AIDS fighting funds slashed across African continent

The global recession has had bad effects on funding the fight against AIDS. Governments across the African continent are slashing their budgets to fight the disease. Meanwhile, NGO's are in the same trouble with cash. The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria recently announced a 4 billion dollar shortfall.

From Black Star News, writer Sifelani Tsiko gives this round up of some of the cutbacks.

Tanzania was the first sub-Saharan country to announce a 25% slash of its annual HIV/Aids budget. Health experts say this will have a significant impact on human resources in the sector and on health service delivery in this East African country.

They further say that long-term health planning will become completely unpredictable as funding dwindles for most HIV/Aids programs on the continent.

The global financial crisis has forced commodity prices to nose-dive dealing major blow to agriculture and mining-based African economies which had registered some positive growth in export revenue over the last few years. Mining companies in mineral dependent economies in Africa are scaling down operations resulting in massive retrenchments and lay–offs.

Botswana, South Africa, Zambia, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Zimbabwe were some of the hardest hit countries in the southern Africa region. These countries have registered significant cuts in their export receipts severely affecting revenue flows for the governments and expenditure on HIV/Aids programs.

Even the large mining companies are scaling down expenditure on HIV prevention programs, affecting thousands of employees and their families. The Botswana government announced recently that it will not be able to include new patients in its free antiretroviral (ARV) treatment program from 2016 onwards, because it doesn't have sufficient funds to expand the program.

In Zambia, the situation is dire with the large copper mining companies making massive cuts on HIV spending as the companies lay off thousands of workers due to the global financial turmoil engulfing Western countries which are the main drivers of commodity prices since they are the substantial consumers.

Zimbabwe’s economic problems in the past few years have led to the deterioration of the country’s health care systems. Most HIV patients are still having problems in accessing HIV drugs; if when drugs become available, purchasing choices are stark: medication or food?

One in five of Scotland's children in poverty

A new report from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation reveals that 1 in 5 of Scotland's children live in poverty. The report says that translates to 210,000 children or 21% percent. The number has actually increased from years before.

From the East Lothian News, we learn more of the reports conclusions.

Levels of child deprivation have fallen faster in Scotland than other parts of the UK in the last decade but have stalled since 2004/05, according to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation report.

And it suggests that the UK Government's target of eradicating child poverty by 2020 will not be met if progress continues at the current rate.

Measures to reduce deprivation in Scotland are now fairly similar to the rest of the UK, according to the report.

It called on the Scottish and UK governments to do more to reduce child poverty north of the border and suggested a wide range of policy measures.

Immunization effort against Polio begins in Nigeria tomorrow

The government of Nigeria will begin a new immunization program to help eradicate polio in the country.

Last time a similar effort was made, the government could only reach 60 percent of the children with the shot. They hope to reach at least 90 percent this time.

From the Guardian of Nigeria, writer Chukwuma Muanya offers more details on the immunization project.

Fresh efforts to reach the un-immunised Nigerian child with Oral Polio Vaccine (OPV) begin tomorrow in 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).

The Federal Government and its development partners plan to use the immunisation campaign to deliver a broad range of child survival interventions in the race against the reduction of under-five mortality rate in the country.

Nigeria and the rest of the world are expected to meet the health-related Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) 4 and 5 of reducing significantly child and maternal deaths by 2015.

The MDGs were developed out of the eight chapters of the United Nations Millennium Declaration, signed in September 2000.

Already, Federal Government has deployed 57 million doses of trivalent OPV (OPV-3) for the four day campaign. The vaccines are target at the three type of the Wild Polio Virus (WPV), that WPV-1, WPV-2 and WPV-3 whch are said to be prevalent in the country.. The government plans to administer the vaccines using 180,000 health workers, 140,000 vaccinators, 3,400 supervisors in 33,000 posts. She also plans sub-national campaigns for July, August and October 2009.

