Japan pledges 17 billion in aid

During the World Economic Forum in Davos, Japan's Prime Minister Taro Aso announced more aid for Asia. PM Aso pledges 17 billion dollars to help stimulate the economy in thecontinent.

IPS has the details of the speech that the prime minister made at the forum.

Aso said in a televised speech that the package from the world’s second largest economy would be provided as Official Development Assistance (ODA) for meeting challenges posed by the global economic crisis.

The offer represents a 20 percent increase in ODA to be implemented over a three-year period. Japan had slipped to fifth place from being the number one provider of overseas aid after former prime minister Junichiro Koizumi set in motion a plan in 2006 to reduce foreign aid by 2 - 4 percent every year until the budget was balanced by 2011.

Aso’s announcement augments other proposed measures that include an economic stimulus package of two percent of Japan’s GDP, a proposed loan of 100 billion dollars to the International Monetary Fund and the establishment of a fund to recapitalise banks in developing countries and reform internal financial institutions.

Aso ended his speech with one of his favourite quotes from the French philospher Alain, "Pessimism comes from our passions, optimism from the will."

Japan has a major role to play in world affairs at this critical moment, said Osamu Sakashita, deputy cabinet secretary for public relations, at a briefing in Tokyo on Friday.

Politicians rather than bankers are taking centre stage this year at Davos (Jan. 28 - Feb. 1), according to Sakashita. The theme of the meet ‘Shaping the Post-Crisis World’ where the world’s economy, poverty, climate change, and financial business are being discussed is revealing enough, according to him.

World Economic Forum told to not forget poor

Attendees to the World Economic Forum have been told not to forget the poor. The message came from United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon and others.

This Associated Press article that we found at New Jersey dot com, gives us the details of today's events at the forum

"Last year, we gathered here to declare 2008 the year of the bottom billion," U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said. "These are the poorest people who live on less than a dollar a day, who are vulnerable to every shock that comes."

"As we struggle to cover these and other challenges we must not waiver in our commitment to the poorest of the poor. We must stand by those who are most vulnerable."

It was an appeal repeated throughout the third day of the elite gathering of 2,500 business and political leaders in this well-heeled mountain resort.

The global meltdown has already sapped the developed world of some of its generosity: forecasts calculate a precipitous drop in international investments in poor and developing nations, while charities are resizing their own operations as donations drop.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said lending to emerging countries would drop from $1 trillion two years ago to $150 billion next year. "This is a breach of the promise of global prosperity," Brown exhorted.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who is proposing a U.N. Economic Council out of the ashes of this crisis, similar to the U.N. Security Council formed after the destruction of World War II, said the rights of the poor must be enshrined in the new economic order.

Human traffickers lead Myanmar minority into death trap

One of the developing stories over the last couple of days is a brutal forced drownings by the hands of the Thai military.

As background, a minority from Myanmar named the Rohingyas have fled the country as the Muslim minority is not recognized by the Buddhist nation. Many flee to Bangladesh.

How this relates to poverty is the human trafficking aspect. Traffickers prey on the people promising them jobs and a good life if they leave to another country. After paying the traffickers they are put in rickety boats and have to brave the ocean.

So a group of these Rohingyas were turned away by the Thai military, beaten, and sent out to sea, where as many as 550 of them drowned.

This Reuters article provides more details, from writer Nizam Ahmed.

Mohammad Iqbal was one of a 250-strong group of stateless Rohingya who left Bangladesh a month ago in a rickety wooden boat, lured by agents promising a job in Malaysia.
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More than 550 Rohingya, a Muslim minority group in pre-dominantly Buddhist Myanmar, are feared to have drowned in the last two months after being towed out to sea by the Thai military.

The Thai army has admitted cutting them loose, but said they had food and water and denied the engines were sabotaged.

A group of 78 Rohingya are now in Thai police custody while another boatload of 193 washed up on Indonesia's Aceh coast.
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Many such as Iqbal have been lured by human traffickers offering them jobs in Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia and Singapore.

"They (traffickers) take 30,000 taka (about $450) or more from each individual looking for a life in Malaysia or neighbouring countries," Iqbal's mother Nurun said.

"But not many could afford this. Those who did are cheated by the traffickers, like being dropped on unknown shores," she said.

The lucky ones have found work in Bangladesh, on fishing boats or rickshaws. Others have taken to chopping wood in forests and some others have taken to petty crime.

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Zimbabwe abandons its currency

The runaway inflation in Zimbabwe has forced it's government to abandon their currency. Now residents will use currencies from other countries instead. Many shop owners were already not accepting the Zimbabwe currency anyway.

Rapid inflation made the Zimbabwe currency worthless. The countries central bank recently slashed 10 zeros from their notes to make it more manageable. They did that after introducing a $100 trillion dollar note.

An update on all that is going on in Zimbabwe comes from the BBC.

Until now only licensed businesses could accept foreign currencies, although it was common practice.

The country is also facing an deepening humanitarian crisis as well.

A cholera outbreak has killed over 3,000 people according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

And the World Food Programme (WFP) has revised up the number of people it says need food aid.

It now says seven million Zimbabweans are in need of food aid, up from 5.1 million in June.

WFP regional spokesman Richard Lee said the situation had deteriorated rapidly.

"The economic situation has worsened more dramatically than we had anticipated," he told AFP.

"The agency is being forced to halve the cereal rations given to hungry Zimbabweans so that all the people in need can receive aid."
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The country is in the grip of world-record hyperinflation which has left the Zimbabwean dollar virtually worthless - 231m% in July 2008, the most recent figure released.

Teachers, doctors and civil servants have gone on strike complaining that their salaries - which equal trillions of Zimbabwean dollars - are not even enough to catch the bus to work each day.

Finding long term fixes to the increase in need

With needs increasing in this poor economy, social service leaders say that long term solutions are needed to provide for everyone. Especially with more and more people asking for food from food banks, or help with heating bills and so on.

A story from Kansas' Ottawa Herald examines the struggle that these organizations have to help the growing number of people.

While many advocates agree prevention is key to combatting poverty at its root sources, that isn’t always possible for smaller charity service organizations like churches, said Lisa Davis, coordinator of the Kansas Statewide Homeless Coalition.

“Rural areas can lack specialized services, especially for serious or complicated problems such as mental illness, and it does not make economic sense to replicate programs found in urban areas,” Davis said.

Based on national demographic data, an estimated 3,400 people in rural Kansas are without permanent housing on any given night and may be living in cars, with other families or camping out, she said.

“Unfortunately, the local police and jails can end up being the ones that deal with the homeless in these areas,” Davis said.

Davis points to a transitional housing program in Paola that has been successful in combatting its local poverty issues. That’s because it has been able to not only provide a place for families to go but to help them tackle their problems once they get there.

When Jay Preston first had a vision to help the struggling families in Miami County, the former pastor knew he needed a fresh approach, rather than duplicating the services that were already in the area but were not helping families cope in the long-term.

He also knew that too often church and charities could provide only short-term assistance. In some cases, they turned families away because their moral compasses did not align with the families’ social situations, he said.

“A lot of people, especially in rural areas, feel judged by church services. Sometimes churches earn that bad reputation, unfortunately,” said Preston, who experienced a bout of homelessnees after dropping out of college in the late 1970s while facing drug and alcohol addiction.

The transitional housing at My Father’s House in Paola, an eastern Kansas city of 5,000, has been in operation only since 2006. But it is already providing housing for up to 42 people and needy families. It has also always had a waiting list of dozens of applications in Linn and Miami counties, which have a combined population of about 40,000.

“Nobody in town even knew there was a need around here,” Preston said. “The assumption was that we’d bring homeless folks from downtown Kansas City here.”

Though families can live at the transitional housing for up to two years, it generally takes only nine to 12 months for a family to get back on its feet, thanks to the extensive case management, counseling, mentoring, budgeting and other life skills offered in the transitional housing communities by case workers and counselors, Preston said.

Preston said he’s been working for the last few years to find ways to partner with other organizations in neighboring counties to develop and implement the self-sufficiency models without creating new non-profits and “reinventing the wheel.”

“We know there is more need than resources, and so the change is needed to be more effective so we can meet more needs,” he said. “Preventing homelessness is much cheaper than continuing to pump money into providing services for the chronically homeless.”

Introducing a new charity to help schools and buld wells in togo

We learned of a new not for profit charity that aims to build schools and wells in West Africa. Leaping Stone was started by Natalie Huberman and her husband Robert, after a visit to the West African nation of Togo broke her heart and moved her to help.

More information on the non profit can be found at their website Leaping Stone Org, Natalie also runs a blog on the site and there are links to make donations.

We discovered the charity through this write up in the Chico News Review by Robert Speer.

Only when they visited West Africa, though, did Natalie Huberman discover the cause she now says she will be pursuing for the rest of her life. “It hit me like a ton of bricks” is how she describes the moment when she understood her new purpose. “It wasn’t until I got to West Africa that my heart was slammed.”

The result, many months later, is a new international philanthropic organization, LeapingStone, based in Chico and with her as president.

Huberman had witnessed poverty before, but nowhere had she seen it in tandem with such desire for better lives. Unlike the Mentawai, who though poor were happy and wanted to preserve their traditional way of life by avoiding modern society, the people of West Africa craved development.
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The group’s mission is simple enough: “Providing quality, sustainable primary education for girls and boys in West Africa.” Huberman has no intention of stopping at Dédéké. She wants to build schools throughout West Africa—and put in water wells, too.

She’s been in touch with Ron Reed, the Chico attorney who is personally funding a project to dig some 40 wells in Tanzania and, just as important, set up a system that trains and pays for workers to maintain the wells. Huberman says she hopes to work with him in the future.

She and her board members, aware that building classrooms is pointless if the buildings aren’t maintained, have incorporated similar sustainability efforts in their proposal.

Their immediate goal is to have the buildings up by the end of this year. With Dédéké residents providing much of the labor, construction will cost $30,000 to $40,000, “not that much, really,” as Huberman says. In an effort to acquaint Chicoans with her project and drum up donations, she gave a slide presentation during the King Day ceremony on Jan. 18 at Trinity United Methodist Church, and she continues to talk to various groups to enlist their support.

It’s a big job. She says she spends at least four hours a day on it. Her husband, she says, is very supportive, though she likes to joke that it’s all his fault, since he was the person who led her to explore such places as West Africa.

Fair Trade pottery cooperatives in Rwanda

A great column found in All Africa today tells the story of a pottery cooperative in a little known area of Rwanda.

The writer, Irine Nambi begins the story by talking about a shopping trip to find pottery for her house. Having trouble finding any, she was told to head to Kacyiru where she found a cooperative of pottery makers.

In Nambi's story, she explains how much it improved the lives of the crafters.

The product of their labour was evident all around. The potters were organised in cooperatives and as I moved from one co-op to another, I could not help but marvel at the possibility of moulding clay into such beautiful products.

There is a wide range of products, including, household decoration items in the form of animals, flower vases, cooking pots and cooking stoves among others.

Everything was very good to look at, and the effort and dedication to this activity is unquestionable. I could not help but wonder what difference this engagement was making in the lives of these potters and their dependants.

"Ever since we decided to engage in this activity, life has never been the same. Initially many of us were very poor but today we earn monthly salaries," Jean Paul Rugemangabo, President of their cooperative said.

Salima Mukantwari, aged 44 and a mother of six is also a member of this cooperative and attests to the fact that this activity has changed her life completely.

"I would never have been able to meet the basic needs of life, if it was not for my skills in pottery. Today, my children are healthy and in school," she narrates.

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He also advises that Rwandans can kick out poverty if they struggle to earn income out of what they are good at adding that, it is the only way everyone can contribute to the country's development.

Supporting organisations have also boosted these cooperatives. The Canadian Embassy for example funded the construction of their premises while the Ministry of Local government has supported them financially.

Oregon state report on poverty

A new report on poverty in the state of Oregon shows that 13 percent of the states population lives below the federal poverty line. The survey was conducted by Oregon Housing and Community Services and the Community Action Partnership of Oregon.

The unveiling press conference took place at the Oregon state capital, KPTV has a story on the the reports findings. The link to the full story has a county by county breakdown of poverty measures in Oregon.

The new report brings together data on the number of people experiencing poverty with information about the difficult choices low-income families face and indicators that can drive increases in poverty.

OHCS developed a Basic Family Budget for each county to provide insight into what families really need to make ends meet, from childcare to food to transportation. The county summaries also present recent data about job and population growth, housing and energy costs, and homelessness.

The report pulls together data from the US Census, Oregon Department of Revenue, Oregon Department of Human Services, Oregon Employment Department and a variety of federal and independent studies to paint a picture of poverty in Oregon.

# Among the report's key findings: In 2007, poverty affected 13 percent of Oregonians.
# African American and Native Americans were twice as likely to live in poverty as their White and Asian neighbors.
# One of five Oregonians with disabilities lived in poverty.
# Inability to afford rent was the most frequently cited cause of homelessness in the state.

The report is available on the department's website at www.ohcs.oregon.gov.

Eating on 3 dollars a day

Earlier we introduced you to a couple that tried eating on one dollar a day, now another couple are trying 3 dollars a day. They picked 3 dollars because it is the amount a couple would have with food stamps in their state.

Eve Ross and Justin Shearer have been donating all the money they save on food to a local food bank.

The couple have been blogging about their experience at 3 Justin Shearer.com

The weekly paper Columbia Free Times sent writer Eva Moore over to have a meal with them.

Curious about their own food spending and hoping to donate more money to food charities, Ross and her partner Justin Shearer embarked on a project they’re calling $3 Bill. Each of them is eating for $3 a day — roughly the amount offered to food stamp recipients in South Carolina. That’s $94 per person for the month of January. They’ve donated $564, the difference between January’s expenses and their usual monthly food expenditures, to local food bank Harvest Hope.

It’s been an intense month. The first surprise is just how much time they’ve spent cooking, not to mention cleaning, calculating and writing.

For this story, Shearer and Ross made dinner for a Free Times photographer and writer, with each of them giving up part of their daily budget to feed their guests.

Dinner was in two courses: first, a thick, tasty carrot soup made with pork broth, fresh ginger, and curry powder, served with homemade white bread.

Next, Shearer served what he called Lowcountry Pork Tacos: Boston butt cooked with beans, onions, peppers and chile spices, then fluffed with an immersion blender to the consistency of barbecue hash. He made flour tortillas from a prepared tortilla mix.

“I have a very important question to ask,” Shearer said as he served the tacos. “Do you want cheese or sour cream? You can’t have both. You get one-sixteenth of a cup.”

Dinner came in at 97 cents per couple. Everyone drank water.
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But they’ve had some trials. The hardest day, Ross says, was when her church held a potluck as part of an event she wanted to attend. “I just didn’t have my s#!t together. I hadn’t planned in advance, because I was going to go straight there, and I didn’t bring anything.” People offered her food, but because she hadn’t contributed anything, she didn’t feel right eating the shared food.

“I just felt awful, because I really felt excluded from the community by choice. It sucked. But I could just imagine someone really not having the money to participate in something like that,” she says. “You just never know why people aren’t there.”

World unemployment could rise by 40 million

The United Nations labor agency says that the global credit crisis could make another 40 million people unemployed. That would put the number of unemployed to it's highest level in a decade. Bringing the total number to somewhere between 210 million and 230 million.

In this Associated Press article that we found in the International Herald Tribune, we are told what effects this will have on the working poor in the world.

If the worst case scenario materializes, around 200 million more people would become working poor — unable to earn more than $2 per person a day.

In this outlook, the total number of working poor would be 812 million, or 26.8 percent of the world's work force, the report said, using poverty estimates by the World Bank.

In 2007, some 609.5 million were working poor — 20.6 percent of the world's work force at the time.

In addition to fiscal and monetary interventions, the world economy also needs creative measures improving the social situation of workers, the report said.

"There is a need to focus measures on vulnerable groups in the labor market, such as youth and women, who are most likely to be pushed into poverty and find themselves trapped there for many years," it said.

Discussion on developing nations at the World Economic Forum

The World Economic Forum is going on now in Davos, Switzerland. Once a year really rich people and some heads of state gather to talk about global economics and to do some skiing. We have been waiting until we found a story about developing nations until we covered it here.

