The missteps of aid to Haiti

An Associated Press story today introduces us to an Haitian by the name of Olisten Elerius. Tropical storms have forced Elerius to build his house over and over again. Jonathan Katz, a writer for the Associated Press tells us Elerius story and how aid shortfalls and misuse have caused this tragedy. Our snippet comes from the story's appearance in Salon.

This is the third time Olisten Elerius is preparing to build his tiny cinderblock house. Four years ago, Tropical Storm Jeanne flooded it and drowned his father, sister and nephew. Then, late this summer, Tropical Storm Hanna swallowed it along with his daughter and another sister. It could happen again.

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Haiti's floods are not natural disasters, but a direct result of widespread deforestation, erosion and poverty. Farmers cut trees for charcoal and plant shallow-rooted crops. Rains that would be forgotten elsewhere can kill thousands.

In 2004, Elerius was working in the neighboring Dominican Republic when Tropical Storm Jeanne came twisting like a wounded animal out of the northern sky, sending a wall of water through his cinderblock home and sweeping away his father, sister and nephew. Gonaives residents fled to their rooftops as rivers broke their banks, overflowing morgues with bloated corpses.

A horrified world pledged to help. Elerius returned home just as the money and the white SUVs of non-governmental organizations began flowing into Gonaives, in the north of Haiti.

The U.N. appealed for $37 million in flood relief. Washington would donate more than $45 million, first for emergency food and supplies and then through USAID for the two-year, $34 million Tropical Storm Jeanne Recovery Program.

Disaster officials, newspapers and aid workers called for well-planned, well-financed, long-term aid. Haitian officials told the agencies to spend the money on projects that would save lives: secure rivers, fix roads, design better canals, build homes with better drainage to the sea.

But the U.N. member states, distracted by the Indian Ocean tsunami four months later, raised less than half their funding target.

Work was hampered by violence and insecurity. The Inter-American Development Bank provided about $10 million in loans, mostly for construction of a small drainage system. That project was abandoned by Haitian contractors after bandits stole the cement and steel, IDB representative Philippe Dewez said.

Washington sent money mostly for short-term projects: cleanup, restoration and repair of basic services such as schools, health clinics, roads, bridges and homes. In 2005, the U.S. Government Accountability Office reported that U.S. organizations cleared more than 2 million cubic feet of mud and restored the livelihoods of 48,000 people. But the GAO said they failed to meet an already reduced target for houses and completed no roads or bridges.

How the global economic crisis effecting China

The factory jobs that were supposed to be the paths out of poverty for many Chinese are being cut by the global economic crisis. CNN Money paints a portrait of the workers fleeing the cities.

China's ocean of blue-collar workers is streaming back to the country's farming hinterland, bringing thwarted aspirations and rising discontent in tow as their city jobs, their paths out of poverty, fall victim to the global economic crisis.

Train K192 is a daily conduit of the reversing flow.

Every afternoon it pulls into Chengdu, capital of populous Sichuan province, after a 31-hour trip from Guangzhou, center of China's once-thriving export heartland.

Hundreds of weary passengers, some of whom stand through the entire journey because seats are sold out, straggle into the gray light of the Chengdu winter and an uncertain future.

"Lots of factories have closed. Mine shut about three months ago. There was nothing to do, so I came home," said Wu Hao, 21, sporting a stylish striped sweater and a sleek metal suitcase.

After a year spent making circuit boards in Guangzhou, he was heading back to his family's patch of farmland, a full month before the Chinese new year when he would usually visit home.

Officials estimate that more than 10 million migrant laborers have already returned to the countryside as thousands of companies have been dragged under by weak global demand for everything from clothes to cars.

The government, always concerned about social instability, is now on high alert, fearful of the consequences of a huge mass of jobless, disappointed, rootless young men.

Beijing has urged firms to avoid cutting jobs despite falling profits, and many bosses have obliged by retaining workers but giving them unpaid leave.

"Sales were really bad and the boss just kept giving us holidays. We had 15 days off last month," said Tan Jun, who also clambered off train K192 in Chengdu. "Next year I won't go back."

Catholic responce to the Church of England row

The Telegraph's own James Kirkup notes the response that other church groups have made on the Church of England accusations against the UK government.

Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor rejected the Anglican bishops views on BBC Radio Four's Today Programme, suggesting they were playing a "blame game."

Instead of blaming the Government for materialism and social problems, the cardinal said that responsibility should be shared more widely. Ordinary people and churchmen also bear some of the blame, he said.

"If we are going to accuse people of immorality it is much further than the Government, it is the whole country," Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor said. "I am not too happy with the blame game because if we say that there has to be a "conversion", then I always start with myself."

"Obviously, governments have a particular responsibility but so have the people, so have the cities, so have the communities, I always think that a change of heart begins locally.. you can't bring it about just by Government."

Asked whether he agreed with Bishop McCulloch that the Labuor Government had been "beguiled by money", the cardinal responded: "I do not think that is the whole truth at all."

The cardinal's support will please Downing Street, which had been angered by the Anglican criticism. On Sunday one senior Government source accused the Church of England bishops of a "totally unjustified political attack" on Labour's record

Bishops attack "immoral" UK policies

Sky News from the UK has the latest in some controversial statements that the Church of England have made in criticizing the nations government.

Five leading bishops have accused the Government of failing to tackle poverty and believing money is the answer to every problem.

But Labour has denied the accusation, saying its agenda is all about fairness and giving people the chance to get on in life.

In a damning assessment of its 11 years in power, the five senior Church of England figures have branded the Government "morally corrupt".

The bishops of Durham, Winchester, Manchester, Carlisle and Hulme claim minsters have pursued "scandalous" policies.

The Rt Rev Tom Wright, Bishop of Durham, said they have not done enough to help the poor since taking power in 1997.

"Labour made a lot of promises, but a lot of them have vanished into thin air," he said.

"We have not seen a raising of aspirations in the last 13 years... instead there is a sense of hopelessness.

"While the rich have got richer, the poor have got poorer."

Eating on one dollar a day

A couple of educators tried an experiment to put themselves in the shoes of those in poverty. They tried to live on a diet foodstuffs that cost only $1 dollar a day. The experiment started their own blog and lots of media coverage.

We found out about the diet from this article reprinted in the Chicago Sun Times. Writer Eliene Zimmerman took a look into their kitchen.

The couple, who are both teach English and social justice in southern California high schools, tried to live for one month eating no more than a dollar’s worth of food a day each. (That required buying in bulk; hence the green bins.) Although the project ultimately raised the public’s awareness of poverty and hunger, it started out as a way to lower the couple’s food bill.

“Kerri noticed it was pretty high, about $100 to $150 a week. We were buying prepackaged foods, frozen foods, soy milk, lots of organic fruits and vegetables,” says Greenslate. (He and Leonard are vegans and do not eat animal products.)

When they compared their own food costs with the international poverty rate - $1.25 today, according to the World Bank - Greenslate says they were astonished. “Here we were spending all this money on food every week, and the contrast between that and what those in poverty live on was stark. I wondered if we could actually feed ourselves on a dollar a day,” he says.

In September they began eating less and blogging about it on their website. In the beginning, Greenslate was hungrier than Leonard. But after the first three or four days, “I had more energy, and my appetite decreased,” he says.

By the second week, however, it had become much harder. “There were days where I would hold onto my lectern in class because I felt too lightheaded. It became harder and harder.”

Leonard daydreamed about food. “I would look through my cookbooks thinking, ’I wish we could have that tonight.’ It was like window shopping,” she says Greenslate lost 14 pounds that month; Leonard lost five. Preparing meals could take hours. Almost everything had to be made from scratch, including bread, tortillas, refried beans, and wheat gluten steaks.

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Greenslate and Leonard may have tried living in food poverty for a month, but they did not live in true poverty, says Susanne Freidberg, an associate professor of geography at Dartmouth College who studies the political economy of food.

“They were able to do research and then get in their car and buy a 25-pound bag of cornmeal at the right store for the lowest price. I think if you are that poor, you are buying one cup of flour, an eighth of a head of cabbage, and a little baggie of vegetable oil. On that scale, you’re not getting the food as cheaply,” she says. In many poor countries it’s not just the food people cannot afford but also the fuel for cooking, says Freidberg. “There is such a vast variation worldwide in terms of how people live that ’eating on a dollar a day’ isn’t really meaningful.

”If you live on a dollar a day and you have land and enough hands to work it and the rains are good, the dollar is irrelevant. If you live in a city and depend on the market for food, then you are really suffering.“

Teaching kids how to build bikes

Here is a great inner city project from Houston. It started as a bike repair shop to keep kids out of gangs, but it has transformed into so much more for the children. Lisa Grey of the Houston Chronicle explains how Workshop Houston helps the kids of the third ward.

Workshop Houston started out simple. Right after graduating from Oberlin, four idealists — Zach Moser, Katy Goodman, Seth Capron and Benjy Mason — drove to Houston in a pickup. Between the four of them, they had $20,000 in grant money — enough to launch the Third Ward Community Bike Center, a tiny place where, for free, people could learn to build and repair their own bikes.

They saw the bike shop as an anti-poverty project, giving people in the Third Ward both a skill and a means of transportation — especially necessary in a neighborhood where jobs and grocery stores lie miles away. And for a while, the four got to know poverty firsthand themselves. They shared a four-bedroom apartment. They used foodstamps. They got donations.

They noticed that their 12- and 13-year-old regulars were getting into trouble — out cruising the streets after school, getting tangled in gangs and drugs, going to jail. Bike repair wasn’t enough to break that cycle. A kid can only spend so much time lubricating a chain.

The idealists reformulated themselves as Workshop Houston, with a plan to give middle-school kids something to do every day after school. The Bike Shop would continue, but there would also be the Scholar Shop, with academic tutoring; the Style Shop, with silk-screening; the Beat Shop, with computers for mixing sound; and the Chopper Shop, a place where kids could not just fix a bike, but transmogrify it.

Land is cheap in the Third Ward, and a couple of years ago, Workshop Houston bought a dingy bungalow and a couple of run-down four-plexes on Sauer Street. The original foursome, plus new hires and volunteers, stripped the bungalow down to its studs, painted it lime green and teal and orange, and turned it into the kind of bike shop you expect in a college town.

Kids drift in when they feel like it. Some come only for one of the shops. Some come every day, for everything. Some disappear, leaving half-finished projects behind.

If a kid comes often to the Chopper Shop, the staff gets to know him. They ask about his grades and want to see his progress reports. They nudge him to academic help next door at the Scholar Shop. They go see his teachers. They ask what he wants to do with his life.

1 in 9 Wyoming children live in poverty

The Children's Defense Fund has issued a report that gives some statistics for the state of Wyoming. The report finds that 1 in 9 Wyoming children live in poverty. But, Bill McCarthy of the Wyoming Tribune Eagle says that is still better than the national average.

The national average shows one in six kids living in poverty, according to the report called "The State of America's Children 2008."

The report indicates the number of poor children in the nation has increased nearly 500,000 to 13.3 million, with 5.8 million of them living in extreme poverty and nearly 9 million children lacking health coverage.

"We expect it could rise during the recession in the coming year," Crato said.

So the Children's Defense Fund is hoping to spur urgent national and state responses to the problems of child poverty before the situation worsens, she added.

There are about 74 million children in the United States; almost 21 million of them are under the age of 5. In Wyoming, there are 125,365 children; 35,890 are under age 5, the report says.

The federal poverty line for a family of four in 2008 is $21,200 in annual income.

The report says that 11.6 percent of Wyoming children live in poverty. Nationally, 18 percent of kids are living in poverty, the report finds.

A family of four is considered extremely poor in 2008 if their annual household income is below $10,600 -- half of the official poverty line.

Providing a home for a family in Romania

Another story of charity work today. This one is for an UK based charity that is providing for people in Romania. The newspaper, This Is South Wales, fills us in on the charity and gives an address at the end for contributions.

Fund-raiser Val Newton, of Wales Romanian Aid, who helps families in poverty in Eastern Europe, said the Craus family live in terrible conditions.

"They live in shocking conditions. I have met them about four times now," she said.

"They all have nothing for Christmas. They have rice and pasta and a small amount of vegetables, but they will not have any meat or cheese."

"Their ceiling is made out of mud and there is mud on the floor."

Val visited the family in November when she delivered a food parcel which contained rice, pasta and soup packets which had been donated by kind-hearted folk in South Wales.

"We collected 570 banana boxes full, which is 10 tonnes, and I would like to say thank-you to everyone who donated," said Val.

And more help is on the way to the family, thanks to Val and her team, as they are to receive a new home from donations Val has received from people in South Wales.

She said: "At the moment I am in the process of rebuilding their house for them.

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Anyone who wishes to help should send cheques, made payable to Wales Romanian Aid, to Val Newton at Tycroes, Maesybont, Cross Hands, Llanelli SA14 7HD or call 01269 843345.

A "Man of the Year" who has helped Liberia

This morning we introduce you to Mike Cambria, who was nominated as the Rochester, Massachusetts Man of The Year by the newspaper the Standard Times.

After working in education and politics, Cambria began volunteer work for a group called Mission to Liberia. Standard Times writer Don Cuddy explains how the nominee got his start in helping the group.

His Liberian effort began with a chance meeting in 2005 and a request for his help in shipping used clothing and shoes to the beleaguered population.

Mr. Cambra, who was in the export business, had contacts in shipping worldwide. A 40-foot container filled with donated items duly made its way to Africa. But that was merely the beginning of his involvement.

Mr. Cambra was so impressed by the efforts of Liberian refugee Joseph Deranamie to help those left behind that he, too, became completely immersed in the relief operation.

Today, he is chairman of the board of the nonprofit Mission to Liberia, which, with support from a number of communities in Massachusetts, has succeeded in building a health clinic in the town of Duazohn. But much more remains to be done, Mr. Cambra said.

"The greatest need is for health care professionals, so we took a trip to the University of Liberia School of Pharmacy and Medicine. It's just four walls and a blackboard. They have no electricity, no water, no books, no lab equipment."

Mission to Liberia has now focused on three primary objectives, he said. First, it offers direct aid to the local people in the form of clothing, medicine and much-needed items like mosquito nets.

Secondly, it plans to further expand the clinic and its programs to offer living space for medical professionals and to provide educational outreach to the local population on such important health care issues as hygiene, malaria prevention and AIDS.

Mission to Liberia also hopes to supply the university school with a fully equipped teaching lab, including textbooks and microscopes, stethoscopes and other instruments.

The economy's effects on combating homelessness

We found a great story this morning from Business Week that examines the economy's downturn as it effects the battle against homelessness. The donors who came from Wall Street, well, they don't have as much money to donate anymore. Also, the fight to give all a place to live has been hampered by all the recent house foreclosures.

Dionne Walker's piece for the magazine focuses on the efforts in the city of Atlanta, as they try to join other cities in the U.S. that have cut homelessness in half in recent years.

The economy is hitting all sectors hard. When your goal is eroding a phenomenon directly linked to poverty, however, a crisis this deep delivers an extra gut punch.

"We're sort of holding our breath," says Steve Berg, with the National Alliance to End Homelessness, a leader in forming the anti-homelessness plans.

"Despite the good work a lot of these communities have done with their 10-year plans, we're probably going to have a time when there's more pressure on homelessness."

Five years ago, Philip Mangano, executive director of the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness, got fed up with homeless numbers that had risen for decades.

"How many homeless people (there were), where they came from, how long they stayed homeless, what were the initiatives that actually worked to reduce homelessness -- we didn't know," Mangano says. "We were groping in the dark."

So he urged 100 mayors in 2003 to formulate plans to end homelessness within a decade. They would focus on the chronic homeless, defined as those with a disabling condition experiencing long-term or multiple instances of homelessness and who, activists say, suck up half of available resources.

Leaders would measure progress through benchmarks of people staying off the streets, rather than shelter beds filled. Regions began adopting a strategy placing homeless into their own apartments, then offering help, rather than vice versa.

Immediate housing calms some of the most troubled clients, according to the National Alliance, and double-digit drops in homelessness reported in Chicago, Denver, New York and Norfolk, Va., among other cities, seem to back them up.

"We have some remarkable accomplishments here," says New York Homeless Services Commissioner Robert Hess, pointing to a 25 percent reduction in street homeless since 2005.

Mangano says more than 50,000 units of housing targeting the homeless have been created over the past five years; the goal is 150,000 units by 2014.

A new website to fight childhood hunger in Arizona

A new Arizona state program is seeking donors and volunteers to help hungry children. Melissa S. Aude of the Tri Valley Central wrote a story about the program after visiting their new website.

An estimated 33,477 Pinal County children live in poverty or in low-income households, and many suffer from hunger, missed meals and improper nutrition.

With a goal of eradicating childhood hunger throughout the state by 2018, the Arizona Partnership to End Childhood Hunger, a new campaign sponsored by the state Department of Economic Security, is turning to the community and the Internet to ensure that kids throughout the state receive the nutritional food they need.

Last week, the campaign launched a new Web site and online community to encourage anyone who wants to help to sign up. The Web site allows visitors to join an online network, make a donation, begin a fundraising project and recruit friends and family to help in the cause. So far 27 Internet supporters have signed on and several projects have begun in some communities from Globe, where people are raising money for a food bank, to Peoria, where an elementary school is forming a community garden.

"Since this is a new initiative, projects are starting in communities around the state," said Linda Hamman, hunger relief coordinator for the state Office of Community Partnerships and Innovative Practices.