The government has also adopted new strategies which include: engagement of political and religious leadership, and civil societies; publishing the coverage, successes and failures of States; revision of guidelines for the conduct of immunisation campaign; and creation of special teams to capture children on the street.

Latest figures on polio eradication in Nigeria from the FMOH, indicate that the progress with immunisation activities reported during the first quarter of 2009 has not been uniform in all states and local councils.

According to government sources about 19 per cent of all local councils failed to achieve the target of 90 per cent coverage during the last campaign held in March 2009.

ECLA writes a letter to the U.S.Congress

Faith groups of all sorts are urging members of the U.S. Congress to co-sponsor a bill that will try to streamline international aid.

The latest faith group to contact Congress are the bishops of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. In a signed letter sent to all members of Congress, the bishops urge the co-sponsorship of the bill.

From Ekklesia, we learn more of the bill, and the faith groups mobilization.

They want members of Congress to co-sponsor the Initiating Foreign Assistance Reform Act of 2009 (HR 2139). The bipartisan bill is intended to refocus the US government’s global development policies and programmes to make them more effective in addressing poverty and security.

In the letter distributed to the 465-member House of Representatives last week, the bishops said “comprehensive reform is critical in order to more effectively meet the growing needs of those living in extreme poverty while ensuring global security.”

The ELCA is one of a range of faith groups calling on millions of their constituents to urge their U.S. representatives to co-sponsor the bill. Nearly 50 Christian, Jewish and Muslim organizations are working together to issue statements on US international assistance reform.

“Lutheran leaders understand the importance of US foreign [sic] aid because we have seen firsthand how it affects our brothers and sisters in partner churches throughout the world,” said the Rev Peter Rogness, bishop, ELCA St. Paul (Minnesota) Area Synod, and one of the signatories.
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The bill would direct President Barack Obama to develop and implement a comprehensive national strategy for global development, establish new guidelines for monitoring and evaluating US international assistance and increase its transparency.

Indian textile workers slide back into poverty

What was formerly a booming piece of the economy for India, has become another victim in the global recession.

The textile industry in India employed many people, so many that the factories bussed people in. But as soon as the U.S. economy slowed down the workers found themselves without jobs. The people then could only find other work that payed half of what they made before.

From this Associated Press article that we found at Oregon Live, writer Erika Kinetz describes the bust of India's textile industry.

Many in the textile belt of south India's Tamil Nadu state have seen their incomes roughly halved, to about $1.50 a day, as factories hit by declining exports and tight credit cut production, are forced to reduce payrolls and eventually close down. Distribution of government subsidized food in the area has shot up, and people are taking out loans and hocking jewelry to meet expenses.

India's public schools are notoriously poor, and many parents work hard to send their children to low-cost private schools that teach English. Now they are pulling them out, cutting off the next generation from what has been the surest ticket to a better life in India: the English language.

During the boom years, textile factories in Tamil Nadu's Coimbatore region could not get enough workers. They sent buses to nearby villages, picking up workers for thrice-daily shifts. In 2005, mills began holding recruitment fairs hundreds of kilometers (miles) away, in Tamil Nadu's impoverished south. Laborers poured in from poor states like Bihar and Orissa. Even on $3 or $4 a day, many built houses and put their children in private English-language schools.

Today many of the factory buses have stopped running, and migrants have gone home.

Things started to go bad in 2007, when the rupee appreciated sharply. Next, due to severe power shortages, blackouts began sweeping Tamil Nadu. Factory owners say they still don't get power for up to 8 hours a day.

From 2004 to 2007, textile production in India grew an average of 9.4 percent a year, according to the Confederation of Indian Textile Industry, a trade group. Growth then slipped to 4.9 percent, and in the year ended March, production actually contracted by 0.3 percent.

The biggest blow was the global financial crisis, which dried up credit and forced Americans to cut back on their shopping. Half of India's textile production is for export, and the U.S. is India's largest market, accounting for over 20 percent of exports. In the first two months of this year, textile imports from India were 11.9 percent lower than they were last year, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce.