Developing nations are accumulating 1 trillion dollars of debt. Many nations are seeing investment dry up due to the world credit crisis. While some nations are wondering why they even bother being integrated in the world market, if it means that they will just follow the US into recession, each time.

Today's International Herald Tribune devoted a story to the developing countries concerns at the forum.

Some 48 mining projects in the Republic of Congo are "in various stages of abandonment," South Africa's Finance Minister Trevor Manuel cited as an example.

Turkish businessman Ferit F. Sahenk cited studies showing that private investment flows into emerging markets will drop significantly this year.

"It is not only unemployment. It is not only poverty. If this crisis goes longer, it will lead around the world to a social crisis that we should be keeping in mind," he said.
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World Bank managing director Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said the discussions at Davos were too focused on rich countries.

"This crisis is not just about finance," she said. "It is about people and in many of these developing countries there are millions and millions of people who are at the bottom end of the scale."

She urged participants at Davos to explore the World Bank president's suggestion that 0.7 percent of the stimulus packages being discussed by industrialized nations be used to help developing nations.

German assistance pledge to Bangladesh

German Foreign Secretary Reinhard Silberberg made pledges of continued aid to help meet the Millennium Development Goals during a recent visit to Bangladesh. Secretary Silberberg also pledged to continue aid to Bangladesh despite the current financial credit crisis.

Bangladeshi newspaper The Daily Star made record of the visit and pledge.

Silberberg who had one and a-half-hour discussions on trade, investment, aid and cooperation in international arena said, “We will keep high level of assistance and increase step by step as we promised as part of the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) policy and this is a commitment that we will not put into dark.”

Germany has so far provided 4.4 billion euros (5.8 billion dollars) as direct assistance or indirect multilateral aid contributions to help combat poverty, protect human rights and achieve economic development.

On German investment in Bangladesh, he said the investment is made by private companies adding, “What we can do we can talk about to improve the framework for foreign investment.” He, however, said, “I think something could be done for further improvement of environment for foreign investment.”

About bilateral trade, he said Bangladesh has been enjoying trade surplus with Germany and EU, saying, “We have positive trend in bilateral trade and we favour a lot of Bangladeshi exports.”

Germany is the second-largest export destination for Bangladesh after the United States. The annual trade volume between the two countries is set to reach about 2 billion euros, with Bangladesh enjoying a trade surplus of more than 1.3 billion euros annually.

Mexicans are sending less money home

For the first time since these stats have been kept, the Central Bank of Mexico says less money is being sent back from Mexican migrants.

Mexicans sent back $25 billion, down from $26 billion the year before. Bank officials say this means that the country will follow the US into recession.

From the Christian Science Monitor, Sara Miller Llana fills us in on how that effects the economy and people in poverty in Mexico.

But the break in the trend is significant, say economists. Less cash coming to low-income families who then spend it on goods and services, will mean more frugal spending, which will in turn be a further drag on the Mexican economy this year. And it will impact millions of families whose entire incomes depend on the dollars sent from men and women working as construction workers, lettuce pickers, and housekeepers from California to New York.

"This translates into social pressure," says Heliodoro Gil Corona, an economist at the School of Economists in the Mexican state of Michoacán. "It means a lack of employment. It means a lack of income. It even means more crime and insecurity."

Mexico's economy is in much better shape than in previous global economic downturns. While GDP is expected to remain stagnant or shrink here this year, in the past, when the US was in a recession, the economy south of the border quickly followed.

Even though Mexico sends up to 80 percent of its exports to the US and Canada, it has been cushioned somewhat by having corrected macroeconomic imbalances, such a fiscal deficit, external deficit, and high inflation, says Alfredo Coutino, a senior economist for Latin America at Moody's Economy.com.

But a drop in remittances, which represent the largest source of foreign income in Mexico after oil exports, is a worrisome trend – one that economists expect will trend further downward this year.
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The poorest Mexicans are not the most affected – those in extreme poverty do not tend to be economic migrants. Rather the decline in remittances touches those families another rung up the economic ladder, those who depend on money to build better homes, buy books for their children and medicine for their elders.

Nations begin to barter for food

We are beginning to see the effects of the global credit crunch is having on nations securing food.

Experts have been telling us for a while that credit drying up will make it harder for underdeveloped nations to obtain credit to buy food. They have warned of the damages this could have for world trade. This also raises prices for locally grown food.

Now some countries have begun to admit that they are bartering for food staples. Javier Bias from the Financial Times lists some of the countries who have fessed up to bartering.

In a striking example of how the global financial crisis and high food prices have strained the finances of poor and middle-income nations, countries including Russia, Malaysia, Vietnam and Morocco say they have signed or are discussing inter-government and barter deals to import commodities from rice to vegetable oil.
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The countries have not disclosed the value of any deals, and some have refused even to confirm their existence. Officials estimated that they ranged from $5m for smaller contracts to more than $500m for the biggest.

Josette Sheeran, head of the United Nations’ World Food Programme, said senior government officials, including heads of state, had told the WFP they were facing “difficulties” obtaining credit to purchase food. “This could be a big problem,” she told the Financial Times.

Last week, Malaysia’s commodities minister, Datuk Peter Chin Fah Kui, said Kuala Lumpur had already signed a barter deal swapping palm oil for fertilizer and machinery with North Korea, Cuba and Russia. He said Malaysia was talking to Morocco, Jordan, Syria and Iran about other barter deals.

“[Bartering] could be used for contracts with other countries that do not have the cash,” Mr Chin told the local press. “We can set the conditions for them to supply us with the raw materials that we need.”

Thailand, the world’s largest exporter of rice, is discussing barter deals with Middle Eastern countries, including Iran. The Philippines, the world’s largest importer of rice, has secured rice needs for this year through a diplomatic agreement with Hanoi.

Spain pledges a billion euros in food aid

One more item to report from the food security summit that recently concluded in Spain.

Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriquez Zapatero says his country will provide 1 billion euros over the next five years to boost food security thought the world. This will help Spain meet the goal of 0.7% of the countries gross domestic product being used for poverty fighting aid.

We love the quotes that Prime Minister Zapatero made in announcing the pledge, Spanish newspaper Easy Bourse has the quotes.

"A total of EUR1 billion will go during this period towards the nations which are the most vulnerable and most affected by the global food security crisis," he added at the end of a two-day conference on food security.

The funding is part of Spain's aim to raise the amount of development aid it provides to 0.7% of its GDP by 2012, despite facing its sharpest economic contraction in decades amid the global financial crisis, he said.

"The crisis here will be temporary. In countries lashed by hunger and extreme poverty, the crisis, the more radical crisis which puts at risk that which is most needed, is a form of life, a life of subsistence," Zapatero said.

Spain will also push for the creation of a new global partnership to better co-ordinate the fight against hunger that will be made up of donor nations, aid agencies, food producers and unions, and will be headed by the U.N., he said.

Ban said the food crisis had brought the total number of hungry people in the world to "an intolerable 1 billion" and he warned the situation could get worse unless more is done to tackle the problem.
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While food prices have since dropped, they remain volatile.
The world's richest nations agreed to provide 0.7% of their output in development aid by 2015 as part of the U.N. Millennium Development Goals, a series of targets aimed at reducing poverty and living standards around the globe, but so far only a handful have met this target.

UN summit on food security closes

The United Nations food security summit in Madrid has drawn to a close. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon finished the summit with a speech that asked the world to do more to help the hungry.

Instead of focusing on the Secretary General's comments, our snippet from the BBC story includes reaction from the civic world on the summit. Also, it includes a remark that Jeffrey Sachs made at the conference. David Loyn of the BBC filed this story on the close of the summit.

The most dramatic intervention at the conference was from the UN poverty adviser Professor Jeffrey Sachs, who said that when the finance minister of Kenya phoned him to ask for $80m (£57m) to help Kenya's farmers this year he said "spend the money" in the faith that it would be covered by the World Bank.

This prioritisation of food and hunger is quite new, and has been welcomed by campaign groups like the Global Call to Action Against Poverty (GCAP), who have recently mobilised millions of people for their cause.

But the co-chair of the movement, Sylvia Borren, said that the international response in Madrid is still lacking urgency.

"It is a consultation and coalition-forming process, but if you look at the plans it will be another year before it gets off the paper, out of the talks into real action.

"What we are concerned about are people who are starving today - women who say to us 'I have to choose which child to feed'."
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The amounts of money now being talked about are large - $5bn extra for food aid, and $10bn extra on helping farmers in Africa plant more productive crops.

But they are dwarfed by the trillions now committed to saving the banking system in the developed world.

Philippines announces 1.4 million jobs created

The Philippines government has announced that they have created 1.4 million jobs through their anti-poverty efforts. The National Anti-Poverty Commission made that announcement today, while introducing an upcoming forum.

From the Philippines, ABS CBN News received the figures.

The government's anti-hunger program has created job opportunities for nearly 1.4 million unemployed and underemployed poor Filipinos, according to the National Anti-Poverty Commission (NAPC).

NAPC Secretary Domingo Panganiban said new jobs were created through the expansion of microfinance services, the construction and maintenance of farm infrastructure, coconut intercropping and aggressive rice seeds subsidy, and skills training programs nationwide.

"The creation of jobs for hungry folk is among the primary objectives of the Accelerated Hunger Mitigation Program (AHMP) and we are pleased to say that our efforts to ensure jobs for the poor have been successful," he said.
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NAPC Assistant Secretary Dolores de Quiros Castillo said the government's microfinance program had already created over a million new jobs for the poor as of July last year and another 292,372 poor Filipinos were trained for higher paying jobs through the government's various skills training programs.

Some 38,507 rural workers, meanwhile, found new earning opportunities through the Coconut Intercropping Program of the Department of Agriculture while 10,761 were hired for irrigation project and another 26,326 Filipinos were put to work on roadside maintenance projects.

The figures were based on the 2008 AHMP accomplishment report that was submitted by the National Nutrition Council to the NAPC.

Discussing the Swaziland government budget

Swaziland's government is working on a new budget. Non governmental groups who work to fight poverty in the nation are telling the government what they would like to see included to help the poor.

A coalition of NGO's would like to see measures that will help the incomes of the poor to help grow the economy in the country. The Swazi Observer recently attended a meeting to discuss the budget, and received the comments of an economist that works for NGO's.

Coordinating Assembly of Non-Governmental organisations (CANGO) Economist Thembinkosi Dlamini said poverty manifests itself in the lack of equal opportunities to access basic needs like employment, food, income and wealth, and as such, the budget needs to address this.

Speaking during a pre-budget dialogue hosted by the organisation in conjunction with the Council of Swaziland Churches, he said government's increase of the elderly grant from E300 to E500 per quarter was a positive move in this regard.

He also said the allocation of E15 million to the Children's Unit was an indication of government being committed towards advancing, fulfilling and protecting children's rights while the allocation of E45 million to revamp the agriculture sector as a direct outcome of the Agricultural Summit held in 2007 was a major milestone.

"But where is the money?" he wondered.

Meanwhile, Dlamini noted that macroeconomic stability and accelerated economic growth was based on broader participation while empowering the poor to generate income and reduce inequalities.

He said as set out in the Poverty Reduction Strategy Action Plan (PRSAP), its pillars included fair distribution of the benefits of growth through fiscal policy, human capital development, improving the quality of life of the poor and improving governance and strengthening institutions.

Half of the world's people have access to microcredit

A new survey says that half of the world's people now have access to micro credit. Great news, but the group who conducted the survey warns the global economic crisis could slow the growth to more people.

Writer Peter Apps from the Guardian gives us the results of the survey.

The Microcredit Summit Campaign said its survey of micro-lenders showed more than 106 million of the very poorest received loans in 2007, helping them to set up and expand their businesses, reaching a target set in 1997 when fewer than 8 million were benefiting.

Assuming each recipient was supporting four family members, that would mean some half a billion were being reached -- roughly half the nearly one billion people classed as living on less than $1.25 a day.

"You can be a beggar, you can be a prostitute -- there is still a way out of poverty," Ingrid Munro, founder of Kenyan microcredit organisation Jamii Bora, told a conference call.

Jamii Bora started in 1999 with loans to 50 beggars but now reaches 200,000 members. It has provided mortgages to help build a town of 2000 houses and 3000 business spaces.

"We are doing subprime lending but we are doing it right," said Munro.
Beginning in the 1970s, microcredit has gained ground dramatically in recent years. Pionee Bangladeshi micro-finance institution Grameen Bank and its founder Muhammad Yunus won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006.

"There are still many people we are not reaching," said Yunus. "We cannot stop now."
The campaign's new target is to reach 175 million recipients by 2015 and move the income level of 100 million families above one dollar a day.

World must double food production by 2050 says the FAO

The meeting in Spain on world hunger has begun. The headlines of the first day belong to the head of the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization. Jacques Diouf claims that mass starvation will begin if the world doesn't double food production by 2050.

Many leaders attending the meeting are lamenting the fact the food insecurity is not a priority. Other issues such as AIDS or climate change have taken precedence.

The new US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was not present at the meetings, but gave a speech to the conference that she recorded in Washington DC.

The AFP has more on Diouf's comments at the world hunger conference.

The food crisis pushed another 40 million people into hunger in 2008, Jacques Diouf said here at the start of a two-day international conference on food security.

That brought the global number of undernourished people to 973 million last year out of a total population of around 6.5 billion, he said.

"We face the challenge now of not only ensuring food for the 973 million who are currently hungry, but also ensuring there is food for nine billion people in 2050. We will need to double global food production by 2050," he said.

But Diouf warned the global economic crisis was already undermining efforts to tackle food insecurity as it was making it harder for farmers to get loans to buy materials and new equipment that would boost yields.

"The current economic situation does not make our task easier," he said.

The fall in prices for certain food staples from last year's highs could also discourage farmers from sowing crops, adding to the difficulty in meeting FAO's goal to halve the number of people who live in hunger by 2015, he said.

IMF cautions Africa on their economic future

Economic policymakers in Africa were cautioned by the International Monetary Fund on what lies ahead for the continent due to the world economic slowdown.

Among some of the things the IMF said...

The threat of inflation may be coming due to the food and fuel price spikes that occurred last year. That is especially dangerous for those that are close to the poverty line, the inflation could drop more and more people in the continent into poverty.

Also, the IMF warned that prices of imports will be higher, and aid may not be available to offset the price increases of imports.

From the South African Newspaper the Mail and Guardian, we hear more from the IMF.

While economic growth in the countries of sub-Saharan Africa has been "surprisingly resilient" in the face of the latest shocks hitting the global economy, the IMF cautioned that there is no guarantee that things will not change.

According to Antoinette Monsio Sayeh, director of the IMF's African Department, the risks to growth in sub-Saharan Africa are quite obvious: the food and fuel price shock has put pressure on inflation and external balances.

But she warned that the deepening global financial turmoil had put a brake on global growth, giving rise to the potential for lower commodity prices for Africa's exports and reduced capital flows to Africa.

"As a result, growth in Africa could slow as well," she warned, adding that if the clouds on the horizon develop into a storm, policymakers -– including governments and central banks –- must be prepared to respond.

The IMF said the current severe external challenges come when, for the first time since the 1970s, a large number of countries in sub-Saharan Africa are enjoying persistently high rates of growth in per capita income.

Sustaining and even accelerating the high growth momentum —- and extending it to low-growth countries -— is now critical for the region.

A microcredit success story from Nepal

A unique story from a newspaper in Nepal gives us another micro-credit success. It tells us of Parbati Karki, who has a successful milk selling business thanks to a micro-credit loan. Again, we see overwhelming success for the lender in this article as well, as 99.93 percent of their loans are payed back.

Prithvi Man Shrestha of the Kantipur Online gives us the good news story from Kathmandu.

Parbati Karki, 27, had purchased a Jersey cow five years ago by obtaining a small loan of Rs. 5,000 from Mahila Sahayogi Sahakari Sanstha (MSSS), a micro-credit provider.

She now sells 18 litres of milk daily from her two cows and earns about Rs. 400. She has been able to erect a new house by putting together her income from the milk business and her husband's earnings.