The Arizona Partnership to End Childhood Hunger is a collaborative effort between families, state agencies, local governments, community-based organizers and volunteers. It is based on the philosophy that communities have the tools, resources and expertise to properly feed children, but the challenge is to mobilize assets and find cost-effective solutions.

"The main goal of this initiative is public and community awareness of the assistance available and how communities and individuals can make a difference through education, advocacy and awareness of the issue of hunger in Arizona," Hamman said.

Statewide, more than 700,000 children under the age of 18 live in low-income households and many do receive adequate nutrition, the organization says. With nearly 52 percent of local children living within or near the federal poverty level, Pinal County ranks third in the state as the county with the most economically challenged children. Only Maricopa County and Pima County rank higher.

Part of the problem in fighting childhood hunger is the fact that many of the programs designed to provide food to the poor do not reach all of their target population, according to Hamman.

A respectful way to raise money

An Ethiopian who lives in Canada is trying to raise money to send a donated ambulance back to his home country. Today's Toronto Star has a story about Samuel Getachew, who doesn't like to exploit the poor people of his country to raise funds. Instead, he has been using cultural events to raise the money.

Getachew explains the need for the ambulance to Toronto Star reporter John Goddard.

"Using an ambulance is a luxury in Ethiopia," he says. "Most people ride to the hospital in taxis or wait for a bus. In villages, to transport very sick people, they even use a donkey."

The City of Ottawa typically sells five used ambulances a year for $5,000 each. The city once gave an ambulance to Ghana.

"I have known (Getachew) for quite a while from some of the other work he has done around the city," says Ottawa city Councillor Diane Deans.

"When he wants to do something, he puts a lot of energy behind the project, and I felt it was one the city could and should support."

Last summer, Getachew visited Ethiopia and met Abebech Gobena, a woman he intends to nominate for the Nobel Peace Prize.

In 1984, Gobena adopted two children left orphans by the famine and now runs orphanage schools serving more than 5,000 children. Videos of her work are on YouTube.

"I'm going to send the ambulance to her headquarters in Addis Ababa and she will decide what village to send it to," Getachew says. "She has made a commitment that it won't be used only for the middle class."

Friends of Ethiopia must still raise $6,000 toward shipping costs. Getachew says anybody interested can call him at 647-210-5538.

Another increase infood bank usage story

This time it's from Indiana. Since the weather became cold in the states, food banks here have noticed a big increase in the numbers coming in for help. As Lauren Daley of the Indiana Gazette notes, sometimes the demand on the food pantries is too much.

With decreasing state and federal aid and a growing demand, the Indiana County Community Action Program is simply trying to use what it has and rely on community donations to support those in need.

Lorna Vite, executive director of ICCAP, said Indiana County residents seemed to make do when gas prices were high in the summer, but food bank numbers jumped as cold weather hit.


``I think if someone is on a fixed income, this is one way they can free up a little bit of money to go into the fuel bill,'' Vite said. ``I think that as cold weather hit, people were looking for all ways to help their household.

ICCAP's 21 food pantries served 1,713 households in October, an increase from 1,380 in July. The agency also gave out significantly more emergency food bags - 393 - in October, a spike from 92 in August and 88 in September. Those who receive emergency food bags are allowed to do so only three times a year and are referred to the county food bank.

Vite said the agency helps approximately 3,200 people per year, a number she believes will increase in 2009.

``I feel like it will go up. Even if it doubled, we would have to work to supply each family with a bag of food. I feel we could handle that, but we have not been in that situation before,'' she said. ``It would be something we would have to work for.''

Based on U.S. Census data, Vite said there are 24,844 people in Indiana County who are eligible for ICCAP's food bank. To determine eligibility, ICCAP takes 150 percent of the federal poverty guidelines, which is an income amount set each year based on household size.

Video: Birthing a better life in Appalachia

Some holiday cheer from Jeffery Sachs

Jeffrey Sachs uses his latest commentary to highlight some great accomplishments that have helped the anti-poverty cause. He reminds us of these achievements to show that the fight against poverty can be won, and so that we don't think the problems are too big to conquer.

Our snippet of Dr. Sachs commentary came from the Miami Herald, even though it has been published just about everywhere.

Hats off, first, to Mexico for pioneering the idea of ''conditional cash transfers'' to poor households. These transfers enable and encourage those households to invest in their children's health, nutrition and schooling. Mexico's ''Opportunities Program,'' led by President Felipe Calderón, is now being widely emulated around Latin America.

• Norway, under the leadership of Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg, is maintaining its tradition of creative social and environmental leadership. The government has put together a global alliance to prevent maternal death in childbirth, investing in both safe delivery and survival of newborns. At the same time, Norway launched an innovative $1 billion program with Brazil to induce poor communities in the Amazon to end rampant deforestation. Cleverly, Norway pays out the funds to Brazil only upon proven success in avoiding deforestation (compared with an agreed baseline).

• Spain, under the leadership of Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, has given a major stimulus to helping the poorest countries to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Spain created a new MDG Fund at the United Nations to promote the cooperation needed to address the various challenges of the MDGs.

• Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has similarly surged to the forefront of global problem solving, putting forward a bold action plan on climate change and proposing new and practical means to address the MDGs. Australia put real money on the table for increased food production, along the lines that Spain is proposing. It also champions an increased program of action for the poor and environmentally threatened island economies of the Pacific region.

• These efforts have been matched by actions in the poorest countries. The landlocked and impoverished country of Malawi, under the leadership of President Bingu wa Mutharika, has doubled its annual food production since 2005 through a pioneering effort to help its poorest farmers. The program has been so successful that it is being emulated across Africa.

• Mali's government, under President Amadou Toumani Touré, has recently put forward a bold challenge to the world community. Mali is eager to scale up investments in agriculture, health, education and infrastructure in its 166 poorest communities. The plans are detailed, thoughtful, credible and based on proven successes that the government has already achieved. The rich world has promised to help Mali, and now Mali has led the way with its creativity.

Comment on fighting poverty in the US

Rebecca Blank of the Brookings Institution has some strategies that the next administration in the US could work on to fight poverty in the states. Our clip of the essay comes from McClatchy newspapers.

Holidays should be a time of blessing. But this year, with unemployment rising, more families are feeling squeezed rather than blessed. A sound plan from the new White House to support low-wage workers, ensure an effective safety net and create opportunities in high-poverty neighborhoods might guarantee American families more on their tables in the seasons ahead.

One in eight Americans lived in families with income below the official U.S. poverty level in 2007. As 2008 wraps up in a deepening economic recession, many more families are finding it difficult to pay the bills that cover the costs of food, clothing and shelter. The ability to cope with medical bills, transportation and child care costs must also be part of the modern-day basic survival package.

To understand the problems of poverty, it is important to identify accurately who is poor. Unfortunately, our current poverty measure is seriously outdated. The current thresholds for measuring whether a family is in poverty are based on 50-year-old data about food consumption, updated only for inflation since the Johnson administration established the poverty measure.

If Barack Obama is serious about waging a new war on poverty, a good start would be to consider a more effective way to measure poverty that better indicates how many families have sufficient economic resources to pay for their basic necessities. In a developed country like the United States, this means more than merely avoiding starvation or homelessness; it means having the resources needed to seek and hold employment.

In a new Hamilton Project discussion paper, Mark Greenberg and I recommend the adoption of an improved measure, drawing from the recommendations of the National Academy of Sciences, which would better define a poverty line and better measure the actual amount households have to spend on the necessities of food, clothing and shelter.

The new measure would provide a more accurate picture of poverty in America and a better understanding of the effectiveness of antipoverty programs. Combating contemporary poverty, however, also requires a rapid-action plan.

For a major political win early in the Obama administration, his policy advisers should propose expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit for low-wage workers without children. Currently, only working parents who live with their children can receive an EITC that is large enough to matter. We need to "make work pay" for all low-wage workers, including less-skilled men who do not live with their children but still have child-support obligations.

The latest great Idea in microcredit

Ah Ha!!! This guy is on to something. I now have another link to add to the "Get Involved Links" Curtis Stephen from the New York City paper City Limits introduces us to Darryl Penrice.

Darryl Penrice likes to talk. His preferred topics of conversation can roam anywhere from the music of the late rapper Tupac Shakur and the murky underside of politics in America to the mechanics of microeconomics. But if there’s one subject that the 32-year-old Brooklyn resident and self-professed “ghetto prodigy” loves to discuss more than anything else, it’s a vision of a new way to fight poverty that he's obsessed with making real.

For the past year, Penrice has been anything but silent about his proposal, meeting with an assortment of potential investors, city officials, nonprofit groups, college students and major grant-making institutions. In the midst of an outreach campaign, Penrice has been trying to earn support – especially the financial kind – to transform the website that he’s created from a prototype into a full-scale, anti-poverty platform that he contends will have a significant impact in the lives of people experiencing economic hardship in New York and well beyond. “I know what I have,” Penrice declares. “I’m not the most religious person in the world, but if God gave me a gift then I’m going to share it. This is something that can feed millions of people.”

Penrice plans for his initiative – an interactive website called Poverty's Demise.org (or as he calls it, "PDO") – to combine the open source atmosphere of Craigslist with the opportunity-expanding aims of Kiva.org, which allows for “microfinance” lending to entrepreneurs in developing countries. But in many respects, if Penrice's ambitious plan ever goes live, it will launch an unprecedented Web-based undertaking.

Penrice envisions PDO as an outlet for person-to-person financial transactions in which donors help economically disadvantaged individuals – who have been screened and approved for participation – and struggling working-class families pay for essential daily living expenses, including everything from food and rent to utility bills and child care costs. Under the proposal, which Penrice details extensively on his website, the tax-deductible donations would be sent to recipients in the form of “universally redeemable” bar-coded certificates to be exchanged at participating retailers and service providers for specific goods and services. Incentives are also provided to both donors and recipients for volunteerism, and the purchase of healthy food and environmentally-friendly products.

The PDO model would also help to ease the burden faced by those on public assistance and seniors, both of whom are subjected to often-frustrating bureaucracies, Penrice charges. “The government is spending billions right now, but nothing is being done to fix a system that isn’t very efficient,” he says. “A lot of people are against welfare, but how can we tolerate a society where people who worked for 40 or 50 years are forced to choose between their medication or groceries?”

As he seeks to create a high-tech community-oriented platform that circumvents government and nonprofit social services, Penrice is clearly aiming big. He’s hoping to land an investment of $4 million to make an initial run. In addition to setting up an office, hiring programmers and sparking the first wave of donations, Penrice plans to focus on New Yorkers in need before branching out nationwide. One endeavor that Penrice hopes to launch through PDO is a program he calls Broader Horizons, where disadvantaged families are sent abroad. “Can you imagine taking a kid from Bed-Stuy and dropping him off in Japan for a week? The problem with generational poverty is that Dad is in jail, Mom is smoked out, and you think the whole world is a ghetto.”

Fund raising for Madagascar schools

A fund raiser was profiled in the website BC Local News from British Columbia. Luke King is a part of the group Rose Madagascar, who raises money for schools and food for the children of the country.

Sage Birchwater of the Williams Lake Tribune explains Mr. King's involvement in the charity.

At the Tatla Lake Christmas Craft Fair last month, Luke King, 26, had a table selling children’s books, calendars and woven bags made from recycled plastic.

The items, he explained, were all part of a project to raise funds for a small village in Madagascar.

When King, who grew up on a ranch in the West Branch Valley south of Tatla Lake, graduated from the UBC geological engineering program two-and-a-half years ago, he and four university friends went to Madagascar.

Three of whom are now doctoral students, one is a law student, and King is an engineer.

“I went there in the summer of 2006 for a couple of months,” King says.

He says two members of his party were there for eight months.

“We hung out in Tsarahonenana, a community where there was no school,” King continues. “And we were introduced to a gentleman who had a development plan for the community.”

...

A month ago King and his friends formally joined with Rose Charities to give their project a stronger organizational base.

“Rose Charities works all over the world,” King says.

He says Rose Charities Madagascar is a Canadian group dedicated to helping children and communities in need in Madagascar.

“Rose Charities works with a variety of Malagasy-run projects that reach out to abandoned, orphaned and underprivileged children that would otherwise be living in poverty,” King says.

We will put a link to Rose Charities up in the "Get Involved Links" later today.

An eyewitness account of Zimbabwe's cholera epidemic

A great story done by the Independent that we found on Zim News, gives a close up view of the conditions in Zimbabwe.

In Harare, the rains have come. They are falling on a city gripped by a cholera crisis that refuses to be talked out of existence. The water is soaking through piles of uncollected rubbish, flooding the reeking open sewers of the townships and driving the foul water into the dams and reservoirs. In the waterlogged soil lie scores of recently buried bodies, few of them wrapped in the regulation plastic that would stop the bacteria seeping into the underground streams that feed the city's bore-holes. The rains are drowning government claims that the cholera crisis is over. The official UN death toll stands at more than 1,000 but the reality is on an entirely different scale. International aid workers are reliant on Zimbabwe's ruined health ministry for numbers and admit in private that the figures quoted in Geneva are up to three weeks out of date and exclude those who leave hospitals and go home to die.

Onias Chimbabara has been collating his own statistics. Walking from house to house in Chitungwiza, the mouldering township 20 miles from Harare where the outbreak began, he has been recording cholera deaths and infections and doing the little he can to help. In a battered blue exercise book he has the names of eight of his friends and neighbours who have died and four more who are close to death. The numbers seem modest until Mr Chimbarara's explains that there are only 100 people in his ward. In the next ward, six have died, he says, in the next six again, and so on throughout the whole township. "People here have diarrhoea and skin problems and the mosquitoes are breeding in the sewerage," he says. No one is paying him to do the count, he volunteered, and his hollow cheeks and tired movements are testament to his own brush with cholera.

Chitungwiza is a playground for the intestinal disease, which in its severest form is among the most rapidly fatal illnesses known. The sewerage system stopped working six years ago. Rubbish collections stopped at the beginning of this year, and filthy, stinking water is available fitfully through what is left of the water pipes. "We petitioned the council to collect the rubbish and fix the sewerage but we have got no response," Mr Chimbarara says. Rain drums loudly on the corrugated roof. "Now with the rains it's getting worse, everyone is complaining of stomach pains." The corrupt local council is bankrupt so residents tried to collect money for diesel to get the rubbish trucks moving but everyone is broke; so far, they have just 20 litres. This is not a natural disaster or even a simple case of poverty. The sewerage system worked well enough in Chitungwiza until 2002 when the area voted overwhelmingly for the opposition Movement for Democratic Change. Thugs from Robert Mugabe's Zanu PF party responded by vandalising the sewerage pumps.

As we spoke, a black and white television showed Mr Mugabe loudly addressing a conference of that same party in nearby Bindura. "Zimbabwe is mine," he told them, wearing the same loud m'zambia patterned shirt he loathes but trots out to play the populist. He would "Never, never surrender!" he shouted, banging the table. The coming of the rains is supposed to be good news. In Mr Mugabe's native Shona, they are called Mwaka ye kurima , the coming of the summer rains for planting. But the country's once-thriving agriculture has degenerated into a desperate effort to stay alive, which in Chitungwiza means old women planting sweet potatoes amid the rubbish on the mud-banks of cholera-infected sewage ditches.

"Everyone is hungry," says Mr Chimbarara. In his backyard is a locked toilet, its rusting door was closed permanently soon after the pumps were smashed, when pouring muddy water down the bowl stopped working. An educated and thoughtful man, he seems embarrassed to say there have been "no flushing toilets for six years". Six feet away is the replacement latrine which feeds stinking, grey, faecal-laden water into a shallow ditch that trickles past the vegetable patch into a similar ditch next door. Asked what he can do for all the people that he is trying to help, he shrugs. "All I can do is tell them to go the clinic." Catherine's clinic in Waterfalls suburb is typical. She is a nurse who until last week worked at the Beatrice Hospital for Infectious Disease. She was watching an average of 13 people a day dying at Beatrice alone. Most patients had clear signs of malnutrition, "skin damages, flaking off like old paint in adults". The children have swelling in their lower limbs, hands and feet.

...

Hopes that the epidemic could be contained have been dashed. Although the World Health Organisation has yet to confirm it, the disease has spread to all 10 districts of the country, says a non-government organisation worker, speaking on condition of anonymity. "The peak will come in the rainy season," she says. "The technocrats at the health ministry are not in denial. They know this is an emergency. It's the politicians." Like many others, she observes that Zimbabwe's society has fallen apart in the past six months. "Things the country was able to contain in the past it can no longer contain." What prevents an even worse, more widespread disaster are the NGOs. Mr Chimbarara goes on with his sad, self-imposed task. He has already lost his brother, who was shot eight years ago by Zanu militia during the farm invasions. His mother was beaten near to death after the ruling party lost elections in March. "Where are we going?" he asks plaintively. "We are being buried in a shallow grave; we are being buried alive."

The Nubian people of Egypt

A very good profile from Bloomberg today about a displaced people within their own country. Similar to the Kurds in Iraq, the Nubians of Egypt have had to leave their traditional villages along the Nile. Some of the displacement is caused by floods, while some is due to reservoirs that the government builds and plans to build upon.

Daniel Williams of Bloomberg news tells us about the Nubian people and their efforts to preserve their own kind.

Singing songs and chatting in an ancient language, hundreds of cheerful Nubian travelers gathered at Alexandria’s railway station for a long pilgrimage to a lost homeland.

Exiles in their own country, they journeyed 18 hours to celebrate a Muslim holiday in southern Egypt’s Nile valley, a region their ancestors once dominated from a loose confederation of villages along the river banks.