Declining demand has tightened an already competitive market. Indian companies complain they are at a disadvantage to poorer nations like Bangladesh, which get preferential trade treatment from developed countries.

Africa Bags visits Malawi

An U.S. non profit Africa Bags is planning a trip to Africa to visit the people it helps. Africa Bags employs people in Malawi to make the reusable shopping bags. U. S. volunteers from the non-profit will make a trip to Malawi to bring school supplies and to volunteer at a village school and health clinic.

From The Reporter Herald, writer Sarah Bultema gives us more details about the trip.

This Friday, about 17 members of the community — from families to college students — will meet in Malawi to volunteer in the villages, train more people to make the bags and drop off supplies for schools.

“We wanted to include volunteers who’ve helped us sell bags, to get them over to Malawi and see the problems of poverty and also to see how the project’s been helping,” Petitt said.

During their two weeks in Malawi, one of the poorest countries in the world, the volunteers will help wherever they’re needed, including at a nursery and a crisis care center.

They also will drop off the 1,000 pounds of supplies that were collected in Loveland, including supplies to improve the schools.

And along with lending a hand, the volunteers will see the progress the nonprofit is helping make for the citizens.

In the five villages that participate with the program, many have used the proceeds from the bags to create community funds that help sustain the village. Some of these projects include raising chickens and selling the eggs, starting a garden to feed orphans and offering micro-loans so others can start businesses.

Amnesty International says the rights of the poor have eroded

Amnesty International released their annual report on the state of human rights today. The report claims that the global economic recession has further eroded human rights.

Amnesty points to a couple of ways where the recession has eroded rights. First, in the protests over food prices where governments turned violent on their own people. Second, through the governments spending packages that have helped businesses and banks but not the poor.

From IPS, writer Sanjay Suri gathers some quotes from the Amnesty report.

"The economic crisis is aggravating pre-existing human rights problems such as marginalisation of indigenous peoples, the situation of forced evictions of slum dwellers, and the issue of refugees and migrants," she told IPS in an interview.

"The economic crisis is also throwing up new problems," she said. "We have seen over the last year people turning out on the streets to protest in 17 countries, and when that happened, governments, particularly those of an authoritarian bent, turned on those demonstrations in very harsh ways.

"We have seen people killed in Tunisia, in Cameroon, we have seen the police use excessive force in other places like Egypt, Mali, Senegal. We are seeing more repression coming out of the recession."

Apart from the crackdown on people hit by the recession, Khan said, "some very important human rights problems are not getting the attention and the resources they need. I'm talking about issues like violence against women, and also talking about issues like armed conflicts in Darfur or Somalia or the Congo or Afghanistan or Pakistan."

Governments, she said, "are investing in putting the market straight again. But the market is not going to address human rights problems. When you are going in with an economic recovery package, if you only focus on putting businesses back on their feet, and in putting banks straight, then you miss out on the poor people, and if you don't tackle poverty, then you are not going to have a sustainable economic recovery plan."

The World Bank, she said, had talked about 53 million people being pushed back into poverty as a result of the recession. "Last year the food crisis affected 150 million or so people. That means that all the progress that has been made over the past decade has been wiped away."

Mudflows and floods in Tajikistan

The country of Tajikistan is especially prone to natural disasters. But the people there say the month of May has been especially difficult.

Floods and mudslides have destroyed a good part of the Tajikistan's crops. The weather could put food security at risk if the crops are unable to be replanted.

From the IRIN, we learn more of the costs from the weather in Tajikistan.

Farmers in Tajikistan will have to replant their crops after floods and mudflows damaged up to 40,000 hectares of agricultural land, according to the Ministry of Agriculture.

Tajikistan, which has 860,000 hectares of agricultural land according to the World Resources Institute, is prone to seasonal floods and mudslides. However, local people say the weather this May has been exceptional.