Thanu Karki, 30, said she purchased jewellery from the savings she made by rearing goats. She had also borrowed Rs. 5,000 from the micro-finance institution to start her enterprise. Mina Karki had a hard time managing her household expenses on the small salary her husband earned by working as a peon at Saraswoti Campus, Kathmandu. Now, she is earning money herself by rearing cows and growing vegetables. The women of the village said they had to depend on others for even small personal expenses. Now they are capable of earning enough money not only their personal expenses but also to contributed the household expenses.

The borrowers do not have to offer their property as collateral to get credit from the micro-credit institution. The employees of the micro-finance institution come to their doorsteps to provide them credit.

They have formed a women's group which is mainly responsible for taking decisions regarding who should be given credit as per their earlier performance regarding the best utilisation of the fund.

“We hold a meeting of the group every fortnight,” said Sita K.C. who is the acting group chief. “The regular group meetings have established a strong bond among the women here.”

Farming in Uganda, most are unable to afford what we can

An article in All Africa today, provides more proof on why improving farming in the underdeveloped world is perhaps the most important aid we can do. A survey shows very high percentages of farmers in Uganda do not use the same tools to help their crops as in the developed world. And are in fact, far behind the world's average.

Improved seeds, fertilizer and other "inputs" could greatly improve yields for farmers. Many of whom are too poor to even afford these things and can only grow enough crops to feed their families, hopefully for the whole year.

A stat relieved in the survey said that a Ugandan farmer needs four acres to match the same output as one acre in the developed world. This is pretty much what Jeffrey Sachs was talking about in his most recent commentary. In it, he talked about how the improved inputs have helped to feed Asia, but still needs to be done elsewhere.

On to the survey now, Joshua Kato of Uganda's New Vision provides the findings.

USING improved agriculture inputs is one of the best ways of modernising agriculture. However, more than 95% of Ugandan farmers do not use improved agriculture inputs, according to a survey, Gender Disaggregated Data for Agriculture.

The survey found out that 75.5% of farmers were not using improved seeds. It was also found out that 85% were not using hybrid seeds, while 93.1% were not using herbicides.

The survey further revealed that 91.9% were not using fungicides, while 83.4% were not using pesticides. It further discovered that 94.5% were not using improved animal feeds, while 75.2% were not using veterinary drugs.

The figures look similar with almost all classes of farmers, including the elderly, the married and single. Among adult farmers who use inputs, it was established that the main source of inputs are shops and local vendors, at 50% for male farmers and 48% for female farmers.

Other sources include agriculture officers at 11% and 13% for males and females respectively, veterinary officers at 9.4% and 9.6% for males and females respectively, markets at 16.6% and 15% for male and female farmers respectively.

Agriculture researchers/ the National Agricultural Research Organisation only provide 3.7% and 3.8% inputs for male and female farmers respectively. Other sources are cooperative societies at an average 2%.

According to the survey, there are several reasons why farmers do not use farm inputs. The majority of them said they lacked knowledge about the input, while others said the inputs were too expensive or not available.

About 34% said they lacked knowledge about improved seeds while 29.2% said the seeds were too expensive. A similar number said the seeds were not available.

About 43% said they lacked knowledge about hybrid seeds, while 30.2% said the seeds were too expensive, yet 28.2% said the seeds were not available. The percentages are almost similar with artificial insemination, fungicides, pesticides, animal feeds and veterinary drugs.

One Million Nicaraguans emigrate to Costa Rica

Trying to escape poverty and a lack of jods in Nicaragua, over a million people have emigrated to Costa Rica to find a job. The numbers are according to the International Organization for Migration. Around 250,000 people from Nicaragua now live in Costa Rica permanently. Many return to their home country after their temporary job ends.

We found the story on the emigration from the Costa Rica's Daily News

With a population of 5.6 million inhabitants - more than half of them under 18 - with an annual growth of 2.7 percent, Nicaragua, the second-poorest country in the Americas, "is facing a tremendous challenge to overcome its poverty," IOM spokesman Jean-Philippe Chauzy said Friday in Geneva.

That challenge, he said, particularly affects women, since a quarter of Nicaraguan households are headed by women.

The spokesman cited Capt. Lenin Flores, head of a busy post on the Nicaragua-Costa Rica border, who said that the Nicaraguan emigrants "are not criminals," but people "risking everything to find work and a better life," even though they do it without the required documents.

Chauzy also pointed to the case of 18-year-old Juanita, who traveled a long, hard road to cross the border illegally with her husband and children, and said that "wages are low and we have two kids, we just can't manage that way."

In the last 30 years, Nicaraguan emigration has been spurred by natural disasters, political conflicts and economic hardship.

Costa Rica, meanwhile, has become a magnet for people without professional qualifications thanks to the abundant job market in sectors less attractive to the native population - above all in agriculture, construction and domestic service.

The food price crisis of 2008, what to do next?

The United Nations high level task force on the food crisis is about to have another meeting. UN secretary general Ban Ki Moon and Spain's prime minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero will host the meeting in Madrid on January 26th.

An article on IRIN breaks down the issues that surround the meeting.

As food inflation shot to almost 60 percent in Ethiopia in 2008, the beneficiaries of a safety net programme offering cash to build resilience to face shocks opted for food.

The rising prices "may have reduced the hoped-for long-term impacts of the programme [to help people become more resilient and break the cycle of dependence on food aid]" said John Hoddinott, a senior research fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).

The global food price crisis that led to nearly a billion malnourished people in 2008 is not over, said David Nabarro, coordinator of the UN Secretary-General's High-Level Task Force on the Global Food Security Crisis. "Food systems in many countries are not working for poor people."

The economic slowdown has exacerbated the situation. "It means both developed and developing countries have even less funds to invest in social protection programmes to help people become more resilient [and prevent them falling into the poverty trap]."

In its most recent report the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) said the food price crisis had pushed another 40 million into hunger in 2008, bringing the global number of undernourished people closer to a billion.

Food is not going to get cheaper soon; prices of major cereals have fallen by over 50 percent from their peak earlier in 2008 but are still high compared to previous years, said FAO's State of Food Insecurity in the World 2008.

The purchasing power of cash transfers in Ethiopia had been steadily eroded by escalating food prices since the beginning of the Productive Safety Net Programme (PSNP) in 2005, and then spiked in 2008, according to a new joint crop and food security assessment report by FAO and the World Food Programme (WFP). The number of PSNP participants opting for cash transfers dropped from 74 percent in 2005 to 48 percent in 2008.

Malawi receives loan to help with the world economic downturn

Malawi has received a loan from the International Monetary Fund. The loan comes from a reserve of funds that is doled out when a country is effected by economic events beyond it's control, like the world depression going on now.

This IRIN article that we found from Reuters details the loan and why the nation needed it.

Malawi - one of the world's poorest countries, but which is also enjoying one of the world's highest growth rates - was hit hard by high fuel and fertiliser costs that reduced its import cover to about five weeks in September 2008.

This was despite being "buttressed by the seasonal concentration of tobacco proceeds [a major foreign currency earner] in April-September," said the IMF Request for a One Year Exogenous Shocks Facility Arrangement Staff Report, published on 21 January.

On 3 December 2008 the IMF approved a one-year US$77.1 million loan, of which US$51.4 million was available immediately.

Although world oil prices have dropped sharply with the onset of a global economic downturn, "the negative effects of the earlier price hikes will persist over the next few months, because current imports of oil and fertilisers were contracted at earlier high prices," Takatoshi Kato, the IMF's deputy managing director and acting chair, said in a statement.

The ESF was modified in November 2008, making it easier for low-income countries to access the facility. Repayments begin five and half years after the money has been disbursed and the loan has to be repaid in 10 years at an interest rate of 0.5 percent.

Victor Mbewe, Malawi's Reserve Bank Governor, said in the capital, Lilongwe, on 19 December that although the global financial market crisis was unlikely to directly affect Malawi, it would "manifest itself in a reduced demand for our exports in the coming year [2009], which will in turn affect the country's economic growth and poverty reduction efforts."

Poverty simulation for teachers in Des Moines

A poverty simulation was held in the Des Moines, Iowa area to help teachers see the realities of poverty in the community. The simulation focused on what teachers can do to help poor students in their classroom. This only grows in importance as the economy continues to be weak.

From the Des Moines Register, reporter Dave Dolmage shows us the extent of poverty in West Des Moines.

Andréa Boyd, the principal at Phenix Elementary School in West Des Moines, is no stranger to poverty. Located in the Valley Junction area of West Des Moines, more than half the students at Phenix qualify for free or reduced-price lunches.

After going through a training course, Boyd wanted to bring the poverty simulation program to her school to help teachers and other administrators understand how poverty affects students, and how teachers can minimize its effects.

"We do it for people to have awareness, but with the economy everyone is aware," Boyd said. "It's a call to action, to see what we can do to help students and families."

Boyd works with Mary Stilwell, the family services coordinator at Phenix, to ensure that the district is doing what it can to help meet the needs of students. Stilwell works to find donations of clothing, and even helps some families find apartments. Boyd said it's easier for family members to talk to Stilwell, rather than speaking to the principal.

"She fulfills a very valuable role, and I think sometimes it's easier for families to go and talk to her," Boyd said of Stilwell.

About to graduate from Iowa State University, Whitney Wilson of West Des Moines is a student teacher who attended the poverty seminar. "It really opened my eyes and helped me see things that I might not have otherwise noticed," Wilson said.

The concept of a family services coordinator at a school was new to us, we wonder if other poor districts have something similar?

WTO still hopes for more trade talks

The leader of the World Trade Organization recently shared what he hopes to see in the new year. The WTO Director Pascal Lamy said he wants to renew the Doha round of free trade talks. Lamy says the economic slowdown has really hurt trade between nations, and that increased trade could help developing countries.

From the Hindustan Times, this Reuters article recorded Lamy's remarks that he made while in the UK.

The Doha round was launched in late 2001 to boost world trade and help developing countries export their way out of poverty, but agreement has proved elusive.

The G20 group of rich and emerging nations called in November for an outline deal by the end of 2008 to help counter the economic crisis.

But last month Lamy decided political differences were still to wide to invite ministers to Geneva to seek a breakthrough.

In his speech on Thursday he praised Britain's support for the negotiations and Prime Minister Gordon Brown's leadership.

"It is this leadership that we are counting on to ensure that the coming G20 summit in April here in London will result in a recommitment to conclude the negotiations this year," said Lamy, who also met Brown on Thursday.

Lamy said the crisis made it more urgent to reform the global trading system to help developing countries.

"There is no doubt that this crisis will have profound and possibly prolonged effects on developing countries, the least developed among them in particular, whose recent good economic performance has been largely driven by external factors," he said.

Gates Foundation grants money to fight polio

Rotary International has been raising money for years to battle polio. Today Rotary received a grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to help their cause. The grant is $255 million dollars, one of the largest the foundation has ever made.

The World Health Organization wanted to totally stop Polio in the year 2000. In over 30 years they have spent 6 billion dollars trying to eradicate the disease in the under developed world.

From the Los Angeles Times, Mary Engel details the fight to stop what's left of the Polio.

The number of countries in which the virus is still endemic has dropped since 1988 from more than 125 to four -- Nigeria, India, Pakistan and, to a lesser extent, Afghanistan. These four countries accounted for 1,488 of the 1,625 polio cases reported in 2008.

Fifteen other countries in Africa and Asia that once had eliminated the disease reported a total of 137 cases after the virus was reintroduced by travelers or immigrants.

Dr. Bruce Aylward, director of the WHO polio eradication program, estimated that it would cost $2 billion to stamp out the last traces of the virus in areas where wars, natural disasters, difficult terrain, extreme poverty and political interference have kept it stubbornly entrenched.

Without eradication, the virus will continue to find unprotected children, said Dr. Stephen L. Cochi of the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Should nations eventually tire of funding mass vaccination campaigns, mathematical models have shown that infections would quickly soar to 200,000 a year.

"The very point of eradication is to go that last mile, or the disease comes roaring back," Cochi said.

Polio is caused by a highly infectious virus that invades the nervous system. Most of those infected do not become ill, but one in 200 develop an irreversible paralysis, usually in the legs, that can set in within hours of infection. Of these, 5% to 10% can survive only with a ventilator because their breathing muscles become paralyzed.

"Slumdog Millionaire" premieres in Mumbai

While the film receives more nominations for awards, "Slumdog Millionaire" recently premiered in the city it was filmed. The film even found it's way into controversy in Mumbai, as people from the slums depicted in the film staged a protest.

In this Associated Press article, writer Erika Kinetz documents the protest. Our snippet comes from the Contra Costa Times.

The joy wasn't felt by some, however, as about two dozen slum residents protested the film outside Kapoor's Mumbai home saying the title of the movie was an insult.

"I am poor, but don't call me slumdog," said Rekha Dhamji, 18. "I don't want to be referred to as a dog."

Other protesters held up banners reading "Poverty For Sale" and "I am not a dog."

Nicholas Almeida, a social activist who organized the protest, said he planned to file a lawsuit Friday to get the film's name changed.

"Slumdog Millionaire" tells the story of Jamal Malik, a poor youth who becomes the champion of India's "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" television program as he searches for his lost love.

On Wednesday the cast and director spoke to the media in New Delhi about the film, and the controversy it has sparked.

"The film is going to be a terrific inspiration to kids around India. It's a feel-good film, a film of hope," said Kapoor, who grew up in a Mumbai slum.

He dismissed claims that the word "slumdog" was offensive. "Children from the slums are actually called much worse names."

A quarter of Bulgarians live on the edge of poverty

Bulgaria has one of the highest inflation rates in the European Union. The rising prices without any rising wages push more and more Bulgarians into poverty. For example, the prices of food stuffs in the country has gone up 7.6 percent, while rent and household has gone up 20 percent.

More facts and figures are presented in this story from Sofia Echo.

In 2008, the cost of life in Bulgaria has gone up by 14 per cent, which is the highest rise registered over the past eight years, Sega daily reported on January 22 2009 citing data provided by the Institute for Trade Union and Social Research (ITUSR).

One four-member household needs 1895 leva a month to cover basic expenses for food, utilities, clothing, education and short holidays. This would roughly make 474 leva a person. Sega daily cited national statistics indicating that only 15.2 per cent of Bulgarian families live with more than 450 a person monthly allowance.

To physically survive, one person needs 185 leva, according to ITUSR. National Statistical Institute released data showing that by November 2008, 22 per cent of Bulgarian households live below that minimum.

“At the beginning of 2008, food prices increased as a direct result from the tendencies on the food exchange market, later the gas prices increased,” Lyuben Tomev from ITUSR said as quoted by Sega daily. Although Tomev said he expected prices to rise slower, “the inflation would remain way above the EU average."

Eurostat research, cited by the newspaper, showed that in 2008, inflation rate in Bulgaria was 12 per cent, which has placed the country second in the category of intensive cost of life increased. First was Latvia with annual inflation rate of 15.3 per cent. In comparison, the average inflation rate in the EU is 3.7 per cent.

Another factor affecting the living standard in Bulgaria is the salary. The country occupies the bottom with minimal wage floor of 112 euro (218 leva). Usual expenses for a child vary from 261 leva to 445 leva.

Video: Poverty in Mississippi

Commentary on hunger from Jeffrey Sachs

The latest commentary from Jeffrey Sachs is about growing more food and feeding people. Again, Dr Sachs makes an appeal for more funding to provide seeds and fertilizer for small farmers. We found his latest commentary in the Guatemala Times.

Today's world hunger crisis is unprecedentedly severe and requires urgent measures. Nearly one billion people are trapped in chronic hunger - perhaps 100 million more than two years ago. Spain is taking global leadership in combating hunger by inviting world leaders to Madrid in late January to move beyond words to action. With Spain's leadership and United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's partnership, several donor governments are proposing to pool their financial resources so that the world's poorest farmers can grow more food and escape the poverty trap.

The benefits of some donor help can be remarkable. Peasant farmers in Africa, Haiti, and other impoverished regions currently plant their crops without the benefit of high-yield seed varieties and fertilizers. The result is a grain yield (for example, maize) that is roughly one-third less than what could be achieved with better farm inputs. African farmers produce roughly one ton of grain per hectare, compared with more than four tons per hectare in China, where farmers use fertilizers heavily.

