount necessary to meet the goal, provided that people in other countries did so as well.

In a question asked to 20 nations around the world, majorities in all but one agree that developed countries "have a moral responsibility to help reduce hunger and severe poverty in poor countries." On average, eight in 10 say developed countries have such a responsibility.

Respondents in France, Italy, Great Britain, South Korea, Turkey, the United States, Germany, and Russia were told about the Millennium Development Goal of cutting hunger and severe poverty in half and told how much it would cost each person in their country if the cost were shared among all of the OECD countries. These amounts were: the United States $56, Great Britain $49, or 25 pounds sterling, France $45, or 29 euros, Germany $43, or 27 euros, Italy $39, or 25 euros, South Korea $23, or 24,000 won, Russia $11, or 257 rubles and Turkey $10, or 12 liras.

They were then asked: "Assuming the people in the other countries were willing to pay their share, would you be willing to pay [per-person amount] a year to cut hunger by half and reduce severe poverty?"

Majorities in every country polled say that they would be willing to pay the required amount. In every country except one, the majorities are very large, ranging from 75 percent in the United States to 86 percent in France. Russia is the one country with a modest majority--54 percent. On average, 77 percent are in favor of contributing a proportion of their country's foreign aid to meet this goal, and only 17 percent would not be willing to do so.

The methodology of the survey can be downloaded here.

Founder of the U.N. Millennium Goal Campaign fears reaching goals

Billions of dollars are being used to fend of another great depression. That means aid to to poor countries is dwindling. In fact, before the credit crunch even began the aid was shrinking.

From a forum on international hunger, the founder of U.N. Millennium Goal Campaign spoke up on the decrease in aid and it's effects on the poor. Svetlana Kovalyova from Reuters UK received these words from Eveline Herfkens.

"If everybody lives up to their promise, they (the goals) are still reachable. If not, we are in a big trouble," Eveline Herfkens said on the sidelines of an international food forum.

"When the financial markets sneeze, the poor get pneumonia."

"I really would hope that our finance ministers who find trillions of dollars to beef up their own systems will not forget about a few billions that they promised to the poor," Herfkens told Reuters.

We heard similar comments from Kofi Annan and Jeffery Sachs about the cut backs in aid yesterday.

International Day for the Eradication of Poverty Roundup Part 2

This time, more events and a couple of speeches.

International Day for the Eradication of Poverty is being recognized around the world today. Events even continue onto the weekend as the "Stand Up Against Poverty" campaign takes place.

A story in the Afrique en ligne has a good overview on both events.

The events, in which the UN and its partners will participate, will hold simultaneously around the world.

In Lagos, Nigeria, a concert hosted by popular musician Femi Kuti to make "Music Against Poverty" will commemorate the life of renowned Nigerian Musician Fela Kuti and Stand Up in support of the MDGs.

In Tema, Ghana, "Games Against Poverty" will use sport as a platform to support the MDGs.

In the United States, students will join a campus challenge to build political will to end extreme poverty by hosting teach-ins and events across America, and in India, members of the Art of Living Foundation, one of the largest spiritual movements in the world, will mobilise to plant more than 100 million trees around the globe.

Also, groups across Europe - from Portugal to Germany, will mobilise to demand more and better aid.

We encourage you to find an event near you and participate. Only an overwhelming voice of a large collection of people will make politicians take notice... and do something other than make empty promises.

Now on to a few politicians who are saying words today. In Nigeria, President Umaru Yar'adua used this occasion to make a speech. Sunday Williams of the Nigerian paper the Daily Trust provides this quote, which we found on All Africa.

The attainment of the government's vision of becoming one of the top 20 economies in the world by the year 2020 can only be achieved with the eradication of extreme poverty, President Umaru Yar'adua has said.

The President made the remarks yesterday while delivering a keynote address at the all Local Government summit on poverty eradication and International Day for the Eradication of Poverty in Abuja.

He said, "We are resolved to as nation to face up to our development challenges and set the country on the right part to becoming a public grounded democracy and one of the 20 largest economies in the world by year 2020.However, this is only possible when we are perceived in an eradication of extreme poverty which we have resolved to achieve through human capital development, wealth creation, employment creation through appropriate partnership with the private sector."

He said, "Poverty has continued to be endemic to our communities despite the existence of the local government whose constitutional roles is to carry out the activities to improved the livelihood of rural dwellers. At the end of this commemoration, I'm convinced that many local government chairmen will go back home with resolve to address the issue of poverty eradication with more passion."

Lastly, on to Nepal, where Prime Minister Prachanda calls for more coordination. Our snippet comes from the Andhra News from Nepal.

Speaking on the occasion of International Day on Elimination of Poverty here, Prachanda said, "I want to remind all that the policies and programs and budget presented by the government that I am leading also has put poverty alleviation as top priority."

He expressed full commitment to uplift the backward and disadvantaged communities in Nepal.

He also reiterated his commitment to attain the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

"For any country, political stability and the peace process is the foundation for development. The job of institutionalizing peace was therefore very important," he said.

"Judicious investment and the distribution of public resources and services are the first duty of any state in the absence of which poverty-free country cannot be built," he added.

International Day for the Eradication of Poverty Roundup

Today, October 17th, is recognized as the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty. Established by a declaration in the United Nations general assembly in 1992. But it has roots in a demonstration in Paris on this date in 1987.

Were getting a lot of items on protests and marches that are going on today. So, here is our first roundup of the events.

First, a special stone in Dublin, as told by Charlie Taylor of the Irish Times.

A commemorative stone to mark International Day for the Eradication of Poverty has been unveiled in Dublin today.

The stone, which is situated near to the Famine memorial on Customs House Quay, was unveiled by Deputy Lord Mayor of Dublin Emer Costello.

The commemorative stone was commissioned by Dublin City Council and Dublin Docklands Authority and is inscribed with words from Joseph Wresinski, founder of the international human rights organisation ATD Fourth World.

The words - “Whenever men and women are condemned to live in poverty, human rights are violated. To come together to ensure that these rights are respected is our solemn duty” - were first inscribed on a commemorative stone laid on October.

17th, 1987, on the Human Rights Plaza in Paris where the Universal Declaration of Human Rights had been signed.

Since then the same words have been used on more than 30 similar commemorative pieces around the world including the UN headquarters in New York and the European Parliament building in Brussels.

Next, we travel to Kenya. Emmanuel Kola of the Kenyan Broadcasting Corporation give us the details.

Kenya joins millions of people around the world on Friday in marking the World Poverty Eradication Day.

The campaign whose key message is ‘Stand Up and Take Action against poverty' will be marked at Garissa Primary School in North Eastern province.

Minister of State for planning, National development and Vision 2030, Wycliffe Oparanya, the guest of honor at the event, will share the governments' strategies to eradicate poverty in the country where about 46 per cent of the population is living in absolute poverty.

As the Kenya marks this day, Focus will be placed on the biting poverty facing people living in the Arid and Semi Arid Lands- ASALs and the food insecurity currently being experienced in Kenya and East Africa.

With all the trouble in South Africa lately, the demonstrations there will be a little angrier. This protest is detailed by the South African Daily News

About a hundred people gathered on Friday at the Union Buildings in Pretoria to protest against poverty.

Protesters called, among other things, for an end to poverty and VAT on basic foodstuffs to be cut.

Co-chair of the global call for action against poverty (GCAP) Kumi Naidoo, said it was time for government to act decisively to eradicate poverty and instead of spending millions on border control it should rather spend on health care, water, and sanitation.

The GCAP is a civil society alliance comprising NGOs and trade unions.

Finally for this first roundup, Thailand. Where the UN and government joined in a walk. As reported by IRIN.

The UN and Thai government went walking in support of the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty on 17 October, with the deputy interior minister, Preecha Rengsomboonsuk, and the representative of the UN Children’s Fund Thailand country office, Tomoo Hozumi, joining more than 2,000 people in Ayutthaya Province to raise poverty awareness.

About 10,000 Ayutthaya citizens from every social sector joined the opening ceremony at the city hall after the walk. The two representatives made pledges to fight poverty and achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

“We tried to adopt his Majesty the King’s initiative on sustainable development and emphasised three main issues: encouraging people to save, providing jobs for them, and making them help one another in solving poverty,” Touchrich Tanaluck, chief community development officer of Ayutthaya, told IRIN. “We believe this policy will help us achieve our goal in the ‘180 Day Roadmap for Poverty Reduction’ campaign.”

The campaign was launched on 15 August 2008 by former Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej’s government to raise the annual income of almost 180,000 Thais who live below the national poverty line through decentralisation. Each province has its own policy and campaign to achieve its goal.

Comment on the Church in Africa

A great commentary in the Guardian today about the Church's role in Africa.

As many world travelers and aid workers will tell you, despite being hungry, sick and destitute, the children are still happy. The women who have lost the spouses to AIDS and have to provide by themselves still have hope. The Church gives them that hope and joy.

Mark Frost is an executive at the relief agency Tearfund. And he gives some concrete examples in his commentary.

The church is one of the few movements that is both local and global. It draws from an impressive portfolio of highly professional church-based organisations and denominational structures robust enough to fill the gap when states fail in their duty to provide vital services for the marginalised and poorest in society. As an international network it also has the ability to mobilise hundreds of thousands of people worldwide to lobby policy makers to take up their responsibilities to eliminate poverty and provide those basic rights and services for all.

For more than 20 years, Tearfund partner Kigezi diocese has been delivering water and sanitation to households in remote mountainous parts of south-west Uganda, several hundred metres above ground and surface water supplies. Since 2006, 23 voluntary women's groups have been trained in masonry and have now installed 4,000-litre rainwater catchment tanks for the benefit of the poorest households. Kigezi diocese is now influential in national policymaking on water.

Elsewhere in Africa, the Churches Health Association of Zambia, a network of church-owned hospitals and health centres, provides nearly a third of Zambia's healthcare, and half of its rural healthcare provision. Ethiopia's Kale Heywet Church – which fields 6,000 congregations and more than 5 million individual members - is the largest local provider of antiretroviral drugs for the prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV. A network of 1,000 local church leaders in Rwanda are now rolling out a three-year programme to train 2.5 million Rwandans on how to combat malaria and rebuild peace through reconciliation.

And, in the thick of Zimbabwe's political crisis, church leaders have played a key role in disseminating information about what is happening throughout the remote rural communities, and have been some of the loudest voices speaking out against injustice. In addition, the practical day to day relief comes when pastors with their sleeves rolled up are providing water from huge tanks in church compounds, or running food distribution centres.

Takes on the global credit crisis from Kofi Annan and Jefferey Sachs

As stated on the previous post, aid commitments from wealthy countries are falling far short from being payed out. The nations pledged $12.3 million dollars, but only $1 billion has been disbursed so far. The pledges came from an emergency meeting earlier this year that was called to deal with the jump in food prices.

The wealthy nations blame the credit crisis for not fulfilling their pledge. But two people we respect a lot say that it is wrong to.

From this Associated Press article found in the the Santa Cruz Sentinel, former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan says poverty should not be ignored.

"The financial crisis deserves urgent attention and focus. But so does the question of hunger. Millions (this year) are liable to die. Is that any less urgent?" Annan told journalists at the Fighting Hunger conference attended by 200 foreign-aid experts from Europe, Africa and the United States.

"I agree that politicians being what they are, and under pressure from their own voters to improve their own local economic conditions—they will take their eyes off of poverty," he said.

Annan suggested that the US$12 billion pledge was an illusion.

"How much of that $12 billion has been paid out? How much of that $12 billion was new money? How much of it had been pledged before and pledged again?" he said.

Meanwhile, Jeffery Sachs said the credit crisis excuse was a false one.

"Even during the boom years, it was impossible to get traction on this issue. So, honestly, now that we're in tougher times, you ask me: Now is it hard? It's always been hard—period!" said Sachs, a Columbia University expert on Third World development who has been a special adviser to Annan and his successor, U.S. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

Lessons to learn from the food crisis

OXFAM has relaesed a new position paper on how the world should react to the global food crisis. The report titled Double Edged Prices has 10 actions that OXFAM would like to see the world take to prevent another food crisis.

Among the 10 steps, are the importance of investing in agriculture, having trade policies that ensure food security, and designing social protection systems that protect the poorest.

Our snippet from OXFAM includes some stats on how many people have been pushed into poverty from the food crisis, and the profits that food manufactures have made since prices went up.

The sharp rise in global food prices has pushed 119m more people into hunger, taking the global total to 967m. Higher food prices mean people are eating less and lower quality food, children are being taken out of school and farmers are being forced to migrate to cities to live in slums (see case studies below). Women are especially vulnerable because they rarely own land and have limited access to credit and other services, but they bear much of the responsibility for feeding and caring for families.

Meanwhile, some of the biggest international food companies have made windfall profits. Commodity-trader, Bunge, saw its profits in the second fiscal quarter of 2008 increase by $583m, or quadruple, compared with the same period last year. Nestlé’s global sales grew nearly 9% in the first half of 2008, and UK supermarket Tesco, has reported profits up 10% from last year. Seed company, Monsanto, reported a 26% increase in revenue to a record $3.6bn in the fiscal quarter that ended May 31, 2008.

Oxfam criticizes the international community’s inadequate response – both in terms of money and coordination. At an emergency meeting in Rome earlier this year, $12.3bn was pledged for the food crisis, but little more than $1bn has been disbursed so far. This is in stark contrast with the response to the current financial crisis, where huge financial resources have been mobilized by the international community in a matter of days.

OXFAM also provided some case studies that show how their suggestions are working in specific countries.

In Haiti, existing deep poverty has been exacerbated by food price rises and hurricanes. Five million Haitians live on less than a dollar a day and in 2007 almost half the population was undernourished. Haitians have labelled the food price crisis Clorox after a brand of chlorine tablets for water purification, which cause terrible stomach pains if swallowed – like permanent hunger.

In Malawi, government subsidies have successfully boosted production levels in many areas, resulting in consecutive surpluses at the national level (a reversal of previous shortages). However, pockets of serious food insecurity still exist and some poor households are already facing a food crisis, eating only one meal a day. In some areas, women have resorted to cooking wild beans, which are poisonous if not prepared properly. This means cooking them for hours, using scarce water and firewood.

In Cambodia, soaring food prices are impacting hard on the poor in both urban and rural areas. Even rice farmers who are supposed to benefit from the high prices are struggling to feed their family, as many of them are net food buyers. Overall, 1.7 million people are facing food insecurity. Von Siphou, 42, sells fruit at a stall in Phnom Penh. She says: "I am working as hard as I can and it is not good enough. The only thing left to do is to not eat."

In Honduras, which is highly dependent on imports, food consumption among the poorest families has reduced by 8%. The most affected are urban poor, subsistence farmers, day labourers, and non-farming rural poor. 60% of the rural population is affected.

In Tajikistan, an exceptionally severe winter followed by a hot spring led to large losses of livestock and crops. Locusts in the south also destroyed crops. One third of the rural population is now food insecure (at least 1.7 million people).

In Brazil, well-targeted government agricultural policies have shielded small farmers and consumers from the harshest impacts. The urban poor, among others, are however, still feeling the effects of higher prices.

Video: the child soldiers of Uganda

Wow! This is a stunning video.

25,000 children have been kidnapped through the years in Uganda. They are taken and turned into soldiers for the Lord's Resistance Army.

A heavy amount of brainwashing is done on these children to turn them into soldiers. When they escape the army, the process of undoing the brainwashing is difficult and delicate.

Rev. Donald H. Dunson first traveled to northern Uganda in 2001. He has kept going back to get to know more of the former child soldiers. Rev. Dunson has now written a book that tells their stories. The book is called “Child, Victim, Soldier,”, but we were unable to find more info on the book thru a quick web search.

Rev. Dunson is featured in this video, which does a good job of giving some background on the situation in Uganda.