Some 3,000 livestock have perished and many pastures in foothill areas have been flooded, according to the most recent situation report published on 21 May by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

"It's too late for farmers to claim [compensation] for what has been lost and they have been advised by the government to replant," Gabriella Waaijman, an OCHA regional disaster response adviser in Almaty (Kazakhstan), told IRIN.

The government is planning to help farmers replant with original or substitute crops before 1 June. However, the Agriculture Ministry said there was a shortage of fuel and seeds.

According to government estimates, over 2,000 buildings have been destroyed; 40 of the country’s 58 districts (many of which have little agricultural land) have been affected. Khuroson District in Khatlon Province is the worst hit area.

Gleaning from America's farm fields to provide for food banks

A lot of produce is left to sit in the farm fields of America. The marketplace only wants perfect produce, so the fruits and vegetables that have been attacked by a few bugs or are over ripe are left to sit in the fields and are used as compost for next year. But instead of leaving the food there, many food banks have volunteer pickers who salvage the food for the needy.

From this Associated Press story that we found at the Capital Press, reporter
Raquel Maria Dillon spent some time in the fields.

The local gleaning program was started by Salvation Army staffer Maddy Graham to supplement food boxes given to needy families who too often rely on fast food and discount retailers for high-fat, high-sugar foods that can lead to health problems.

The volunteer pickers get financial assistance and a box of oranges in exchange for working once a week.

Negrete said his kids devour the oranges.

"When they're sweet like this, they're better than candy. And better for their teeth," he said in Spanish, wiping sweat from his forehead.

Elsewhere, the Society of St. Andrew, a national gleaning organization, recruits volunteers from churches, scout troops and schools to pick sweet corn in Florida, collards in South Carolina, potatoes in Colorado and apples in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina.

"Fresh produce is expensive and it spoils quickly," spokeswoman Carol Breitinger said. "But fresh fruits and vegetables are essential to people's diets."

The pantries of many food giveaway programs are stocked with packaged goods and caloric filler foods such as pasta because those products are cheap and easy to ship and store, she said.

Meanwhile, perfectly good produce that could balance those offerings sometimes rots in fields because of cosmetic flaws or high shipping costs.

"I can remember going into a cabbage field on the eastern shore of Virginia to pick after the harvest," Breitinger recalled. "There were thousands and thousands of pounds of perfectly good cabbage."

Gleaners step in when community-minded farmers give them the run of their fields after crews of paid pickers have already passed through, or when cosmetic damage caused by pests or weather makes harvesting and shipping the produce a money-losing proposition.

In exchange, farmers get a tax credit and the satisfaction of knowing their hard work didn't go to waste.

Not your usual story about a conference

The 36th International Conference on Global Health started today in Washington, but one of the presenters today had a very unique perspective.

Winston Zulu is a tuberculosis survivor who is also HIV-positive. Zulu's talk was about eradicating tuberculosis to sustain the lives of those who are HIV-positive in Africa. Zulu makes the case that TB damages the immune system and brings those with HIV into AIDS creating a double jeopardy across the continent.

From the Voice of America, reporter Howard Lesser was at the conference to make note of Zulu's remarks.

Zambian-born Winstone Zulu became HIV-positive in 1990 and seven years later contracted tuberculosis. Four of his brothers died from TB, but with careful diagnosis and medication, Zulu survived TB and keeps his HIV in check with a regimen of first-line anti-retroviral drugs (ARV’s). A participant in the Washington conference, he explains that the links between HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis are alarmingly high and require greater international attention.

“It’s very, very important, especially in Africa, where the leading killer of people with HIV is tuberculosis. And basically what that means is that if you see all the statistics that talk about the number of people that have died in Africa from AIDS, and then you factor in TB and say, look, if we would have treated TB, then that would have changed the picture completely. And this is why it doesn’t make any sense to me for anybody in Africa to do AIDS work without putting in TB,” he says.