African farmers know that they need fertilizer; they just can't afford it. With donor help, they can. Not only do these farmers then feed their families, but they also can begin to earn market income and to save for the future. By building up savings over a few years, the farmers eventually become creditworthy, or have enough cash to purchase vitally necessary inputs on their own.

There is now widespread agreement on the need for increased donor financing for small farmers (those with two hectares or less of land, or impoverished pastoralists), which is especially urgent in Africa. The UN Secretary General led a steering group last year that determined that African agriculture needs around $8 billion per year in donor financing - roughly four times the current total - with a heavy emphasis on improved seeds, fertilizer, irrigation systems, and extension training.

In addition to direct help for small farms, donors should provide more help for the research and development needed to identify new high-yielding seed varieties, especially to breed plants that can withstand temporary flooding, excess nitrogen, salty soils, crop pests, and other challenges to sustainable food production. Helping the poor with today's technologies, while investing in future improved technologies, is the optimum division of labor.

This investment pays off wonderfully, with research centers such as the International Rice Research Institute and the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Centre providing the high-yield seeds and innovative farming strategies that together triggered the Asian Green Revolution. These centers are not household names, but they deserve to be. Their scientific breakthroughs have helped to feed the world, and we'll need more of them.

Video: Once stable, now seeking aid

"The missing MDG"

A Nobel prize winner says that energy development should have been included in the Millennium Development Goals. Rajendra Pachauri, who heads the United Nations climate panel, says that getting energy to the poor is holding back the fight against poverty.

Matthias Williams, who writes for Reuters received the remarks from Pachauri.

Pachauri, whose panel shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore, said meeting the poor's energy needs should have been listed as a Millennium Development Goal (MDG) when the issue was debated at a key development summit more than six years ago.

"As a result of the insistence by some country governments, and in fact particularly just one country government, the whole sector of energy was dropped from the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)," Pachauri said at a seminar in New Delhi.

"Today energy remains the missing MDG."

Energy was discussed at the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg in 2002, Pachauri said, though he did not elaborate on which countries blocked its inclusion.

"Without the provision of adequate and appropriate supply of energy ... we would be falling far short of what is desired and what we need to achieve in eliminating poverty across rural areas across the world," Pachauri said.

There are 1.6 billion people without electricity in the world, which impacts their health, education and ability to work, Pachauri said.

I bet you that the one country is the U.S...

Tanzania's asks for Chinese help for a farming bank

It seems as though Tanzania has good relations with China. The President of Tanzania, Jakaya Kikwete recently toured China. While there, he was able to get the Chinese to help fund an $11 million dollar convention center.

Now, on a recent meeting with the Chinesse ambasodor for the country President Kikwete asks for funding for an agricultual bank to help small farmers.

The Citizen Reporter details the negotiations.

President Jakaya Kikwete has asked the Chinese government to assist in the setting up of an agricultural bank as a joint venture between the two countries.

He said the bank would play a vital role in revolutionazing agriculture regarded as the backbone of Tanzania's economy.

He said the bank would enable Tanzanian farmers boost productivity, thus improve food security and to fight poverty.

"It is agriculture which will redeem us. We need loans for our farmers," he said.

President Kikwete made the appeal at the State House in Dar es Salaam on Monday when he met the Chinese ambassador to Tanzania, Mr Liu Xinsheng.

Ambassador Xinsheng promised to forward the request to Beijing, fully aware that such an institution would enable farmers overcome poverty.

...

During the talks, Mr Xinsheng presented President Kikwete with architectural drawing of the proposed Julius Nyerere Convention Centre to be built in Dar es Salaam.

Agreement for a grant for the centre was signed in May last year when President Kikwete toured China.

Construction of the centre is expected to cost $11 million (about Sh15.07 billion).

It does have us curious as to why President Kikwete set up a convention center first, then works for an agricultural bank. It seems like farming should be a bigger priority.

A development project to help mendong crafters in Indonesia

Indonesia has this type of grass called mendong, that grows in swamps and is great for making hand woven mats. Some people have been pulled out of poverty thanks to the craft. First, they sold the mats to tourists, now thanks to the internet, the mats are sold worldwide.

The problem with mendong is that it created a lot of waste in the mat making process. About a quarter of the mendong plant becomes waste, so much of it began to me thrown out that it became an environmental issue. But, a group of students found something that could be done with the waste.

From this story in the Jakarta Post, Yuli Tri Suwarni explains how the students helped the crafters clean up.

After examining the piles of waste during a study tour of Manonjaya, Tasikmalaya, a group of students from the Langlabuana University in Bandung expressed concern over the issue. They estimated that each district produces 3 tons of mendong waste.

A lecturer from the University’s technical school, Rosad Ma’ali Hadi, noticed the students’ interest in researching ways to transform the waste into something useful.

Rosad, assisted by a number of students from the technical school, researched the possibilities of turning the waste into something useful.

After they found out that the fiber structure of mendong is similar to that of pineapple and banana stems, which are used to produce boutique paper, a product that is highly sought after thanks to the current “go green” movement, they gathered information from paper craftsmen and manufacturers.

Rosad received a grant of Rp 2 million (about US$180) from his university for initial research
funding.

“We used it for trials to turn mendong waste into fancy paper by using simple equipment,” Rosad said.

Realizing its great potential, the group wanted to equip the communities in Tasikmalaya with the technology. Funding however remained a big obstacle.

“We later joined a competition organized by the Senada-United States Agency for International Development (USAID) through a business innovation funds program, supported by the Economics and Research and Technology ministries,” Rosad said.

Senada-USAID grant technical adviser Herry Kameswara said the simple technology applied by the Langlabuana University students was one of 40 business innovations that received part of a total of $1 million in grants for the development of business innovations in Indonesia.

Emancipated teen tries to break out of poverty

An Omaha TV station profiled young Chissa Sheppard. The teen emancipated herself from her family in an attempt to break free from poverty. Sheppard at 17 years old receives assistance to finish her high school education, and is also taking nursing classes.

However, Sheppard leaves nine younger siblings behind with her mother. Sheppard often had to stay home to take care of the children. She feels the emancipation gives her the opportunity to get an education. Sheppard currently lives with a cousin.

MSNBC picked up the story from Omaha's KETV.

“Poverty is impacting everything she does and every decision she makes and I think it really says a lot that she has made high school and this training program a priority for her,” said Tobi Mathouser, Partnership Program coordinator at Omaha’s Goodwill Industries.

Shepard is part of the program which pays her and other high school dropouts to go to school, train for a job and plan for a career.

She chose to attend training to be a nursing assistant through Caregiver Support Services at 36th and Dodge streets.

Mathouser said Goodwill’s mission is to remove barriers that prevent people from finding employment. In Shepard’s case, poverty is a barrier.

“Chissa is a very strong individual struggling with homelessness,” said Mathouser.

According to data from the nonprofit child advocacy group Voices For Children, 52-percent of African-American Children in Nebraska live in poverty.

Shepard will spend a month in class learning how to care for patients and administer medication.

She said the $12-an-hour job that will result from the training will help her decide whether she wants to be a doctor when she grows up. This week she’ll start attending classes to get her high school diploma. She’s already paid the fees necessary to take college entrance exams.

Uganda applauds the WFP plan to buy more crops

The World Food Programme plans to expand its food crop buying program this year. The new program called "Purchase for Progress" will buy directly from small farmers. The experimental aid program recently received a big grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to get it started.

From the Ugandan Newspaper The Daily Monitor, Dorothy Nakaweesi explains the effect that "Purchase for Progress" could have on the country.

Traditionally WFP has been buying only maize and beans from Uganda. Last year, the programme purchased maize and beans worth close to $34 million (Shs64.4 billion). However, in the next three years, it’s planning to double its spending by buying more than $100 million (Shs190 billion) worth of food annually. “WFP will buy other staple foods such as millet, sorghum, sesame and cassava products besides maize and beans,” Country Director of WFP, Stanlake Samkange, recently said.

Buying food directly from small-scale farmers, especially at high prices, helps improve the quality of life for the poorest people. Recently the agency begun buying food through the warehouse receipt system in a bid to increase direct assistance to small-scale farmers and support the government’s poverty eradication efforts.

President of Uganda National Farmers Federation Frank Tumwebaze, in an interview with Daily Monitor said; “We are glad for WFP’s initiative. It is going to give the farmers a guaranteed market.” He said given the high prices of food, which dramatically shot up last year, many farmers embarked on an extensive increase in their acreages which means there will be sufficient food for consumption and sale.

Mr Tumwesigye however said the challenge farmers are facing is the changing weather pattern which is not reliable. “Because of the weather changes, farmers may not guarantee good yields and this may - in some seasons - lead to low supplies,” Mr Tumweisigye said. He urged the government to come up with a disaster management programme so that when the weather becomes hostile, farmers are assured of assistance especially in terms of emergency seeds.

Meanwhile, WFP last year bought food worth $53million in Uganda and spent $14 million on local commercial transporters. Mr Samkange said local transporters moved about 90 per cent of this food mostly to destinations in Uganda, but also to Sudan, Rwanda, Burundi and the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. “Last year was most challenging but most rewarding,” Mr Samkange added. “Conflicts coupled with failed harvests caused reduced agricultural production in the region. This led to a severe scarcity of food and doubling of the prices of maize and beans.”

With the help of donors, WFP was able to purchase an annual total of 109,000 tons of food from local traders and small-scale farmers. Buying food locally and using local transporters boosts Uganda’s economy. Local purchase helps WFP reach needy people faster while avoiding costs of shipping food from abroad. The agency can therefore utilise donor funds better in an era of high food and fuel prices.

More funding for anti-poverty in the Philippines

A government money package in the Philippines is expected to add 1.5 million new jobs to the country. The government added another 30 million to the already 300 million dollar fund package, similar to the economic stimulus packages here in the states.

Joel Guinto a writer for the Inquirer details the governments doings.

For the first half of 2009, the government is expected to generate as much as 1.5 million new jobs, mostly street sweepers and construction workers. With "best effort," three million new jobs could be created by the end of the year, National Anti-Poverty Commission (NAPC) lead convenor Domingo Panganiban told reporters.

The government would need to spend P1.0 billion for every one million new jobs. This meant P3.0 billion would be spent if three million jobs were created this year under the Comprehensive Livelihood and Emergency Employment Program, Panganiban said.

"It will be a big dent to the reduction of poverty," he said.

The additional P30 billion was pooled from savings of government agencies and contributions from government-owned or-controlled corporations, he said.

Dr Martin Luther King Jr. Day

The press is buzzing with articles about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. today. So here are a couple of stories about Dr. King and the concern he had about fighting poverty.

First, a story from Ohio's News Messenger about Dr. King and the upcoming inauguration. Writer Kristina Smith Horn also touched on other ways that Dr. King's dream has gone unfulfilled.

Poverty was an issue that King often discussed, Jones said. Although he talked about the disparity between the poverty levels of blacks and whites during a 1967 speech, he also focused on the 40 million poor people of all races across the country.

"Let us be dissatisfied until slums are cast into the junk heaps of history, and every family is living in a decent sanitary home," King said during comments to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

Since then, poverty levels are still high, Jones said. Instead, the gap between the wealthy and the poor is growing ever larger, he said.

In 2007, there were 7.6 million American families living in poverty, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Nearly 25 percent of blacks and 21. 5 percent of Hispanics lived in poverty in 2007, compared to eight percent of whites in poverty, according to the Census Bureau.

"As a nation, we have a long way to go to fulfill that concern," Jones said.

A commentary in the Los Angeles Daily Newsdiscusses a concept that Dr. King advocated that has been forgotten. Al Sheahen from Results re-introduces us to guaranteed income.

In his 1967 book, "Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?" the Rev. King wrote, "I am now convinced that the simplest solution to poverty is to abolish it directly by a now widely discussed measure: the guaranteed income. A host of positive psychological changes inevitably will result from wide-spread economic security."

The concept of a guaranteed income is not discussed much anymore, especially in light of our current financial crisis. But it remains, as the late economist Milton Friedman always maintained, the most practical and sensible way to end poverty in America and provide economic security to all Americans.

President Obama is on the right track with his economic stimulus plan. Give the money directly to the people, not just to the big banks and corporations.

But don't stop there. Keep the stimulus coming. Every year.

Today there are more than 200 income-tested federal social programs costing more than $300 billion a year. Much of that money goes for administrative expenses, not to the needy.

Charles Murray, whose 1984 book "Losing Ground" claimed that welfare was doing more harm than good, now agrees with the Rev. King's approach. Murray calls for giving an annual cash grant of $10,000 - with no work requirements - to every adult over age 21.

John Legend's anti-poverty work

The singer John Legend has joined the growing list of celebrities involved in anti-poverty work. He calls his effort the "Show Me" campaign, based on a song he wrote about what a person can do to make the world better.

A section of his website is dedicated to raising money. The fund uses the money for mosquito nets and to help small farmers in Africa.

Stacy Brown of the Scranton Times Tribune interviewed John Legend for her story.

“We’ve already raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for Mbola, Tanzania, and we’ve seen malaria incidents there going down and we’ve seen farming, which is a big source of income, going up,” Mr. Legend said. “We’ve also been able to help a number of kids go to school.”

Mr. Legend also visited the village of Bonsaaso, Ghana, to get a better understanding of the grim situation there.

He began pouring money into the cause and soliciting donations to help provide much-needed aid.

In an effort to encourage his fans and others to assist in the cause, Mr. Legend wrote a passionate letter and posted it on his Web site.

He said he was moved to visit Africa’s poor after reading “The End of Poverty,” a book by Columbia University professor Jeffrey Sachs.

“Dr. Sachs’ book and my visits to the continent convinced me that extreme poverty can be eradicated in our lifetime with a modest amount of money,” he said.

The Mount Hope Project

This week the Poverty News Blog was introduced to a film maker who was inspired to use his talent to try to make a difference. Writer/director/producer, Gerry Balasta was born and raised in the Philippines. After working as an Occupation Therapist in the United States, he turned to the art of film making. His movie not only tells a tale of a life of extreme poverty, but it also tries to to improve the lives of those depicted in the film. The film has given birth to “The Mount Hope Project” a charitable group to help the people of the slum.

The film “The Mountain Thief” takes place in Payatas, a slum built on mounds of garbage in the Philippines. The residents try to make a living out of scavenging garbage for scraps of food or for stuff that they can sell. The conditions are some of the worst in the world.

From the film's website is a synopsis of the plot.

In a world of monstrous mountains of trash, Julio and his son confront their ultimate fight for survival as they seek refuge and redemption from war and hunger. Together, they navigate territorial rivalries and intense desperation among scavengers, surviving--and finding love--despite horrific living conditions. Julio, involved in a murder incident, must prove his innocence to avoid his family’s banishment and ultimate starvation.

A story of triumph over unusual circumstances, "The Mountain Thief" reveals the unimaginable realities of people living in extreme poverty, and what happens when their tenuous hold on hope and survival is threatened.

But this story is lot more than about a movie. It's also a story about the people who live amongst the garbage. The actors in the film are not from Hollywood, rather they are people who actually live in the slum. Balasta felt that the story would be best depicted by the people who face the realities everyday. As he told us in an e-mail “I just believed that if they are given the chance to act, they will best tell their own story.” So he began an acting workshop in the garbage slum.

Balasta, along with his mom, Nina Balasta, and friend Francisco Valdez helped the people of the slum learn the art of acting by setting up an acting workshop in the village. The trio prepared the building and hired help to teach the classes. They also provided meals and transportation to those attending the workshop, even sending some food back home with them.

As quoted from his website, Balasta had trouble getting anyone to attend.

The process was a long, trial and error process. At first, it was hard to get scavengers in to attend, just because they never expect anyone will hire them as actors, they all thought it was a scam.  At that time also, we didn’t have any contacts in the community and it was really hard to break in the very secluded town. Whenever I had a lead for a scavenger who’s interested, I literally had to chase them down, running with a camera on one hand, and offer to interview them and audition to be part of the workshops. I had to see them in camera and see some potential at least before I can invite them in.