One note though, the video is from the newspaper the News Herald from northern Ohio. You will have to sit through their :15 ad before the story begins..



The accompanying article also has more on the first meeting of the boy mentioned in this video Sunday Obote. Here is more from Rev. Duncan about the meeting.

Dunson remembers the exact day he met Sunday Obote: July 4, 2001. The tall, handsome teen with the broad smile and bullet in his leg joined Dunson under the tree.

“Sunday Obote was the very first child soldier I met. He was the one who opened a door that would become a floodgate,” Dunson said. “Within five minutes of talking to Sunday Obote, I knew for sure I was in the presence of the most vulnerable person I have ever met in my life. He had been kidnapped at age 7.

“He killed several hundred people. He used to eat lunch seated on the dead bodies of the enemy. How can a child survive that and go back to normality? He was gone for at least eight years with the rebel group. He forgot the face of his mother and father, what they looked like. He forgot what love is like.”

Obote was one of Joseph Kony’s bodyguards. He abducted beautiful women who would be forced to marry Kony. He was once beaten for bringing back a girl who was not pretty enough.

Now, Dunson and Obote correspond frequently and Dunson visits him when he annually returns to Uganda. Obote is a student now, not a soldier. He’s in fourth grade, though he’s in his early 20s.

There is some good news in Africa...

... but you will have a hard time finding it. Perhaps we're partly to blame.

The International Federation of Red Cross is so concerned about the negative press that Africa receives that they did a survey to get other opinions on press coverage.

The Red Cross thinks that press coverage on Africa is too focused on war, famine, poverty. So much so that positive developments are never reported on.

So the Red Cross wanted to see if other groups shared the same view. Our clip includes some quotes on what gives aid groups hope. Our clip comes from the Red Cross press release on the survey found on Relief Web.

Equally, respondents see hope in continued economic growth, democratization, nation building and accountability, as well as Africa's human capital, conflict resolution in some countries, regional cooperation and international support.

Officials cited economic growth over the past half decade, as well as rising income from resources and commodities, expansion in the private sector and market reforms.

On the political front, more than half the interviewees mentioned continuing democratization, new leadership, accountability, decentralization and Kenya's "return from the brink".

According to a British respondent: "…the conflict situation is better than it was five years ago. The political process is better…"

"There are a growing number of countries in Africa that are showing very good GDP (1) growth," said a US interviewee, "serving as examples of very market-oriented, democratic, secure countries that are improving the lives of their people."

A German official wished Africa could be "not just a producer of raw materials but also increasingly a processor" of them.

A Spanish interviewee's hope was to "get very basic social services all over…Africa" in the next five years.

To balance this post, here is the bad stuff. The people interviewed said the biggest challenges facing Africa are the crises in the Horn of Africa and Darfur and the Great Lakes, food insecurity, health issues and climate.

But lets face it. It's the bad stuff that sells the papers, or nowadays make you click on the headlines that will expose you to more ads.

Economic crisis on another kind pushing Pakistani's into poverty

Up until the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, we had a lot of links to stories from Pakistan news sources on this blog. But at the time of the killing we had concerns about the state of the free press in that country. So we instead only linked to stories about Pakistan.

This is all to say, that when we see a story about Pakistan in the western press we look at it with great interest, as a kind of catching up.

We haven't changed our policy on Pakistan's press since democracy came back to the country. I will have to look into it. But, it looks like democracy is having a real struggle there. A struggle that could push millions back into poverty in that county.


McClatchy newspapers has an update on the crisis in Pakistan, our snippet's come from the Miami Herald.

A worsening economic crisis in Pakistan is pushing millions more people into poverty, and experts fear that it could help Islamic extremists recruit new converts.

The crisis began early this year, as democracy was restored after more than eight years of military rule. Now Pakistan's hard currency reserves have shrunk to $3.5 billion, and without an international rescue package, America's key ally in the fight against al-Qaida is likely to default on foreign debt repayments in the next two months, economic experts said.

Inflation is running at 25 percent, according to official figures, electricity is in short supply, and Pakistan's currency, the rupee, has been devalued 25 percent against the dollar. Investor confidence has fallen so low that on Monday, police had to surround the Karachi Stock Exchange to protect it from angry investors. The Exchange already had lobbied the government unsuccessfully to be allowed to close for two weeks.

"In Pakistan, there are a huge proportion of people just above the poverty line. A slight shock in their income can push them below the poverty line," said Sadia Malik, director of the Mahbub ul Haq Human Development Center in Islamabad, the capital. "This is the kind of shock that would have pushed a huge number of people into the poverty trap."

The prices of wheat, rice and milk have more than doubled in the last year. The price of flour used to make roti bread, the food staple, has jumped from 12 rupees (15 cents) a kilo last year to 28 rupees (35 cents). Economists warn that prices would spiral even higher if Pakistan defaulted on its foreign debt.

Before the crisis, an estimated 56 million Pakistanis - around a third of the population - already were living below the poverty line, as measured by their daily caloric intake. Millions more are likely to have joined them now.

Of course, poverty breeds more terrorism. People are so angry that they are poor that begin to seek retribution for it. But it is exactly terrorism that is preventing foreign investment in the country. Investments that could help the crisis in Pakistan, and in turn, make the people better off. No ones going to put money in a country where that investment will get blown up.

Planning to provide water and sanitation in Asia

Money has been raised to help draw up plans for a major water and sanitation project.

The Asian Development Bank helped to pool together several loans to help fund the project. The total money that will be loaned is 1.5 million dollars.

The money will be used to draw up plans for water and sanitation for an area in Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam. As the local governments don't have the money to do a big project themselves.


200,000 people in 9 different towns will benefit from the project. The bank believes those towns could become tourism or transportation hubs when the right infrastructure is in place.

Again, this is just for drawing up the plans, I imagine more fund raising will have to be done to actually install the water works.

Here is a snippet from the ADB's press release that details the poor condition of the towns, and some more details about the project.

The towns identified for the planned project have high poverty levels and poor, or even non-existent, water supply and sanitation services. With improved infrastructure, they have the potential to develop into transport and tourism hubs.

The technical assistance will be used to determine the services needed for each town, the appropriate level of user charges, and the financial and technical capacity of participating public utilities and local governments, in order to design a project that is both realistic and sustainable.

At present, many local governments are unable to provide potable water and sanitation services 24 hours a day because of the high investment costs involved. At the same time, consumers face high tariffs that many cannot afford, or are unwilling to pay, making the rollout of new services financially unsustainable.

Major emphasis will also be given to improving sanitation services as few local governments in developing towns consider it a priority. Sanitation plans will be drawn up for each town, identifying cost-effective technologies, investment requirements, implementation and operating needs, and other actions needed to improve sanitation and promote hygiene.

Calls for debt relief amid the credit crisis

The organization Jubilee USA issued a statement yesterday that called on the international community to help Haiti and Liberia. The group says that delays in granting debt relief to the two countries have gone on long enough.

Jubilee USA asks the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund to act quickly, just as they did to help the banks with the credit crisis.

Here are some quotes from leaders of Jubilee USA, clipped from their blog Blog The Debt

Neil Watkins, National Coordinator of Jubilee USA Network, said: “After four hurricanes in a month and an escalating food crisis it is outrageous that Haiti is being told it must wait six more months for debt relief. This is like Hank Paulson telling Wall Street he will get back to them in the New Year.”

“Haiti has been dealing with multiple crises in recent months. As a result it is still spending $1 million a week on debt service while its people starve. As we’ve seen this month, when Wall Street bankers are affected, they get fast tracked for debt relief. But the people of Haiti don’t seem to matter very much in Washington. Haiti needs the immediate debt cancellation of its illegitimate debt that it has long been promised now,” said Watkins.

Nick Dearden, Director of Jubilee Debt Campaign UK, said: “Liberia has a large, illegitimate commercial debt burden and both the government and its creditors are ready to make a deal via the Debt Reduction Facility, but are being held up by delays in the World Bank bureaucracy. The people working on the DRF should stop crisis-watching on CNN and get on with releasing funds that will save people’s lives.”

“Liberia is on the front line of the global food crisis, and yet it is still being told it must wait until 2010 for debt relief to be delivered. In such a rapidly-changing world, the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries initiative is increasingly looking like an outdated process. It’s time for an urgent injection of political will to get some liquidity back into debt cancellation, and bail out the world’s poor from a mess they had no part in creating,” said Dearden.

Update on Michigan's Governor living on food stamps

Yesterday, we told you about the food stamp awareness scheme here in Michigan. Our Governor along with automotive executives have pledged to live on a budget of food stamps this week.

Instead of doing their usual shopping, 300 people have pledged to limit their food budget to only what food stamps can provide. It isn't much, only about $5.80 a day.

Here's is a quote from human services department chief Ismael Ahmed on how he is doing. We found this from Google's AFP news feed.

"It's my second day on 5.87 dollars a day," Ahmed told AFP by telephone. "I've already calculated that I'll be out of bread by Thursday."

Aid groups view on how the credit crisis effects them

A good story came out overnight about the major aid organizations worldwide and how the credit crisis will effect them.

Some groups have already starting cutting back on their efforts, while others don't know yet if it will effect donations.

All aid groups agree that this will trickle down to the poor at the bottom. The poor will have less help to fend of malnutrition, disease and more.

We boiled down our snippet to the actual reactions from the leaders of top aid organizations. But there is much more in this Associated Press article by Alexander Higgins. We came across the article from the Enquirer Herald website from Eastern New York.

Philippe Guiton of World Vision told The Associated Press that his agency plans to cut back hiring, which will have implications for delivering aid to the needy overseas.

"What we are going to do now is to issue an order to reduce spending, to delay recruitment, delay purchases of capital assets, etc., until we can see clearer how much our income has dropped," he said.
[..]
Robert Glasser, secretary-general of CARE International, said the agency has "a number of major donors who have invested heavily in the markets and have now seen their portfolios take a big hit."

What that will mean on the ground could take months or more to gauge - and perhaps years for a complete recovery, aid groups say.
[..]
In impoverished Haiti, funding for projects to rebuild from tropical storms that killed nearly 800 people and destroyed more than half the nation's agriculture hangs in the balance.

"It's too soon to tell yet because we haven't heard back positively or negatively from our major donors," Greg Elder, deputy head of programming for U.S-based Catholic Relief Services, said by telephone from the battered southern port of Les Cayes.

The group is waiting for word from the U.S. Agency for International Development on whether it will get $2 million for 10 new food-for-work projects, which provide Haitians with rations in exchange for building roads, irrigation systems and environmental projects.
[..]
Medecins Sans Frontieres, which runs AIDS clinics in the Cape Town township of Khayelitsha in South Africa, said it's "far too early" to determine the impact the crisis would have on donations.

"The money we're spending now was collected some time ago," said Henrik Glette, a South Africa-based spokesman for the group.
[..]
Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said "the increases in the budget we had hoped for will not be forthcoming."

Alan Bernstein, head of Global Vaccine Enterprise, said the financial meltdown is "not good news for research in general and vaccine research in particular."

1 in 7 Japanese Children live in Poverty

It's rare that we get this kind of story from Japan. Statistical stories are hard to find from Japan because their government doesn't keep official poverty figures. Part of the reason for not keeping the stats is because of the rapid growth Japan experienced since World War II.

So, from the group called Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, is the followinganalysis of child poverty in Japan. Our snippet comes from Kazuo Otsu of the Daily Yomiuri

According to statistics released by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, one out of every seven Japanese children under 17 lives in poverty.

Poverty has long been known to adversely effect children's health and education, but there also are concerns now that growing up in poverty tends to lock children into a cycle of poverty that leaves them economically disadvantaged all their lives.

According to a 2000 OECD survey, the child poverty rate in Japan stood at 14.3 percent, 2.2 percentage points higher than the average among developed nations and an increase of 2.3 percentage points from 10 years earlier.

WHO report calls for focus on basic health care

Good! The World Health Organization agrees with me.

I avoid medical care like the plague. It's dizzying, the amount of visits and tests you have to go thru just for one small thing. You see your doctor, then your referred to a specialist, then the specialist calls you back for tests, then again for more tests. Then finally your prescribed a drug that will give you unwanted side effects.

Well, the World Health Organization says that this is exactly the sort of thing that drives up costs in industrialized countries. Instead of going to the press release for this snippet, a Reuters article written by Laura MacInnis summed it up nicely.

Medical care in the rich world has also become dangerously fragmented, according to the report. It said front-line health workers ought to better assess patients' overall needs instead of referring them to costly specialists.

"This contributes to inefficiency, restricts access, and deprives patients of opportunities for comprehensive care," it said. "In far too many cases, people who are well-off and generally healthier have the best access to the best care, while the poor are left to fend for themselves."

Profit-driven care has also increased the use of unnecessary tests and procedures, prompted more frequent and longer hospital stays, driven up overall costs, and excluded those who cannot pay, the Geneva-based agency found.

Annual government spending on health worldwide varies from just $20 to more than $6,000 per person.

But lets get back on topic. The WHO also says that primary health care models can also help developing nations.

The WHO says with a focus being made on eliminating diseases like AIDS and malaria. The international community has forgotten to provide care for the poor with preventative medicine.

The difference in life expectancy between the richest and poorest countries still exceeds 40 years, said the report, whose launch coincided with a global financial crisis that could freeze aid flows and squeeze government budgets for health care.

Some 58 million of the 136 million women who will have babies this year will lack medical help during and after their births, it said.

Increasingly specialised and technical medicine in wealthy nations has also excluded and impoverished millions of patients, exposing failures of "laissez-faire" governance in health, according to WHO Director-General Margaret Chan.

And despite huge foreign aid sums earmarked for programmes fighting AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria, and other killer diseases in developing countries, the WHO said quality care remained scarce outside of those specific areas.

"Disproportionate investment in a limited number of disease programmes considered as global priorities in countries that are dependent on external support has diverted the limited energies of ministries of health away from their primary role," it said.

The full report can be downloaded and read by using this link.

Stand Up Against Poverty: October 17th - 19

Dont forget! I almost did!

Hundreds of events are taking place around the world this weekend, hoping to catch the eye of world leaders. "Stand Up Against Poverty" is a global effort that invites people to do something, it's better than sitting down.

There is a couple of differences form this year event from the past. Events will be during the entire span of the weekend instead of one day. Also, the events will invite people to take action such as sending letters to your government, organizing teach-ins, distributing books or other educational materials.

To find an event near you hit their website.A click thru map of the world will your guide to an event near you.

In our home state of Michigan "Stand Up"s are in Brighton, Ann Arbor, Grand Rapids, Big Rapids, and Holland. I will have to do a little driving this weekend...

Global Hunger Index Released

It should go without saying, but hunger is closely tied to poverty. There are many hungry people in middle to low income countries. A report released today gauges the number of hungry thought the world.

The International Food Policy Research Institute says that thirty three countries have dangerously high levels of hunger.

The report is unable to take into account the current food price crisis, as the statistics used only go up to the year 2006. Which is the last year available.

Also, the report does not rank industrialized nations.

The five least hungry countries were Mauritius, Jamaica, Moldova, Cuba and Peru. While the hungriest were Democratic Republic of Congo, followed by Eritrea, Burundi, Niger, Sierra Leone.

You can download and view the full report here.

Here is more from the organizations press release. Our snippet also includes some police changes the institute suggests.

The Index measures global hunger by ranking countries on three leading indicators and combining them into one index. The three indicators are prevalence of child malnutrition, rates of child mortality, and the proportion of people who are calorie deficient.

In the nearly two decades since 1990, some regions—South and Southeast Asia, the Near East and North Africa, and Latin America and the Caribbean—have made major headway in improving food security. But South Asia still suffers from high levels of hunger, along with Sub-Saharan Africa. While South Asia has made significant strides since 1990, progress in Sub-Saharan Africa has been minimal.