In 1964, their shoreline was inundated when the Aswan High Dam created Lake Nasser, the world’s largest reservoir. Now the Egyptian government has floated plans to develop and populate land surrounding the lake -- without reserving space for Nubians. Activists in the ethnic minority say no fair: They want terrain set aside for new villages so their brethren can live again on the Nile, returning from a northern Egypt diaspora and arid settlements established 44 years ago for displaced families.

“The settlements are false Nubia,” said Haggag Oddoul, an author who has become an outspoken advocate for resettlement. “To restore our character and community, we need to be rerooted. We need to return.”

Nubians ruled Egypt in pharaonic times, their armies having ousted Libyan invaders. They speak their own, non-Arabic language and sing their songs to drum beats. The river was their economic lifeblood and fountain of memory, identity and lore. Central to old beliefs, it held the spirits of angels and holy men.

...

Nubians, now numbering about 3 million of Egypt’s 73 million people, have been leaving their stretch of the Nile valley for more than a century -- some because of poverty, some because of efforts to tame the river’s annual floods.

The first dam near Aswan was built in 1902; subsequent ones obliterated settlements further and further south until all of Egyptian Nubia was under water.

Khabairi Gamal, 70, unfurled a hand-drawn map of old Nubia for holiday visitors earlier this month in Aniba, one of the transplanted villages. Young Nubians are forgetting their past, he said, turning to Islam Fathi, 23, and asking where he was from originally.

“Well,” Fathi stammered with a smile.

“Go home and ask about your grandfather. Ask about it!” stormed Gamal, the village leader. “And do you know Nubian?”

“A few --”

“Learn it,” Gamal ordered. “You see, we have to move back. Otherwise, there will be no Nubia and no Nubians.”

Christmas giving in Hawaii

Our blog seems to be catching the Christmas spirit as well, as many stories we have shared are about giving. This focuses on a Rotary club of Hawaii giving to children who live at a Hawaiian homeless shelter. The story on the gifts to children came from the Maui Weekly.

Santa and Dora the Explorer deliver toys from the Rotary Club of Kahului.

Christmas came early for pre-schoolers at the Wailuku A Homeless Shelter on Dec. 17, when the Rotary Club of Kahului brought Santa and his bright red bag brimming with toys to the Head Start class.

As part of the Rotary club’s 2008 “Make Dreams Real” service theme, the event provided toys to 20 of Maui’s needful children.

“As Rotarians, we are committed to the motto of service above self,” said Club President Sandy Baz. “This project allows us to share the blessings that we have received with children who otherwise might not have had a Christmas gift.”

The club partnered with MEO Head Start Director Debbi Amaral to get “Dream Gift” wishes from each child in the Wailuku A Head Start program. Rotarians chose children’s dreams, granted them through local stores, and delivered the wrapped gifts to the shelter.

The holiday party came complete with a pizza feast, a gift exchange, and Christmas carols that brought lots of giggles and smiles to the kids.

New funds from United Nations to reduce poverty

The International Fund for Agricultural Development, and arm of the United Nations, has released new funds to help in anti-poverty efforts.

We found the announcement from an article in the Times of India.

In an effort to reduce rural poverty, a UN agency has approved a new funding of USD 258 million to improve the lives of impoverished
people in 16 developing countries.

The executive board of the UN international fund for agricultural development (IFAD) has approved more than USD 197.55 million in loans and USD 60.83 million in grants for such projects.

"The agreement of the executive board to this package will enable IFAD to continue to work closely with national governments and partners to help poor rural people in these 16 developing countries build better lives," said IFAD President Lennart Bege.

The rural poor, who are the most vulnerable to global problems like climate change and financial crisis, are at the centre of IFAD's work and "we are single-minded in our commitment to do more and serve them better. The board's support will allow us to do that," he added.

The largest portion of the newly-approved funds, over USD 100 million, will assist several African nations, including the strife-torn Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Swaziland and Kenya, to reduce poverty, improve food security and enhance living conditions.

Mugabe: "Zimbabwe is mine"

Here is the latest from Zimbabwe as found in the Australian newspaper The Age.

President Robert Mugabe has declared "Zimbabwe is mine" and vowed never to surrender to calls to step down, as his political rival threatened to quit stalled unity government talks.

Addressing his ZANU-PF party's annual conference on Friday amid a ruinous political crisis and a deadly cholera epidemic, Mugabe returned to the kind of defiance he has often shown in the face of mounting criticism.

"I will never, never, never never surrender. Zimbabwe is mine, I am a Zimbabwean. Zimbabwe for Zimbabweans. Zimbabwe never for the British, Britain for the British," Mugabe told his party's annual conference.

The veteran leader in the former British colony said he would remain until "his people decide to change him".

While the comments struck a familiar tone for the 84-year-old leader - he said earlier this year only God could remove him from office - he now faces increasingly grim circumstances in his crippled country.

The UN says more than 1,100 people have died in the cholera epidemic, adding to woes such as food shortages and poverty as Zimbabwe struggles with a collapsed economy and eye-popping inflation rates.

Poverty census data for Scranton-Wilkes Barre

The Scranton Wilkes Barre area of Pennsylvania has more people in poverty than the national average. James Haggerty of the Standard Speaker reports on the numbers collected by the US census bureau.

About one of five residents in Scranton, Wilkes-Barre and Hazleton live below the poverty level, new U.S. Census data shows, and the proportion of people on public assistance in the cities far exceeds state and national averages.

“Our poverty level has always been on the high side,” said Teri Ooms, director of the Joint Urban Studies Center, a Wilkes-Barre think tank. “While these numbers are alarming, I’m not surprised.”

The new data, reflecting statistical changes from 2005 through 2007, shows public assistance or food stamps went to 16 percent of Wilkes-Barre residents, 13.9 percent of Scrantonians and 13.8 percent of Hazleton citizens. The state and national averages were 8.5 percent and 8.6 percent, respectively.

In addition, poverty afflicts 21.2 percent of the people in Wilkes-Barre, 20.5 percent in Scranton and 18.6 percent in Hazleton, data shows. The state and national averages are 11.9 percent and 13.3 percent, respectively.

“Poverty levels are tied to wages and educations,” Ooms said, citing the region’s labor history of coal mining, textile spinning and other blue-collar work. “We’ve always had difficulty in maintaining a high percentage of highly educated individuals. It’s a little bit of a vicious circle, but it’s a long-standing problem.”

And, the problem is getting bigger, Nocilla said. Catholic Social Services, which feeds, clothes, shelters and counsels the needy, provided aid to 6,450 people in 2007, a 24 percent increase from 2006.

A Red Cross branch in Colorado is having trouble raising money

The Red Cross of Grand Junction, Colorado is having trouble raising money this year. Emily Anderson of the Grand Junction Free Press reports on the troubles they are having in this economic recession. This article also has some good statistics on poverty in that part of the country.

The Red Cross giving tree hasn’t been receiving much this holiday season.

The Western Colorado Chapter of the Red Cross, located in Grand Junction and serving 10 counties, has received 25 percent of the amount donated last year during the holiday season. Red Cross workers and volunteers called 200 businesses hoping to drum up support and set up the tree at Mesa Mall alongside a table of envelopes for donations in December, but have only collected $2,000 during Christmas time. They collected $8,000 in the same time frame in 2007.

“We’re not saying we’re going to close our doors, but we’re trying to maintain our level of service,” said local Red Cross Executive Director David Hintch.

Even for those charitable organizations getting the same amount of donations as last year, extra items are still welcome because of increased need. Although the median household income has increased from $52,015 in 2006 to $55,212 in 2007, Mesa County poverty levels are still above the state average. According to the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, 13.4 percent of Mesa County residents lived below the poverty level in 2007 and 18.4 percent of Mesa County children were below the poverty level. The Colorado average for people below the poverty level was 11.8 percent in 2007, and 15.6 percent of Colorado children lived below the poverty line.

The Salvation Army sent gift baskets filled with toys and practical items to 1,150 families last year, but Major Al Parker expects that number to increase to 1,350 families this year. Volunteers are invited to help sort the baskets today and Monday at the old National Guard building (call 462-5605 if you want to help). Donations of toys, clothing, gloves, coats and gift certificates for food are still welcome, or people can drop some money in a red Salvation Army kettle.

Grand Junction Rescue Mission Director Keith Bradley said he expected fewer donations because of a downturn in the economy, but he has plenty of food to feed the 46 men that sleep at the mission every night.

A great show of charity: gloves for an entire school

Here is a great showing of the Christmas spirit. A woman from Washington state bought gloves for all of the children who attend the poorest school in the area. We found the details from this Associated Press article found at KNDO.

A woman who saw children Monday with no mittens bought 300 pairs of gloves and donated them Tuesday to Stanley Elementary School in Tacoma.

Serena Smith told The Tacoma News Tribune she chose the school at the recommendation of grocery store bagger. Eighty percent of the students there meet federal poverty guidelines for free or reduced meals.

The principal of the school on 17th Street, Cindy Tone-Johnson, called it the "Miracle on 17th Street."

The 54-year-old Smith has two grown sons and works at the Frank Tobey Jones retirement community where co-workers helped her expenses.

A second cholera outbreak in Zimbabwe

Medecins Sans Frontieres says that there is now a second outbreak of cholera in Zimbabwe. Our snippet comes from the MSF press release.

A second cholera outbreak has hit Chegutu, a town 100 km south of Harare, where more than 100 people have died since the first cases appeared on 24 November.

MSF arrived in Chegutu, which has a population of 55,000, on 12 December after being told that day of the emergency. The scene MSF found at the town’s small government cholera treatment centre (CTC) was grim. 74 people were said to have died amongst 650 registered cases.

Patients, dead and alive, were lying on the floor, sanitation services were non-existent and there was no water or food to be found. “The situation was absolute chaos,” says Luis Maria Tello, the MSF Emergency Team Medical Coordinator. “There were no beds and dead people were lying everywhere. People were dying of thirst because there was no water.” The disposal of the dead was one of the first priorities set by the emergency team and MSF was able to carry out disinfection and disposal of the corpses within a day.

The sources of the outbreak are believed to have been discovered. Government authorities found many of the sick had used water from broken pipes that had been vandalized by others trying to access it. Chegutu has been experiencing water cuts for the past seven months, according to residents. Since there are also many burst sewage pipes in the town, it is believed that sewage fairly easily contaminated these drinking sources.

Giving up children to orphanages creates media row in Pakistan

In just one day, three mothers gave up their eight children to an orphanage in Pakistan. When the drop offs occurred last month, it created national headlines shedding light to the worst economic conditions the country has faced in recent memory.

IRIN gave some background on the story and on one of the mothers that was caught up in the media frenzy.

“This is not the first time that people have come to us and dropped off their children citing poverty as the reason for their inability to bring them up,” said Maulana Abdul Sattar Edhi, 85.

“But this time the media showed the stark and ugly face of poverty, which created a ripple in our society and moved the people out of their indifference,” he said.

The Edhi Foundation's headquarters takes in about 300 abandoned babies each year and some 50,000 children at any given moment depend on the foundation for their survival, according to a recent report by the Christian Science Monitor.

According to Haris Gazdar, a Karachi-based economist, an estimated 8.5 million of the country’s 170 million people have been added in the past year to those already living below the poverty line (earning less than two dollars a day).

About 29 percent of the population were living below this level in 2006-07, but this figure may have gone up by 5 percent in 2008-09, he said.

Following extensive media coverage, all three women decided to return to the orphanage and collect their children.

Family’s dire circumstances

“I don’t know what became of me. I made a mistake and I am truly ashamed, but the way the media played up the story has taken away what little respect we enjoyed,” said Bibi. “I lied to my husband and told him I had sent her to a `madrasa’ (religious school) where she would get a good education and three square meals.”

Her husband, Khan Bahadur, an ex-army man, suffers from a muscular disorder and is bed-ridden. “His condition started deteriorating four years ago and now he is just like a child and needs my help with everything,” Bibi said.

Taking care of her children and an ailing husband is taking its toll. “Not only am I in a lot of debt, I have no way out of it.” She used to stitch clothes and earn a little money, but she no longer has time.

People and organisations reached out to the women and doled out alms, but hardly a day later four more children were dumped at the Edhi Foundation - by a father from Tharparkar, one of the most under-developed districts of Sindh Province.

80 ideas to cure poverty

Minnesota is about to complete a year long commission on poverty. The commission's members have traveled the state to hear from the public, and they have boiled all the comments down into 80 ways to cure poverty.

With the state facing a budget deficit, it's doubtful that all 80 ideas in the report will be implemented right away. Charlie Shaw from the St. Paul Star Ledger looked into the commissions report.

The current draft of the final report contains some 80 recommendations. Because of that number, Gregory Gray, the commission’s director, said the recommendations were divided into seven descriptive categories such as “Making state programs more responsive” and “Preventing and alleviating poverty through a high-quality education system.”

The recommendations will hit the Legislature at a time when the state’s general fund is drowning in red ink. Many would cost the state money to implement. For example, the commission wants to increase the Working Family Credit and other tax credits for low-income workers. The commission also wants the state to guarantee child care for all low-income working families by including all families within 300 percent of federal poverty guidelines in public health care programs.

Rep. Carlos Mariani, DFL-St. Paul, a co-chairman of the commission, said the group of 18 legislators and two gubernatorial appointees has looked at the benefits the state would receive by paying for these programs. But he acknowledged they wouldn’t come cheap.

“I think … it needs to be aggressive. Unless you believe you’re going to do it in the private sector, it’s logical you would have outlays before 2020,” Mariani said.

Asked if some of the commission’s recommendations can get passed in 2009, Mariani said, “I do. But it’s in the context of hope.”

A new cholera outbreak in Uganda

This outbreak is not nearly as a bad as Zimbabwe, but there are cholera infections in a region of Uganda. The government there is making radio announcements and conducting door to door visits to warn people on how to avoid the disease.

Warom Felix Okello of the Daily Monitor online says that poor sanitation and poor food safety are to blame.

In just a month, over 38 cases have been registered, mainly in the division, including three deaths district-wide. Statistics indicate that 28 people have been admitted at Oli Health Centre with one death case. “Oli Health Centre has become Arua’s referral hospital with overcrowding of patients,” The Municipal Health officer Dr Paul Onzubo said.

The spectrum of a return of the disease annually has raised widespread fear. District officials believe that several local people were infected by sub-standard sale of food and are paying the price.

An economic meltdown has left urban residents with uncollected garbage and severe water cuts, forcing many desperate families to fetch unclean water from shallow wells. The Medecines Sans Frontieres (MSF) team is working closely with the district health team to contain the dreadful disease.

And on a dusty back street heaped with piles of uncollected refuse not far from Oli Health Centre, residents at the road side said, “Cholera is threatening us. Where is our Mayor?”

Cholera is an acute intestinal infection spread by contaminated water and food. It is now endemic in the area, notably Oli and Ajia Sub County. These areas experienced strong torrential rain that run through the small, muddy alleys, invading each household and leaving filthy rubbish in its wake. Contents from broken sewage pipes and latrines seep into the floodwaters, raising the risk of cholera.

Previously, the Arua Mayor Mr Charles Asiki said the Municipal faces problems of garbage collection due to population density. He said this has made it difficult to control dumping of wastes.

Switzerland extends grand to help Tanzania fight malaria

The Swiss has given a grant to the government of Tanzania to their fight against malaria. Switzerland gave 2.7 billion dollars to help bring more treated nets to the people. The announcement was recorded by the Tanzanian newspaper The Daily News.

Switzerland has extended a grant of 2.7bn/-to Tanzania for scaling up the use of insecticide treated nets in the region, the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Finance and Economic Affairs, Mr Ramadhani Khijja, has said.

Mr Khijja said during a signing ceremony held in Dar es Salaam yesterday that the grant would help reduce the number of deaths from malaria, particularly among children and pregnant women. He said the grant would also go a long way to supporting efforts by the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare to better coordinate the Tanzania National Insecticide Treated Nets (ITN) Programme.

"The agreement shows Switzerland's commitment to support Tanzanian government in its aim of improving the health and well-being of all Tanzanians especially those in rural areas, the poor and vulnerable," he said. The Swiss Ambassador, Mr Adrian Schlaepher, said the funding was aimed not only at sustaining but also strengthening the National Malaria Control Porgramme as a viable institution.

'Alarming' levels of poverty in Congo: UN

Yesterday, the United Nations Development Programme released a report on poverty in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The report's findings show that half of the population will not live to see the age of 40. The long lasting war that tries to control the country's vast resources is mostly to blame.

The Mail and Guardian from South Africa details the UN's report.

The report said that 75% of the population lived below the poverty line -- less than a dollar a day.

More than half the population (57%) had no access to drinking water or to basic healthcare (54%), while three out of every 10 children were poorly nourished, it added.

And there was a 47% chance that a Congolese would die before his or her 40th birthday.

While there had been some improvement in adult literacy and access to healthcare, all other indicators had worsened, the report continued.

Human rights groups have long argued that the battle in the east of the country for control of DRC's mineral riches, including cassiterite (tin ore), gold and coltan, is part of the country's problems.

One-third of the world's estimated reserves of coltan, which is used to make electronics components, are in DRC. The country also has 49% of the world's supplies of cobalt.

Poverty in San Joaquin Schools larger than rest of the country

An area of California has found that poverty is greater in their school district than the rest of the country. The San Joaquin Schools have 53% percent of their students in the free or discount lunch program. The numbers enrolled in such programs here in the States are used as a indicator of poverty within a school district.

Jennifer Torres from the San Joaquin Record reports on the figures in San Joaquin and the concern from school officials.