Once people began to show up to the acting workshop their attendance was sporadic because of the harsh way of life. If a family emergency came up, or if their family simply didn't have enough money for the next meal, that took presidence over attending the classes. Literacy was also a challenge, some did not know enough words to keep up with the classes.

The film is now in the post production and final editing stage. Much of the filming is done, but Balasta still needs to complete the sound mix, color correction and make a master HD copy for production. Balasta is trying to raise the funds to complete the film, about 14, 000 is still needed to complete the film.

Below is the preliminary trailer:



But the filmmakers don't want to stop there. The actors in the film have many needs and they hope to fulfill those needs through charitable fund raising called the "Mount Hope Project". The website for “The Mountain Thief” has links for donations for those who appear in the film. One of the films main characters is a boy with a vision problem. Nine-year-old Richard Casa has difficulty keeping his balance when walking amongst trails through hills of garbage. The film crew hopes to raise money to provide glasses for Richard and for a surgery to improve his condition.

Another actor in the film has a son with a foot defect. The website has a description of his condition.

“Every parent is looking for the moment when their children walk, but for Randy it would mean a miracle. Junior has a club foot deformity. His ankles are rotated and because of this he is unable to walk. He needs a surgical correction. Such surgeries are very common in the western world. However, the high cost of this surgery in the Philippines, make this procedure impossible for him..”

For more information on the town, the filmmaking or the actors and their harsh living conditions, click on “The Mountain Thief” website. Gerry Balasta has joined the Poverty News Blog Facebook group, so we hope to have continuing updates on the charitable efforts of the Mount Hope Project.

Africa's hopes for the Obama presidency

With the inauguration coming up, a lot is being said about the problems in the states and the entire earth that the President - Elect will inherent. Africa has especially high hopes since the incoming president is African American. One African country even called for a holiday when Obama was elected.

Thomas Omestad of the US News and World Report gives us an analysis of the African issues.

On policy, Obama will have to respond to a diverse and vast continent still struggling in many countries with poverty, disease, corruption, and poor governance. More than 40 percent of sub-Saharan Africans live on less than $1 a day. The need for public investment in education, infrastructure, and healthcare is huge. An estimated 22 million suffer from HIV/AIDS. Furthermore, humanitarian and security crises—each with its own causes and attributes—plague Sudan and Somalia, as well as Congo and Zimbabwe.

The death and suffering of civilians in such zones of conflict or political strife could well force difficult choices on the new president on whether to intervene for humanitarian ends. The Pentagon remains skeptical of intervening in the violence-wracked Darfur region of Sudan, for instance. But Obama's top foreign policy adviser during the campaign, incoming U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice, is known as a passionate advocate of strong, multilateral efforts to protect the people of Darfur, including military action if necessary. She and many other Democratic policymakers rue the international community's unwillingness to forcibly stop the ethnic genocide that swept through Rwanda in 1994. The fear that powerful countries continue to be unwilling to accept risks to halt atrocities extends beyond Darfur to other areas, too, including Congo. "We are regressing on our responsibility to protect," contends French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner.

At the same time, Obama's approach to Africa comes amid hopeful developments as well. With a rapidly growing population that is now near 1 billion people, many of the economies in sub-Saharan Africa have been showing signs of sturdier growth than they experienced in the past. Foreign investment has risen, in part a reflection of global demand for its energy and other commodities and prospects for future growth. Countries like Sierra Leone and Liberia have climbed back from vicious civil wars enough to launch promising, democratically elected governments.

In addition, Bush administration policy toward Africa has received wide acclaim. Its moves included major increases in foreign aid and on spending for programs to counter disease, along with debt relief. By the end of the Bush years, the United States was supporting antiretroviral treatment for more than 2 million people in sub-Saharan Africa with HIV/AIDS; in 2003 just 50,000 people in the region were receiving such help. Efforts to fight the spread of malaria also received significant attention and money. Africans hope the support will continue—or increase—despite the harder economic times hitting the United States.

Turning marriage into business in Niger

The custom of marrying off daughters at a young age has turned into a perverse business practice in Niger. Now, businesses will sell the young bride to men from neighboring countries. The business will then give a portion of the money from the sale to the family. The families are often just selling their daughters in an attempt to escape poverty.

IRIN tells the story of the practice and what awaits the young bride once sold.

In a country with the world’s highest incidence of early marriage according to the UN, child rights activists say the phenomenon is changing in Niger from a village tradition to a cross- border business transaction.

Early and forced marriage in Niger has largely been confined to rural areas in the south, but according to the local non-profit Action Against The Use of Child Workers (AFETEN), families in the north are “selling” their daughters to men from neighbouring countries to lift themselves out of urban poverty.

The inhospitable desert north has some of the country’s highest rates of extreme poverty.

“It’s been going on since the 1990s, but recently it’s been getting a lot worse," AFETEN’s regional coordinator Moutari Mamane told IRIN. “Poverty is at the root of the problem, families are worse off now, with the food crisis and everything. These marriages are like sales, trafficking. It’s a form of prostitution.”

Tradition-turned-transaction

At the intersection of sub-Saharan and northern Africa, Niger’s mountainous desert north has long been a strategic zone for business and, increasingly, illegal immigration, according to authorities.

A phone company employee in the northern Niger business hub of Agadez who gave his name as Alassane told IRIN he has seen local businesses arranging marriages for men from neighbouring Nigeria or northern African countries. “They are like matrimonial agencies. There’s a guy who looks for the girls and sends clients their photo via the Internet. The men send gifts for the girl and then the fixer talks to the family to arrange the marriage.

“Unemployed parents sell their daughters to strangers…and most often the girls are minors and still in school,” he added.

According to local human rights organisations, Tuareg girls in urban areas are often targeted because of their beauty.

The more beautiful and young a girl is, the higher the price.

UN Children Fund unveils new annual report

The United Nations Children's Fund says that millions of deaths that happened last year were preventable. 4 million babies died as well as a half a million mothers. The stats come from the latest issue of the funds annual report.

UNICEF took the occasion to highlight the situations in Gaza and Zimbabwe. The fund says that half of the population in Gaza are children. Meanwhile, the collapse of the health system in Zimbabwe has put many children lives in danger.

Delia Robertson of the Voice of America was at the UNICEF press conference that introduced the report.

The study shows that a woman in a least developed country is 300 times more likely to die from complications related to pregnancy or childbirth than a woman in the developed world. And a child born in a least developed country is nearly 14 times more likely to die within 28 days, than a child born in an industrialized country.

Veneman says the impact is greatest in Africa and Asia.

"The burden is disproportionately heavy in Africa and Asia," she said. "Ninety-five percent of maternal deaths occur in Africa and Asia combined and 90 percent of newborn deaths occur in Africa and Asia. In southern Africa a high number of maternal and newborn deaths are related to HIV/AIDS. The health of the child is inextricably linked to the health of the mother."

Veneman notes that many women and newborns die needlessly and says this can be prevented by ensuring mothers and babies have adequate nutrition, that hygiene practices are improved and through better access to skilled health care and emergency services at birth. She said research indicates that around 80 percent of maternal deaths could be prevented if women had access to essential maternity and basic health care services.

Using the Economic stimulus to help women in poverty

A story in Women's E- News this morning to a US Congress women who used to live in poverty. Wisconsin Democrat Gwen Moore hopes to include some measures that will help women in poverty in the upcoming round of economic stimulus talks.

The new Congress and President want to pass another economic stimulus package that will help infrastructure and provide jobs in the US. Moore would like to see some money used for women on welfare, and to provide tax breaks to those women while they try to get an education.

The article explains some on the burdens that women face here in the states, writer Allison Stevens helps to detail them.

Poor women face particularly hard times during periods of economic downturn, Moore said. Nowhere is that more evident than in urban areas like her home town of Milwaukee, one of the poorer cities in the country.

Often the last hired and first fired, women have less money and face longer periods without regular income. If they do have a job they tend to make less than men, have fewer benefits or have part-time positions. Topping it off, many of the jobs typically held by women are not covered by unemployment insurance.

Women are also more likely to leave the work force to shoulder caregiving responsibilities for family members, and earn less than men in similar jobs. Women also save less money and have smaller pensions or retirement accounts.

And even though they have slightly better credit scores than men, women have a disproportionate share of the high-priced "subprime" loans, putting them at higher risk of foreclosure, according to a 2006 report by Allen Fishbein, a scholar at the Consumer Federation of America, a think tank and lobby in Washington, D.C.

Financial problems are even more acute for single women and women of color.

"When you compound those problems, you see that women are just destined to be poor," Moore said.

And yet, the government shredded the safety net for poor women when it overhauled the welfare system in 1996, she notes.

That year, President Bill Clinton teamed up with a Republican Congress to enact the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, a law that tied welfare payments to behavior--including requiring recipients to engage in work-related activities--rather than need. The law was reauthorized in 2004.

Related Video

With success, comes more questions from other countries

An aid program run by Canadian government has some politicians questioning it's practices.

Canadian companies can apply to the program if they are planning on creating jobs in poverty stricken countries. But, what politicians are questioning is why aid money is still going to China.

Further audits of the program find that only 15 percent of it's projects actually create jobs in the undeveloped world. That's 15 percent of out of 721 projects totaling $1.1 billion dollars.

In this Canadian Press article found from the CBC, the complaint is detailed and we hear from the businessman who created jobs in China.

Foreign aid officials and critics alike are asking if a program that helped Canadian firms make icewine and lingerie in China is the best way to fight global poverty.

A Niagara winery received $108,000 to study icewine prospects in China under the same business partnership program that gave $103,000 to a Montreal company that makes women's underwear.

Critics have questioned why the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) still sends aid to one of the world's emerging economic superpowers.

The agency's industrial co-operation program, which matches Canadian companies with job-creating partners overseas, has been an especially broad target for skeptics and auditors.

Official with the government said the use of the funds is now being reviewed.

"We want to make sure that our aid dollars bring results — maximum results," said Jean-Luc Benoit, spokesman for International Development Minister Bev Oda. "If this program either needs to be overhauled or moved somewhere else, that's what we'll do."
...

Charles Pillitteri, son of former Liberal MP Gary Pillitteri, said his winery in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ont., applied to the program after his father left politics. The vineyard is billed as one of the largest icewine producers in the world.

Pillitteri Estates received $108,263 over two years ended last year to study the potential for a joint icewine venture in Xinjiang, an autonomous region of northwestern China.

"The CIDA program actually went very well," Pillitteri said in an interview.

He can understand the skepticism raised by the program's track record. Byzantine paperwork and dealing with an entirely different culture half a world away are likely deal-breakers for firms not committed to the long haul, he said.

But Pillitteri said his company has spent many times the amount of federal cash it received and will exceed its proposal to create 30 full-time jobs in China.

China's economic growth as it relates to poverty

The big news about China today is that the country has now surpassed Germany as the world's third largest economy. Let's look further into this story as it relates to poverty alleviation in the country.

With the huge population in China it still makes the average person amongst the world's poorest. However, the economic growth that the county has experienced has brought many of it's people out of poverty.

In this Associated Press story that we found in California's Press Telegram, writer Joe McDonald crunches the numbers.

The United States is the world's biggest economy at $13.8 trillion in 2007, followed by Japan at $4.4 trillion.

Germany's 85 million people were still far ahead of China in GDP per person in 2007 at 28,200 euros ($38,800).

China's GDP per person was 19,800 yuan ($2,800) in 2007, but the country has wide disparities of wealth and poverty, and many live on far less than that. Chinese officials say more than 100 other countries have a higher income per person.

Then-supreme leader Deng Xiaoping set China on the road from communist central planning to a market-style economy in 1979. That year's GDP was just $300 billion - one-tenth of the 2007 level - according to the International Monetary Fund.

Over three decades, hundreds of millions of people have lifted themselves out of poverty and major cities have been transformed into forests of skyscrapers and modern apartment blocks, with streets jammed with private cars.

Independent economists say China's economy is believed to have grown by another 9 percent in 2008 despite the global downturn. Figures for 2008 are expected to be released this month.

About the hype surrounding "Slumdog Millionare'

I gotta admit, I've been a fan of Danny Boyle ever since "Trainspotting". So I'm really happy with the critical acclaim his latest movie is receiving. We're even more happy with the subject matter of the film. The movie shows life in an Indian slum, where more than 17 million are homeless.

Now that "Slumdog Millionare" has received a couple of awards we thought it would be time to visit the film and the controversy. Many children will not escape the slums of India as Boyle's children try to do. However, any attempt to shed light upon the terrible conditions of a slum should be applauded. For those realities are unknown to most in the west.

An article from the Post Chronicle from writer Rina Chandran sums up the debate nicely.

"Slumdog Millionaire," which tells the rags-to-riches tale of an orphan from such a slum, won four Golden Globe awards
on Sunday, including one for Indian music composer AR Rahman.

But there is little upbeat or ambitious about Nehru Nagar, and some newspapers have criticized Boyle for romanticizing the slums and peddling such grim realities as the beggar mafia, prostitution and crime as "Indian exotica."

Others have sprung to Boyle's defense.

"If through (the movie) the world gets a peek at an India inhabited by millions of people who continue to live their lives without clean water, sanitation or electricity, what is the problem?" wrote Kalpana Sharma, author of a book on Dharavi, Asia's largest slum, in the Indian Express paper.

India's own film industry, best known for its racy action flicks and lush romances, has delved before into the slums in Mumbai occasionally, and there is growing interest from tourists.

Reality Tours & Travel, which offers guided tours of Dharavi, calls the slum "a place of poverty and hardship but also a place of enterprise and humor," saying the tours are meant to dispel the negative image that many people have about slums in Mumbai.

"People want to understand how the country works, experience a culture that is alien to them and goes beyond the standard tourist spots," said co-founder Chris Way.

"Flying Toilets"

Millennium Development Goal number 7 aims to reduce by half the number of people without proper sanitation. Sadly, most of East Africa will not meet the goals deadline of 2015.

Even though many of the countries have promised to make sanitation a priority, we have yet to see that promise fulfilled in budgets. Kenya spends 13 million a year on sanitation development, but 40 million is needed. The southern half of Sudan shows only 6 percent of the population having access to toilets.

The problem is only made worse by lack of food. Aid organizations will provide latrine making tools to people, but they will just sell them in order to buy food.

Joyce Mulama of IPP Media explains to us the concept of flying toliets in this snippet.

Despite governments in the region being signatories to several declarations on improving sanitation, many East African households still lack access to flush toilets or pit latrines.

Open defecation is widespread, and `flying toilets`, where people defecate in plastic bags and throw them away at night are the rule rather than the exception in many informal settlements.

``This is the way we live. We do not have toilets, and no place to safely dispose of our waste,`` said Nicholas Ambeyo. ``Because of this, and the lack of sufficient water, and the open sewers that run through our houses, we are at a risk of contracting diseases.``

Ambeyo spoke to IPS in his home in Kibera. With a population estimated to be close to a million people, Kibera is one of Africa`s largest slums. It is approximately seven kilometres from Nairobi city centre.

``In fact as we are talking, my wife has just arrived home from that hospital with my two children who have been treated for cholera,`` he said, pointing at a run-down health centre a stones`` throw away.

Poor sanitation facilities often lead to ill health. For instance 30 percent of Kenya`s disease burden is sanitation-related, with many children dying from diarrhoeal diseases including dysentery, cholera and typhoid, according to the Ministry of Public Health and Sanitation. The UN says that such deaths could be prevented through investment in toilets, water and hygiene.

US Global AIDS Coordinator will stay into Obama administration

A quick note that we found in last night's items that we are way behind on...

The leader of the US Global AIDS Task Force has been asked to stay on during the Obama administration. Many AIDS activists have been calling on President-Elect Barack Obama to replace Mark Dybul.

We found mention of the appointment on a Washington Post blog concerning the transition in US power.

Amb. Mark Dybul, the U.S. Global AIDS coordinator, informed his staff via email Friday that he was asked to stay on for an indeterminate length of time.

Earlier speculation had Nils Daulaire, president and CEO of the Global Health Council, as a top contender for the post.