In South Asia, the major problem is a high prevalence of underweight in children under five, resulting largely from the lower nutritional and educational status of women, poor nutrition and health programs, and inadequate water and sanitation services. In contrast, the poor performance of Sub-Saharan Africa is due to high rates of child mortality and a large proportion of people who cannot meet their calorie requirements. Government ineffectiveness, conflict, and political instability, as well as high rates of HIV/AIDS, have driven these two indicators in the region.

To address the current food crisis and improve the long-term functioning of the world food system, IFPRI recommends three areas for high-priority policy actions:

1. Productivity and Research: undertake fast-impact food production programs in key areas and scale up investments for sustained agricultural productivity, including agricultural science policy and appropriate finance.
2. Nutrition and Social Protection: expand emergency responses and humanitarian assistance to food-insecure people and invest in social protection for nutritional improvement.
3. Markets and Trade: eliminate agricultural trade restrictions and facilitate rule-based and fair global and regional trade openness; change biofuel policies; support market-oriented regulation of speculation, and implement innovative virtual grain reserve policies.

IFPRI estimates that the additional global public investment required to overcome the food crisis, and still meet the first Millennium Development Goal of halving poverty and hunger by 2015, is at least US$14 billion per annum. For Sub-Saharan Africa, the annual additional investment is estimated to be about US$5 billion, if African governments fulfill their commitment to invest 10 percent of their national budgets to agriculture.

The Working Poor in America: Still Falling Behind

The Working Poor Families Project releases a new report on the state of the working poor in America.

It includes an update on their state by state ranking of low income families. This year, New Hampshire fared the best with only 15% of the state's families being working poor. Maryland and Connecticut tied for second.

On the other end of the spectrum, New Mexico was last with 41%. Mississippi was next to last.

You can download and view the entire report here.

Here is more from the project, as stated in their press release.

“Still Working Hard, Still Falling Short,” a follow-up to the 2004 report “Working Hard, Falling Short,” found that an additional 350,000 working families were low-income in 2006 compared to 2002. The report also found increasing income inequality, with a widening gap between the share of income the highest-earning families receive and that earned by the least affluent. This increase in income disparity and in the number of low-income working families came during a period of economic expansion, suggesting that those numbers will continue to grow during this economic downturn.

“Understandably, all eyes today are focused on the financial and economic crisis affecting America’s working families,” said Brandon Roberts, report author. “But the stark reality is that America’s working families have been in economic crisis long before this year.”

“Low-income working families pay a higher percentage of their income for housing than other working families and are far less likely to have health insurance,” according to the report. “At the same time, low-income working families work hard. Adults in low-income working families worked an average of 2,552 hours per year in 2006, the equivalent of almost one and a quarter full-time workers per family.”

Inadequate education plays a major role in preventing low-income workers from climbing the economic ladder, the report found. While almost half of all job openings require more than a high school education, 88 million adult workers are not prepared for these positions. According to the report, federal and state resources for adult education or skills development programs meet only about one-tenth of the need.
Additional report findings include:

* In 13 states, 33 percent or more of working families are low-income, while in Mississippi and New Mexico, more than 40 percent of working families are low-income.

* In 2006, California and Texas had more that a million low-income working families, while Florida and New York each had more than half a million.

* In 13 states, 50 percent or more of minority working families are low-income.

* Nationally, more than one in five jobs – 22 percent – pays wages that fall below the federal poverty threshold. In eight states, more than a third of all jobs are in poverty-wage occupations.

UN Secretary General on the Credit Crisis

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon issued a statement Monday, expressing alarm that the poor nations will be neglected in the global credit crisis.

Our snippet of Ki-Moon's statement comes from a story in the Teipei Times

“I am deeply concerned about the impact of this crisis on the developing world, particularly on the poorest of the poor and the serious setback this is likely to have on efforts to meet major goals,” he said in a statement.

Ban added that while initiatives by the World Bank and the IMF to provide new emergency liquidity provisioning to poor nations could help them counteract some of the effects of the crisis, “more needs to be done.”

In his statement on Monday, the UN secretary general also stressed the need “to consider urgent multilateral action to alleviate the impact of recent events on the development agenda of the organization.”

He singled out the implementation of anti-poverty Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by a 2015 deadline, the food and energy crises as well as the challenges of climate change.

The next big meeting for the international community comes next month. A "finance for development" conference will give leaders a chance to take up this subject. Hopefully, they will have time for that world trade pact as well.

Food Stamp challenge in Michigan

This ought to be good.

Again, showing my bias to stories in my home state. Here is one I found about our governor and executives from the big 3 American automakers. They have pledged to limit their grocery bills to only what you can afford to buy on Food stamps.

Good Luck! In Michigan food stamps only get you $5.70 worth of food a day.

I was unable to find any actual quotes or stories about automotive executives coming to the realization that they would have to live on ramen noodles or anything. But found this from the Traverse City Record Eagle about one who volunteered for the challenge. Lindsay Vanhulle introduces us to her.

Valerie Shultz hasn't yet planned how she will prepare food next week for her family of three.

She'll only have about $30 a person to spend on five days' worth of meals, and these days, a dollar doesn't stretch far.

Shultz, of Cadillac, signed up for the Food Stamp Challenge, a statewide simulation project that will allow participants to learn what life is like for the thousands of Michigan citizens who receive food assistance.

At least for a week.

"I just wanted to see how it would be if we had to live on food stamps," Shultz said. "It's going to be a challenge."

Starting Monday, participants will have no more than $29.35 per person to purchase and prepare meals through Friday. That breaks down to $5.87 per person, per day.

The goal isn't just for participants to view the lives of the region's poor from a new perspective. The hope is that it also will boost donations to area food pantries.

Our state govenment has set up this website to give us more info on the challenge.

Walking Barefoot

Here's a unique fundraiser. A man is going to walk barefoot from Charlotte to Atlanta to raise money for shoes for African Children. The fundraiser is for the organization Samaritans Feet.

This snippet comes from the charity's press release. Guess what? A shoe company is the sponsor.

Fila is delighted to partner with Samaritan's Feet in its efforts to distribute footwear to people in need around the world. World Walk is a "barefoot walk" in which Samaritan's Feet founder, Emmanuel(Manny) Ohonme will complete a 300 mile walk in his bare feet to raise awareness and support for themore than 300 million children globally who have never owned a pair of shoes.

At the conclusion of the NASCAR Track Walk at Lowe's Motor Speedway in Charlotte on October 11th, Samaritan's Feet Founder Emmanuel Ohonme (Manny) will walk in his bare feet to Atlanta to kick off the "World Walk." Simultaneously, walkers will join across the globe on October 25th in a "simul-walk" to be orchestrated in more than 25 countries served by the Samaritan's Feet ministry. He will conclude at the Atlanta Motor Speedway on October 26th.

The goal is to raise $1,000,000 and 300,000 pairs of shoes during his 300 mile journey. Manny will stop at historic sites throughout his journey recognizing political figures and citizens who have changed our country for the better. Samaritan's Feet will also coordinate shoe distributions throughout our journey.

The Credit Crisis Will it Reach Africa?

Reuters has a great wide ranging analysis on the credit crisis. The article compiles different viewpoints and opinions on how it will effect Africa.

One side is of the opinion that it will not hurt Africa much because banking systems are under developed in the continent. The other side says the monies being used to bail out banks will cause cut backs in aid.

Writer Pascal Fletcher has within this story a breakdown from Oxfam on how the $700 billion dollars could have been used to help Africa. The $700 billion dollar figure is the amount that the US government used to bail out the banking system here in the states.

from Reuters

Oxfam GB has drawn up figures showing just how far $700 billion earmarked by the U.S government for a financial rescue plan could go in helping to solve the poor world's problems.

It says this is enough to eradicate all world poverty for over two years, based on a United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) calculation that it would take $300 billion to get the entire global population over the $1 a day poverty line.

The $700 billion could clear -- almost twice over -- the $375 billion accumulated debt of the world's 49 poorest nations.

According to Oxfam, the U.S. bailout figure is worth about 7 years of annual global aid levels ($104 billion in 2007).

The United States is also planning to inject $250 billion into its banks following European rescue pledges totalling more than $1.3 trillion.

Interview with Robert Zoellick

Ethiopia Parliament Drafts Proposal to make NGO Activities Illegal

This sort of thing happens in volatile countries: An NGO gives aid to poor people who may or may not be associated with a rebel force. Then the government kicks the NGO out for aiding the enemy.

Last Year, the International Red Cross was kicked out of Ethiopia for allegedly giving aid to rebel forces in the country.

Now, the parliament is about to vote on a law that will make many NGO activities illegal.

Peter Heinlein from theVoice of America details the proposal and reaction from Human Rights Watch.

Ethiopian officials have told western diplomats that parliament will approve a proposed Charities and Societies Proclamation within weeks. The bill would give the government supervisory powers over non-governmental organizations that receive at least 10 percent foreign funding, including money from Ethiopians living abroad.

The text before lawmakers prohibits such NGOs from promoting democratic or human rights, the rights of children and the disabled, and equality of gender or religion. Violators could face up to 15 years in prison and fines up to $10,000.

Foreign NGOs have reacted with alarm to the bill, saying it could make it impossible for them to operate in Ethiopia. A group of ambassadors in Addis Ababa recently warned Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi that passage of the Charities and Societies Proclamation could mean the loss of untold millions of dollars in desperately needed aid.

The organization Human Rights Watch issued a statement urging Ethiopia's lawmakers to reject the bill, calling it 'repressive'. But the leader of an opposition parliament faction, Bulcha Demeksa, said he and like-minded lawmakers are powerless to stop it in the face of an overwhelming ruling-party majority. "The government is going to silence the NGOs and their leadership when they speak about human rights, when they spoke about democratic rights, when they spoke about giving democratic education to the citizens."

He continued, "The government does not like it, that is why the government wants to silence them, and I am very sorry about it, I am very hurt about it. I wish I could do something about it, because practically all the NGOs are doing something good for this country."

Opposition parties in the Ethiopia government are a small minority and will not be able to stop this from being a law.

3 Countries Combine Forces to Investigate Trafficking of Women

India Singapore and Malaysia are all investigating a sex slave trafficking circuit.

Slavery is one of the many social ills caused by poverty. Women from North East India are lured to the big cities with the promise of good jobs. Instead the women are forced to be strippers or prostitutes.

Here is a story about the same sex slave trade that we posted last week.

The Times of India updates the investigation.

The probe comes in the wake of an incident in which five tribal girls from Manipur and Assam, who were taken by an agent to Singapore on the pretext of getting them jobs there, were sent to Malaysia and pushed into flesh trade.

One of the girls managed to escape and alerted a pastor who got help from an NGO.

All the five were housed in the David Pasteur Christian Home for destitutes here, which linked up with social activist Kinderson Panmei.

Minister for Overseas Affairs Vyalar Ravi, currently on an official visit here, has said that his ministry has decided to immediately crack down on dubious recruitment agents and as a first step would suspend the agency on the receipt of any report against them and then start an enquiry against them.

He said his ministry had helped in the repatriation of the women back home last Friday.

One of the agents involved in the incident has been arrested in Manipur in India while one is on the run in Kolkata. Ravi has said that there were plans to amend the existing Immigration Act and recruitment agents duping people would be sentenced to a minimum of five years imprisonment. Manipur police are believed to have made several arrests in connection with the case of agents luring girls to this region, local media reports said.

Singapore and Malaysian police are believed to be hot on the trail of another man, believed to be the mastermind of a Singapore-based "recruiting firm", New Straits Times reported on Monday.

Family breakups in Australia

A new study compiled by the Australian government examines the number of jobless families in the country. The study shows how many children are living with parents who don't have work. This is especially concerning in Australia where there are a number of jobless without any welfare benefits.

Carol Nader, a writer for the Australian newspaper The Age gives us the numbers.

from The Age

Family breakdown is contributing to child poverty and 13% of children are living in households without a parent in employment, a Federal Government report says.

The proportion of children living in jobless households is "relatively high", according to the Australian Institute of Family Studies report.

It says there has been only a slow decline in the number of jobless households over the past decade, from 18% in 1983 to 13% in 2007, despite the strength of the economy over that period.

And with the current economic situation uncertain, there are fears the proportion of jobless families may start to grow.

In Australia, about half of all single parents are employed, compared to an OECD average of 70.6%. The report says this highlights the role that family breakdown plays in putting children at risk of poverty.

Assuring Developing Countries

Officials of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund went on record to say that developing countries will not be forgotten during the credit crisis.

from Radio Australia

World Bank head Robert Zoellick says they will not allow the crisis to put recent economic gains in the developing world at risk.

He says governments must not reject commitments to boost overseas assistance to meet the Millennium Development Goals.

IMF head, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, says the financial crisis adds to the existing problems of rising food and energy prices in poor countries.

The banking system in poorer countries could face volatility because of links with banks in the developed world which have been pushed to the brink by the crisis destroying their capital.

We will do some extra searching today to see if we can find any stories of countries going back on aid commitments. After an initial look, at the headlines i haven't seen any yet. But, I'm afraid is about to start happening.

How the global credit crunch will effect Africa

The International Monetary Fund released a statement yesterday on how the global credit crisis will effect Africa. We have heard plenty of how the rising prices of food and fuel have reversed gains on poverty reduction on the continent. Now the number crunchers are starting to analise how this credit crisis will hurt poverty efforts.

This snippet comes from a press release from the International Monetary Fund. The press release helps to promote a report that the fund release on the subject. The quote is from Ms. Antoinette Sayeh, Director of the IMF's African Department.

from the International Monetary Fund

"The worsening macroeconomic situation reflects headwinds from strong increases in food and fuel prices, slower world growth, and global financial turmoil. So far, the main effects of the global financial turmoil appear to be indirect, in the form of slower global growth and volatile commodity prices. Recent heightened turbulence raises the risks, including of a decline in resource flows to Africa in the form of private capital, remittances, and even aid.

"The food and fuel price shock has put upward pressure on inflation and current account deficits. Further, donor support has not risen to cover the larger import bills caused by the price shock, leaving the adjustment to domestic resources. Foreign exchange reserves have held up fairly well so far but cannot be expected to absorb the long-term consequences of the food and fuel price shock. High volatility means that the situation is changing rapidly, but these concerns remain valid for many countries in spite of the recent easing of oil and food prices. In a number of countries, adjustment to higher price levels is not yet complete, and inflationary pressures may still be present.

"The challenge for policymakers is to adjust to the food and fuel price shock, preserve economic stability in the face of global financial turbulence, and shield the poor. With food and fuel prices substantially off recent peaks, it should be easier to fully pass through higher prices to the economy to encourage adjustment. With food accounting for a major part of household expenditure, the resulting loss in the purchasing power of the poor is a serious concern. Measures to cushion the impact of higher food and fuel prices on the poor therefore need to be well targeted—and also supported by donors. For oil exporters a particular challenge is to preserve a medium-term perspective; caution use of oil revenue windfalls permits smoothing of fiscal spending in the face of price declines as well.

Tis the season to walk

Each autumn season in the states many CROP walks are held thought the country. CROP stands for Communities Responding to Overcome Poverty. The program is from the World Church Service, who uses the CROP walks to raise funds for their hunger efforts. A quarter of the funds stay in the local community.

During the autumn we come across quite a few mentions of CROP walks in our daily searching for news items. So,I figured I would combine the couple I found yesterday into one post.

First, One that is taking place in the Carolinas. Amy Clarke writes for the Greenville News.

from the Greenville Times

The 23rd annual Clemson-area CROP Walk will kick off with registration at 2 p.m. Sunday at St. Andrew's Catholic Church. Walkers will set out at 2:30 p.m. Two routes are available -- a 1-mile waterfront stroll, ideal for families, and a 4.5-mile walk around the campus.