According to figures from the California Department of Education, 53 percent of children in the county qualify for free or reduced-price school lunches based on their parents' low incomes. In some school districts, that percentage is even higher.

Statewide, about 51 percent of children qualify for free or reduced-price lunches. Generally the county's school poverty rate has tended to match the statewide average, even falling below it for the first years of this decade.

The percentage of children qualifying for subsidized meals - commonly used to gauge the socioeconomic status of a school's population - has been increasing in the county since 2004. In 2005, it broke the halfway mark.

The statistic is of particular concern because poverty is strongly associated with student achievement; schools with higher numbers of financially struggling families tend to have lower overall test scores.

"Everybody who works in schools needs to be really aware of the impact of poverty on kids," said Lynn Beck, dean of University of the Pacific's Gladys L. Benerd School of Education. "It's quite complex. It's everything from the inability of parents to come to meetings because of second jobs to issues of having enough food."

Educators said confronting the challenges of poverty and improving the academic success of children in the region require an approach that considers what children are doing in their classrooms but also the lives to which they return when the afternoon bell rings.

Video: tackling poverty in Charlottesville, Virginia

A new homeless shelter in Washington state

A new homeless shelter has opened in Washington state. It's opening is just in time too, as the temperatures there are getting cold. Dan Schreiber of Lewis County Washington introduces the public to the new shelter.

Ten people gathered at an impromptu homeless shelter on Tower Avenue in downtown Centralia Monday night at about 9 p.m., as temperatures were plummeting far below freezing.

Carl Bohlin was the lone volunteer running the outreach center across the street from the Destiny Christian Center, which provided space starting earlier this month. As far as Bohlin knew, that was the only place available in town for homeless people to go.

“There are people sleeping in garages and under bridges tonight. It’s hard to come here sometimes, and give up your pride,” Bohlin said. “We need more things like this. We’ve got to give them hope.”

Bohlin said the need is much greater than the 16 sleeping spots set up in the shelter, and people could use more help if any other churches were willing to offer it. The shelter is set to remain open every night the temperature falls below 36 degrees.

“Some people in the community say ‘It’s your fault,’ and it’s hard. I’ve been there,” Bohlin said. “But with this economy the way it is, you make one bad choice and you’re out.”

A 35-year-old homeless woman named Michelle said there are plenty of people whose bad decisions lead them into homelessness, but most who use the shelters are grateful, and simply looking for a safe place to sleep.

Poverty forces organ selling in Egypt

We often hear of organ trafficking in other countries, but this is the first that we can recollect seeing a story about the practice in Egypt.

Not only do experts blame poverty, but also the dialysis and health centers that are run down. Some are so unclean that patients run the risk of getting other diseases just by taking dialysis.

This story from IRIN, exposes the problem of organ selling in Egypt, while showing us the case of one of the organ buyers.

In today’s Egypt, a human kidney can be bought illegally for less than US $5,000. A desperate donor sold his to Fawziya (not her real name) for as much. But even paying that sum of money did not cure the patient.

In Egypt, prior to any transplant, the Doctors’ Syndicate must conduct an investigation and only when a specialised committee has given approval can a transplant take place.

Fawziya from Upper Egypt suffers from kidney failure in both kidneys. With no relatives with matching tissue, Fawziya found herself with two options: to continue undergoing dialysis at run-down government health centres, or seek an unrelated donor willing to give up a kidney in exchange for money. She opted for the latter.

In Fawziya’s case the laboratory managed to bribe a member of the committee to approve the operation. “The laboratory had a contact in the syndicate, and we got the approval that way,” Mohamed said. “The doctors treating my mother were all paid, but my mother’s still sick.”

“Now she’s very, very sick,” said Mohamed, her son. “The transplant failed. Within hours of the operation, doctors discovered that her body had rejected the kidney. She is back on dialysis, and has no intention of undergoing surgery again.”

According to Mohamed, Fawziya had received a kidney from a donor from Cairo. The transplant was arranged by a privately-run clinic that officially operates as a laboratory. “We paid a total of US $15,600 for the entire procedure,” he said. “The kidney alone cost US $4,335.” Much of the family’s life savings, therefore, went to waste as a result of the failed operation.

Strict rules, little enforcement

In Egypt, only live organs can be transplanted, according to one health ministry spokesman speaking on condition of anonymity. “Traditionally, Islam prohibits the transplant of body organs from the deceased,” he explained.

Given the genuine risk of patients paying donors for organs, the syndicate has attempted to apply numerous rules aimed at minimising organ trafficking. In 1996, for example, a decree passed by the syndicate forbade patients from receiving organs from unrelated donors. “Only those who are related up to the fourth degree are allowed to donate organs to a given patient,” said syndicate head Hamdi al-Sayyid.

Additionally, in order to curb the purchase of organs from poor Egyptians by wealthy Arabs, foreigners are not allowed to receive organs from Egyptian donors. “The decree prohibits foreigners from receiving implants from Egyptians,” al-Sayyid explained.

There is, however, no law regulating transplants, rendering it difficult to monitor the situation at every level. According to al-Sayyid, a draft law was recently presented to the People’s Assembly by the syndicate, which is currently being deliberated by the upper house of parliament. “The draft includes provisions allowing for transplants from the recently deceased, which is allowed in numerous other Muslim countries,” al-Sayyid said. He added that the draft law enjoyed the support of the Grand Mufti of Cairo’s Al-Azhar University, the most respected seat of religious jurisprudence in the world of Sunni Islam.

The draft also sets down penalties for doctors involved in carrying out illegal transplants. “We’re hoping for the law to be passed as soon as possible so that doctors and institutions involved in the trafficking can be punished,” said al-Sayyid, adding that the draft will subject offenders to possible prison sentences and licence revocations.

A single mother protecting her family from malaria

Our first update for today is about the battle against malaria in Malawi. The Daily Times' Mike Kamande profiled a poor single mother who can not afford mosquito nets for everyone in her family. However, she did get some help from the aid group Nets For Life. The group has distributed 63,000 mosquito nets throughout the country.

It is a known fact that sleeping under an insecticide-treated net drastically reduces malaria transmission but few people have access to nets and so the disease remains a scourge in Sub Saharan Africa, Malawi included. Granted that a net costs about K900 in most shops, it is such an uphill struggle for an ordinary villager, more so a single mother like Anastazia Mphadzula to source that fortune just to buy the life saving net.

Anastazia, 54, of Ndirande Village, T/A Lundu in Chikwawa, a mother of 3 has experienced numerous and frequent close-shaves with malaria most especially her 12 grandchildren of whom she is the only parent.

“Malaria has ravaged my family so much and a month could not pass without one of my grandchildren falling ill to the disease” she said.

She added that due to poverty she could not afford to purchase nets for her large family and so the young ones and herself were condemned to perpetual malaria attacks, and that culminated into reduced productivity in her garden as she spent most of her time attending to her sick family members.

“The health of the people is really the foundation upon which all their happiness and all their powers as a state depends,” once observed Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881). And in truth, everyday it was becoming more apparent that no satisfactory solution to her problems was possible so long as poverty remained at the head of her affairs.

Nonetheless, long at last, a smile emanated from Anastanzia’s face, when NetsForLife, a charitable non-governmental organisation donated a insecticide-treated net that helped reduce her miseries due to malaria. And there could be no mistaking her happiness recently as she bubbled with joy when she recounted her past ordeal.

“It’s unbelievable how a small thing like a net could be so useful in saving so many lives from the pangs of a killer disease like malaria, emancipating an old woman like myself from the slavery that mosquitoes posed on me,” she said.

The sad part of the story, however, is that although she is ready to sacrifice her own life due to the fact that she was given only a single net, she reasoned she ought not to sacrifice lives of her grandchildren, observing that unlike before, the children are now huddled under the net to protect them from malaria spreading mosquitoes. She, however, wished the nets were many.

Is the food crisis truly over?

In the opinion of an interview in the Scientific American, Joachim von Braun of the International Food Policy Research Institute thinks that the crisis will continue. Von Braun is of the opinion that the drop in food prices is only because of the economic recession that is spreading around the world.

David Biello interviewed von Braun for the magazine.

Earlier this year there was a widespread perception of a food crisis as grain and other food commodity prices soared, accompanied by food riots in Haiti and elsewhere. But recently those prices have dropped. Has the crisis passed?
Not at all. Only some of the elements and causes of the crisis have changed. Prices came down in the international commodity markets and that helps import-dependent poor countries. But in many countries the international price change is not quickly passed on to the domestic markets. For instance, in many African countries [prices] remain far above long-term trends. Now the financial crisis comes on top of the price crisis. Capital for investment in agriculture is very limited and employment and income of the poor is reduced in the recession. Hunger will increase further.

What was responsible for this crisis?
The [food] price crisis in 2007–2008 stemmed from long-term neglect of agricultural investment, especially investment in research and development; the financial crisis in the second half of 2008 stemmed from fundamentally different causes—flawed regulatory regimes in banking and finance—but the two crises have fed on each other. Although the food and financial crises developed from different underlying causes, they are becoming intertwined in complex ways through their implications for macroeconomic stability, food security and political security. Because the two crises are interconnected, a coordinated response is needed to alleviate the double blow on the poor.

Why can't we produce enough food and/or get food to where it is needed?
We can grow enough food but currently don’t. Greater investment in research and development [R&D] is crucial for promoting pro-poor agricultural growth. Even though spending on agricultural R&D is among the most effective types of investment for promoting growth and reducing poverty, such spending has stagnated since the mid-1990s. A recent study by IFPRI shows that if investments in public agricultural research doubled from US$5 [billion] to US$10 billion from 2008 to 2013, agricultural output would increase significantly and millions of people would emerge from poverty. If these R&D investments are targeted at the poor regions of the world—sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia—about 282 million people could come out of poverty by 2020.

The battle for the riches in Niger

The war in Niger isn't so much for the land, but what is beneath it. The country has a large deposit of uranium which is needed for nuclear power. A people fight against it's government for the rights to the unclaimed uranium.

The New York Times Lydia Polgreen writes an extensive piece about the battle in Niger.

Until last year, the only trigger Amoumoun Halil had pulled was the one on his livestock-vaccination gun. This spring, a battered Kalashnikov rifle rested uneasily on his shoulder. When he donned his stiff fatigues, his lopsided gait and smiling eyes stood out among his hard-faced guerrilla brethren.

Mr. Halil, a 40-year-old veterinary engineer, was a reluctant soldier in a rebellion that had broken out over an improbable — and as yet unrealized — bonanza in one of the world’s poorest countries.

A battle is unfolding on the stark mountains and scalloped dunes of northern Niger between a band of Tuareg nomads, who claim the riches beneath their homeland are being taken by a government that gives them little in return, and an army that calls the fighters drug traffickers and bandits.

It is a new front of an old war to control the vast wealth locked beneath African soil. Niger’s northern desert caps one of the world’s largest deposits of uranium, and demand for it has surged as global warming has increased interest in nuclear power. Growing economies like China and India are scouring the globe for the crumbly ore known as yellowcake. A French mining company is building the world’s largest uranium mine in northern Niger, and a Chinese state company is building another mine nearby.

Uranium could infuse Niger with enough cash to catapult it out of the kind of poverty that causes one in five Niger children to die before turning 5.

Or it could end in a calamitous war that leaves Niger more destitute than ever. Mineral wealth has fueled conflict across Africa for decades, a series of bloody, smash-and-grab rebellions that shattered nations. The misery wrought has left many Africans to conclude that mineral wealth is a curse.

Here in the Sahara, the uranium boom has given new life to longstanding grievances over land and power. For years, the Tuareg have struggled against a government they largely disdained. But this new rebellion has shed the parochial complaints of an ethnic minority, claiming instead that the government is squandering the entire country’s resources through corruption and waste. Armed with a slick Web site and articulate spokesmen in Europe and the United States, the movement has gotten sympathy from Westerners drawn to the mysterious Tuareg and their arguments for justice.

22 convictions in Egypt food riots

When food prices spiked this summer, riots occurred throughout the world in protest. In Egypt, people are now being convicted on charges from crimes that occurred during the riots.

From this Associated Press story that we found in the International Herald Tribune, the sentencing itself caused some additional protests.

An Egyptian emergency court convicted 22 people for participating in deadly food riots in April, handing out sentences ranging from three to five years, the presiding judge said.

The remaining 27 defendants in the high profile case held in the northern provincial capital of Tanta 55 miles (90 kilometers) north of Cairo, were acquitted, Judge Alsayyed Abdel-Maaboud told The Associated Press.

Defendants screamed at the judge calling him unjust when the verdicts were read out, with some fainting, according to witnesses inside the court.

Thousands of residents of the gritty industrial town of Mahalla al-Kobra rioted in April for two days over the hardships caused by high food prices, destroying posters of the president and clashing with security troops.

The demonstrations were quashed by tear gas and shotgun-wielding security forces who killed three people and arrested dozens of others.

The 22 defendants were convicted on charges of looting, assaulting police officers and the possession of dangerous materials, including firearms.

Before the sentencing the judge read a lengthy statement that blamed international pressures for the food prices, and that the blame was not with the Egyptian government. Echoing the statement that President Hosni Mubarak made this summer.

Video: African Farmers Increase

Charity brings good ideals to poor places

The Independent newspaper has a profile on a charity it is helping to support this Christmas season. The charity called Voluntary Service Overseas puts professionals in the fields of medicine, science and engineering in the underdeveloped world.

This story, as a part of the The Independent Appeal series, shows how VSO helped a changed the life of a poor family with a business idea.

A community of a few hundred fishermen and small farmers in a humid equatorial forest of tall palms and cassava fields, it is a three-mile walk from the nearest sea breeze and an equal distance to the closest place to charge a mobile phone. Altogether an unlikely setting for entrepreneurship. But for Sada and her group of two dozen women in Kisasasaka that is exactly what it is.

Fed up with a life of just getting by – which has been getting harder with each price rise in food, medicine and transport – she jumped at the chance to start a business. With the latest of her five children, Aziza, attached to a breast, Sada, 35, is talking about "understanding markets" and her plans to branch out from crab-farming into chicken-rearing.

All that had been needed was a brainwave. It was supplied by a British ecologist. He was volunteering for Voluntary Service Overseas a few hundred miles away in the mainland coastal city of Tanga when he saw fishermen fattening crabs for resale at premium prices. That activity, he thought, could be transferred to the subsistence communities living in Zanzibar's mangrove swamps, and make them some useful money.

It is just the kind of brainwave that is the speciality of the British charity VSO, one of the three charities being supported by The Independent's Christmas Appeal this year. VSO takes smart, skilled people and puts them in places where good ideas can change lives.

Sada and her Kisasasaka women's group buy or trap immature crabs and fatten them in homemade pens. They feed them the fish guts which is the waste product of their husbands' businesses. Young crabs cost as little as 20p and after six weeks, when they weigh up to two kilos, can be sold to the island's top hotels for more than £2.

That kind of profit has allowed important changes in Sada's life. "If my baby gets sick I don't have to wait for my husband to get back from the sea to take her to the clinic," she says. "I can get transport and buy medicine myself." In addition, it buys clothes, pens, school books and "self-respect".

React to Mugabe's madness

The opposition to Mugabe's ruling party has called his words from yesterday "madness." Yesterday Robert Mugabe, President of Zimbabwe said there was no cholera in his nation, even though Medecins Sans Frontieres has treated more than 11,000 patients.

Bloomberg's Brian Lathum reports on the reaction and the outbreak.

A United Nations health agency stood by its warning that the number of people infected may almost quadruple to more than 60,000, while a U.S. aid agency authorized new emergency assistance for Zimbabwe.

Mugabe made his comment in a nationally televised address, saying cholera “no longer exists” in the country and crediting the World Health Organization and the Southern African Development Community for their help in fighting the disease. He also dismissed calls by global leaders for him to resign.

Mugabe’s announcement is “clearly madness,” Nelson Chamisa, a spokesman for the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, said in an interview from the capital, Harare. “At least 800 people have died, perhaps more because we do not really know the effect of the disease in outlying rural areas.”

Cholera, mainly spread through contaminated water and food and poor sanitation, causes severe diarrhea and vomiting that can be fatal. The first cases in the Zimbabwean outbreak were reported in August. A collapse of the country’s economy has led to shortages of chemicals for water-treatment plants.

U.S. Ambassador to Zimbabwe James McGee criticized Mugabe and his government.

“The so-called leaders of this country need to stop feeding their insatiable greed and take care of the poor and deserving Zimbabweans languishing because of corruption,” McGee said in an e-mailed statement today.

Mugabe says there is no more cholera in Zimbabwe

WOW! Just Wow! I can't believe this moron.

This story comes from the AFP.

President Robert Mugabe claimed Thursday the end of Zimbabwe's cholera epidemic, but aid agencies argued otherwise, as South Africa declared a disaster on its border due to the disease.

"I am happy to say our doctors have been assisted by others, and WHO (the World Health Organization) and they have now arrested cholera," he said in a nationally broadcast speech.

He also denounced calls by British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and US President George W. Bush for him to step down, accusing them of plotting an invasion.

"Because of cholera, Mr Brown, Mr Sarkozy and Mr Bush want military intervention. Now that there is no cholera, there is no need for war," he said. "The cholera cause doesn't exist any more."

Shortly after Mugabe spoke, the UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Assistance said the death toll had risen overnight to 783 with more than 16,000 cases reported.

"If anything is certain in the chaos of Zimbabwe today, it is that the cholera outbreak is not under control," said Rachel Pounds, Zimbabwe director for British charity Save the Children.

World Bank forecast for 2009...