Dybul, an openly gay physician, has overseen the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR. Some reproductive rights and AIDS advocates have complained that the international relief program has been hampered by the president's more conservative social views.

In December, the International Women's Health Coalition, the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States, and Results, an anti-poverty and global health organization, wrote letters to the Obama transition team urging him to make selecting a leader for the global AIDS fight a priority or give it new direction.

Investing in Africa's soil health

A new "soil map" has been launched to help stabilize food security in Africa. A digital map that shows the health of Africa's soil started in Nairobi today.

Scientists hope the map can show where soil needs more nutrients to help small farmers. If the map can show that a certain area in Africa is missing something, aid organizations will effectively be able to help that area's farmers.

This is important because anything that can boost the yields of farmers can provide more food. Especially the small farmers in the undeveloped world that are just trying to feed their family. The importance of this type of project was magnified with the food crisis of last summer and the riots staged around the world because of the hunger it caused.

IRIN News service was at the launch of the project. A link to the soil map's website is right here.

Undertaken by the International Centre for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), the "first ever" detailed digital map for 42 countries combines the latest soil science and technology with remote satellite imagery and on-the-ground efforts to develop an online map.

According to CIAT, this digital map of the continent's depleted soils will offer insights crucial for boosting food production. It will help provide solutions for poor farmers who suffer from chronically low-yielding crops due to degraded soils.

Wycliffe Oparanya, Kenya's Minister of State for Planning, National Development and Vision 2030, who launched the African Soil Information Service (AfSIS) at the World Agroforestry Center (ICRAF) in Nairobi, said the soil map would provide scientists and policy-makers with more detailed and accurate information on soil fertility in Sub-Saharan Africa.

"There has been an effort to develop high-yielding varieties of crops but the fact that soil fertility has remained low across many countries in Africa, [means] we have not been able to harness the benefits of the improved crops to capacity," he said. "Therefore, investing in soil health is a key concern that we must all address ourselves … to achieve food security for our people."

He said the food crisis facing many countries had become a global phenomenon that posed a new threat to the stability of the social framework and to the prosperity of all nations, "especially the small nations”.

Oparanya said: “Throughout the world, more and more people are unable to find food. There are increased cases of food riots, which in turn lead to political instability. This means that all nations must increase and sustain the production of staple food crops such as wheat, rice, maize, millet and potatoes, among others.”

CIAT is establishing the African Soil Information Service through a four-year US$18 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA). The digital map ultimately will be developed as part of a global soil mapping initiative, known as GlobalSoilMap.net

A report on Jacksonville's children

A new report on ethnic and racial disparities in Jacksonville, Florida has been labeled "depressing". That was the reaction of former Senator Betty Holzendorf to the new city government report. When the document was unveiled today, the city commission also presented the first such report in 1947, and not much has changed since then.

Lindy Thackston of First Coast News gives us the details on the urban core of Jacksonville. The full document can be downloaded here.

Zone 1 - an area known as the Urban Core, which includes zip codes 32202, 32204, 32206, 32208, 32209. and 32254 - is overwhelmingly the most at risk.

Zone 1 has the greatest concentration of African-American citizens, and the Jacksonville Children's Commission says it is consistently the bull's-eye target area, representing the neediest children and families.

Holzendorf says, "Tou cannot raise children in a community where the community is going to hell in a basket."

Zone 1 consistently leads Duval County in homicides, but it is also number one in little or no prenatal care, child poverty, low birth weight babies, child deaths, teen pregnancy, HIV/AIDS, single parent households, and high school dropouts.

Nine percent of people 15 to 24 years old in Zone 1 admit to having an STD.

The infant mortality rate in Zone 1 is a shocking 137 percent higher than the rate of the entire city.

Nearly 40 percent of children in Zone 1 are living in poverty.

"We've been talking about Zone 1 since 1947," said Holzendorf. "For the last 61 years, why haven't we put the resources in that hub so that it no longer exists?"

US congress to vote on S-CHIP expansion

The US Congress is set to vote on the S-CHIP expansion later this week. Congress passed the expansion package only to get it vetoed by President Bush a couple of times. Now, with a President-Elect about to arrive who will sign the bill, Congress will get it passed again. This should give President-Elect Obama something that he can claim he accomplished early in his administration.

For details on the vote and an analysis on how the expansion of children's health care will be paid for, E Max Health provides a round up of news stories about S-CHIP.

Although House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) last week said the package would be nearly the same as the bill vetoed by Bush in 2007, some Democratic aides have said the pending economic-stimulus package and previous $700 billion economic bailout have limited the amount of federal money available and could force Democrats to cut costs on the original proposed expansion, the Times reports (Lengell, Washington Times, 1/12).

The original proposal included an increase in the federal cigarette tax to fund the SCHIP expansion. The 2007 bill, which supporters believe would have increased SCHIP enrollment from six million to 10 million, would have raised the tax by 61 cents per pack and would have cost an estimated $35 million over five years (Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report, 1/8).

However, because the 61-cents-per-pack cigarette tax likely will not cover the full cost of a five-year expansion, aides to House Democrats said lawmakers would seek a shorter SCHIP reauthorization, CQ Today reports (Armstrong, CQ Today, 1/9). According to the Times, SCHIP's expenses have increased over the last two years and cigarette sales are declining, making it necessary to seek new revenue sources for an expansion (Washington Times, 1/12). Lawmakers are waiting for cost projections from the Congressional Budget Office before they determine the length of the reauthorization. According to lobbyists and congressional aides, the extension likely will be between two years and four-and-a-half years.

According to CQ Today, a shorter-term reauthorization could mean that Democrats will attempt a "fuller expansion" of the program as part of a comprehensive health reform package. Rep. Diana DeGette (D-Colo.) said, "If a shorter-term reauthorization is the only way to craft a stronger bill that would provide coverage for more eligible children, we should take that course."

House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) and Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.) wrote in a letter to Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) that Republicans want the program to require coverage of children below 200% of the federal poverty level before increasing to higher income levels. The letter said, "Republicans are committed to reauthorizing SCHIP in a manner that puts poor children first, which is the original intent of the program." They also want the legislation to require stricter citizenship documentation (CQ Today, 1/9).

Expanding SCHIP "is good politics and the right thing to do" and is "one of the clearest signals" that Obama has sent in "his determination to learn from the Clinton years, particularly from the former president's failures on health care," E.J. Dionne, Washington Post columnist, writes in a Post opinion piece. According to Dionne, in 1994 a group of senators suggested Clinton try to insure all children when his plan for universal coverage was encountering difficulties, in order to "make, at least, a down payment on reform."

How poverty effects voting in South Africa

While profiling a poor white women on how she plans to vote in the upcoming South African elections. The Independent On Line did a good job in showing one of the faces of poverty in the country.

Xolani Mbanjwa of the Independent On Line introduces us to Lisa Bouwer.

At the youthful age of 25, Liza Bouwer predicts a bleak future for her and her three children despite promises of a better life by political parties ahead of the elections.

Sitting on an old blue couch she borrowed from her mother, Bouwer candidly talks about the difficulties of raising children as an unemployed parent with her common-law husband, Francois.

She believes that if it weren't for affirmative action policies, her partner, Francois, who is a mechanic, would stand a good chance at getting a better job.

When times are tough, she sells newspapers on the streets.

She refers to herself as a "poor white" similar to tens of other white families who rent similar homes around her neighbourhood.


She is pessimistic and believes life will not get better while politicians fall short on their promises.

The house they rent in Hermanstad, Pretoria West, for R450 a month (she is R3 000 in arrears) is filled with her mother's borrowed and old furniture.

The battle to make ends meet is evident when entering her front door which has a broken lock.

"Locks cost R160 and I won't be changing it anytime soon," she says as she fastens a piece of wire tied to the keyhole on the gate at the door.

Although she hopes that she is proved wrong by the next government, Bouwer is in no doubt that her vote in the upcoming elections will not yield anything positive for her family. "It was better when (Nelson) Mandela was President, but under Thabo Mbeki life became more difficult. Food, transport, electricity, water and life in general became expensive. Searching for a job today is like looking for a cookie jar in an orphanage," she said.

Her main concern is the "suffocating poverty brought about by the high food prices".

Economics and geography

World Bank economists presented a new study on economic geography in the Philippines yesterday. Some of this goes over my head, but essentially it discusses how urban and rural areas need to cooperate to spur economic growth for all.

Jesus Llanto of the ABS CBN News of the Philippines was at the press briefing.

Contrary to the belief that distributing economic activities from the urban centers to remote areas will reduce poverty and spur growth, it is the economic integration of the urban centers and far-flung areas that will boost economic development and cut poverty, said World Bank economists during a presentation of the report, entitled Reshaping Economic Geography, at Makati City today.

“The reality is that interaction between leading and lagging places is the key to economic development,” said Indermit Gill, director of the WDR and WB chief economist for Europe and Central Asia.

Gill said that economic growth tends to favor some regions and this is the reason why economic activities tend to be concentrated on some areas. “Economic growth is seldom spatially-balanced.”

“The world is not flat. Markets favor some places over the others. To fight this concentration is tantamount to fighting prosperity,” Gill added.

Business activities in the Philippines, Gill noted, are concentrated in Metro Manila, its two neighboring regions—Central Luzon and CALABARZON—and in a few cities like Cebu, Davao and Cagayan de Oro.

The World Development Report 2009 noted that current policy debates on urbanization, area development, and globalization tend to emphasize geographic targeting, which focuses on what to do in rural areas or slums, what to do in remote areas, among others.

The report, according to Mr. Gill, reframes these debates in a way that better conforms to the reality of growth and development.

Experts said that the process of redistributing economic activities in other areas will not successfully induce growth and reduce poverty.

“It’s like building more mediocre libraries than building one effective library,” said Arturo Corpuz, vice president for Urban-Regional Planning of Ayala-Land Inc.

An upstate downstate connection in New York

Students from a New York City college traveled upstate to learn more about the groups fighting poverty in Ithaca. The students from Union Theological Seminary are trying to emulate the Poor People Initiative the Dr. Martin Luther King started in the 1960's.

Krisy Gashler of the Ithaca Journal details the first meeting between the students and the people helped by aid groups in the upstate.

Roughly 50 people attended Friday's forum at the Unitarian Church on Buffalo Street. The half dozen speakers represented agencies such as the Tompkins County Workers' Center, the Multicultural Resource Center and Tompkins Community Action.

Wayne Goodin, who spoke on behalf of the Natural Leaders Initiative, said after serving in the Army he found himself dependent on drugs and alcohol and scavenging for food in garbage cans.

What helped Goodin out of poverty were social service agents and community leaders in Ithaca who treated him with respect and equality, he told the room filled with many of the people who helped him.

"You guys looked at me like this," he said, motioning looking straight ahead, "instead of like this," motioning looking down.

Kris Townsend said what she needed to get herself out of poverty was someone to believe in her.

"When I got involved with the Natural Leaders Initiative, I realized that people actually believed in me and saw me as greater than what I was seeing myself. That was a big help," Townsend said. "I needed somebody to believe in me. I just needed a mentor."

Volunteering to help build El Salvador

A father and son were profiled today in a Wisconsin paper for their service work in El Salvador. Al and Jesse Kvitek of Mansfield joined the group Thrivent Builds Worldwide.

Further information on their mission work can be seen at the blogThrivent Builds. Our snippet of their trip comes from the Mansfield News Herald.

"Volunteering in El Salvador really grabbed my heart," said Al Kvitek. "One-third of the population of El Salvador lives in substandard housing, and by our American standards, the Salvadorans have very little. In spite of that, the people we met were so generous and so excited to live in their own home."

Father and son traveled to El Salvador Nov. 1 to 9, to start the construction of a community of homes with families in need, thanks to an alliance between Thrivent Financial for Lutherans and Habitat for Humanity International. Because it's very difficult for landless Salvadoran families to own a home, Habitat for Humanity El Salvador has developed a holistic neighborhood model providing families with access to land, a house, basic services and social infrastructure such as green areas and a community center. To support this movement, Thrivent Financial committed up to $1.3 million to Habitat for Humanity El Salvador to build a model community. Eighteen months from now, there will be a new community with as many as 75 homes in Santa Ana, El Salvador, all supported by the Thrivent Builds with Habitat for Humanity alliance and built by hundreds of Thrivent Financial member volunteers.

Al Kvitek, a Thrivent Financial associate serving Lutherans and their family members in Clark and Wood counties, and his son Jesse Kvitek, a Thrivent Financial consultant serving Lutherans and their family members in St. Croix County, and 26 other service-minded Thrivent Financial representatives kicked off the construction of this new community in November. For these representatives, whose job is to help people with their financial security, going to El Salvador to help more families buy a safe and affordable home put a whole new twist on that role. Rather than meeting with clients in the office, the American volunteers cleared a large jungle-like field of brush and trees with machetes and pick axes, an area that will soon become the foundation for many families' homes. Some of the team also assisted local Salvadoran construction masons in building a community center by leveling dirt, digging trenches, and laying block walls.

As the field was cleared and the community center was built, relationships grew with the local Salvadorans. The team enjoyed building with volunteers from a local Lutheran and a Presbyterian church, as well as with the partner families who will live in this community. "I didn't expect to find so many similarities between Americans and Salvadorans," said Jesse Kvitek, "but I realized that people are people wherever you are. They laugh the same, cry the same, have the same concerns and love for their families. The language barrier is not really a barrier at all."

This team of volunteers also had the opportunity to put down their work gloves and have some free time to attend a Lutheran church service on Sunday, go on a boat ride, tour Mayan ruins, learn how to make a favorite Salvadoran food called pupusas and spend a day on the Costa de Sol beach.

The nine-day experience in Central America invigorated both Kviteks, and both plan to share this experience with as many people as possible to encourage others to get involved in similar service work and to raise awareness of the burden of poverty housing while building decent, affordable homes worldwide.

Malnutrition in the Bolivian highlands

The Inter Press Service has a big story on a mountainous region of Bolivia where malnutrition is rampant. The Betanzos region of the country sees one of every two children malnourished. The region is largely populated by the Quechua Indians.

Julia Velasco Parisaca and Wendy Medina of the IPS give us the stats for this region of Latin America's poorest country.

According to the National Nutrition Survey conducted in 2007 by the Health Ministry, municipalities where 38 of every 100 children are malnourished are classified as having a high degree of food vulnerability. In Betanzos, the rate is 50 out of 100.

Dr. Braulio Escalante, the municipality’s top health authority, told IPS that the living conditions of Quechua families have a major impact on their children’s nutrition and health.

"Most families are involved in agriculture, but they only raise enough food for their own subsistence and a small amount to barter (for other goods) or to sell in order to acquire other foodstuffs, such as sugar or rice," he noted.

Almost 80 percent of the population of Potosí lives in poverty, which is exarcebated by environmental problems like drought. Out of the 10 poorest provinces in the department, nine are Quechua, according to figures from the 2001 census.

The Quechua are the largest indigenous group in Bolivia. A total of 1,557,689 respondents identified themselves as Quechua in the 2001 census, out of a total population of 9.2 million.

The extreme poverty in this region is combined with another problem: local eating habits are not based on the high-protein foodstuffs that are grown and harvested here, such as fava beans, corn, potatoes and wheat, nor on fruit like peaches, said Escalante. Instead, local peasant farmers prefer to trade or sell this fresh produce for processed flour-based products like pasta.

The story goes on to detail a "Mindful Mothers" program, that helps with the children's nutrition. But the program can still only reach 20 percent of the Betanzos population, largely because of hilly terrain without any roads.

"Our task is to weigh and measure children from the time they are newborns until they are five, to see whether or not they are malnourished and whether or not they are gaining weight and growing. As madres vigilantes we train other women how to feed their kids so that one day malnutrition will disappear," Eva Juchani from Buey Tambo told IPS.

Juchani and the other 1,500 madres vigilantes throughout Betanzas also work to inform and educate their communities about better eating and cooking habits.

"It’s hard to get people organised. We started with meetings, markets and festivals. We teach women that as mothers, we must keep ourselves very clean, and give our children food that is well prepared and nutritious," commented Reyna Caba, a community health worker and madre vigilante in Buey Tambo.