Walk coordinator Laura Shick said the walk is about "not just trying to be a handout but the hand up. We address the immediate needs of the hungry, but (also) how can we help people so that they aren't hungry."

Clemson Community Care and Golden Corners Food Bank have helped coordinate the walk and will be local recipients.

Shick said that in celebration of the 23rd annual walk, organizers are using the number 23 as a theme, drawing on the message of the 23rd Psalm.

"We're taking that theme of 'I shall not want' and saying there are a lot of people who in this area who do want," she said.

And some details of one taking place in Maine.

from the Seacoast Online

Residents of York and nearby communities are invited to participate in a four-mile walk to raise funds for the hungry and needy around the world at 1:30 p.m., on Sunday, Oct. 19.

The walk begins and ends at St. George's Church and loops through the village. There will be at least three water stations along the way and a van will follow the walkers to pick up individuals who want to ride back to St. George's.

At 4 p.m., St. George's will hold a U2charist, a ministry with the theme of ending world poverty. A portion of the donations received in the U2charist will support the CROP Hunger Walk. Registration for the CROP Hunger Walk is at 1 p.m. at St. George's Church. Prior to Oct. 19, registration forms will be available at the local churches that are sponsoring the CROP Hunger Walk.

Christian Children's Fund expands work in Cambodia

Cambodia has been in the news a lot recently. It's a country where 1 in 3 people live in poverty. On top of that, the nation's poverty line is quite low, only 45 cents a day.

The World Bank recently announced emergency aid to the country to combat rising prices of everything. Now, aid organizations follow suit. Christian Children's Fund has announced a new project that is in cooperation with Australia's Child Fund. The snippet comes from their press release.

from Christian Children's Fund

The project, which officially launched Oct. 8, is in the Svay Yea Community Development in the Svay Chrum district of Svay Rieng province, 78 miles from Cambodia’s capital.

About 92 percent of the area’s households live without toilets and more than 43 percent have to boil water before using it for drinking. More than 61,000, or nearly 40 percent, of Svay Chrum’s population is under the age of 17. Less than 50 percent of pre-school aged children attend kindergarten.

To help combat this, the new program includes constructing primary schools. Kindergartens will be established at each community-based primary school. Teachers will be locally recruited, mentored and trained.

Svay Yea Community Development will establish child clubs to give children life skills training and opportunities to explore and develop their sporting, cultural, musical and artistic talents. Children and youth will receive leadership training to increase their voice in their community.

Christian Children's Fund is another one of our favorite NGO's Here is a link to their website.

College clubs for Microfinance, what a concept!

Now here is a great idea! Clubs devoted to Microcredit are springing up on college campuses. And what better place to have such a club than in a higher learning institution, much better than a rugby club if you ask me.

All kidding aside, the newspaper for Northwestern University profiled the campus Microfinance club. Emily Wray detailed the club's goals.

Traveling to rural areas of Africa and India. Starting banks in small villages. Finding ways to fund local education and health care.

These are just a few of the goals of Northwestern's Microfinance Club.

Microfinance provides small loans for low-income people in underdeveloped countries so that they can work their way out of poverty, said Jesse Wiener, a member of the club's executive board.

The Microfinance Club hopes to increase student awareness of microfinance as a tool to alleviate poverty in developing nations. To achieve its mission, the club is seeking to organize open forums between students and faculty and to provide students with educational resources, including opportunities for research and independent study.

"Microfinance is a way for people like us to really help change the quality of life of people in underdeveloped countries," said Wiener, a Weinberg sophomore.

Right now, the club is working to raise $5,000 to start a village bank in Malawi. They hope to send members there one day to gain firsthand microfinance experience and to see the impact of their efforts on the community.

This club stuff had me curious since it was a new concept to me.A quick web search found a few similar clubs thought the states. We even found a how to document on how to start one at a campus near you.

Western Kentucky Bus stop for the One Campaign

The One campaign is doing a bus tour during the U.S election. The tour's purpose is to raise awareness of the issues of poverty, and to try to put pressure on the candidates to make poverty issues a priority.

The tour stop was part of a prize from the One organization. The students of WKU won by collecting more signatures than any other in a petition to be given to both the candidates.

Bowling Green Daily News writer Joanie Baker introduces us to one of the bus riders.

from the Bowling Green Daily News

Megan Schweizer took two months off from her job in Louisville to do something for which most people would go to jail.

After learning about the One Campaign organization three years ago at the University of Louisville, Schweizer became an active member in spreading the word to politicians on issues such as extreme poverty and global health.

This year, Schweizer "jumped on the bus," and joined several others across the country in touring the United States in an 18-wheeler to remind future leaders of the country about issues that could impact the world.

After spending the night in Nashville during the presidential debate Tuesday, the giant black bus plastered with One Vote 08's issues arrived on Western Kentucky University's campus.

Students were asked to sign the One Declaration, stating they believe in helping others help themselves and recognize the impact this country can have on global affairs.

As staff members handed out white One bracelets, Schweizer said Western was chosen as a campus stop after the university won the national Campus Challenge last year. Western beat more than 1,500 schools taking part in the initiative by collecting more than 3,000 student signatures.

Also, I always try to mention any fund raising events I come across, this same article also promoted a "Stand In" event coming up next week.

On Oct. 17, Western students will be challenged to attempt to live on $2 a day as part of Stand Up Kentucky. In coordination with Americans for Informed Democracy at Western, the event will bring together everyone who is trying to live like many impoverished people do worldwide in an effort to take a stand against global poverty.

"We're trying to break the Guinness World Record for having the most people standing up for a single cause," Harris said.

Fifty million people around the world are expected to take part in the international day of action for the eradication of poverty.

Events at Western will begin at 6 p.m. at the Ivan Wilson Fine Arts Center Amphitheater.

-- For more information, visit www.wkuaid.org/standup.

The One's web page on the bus tour has neat multimedia offerings on the tour. Including video, pictures and blog posts.

Getting Specific on who's hurting with rising costs.

Yes, the rising cost of food and fuel have hurt the whole world, even you and me. In fact, the big banks have said that the increases will push another 100 million into poverty.

With meetings going on now with would financial leaders, lots of reports are beeing issued. This one caught our eye, that names specific countries that are the feeling the effects the worse.

from Reuters

Among the "fiscally vulnerable" countries are Jordan, Cambodia, Lebanon, Jamaica, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Tajikistan, Madagascar, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Rwanda, Malawi, Ivory Coast, Eritrea, Fiji, Haiti, Seychelles and Mauritania.


The report, published ahead of weekend International Monetary Fund and World Bank meetings of finance and development ministers, said many of these countries had little or no room to take on new debt to afford the higher prices.

It said resource-rich developing countries had the means to cushion the current account impact of costlier food and fuel. But inflation is rising and they could be afflicted by "Dutch disease," a phenomenon in which high revenues from natural resources lead to a strengthening of a currency.

"Over recent weeks, attention has focused on the size of financial package, and on the impact on Main Street," Zoellick told a news conference ahead of the meetings.

"There are Main Streets all over the world. We must look beyond the financial rescue to the human rescue," he added.

Putting Sudan in charge?

Last week, we posted a story about comments from the president of Sudan, Omar al-Bashir. Yes, the same one who is committing genocide to the people in Darfur. I thought it was weird that he would show his face in a summit, and make charges against the international community. I also thought it was weird that he was the chair of this group's summit.

We found this commentary on the international community turning a blind eye to the killings in Sudan. In fact, the international groups still put this killer in charge of things. And some very important things at that.

from The New Republic

But the largest and most influential group of developing nations has added an ill-considered and wholly gratuitous burden to the challenges of the MDG: they have selected the Sudan government, which continues to perpetrate genocide in Darfur in front of the eyes of the world, to be their chair in the coming year. The "Group of 77," as it's known, made this extraordinary decision at the very moment the General Assembly and the U.N. Secretariat were highlighting a number of discouraging shortfalls in MDG progress. The Group of 77 now has 130 members (77 was the number at its inception in 1964), including virtually every African nation. Since it was the African countries' turn to pick the chair of the organization, and since the selection of Sudan was supported by China, the outcome--however outrageous--is hardly surprising. Strong support from the member states of the Organization of the Islamic Conference helped ensured Khartoum's diplomatic victory. The selection of the National Islamic Front regime as chair is no mere symbolic exercise, though the symbolism of the choice is intensely dispiriting. For it comes at a time when the head of the regime faces a likely arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court---for crimes against humanity and for genocide in Darfur.

Forced marriages in Botswana

Although teenage pregnancy does not doom one to a life of poverty. It does make it harder, and when your in a developing country it could be next to impossible.

In the country of Botswana teenage pregnancies and forced marriages are widespread. Sometimes teenage pregnancies can involve teachers impregnating students.

A workshop in Botswana put on by the Women’s Affairs Department issues a statement of the effect of this social ill.

from theDaily News Online Botswana

An official from the Botswana National Productivity Centre (BNYC), Mr Emmanuel Galeboe, said there was an alarming rate of inter generational sex in the region, which also leads to impoverishment of the girl child.

He said most of the young people involved in this cross generation sex end up either pregnant or infected with the HIV.

Since the beginning of the year, close to 1 200 have dropped out of school because of pregnancy in the Ngamiland region.

One participant, Ms Magrate Mhlanga, said some cultures in northern Botswana were known to practice under-age marriages, where girls were forced out of school to be married by older men.

“This issue needs to be addresses, but I don’t know how,” she said.

Most of those married at young ages become subjects of their husbands and do not participate in any decision making regarding the family.

U.N. Secretary talks drug firms into investing more into AIDS research.

Drug companies worldwide have long been critisized for not investing into research and development on drugs that would help the ills of the third world. Instead of finding medicines for malaria, tuberculosis and AIDS, a lot of money goes into curing erectile dysfunction or high cholesterol.

U. N. Secretary Ban Ki-Moon recently met with leaders of drug companies such as Abbott Labs, GlaxoSmithKline and others. Moon's aim is to increase access to drugs for developing countries. Which is one of the Millenium Development Goals. This Reuters article details the pledge from the drug companies.

from Reuters

The companies also agreed to invest more in prevention, including vaccines and pre- and post-exposure prophylaxis, Ban said in a statement issued after he met with top executives at pharmaceutical and diagnostic firms working on AIDS and HIV, the virus that causes it.

"We noted that despite the gains, the epidemic continues to outstrip our best efforts. Only one-third of those who need antiretroviral treatment in low-and middle-income countries are getting it," he said.

"Each day, for every two people who are placed on antiretroviral treatment, five more are infected. Collectively, we still have more work to do."

Ban said the companies agreed to "invest further in research and development of new HIV-related medicines adapted to resource-limited settings to be used safely in children, adolescents, adults and pregnant women" -- in other words, to try to make drugs available to people in poor environments.

Decoding of malaria parasite's genome could lead to vaccine

from USA Today

By Steve Sternberg,

Scientists have unraveled the genetic code of a malaria parasite that sickens hundreds of millions of people each year, a step that may lead to better treatment and a vaccine.

The bug, known to researchers as Plasmodium vivax, is the main cause of malaria in Latin America and Southeast Asia, accounting for as much as 40% of up to 500 million cases worldwide each year. It was once entrenched in the USA. In 2002, a small cluster of cases were reported in Loudoun County, Va., near Washington, D.C.

The mosquito-borne parasite doesn't arouse the same level of scientific concern as its African cousin, Plasmodium falciparum, because it rarely kills. Falciparum malaria, found in Africa, is the leading cause of death of children younger than 5.

But vivax malaria is, in its own way, as much a scourge as the African variety. Like falciparum malaria, it causes excruciating spells of recurrent disease, with high fever, chills, body aches, diarrhea, nausea, vomiting and anemia.

"It makes people very sick," says lead researcher Jane Carlton, of New York University's Langone Medical Center. "It can come out of the liver weeks or months after the initial mosquito bite. That makes it a very serious risk to human health."

Vivax malaria is so debilitating that sufferers, most of whom are poor, can't support themselves or their families. "Vivax is one of the stealth reasons that poor people can't escape poverty," says Peter Hotez, president of the Sabin Vaccine Institute at George Washington University and an expert in tropical diseases.

The research, out today in the journal Nature, reflects a growing effort to roll back the disease. Six years ago, scientists in Britain and the USA reported that they had deciphered the genetic code of falciparum malaria. On Wednesday, two teams of researchers reported that they had also decoded vivax and Plasmodium knowlesi, a malaria parasite found mostly in monkeys and first diagnosed in a human 40 years ago.

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Malaysian Province leader Penang aims to eradicate hardcore poverty by March

from the Malaysian Star

By M. SIVANANTHA SHARMA

BUTTERWORTH: The state government aims to eradicate hardcore poor families in Penang by March next year.

Deputy Chief Minister II Dr P. Ramasamy has urged state assemblymen to identify such families in their respective areas for the state Welfare Department to compile the exact statistic.

He added the state had up to now, registered more than 350 families in the hardcore poor category and efforts were being made to identify more.

“If everything goes as planned there will be no more hardcore poor family in the state by March. Once this mission is achieved, Penang will be the first state in the country to absolutely wipe out poverty,” he said Wednesday at the Deepavali Charity Cultural show at Dewan Sree Maha Mariamman Temple at Jalan Mengkuang here.

He also said the improved quality of life would also help reduce the crime rate in the state.

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Global poverty distribution - infant mortality as poverty indicator

from the United Nations Environment Programme

Parents' status tied to health of child

from Tulsa World

by Kim Archer

The mortality rate for infants of Oklahoma high school dropouts is nearly double the rate for children of mothers who completed college, a new national study states.

Released by the nonprofit Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the study is the first of its kind to link child health to a parent's income and educational level, said Dr. Paula Braveman, one of the study's authors.

"What may be most startling to pople is that middle-class children also fare worse than children in wealthy families," she said during a media teleconference this week.

Overall, the general health of Oklahoma children in every income or education group did not meet the national benchmark, the report said.

The findings don't surprise Jan Figart, associate director of Tulsa's Community Service Council.

"The relationship between poor child health status and high poverty and low education of the mother has been known for some time," she said.
According to the report, nearly half of Oklahoma children live in poor or near-poor households. A third live in middle-income households, and one-fifth live in high-income households, the report said.

Oklahoma was ranked as having the 40th-largest gap in the country between infant mortality and the mother's education.

In other words, the state's infant mortality rate among the least-educated mothers is 7.6 deaths per 1,000 live births, higher than the 4.7 deaths per 1,000 live births among the most-educated mothers, the report said. The national benchmark is 3.2 deaths per 1,000 live births, it said.

Oklahoma ranked as having the 34th-largest gap between child health and family income among states. Among lower-income Oklahoma families, 13.7 percent of children have lower than optimal health, while 5.3 percent of children in higher-income families have less than optimal health, the report said.

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[Obituary] J Earl Williams, ex-UH prof, War on Poverty recruit

from the Houston Chronicle

By LYNWOOD ABRAM

J. Earl Williams, a former professor of economics at the University of Houston main campus and a leader in the War on Poverty during the 1960s, died Wednesday in a Houston nursing home. He was 86.

An authority on vocational education, Williams figured in establishing the Houston Community College system, said James Noland, a friend and former colleague at UH.

In the 1960s, Williams was director of the manpower division of the now-defunct Office of Economic Opportunity, which oversaw the programs of the War on Poverty.

"Earl will be remembered for his independent mind, friendly spirit and uncanny wit," Noland said. "He worked to further democratic opportunities, sponsoring anti-poverty programs to banish injustice, increase equality and enhance dignity through vocational and technical education."

James Earl Williams was born on July 16, 1922, in Fonde, Ky., the son of Hobert Williams, a coal miner, and Beatrice Dephonis Seal Williams.

In 1940, Earl Williams graduated from Knoxville High School. He enlisted in the Marine Corps in 1941, and served as an enlisted man in the Pacific theater during World War II.