...is not a good one. The World Bank predicts that the developed world economies will contract in 2009, while the growth in developing countries will be much slower because of the contraction.

In this article from the Financial Express, the World Bank explains why the recession is important for anti poverty efforts.

"The global economy is at a crossroads, transitioning from a sustained period of very strong developing country-led growth to one of substantial uncertainty as a financial crisis rooted in high-income countries has shaken financial markets worldwide," Justin Lin, the chief economist of the anti-poverty bank, said in the report.

Developing countries' economies would likely expand at an annual pace of 4.5 per cent while wealthier, developed economies are expected to contract 0.1 per cent, the multilateral development lender said.

"We know that, in developing countries, every 1.0 per cent reduction in the growth rate will mean around 20 million people lost the opportunity to get out of poverty," Lin said at a news conference at the bank's headquarters in Washington.

The latest report was far more pessimistic than the bank's prior 2009 forecasts of global growth of 3.0 per cent and 6.4 per cent for developing countries, issued in June.

They also were gloomier than those of its sister institution, the International Monetary Fund, which forecast the world economy would expand by 2.2 per cent and developing economies by 5.1 per cent in early November.

The World Bank projected that world trade volume would contract 2.1 per cent in 2009, the first decline since 1982.

Related Video

Census figures round up: Part 3

Here are some more localized stories on the nationwide census survey that was released yesterday. The data collected ranges from 2005 to 2007. Here are links to related stories from yesterday, part 1 and part 2.

First we stop by Ohio, Dana Wilson and Jim Phillips filed this story for the Columbus Dispatch.

Ohio University students might be short on cash, but the city probably is not as poor as the U.S. Census might lead one to believe.

Athens is atop the list of the nation's poorest towns and cities that have at least 20,000 people, according to newly released figures from the U.S. Census.

Numbers from the census' American Community Survey released yesterday say that on average for the period of 2005-2007, 52.3 percent of the city's residents were living below the federal poverty level.

The only community in the United States that ranked higher than Athens was a segregated Hasidic Jewish enclave in New York, Kiryas Joel Village, which in many ways is a statistical anomaly (its median age, for example, is 15).

Athens Mayor Paul Wiehl wonders whether the city's ranking might be skewed by the large portion of the city's population made up of OU students. His city, whose total population is listed in the census report as 23,814, includes a university with an enrollment of more than 20,000.

Given that many college students probably wouldn't report high incomes to the census, Wiehl suggested that when OU students are included as Athens residents, they drive up the city's poverty percentages.

Lastly for this post, upstate New York's York County, Carl Lindquist is a writer for the York Dispatch.

The number of York County people living in poverty is on the rise, according to new U.S. Census Bureau figures.

An average of 33,700 people were living below the poverty line between 2005-2007, according to three-year Census Bureau estimates released Tuesday.

That's up from 25,269 reported in the 2000 Census.

The figures show that nearly 8.3 percent of York countians living in poverty, compared to 6.7 percent in 2000.

The estimates were released Tuesday by the Census Bureau as part of its American Community Survey, which offers a variety of demographic, housing and population estimates. The information was averaged over three years.

It offers the first look since the 2000 Census at detailed socioeconomic and housing characteristics of mid-size areas with populations between 20,000 and 64,999.

York City, like the county as a whole, experienced an increase in poverty, according to the Census estimates. The newest figures show about 33 percent of the city's population living in poverty, up from 24 percent in 2000.

The slow food aid from the US

This is a good one, and our little snippet will not do it justice, so I would encourage you to hit the link to the full story from Bloomberg.

This is an exhaustive peace on the shortcomings of the USAID food aid program. Showing how slow it is, how it benefits US companies, and how more and more money is sunk into a slow, ineffective aid program.

In a related post from a few weeks ago, former President Bill Clinton had applauded President George Bush's attempt to correct a problem with USAID, but was stopped by Congress.

Bloomberg reporter Alan Bjera begins the story by developing a "food trail" from North Dakota to Ethiopia.

The bag of green peas, stamped “USAID From the American People,” took more than six months to reach Haylar Ayako.

For seven of his grandchildren, that was a lifetime.

They died as the peas journeyed from North Dakota to southern Ethiopia. During that time, the American growers, processors and transporters that profit from aid shipments were fighting off a proposal before Congress to speed deliveries by buying more from foreign producers near trouble spots. As a result of legal mandates to buy U.S. goods, the world’s most generous food relief program wasn’t fast or flexible enough to feed the starving in Ethiopia’s drought-ridden South Omo region this year.

“I am so grieved that I lost those children,” said Ayako, a Bena tribesman, speaking in his local Omotic language. “They died of the food shortage.”

The dry peas Ayako took home almost eight weeks ago had traveled more than 12,000 miles (19,300 kilometers) by rail, ship and truck, starting 15 miles south of the Canadian border with their harvest in August 2007. Stops included Lake Charles, Louisiana; Djibouti, the small African country whose capital on the Gulf of Aden serves as a port for food aid; and Nazareth, Ethiopia, two hours south of Addis Ababa, the capital. Warehouse stays punctuated each leg until the peas finally arrived in the village of Shala-Luka.

‘Behind Closed Doors’

U.S. farm and shipping lobbyists have stifled efforts to simplify aid deliveries, leaving Africans to starve when they might have been saved, said Andrew Natsios, a professor at Georgetown University in Washington who led USAID, the Agency for International Development, from 2001 to 2006.

“No one can take the high moral ground against it, so they hide behind closed doors and kill it,” he said. “It’s all done behind the scenes.”

The shortcomings of the half-century-old humanitarian program show how efforts to protect American shareholders can have unintended consequences. After approving $2.62 billion of food aid in June, Congress has since authorized 267 times that much in the $700 billion financial system bailout and begun debate on requests from U.S. automakers for billions more.

Lawmakers this year failed to pass President George W. Bush’s January proposal to buy food closer to starving people rather than shipping American produce. In May, Bush renewed his request to spend 25 percent of the program locally after food riots broke out in Africa, South Asia and the Caribbean.

Companies Benefit

Cargill Inc., Archer Daniels Midland Co. and Bunge Ltd. accounted for 47 percent of 2007 commodities spending for aid, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The program was created in the 1950s, partly to reduce domestic surpluses. The regulations require that almost all the peas, corn and other crops come from American sources, effectively steering the bulk of the business to the biggest food-trading companies.

The rules also stipulate that 75 percent of the food must be transported on U.S.-flagged vessels, benefiting ship operators, including Liberty Maritime Corp., based in Lake Success, New York, and Sealift Inc., of Oyster Bay, New York. In 2007, the program’s shipping contracts were worth $385 million, according to the USDA.

Politics isn’t the only manmade cause of the disaster that befell Ayako and his family in Ethiopia. Dozens of interviews on six continents show that the global food crisis also has roots in the failure by governments of developing countries to invest in agriculture, in a three-fold jump in fertilizer prices over two years and in speculators who doubled bets on grain futures and drove prices to records.

Give and take in Latin America

The numbers of those in poverty in Latin America and the Caribbean did a little give and take in 2008. Two million people were lifted out of poverty while three million people fell into extreme poverty.

The IPS Daniela Estrada gives us the numbers on a report from a regional United Nations agency.

According to the 2008 edition of ECLAC’s annual Social Panorama of Latin America report, released Tuesday in the Chilean capital, 33.2 percent of the regional population, or 182 million people, are now living in poverty, 0.9 percent less than in 2007.

At the same time, the extreme poverty rate rose slightly, from 12.6 percent of the population in 2007 to 12.9 percent this year (68 to 71 million people). Factors that played a role in this increase were the rise in inflation, and especially food prices.

Although the region is better prepared than in the past, both poverty and indigence rates could go up in 2009 as a result of the global financial and economic crisis that originated in the United States, said ECLAC (Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean) executive secretary Alicia Bárcena at the presentation of the report.

Bárcena grouped the countries of the region according to their poverty levels: low (below 22 percent), medium-low (below 32 percent), medium-high (between 38 and 48 percent) and high (over 50 percent).

The first category includes Argentina, Chile, Uruguay and Costa Rica, the second Brazil, Mexico, Panama and Venezuela, the third Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador and Peru, and the fourth Bolivia, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Paraguay.

Under the present circumstances, the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean should "protect the poor, maintain social spending, implement effective employment programmes, and step up the fight against child malnutrition," Bárcena told IPS.

It's not a news story, but I couldn't get it out of my head

One of the blogs we follow had a compelling post about encountering poverty in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. While it is not a news story, we thought we would share it here, because we haven't been able to get the word pictures out of our head since we've read it.

The story comes from one of our favorite blogs Flower Dust.net. Anne Jackson is the author.

after making the rounds at several adult establishments to hand out roses to the ladies who worked at them, we went to the almost condemned alamo motel.

the cold air kept the prostitutes indoors, yet we managed to stop by one motel room where we knew we’d find a lady the team has gotten to know over the last little while. she answered the door in a house robe and hair net.

we’ll call her miss ella.

miss ella lives in a motel room no bigger than 300 sqaure feet. some of the surrounding rooms still have boarded up windows and are missing pieces of the roof, but miss ella’s room managed to weather the rounds of hurricanes that hit baton rouge over the summer.

the thing that surprised me about miss ella wasn’t the fact that she’s a grandma. but that she is a grandma with six (usually seven) kids (and a dog) living with her in her small, god-only-knows-what’s-happened-here motel room. as i peered in a crooked door frame, mattresses covered the floor and baskets of clothes were scattered around.

this was miss ella’s home.

we gave miss ella a rose and some candy to her grandchildren. one of the ladies i was with asked why one of miss ella’s granddaughters stayed covered up under some blankets, and why she wasn’t coming to the door for her candy.

“is she sick?”

“she doesn’t have no clothes,” miss ella said.

we talked more with miss ella and what appeared to be her eldest grandson came to the door wearing a light purple windbreaker (circa 1984) and matching running pants. evidently he had recently returned to the care of miss ella after getting into some kind of trouble. we asked him if he’d go back to school soon. he said no.

“he don’t have no clothes to wear to school,” miss ella replied, matter of factly.

alliece, the brilliant and beautiful woman who heads up the baton rouge dream center, as well as this midnight outreach we were on, told miss ella to come by the center for some clothes on sunday. they would take care of him, and make sure miss ella had anything else she needed.

after we prayed with her, i climbed back in the shuttle, headed back to my own hotel room, which was probably the same size as miss ella’s, if not a tad bigger. but i had my room all to myself. perched high up on the 18th floor, i was far removed from any pimps or prostitutes or drug deals or rats or roaches or mold. i didn’t consider latching the door behind me because subconsciously i knew i was completely safe.

it was a contrast i’m far from forgetting.

Gates Foundation gives money for food research

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has given $27 million dollars to the McKnight Foundation. The Foundation works on food research to help farmers in the poorest parts of the world.

The Foundation has many projects ongoing throughout the world. McKnight works to help farmers improve their seed varieties, improve their soil, and control pests.

The Star Tribune's Matt McKinney offers more on the grant and the Foundations work.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the biggest name in philanthropy, has awarded $27 million to the McKnight Foundation to study food crops and farming in some of the poorest corners of the world. The grant, for research on crops such as sorghum and finger millet and on ways to increase the yield of sweet potato in Uganda, is a first for the Minnesota-based McKnight, said the group's president, Kate Wolford.

"They were aware of the program work we were doing and reached out to us as they were expanding their agricultural research and development work," Wolford said.

The McKnight Foundation has funded crop research for more than 20 years, and today it supports 26 projects in 17 countries.

The research is precisely the sort of work that experts say must be done to stave off the possibility of famine across Africa and Central and South America, the likelihood of which grew this year as a global food crisis pushed millions of people into poverty and swelled the ranks of the malnourished to 967 million, according to the World Food Program.

The Gates Foundation grant, paid out over five years, will double the $4.7 million that McKnight spends on agriculture research every year.

Census figures round up: Part 2

Here is some more local coverage of the recent US Census Data release. Reflecting data collected from 2005-2007. First from the Chicago Tribune.

The southern Chicago suburb of Dolton ranks 10th on the list of small-and-medium-sized U.S. cities that have seen the biggest jumps in poverty.

New census data show the poverty rate has increased 8.4 percent since 1999 to 18.3 percent in the village of Dolton. The east-central city of Charleston ranked 12th on the list, with a poverty rate of 40 percent -- up 30 percent since 1999.

Next from your humble blogger's home state of Michigan. Linda Angelo writes for the Flint Journal.

Everywhere from blue-collar Burton to the wealthier Grand Blanc Township, people are having a tough time making a living. Those who help the poor are noticing the change.

"We're seeing a little bit of a climb and expect in the next few years to see that accelerate and that's because the folks who are outside of the city traditionally had a broader support system compared to those who have always been isolated in poverty in the city," said Steve Walker, executive director of the Genesee County Community Action Resource Department.

"Their available discretionary income is shrinking -- the families and friends they could go to (and) ask for assistance, there's less available at this point in time."

Taking the biggest hit is Burton, which had 12.1 percent of its families living below the poverty level between 2005 and 2007. That's more than double the poverty rate in 2000 when it was 5.5 percent.

The numbers are part of the 2005-2007 American Community Survey -- the first statistical "portrait" since the 2000 Census for more than 2,500 midsize counties, cities and towns with populations between 20,000 and 64,999.

Finally another perspective from Colorado, Amy Bounds writes for the Daily Camera.

Before the recession hit, this city already was seeing a significant increase in the number of residents living in poverty.

The number of Lafayette residents whose income levels were below the poverty line jumped 68 percent from 2000 to 2007, according to new data for mid-sized cities released Tuesday by the U.S. Census Bureau. It’s estimated that 2,745 people — or 11 percent of Lafayette’s population — are living in poverty.

Ruth Perry, food bank manager at Lafayette’s Sister Carmen Community Center, said that number is likely even higher now.

In the past couple of months, she said, she’s seen as much as a 40 percent increase in the number of clients using the food bank. On a busy day last year, the food bank’s customers numbered in the low 20s. One day last week, Perry counted 48 people picking up canned goods, dairy products and other food.

“It’s been staggering,” she said.

The new census data was compiled from the American Community Survey given in more than 2,500 counties, cities and towns nationwide with populations that ranged from 20,000 to 64,999. The surveys were given from 2005 to 2007 and the results averaged.

Census figures round up: Part 1

The US Census Bureau released data today that was compiled during the years 2005 to 2007. They call it the American Community Survey and it's purpose is to compliment the census that takes place every decade for more year to year material.

Whenever the census bureau does something like this, newspapers across the country localize the story, so we will do snippets of three stories we have seen already today. First, from The Coloradan, writer Dennis Crawl gives the figures for a very prosperous part of the nation.

The number of Loveland residents living in poverty doubled in recent years as income levels plunged by 10 percent, according to new census data released this week.

On average, more than one of every 11 Loveland residents lived below the poverty line between 2005 and 2007, compared to about one in every 16 in the 2000 census, according to results from the American Community Survey conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau.

It's the first poverty estimate for Loveland since the 2000 census and is in line with earlier data that showed dramatic poverty increases in that time in Larimer County and Fort Collins.

Jenn and Derrick Barnes have learned how difficult it is to make ends meet while supporting four small children on one modest paycheck.

“I worked so much that I was gone all the time, and it wasn’t helping out as much as I hoped. I couldn’t make enough to afford day care,” Jenn said.

That kept Jenn at home with the children, all between 5 and 11 years old, and the family dependent on Derrick’s job as a business analyst, which they said is a “fancy title” with a not-so-fancy salary.

Next, the take from Northern California, Shauntel Lowe writes for the Time Herald.

Census data released today show a marked increase since 2000 in the percentage of Vallejo families living below the poverty level and a steep jump in the proportion of household income devoted to housing costs.

The data, compiled between 2005 and 2007 for the American Community Survey by the U.S. Census Bureau, also reveals an increase of more than 100 percent in the median value of single-family homes in that time.

(The figures, however, were based on statistics gathered at the beginning of the subprime mortgage crisis, and do not reflect current values.)

Since 2000, the percentage of Vallejo families with children under 18 living below the poverty level has risen from 10.3 to 15.5, according to the survey.

In that same period, the percentage of homeowners spending more than 35 percent of their household income on housing costs has climbed from 21.8 to 39.1.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development recommends that no more than 30 percent of a household's gross income go toward housing costs, which include mortgage and property insurance payments.

Finally from Alabama, Trevor Stokes writes for the Times Daily.

The U.S. Census today released a demographic snapshot of small communities with 20,000 or more residents, the first update since the 2000 Census.

The American Community Survey averaged together three years of responses across the U.S. taken between 2005 and 2007 that allowed the Census to produce population estimates of population as small as 20,000 people. The survey results covered Lauderdale and Colbert counties along with the Florence/Muscle Shoals metropolitan statistical area.

"Communities are no longer limited to a once-a-decade look at their population's characteristics," stated Census Bureau Director Steve H. Murdock in a press release.

"The (American Community Survey's) multiyear data will allow small towns and communities to track how they are changing on an ongoing basis."

The data are distinguished from the U.S. Census taken every 10 years in that they represent an average over three years in different surveys.

"Construction of new housing units has slowed to a crawl in Florence this decade," according to an initial analysis from Annette Jones Watters, director of the Alabama State Data Center at the University of Alabama. Watters responded to questions about the data via e-mail.

Ontario's anti poverty plan, more stats desired by some

Some anti-poverty groups in Ontario say that the plan unveiled last week by provincial government was a good start. But, they would like to see further numbers crunched on how poverty effects different races.