The women’s training was sponsored by Plan International, a UK-based non-governmental humanitarian organisation that is collaborating in the implementation of Community Integrated Management of Childhood Illness (C-IMCI), a programme that targets children under the age of five.

C-IMCI was developed in 1996 by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).

"Madres vigilantes are trained about children’s growth, development and nutrition, and at the same time, they pass on this training to other mothers in their communities, while monitoring the growth and development of their children," explained Aurora Gutiérrez, the health programme coordinator for the Plan International branch in Bolivia, based in Sucre.

New law in Ethiopia restricts foreign aid

Ethiopian government passed a bill that puts large restrictions on foreign aid. This brings to mind similar restrictions Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe made to foreign aid groups last year.

We found the AFP article from the website the Raw Story.

Under the new law, any group that draws more than 10 percent of its funding from abroad will be classified as foreign, and thus banned from working on issues related to ethnicity, gender, children's rights and conflict resolution. "We recognise the importance of effective oversight of civil society organisations... However we are concerned this law may restrict US government assistance to Ethiopia," a State Department statement said.

Despite criticism, Ethiopia's parliament on Tuesday overwhelmingly passed the bill, which the government argues is solely to safeguard citizens' rights.

Georgette Gagnon, the Africa director for the New York-based Human Rights Watch, said the law is a "repression, not regulation."

"If enforced, this law will make Ethiopia one of the most inhospitable places in the world for both Ethiopian and international human rights groups," she said in a statement.

The Horn of Africa nation, a key ally in Washington's "War on Terror" against Islamist extremists, received more than 900 million dollars in aid from the US in 2008.

Ethiopia, a poverty-stricken country of 77 million, is among the world's chief aid recipients.

Shoe drive for the homeless in Toronto

A shoe store owner in Toronto is starting his annual shoe drive for the homeless. Jenny Yuen of the Toronto Sun introduces us to Ron White of White's Shoes.

The Toronto shoe store owner was walking in the Yonge-Eglinton area over a decade ago when he saw a homeless man sitting on the ground, his toe sticking out of his worn shoes.

"A snowflake landed on his big toe," White said. "I thought, 'Oh my God, he's going to get frostbite.' And when people come in and buy shoes, they leave the old ones, which have some life left. Next thing you know, it became a shoe drive."

His Shoe Drive for the Homeless entered its 13th year yesterday at his Manulife Centre location. Celebrities autograph and donate their footwear as inspiration for others to drop off gently-used shoes for the homeless.
[...]
White hopes to beat last year's 2,000 count by 500 during the month-long drive.

Drop off winter boots and shoes at one of White's six locations where staff will clean them before donating them to the Out of the Cold program, Red Door Family Shelter and Halton Women's Place. To find a location, go to ronwhite.ca.

Muncie, Indiana gathers for a town hall meeting on poverty

The town of Muncie, Indiana had a town hall meeting last night to discuss how to combat poverty in their community. The meeting also talked about how the working poor is falling further behind. Ivy Farguheson of the Star Press tells us what was presented.

Sponsored by TEAMwork for Quality Living and the Economic Poverty Impact Coalition, the meeting was intended to discuss what needs to be done in Muncie and the surrounding areas to assist those living in poverty.

Residents from across varying income levels were on hand, not only to ask what can be done to assist someone in poverty but also what can be done to assist the ever-increasing working poor.

"When you have a middle class that's working and they are considered a working-poor group, there is a larger problem out here," said Monica James. "We do fall short, and it's not because we're lavishing ourselves in these wonderful gifts."

Leaders of local non-profits presented the evidence of increasing demands for their services by the working poor and offered suggestions for where to receive services to make it through tough times.

But there was also an emphasis on giving people information that could save them time and money in the short and long term.

"We need to have a better infrastructure that allows this sort of information to get out," said Gary Chenault, president and CEO of the United Way of Delaware County. "We have an information gap."

UN development chief to step down

The head of the United Nations Development Program had decided to step down from his post. Kemal Davis from Turkey, announced his decision today. The Development Program runs the United Nations anti-poverty efforts.

We learned of the announcement from this mention in the Times News.

Kemal Dervis, who has headed the U.N. program since August 2005, informed Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon that he decided not to seek a second term and to leave the post March 1 "due to personal and family reasons," a UNDP statement said.

Before joining UNDP, Dervis was a member of the Turkish Parliament from November 2002 to June 2005. He previously had served as Turkey's minister for economic affairs and the treasury.

Africa may face extreme poverty for another 200 years, says a new report

A coalition of anti-poverty groups released a new report that suggests that the poverty struggle may still be a long one. Social Watch says that extreme poverty will continue in Africa for another 200 years unless big changes are made.

David Cronin of IPS digs into the report, and explains Social Watch's "basic capabilities index."

Its latest report finds that 80 countries -- home to half the world's population -- fare badly when three criteria are examined: the number of children who die before their fifth birthday, the proportion of children who complete primary education, and the proportion of births that are attended by trained midwives or other medical professionals.

Only 16 of these countries have registered considerable improvement since 2000. Although the countries making progress include India, home to 1.6 billion, regression has been recorded in others with a combined population of 150 million. The latter category includes Chad, Niger, Malawi, Benin and Yemen, while Bangladesh, Uganda, Nigeria, Madagascar and Ghana have been listed as stagnant.

While much of sub-Saharan Africa has recorded strong economic growth in recent years, this has not translated into a major drop in poverty levels. As things stand, the basic needs of millions of Africans will not be met until the 23rd century, with many governments struggling to fulfil pledges they have made. Zambia, for example, has undertaken to provide free basic health care for all citizens, yet continues to have one of the lowest rates of life expectancy on the planet.

Roberto Bissio, coordinator of Social Watch, predicted that the crisis which gripped international capitalism during 2008 will complicate matters further. "Poor countries are very likely going to suffer quite heavily from a crisis which they did not at all create," he said, indicating that crucial sources of money such as remittances from migrants overseas will probably decline.

Bissio argued that one of the most appropriate responses of governments would be to develop a more coherent response to the fulfilment of human rights, particularly those with an economic and social dimension.

Over the past twenty years, he said, international bodies have been eager to promote the 'rights' of corporations to establish themselves anywhere in the world, forbidding poor countries to "impose on them conditions that contribute to the development of host countries."

The Somali pirates are high rollers

The Somali pirates have received a lot of global attention lately. The pirates hijack ships and boats passing by one of the planets busiest waterways. The pirates seem to get away with it most of the time.

Many go into pirating because it's about the only way to get a leg up in Somalia. Years of war have destroyed any economic opportunity of anyone. According to Sarah Smiles of Australia's The Age the pirates get to enjoy a lavish lifestyle.

The pirates enjoy a lavish lifestyle unknown to many in a country racked by poverty.

A New York Times article in October described the high-rolling swagger of pirates in Garoowe, a town south of Boosaaso on the Somalian coast.

Flush with cash, the pirates drive the biggest cars, run many of the town's businesses — like hotels — and throw the best parties, residents say.

Fatuma Abdul Kadir said she went to a pirate wedding in July that lasted two days, with nonstop dancing and goat meat, and a band flown in from neighbouring Djibouti.

The pirates — who were often fishermen before they became criminals — have become more ambitious in their attacks in recent years, travelling longer distances to attack ships.

High-profile attacks include the hijacking of the Saudi supertanker MV Sirius Star and its cargo of oil worth more than $100 million in November, and a Ukrainian freighter carrying more than 30 Soviet-era battle tanks and heavy weaponry that was seized in September.

Joblessness is the biggest worry worldwide

A 22 nation online survey shows that unemployment is the number one worry worldwide. The fears of the global economic crisis have replaced poverty, inequality and violence as the biggest concern. Michelle Nichols of Reuters gives us the details of the survey.

Some 41 percent of people said joblessness was their biggest worry, a 13-percentage point jump from a year ago, when unemployment was No. 4, according to the November survey of 22,000 people.

"Jobs, jobs, jobs all across the globe is the No. 1 issue," said Clifford Young of Ipsos Global Public Affairs, the international market research and polling company that carried out the online poll. "There is going to be demand for government solutions."

U.S. data released on Wednesday showed private employers shed 693,000 jobs in December, far more than expected and up sharply from the 476,000 jobs lost in November.

"(The poll) suggests there is going to be a strong return to bread and butter issues, especially job creation and job-related programs and it suggests in respect to the economy greater government intervention," Young said.

Some 35 percent of those polled were equally concerned about poverty and social inequality or crime and violence, making it the No. 2 issue, while 31 percent feared corruption and financial or political scandals.

In October 2007, crime and violence was the top issue, followed by poverty and social inequality, and corruption and financial or political scandals.

Jeffrey Sachs lectures the Asian Development Bank

Jeffrey Sachs recently presented a lecture to the Asian Development Bank. In his lecture, Sachs says that public spending financed by the Japanese is the way out of the financial crisis for their region.

Gemma Bagayaua listened in to the lecture a filed a story on it for ABS CBN News.

To begin with, Asia has been chronically under-investing in critical sectors such as energy sector, pollution control, roads, public housing, ports, education, health and sustainable development, according to Sachs.

There is enough demand for goods and services in these sectors, he said, to offset declining consumer demand from US and Europe.

“This is still region of the world with the fastest growing population, with the most dramatic need for pollution control, for sustainable development, for accommodating migration of hundreds in suburban areas,” Sachs said.

These considered, public spending can have a very high social return apart from economic purpose right now “if it can be implemented in a responsible way,” he said.

Sachs noted that Asia has no balance of payment constraints, no inflation constraints, and no credit constraints that could stop the region from spending its way out of the crisis.

What has been preventing governments from the spending more on these sectors, Sachs noted, is lack of long-term financing, which Japan, with its ample reserves and strong currency can easily provide.

The bottom billion, and how they are effected by the global financial crisis

All Africa has comments from several expert on how the global financial crisis will effect Africa.

Against the backdrop that Africa and other developing nations are not bound to be affected by the global financial crisis, former World Bank president, Mr. James Wolfensohn has stoutly dismissed such speculation, insisting that African countries would be hard hit.

Speaking in an interview, which excerpts were made available to LEADERSHIP, the international investment banker opined that African countries have only "$600 of $700 per capita income now measured against one hundred times than in the developed world," stating that, "we have the bottom end of the pyramid, people are not talking about giving up luxuries; they are talking about living in absolute poverty."

Buttressing Wolfensohn's argument, Mrs. Hauwa Hassan of the Department of Business Administration, Bayero University, Kano, noted that " the technological revolution combined with delocation and corporated restructuring has dramatically lowered the cost of production while at the same time, impoverishing millions of people. Macro- economic policies are internationalist; the same ousteristy measures are applied all over the world. Developing countries are not an exception and these policies are not in their favour."

In a paper presentation made availaable to LEADERSHIP yesterday, Hassan further emphasised that, "factories are closed down in developed countries and producrtion is transferred to third world countries where workers are often paid less than a dollar per day."

According to her, " there will be decrease in demand of raw materials from third world countries which result in cut down of supply of finished goods from developed nations that will invariably increase the prices of finished products."

She, pointed out that, third world countries such as Iran, Venezuela and Nigeria that depend 90 per cent on sale of petroleum product are likely to be worse hit by the low demand of petroleum product at international market.

AIDS and the sex trade in Yemen

IRIN has a story about the risk of AIDS in Yemen and the sex trade that helps to spread it. High rates of poverty in Yemen (wiki) and the lack of education there leave it's population vulnerable to AIDS.

Abdul-Hafed al-Ward, secretary-general of the Integrated Care Association for People Living with HIV, told IRIN: "Poverty and HIV/AIDS go together and whenever the former exists so does the latter." He said most HIV/AIDS cases were among the poor.

Yemen is ranked 153 out of 177 countries on the UN Development Programme's (UNDP’s) 2007-08 Human Development Index. According to the Poverty Assessment Report 2007 prepared by the UNDP, the World Bank and the Yemeni government, the percentage of poor people among Yemen's 21 million population stood at 34.8 percent. According to the UNDP office in Yemen, 15.7 percent of the population lives on less than US$1 a day and 45.2 percent live on less than US$2 a day.

Khaled Abdul-Majid, a programme officer at the UNDP office in Sanaa, said state institutions lacked the capacity to tackle HIV/AIDS, adding: "When there are not enough jobs, young people feel they have no future. Some resort to prostitution." He also said internal and external migration had played a role in spreading the virus.

Suad al-Qadasi, chair of the Women's Forum for Research and Training (WFRT), a local NGO, said prostitution and commercial sex work had begun to increase rapidly over the past three years.

"But Yemen is a conservative community which does not acknowledge this phenomenon. This is a problem in itself," she told IRIN.

The WFRT recently conducted a survey on commercial sex work but found that people were not willing to admit to its existence. “Denying it is a problem as awareness rests on acknowledging that the phenomenon exists," Suad said, warning that if the situation continued, HIV/AIDS would be rife.

Let them wear fruit

Your humble blogger is way behind, a stomach flu has been traveling across our family this week, and it caught me yesterday.

The libertarian in me couldn't resist this story. Mike Oboh of Reuters has a fascinating story about a new law in Nigeria.

Police in Nigeria have arrested scores of motorcycle taxi riders with dried fruit shells, paint pots or pieces of rubber tire tied to their heads with string to avoid a new law requiring them to wear helmets.

The regulations have caused chaos around Africa's most populous nation, with motorcyclists complaining helmets are too expensive and some passengers refusing to wear them fearing they will catch skin disease or be put under a black magic spell.

The law, which came into force on January 1, pits two factions equally feared by the common motorist against one another: erratic motorcycle taxis known as "Okadas," whose owners are notorious for road-rage, and the bribe-hungry traffic police.

Some bikers have used calabashes -- dried shells of pumpkin-sized fruit usually used as a bowl -- or pots and pans tied to their heads with string to try to dodge the rules.

Construction workers have set up a lucrative trade renting out their safety helmets for around 500 naira ($3.60) a day.

"They use pots, plates, calabashes, rubber and plastic as makeshift helmets," said Yusuf Garba, commander of the Federal Road Safety Commission in the northern town of Kano.

"We will not tolerate this. We gave them enough time to purchase helmets. Six months ago the price of helmets was below 800 naira so complaints about non-availability and high prices are no excuse," he told Reuters.

Helmet prices have since risen sharply as sellers cash in on demand.

Global poverty ranks swell

High Schoolers raising money for Africa

We are partial to stories from our home state, so when we saw this effort from high school students in nearby Ann Arbor we didn't hesitate to share it here.

A group of student leaders have gone from classroom to classroom to tell their fellow student of the plight of the people of Africa. They then pass around a plate for donations. They also have a teen dance planned, where all proceeds will go to Africa.

David Jesse of the Ann Arbor News tells where the money is exactly going to. We also see how the students teach their classmates on the situation of Africa's poor.

The four students who spoke in Jennifer Kunec's class one day just before Christmas break are part of the Youth Senate's Africa Project.

As part of the project, the students spend time before the ball going into classrooms, telling their peers about problems, especially AIDS, stemming from poverty in Africa.

Their goal is to raise $20,000, Pioneer student Aparna Ghosh told the class. The money will be used to buy technology like video equipment, laptop computers and electric generators that will allow for youth peer education in small villages in Africa.
The presentation isn't just a dry recitation of facts.

The presenting students have the entire class stand up.

Then, row by row, they have students sit down, signifying death from a variety of poverty-related causes.

Rather quickly, only one person is left standing.

Helping to give health to the Nigerian people

The health care in Nigeria is in a very bad state. Despite being a very oil rich country, corruption and closed clinics leave the public in ill-health. The money from the oil does not go back into services for the public. Also, many state run health clinics have shut down, as the staff have quit when no pay checks came from the government.

Two Nigerian doctors who received their education in UK have started a charity to help bring health to Nigeria (wiki). Belinda Otas a writer for the BBC, introduces us to the doctors, and what happened on their first visit.

The dire state of Nigerian healthcare has prompted two UK-based Nigerians to form a non-governmental organisation known as the Ibelaw Community Health & Social Care Foundation.