After the war, Williams graduated with a degree in economics and political science from Carson-Newman College in Jefferson City, Tenn., completing the four-year course in 2 1/2 years, said his wife, Marjorie Hybarger Williams.

Williams also earned a master's degree in economics from the University of Tennessee at Knoxville and a doctorate in economics from the University of Wisconsin at Madison.

He later returned to the University of Tennessee to take part in a study of economic conditions in Appalachia.

Before joining UH in 1966, Williams taught at Austin Peay College at Clarksville, Tenn., and the University of Tennessee at Knoxville.

At UH, Williams taught on the graduate level and headed the university's Center for Human Resources.

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Canada ‘ punching below’ its weight in aid — McKenna

from the Chronicle Herald

By STEVE BRUCE

Canada has fallen behind too many other nations in providing aid to developing countries, Frank McKenna says.

"I would like to see us stop punching below our weight," the former Liberal premier of New Brunswick and Canadian ambassador to the United States told a Halifax dinner Wednesday night.

Mr. McKenna said Canada dedicates only 0.28 per cent of its budget to helping developing countries.

"That’s half of what we gave in the early 1990s," he said at a benefit dinner for the Coady International Institute in Antigonish.

"More, much more, has been given by everybody from Norway to Sweden to Finland to Denmark to Ireland to Switzerland to Luxembourg to Austria, Spain, Australia, Spain — do you get the picture?

"A lot of countries in the world give more than we do and they all have the same thing in common. They’re far less affluent than we are in Canada.

"We are wealthier than virtually all other nations in the world and yet we don’t seem to have it in our DNA to strive to reach the highest level of giving."

Mr. McKenna, deputy chairman of the TD Bank Financial Group, said looking at the figures on world poverty is "mind-numbing."

He said at least 80 per cent of humanity lives on less than $10 a day and more than a billion people live on less than $1 per day.

"More than nine million die every year because they’re just too poor to stay alive," he said.

"Of 1.9 billion children in the developing world, there are 620 million without adequate shelter, 400 million with no access to safe water and 270 million with no access to health service.

"And according to UNICEF, close to 30,000 children die every day because of poverty."

Meanwhile, Americans spend $8 billion a year on cosmetics, Europeans fork out $50 billion on cigarettes and the Japanese spend $35 billion on business entertainment.

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High cost of fertiliser threatens harvest in Myanmar

from IRIN News

DAYDAYE, 7 October 2008 (IRIN) - With many farmers in Myanmar's cyclone-affected areas unable to prepare their fields in time, many planted high yielding rice varieties (HYVs), which have a shorter growth period than traditional types.

HYVs generally take around three months to mature, and with this year's rice planting season over at end-July, farmers can expect to harvest in late October or early November.

Traditional rice takes longer than HYVs and is generally harvested in late November or December, depending on planting time.

However, according to specialists, only with the appropriate fertiliser use can farmers fully benefit from the potential of the high yielding varieties.

Traditional local rice varieties generally have a lower yield potential and are often grown without much fertiliser.

Fertiliser in the cyclone-affected rice farming areas of Myanmar costs around $21 per 50kg bag, but $15 in Yangon. Damaged roads have driven up transport costs.

In addition, local fertiliser dealers refuse to sell on credit, unconvinced they will be repaid.

Most paddy farmers apply fertiliser in two stages. Triple Super Phosphate (TSP) is normally applied in full as basal application during the final tillage operation at a rate of some 25kg per acre, while Urea and Muriate of Potash (MOP) applications are typically split. Fifty percent of Urea and MOP is usually made as basal application with the remainder applied as top dressing.

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WTO Doha talks don’t spell disaster for Africa

from New Vision

By Alec Van Gelder

The recent failure of the World Trade Organisation’s Doha Round and the long-standing failure of aid need not need spell disaster for African economies. The tools for promoting growth and prosperity are in their own backyard and three of the world’s top 10 pro-growth reformers are in Africa, according to the World Bank report Doing Business 2009, released recently.

Useful reforms in Africa have increased by over 150 per cent over the past five years, helping to maintain the record six per cent a year growth of the past decade. Some countries are buoyed by high commodity prices but African economies are diversifying and expanding.

The top reformers in the whole continent, Botswana, Burkina Faso and Senegal, have focused specifically on an area of upmost importance, simplifying the procedures for trading with the rest of the world.

Redtape, logistics bottlenecks and customs corruption are trade barriers just like tariffs. “Reforms are already paying dividends for countries rich and poor but there is scope for greater improvement still,” trade analyst Daniel Ikenson of the Cato Institute says.

According to Doing Business 2009, it takes an average of 39 days before exports are allowed to leave Uganda: nine days to prepare documents, six days to clear customs and an additional six days for loading. The entire process costs exporters a tidy US$3,090—nine times the average annual Ugandan income. And most of this rigmarole applies to imports too.

In Angola it takes 68 days: the economy is booming now thanks to high prices for oil and diamonds, with annual growth over 15 per cent, but removing these trade barriers would give Angolans a better chance to prosper when those prices take a tumble.

The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development estimates that just a one per cent reduction in the cost of maritime and air transport in developing countries—easily achievable in Angola—could increase global GDP by US$7 billion.

Across Africa, a 10 per cent increase in exports to rich countries could be achieved simply by cutting export time by about four days—the regional average is a suffocating 34.7 days. Dropping these barriers would also boost the paltry level of regional trade: under 15 per cent of African trade occurs between neighbours.

So the fact that Africa’s top reformers have prioritised trade facilitation is very good news. Crucially, their reforms illustrate how any economy can move in the right direction unilaterally, without waiting for bureaucrats to agree on complicated agreements at the WTO or elsewhere.

Optimistic estimates predicted that agreement at the WTO Doha Development Round would have injected an additional US$287 billion into the global economy, half of which would have benefitted poor countries.

The proposed cuts in tariffs and subsidies would have been wonderful but the agreement was politically unachieveable.

Yet the right unilateral reforms within Africa could be even more beneficial: a recent World Bank study of 75 countries found that if below-average performers on trade obstacles, many of them in sub-Saharan Africa, could raise their scores only halfway to the average score, world trade would increase by $377b, or about nine per cent a year.

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Kenya, a New Food Crisis

from All Africa

By Geofrey Kamadi
Nairobi

Rina Awinja, her 5-month-old baby, Stanley Lumumba, and her husband, George Oyange, are HIV-positive.

The young family depends on Lea Toto, an organisation that takes care of orphaned and vulnerable (OVC) children, providing both nutritional and ARV support.

For the past few months, life has been particularly rough for the family, which lives in Nairobi's Kangemi slum. The assistance from Lea Toto has now become inadequate due to rising food prices.

"Lea Toto is a great help to us, but we are required to cook the food, which has meant that an alternative income source is required," says Awinja.

Paul Mulongo, an administrator at the centre, explains that nutrition assistance was initiated at the centre as an HIV intervention strategy to supplement what these families already had.

"However, the situation has deteriorated so much so that these families do not have any other food alternatives. They are now relying on whatever we give them, because this is the only food they have," observes Mulongo.

As a result, a new trend is emerging in the slums. It has been noticed other HIV-negative family members are now moving in with the HIV-positive families to benefit from the free food.

"Relatives have been moving into the HIV-positive families solely because of the food rations," says Keziah Mathei, a nutritionist at Lea Toto.

According to Mathei, not only has the number of family members increased, but new HIV-positive families are coming out in the open to enrol with the centre in large numbers.

"Our resources are now stretched beyond the limit," says Mulongo.

Rose Makungu, a single mother to two and a half year old Christabel Kamayo, attests to this growing trend among families with a HIV-positive member.

Her situation was so dire that she was compelled to physically chase away some relatives whom she caught helping themselves to the little food she had been given at the centre.

"This was not right. I and my little girl are ailing, yet relatives could not appreciate my situation," says Makungu, who earns a living washing clothes in Kangemi. Her daughter receives a daily dose of ARVs.

According to Mary Njoki, the nutrition programme manager at the National Aids & STI Control Programme (NASCOP), inadequate nutrition can be detrimental to an HIV-positive person especially a child.

"Nutrition demand for children is greater than those for adults because they require more kilocalories per kilogramme body weight due to their higher basal metabolic rate (the rate when asleep or resting)," says Njoki.

She adds that for an HIV-positive adult, who is in the third stage of infection (when opportunistic diseases begin to attack), for instance, the energy requirement increases 30 per cent compared with 50 per cent for a child.

Even though a breastfeeding programme is provided at the centre, this too is being overwhelmed.

"There are just too many cases coming in. In as much as we encourage breastfeeding, as long as the mother is not feeding properly, it poses risk for the child," says Mulongo.

Njoki concurs: "The viral load in the mother goes up and the CD4 cell count drops, hence the danger of transmitting the virus to a HIV-negative child." She adds that the viral load increases due to cross-transmission from the mother in the case of a suckling HIV-positive baby.

Lea Toto has six centres in Nairobi located in Kangemi, Kawangware, Kibera, the Mukuru slums, Dandora and Kariobangi.

The centre has been working closely with the World Food Programme since 2005. The world body provides a fixed amount of food to be offered to families. But not all clients in the programme are on food rations.

There are 2,591 HIV-positive children in the six centres in Nairobi with the exception of the Nyumbani Orphanage and another centre in Kitui.

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'Empowering HIV/Aids Positive People Will Alleviate Poverty'.

from All Africa

Byline: Adedapo Olojo

Lagos, - Government and relevant stakeholders have been called upon to help empower people living with the Human Immuno-deficiency Virus (HIV) and Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS); as a way to alleviate poverty among the masses in Nigeria.

The call was made by the Executive Director of Ajegunle Community Project (ACP), Alhaja Roli Daniju, during a programme on stigmatisation organised by the group in Lagos.

ACP, a non-governmental organisation, an NGO committed to reducing social inequalities among grassroots women and girl-child, organised the one day programme, titled, 'positive living and income generation' for women living with HIV/AIDS at their secretariat.

The programme was supported by Global Fund for Women (LFW) and the objectives is to sensitise women living with HIV/AIDS on positive living and doctoral skills acquisition on how to manage their own.

The group has also engaged in series of activities on issues of stigmatisation and discrimination of women living with HIV/AIDs at the grassroots level, organising road shows and market place seminar in Olodi Apapa, a Lagos suburb.

According to Daniju, "people living with HIV/AIDS need to be cared for. They are part and parcel of the society. They are just victim of circumstances but notwithstanding what an HIV- negative person can do, they (positive) can also do even better, because they have vision, mission and are full of hope for a greater future".

She claimed stigma and discrimination is a common reaction to certain diseases such as HIV/AIDs, which make it difficult for people living with HIV to seek help. Some diseases like TB Leprosy had carried stigma and discrimination in the past.

The programme was attended by people living with HIV/AIDS, both old and young. Present on that day was a 54 year-old woman who said she has been living positively for the past 10 years. Also in attendance was a woman who said she had three children, all of them HIV-negative.

All positive living woman present at the prig were thirty in number and they all confirmed that they are living a normal like others in the society and that they are not ashamed of declaring to the public that they are HIV positive.

According to Daniju, empowering positive living women is a way of eradicating/alleviating poverty because most of the women are being stigmatised by friends and families, with some husbands allegedly abandoning their women with children.

"Some employers of labour sack positive living women, nobody to help them with their children and they need to sustain a living. That is the reason why ACP is keen on showing love and concern to positive living women in the society".

Students Torn on Use of Food Stamps

from the Hilltop Online

by Sharon Taylor

With the economy on a downward slope, Howard students are faced with the task of finding money for the rising costs of books, tuition, housing and gas.

Many have found the value in government assistance, specifically food stamps, to meet their needs.

"It was easy to get food stamps," said junior political science major Allen Jordan. "All I had to do was go to the financial aid building, get a financial aid verification form, then take it down to the social services department."

But in the state that the economy is in, some students are finding other ways to stay afloat.

Nevertheless, senior broadcast journalism Alesha Johnson thinks that as a college student, there is nothing wrong with receiving government assistance.

"I feel that I am entitled," Johnson said. "There is no need to feel poor to have food stamps and be a college student."

For more information, log on to www.fns.usda.gov/fsp/outreach/states/dc.htm.

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Corporate Governance Will Reduce Poverty, Says Oceanic Bank official Dr. Ibru

from All Africa

By Idris Ahmed,

The reduction in the poverty level is due to strict adherence to corporate governance and the government's partnership with the private sector, the Chief Executive of Oceanic Bank International Plc, Dr. Cecilia Ibru has said.

She said both the private sector and the government must continue to cooperate and develop the real sector being the engine of growth in any economy.

According to her, if the African heads of government adhere to strict corporate governance, poverty would be reduced to the barest minimum in the region.

Delivering a paper titled "Measuring Corporate Governance and Risk" in Africa at the Africa Investor Index Award, New York Stock Exchange, United States, last week, Ibru explained that commitment to improving the corporate governance profile in the African countries would enhance the governments' ability to implement with the scarce resources, development policies that is capable of reducing poverty in all ramifications.

Making a case for the use of microfinance recently at another function, Ibru, lamented that despite the broad consensus regarding the importance of micro finance as a poverty alleviation tool, not less than two billion people are currently excluded from access to financial services.

"The situation is particularly dire in most least developed countries especially African states, where often more than 90 per cent of the population is excluded from access to the formal financial system", she said.

Africa growth to slow amid turmoil, inflation: IMF

from Reuters Africa

WASHINGTON - Growing financial turmoil and rising food and energy prices are likely to slow economic growth in sub-Saharan Africa, with oil-producing countries least affected the International Monetary Fund said on Wednesday.

In its twice-yearly health-check of the world economy, the IMF said growth across the region should slow to 6.1 percent this year, rising to 6.3 percent in 2009, from nearly 7 percent in 2007.

Oil producing countries will be only slightly affected, with growth easing to 7.5 percent from around 8 percent in 2007, the IMF said.

Meanwhile, for countries that import oil the terms of trade will remain broadly the same this year, with higher oil prices offset by costlier export prices for metals, coffee, cocoa and cotton.

In South Africa, Africa's biggest economy, electricity shortages and a necessary 500-basis point interest rate rise since 2006 to contain inflation, should cut growth to 3.5 percent in 2008-09 from 5 percent in 2007.

The fund said a widening current account gap in South Africa, which stood at 7.2 percent of gross domestic product in the second quarter, was a concern, especially since it is financed by portfolio flows that have been affected by the market turmoil.

"The deficit is financed largely through volatile portfolio flows, although low external debt and a flexible exchange rate should provide some resilience if capital flows were to reverse," the IMF said.

The South African central bank has steadily built up its reserves to help cushion the country against economic shocks.

But the IMF said it was also worried about the impact that higher food and fuel prices might have on economies in Africa, especially since food is a large part of families' spending.

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Everything 'that could be going wrong is going wrong' in the US

from the Daytona Daily News

By Lynn Hulsey

The people who help the needy try to describe the current economic crisis without using cliches like "perfect storm" or "vicious circle." But they are left grasping for better words.

Unemployment is on the rise, food stamp and cash assistance rolls are growing, home foreclosures are rampant, food pantries are running low, and it's getting harder to afford food, gas and health care.

The signs of growing need are everywhere, with social service and government agencies reporting an influx of people who've never had to ask for help before. And just as the need is growing, cash-strapped governments are cutting back, and the state may need to borrow money from the federal government early next year to pay unemployment claims.

There hasn't been this confluence of events in a long time, and it is unnerving.

"It's very difficult to be optimistic at this time when you look at all the things that are taking place," said Joel Potts, senior policy analyst for the Ohio Job and Family Services Directors Association. "Things are all coming into play at the same time. Every single thing you look at right now that could be going wrong is going wrong."