Tanya Talaga of the Toronto Star details the complaint.

While the strategy is hailed as a welcome first step, race-based numbers need to be collected and analyzed, according to the Colour of Poverty Campaign, a province-wide group.

The issue of collecting race-based statistics is something the government has to look at carefully, said Children and Youth Minister Deb Matthews, who is in charge of Ontario's poverty reduction strategy.

"Ontario is in the midst of a social experiment here in that our level of diversity is quite extraordinary.

"We need to show the rest of the world that it works," Matthews said in an interview.

"When certain groups are not thriving we need to recognize that and get to work at it. Because our strategy really focuses on kids living in poverty, and racialized (people of colour) groups are disproportionately affected, this strategy will disproportionately affect those kids."

As the strategy is implemented, a further breakdown of indicators used to measure poverty will be considered she said, adding the link between poverty and race is acknowledged in the strategy report entitled Breaking the Cycle.

Recession in Britain putting anti poverty work at risk

A new report from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation says that the recession is putting anti-poverty efforts at risk. In fact, the foundations latest report says that UK poverty indicators have faltered in the last five years.

Larry Elliot of the Guardian filed a story on the report.

The study found that the Labour government had been far more successful in its first five years in office after 1997 than it had been since. Until 2002, 30 of the 56 poverty indicators - including housing, education, health and crime - chosen by the charity showed improvement and only a few worsened. Since then, only 14 of the indicators have improved and 15 have worsened.

Successes of the past decade, the JRF study said, were an increase in the number of homes meeting the government's decency standard, a halving in the number of 11-year-olds failing to achieve level 4 at key stage 2 tests, a reduction in the pay gap between low-paid women and male median earnings, and a steep reduction in the number of poor households with access to a bank account.

But it said too many pensioners still did not claim the benefits they were entitled to, the value of in-work benefits for adults without children had fallen by 20% in the past decade, there had been no progress in reducing under-16 pregnancies and no increase in the proportion of disabled working-age adults in employment.

Peter Kenway, the report's co-author, said: "The successes from the past 10 years need to be acknowledged but the failures also need to be understood if they are to be properly addressed. The concern now is how well an anti-poverty strategy that has been centred on getting people into work is going to fare in recession.

"With the adult social security net worth no more in real terms than 10 years ago, lots of people who lose their jobs have a long way to fall. Those out of work are going to find it harder to get a job."

The prime minister used last week's Queen's speech to put on a statutory footing the government's pledge to eradicate child poverty, but the JRF report said the emphasis on children had narrowed the government's approach.

Kenya puts price controls on maize

Amid protests from the public, the Kenyan government has put price controls on a staple food. The government has put a price cap on maize flour which is a food stuff the people of the country depend on.

The price controls should put it back into the reach of low income people in Kenya. As the price of the commodity has skyrocketed this year. But, the government created a difference in price between government flour and private flour.

Cedric Lumiti from East African Business Week provides details on the action in Kenya.

The action is a culmination of fears that the East African country long considered as the region's economic powerhouse could slip into starvation as the price of the precious staple used in preparation of ugali was retailing at KShs120 (US$2) per 2-kilogramme packet, well out of reach for the common masses.

The new arrangement will see the subsidized government flour retailing at KShs52 per 2kg packet which will be specially branded with the government label. Supermarkets stocking the usual brands will retail the commodity at KShs72, prompting concerns on how the government will ensure adequate supply of the subsidized brands while at the same time ensuring no artificial shortages of the cheap maize flour.

The new arrangement will see the government release 1.2 million bags of maize for both the private sector branded and the government branded maize products. Another 5 million 90kg bags of maize will be imported to cushion the country's reserves in a situation that appears to have caught the coalition government flat footed. The measures have however attracted the wrath of a section of the civil society which feels that the government is slowly turning the country into a caste society where the rich and the poor have distinct market outlets further widening the poverty gap.

Professionals in the agriculture sector have criticized the government's move terming it restrictive for free business and asked the government to divest from the business of cereal importation and allow the forces of demand and supply to dictate prices. Prime Minister Raila Odinga at his office announced the long awaited measures to the press.

The arrangement will only target genuine millers vetted by the Ministry of Agriculture in consultation with the Cereals Millers Association registered by the National Cereals and Produce Board (NCPB).

NCPB will purchase maize from farmers at KShs1, 950 per 90kg bag with immediate effect. No other individual or company will be allowed to purchase more than 10 bags from farmers as police have been instructed to be on the lookout for brokers and middlemen.

Brown says that Zimbabwe is now an international emergency

The international community is now stepping up the rhetoric on the Zimbabwe situation, saying it's now time for Robert Mugabe to leave. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown issued a statement on the countries woes during the weekend.

We found details on the statement from the online paper Zim Online.

"This is now an international rather than a national emergency," British Premier Gordon Brown said in a statement, adding; "International because disease crosses borders. International because the systems of government in Zimbabwe are now broken. There is no state capable or willing of protecting its people.”

An intestinal infection that spreads through contaminated food or water, cholera has so far killed almost 600 people in crisis-torn Zimbabwe since August. Cholera causes vomiting and acute diarrhoea, and can rapidly lead to death from dehydration.

The disease spreads fastest in situations with poor sanitation such as those found in Zimbabwe’s cities where sewers have broken down while garbage piles up in the streets and a shortage of clean water means residents have to rely on unprotected shallow wells for water.

The disease has since spilt into Zimbabwe’s neighbours – South Africa, Mozambique and Botswana – and Brown said the situation now required an international response.

"International because – not least in the week of the 60th anniversary of the universal declaration of human rights – we must stand together to defend human rights and democracy, to say firmly to Mugabe that enough is enough."

Brown called for an urgent meeting of the United Nations Security Council to consider Zimbabwe’s deteriorating situation.

Related Video: US Secratary of State Rice on Zimbabwe.

New survey shows poverty level down in the Philippines

The number of families who consider themselves poor has decreased in the Philippines. Social Weather Systems conducted the study on who thinks themselves poor, or "self rated poverty"

Rommel C. Lontayao of the Manila Times has the results of the survey.

Compared to the previous quarter, the number of families who consider themselves as poor was lower by 7 percentage points at 52 percent, or around 9.4 million families.

“The new self-rated poverty is 7 points down from 59 percent [estimated 10.6 million] in [the] second quarter, and just 6 points above the previous low of 46 percent [estimated 8.1 million] in December 2007,” SWS reported.

Around 29 percent of the respondents put themselves on the “poverty border­line,” and 19 percent consider themselves as “not poor.”

The survey also showed that the decline in self-rated poverty was higher in rural areas.

“The one-quarter decline in self-rated poverty was steepest in Mindanao. It fell by 16 points, from 68 percent last June to 52 percent in September, returning to the level of December 2007,” SWS reported.

Self-rated poverty fell by 7 points in the Visayas, by 3 points in Metro Manila, and by 2 points in the balance Luzon, which includes all regions on the main island except the capital region.

A microcredit NGO to cooperate with Nigerian government

The Growing Business Foundation will provide microcredit services to Nigeria to help small business people. The head of the non profit, Mrs. Ndidi Edozien, made the announcement during a meeting about microcredit in Africa.

As Vanguard reporter Michael Eboh writes, the non-governmental organization believes that lack of access to credit is what is holding Nigeria back.

She said, "If Nigeria is to grow, a lot of effort should be directed towards developing the grassroots populace, towards developing the rural areas and providing access to funds for small businesses. It is impossible to build a mega city unless we develop the rural areas. Development apart from rural and agricultural development is not tenable and unachievable. The global food and financial crisis is an attestation to that fact."

She disclosed that the over 70 per cent of the country's population that are involved in agriculture do not have access to micro credit facilities, adding that this has hindered the growth of the country's agricultural sector and contributed in further impoverishing a vast majority of Nigerians. She lamented the fact that the micro finance institutions in the country lacks the requisite capacity to meet the financial needs of the people and that majority of the commercial banks in the country have refused to provide support for the agricultural, real sector and the small businesses in the economy.

According to her, "The entrepreneur has all it takes and can make a significant difference to Nigeria's economic development. Microfinance brings the power of credit to the grass roots by way of loans to the poor, without the requirement of collateral or previous credit record Experience has shown that microfinance can help the poor to increase income, build viable businesses and reduce their vulnerability to external shocks."

She disclosed that at GBF, they have worked assiduously to enhance credit infrastructure across the country, ensuring that people get access to finance, especially women and youth.

Edozien further stated that in conjunction with its other partners, it has worked to support businesses with prospects for growth and helped in repositioning microfinance institutions in the country, making them responsive and beneficial to the people of Nigeria.

"GBF uses a portfolio of financial products services and strengthening a network of relations to develop socially responsible business programs for micro, small and medium scale entrepreneurs (MSMEs). The last nine years have seen us improve on our methodology, vigorously pursuing both best practices and local development content to achieve our vision of sustainable economic development led by socially responsible businesses," she added.

Poverty fueling spread of AIDS in the Iringa Region of Tanzania

A report made on the recent World AIDS Day shows the spread of AIDS in a region of Tanzania. Municipal Director Teresia Mmbando of Tanzania explained why AIDS is more prevalent in the Iringa region than any other in the country.

Friday Simbaya of the IPP Media recieved the Directors comments.

``Iringa Region has a 14.7 per cent HIV prevalence rate, the highest, followed by Mbeya and Dar es Salaam regions,`` she said..

She said poverty caused young girls and women to engage in casual sex.

``Poverty has direct and indirect consequences on the increase of HIV/Aids infections among girls and women,`` Mmbando said.

Other factors included inheriting widows, unprotected sex and alcohol abuse.

The director said a total of 26,317 people went for voluntary counselling and testing between January and November, this year,10,565 of whom were male and 15,752 female

``Out of the total, 3,775 tested HIV-positive, equivalent to 14.3 per cent,`` she said.

Audit finds high pay for an poverty fighting leader

The UK government operates a fund that invests in businesses in the developing world. But recently the leader of the funds pay was raised to be comparable to other private fund heads. The increase in pay is causing a stir in the UK.

Christopher Hunt of the UK paper the Telegraph reports on the controversy.

The public spending watchdog found that the salary paid to CDC Group's Richard Laing was more than double a threshold which had been set by its owner, the Department for International Development.

The National Audit Office found that Mr Laing's pay jumped after DFID decided to compare his remuneration with private equity bosses.

Edward Leigh, the chairman of the Public Accounts Committee, said the salary was "ridiculous".

CDC is a fund management company which invests in private businesses in emerging markets, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa and south Asia.

A 2004 agreement had set a £466,000 threshold on the chief executive's pay and £205,000 for other senior executives, above which DFID should be consulted.

The levels were based on comparisons with other senior staff in development finance institutions, pension funds and private equity "funds of funds".

UK minister accuses UN of being unfit to lead poverty fight

A British minister attacked the United Nations yesterday. Gareth Thomas says the UN is not fit to lead the world's fight against poverty. Gareth made the attack after a visit to UN operations in Tanzania and Kenya. Britain gives over 1 billion dollars to the UN annually.

Reuters recorded Gareth's remarks.

"Reform is urgent. Presently the U.N. is not fit for purpose to lead the world's response to eradicating poverty and tackling the climate crisis," International Development Minister Gareth Thomas told U.N. and government officials in Kenya.

Thomas, speaking at the end of a fact-finding mission to assess the U.N.'s work in Africa, called for reform in areas such as the United Nations' leadership, humanitarian assistance and performance.

His demand that the United Nations meet tough performance targets comes as the U.N. and aid partners voice fears that countries will cut back on aid commitments as the global financial crisis puts their budgets under pressure.

The United Nations asked for a record $7 billion last month to help 30 million people recover from disasters and conflict in the coming year, the largest appeal in its history.

Britain is setting performance targets for the U.N., focusing on health, help for new mothers and their babies and tackling HIV and AIDS, Thomas said, according to a statement released by his department in London.

British targets include 85 percent of births to be attended by skilled health personnel by 2011 and ensuring the World Health Organisation helps all affected countries tackle malaria by 2013.

A neat school group from Tennessee

A high school in Tennessee has a student organization that raises money and creates awareness about disease and poverty in Africa. The club called the Teen African Relief Effort involves about 25 students in McGavock High School.

The Tennessean's Andy Humbles fills us in on what the student group does.

TARE is sponsored by English teacher Faye Walker, but the club is student-driven, with Abbie Alexander and senior Robert Curry the founders and co-chairs. TARE usually sets its own meeting schedule after school or even on weekends off campus.

Last school year TARE raised $940 to buy 94 mosquito nets for African families through the Nothing But Nets campaign. The nets are sent to Africa to help protect residents against malaria, which is spread by mosquitoes and is a leading cause of death.

The group also solicited signatures for an Amnesty International campaign and sent them to President George W. Bush to encourage approval of a United Nations-African Union hybrid peacekeeping force to Darfur, which was approved. About 300,000 people have died and 2.5 million are homeless as a result of five years of fighting in Darfur.

Abbie, an honor student at McGavock, said she tried to launch the club as a sophomore, but it couldn't get approval. It did get approved last school year.

This school year TARE organized a Darfur Awareness Week in November that included setting up booths at school to provide information and solicit donations. The week culminated with a Friday evening showing of the documentary Darfur Now in the school auditorium that was open to the community.

The second semester will focus again on raising money to buy mosquito nets. One net costing $10 is good for four people, Abbie said.

Medecins Sans Frontieres statement on Cholera outbreak in Zimbabwe

As requested, here is a link to the latest update from Medecins Sans Frontieres on the Cholera outbreak in Zimbabwe. The health aid organization has set up two treatment centers in the country, and says the need is greatest in and around the city of Harare.

To date, we have treated about 4,000 patients in Harare and 1,300 in the Mudzi district at the border with Mozambique. The patient numbers are still at a high level but have more or less stabilised at a total average of about 350 admissions per day in Harare. The situation in Breitbridge, a town close to the border with South Africa where more than 3,000 cases have been seen since mid-November is now improving, with the number of cases decreasing*. MSF is also covering the rural areas south of Harare, and Masvingo and Manicaland provinces, where scattered cases of cholera have been found in several villages.

We are working alongside the Ministry of Health as much as possible and helping to train health workers to treat patients and to control future outbreaks. MSF has emergency staff on the ground in the most affected areas and has been sending vital supplies to these areas. MSF will continue to investigate reports of new cases and will work to contain the outbreak in the most deeply affected areas as long as necessary.

An profile of Cargill from the "Our Hungry Planet" series

The Minneapolis St. Paul Star Tribune is doing a series this week called "Our Hungry Planet". The week long series looks at the supply and price of food. Today they profiled a big corporation that has a lot invested in food, Cargill.

Chris Serres a writer for the Star Tribune shows how the company is effected by food prices.

The giant food and agricultural company, along with others in the industry, became a corporate punching bag for human rights groups, academics and world leaders looking to assess blame for the worst food crisis since World War II.

The president of the United Nations General Assembly went so far as to accuse the industry of subordinating the "essential purpose of food, which is to nourish people."

In every crisis, there are winners, and if profiting from instability in the world food markets was a crime, the list of culprits would be long.

Commodities traders, speculative hedge funds and farmers from the Midwest were among the many reaping money from this year's dramatic run up in world food prices.What sets Cargill apart is not its profits -- which as far as large corporations go, are relatively modest as a percentage of its sales -- but the company's enormous size and role in global food markets, say agricultural experts. With $120 billion in annual revenues, Cargill is bigger than the economies of more than two-thirds of the world's countries, including Kuwait, Peru and Vietnam. Its sales exceed those of Disney, Kraft Foods and PepsiCo -- combined -- and it is nearly twice as large as its next closest competitor, Archer Daniels Midland.

With a leading position in nearly every phase of the food distribution system, Cargill can influence agricultural markets around the world and affect prices consumers pay for everything from hamburgers to bread, according to some agricultural economists.

New survey on Tanzania poverty reduction

A new survey on how Tanzania is doing in poverty reduction was released today. It contains a mixed bag of results. The good is the economic growth, the bad is sanitation, income and health.

The Inter Press Service brings us new details from the survey conducted by the governments National Bureau of Statistics.

Supported by budding financial markets, the proportion of Tanzania's population living below the poverty line dropped to 33.3 percent last year from 35.7 percent in 2000/01, stated the 2007 survey, which was released by the country’s National Bureau of Statistics.

However, the number of people in Tanzania who have to survive on $1.10 a day or less has risen by one million to 12.7 million in the last six years. Researchers have attributed this mainly to an annual population growth of 2.6 percent.

"It's a bit of a shock that poverty has reduced so little despite our efforts," said Monique Bergeron, chair of the poverty-monitoring group of foreign donors to Tanzania and a Canadian diplomat. "Economic growth is moving in the right direction, yet poverty reduction is still marginal."

Tanzania is one of Africa’s biggest recipients of development aid with almost 40 percent of the current 2008/09 budget funded by outside donors. Foreign aid agencies are willing to invest into the country because of its political stability, attempts to crack down on corruption and sound fiscal reforms.

Economic growth in Tanzania, the third-biggest gold producer in Africa, reached about seven percent a year since 2001. Yet, the country remains one of the poorest in the world. The United Nations Human Development Index, which measures a range of social and economic indicators, ranks Tanzania 159 out of 177 nations.

Poverty continues to be rife because progress in spreading Tanzania’s economic benefits has been uneven and many of the poorest citizens have seen little or no improvement in their quality of life, explained Dar es Salaam-based World Bank economist Paolo Zacchia.

Ontario attempts to lift 900,000 children out of poverty

This story has been developing for a while now, and we finally have had a chance to shed some light on it here.