Through the foundation, Dr Ibe Nathans, a medical doctor, and Lawrence Ndulor, a clinical psychologist, offer free primary healthcare to the poor and needy in the Niger Delta - their home region and an area torn apart by poverty and violence despite its oil revenues.

...

With the benefit of a UK-based education Dr Nathans and Mr Ndulor feel they should be helping other Nigerians who are not as privileged as them. "We tried to see as many patients as we could, and were warmly welcomed," said Mr Ndulor.

"My job was to give them pre-medical counselling to help them prevent disease in future, but also for things like stress and anxiety," he added.

However, tragedy struck just before the team left to return to London.

"In the house where I was staying, in the middle of the night some armed robbers broke in and demanded money, I gave them what I had but they shot me in the chest as they were leaving," said Mr Ndulor.

Stabilised at a local hospital in Nigeria, he was rushed back to London for treatment and had 32 pellets removed from his chest.

"I haven't been back to Nigeria since, but I hope to go back soon," said Mr Ndulor.

On a mission

This has not slowed his partner down and during the past year alone Dr Nathans has visited Nigeria three times, seeing 500 patients on each trip, dealing with health complaints ranging from abdominal pain to measles and malnutrition.

Half of the Ivory Coast in poverty

A report has the latest numbers on the amount of people in poverty in Cote d'Ivoire. A governmental meeting to produce a debt relief strategy produced the report. Cote d'Ivoire (wiki) is the African continents biggest cocoa grower.

We found the details of the report from a story in IC publications.

Poverty in the West African country of Ivory Coast has soared in the last 23 years and almost half the population lives on less than a euro (1.36 dollars) a day, a report said Monday.

"Today one person in two is poor, against one in 10 in 1985, and in the space of a generation the number of the poor has been multiplied by 10," the Poverty Reduction Strategy Document (DSRP) said.

The study, carried out by the national planning ministry, defines as poor in 2008 an Ivorian spending less than 241,145 CFA Francs (367 euros) a year, or 661 CFA francs (one euro) a day.

"Poverty has therefore seen a developing increase, passing from 10 percent in 1985 to 33.6 percent in 1998 before rising to 38.4 percent in 2002 and then 48.9 percent in 2008, " the report, published at the opening of a workshop at Grand-Bassam, 30 kilometres (20 miles) southeast of Abidjan, said.

The workshop, attended by representatives of the World Bank and the European Union, is designed to validate the DSRP, produced by the Ivorian authorities in support of debt relief.

The report shows that in the countryside 60 percent of the population are poor compared with about half in the cities.

"The poverty rate in rural areas worsened particularly in the recent period coinciding with that of the politico-military crisis," the report said.

South Asians, the forgotten minority in Ontario

Many South Asians immigrate into Ontario, and it is that group who often are forgotten when talk of beating poverty comes up. To shed light on the problem, a rally was held recently at Scarborough, Ontario. The activists say that the level of poverty among South Asians is at a disproportionate level compared to other minorities.

Kim Zarzour of The Liberal gave the details on what the activists hope to do after the rally.

Studies show that the poor in Ontario today are most likely to be people of colour. While poverty among non-minorities dropped by 26 per cent between 1980 and 2000, visible minorities experienced an almost four-fold increase, said Neethan Shan, executive director of Council of Agencies Serving South Asians.

In York Region where, between 2001 and 2006, the number of visible minorities increased by 53 per cent, that disproportion is especially pronounced - but is often hidden, said Mr. Shan.

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The anti-poverty rally was held to raise attention to the issue of poverty in immigrant communities and to find ways for South Asians to work on the problem at the grassroots level. The group plans to present their response to Ontario's Poverty Reduction Strategy Report, which they say ignores the "racialization of poverty".

Mr. Shan says part of the problem stems from immigrants not getting the opportunity to learn skills, or their credentials not being valued, who are subsequently being exploited on the job or working for less than minimum wage. He says the workers may be afraid to question their employers because "they are here and want to make the best of living in a safe environment."

It is ironic, he says, that while business is increasingly globalized and taking place overseas, those who have immigrated here with professional credentials and experience are not being valued.

It's not just immigrant doctors and engineers who are stuck driving cabs, but also skilled tradespeople like electricians and plumbers who come from South Asia and can't get jobs in their trade, according to Mr. Shan.

Research conducted by the South Asian Legal Clinic of Ontario shows South Asians are more likely to be employed in full-time temporary work than any other visible minority group. More than half of Bangladeshis, and more than 30 per cent of Pakistanis, Tamils, Sri Lankans, and "other South Asians" live below the low-income cut-off. Bangladeshi women earn less than any other ethno-racial group, male or female, the Legal Clinic's studies show.

And yet the South Asian voice is often missing from anti-poverty initiatives and decision-making, say members of the Council.

Helping a young women's school in Nairobi

A Catholic Church in California has ties to Nairobi, and uses those connections to help a girls school there. The relationship across borders began in 2002, since then the church has been raising money for the school and the young women who attend it. A nun from Nairobi is currently visiting the church in California to show the parishioners how their fund raising has helped.

Kerana Todorov from the Napa Valley Register writes of how the relationship started and gives us more details on the school. The story of the school can also be found on it's blog. The school needs $600 for each child per year.

The Rev. Pat Stephenson, leader of Holy Family Parish, began to raise money for Kenya’s children in 2002. He visited the country to go on a safari, but was moved by what he saw on Nairobi streets: hundreds of children, including pregnant teens and young mothers, begging in the streets.

When Stephenson told Schneiders of his experience, Schneiders offered to help raise money for Sister Christine. He also agreed to come along on three fact-finding trips to Kenya to find out what the parish could do to help Kenya’s abandoned children.

The trips were not for the faint of heart.

Post-election violence erupted in Kenya shortly before they landed in Nairobi on their most recent trip together, in December 2007. Despite the danger and uncertainty, they returned safely and plan to go back in a year.

The Cardinal Maurice Otunga Empowerment Center for Girls opened in mid-2004 on a property donated by Kenya’s Catholic church, a few months after the Schneiders and Stephenson presented a $5,000 donation from parish members to the Archbishop of Nairobi, Rafael Ndingi.

Stephenson asked that the money be used to help needy children.

About three months later, Sister Christine, a member of the order of the Sisters of the Assumption and a high school teacher by training, proposed to use Holy Family Parish’s donation to open the center for girls.

About 80 girls between the ages of 13 and 19 live at the school for two years. Some arrive suffering from AIDS after turning to prostitution to support their families. Many have been beaten or raped or suffered from homelessness.

At the school, the teens receive counseling and medical care and learn how to sew, cook and knit. They also train in how to use computers and make arts and crafts. The students work in shifts to feed staff and colleagues and maintain the property.

Comment on the good that non-profits do

A commentary from Rick Cohen of the Nonprofit Quarterly found something very interesting in a recent Brookings Institution study. We found the commentary in the Philanthropy Journal.

The most important finding of a recent Brookings Institution/Federal Reserve Bank study on concentrated poverty was not the descriptions of joblessness, high crime, poor educations and negative health outcomes.

The understated conclusion from the 16 case studies of rural and urban concentrated poverty was the importance of the nonprofit sector.

When nonprofit organizations -- community development corporations, human-service agencies, faith-based organizations and others -- were active, engaged, organizing and advocating, these neighborhoods were making some halting progress.

Where nonprofit capacity was minimal or nonexistent, the neighborhoods more than languished and even declined.

The study examined desperately poor communities in the U.S. as diverse as urban neighborhoods and rural areas.

But the obvious finding about the nonprofit sector virtually jumped off the pages of the report, based on a number of compelling examples of nonprofit courage and creativity:

* In West Fresno, Calif., where the private market had basically collapsed, it was a community development corporation that bucked the prevailing wisdom and instigated the creation of a neighborhood shopping center providing important services and jobs for the residents.

* In the combined Old Hill, Six Corners and South End neighborhoods of Springfield, Mass., a collaboration of Springfield Neighborhood Housing Services, the Hampden Hampshire Housing Partnership, and Habitat for Humanity have joined forces to create housing for first-time homebuyers.

* In Holmes County, Miss., the West Holmes Community Development Corporation is carrying out a remarkable program integrating sustainable agriculture, youth employment, skills development and health and nutrition issues, an impressive display of creativity that rivals the best efforts of much-better-heeled nonprofits elsewhere in the U.S.

A roundup of Gaza Items

We came across a couple of items on the Gaza strip this morning and decided to put them all together into one post.

First, World Vision New Zealand is seeking donations to those who are hardest hit by the Israeli bombing. The Stuff website from New Zealand explains that this is part of a international effort.

World Vision internationally is aiming to raise $1.72 million to provide food parcels, blankets and other basic supplies to vulnerable families as soon as the situation in Gaza permits.

"Our priority now is to assist those who are living in intolerable conditions with limited access to food, water or medical facilities," World Vision's national director for Jerusalem-West Bank-Gaza, Charles Clayton said.

"Eighty percent of the people in Gaza are already dependent on food aid, and even those who had relied on a meagre daily income now find that it is no longer available."

Israel unleashed a massive bombardment following the end of a six-month ceasefire on December 19, aimed at weakening Hamas and in response to persistent rocket fire from the enclave.

Israeli rockets have targeted government buildings, mosques, universities, police stations and other civilian buildings in the deadliest conflict in Gaza in four decades.

Israel has said militants were using some holy sites to hoard weapons and as command centres, and that other buildings were linked to Hamas military operations.

Second, Medecins Sans Frontieres is asking for help to aid the people in Gaza. The medical aid organization is seeking more doctors to volunteer their time.

More than a week after air strikes on Gaza Strip began and following the first land incursion of Israeli forces, surgical services in the area are overwhelmed and surgeons specialised in vascular surgery are desperately needed in order to deal with the number of wounded. In Gaza City, the intensive care unit of Shifa referral hospital has reached the limits of its capacity. The conflict is preventing patients needing post operative medical care and health personnel from reaching clinics and hospitals.

Three international MSF volunteers (a field coordinator, a doctor and a nurse) arrived in Gaza Strip on Wednesday the 31st of December, to reinforce the 35 local staff members.

MSF is adapting its activities to reach people in need of medical help who are unable to leave their homes. Local MSF doctors, nurses and physiotherapists have taken medical supplies to their own neighbourhoods and are providing care and distributing medical material to meet the immediate needs of patients living in their vicinity. In response to a request from Shifa referral hospital, MSF is attempting to send a surgical team into Gaza Strip. MSF is also trying to send a mobile hospital unit with an operating theatre and an intensive care unit, and medical material for treating the wounded and supplying hospitals, in order to help them deal with the numerous emergencies they are facing.

An update on the Gaza strip

For a while now we have been meaning to post an update on the humanitarian situation in Gaza. Israel is now in it's seventh day of bombing, and some foreigners have been allowed out of the region, but Palestinians are still locked in. NPR asked World Vision about the humanitarian situation.

Aid groups are concerned about civilians in the area. Allen Dhynes, a Jerusalem-based communication manager for the aid group World Vision, said residents of Gaza have no power and that fuel is scarce.

"Prior to the violence, there was only an average of eight hours of power a day, and now it's maybe only one hour a day," he told NPR from Portland, Ore., where he has been in contact with colleagues in Gaza.

"Gaza has been under a severe blockade and was already living under dire poverty before any of this occurred, so this is just an overwhelming burden for the population," Dhynes said.

Between 350 and 450 foreigners were authorised by Israel to leave Gaza if they wish, via the forbidding concrete corridor that ushers them into Israel's fortified crossing point and its panoply of security scanners to detect hidden suicide bombs.

Israel launched the aerial campaign Saturday in a bid to halt weeks of intensifying Palestinian rocket fire from Gaza. The offensive has dealt a heavy blow to Hamas, but has failed to halt the rocket fire. New attacks Friday struck apartment buildings in a southern Israeli city. No serious injuries were reported.

Urban food poverty rises in Uganda

Urban food poverty in Uganda increased by two percent, according to an NGO. The Global Call to Action Against Poverty released the figures during an launch for their 2009 efforts. Jonathan Konuche of Uganda's Daily Nation details the announcement.

The Global Call to Action Against Poverty says that in 1997, urban food poverty incidence in the country stood at 38.3 percent, and that 11 years later, it stands at 40.5 per cent.

The organisation’s national coordinator, Mr Mwangi Waituru, said the country’s social security nets should be rebuilt to complement financial investments aimed at curbing urban food poverty.

“The current consumer society is rapidly eroding the traditional security nets system, leaving the poor more and more vulnerable,” Mr Waituru said in Mwiki at the launch of a one-year campaign to eradicate hunger.

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The price of food, especially maize flour, has soared in the country and though the Government launched a distribution network of low-priced flour, this is yet to reach the most affected regions.

Mr Waituru said that while the country might be producing more food than it did 20 years ago, food poverty was on the rise.

“It is a pity that some of us continue to suffer so much hunger in the midst of so much abundance,” he said, adding that it was a grave violation of human rights that children were still going to bed on an empty stomach amid such abundance.

Video from The Girl Effect

A commentary from a former US president and a adviser to the UN secretary

Former US President Bill Clinton and Philippe Douste-Blazy a special adviser to the UN secretary general wrote an opinion piece that appeared in today's International Herald Tribune. They both encourage the wealthy nations to keep their aid promises to help the health of the world's poor.

The financial crisis has undermined our economic security. But it has also taught us that the stability of any one nation depends on its interdependence with others. A functional global marketplace depends on productive workers and healthy consumers in Africa, Asia and Latin America, as much as in the United States and Europe. As we look toward a new year, it is well to remember the importance of keeping the promise to help developing countries fight AIDS and build stronger health systems.

Development assistance is good economic policy. The returns are disproportionately in our favor given that it represents far less than 1 percent of any wealthy nation's budget. Malaria - which still kills more than a million children in Africa annually - was eliminated in the United States in the 1950s, saving more than $2 billion in today's dollars that the disease cost the American economy each year. The cost of wiping smallpox out globally is recouped every month in the economic output gained by freeing the world from its scourge.

These are lessons in what aid can save and a reminder that we should define investments in development assistance by their long-term return, not their short-term cost.

Helping others is good foreign policy. Saving lives is the right thing to do by any moral standard. It is unacceptable that extreme poverty kills 25,000 children daily. Averting this loss of life is a responsibility shared across all faiths and nations.

Aid works. We have made remarkable progress in the 21st century. Better vaccine coverage has averted 3.4 million deaths since 2000. The number of people receiving AIDS medicines has increased tenfold in five years, to 3 million. Among children, we have narrowed the gap in half that time from 1 in 40 in need receiving treatment to 1 in 4. The majority of those children are receiving the commodities they need in part thanks to a partnership between our organizations, which we started together on World AIDS Day in 2006.

An increase in the minimum wage in Florida

The minimum wage in Florida has just increased to $7.21. The increase usually stirs a debate on whether it cuts low wage jobs rather than help those in the jobs. But, there is something else that we found interesting in this article from the Gainesville Sun.

Florida ties the states minimum wage to inflation. They are among 10 other states that do so. Anna Scott the writer for the piece that appeared in today's Gainesville Sun shows how Florida enacted it's minimum wage law.

Until four years ago, Florida was one of seven states - six in the South, plus Arizona - that did not set a minimum wage. But in 2004, 71 percent of voters approved a change to the constitution that set Florida's minimum wage at $6.15 an hour - at the time $1 an hour higher than the federal rate - and pegged future increases to inflation. Arizona also enacted a state minimum wage.

In July, workers will get another raise, although a small one.

The federal minimum wage law will bump pay nationwide, including in Florida, to $7.25 an hour. It will be the first time since Florida's minimum wage law took effect in 2005 that it will be trumped by a higher federal minimum wage.

Even though the federal wage will pass Florida's in July, economists say the state's wage law is still more advantageous to Florida's low-wage workers than it appears. The state's minimum wage increases annually to provide for the increased cost of living according to the Consumer Price Index. The federal minimum wage is increased by the will of Congress.

"The state's minimum wage will never lose its actual purchasing power in terms of real income, which is not true with the federal one," Nissen said.

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Florida will be in the majority of states whose rates are superseded by the new federal pay. By the end of 2009, the federal minimum wage will be exceeded in only 12 states, compared with 25 in 2008.