On top of a badly faltering national economy there's the home mortgage-fueled financial crisis and a newly approved $700 billion government bailout that could divert taxpayer money from needed social programs.

"Whoever becomes the next president is in for a rude awakening," said Chris Duncan, University of Dayton professor and chairman of political science.

He said the promises made by Sen. John McCain and Sen. Barack Obama to find new revenue by cutting waste, fraud and abuse "is not going to give you what you need to create a national health care program, to fix education or to fix all the other myriad problems we have."

Ohio, which never fully recovered jobs lost during the 2001 recession, now has its highest unemployment rate since 1992.

Montgomery County's 7.8 percent rate is even higher than the state's 7.4 percent, and the region stands to lose at least 10,000 jobs by next year from the closure of the Moraine General Motors plant and the proposed shift of Wilmington's DHL jobs to Kentucky.

That's on top of the 25,000 manufacturing jobs the region has lost since 2000.

Across the Miami Valley more people are falling into the social services safety net, which officials say is showing the strain. And the net isn't always able to help, because of eligibility limits on income and assets for those receiving cash assistance, food stamps, Medicaid, child care or one-time emergency help with rent, food or heating bills.

"We get a number of people who are requesting assistance but we cannot help them," said Dwayne Woods, employment division administrator at Montgomery County Job and Family Services.

For a family of four, the monthly income limit to receive cash assistance is $844 and the maximum in help they can get is $507 a month, Woods said. The food stamps monthly income limit for a four-person family is $2,297, and that family can receive $588 in stamps for the month, he said.

An applicant's savings and other assets also play into the eligibility calculation and can make an unemployed person ineligible for help.

"They feel that is their nest egg, that they shouldn't have to use it, because they have paid into the system all their lives," Woods said. "They're shocked at the low level of assistance they can receive."

Many people are turning to food pantries.

"We're seeing new families at the food pantries, we're seeing more working families, we are seeing families that really are just struggling to make ends meet with the economy as it is right now," said Linda Roepken, associate executive of The Foodbank, which serves 90 food programs in Montgomery, Greene and Preble counties.

She said the food bank's pantries, soup kitchens and other programs handed out 27 percent more meals in August compared to the same month last year.

At the Catholic Social Services pantry in Dayton, daily calls for help are up from about 30 to 125, said J. Elaine Jelly, executive director.

"We've had days where we have had to say, 'Come back tomorrow.' The shelves are literally empty," said spokeswoman Regina Estep.

She said the people who come in have multiple issues: evictions, foreclosures, lost jobs, health problems. Many seniors have had to choose between medicine and food.

"It's exactly what you read in the statistics," Estep said. "They're coming to life in the food line."

Lisa Hamler-Fugitt, executive director of the Ohio Association of Second Harvest Food Banks, said the social services safety net is "shredded."

"We are asking these (presidential) candidates, if (they're) elected, to increase funding for the food stamp programs, increase the money allocations to allow people to purchase the food they need," Hamler-Fugitt said. "This is a crisis and we need a government response."

Perhaps one of the most telling statistics, even though it involves small actual numbers, is in upscale Warren County. In June of this year, the county had a 40 percent increase from June 2007 — to 482 people — in the number of people receiving cash assistance under the Ohio Works First program, according to the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services. Greene County had the second-highest increase in welfare recipients in the four-county area, jumping 12.9 percent. Montgomery's number went up 11.5 percent and Miami's was less than 1 percent.

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Survey results lead to calls for action on child poverty

from Wales Online

by Anthony O'Connell, Neath Guardian

THREE out of every four children in a Neath community are living in or on the brink of poverty.

Shocking statistics produced by the Campaign to End Child Poverty have revealed hundreds of youngsters from Briton Ferry West are living in families struggling to make ends meet because of their low incomes.

The report said, in Neath East, 64% of children were from struggling families, while the figure for Townhill, in Swansea, was 85%.

Briton Ferry West councillor Hugh James said: “To be honest, I’m not surprised at all by the figure in my ward – that’s why we are a Communities First area.

“We are a very poor ward, we always have been. There are a lot of families really struggling and a lot of children being assisted with the cost of their meals in school.”

The councillor said action is already being taken to ease child poverty across the county borough, and he urged those involved to act without delay.

He said: “This is an issue we need to tackle and the report has shown the urgency. Where there is deprivation it has to be tackled.

“Neath Port Talbot Council is working with the National Assembly on a Children’s Plan, which will have a crack at bringing the poverty figures down.

“It’s been in being for about nine months now and an action plan is about to be launched."

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US credit crisis threatens New Orleans' recovery

from the Associated Press via Google

By BECKY BOHRER

NEW ORLEANS — A prolonged recession and a tight credit market would cripple New Orleans' still-fragile recovery from Hurricane Katrina, delaying or eliminating road work, new construction and repairs to homes and businesses that have stood empty since 2005.

The city's infrastructure plans should stay on track, but a real estate expert calls it a "terrifying" scenario: A lack of sufficient credit would smother companies trying to start up or expand, and with them the new jobs needed to grow the area's economy. It would choke the flow of cash that developers need to build new homes and first-time homeowners need to buy them. And it would make it tough for the city to sell bonds to finance rebuilding projects on its appointed timeline.

Parking lots and buildings slated for reincarnation as gleaming high-rises might never move beyond blueprints. Small businesses, a lifeblood to the economy and neighborhood anchors, may never reopen or expand.

The road to recovery from Katrina would get even longer.

The financial meltdown "comes at a difficult time" for the city, said Janet Speyrer, an economist at the University of New Orleans.

The city's population, about 454,000 when Katrina struck in August 2005, has rebounded but seems to have leveled off around 325,000. Job growth hasn't lived up to forecasts, with major corporate investment largely staying on the sidelines and the cost of living — driven in part by skyrocketing insurance costs — remaining high.

"Even before the credit crunch, there were questions about whether we were going to get back to where we were even before Katrina," Speyrer said.

It isn't the flow of federal aid that most concerns economists. The Federal Emergency Management Agency so far has set aside $2.3 billion for rebuilding infrastructure; of that, $894 million has filtered down to the local level through state administrators, and economists believe projects with dedicated funds should be OK.

It's the commercial sector — privately funded hotels, condos and new-business development — that would be waylaid by a contraction of credit.

In the housing sector, there's no shortage of homes, and thousands more bought by the state after Katrina are expected to start coming onto the market in the coming months with price points in the $150,000 to $200,000 range. The region did not see nearly the number of foreclosures as other parts of the country, and economists believe the trickle of new building nationally could draw contractors to the city.

Still, it's a challenge for prospective first-time homeowners and those who got behind on bills or whose credit otherwise took a beating after the storm to get loans.

The next few weeks could give authorities the first glimpse of how the credit markets are affecting new housing proposals, particularly those hoping for tax credits as part of their financing to build lower-income housing.

Brenda Evans, program administrator with the Louisiana Housing Finance Agency, said officials must find a way to encourage and create adequate, affordable housing. More affordable housing is seen as critical to shoring up the city's middle class and keeping working-class families here.

The city was plagued by poverty, dominated by renters and overbuilt before Katrina; blighted, derelict properties were a problem, made worse by Katrina and a decades-long slide in population. Officials see homeownership as a key to stabilizing and strengthening neighborhoods, and they're promising $50 million in federal grants to offset mortgage costs and get affordable homes constructed. The plan will help about 1,000 households directly and, ideally, attract private development dollars.

For some, it could be the key to keeping them in the city.

Nia Davis, a 33-year-old graduate student at UNO who does freelances research for nonprofits, is renting in the partially rebuilt Gentilly neighborhood and desperately wants a home of her own. She says she doesn't have the stable income that banks want to see, and says the type of subsidies the state is touting are her only clear route to homeownership.

Returning to New Orleans from Texas in 2006 was a "nonlogical decision," she said, driven by her heart, not her head. She wants to stay but isn't sure she will if she can't buy a house.

"If I own a home, I want to own a home in New Orleans," she said, "and that's more about passion and commitment, because I know I'm going to pay more for everything else."

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Cambodia gets $35 million in emergency food aid

from the Boston Globe

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia --The Asian Development Bank announced Wednesday $35 million in emergency food aid to ease the burden of soaring food prices among some of Cambodia's poorest people.

The assistance will provide free rice, seed and fertilizer to 500,000 Cambodians, the poorest of the poor among the country's 14 million people, the bank said.

The recipients include slum residents in the capital, Phnom Penh, and farmers in seven provinces around the country's Tonle Sap lake.

"When the food price inflation spike came, these communities were already in a fragile state. It drove them more sharply over the edge into food poverty," said Arjun Goswami, the bank's country director.

The program will run through September 2011.

Over the past year rice prices in Cambodia have doubled, the ADB said in a statement. It added that the price of meat and fish has risen 30 to 50 percent, and farmers have been hit hard by an almost tripling in fertilizer prices.

About one-in-three Cambodians live below the national poverty line of just 45 cents a day.

Mahfuz Ahmed, the bank official in charge of the food project, said that of Cambodia's 14 million people, about 2.6 million sometimes go hungry and suffer from malnutrition.

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After volunteering in Guatemala, a Langley resident is in Kabala to help women receive microcredit Small loans, big opportunities

from the Langley Times

Bigger is better. At least, that’s the mentality of those in the developed world. But in developing countries, small starts are helping poor entrepreneurs to expand their enterprises.

Most people in Canada have never heard of microcredit loans, but there are an estimated 150 million microcredit borrowers worldwide in many different developing countries. At its core, microcredit is simply the lending of small amounts of money to the poor at reasonable interest rates. As trivial as the concept may seem, it is anything but.

My current assignment here in Kabala, a small town in northern Sierra Leone, is to work alongside local staff to develop a microcredit program as part of CAUSE Canada’s business development training.

The training is for women who currently have a small economic activity that contributes to household income.

The initial loan is small, around $50CDN, but for these entrepreneurs, a small amount of money can go a long way: with the loan, women are able to purchase additional quantities of vegetables, cloth, rice or whatever they may sell.

The morning of Thursday, Aug. 14, was the first disbursement day of the program. I awoke before the sun at 6 a.m. as we needed to get to the communities where we were disbursing before the women go to the farms, as August is the busiest month for farming around Kabala.

It is also the rainiest, and if I was looking for a good omen when I awoke, I was not going to get it — the rain was just as heavy as it was when I went to sleep the night before.

After meeting with the CAUSE Loan Officer, we ventured out the first community, Sarakoh. As we arrived, we saw several women gathered under a shelter along with other community members. The rain did not dampen the smiles on their faces or the excitement in their eyes. For all of these women, it was the first time they would ever receive a loan.

The money was greeted with cheers and singing, a sight not seen back in financial institutions in Canada. The cash disbursed here was more than bills and coins; it was a chance to invest, an opportunity to grow, an invitation for change.

In many developing countries, banks have excluded the poor from accessing financial services. Through large minimum loan sizes, requiring illiterate applicants to fill in forms, and requiring loans to be guaranteed with collateral, the poor are unable to get a step-up — or out — of their current circumstance. Furthermore, many regions have no access to financial institutions at all.

In Africa less than 10 per cent of the population has an account at a financial institution. In both of these cases, lump sums of money have traditionally been provided in informal ways, one of which is through community moneylenders who charge high interest rates for loans.

Microcredit eliminates these barriers to accessing capital and charges interest rates that do not exploit the borrower’s circumstances. Because material collateral is not possible in most microlending situations, collateral is created through the formation of solidarity groups.

These groups consist of usually four to six women who mutually agree to guarantee the loans of the others. Believe it or not, an exceptionally high amount of the loans are paid back. Most microcredit loan programs have repayment rates of 95-98 per cent.

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New fund to bring malaria rates to zero, rolled out in Uganda

from the Daily Monitor

by EVELYN LIRRI

With 300 people dying of malaria every day, Uganda is one of the countries that will benefit from a new $3bn Global Action Plan to reduce deaths from the disease to near zero by 2015.

The plan has been developed by the Roll Back Malaria Partnership with the Global Fund to fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria, contributing $1.62bn. World Bank is giving $1.1bn while the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is injecting $168.7m to the PATH Malaria Vaccine Initiative largely to carry out research for a possible vaccine.

The ambitious plan was endorsed by world leaders during the 2008 Millennium Development Goals - Malaria Summit on September 25. The summit was part of the high level meeting convened by the UN Secretary General-Ban Ki-Moon to renew commitments to achieving the MDGs by 2015.

According to a statement from the office of the UN Secretary General’s Special Envoy on Malaria, full coverage of malaria interventions by 2010 can help save more than 4.2 million lives by 2015 and lay a foundation for a longer term effort to eradicate the disease.

The statement says that fully implementing the Global Malaria Action Plan will require $5.3bn in 2009 worldwide ($2.2bn for Africa) and $6.2bn worldwide in 2010 ($2.86bn for Africa) to expand malaria control programmes, and an additional $750-900m per year is needed for research on vaccines, drugs and other new tools.

In Uganda, statistics from the Ministry of Health indicate that malaria is the leading killer especially among children under the age of five years and is largely responsible for the high poverty levels in the country.

This is largely because at least 25 percent of Ugandan households spend their income treating malaria. “The Global Malaria Action Plan is a milestone in the international response to malaria. We have had isolated accomplishments over the years, but this is the first time we have drawn together those experiences to produce guidelines to replicate success globally. Putting the plan into action must now become our number one priority,” said Prof. Awa Marie Coll-Seck, the Executive Director of the Roll Back Malaria Partnership.

The plan largely focuses on rapidly scaling up access to bed nets, in door spraying, diagnosis and treatment, including preventive treatment for pregnant women, reducing the number of malaria deaths to near zero through continued universal coverage to anti malaria drugs and eventually discovering a way to eradicate malaria through a vaccine.
The plan provides a road map for malaria control that includes all endemic countries.

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UN Chief Says Financial Crisis Will Not Weaken Resolve to Fight Poverty, Disease

from the Voice of America

By Margaret Besheer

Mr. Ban said the international community's determination to help what he calls the world's "bottom billion" - those who live on less than $1 a day - has not weakened. During the annual meeting of the U.N. General Assembly that wrapped up last week in New York, member states pledged $16 billion to help the U.N. meet targets of cutting poverty and disease worldwide by 2015.

"Everyone has felt the earthquake on Wall Street," said the U.N. chief. "But it has not shaken our resolve. Banks may be failing, but the world's bottom billion can bank on us."

He said the generosity of these commitments is very encouraging, given the economic climate. "It means the world is not forgetting the needs of the world's poorest people, notwithstanding the prospect of harder times," said Mr. Ban.

In the first of a new monthly series of press conferences, Mr. Ban spoke about the many challenges facing the United Nations - among them, the deteriorating situation in Darfur, the precarious political and military situation in Afghanistan, piracy and instability in Somalia and the effects of climate change.

The U.N. chief said that amid these crises the world must not forget the plight of others and he urged world leaders to honor the monetary pledges they have made. "Grave as it may be, today's financial crisis will be overcome," he said. "We must underline the need for "crisis-proofing" of the important priorities of the United Nations from international financial turbulence."

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Lives lost through lack of leadership in UN response to humanitarian crises, Britain warns

from the Guardian

by Julian Borger,

Britain will issue a warning today that a lack of leadership in the UN's handling of humanitarian emergencies is "costing lives", and will call for urgent reforms because natural and man-made disasters are increasingly frequent.

In a speech to the UN in Geneva, Gareth Thomas, the international development minister, will say that conflicts, climate change and the scarcity of water and other natural resources, together with rising food prices, have combined to create an accelerating string of crises of unprecedented scale.

"The number of reported disasters over the past 10 years was 60% higher than the previous decade," Thomas will say, according to a text of the speech made available to the Guardian. The humanitarian response, he will argue, has not kept pace.