The Ontario government yesterday released a proposal that they say will lift 900,000 children out of poverty. They hope to do this through increased benefits for low income families. They also hope to spend more money on education. But the plan, of course, has drawn some complaints from the opposition party.

The Canadian Press tells us howt the government plans on spending the $900 million dollars in the proposed legislation.

The Liberal government's strategy includes $300 million in new initiatives, and commits the government to reducing the number of children living in poverty by 25 per cent over five years.

It includes a $230-million annual increase in the provincial child benefit by the end of the five-year plan, which will provide up to $1,310 for each child in a low-income family.

Another $10 million will fund an after-school program for children in high needs neighbourhoods, and $6 million will be used to triple the number of parenting and family literacy centres in Ontario.

There will be $7 million a year to develop what the government calls a community hub program around schools to help respond to local needs on poverty reduction.

Brain function for children effected by poverty.

This may be related to another story we shared in November, as they are both from British Columbia. Researchers there found how being poor can effect children genes. Now they have studied the effects of poverty on brain activity.

Canadian Press writer Sunny Dhillon explains how researchers conducted the study.

In the study, 26 children, ages nine and 10, were chosen. Half came from low-income environments while the other half consisted of children from high-income backgrounds.

Each child's brain activity was measured on an electroencephalograph (EEG) while he or she watched triangles projected on a screen.

Each child was told that when a slightly skewed triangle appeared, he or she was to click a button.

Researchers found that children from low socioeconomic environments demonstrated a slower response to the unexpected stimuli.

The study was conducted at the University of California, Berkeley, where, in addition to his UBC duties, Boyce serves as professor emeritus of public health.

Robert Knight, director of UC Berkeley's Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute, and cognitive psychologist Mark Kishiyama both worked on the study, which was published in the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.

In a news release, Kishiyama described the response of low-income children in the study to the response of people who have had a portion of their frontal lobe destroyed by a stroke.

"These kids have no neural damage, no prenatal exposure to drugs and alcohol, no neurological damage," Kishiyama said. "Yet the prefrontal cortex is not functioning as effectively as it should be."

The researchers say that the impairment can be improved through proper training and education.

"Toys for Joy" helping provide Christmas in buffalo

Here is a pretty good profile of a charity that has a Christmas toy drive in the Buffalo, New York area.

"Toys for Joys" expect nearly 4000 children will come to their toy giveaway event on December 20th. The number dwarfs any from previous years, another indication that needs are greater during this time of recession in the States.

Emma Sapong of the Buffalo News introduces us to a parent who is seeking help from the toy drive.

Christmas was on its way, and Tracey Mullen was unprepared. The mother of two was jobless with no means to buy gifts for her daughters and stepgrandson.

“It was really a concern,” said Mullen, a Buffalo resident. “When you are not working, you just don’t feel like you are part of anything. It’s hard to explain, but you feel awful.”

Mullen turned to FATHERS, an East Side community group, for help. She and her children attended the organization’s holiday bash, “Toys for Joy,” and received donated gifts to go under their Christmas tree.

“FATHERS were a big help; I was able to get presents for my children,” she recalled. “Not just toys for my grandson, but gifts for a teenager and a 12-year-old.”

Mullen’s financial condition has improved since that Christmas six years ago, but you’ll still find her at the Christmas party sponsored by Fathers Armed Together to Help, Educate, Restore and Save, one of the organizations participating in The Buffalo News Neediest Fund.

“I’m a committed volunteer because I know it makes a difference,” she said. “It’s just a really joyous event. I see the joy in the faces of the children, I truly do.”

Poverty getting worse in Côte d’Ivoire

Cote d'Ivoire has had a conflict for the last six years. The war has plunged more people into poverty. The IRIN has results of a survey that has more statistics on the once prosperous country.

Slightly under half of Côte d’Ivoire’s 20 million people are now below the poverty threshold, living on less than about US$1.25 per day - up from 38.4 percent in 2000 and the highest in 20 years, according to results released by the national statistics institute (INS) on 27 November.

The study surveyed 12,600 households to measure poverty and the conflict’s impact on households, according to INS. “Poverty in Côte d’Ivoire is becoming increasingly worrying,” Nouhoun Coulibaly, head of the INS, told reporters at the release of the results.

INS says 70 percent of Ivoirians have difficulty eating adequately and 68 percent cannot afford proper treatment when ill.

The study is done in part as backing for Côte d’Ivoire’s poverty reduction strategy paper (PRSP) - a document that describes a country’s macroeconomic, structural and social policies and programmes to promote growth and reduce poverty, as well as associated external financing needs and sources of financing. Côte d’Ivoire - once West Africa’s most stable and prosperous country - is finalising its first PRSP after the 2002 rebellion split the country in two.

The INS study showed that the worst-hit areas are the centre, north and northwest, as well as parts of the capital Abidjan. In the north the level of poverty reaches 77 percent, according to INS.

“The state is creating thieves, prostitutes and liars,” said a would-be university student in Séguéla, who preferred anonymity. Tensions following recent clashes between rebel factions in the city are making people afraid to complain publicly about their situation, residents told IRIN. As in other parts of Côte d’Ivoire violent crime is soaring in Séguéla, where it used to be largely unheard of, she said, as people turn to stealing, cheating and selling their bodies to get by.

“When a person has absolutely nothing to eat and no money, what do you want them to do?”

Video: Teens awarded for their anti poverty work

Many African countries will not meet MDGs says UN official

Many African countries will not meet the Millennium Development Goals and the financial credit crisis is to blame. This is the opinion of the Deputy Secretary General to the United Nations, Dr. Asha-Rose Migiro.

The Tanzanian newspaper The Daily citizen interviewed Dr. Migiro about the credit crisis and it's effects on the MDGs.

Dr Migiro urged world leaders not to let the current problem erode the gains made in development, as it was likely to adversely affect aid and Africa's banking sector.

She said though the crisis has occurred in the developed countries, letting the MDGs fall off the track, especially in Africa, would be disastrous.

Though the rich countries were seeking solutions to the problems, they should not forget Africa, as sluggish economies in on the continent would in turn affect the rich countries.

"The financial crisis is of interest to the developed countries, but poor nations struggling to meet the MDGs can't be left helpless," she said.

The Deputy Secretary General said that although the banking sector in Africa was still small, a good number of banks on the continent were jointly owned with some foreign banks.

"The fact that the financial crisis emanated from the developed countries where such banks are based tends to affect all parts of the world," she said.

Microcredit still lending despite global credit crisis

I don't understand why it's a surprise to the press and to financial observers that microcredit is still lending lots of money despite the global financial credit crisis.

Microcredit is not phony, it's not a dishonest way to drum up money for a big financial corporation. Microcredit doesn't give people money then adjust the rate on the interest. Microcredit doesn't sell the risky loans to someone else to try to further profit on them.

Microcredit also makes loans to people who pay them back. They generally don't make loans to greedy people. Microcredit makes loans to people who are just trying to better themselves.

In fact, the only way microcredit has been hurt is by less money coming in from these big financial institutions that were making these other phony loans. They were only were trying to get into loaning to poor people because they saw the profit margin there. This may well help microcredit in the long run.

Anyway, Time magazine interviewed the head of Women's World Banking, Mary Ellen Iskenderian, to ask her about this microcredit "phenomenon"

TIME: To what extent and in what specific ways is the worldwide credit crunch impacting microfinance in developing countries?

Iskenderian: There is evidence that microfinance is resilient to global market movements, compared to traditional lending, as it falls outside of the mainstream economy. And there does still seem to be equity available for microfinance; recently, for example, a couple of large private equity deals were completed in India. Repayment rates remain very high, 97% or 98% in many places. That results from good, old-fashioned credit methodology — you know a household's capacity to repay. That's the kind of old-fashioned banking that some people feel was absent in this latest round of banking disasters. At the same time, we are seeing many microfinance institutions (MFIs) scaling back expansion plans and, in some cases, raising interest rates as a result of the credit-spread increase and the rising cost of borrowing. Certainly, no one is taking their existing funding relationships for granted. My concern is that we have only begun to see the effect of the triple threat of finance, fuel and food issues on microfinance.

TIME: To what extent have the global economic challenges trickled down to impact the poorest of the poor?

Iskenderian:The impact on the poor, including the clients of our network, has probably been most evident in rising food and energy prices, which have meant that families may face trade-offs like the choice between paying back their loans or putting dinner on the table for their families. Microfinance doesn't target the poorest of the poor, as they need other types of intervention. It targets the economically active poor at the bottom of the pyramid. There are signs that micro-entrepreneurs will see higher interest rates, since the global credit crunch will likely require MFIs to raise interest rates as funding becomes more scarce. I am particularly concerned about the ramifications for women since, for many poor women around the world who are otherwise excluded from formal financial systems, access to microfinance is their only economic lifeline.

TIME: What prompted the development of a financial instrument like micro-insurance, and what's the broader impact of new financial instruments aimed at the world's unbanked?

Iskenderian: Product diversification came out of a recognition that lending alone is not the solution if our end goal is long-term poverty alleviation, which is why we in the industry no longer talk about microcredit, but microfinance. Many entrepreneurs in the developing world are only one seemingly minor catastrophe — like a hospital stay — away from financial disaster, so housing loans and insurance and savings products help create and preserve assets, leading to broader benefits for the economy as a whole. I can't tell you how many times I've heard women clients in our network ask, "Why can't I save for my child's education, instead of taking out another loan to pay for it?" The poverty alleviation benefits are magnified when microloans are supplemented with savings and insurance products.

Using a fungus to stop malaria

A Tanzanian health institute is testing the use of a fungus to stop the spread of malaria. The Daily News Leonard Mwakalebla reports on the research going on at the IFAKARA Health institute.

IFAKARA Health Institute (IHI) has embarked on research experiment of infecting mosquitoes with fungus with view to killing the insect and subsequently combat malaria disease. In an exclusive interview with the 'Daily News', the institute’s Acting Director Dr Salim Abdulla named the fungus as Beavaria Bassiana and Metarhizium Anosiplial that live in soil.

He said the experiment would take between one and two years and that preliminary findings had showed that the fungus kill mosquitoes. Dr Abdulla said house experiment would be followed by village wide experimentation before embarking on large scale experimentation.

“If it will become a success, it could become one of the easiest, safe and effective interventions of controlling malaria infections in the country” he noted. When he visited the institute last month, President Jakaya Kikwete was impressed by the experiment and commended the institute’s for its innovations.

Dr Abdulla said the institute was committed to finding lasting solution to malaria disease in the country considering the impact of the disease on the nation. According to him, IHI has developed a tool to identify high risks community with urinary schistosomiasis. The tool was validated in seven countries and it is now in WHO Schisto Manual.

Cholera death toll in Zimbabwe reaches 565

12,546 Zimbabweans are now infected with cholera. The intestinal disease has now killed 565 of the countries people, according to the United Nations.

This AAP story found in Yahoo News reports on the aid efforts of the Red Cross in Zimbabwe.

The capital Harare is the worst-affected area with 177 deaths and 6,448 suspected cases - more than half the total number of cases nationwide, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said in a statement.


Cholera is the latest challenge to hit the poverty-wracked southern African nation that is already struggling with political instability and rampant hyperinflation.

The Red Cross said Wednesday it has given more than 200,000 Swiss francs ($A2.5 million) to the Zimbabwe Red Cross Society in the last two weeks to provide health and hygiene kits for more than 11,000 people in seven provinces.

"The most effective way to fight cholera is prevention. We are working to empower communities to take the steps needed to protect themselves from this deadly but curable and preventable disease," said John Fleming, Southern Africa health care coordinator for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC).

The IFRC also warned that cholera had already spread across Zimbabwe's border to neighbouring South Africa where six deaths and 400 cases have so far been reported.

Local Red Cross staff in the Musina region of South Africa have been distributing prevention information leaflets to local communities and supporting health authorities, the IFRC said.

Fetching water instead of getting an education

IRIN had a great profile on the lives of children in Afghanistan. Poverty and drought are so hard that many children do not attend school. Instead of getting an education, the children help provide for their families.

IRIN introduces us to an Afghan eight year old and his younger brother.

Eight-year-old Ahmad Shafi and his younger brother spend many hours a day fetching drinking water for their family in the drought-stricken Chemtal District of Balkh Province, northern Afghanistan. They have been unable to attend school as a result.

"We start around eight in the morning and finish by midday," Ahmad told IRIN, adding that their job was "difficult" and "long".

Ahmad's uncle, Abdul Samad - with whom his family has been living since his father died two years ago - sells vegetables at a local bazaar, and sometimes helps Ahmad and his brother when more than the usual volume of water is needed.

“I have to work and provide food or collect water… women cannot go far to collect water, so the boys have to do this job," he said

Drought, poverty and lack of food have adversely affected the life of many children in Chemtal and elsewhere, forcing some to work instead of going to school.

It is hard to estimate the number of children who have abandoned school to collect water and/or help feed their families, but local officials have reported a considerable drop in school attendance.

"The number of students has gradually declined…10-20 percent of the several hundred students have abandoned school because of drought," said Enayatullah Sharaaf, head of Chemtal's education department.

"The quality of attendance has also been affected because students do not have enough time and energy to do homework," he said.

Mohammad Zahir Penhan, director of Balkh's education department, said most schools could be closed down in 2009 if the situation does not improve.

“Our children often go hungry”

Life in Chemtal is hard. Both agriculture and animal husbandry - prime sources of income - have been badly affected by drought.

"We hardly find any food to eat. Our children often go hungry," said a resident of Chemtal District, explaining that all his four children had lost weight and regularly fell ill.

"Their faces have become pale and they always complain about pain," he said.

Across the country thousands of livestock have perished over the past two years, and over 80 percent of rain-fed agricultural output had been lost this year owing to drought, the Ministry of Agriculture has said.

New record set in Tennessee for food stamp usage

1 in 6 Tennessee residents use food stamps according to the state's monthly survey. That's one million people in total, an increase of 75,000.

In this Associated Press article found in the Chattanooga Time Free Press, those in charge of the system say it's directly effected by the slumping economy.

“Food stamps absolutely trend with the economy,” said Human Services Department spokeswoman Michelle Mowery Johnson. “And when the economy is doing poorly, we get really busy.”

An Associated Press analysis of the state Department of Human Resources data shows the rate of food stamp usage was highest in West Tennessee, where 324,000 people, or 21 percent of the grand division’s population of 1.55 million, were receiving assistance.

Similar numbers of people received food stamps in the other two divisions of the state, but since their populations are larger the rates came in at 15 percent in East Tennessee and 14 percent in Middle Tennessee.

Food stamps contribute an average of about $100 to a family’s monthly food budget and is available to people who earn less than 1.3 times the federal poverty rate, or $27,560 for a family of four.

Tennessee’s highest food stamp rates were in Hancock, Scott and Grundy counties, where about one in three people received assistance. At least a quarter of the people in six other counties received food stamps.

The almost 200,000 people on food stamps in Shelby County made up the highest number of individuals receiving assistance in the state. But the rate of 22 percent of the county’s 911,000 people on food stamps ranked Shelby County 19th among Tennessee’s 95 counties.

Doha meetings are over, nothing much done

The meetings on international aid and free trade in Doha, Qutar are over. Nothing much was done except wondering why no one showed up, and going over development documents from 2002.

Ann Ninan of the IPS surveyed reaction from anti-poverty, and human rights groups on the meetings,

"The world urgently needs effective decisions and follow-up which are inclusive and decisive. Instead of action plans, (they) spent four days going back and forth on language, not on the food, energy, gender, climate, moral crises," says Sylvia Borren of the Global Call to Action against Poverty (GCAP).

As Borren put it, "What is disappointing is there is no bailout plan for the vulnerable peoples of the world, but huge bailouts for banks and financial institutions."

The review conference, however, reaffirmed the Monterrey goals. It also moved forward in some important areas, chiefly with regard to gender equality. The document commits to the promotion of gender equality and women’s economic empowerment as essential to achieving equitable and effective development.

"But this is not enough," asserts the Women’s Working Group on Financing for Development, a network of nine coalitions including the African Women’s Development and Communication Network (FEMNET), Association for Women’s Rights in Development (AWID) and the International Gender and Trade Network (IGTN).

"The commitments to gender equality in the document will only truly be meaningful if the systemic issues that underpin poverty are decisively addressed," say activists representing the 250 civil society groups and networks that participated in a two-day forum in Doha, Nov. 27-28, ahead of the official meeting.

The Doha conference was called by the U.N. not as a pledging conference but to review progress made in Monterrey, Mexico, in 2002, on commitments for new development aid from rich countries as well as agreements on debt relief, the fight against corruption, public-private partnerships and official development assistance (ODA).

Holiday gifts to help Anti-poverty efforts

A few stories that we come across in the last few days suggest websites to buy gifts that help others.

We've become convinced that holiday gifts should have a heart of service to them. We should give gifts not so the person can have more "stuff" but a gift that will help that person or will help other people. This buying stuff just so we can have more is not what the Christmas season should be about. This desire for more worldly possessions helped to cause the trampling, shootings and such that occurred on Black Friday.

So then what to get? Here are some ideas from this Associated Press article that we found in the Star News Online.