Thomas will identify the principal problem as a lack of properly trained humanitarian coordinators to oversee disaster relief in crisis-hit countries.

"Of the 42 poor countries most at risk of conflict or natural disaster, one third do not have a humanitarian coordinator. So in some of the worst disasters there is no one on the ground to lead the international response," Thomas will say. "That lack of leadership costs lives."

Speaking to the Guardian yesterday, Thomas said that where there are coordinators, they are often not the right people. "One of the major problems is that many country-based UN humanitarian coordinators don't have the skills or right background to do their jobs," he said.

As an example, Thomas will point to Chad, where he argues "poor coordination meant that drinking water was allocated unfairly and people in desperate need went thirsty".

"This was counter to basic humanitarian principles and is something that cannot happen again," he said yesterday. British and UN officials agree that water distribution among refugees from Darfur and Chadian nationals made homeless by conflict in the region was haphazard and did not adhere to international standards, leaving many without adequate drinking water.

The occasion for the minister's speech will be an executive committee meeting of the UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), where there will be guarded support for his arguments in the hall.

A senior UNHCR official said yesterday that "in every single case" the job of UN coordinator in crisis countries was given to the UN official already overseeing development work in that country, even though managing development aid and disaster relief require quite different skills and training.

Thomas will argue today: "Finding the best people for the job will require a more credible, transparent selection process; we need humanitarian agencies, the Red Cross and NGOs [non-governmental organisations] to put forward candidates; we need more candidates from developing countries and more women."

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The new face of giving

from the USA Today

By Andrea Stone, USA TODAY

A charity that provides water to African villages posts locations of new wells using Google Earth, and a 13-year-old contributor in Manhattan tracks the progress.

A cancer charity accepts "micro-donations" of $5 by text message.

An orchestra in Michigan begins posting videos of its performances on YouTube to try to draw patrons.

The United States long has been a nation of givers, but a new generation is transforming the way we do good. Millennials and Generation Xers, especially those 20- and 30-somethings starting careers, may not have the bucks to be major donors, but they are finding ways to help others and prompting big changes in the way charities raise money.

Young people are "not just making checks and going on with their lives. They want to be part of what happens" to their money, says Claire Gaudiani of the Heyman Center for Philanthropy and Fundraising at New York University. She says today's young people contribute to favorite causes earlier, more consistently and in more imaginative ways than their grandparents did.

Last year, donations from people of all ages and wallet sizes exceeded $300 billion for the first time, according to the Giving USA Foundation, which tracks philanthropy. Three of four dollars donated came from individuals; the rest were from corporations, foundations and charitable bequests. A 2006 study by the Charities Aid Foundation, a British philanthropic organization, found that Americans donate more per person than any other nation.

"It's part of our culture to be generous. We take it very seriously," says Gaudiani, noting that 89% of Americans gave to the March of Dimes over decades to help suppress polio in the 20th century.

Charitable giving usually dips during recessions, but it doesn't fall as sharply as the economy. "People who are able to give more will double what they gave last year, knowing others won't" be able to contribute, she says.

Religious congregations get a third of all contributions, although their share is shrinking, says Del Martin, chairwoman of Giving USA. In 1967, nearly half of all charitable dollars went to faith groups.

Two of the fastest-growing types of charities, those with causes relevant to international affairs and the environment, weren't even tracked by Giving USA 40 years ago. Now, they top the list for donors in their 20s and 30s.

"We're seeing a tremendous increase in awareness of international issues since 9/11," says Marshall Burke of the international relief agency CARE. Most philanthropic impulses remain local, but young people "are aware that the human community is getting smaller and smaller and we have an obligation to reach out beyond ourselves."

The digital money trail

The Internet has made that easier. When an earthquake hit Peru last year, the anti-hunger group Oxfam America blasted e-mail appeals to 400,000 people within 24 hours. The digital plea raised $355,000 within days, a sharp contrast to mailed appeals that used to take as long as 10 days to reach potential donors. "That was a lot more expensive, and it took so long that the information was already out-of-date by the time the people received it," says Stephanie Kurzina, an Oxfam vice president. "Now we're able to tell them what's going on and, even more important, we can keep them informed of what's being done."

Letting donors follow their money was a key part of the strategy when Scott Harrison started Charitywater.org two years ago to drill freshwater wells in developing nations from Liberia to Bangladesh. The group's website tracks its projects through videos and written stories from the field, Google maps and testimonials from donors. So far, Charitywater's website says it has funded 624 projects providing fresh water to 250,000 people in 12 countries. Harrison says 100% of contributions go to the needy, thanks to overhead support from a few sponsors and corporations.

"A lot of people have questions about how much of their money will actually reach people in need," says Harrison, 32, a former New York nightclub promoter who left that "selfish life" to devote himself to the poor. "We're trying to really restore people's faith" in charities, he says. "People I talk to in their 20s and 30s feel they've been burned. They don't know what happens to the money."

Charities tune in to the young

Josh Hofing is only 13 but chose Charitywater for a social action project for his Jewish coming-of-age ceremony because "I know the money is actually going to go to what I want it to go to. It's not going to a big, combined project. It's going to my own project."

For months before his September bar mitzvah, he followed construction of a well in Ethiopia on the group's website and was able to describe it as he sold black rubber Charitywater bracelets in a park near his Manhattan home. He also raised money at a read-a-thon. In all, Josh collected more than $4,100 for the project. He plans to donate 10% of his bar mitzvah gifts and hopes one day to visit the well in person.

Many non-profit organizations are using cyberspace to connect with the next generation of benefactors. Boston's Museum of Fine Arts has more than 2,500 "fans" on its Facebook page. The Chicago Symphony Orchestra has posted dozens of performance videos on YouTube to reach out to patrons. In Michigan, the Ann Arbor Symphony Orchestra started tapping the power of YouTube in February.

"It's becoming more and more apparent with our future donors that we're going to reach them electronically," Ann Arbor's development director Guy Barast says.

Still, only 6% of all households gave online last year, according to Giving USA. A Commerce Department survey from last October shows 62% of households use the Internet at home.

Patrick Rooney of the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University says the Internet is mostly for "entry-level fundraising. … You're not going to go to them and say, 'Give us $10,000' " online.

The growing use of e-mail, websites and credit cards to make donations may cost less than regular mail, but fundraisers warn against moving too fast toward paperless philanthropy.

"You have to be careful not to lose donors who are not comfortable with that or not trusting," says Christine Benero, president of Mile High United Way in Denver. "We're at a tipping point, but we haven't tipped yet that we can walk away from traditional methods."

Technology is gaining fast on tradition, though. One of the newest tools to raise small donations is text messaging. Already popular in Europe, the mobile moneymaker made its U.S. debut in February when viewers of the Super Bowl were asked in a 10-second commercial to text a $5 donation, which would later appear on their phone bill, to United Way. The charity said the promotion raised about $10,000. In July, fans at Major League Baseball's All-Star Game in Yankee Stadium were asked in a scoreboard appeal to text message a code to donate $5 to Stand Up To Cancer, a research initiative. Other Major League ballparks had similar appeals through the season.

It also is showing up at concerts. Singer Alicia Keys raised more than $40,000 to combat AIDS in Africa by asking fans during her recent tour, which ended in June, to donate $5 on their cellphones, according to the charity Keep a Child Alive.

Jim Manis started the Mobile Giving Foundation in Bellevue, Wash., in 2006 to get wireless companies to pass along donations made by texting.

Texting appeals to young adults underrepresented among givers, he says. "It's a great medium for an impulse gift."

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MALAYSIA: Emerging Trend in Trafficking Tribal Women

from IPS News

By Baradan Kuppusamy

KUALA LUMPUR, - An emerging trend in the trafficking of tribal people, mostly young girls, is raising concern among government officials, rights organisations, migration experts and human rights lawyers.

Increasingly, tribal girls in the region are duped and trafficked from their villages to regional capitals like Singapore and Kuala Lumpur to work in brothels and massage parlours that attract well-heeled locals as well as tourists.

‘’The trafficking of tribal people is on the rise across the South-east Asian region,’’ said Irene Fernandez, executive director of Tenaganita, a leading Malaysian NGO that tracks trafficking of women to Malaysia from across the Asia Pacific region.

‘’It is a most heinous crime because tribal girls are duped into believing they are getting high-paid office and home jobs, but are forced into prostitution,’’ she told IPS.

Not only are tribal people from the region trafficked to Malaysia, the country’s own Penan, from the interiors of Sarawak state, and the Orang Asli tribal groups in peninsular Malaysia are trafficked internally and exploited.

Outsiders, including workers, miners and others, also visit the villages to sexually exploit young tribal women, researchers told IPS.

‘’It is their poverty, dislocation and vulnerability that makes the tribal easily exploited,’’ said a Malaysian researcher with the Penan people who declined to be named. ‘’The government is totally unresponsive...it is total neglect of indigenous people.’’

‘’They give lip-service whenever the issue makes the headlines, but after that the indigenous people are left to the mercy of the traffickers,’’ Fernandez said.

The case of five young Naga tribal women from India’s north-east, who were trafficked from their village to Singapore and later moved to Malaysia and forced to work as sex slaves, has highlighted the plight of tribal women uprooted from their villages and trapped in Malaysia, a country generally hostile to migrants.

The five women are now housed in a half-way centre and the Indian High Commission here is making arrangements to send them home.

Commission counselor Sudhir Kumar Mehrotra told ‘The New Straits Times’ daily on Sep. 29 that the women from the Zeliangrong Naga tribe were promised lucrative jobs but were duped and forced to work as bar girls and prostitutes in nightclubs in Singapore and Malaysia.

‘’We have information that as many as 150 women from Manipur, Assam and Nagaland have been duped and forced to work immorally in this region,’’ he said. According to Mehrotra, the Indian government is concerned and investigating the people involved and the routes taken to curb the emerging trend in the trafficking of tribal people.

Poverty among the tribal people in places like Manipur state’s backward Tamenglong district, where parents place their hopes on agents to secure jobs for their daughters, is fueling the trade, human rights lawyers said.

According to migration experts, trafficking of tribal girls is widespread within India but because of the great demand in South East Asian capitals traffickers are beginning to traffic them outside India in the hope of making a fortune.

‘’Tribal people are rare in these capitals and there is a rising demand for them in many brothels and massage parlours in the region because of their rarity,’’ said a migration and HIV expert with a regional NGO.

‘’The flesh trade is always looking out for new victims,’’ he said, declining to be identified so as not to annoy regional governments. ‘’Trafficking of tribal people is common in India and blatantly carried out despite all the laws against it. But with the heightened push and pull factor the victims are surfacing outside India.’’

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Canada slow in combating child poverty: report

from the CBC

Canada is not taking enough action to reduce the number of children living in poverty across the country, says a new report released Tuesday by a group that represents community foundations.

The report by the Community Foundations of Canada, entitled Vital Signs 2008, says the level of child poverty is currently at the same level it was in 1989.

According to the report, which was obtained by the Canadian Press, 1.6 million children, or 23 per cent, lived in poverty in 2006.

"We have not moved fast enough anywhere in any part of the country to eliminate child poverty," said Monica Patten, president and CEO of Community Foundations of Canada, said in Toronto.

"That level of child poverty has virtually not changed in about 20 years — we just have not been able to move the needle on child poverty," said Patten.

"That's in spite of resolutions both at government levels and in communities to overcome that incredible challenge for us."

The highest poverty rates among the 15 communities studied by researchers were said to be in Toronto and Vancouver, while the lowest rates were reportedly in Calgary and Oakville, Ont.

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Amid Global Gloom, the Good News From Africa

from Time

By Alex Perry

Africa is widely regarded as a world leader by measure of basket-case symptoms — war, disease, famine and humanitarian disaster. The continent has a greater share of its people mired in poverty than any other, and hosts the world's two greatest humanitarian crises, Darfur and Somalia. So it may come as a bit of a surprise to many that much of Africa is doing rather nicely, in some cases recording healthier economic expansion than in the industrialized world. Even amid the financial meltdown in the West and dire predictions of global recession, the International Monetary Fund estimates that Africa will post economic growth of 6.5% this year, although the world credit crisis could trim that to 5%. And the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development reports that a larger share of the money coming into Africa since 2006 has been investment by entrepreneurs seeking profit rather than aid.

More evidence of Africa turning the corner came Monday, in the form of the Mo Ibrahim Foundation's finding that governance is improving in 31 out of 48 sub-Saharan African countries. Even more astonishing, the measure of good governance showing most improvement, on a continent notorious for tyrants and bloodshed, was human rights. "Obscured by many of the headlines of the past few months, the real story coming out of Africa is that governance performance across a large majority of African countries is improving," said Ibrahim, the billionaire boss of Celtel, a pan-African mobile phone giant, at a press conference in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa. Ibrahim inaugurated his foundation last year to promote good governance in Africa.

"According to this comprehensive analysis, progress is being made across the continent against a range of key governance indicators," the foundations annual survey reported. Indeed, some of Africa's brightest hopes are those that until recently had been some of its most depressing stories. Several of the continent's fastest-growing economies are former war zones, such as Angola, Mozambique and Liberia, and — with Angola a notable exception — many of those are also showing most improvement in governance. The index assesses national governments against 57 criteria divided into five broad categories: safety and security; rule of law, transparency and corruption; participation and human rights; sustainable economic opportunity; and human development. Most improved over the past year, for example, was Liberia, which lost more than 250,000 people in two civil wars between 1989 and 2003, but this year rose six places on the governance ranking to 38th. At the top of the table, meanwhile, were the perennial good performers of Africa: in order, Mauritius, the Seychelles, Cape Verde, Botswana and South Africa, whose economy is by far the largest in Africa and whose democracy is the biggest, although the country is afflicted by rampant violent crime.

It was Ibrahim's experiences as an entrepreneur in Africa that convinced him to set up his foundation and created a $5 million annual prize for the African leader who best personifies responsible and credible government, which he saw as the key to African development. So why are things changing now? "[As] John Githongo [Kenya's former anti-corruption czar] says, 'The democracy genie is out of the bottle,' " notes Hania Farhan, the Ibrahim foundation's director of research. "There will be violent ructions and eruptions, like Kenya or Zimbabwe or Nigeria, but the trend is there, and it is remarkable. Africans want their rights and, increasingly, they are getting them."

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Report: Bridgeport, Connecticut children hit hard by poverty

from the Connecticut Post

By LINDA CONNER LAMBECK

BRIDGEPORT -- In just a year, encouraging signs on the status of Bridgeport's children have tanked, plummeting in several categories from a grade of A-plus to F in the annual report issued Monday by the Bridgeport Child Advocacy Coalition.

The infant mortality rate has increased 50 percent from the agency's 2007 report. The city's dropout rate has risen 18 percent. Cases of abused or neglected children spiked 12 percent. And there is a 20 percent boost in the number of teenagers having babies.

"In today's uncertain times, Bridgeport children are barely keeping their heads above water," said Barbara Edinberg, the BCAC assistant director, in releasing its 2008 "State of the Child in Bridgeport."

Edith Cassidy, the BCAC board chairwoman, said she is deeply concerned about the negative impact of growing unemployment, rising energy and food costs, and the lack of affordable health coverage on Bridgeport's children.

"How will parents manage to get their medical care and prescriptions? Will parents be forced to cut back on food purchases? Will more families fall behind on their rent and lose their housing? Bridgeport's children already lag far behind on so many measures," Cassidy said.

Edinberg blames poverty for reversing the direction of positive trends noted in the 2007 report.

Using the most current data available, the coalition grades 21 indicators of child well-being for its annual assessment. The agency stacks those indicators up against statewide data. In almost all measures, Bridgeport children fare poorly compared to those elsewhere in the state.

The report finds that more than 10,200 Bridgeport children, nearly one-third of all city children, lived in poverty in 2006, an increase of 575 over 2005. Bridgeport's child poverty rate is more than twice the statewide figure and 50 percent higher than the national rate.

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Nigerian Minister Decries High Poverty Rate

from All Africa

Abuja, - Minister of Foreign Affairs, Chief Ojo Maduekwe, has urged the government to take urgent steps to eradicate poverty in the country.

Maduekwe made the statement in Abuja, when he received the National Coordinator of NAPEP, Dr Magnus Kpakol.

"Unless the government eradicates poverty in the country, Nigeria as a nation and her citizens would not earn respect from the comity of nations," he said.

According to Maduekwe, a nation is strong when it can provide for the majority of its population and NAPEP has the capacity to deal with the situation.

The minister noted that the major practical step towards national security was to empower the people with adequate food, employment and attain the MDGs by 2015.

Earlier, Kpakol had said he was in the ministry to intimate the officials on the role government was playing in poverty eradication.

He disclosed that 7 million Nigerians were living under the poverty line, adding that the creation of more wealth would further assist in the reduction of poverty.

Hurricanes slash 400k jobs in Haiti

from Spero Forum

By UN News

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) today appealed for funds so it can run projects that would offer jobs to up to 400,000 Haitians whose incomes have disappeared since a series of deadly hurricanes lashed the poor Caribbean country over the past two months.

Generating employment is critical to kick-starting Haiti’s recovery after the tropical storms, UNDP said in a news release issued today, warning that tens of thousands of breadwinners now have no income to support their families.

Joel Boutroue, the head of UNDP in Haiti and the Secretary-General’s Deputy Special Representative, said it was “an absolute imperative that we act immediately” to create jobs and rehabilitate both infrastructure and the natural environment.

“Without a concerted effort of the international community and financial contributions from donors, we’re going to see more poverty, suffering and social instability,” Mr. Boutroue said.

A team from UNDP in the capital, Port-au-Prince, plans to initiate a policy process to help create a social safety net that is currently absent in Haiti, which is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere.

In the northern city of Gonaïves, hit hardest by the hurricanes, UNDP said a $3 million watershed management programme that before the storms employed 7,000 people could resume in one to three weeks.

Under the program, locals built dikes and water walls, planted trees to protect against landslides and carried out activities to preserve agriculture in the face of natural disasters.

Hundreds of thousands of people across Haiti are receiving humanitarian support from UN aid agencies in the wake of hurricanes Fay, Gustav, Hanna and Ike, which struck the country in quick succession between mid-August and early September.

[comment] Taking to the Streets for the Poor

from Blog the Debt

by Fran Quigley
Indianapolis Star

Last week, I participated in a day-long downtown Indianapolis fast and demonstration asking Senator Bayh to join Senator Lugar in co-sponsoring the Global Poverty Act and Jubilee Act. By committing the U.S. to help reduce extreme poverty and cut the debt burden of struggling countries, these two pieces of legislation would address the obscene fact that 16,000 children die each day simply because they are poor.

We took to the streets in the hopes of educating Hoosiers about global poverty. As it turned out, we were the students, too. Even in the age of blogs, Facebook and cell phones, there are still a few lessons best understood by talking with people face-to-face.

We learned about messaging. Some people we spoke with about our issues gestured to the homeless people sitting near our vigil on west Market Street, and asked, “What about the poverty here at home?”

With deeds instead of words, most of the activists at our demonstration eloquently answer that question every day. The folks who held signs asking Senator Bayh to help hungry children in Haiti and Kenya also volunteer at the local food pantries, care for the sick, and empower the struggling right here at home. Responding to domestic and global poverty is not an either-or proposition, and that message has particular credibility when it comes from those who work for justice and peace every day in Indiana.

Of the few thousand passers-by we approached with our signs and flyers over the course of the day, most were courteous and welcoming. A comparative few had their personal spam filters turned on high, and were suspicious or even hostile. Perhaps because of a richer cultural history of advocacy for social justice, people of color were the most likely to accept our outreach and engage in discussion.

We learned about politics, too. Few passers-by were previously aware of the legislation we promoted, but many were unsurprised by the contrasting positions of our Indiana senators. Senator Lugar provided early and vocal leadership on the poverty bills, but Senator Bayh has sat on the fence. In response to over a thousand letters by Hoosiers on this legislation, Bayh has responded by offering neither support or opposition, or even an explanation for failing to take a position.

That didn’t seem to surprise the folks we spoke with. White-haired men in dark suits, women pushing baby strollers and young men walking to the Illinois Street bus stop all shook their heads and offered variations on the same observation: “Bayh doesn’t take a stand on anything.” It was a ground-level echo of the verdict widely pronounced by national and local pundits, but we hope our junior senator defies that reputation by becoming a leader in fighting poverty.

Finally, we learned about grace. Several people passed by, accepted a flyer and walked on, only to double back a few minutes later to offer sincere thanks to demonstrators for speaking out for the least of our brothers and sisters. A political science teacher took photographs to show her class that citizen participation in government isn’t limited to complaining about our own property taxes or 401(K)’s. The many kind “God bless you’s”’ we received made less positive reactions fade into the background.

Link to full article. May expire in future.

Prime Minister: Africa ready for development

from the Standard Kenya

By David Ohito and PMPS

Prime Minister Raila Odinga has said the Africa is ready for investment to bring it at par with the developed nations.

Raila was speaking in Evian France, where he is attending the World Economic Forum inauguration. The PM said Africa suffered from brain drain, spiralling food prices, poverty, poor sanitation and global warming.

"What Africa needs now more than ever is trade and investment opportunities, not aid," he observed.

He said the continent had realised that good governance and democracy were linked to development, and said Kenya took the route of a coalition government after many lives were lost and thousands displaced after a disputed election.

He defended the Government ,saying it was working well.

"We must compel the international community to speak with one voice when discussing Africa and to support voices of change emerging in the continent," he said.

Link to full article. May expire in future.

Food security: The myths and facts

from the Standard, Kenya

By Peter Okong’o

Increased food insecurity is now the biggest threat to Kenya’s economic development.

With the level of malnourishment within the population increasing in tandem with poverty, labour productivity and access to education are rapidly being undermined.

When combined with disease, this spells disaster for the country’s battered agricultural sector.

Up to 70 per cent of Kenya’s malnourished population are in rural areas. The rest live in the slums that have become a permanent feature in our towns and cities.

The most recent blow to Kenya’s food security was the post-election violence that rocked the North Rift region — regarded as the country’s bread basket — in January this year.

This region produces most of Kenya’s maize and wheat. There are several factors responsible, including an underdeveloped agricultural sector, HIV and Aids, corruption in government and frequent drought and famine.

Up 40 per cent of sub-Saharan Africa is malnourished, varying region by region. Food security has three aspects: food availability (supply of food), food access (demand for food) and food adequacy. What are the root causes for Kenya’s underdeveloped agricultural sector? They are many.

Among them are barriers to markets. This is often due to poor infrastructure, limited resources, lack of information, poor supporting institutions and poor policies.

Others are poverty driven, and include the high cost of farm inputs like fertiliser and chemicals and quality seeds.

Climate change has also become a major barrier. A recent conference on global warming held in July in Cape Town, South Africa, noted that there has been an increase in extreme weather spells that are now playing havoc with Africa’s food systems.

Land that was once fertile is becoming arid as ground water levels drop. Deforestation due to human resettlement, like in the Mau escarpment, are partly responsible.

Poverty

It also encourages devastating pest outbreaks that cannot be managed by poverty-stricken farmers who cannot afford pesticides, noted Prof Onesmo ole-Moiyoi of the International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology (ICIPE), based in Kenya.

"Climate change induces outbreak of pests such as the desert locust. In case of an outbreak, locusts are capable of destroying crops. I have seen a locust outbreak. They eat everything they can find within days," he told the conference.

This was bases on research by Dr Zina Ziervogel, a senior researcher at the Climate Systems Analysis Group at the University of Cape Town, South Africa.

"Changing weather patterns or extreme weather events, such as floods or droughts, can have negative consequences for agricultural production.

As a result people have less access to food, which forces them to buy food products. This affects their financial situation," she told the conference. "It also influences their health as people often buy cheaper food, which is frequently les nutritious.

Link to full article. May expire in future.

Poor economy leaves immigrants with less to send home

from the San Bernardino Sun

by Stephen Wall,

Sergio Espinoza worries about his mom's future.

When the economy was strong, the 36-year-old Mexican immigrant used to send $300 or $400 a month to his mom and other relatives in his hometown.

With the United States teetering on the brink of financial collapse, the cash flow heading south of the border has dried up.

"I haven't sent any money home for three months. Not one penny," said Espinoza.

Espinoza said his widowed mom, Maria de la Cruz, survives on dollars he wires from the United States. She lives in Jacona, a city of 53,000 people in the western state of Michoacan.

Lately, Espinoza has been able to find work only two or three times a week. If he's lucky, he'll earn $60 or $70 a day.

"The situation is bad here," Espinoza said in Spanish, "and my mom is very poor back home."

Espinoza is among the millions of immigrants who help keep their home countries afloat with their money transfers known as remittances.

After years of record gains, remittances to Mexico plunged to historic lows this summer, according to the Bank of Mexico.

The bank said remittances in August fell 12 percent to $1.9 billion. That compares to $2.2 billion in August 2007.

Migrants living in this country have sent home $15.5 billion so far this year, 4 percent less than the same period the year before.

In 2007, Mexico received about $24 billion in remittances from the United States. Remittances are Mexico's second-largest source of foreign income, after oil exports.

The Bank of Mexico said remittances are likely to continue dropping in coming months because of the "difficult problems the U.S. economy faces."

Recent U.S. Census data shows higher unemployment rates among Latinos, who make up the majority of immigrant workers in the country.

"Because of the economic crisis, it's obviously becoming harder to find work," said Federico Bass, director of political affairs at the Mexican Consulate in San Bernardino. "If there is less work, there's not as much money to send to your family members."

But Bass said Mexicans aren't left to fend for themselves in times of great need.

"The federal government in Mexico has social programs to help people who are receiving less money from remittances to continue satisfying their essential needs and prevent them from falling into a situation of desperation," Bass said in Spanish.

Link to full article. May expire in future.

Decentralisation Contributes to Fight Against Poverty - Guebuza.

from All Africa

Macia, - Mozambican President Armando Guebuza declared on Friday that this year's elevation of the town of Macia, in the southern province of Gaza, to municipal status will speed up its development and contribute significantly to the fight against poverty.

Macia is one of ten towns granted municipal status this year, bringing the total number of municipalities in Mozambique to 43. Elections will be held for mayor and for members of the municipal assemblies in all of them on 19 November.

Speaking at a rally in Macia, Guebuza said that with these measures of decentralisation the population will participate in the exercise of local power and management.

After overthrowing colonialism and achieving peace, the current challenge facing Mozambique is the struggle against poverty, the President stressed. He was convinced that, if they remain united and determined, the Mozambican people can overcome this challenge too.

He said that the government had adopted decentralisation through setting up municipalities, and through the Local Initiative Investment Fund, under which up to nine million meticais (373,000) US dollars is allocated every year to each of the 128 districts. These measures were intended to accelerate the development of municipalities and districts, improving the living conditions of their communities.

But there are serious problems with the Local Investment Fund. In principle, of the nine million meticais, two million is for infrastructure, and seven million is given as loans to individuals or associations with viable projects that can increase food production and generate employment. This is intended to be a rotating fund - the money repaid is lent out again. But most beneficiaries have so far not repaid the loans.

In 2007, the district of Bilene-Macia received 8.6 million meticais from the fund, and it was all spent. However, to date only 173,000 meticais has been repaid.

This year the central government disbursed a further 8.6 million meticais, but the Bilene-Macia authorities have only been able to spend 3.7 million.

ANALYSIS-Credit crisis threatens disastrous squeeze on aid

from Reuters

By Laura MacInnis

GENEVA - Paying hundreds of billions of dollars to rescue the world's financial industry looks set to squeeze humanitarian aid and crimp international efforts to fight disease, feed hungry children, and shelter refugees.

Charitable giving and foreign aid flows are likely to dry up as the global economy sours, with rising unemployment and inflation pinching already-tight household budgets, and as big corporate bailouts push governments to the fiscal brink.

Celine Charveriat, Oxfam's deputy advocacy and campaign director, warned of "disastrous consequences" for poor countries if the bank crisis and related belt-tightening prompt donors to cut aid from a current $104 billion a year, as many expect.

"Donors must not make overseas aid the first victim of the economic crisis," Charveriat said.

Washington in particular would be under severe pressure to pare its international aid spending after agreeing a $700 billion financial rescue package, said Steve Radelet, a senior fellow at the Centre for Global Development.

"It is imperative that this pressure be withstood," he said, warning a U.S. pullback could prompt other Western donors to cut their contributions as well, or delay coughing up pledged funds.

ECLIPSE

Radelet, a former U.S. Treasury Department official, said financial woes were likely eclipse development issues in future meetings of G8 world leaders, which until recently focused on anti-poverty goals and aid pledges.

"Foreign assistance is not going to have the pre-eminent role that it has had in past years," he told Reuters.

U.N. agencies said they were bracing for a difficult period.

"Will it have an impact? Of course. We are likely to face a period of financial constraint," a World Health Organisation official said.

The WHO's campaigns to fight diseases such as polio, malaria, tuberculosis and AIDS are funded by governments and philanthropic institutions, and "both are likely to be affected by the current financial downturn", he said.

Antonio Guterres, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, told donors at an annual meeting on Monday that he recognised the financial environment would raise challenges for those who have traditionally funded UNHCR programmes.

"At the same time, I must point out that the resources required to support the 31 million people we care for are very modest indeed when compared the sums being spent to bring stability to the international financial system," Guterres said.

"It would be tragic if the funds available to the humanitarian community in general and the UNHCR in particular were to decline at the very time when the demands upon us are increasing so dramatically," he said.

Link to full article. May expire in future.

Most MDGs will be missed says OXFAM Researcher

from the Independent, Uganda

Oxfam International’s head of research, author Duncan Green visited Uganda last week to launch and discuss his 2008 publication From Poverty to Power; How Active Citizens and Effective States can Change the World. He spoke to The Independent.

When did writing this book start and what is the inspiration for it?

Writing began in 2006. We had the idea of building an NGO narrative which links current debates with Oxfam’s experience on the ground in over 70 countries.

You suggest in your book that big International organisations like UN, Oxfam, WTO, WHO G8, don’t rule the world, but the UN and America influence the world in different ways, how is this?

Development is primarily national, based on the interaction between citizens and states. Rich countries and the multilateral system can help or hinder that process, but they are not the main actors.

Why do you think many international organisations consider Africa as an emergency case that should be given aid through and through?

Because it has the deepest levels of poverty and the highest levels of conflict, compared to other regions

Most economic inequalities in the world are result of unequal natural resources geographical distribution. How do you expect countries to go about with a redistribution of natural resources from a wider world perspective?

Not true. Inequalities are more a matter of political and social structures than of natural resources themselves. That’s why redistribution starts with redistribution of power. You say the lead cause of poverty world over is inequality; of power and opportunities. Some people might disagree, That’s up to them!

What is the place of tax in reducing inequality? And doesn’t a progressive tax, which you advocate, keep inequalities at a constant?

Tax is a central means of redistributing wealth, ensuring a minimum quality of life for all, and building a link between citizen and state. A progressive tax is only progressive if it redistributes from rich to poor, so inequality will not remain constant.

2015 is so close; do you think the Millennium development goals would be achieved by that time? Universal primary education, eradication of poverty, gender equality etc

Poverty MDG is likely to be met, largely due to astonishing progress in China. Most others will be missed.

Your book suggests a world that stands as one. What do you think of the endless and rather ridiculous bouts of racial violence in the western world?

It combination of ‘fear of the other’, rapidity of social change mak