The gift of a goat ($120, or share a goat for $10, Heifer International) is one way this charitable organization promotes its mission of helping families worldwide struggle out of poverty and become self-sufficient. A financial contribution enables Heifer to provide animals and training to people in places such as Zambia, Albania, China and Peru.

www.Heifer.org

The Three Soup Gourmet Food Bundle ($18.75, Women's Bean Project) is one of the many food items sold online by this Denver nonprofit that tries to break the cycle of poverty by employing women in its gourmet foods business.

www.womensbeanproject.com

The Freedom Trees Jute Tote ($22, WorldofGood.com and other online retailers) helps the women in North Calcutta, India, who make the bags to help make a living. Sold by Karma Market Boutique on this new eBay online marketplace, each eco-friendly bag comes with a tag that explains its story.

http://worldofgood.com

The Side-Zip Mat Bag ($38, One Mango Tree) is made by seamstresses in Northern Uganda. The small, fair-trade business launched by an American woman and a Ugandan seamstress has expanded to include 27 tailors in just one year. One Mango Tree sells purses, neckties and kitchen items to help people in conflict-torn regions out of poverty.

http://onemangotree.com

The Bicycle Chain Menorah ($24, Ten Thousand Villages) gives an eco-twist to Hanukkah. Artists in India fashion these menorahs out of recycled bicycle parts for this free-trade retailer.

www.tenthousandvillages.com

The Morning Call reprinted this Consumer Reports article that gives us some more ideas.

Originalgood.com supports artisans around the world by selling a big selection of notebooks, jewelry, housewares and other goodies.

Theochocolate.com buys its cacao direct from farmers and grower cooperatives. Their gift boxes carry the Fair-Trade Certified label and Consumer Reports' taste testers gave them the thumbs up.

Tenthousandvillages.com is a nonprofit fair-trade group that markets gifts and home-decor products made by artisans in 36 countries.

Spiralfoundation.org sells home-decor items made from reclaimed or recycled materials, and donates all proceeds to humanitarian programs.

Networkforgood.org/goodcard offers several donation amounts ($10, $25, $50 or $100) and the recipient donates the money to the charity of their choice, selecting from more than 1.5 million organizations.

Kiva.org helps entrepreneurs in developing countries work themselves out of poverty. Certificates start at $25.

Changingthepresent.org allows gift givers to contribute to a cause close to someone's heart and create a personalized greeting card to tell them about the donation made in someone's name. There are hundreds of nonprofits from which to choose.

Any others that you would like to suggest?

Credit Crisis > food crisis

A big story in the Christian Science Monitor from yesterday analyzes the credit crisis versus the food crisis from earlier this year.

Food prices have fallen 50 percent from their record highs in June. But many malnourished countries need to buy food supplies on credit, leading to more hunger. Also credit for small farmers in the under developed world will dry up as well.

Christian Science Monitor reporter David Montero reports on the situation from Cambodia.

The global food crisis that dominated headlines earlier this year has been overshadowed by this fall's financial crisis, but it continues to exact a crippling toll on the world's poor. And, although commodity prices for a wide range of crops have fallen by as much as 50 percent from record highs in June, the financial crisis is expected to make it dramatically worse: credit for farmers could dry up, meaning less money to buy fertilizer and seed, leading in turn to greater global shortages of food.

Money for food aid could dry up as well. In June, governments and donors pledged $12.3 billion for the food crisis. So far, only $1 billion has actually been disbursed, as lending institutions and governments instead scramble to save ailing banks.

"My concern is that with the food crisis out of the headlines, policymakers will assume it's not a problem. Another worry is that, [with the financial crisis], there will simply be less money to invest in agriculture. We've got to turn that around," says Robert Ziegler, the director general of the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in the Philippines.

Some factors contributing to the food crisis have ebbed, which adds to the notion that the worst is over.

The price of oil, needed to transport food to markets, has dropped from July highs of nearly $150 a barrel to around $50 today.

Corn, soybean, and wheat prices have fallen about 50 percent from record highs earlier in the year. And many of the restrictions set by grain-exporting governments like Vietnam, China and India – all of whom feared shortages and effectively hoarded grain supplies, causing prices to shoot up further – have now been eased, meaning supplies have stabilized and prices have come down accordingly.

Still, a country like Cambodia helps illustrate that lower prices have not ended the crisis. The price of rice – the country's staple food – has gone down by about 7 percent since August. But observers say that's not enough to offset the staggering 25 percent inflation of the last year.

"Workers already spend about 70 percent of their income on food. Prices have gone down, but they're still higher than other years. If you look at people's income versus inflation, many more are poor today," says Yang Saing Koma, president of the Cambodian Center for Study and Development of Agriculture, a think tank in the country's capital, Phnom Penh.

In fact, the Asian Development Bank estimates that 2 million more Cambodians may have been pushed into poverty.

The problem is playing out across the globe: food prices rose by 24 percent in 2007, pushing 75 million more people into chronic hunger, estimates the United Nations' Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO). In 2008, food prices surged again by 51 percent, meaning that millions more are likely to join the 923 million people already suffering from malnutrition. World food prices have come down by a modest 6 percent since September, the FAO estimates, but that can't reverse the damage already wreaking its way across the globe.

Incentives to lure businees, how should poor nations do it?

Tax breaks and other incentives go on all the time to get business to invest and build at a location. It's commonplace here in the states, but poor nations have to do it to. But is it fair to give these breaks to business while receiving aid from other nations?

A round table session took place recently that discussed these issues as a part of the recent development and trade meetings in Doha. The Citizen Newspaper of Tanzania says that poor nations were warned against giving too much to lure new investments.

The speakers said there was "no logic" in allowing undue tax concessions and then going around the world begging for aid.

Some called for the rationalisation of current packages and revisiting of regulatory regimes and policies backing them.

"There is need for caution regarding incentives for foreign companies to invest, as that would reduce the tax base, but income from capital should not escape tax regulations," former UN economy under-secretary Vito Tanzi said.

The gathering, which included government leaders, financial and development experts, NGOs and UN officials appealed for assistance to help LDCs retain and tax the profits attributable to them from multinational corporations (MNCs).

The International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) said governments should establish or strengthen regimes that place the highest tax requirements on capital gains.

They should also tax the rich accordingly and provide tax relief for low-income families and the poor.

16 million malnourished children predicted by 2010

The International Food Policy Research Institute predicts that there will be 16 million malnourished children by 2010. The institute says the effects of the international credit crisis is to blame. The recession that is stemming from the credit crisis will hurt investments in agriculture.

ABS- CBN news from the Philippines details the report issued from the IFPRI.

However, IFPRI said developing countries can avert these dire consequences by spending more on research and development, irrigation and productive services in agriculture.

If economic growth is reduced but investments in agriculture and productivity are maintained, the study found that grain would be more affordable, per capita calorie consumption would be higher, and there would be significantly fewer malnourished children.

"More effort is needed to successfully resolve the food price crisis, build resistance to future challenges, and reduce poverty and hunger," Von Braun said.

In 2007, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has estimated the number of undernourished people rising to 923 million, largely owing to the food price crisis. The number likely increased even further this year as prices continued to rise with the financial crisis.

Video: Alaska's first fair trade store opens

Donating is good for you

It can be good for your health to give, or the tough economy can make the thought of giving stressful. In this season of giving, it could help to be creative with donations.

In this article that we found in the Longmont Daily Times Call, Susan Glairon found some suggestions.

Start by taking inventory of your talents and tangible goods, said Mary Coussons-Read, a University of Colorado Denver psychology professor and a certified life coach.


For instance, if you own a carpet-cleaning business, you could clean the carpet at a nonprofit’s office. Shopkeepers can offer gift cards or a discount. If you can’t give money, stuff envelopes for a nonprofit’s giving drive, so others who are able to give are reminded to donate, she said.

Also look at materials you have on hand. Donating canned goods to a food pantry can be less stressful than donating cash, Coussons-Read said. Psychologically, it feels safer to give something you’ve already bought than to give cash, she said.

“We are afraid of giving away things that we see as increasingly scarce,” Coussons-Read said.

If you want to donate money, which is what nonprofits prefer, harvest loose change from your couch cushions, clothes drawers, the penny jar and the car floor and donate what you find.

Or give a charitable donation as a holiday gift in the name someone who doesn’t need anything, such as grandparents who are well-off. Make the donation extra-special by sending a handmade card. Include family photos and a note explaining how the charity was carefully chosen with them in mind.

Give a donation by buying a gift from a charity such as Unicef’s toys and gifts (www.shopcardsandgifts .unicefusa.org) or gift baskets from the Women’s Bean Project in Denver (www.womens beanproject.com/employ), which helps women break the cycle of poverty and unemployment.

World AIDS Day: a profile of an Indonesian survivor

On this World AIDS Day, the Jakarta Post has a great profile of an AIDS survivor who has to battle the disease while living in poverty. Reporter Anton Muhajir introduces us.

Life for Ketut Sari (not her real name) is more than complicated. The 25-year-old has to struggle not only with poverty but also with the deadly HIV inside her body.

Living in one of the island's poorest and most isolated hamlets does nothing to help her situation.

Sari lives in a hamlet in Datah village in Abang district, Karangasem, about 150 kilometers east of Denpasar. It takes two and a half hours to drive to her place from the capital. The last leg of the trip involves navigating a dirt road through rough terrain.

Once every two weeks Sari sets out on the rough trip for her regular appointment with a medical team in Denpasar. The team gives Sari treatment against the HIV and monitors her health.

Sari's husband passed away six months ago after a bout of HIV/AIDS-related diseases. Only after his death did Sari learn she too was infected.

The realization came gradually. Initially, she suffered from various opportunistic diseases closely associated with HIV/AIDS. Voluntary Counseling and Testing (VCT) at Denpasar's Wangaya hospital confirmed that she had the virus. By then, the opportunistic diseases had already taken a major toll on her health.

"My husband was probably the person who infected me," she said, pointing out that she had never participated in high-risk behaviors, such as having more than one sexual partner.

She also admitted her husband was an intravenous drug user (IDU) who often shared his needles with fellow users.

...

Sari now spends her days weaving tiny pandan mats that Balinese Hindus place on shrines. She can make up to 10 mats per day and sells 50 mats for Rp 10,000 (less than US$1). The money goes toward paying for the family's basic daily needs.

"The money is not enough to buy meals let alone to buy medicine for my treatment," she said.

Sari has not taken an ARV (anti-retroviral) cocktail yet because she is still in relatively good health. However, she must undergo specific therapy to prevent her physical health from deteriorating as well as to ward off any opportunistic diseases.

Her financial condition and the remoteness of her hamlet make it difficult for her to access proper health services, she said.

Even elementary school kids can help

An elemnentary school is raising money for a health organization that helps the undeveloped world. Waverly Elementary School in Baltimore began a relationship with Jhpiego, a non profit health group.

A worker for Jhpiego, Jane Otai addressed the school a couple of years ago, from that assembly the students began to put their allowances to good use.

From the Baltimore Sun story, reporter Donna Owens tells us what the kids are up to.

"I described the challenges of families and children there," said Otai, recalling the visit, her first to the U.S., during a recent international phone call. "Most families live in houses with iron sheet roofs and mud floors, no indoor plumbing or electricity ... no access to clean water. If they can get work, they become very cheap labor at nearby industrial factories, earning about $2 a day."

The students, moved by what they heard, had a bevy of questions for Otai. At one point, a girl named Jasmine Harris stood up and asked: "What can we do to help?"

From there, an informal partnership was launched with Jhpiego, and a long-distance friendship was born between a Baltimore school and a country an ocean away.

"At first, we thought about sending clothing to the children in Kenya, because one of the things we learned from Miss Jane was that there weren't enough uniforms," said Keishonna Davis, 11.

But shipping items to Africa would have been too expensive. So the students agreed to save spare change and collect donations from family and friends and send that money to Kenya, Rock said. Using empty cookie tins to hold their money, the youngsters began their nearly yearlong campaign. Some gave up their favorite treats, like candy, and instead put money in the pot.

"We really wanted to help," said Wayne Zeback, 11. "Our goal was to raise a thousand dollars."

"I was saving pennies, dimes and quarters," said 10-year-old Miesha Manigault, who regaled the class with a hilarious tale of how she visited a supermarket to tally the coins in an electronic counting machine.

Eastern Africa needs more investment in sanitation

A conference on sanitation is taking place in Eastern Africa, and a report issued at the conference says that more investment is needed. Without the investment, Sub-Saharan Africa will fall well short of meeting the Millennium Development Goal on sanitation.

As All Africa's own Hellen Mwihoreze reports, the environment is hurt in the area as a lot of waste water is dumped without treatment.

Poor sanitation is undermining all development efforts in Eastern Africa and constraining progress against the health, education, gender and poverty Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), and yet the potential for realizing significant public health gains in the world's poorest countries is huge.

A survey by the international organization Water Aid shows that over 70% of the population in Eastern Africa do not have access to adequate sanitation, and more than 200,000 children are dying each year from diarrhea due to lack of adequate sanitation.

This was revealed during the Eastern Africa conference on sanitation held in Nairobi recently, to review progress on implementing the commitments made under the "e Thekwini Declaration" signed by African ministers in Durban, South Africa, on February 20. 2008.

Oliver Cumming, the Water Aid policy officer, said that the international development community must respond to the development needs of the poor. "How can governments overlook an issue that contributes to the deaths of millions and millions of children every year?" Cumming asked.

In 2002 sanitation was added to the list of MDGs (Millennium development goals), aiming to solve half of the problem by 2015 the proportion of people without sustainable access to basic sanitation, which comprises access to safe drinking water, estimated by the percentage of the population using improved drinking water sources; and access to sanitary means of excreta disposal, estimated by the percentage of the population using improved sanitation facilities (those more likely to ensure privacy and hygienic use).

Five years on, however, the sanitation MDG is badly off track; at the current rate of progress, it will not be met in Sub-Saharan Africa. According to the Water Aid survey, in Sub-Saharan Africa 221,000,000 people are practicing open defecation, and 546,000,000 people lack adequate sanitation.

Poor sanitation kills more children than HIV/Aids, malaria and measles combined yet it remains neglected. Most donor and aid-receiving governments don't even know how much they're spending on the sector, it was noted during the conference.

Comment on World AIDS Day

Today is World AIDS Day. A day to recognize efforts to fight the disease, and to remember those victimized by it.

In today's Miami Herald a founding chairman of the Friends of the World Food Programme wrote a op ed piece on the fight against AIDS. Marshall Matz notes how food can help to keep those with AIDS healthier.

As national governments and international organizations continue to address this crisis, we must not overlook the role of food in both the prevention and cure of the disease.


Anti-retroviral drugs (ARVs) are commonly prescribed to stave off the effects of the virus. Like many prescription drugs, however, ARVs must be taken with food to be effective.

Not only can the combination of medication and food delay the onset of HIV/AIDS-related illnesses, but it also improves the quality of life for those living with HIV/AIDS. In places like Africa, where access to a steady supply of food is often a critical issue, many HIV/AIDS patients are forced to take their ARVs on an empty stomach. Side effects can be so severe that patients cease treatment altogether.

When that happens, a vicious domino effect begins: Patients lose their physical strength and are unable to work; their households suffer from the loss of income and/or food; children are removed from school so that they can work; and getting enough to eat becomes an everyday struggle. In some countries, HIV/AIDS has wiped out entire generations, leaving families with no food and no money.

Ensuring that HIV/AIDS patients receive adequate nutrition is certainly an achievable goal. Two HIV/AIDS relief initiatives are doing exactly that.

• Through the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), President Bush committed $15 billion over a five-year period to addressing HIV/AIDS in 15 African and Asian countries. PEPFAR is the largest commitment by any nation to combat a single disease. Today, PEPFAR supports life-saving treatment for nearly two million people worldwide. Building on this wonderful success story, President Bush signed legislation last July that would extend PEPFAR for another five years. Most importantly, a nutrition component was included in the reauthorization. We must now build upon that authorization to provide a fully funded food component.

• The U.N. World Food Program (WFP) also recognizes the importance of food for HIV/AIDS patients. In coordination with other humanitarian relief organizations, WFP provides patients with food supplies when they receive their medication. This regimen will help patients regain their strength so they can return to work and provide for their families. In particular, farmers will remain healthy long enough to teach vital agricultural skills to their children so that farming practices will continue to be passed on from generation to generation.

World Economic growth projected to slow

The growth of the world's economy is expected to slow to 1 percent in 2009. That is down from 2.5 percent from the year before. The prediction was released at the meeting of world leaders arraigned by the United Nations in Doha.

As Reuters reports in this article found at the Financial Express, the global economy may even contract if the credit crisis continues to grow.

The report on World Economic Situation and Prospects 2009, an advance copy of which was issued at a development conference in Doha on Monday, urged coordinated international stimulus packages to limit the impact of a downturn in Western economies on poorer countries.

Next year's growth forecasts compare to global growth rates of 3.5 to 4 per cent from 2004-2007 and the report said the economic environment for developing countries had deteriorated sharply after early complacency.

"Most developed economies entered into recession during the second half of 2008, and the economic slowdown has spread to developing countries and the economies in transition," the report said.

"A large-scale fiscal stimulus coordinated among major economies would stave off the worst of the crisis yet...it would not prevent a significant slowdown of the global economy in 2009."

The Doha meeting, aimed at advancing U.N. goals on reducing extreme poverty, has been overshadowed by the financial crisis and the standoff between rich and developing states on reforming the Bretton Woods financial system.

The absence of most Western leaders, as well as the heads of the IMF and World Bank, has raised questions on how much the conference can accomplish.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy was the only Western leader to attend, prompting U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to chide leaders of rich states for not attending in greater numbers. Rather than advancing talks after an earlier meeting in Monterey, Mexico in 2002, the U.N. and its aid partners have been focused on holding the line and ensuring aid commitments are kept, given the financial crisis.