A growing body of evidence from sub-Saharan Africa points out that coming down with TB severely weakens immune systems and puts the lives of people living with HIV-positive conditions in great jeopardy. Describing himself as a global TB/HIV prescient advocate, Winstone Zulu notes that the unsettling experience of losing four brothers to the same disease is not as uncommon as it may seem in Zambia, where illness frequently claims the lives of multiple siblings within the same family.

Zulu claims it is urgent for healthcare providers to step up treatment and diagnosis of TB.

“I always challenge people and say, look, you can keep people living with HIV alive by treating tuberculosis. And because it’s the leading killer of people living with HIV in Africa, that’s a big achievement,” he observes.

Zulu cites poverty and HIV as the main factors that account for two-thirds of HIV-positive Zambians also suffering from tuberculosis, which readily spreads among people who infect others within a community. Some of the main stumbling blocks in treating TB patients and stopping transmission are inadequate diagnosis and improper medication.

“TB is the only disease that if left untreated, someone can infect 15 others within a year. So treating it also works as a prevention so that others won’t catch it,”

International Red Cross annual report shows increased needs throughout the world

Living amidst a war is unimaginably difficult, but the International Red Cross says that many people living in wars also suffer from natural disasters and high food prices, while the combat is around them.

The International Red Cross released their annual report today. The report says that in 2008 the Red Cross gave out double the amount of food of 2007. Also, the number of refugees that they have helped has increased by six percent.

From the International Red Cross press release that we found at Reuters Alert Net, the Red Cross president makes his point about the effects of war.

Presenting the ICRC's annual report for 2008, the organization's president, Jakob Kellenberger, said: "Afghanistan, Somalia and Pakistan are three examples of countries where natural disasters and high food prices have made life even harder for poor people already struggling to cope with the effects of war." The report shows that ICRC spending hit an all-time high in 2008, rising to over 1 billion Swiss francs.

Africa accounted for 47% of field expenditure, while 20% went to the Middle East.

The increase in expenditure is due to the deteriorating humanitarian situation in many countries, such as Sri Lanka, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Pakistan, but it also reflects improved ICRC access to people affected by wars.

"2008 clearly showed that the ICRC's neutral and independent humanitarian action does bring significant benefits for victims of armed conflicts," said Mr Kellenberger.

"It allows the ICRC to have access to and help people in places others often can't reach.

Notable examples include Iraq, the Sahel region, Somalia and Georgia." The ICRC president deplored the fact that in 2008 untold numbers of civilians continued to suffer either because they were deliberately targeted or because conflict parties failed to distinguish sufficiently between civilians and civilian objects on the one hand, and combatants and military objectives on the other: "Much of this suffering could have been avoided if conflict parties had improved their compliance with international humanitarian law." Looking ahead, the ICRC president said it was hard to predict the exact impact of the global economic crisis on people already made vulnerable by war.

However, he expressed concern that the increase in the number of people living in extreme poverty, rising unemployment worldwide and a significant drop in remittances from migrant workers to their families in conflict areas could have a particularly severe effect on the poorest victims of armed conflicts.

The many struggles of opening an orphanage in Malawi

Instead of settling down to a comfortable retirement, Charamine Paliwoda sold everything and built an orphanage in Malawi. In her efforts to build the orphanage, she encountered many struggles with bureaucratic red tape, and challenges raising money for the children.

From this Edmonton Journal story that we found at Canada.com, reporter Karen Kleiss details some of the difficulty. But the challenges are many more than our small snippet contains, so he encourage you to read the full inspirational story.

After her husband Benny died in 1999, leaving her alone for the first time in her life, she was lost in a house filled with the remains of their 35 years together.

During those decades, dozens of children had lived in their Edmonton home — five of their own, and more than 60 foster kids. She once found Benny watching a World Vision special, and he said if he could have one wish, it would be for every child in the world to have a home, people to love them, food and an education.

After his death, she bought a cabin outside the city, adopted an old dog and took up working in her daughter's convenience store. The neighbourhood kids started calling her grandma.

Then in the summer of 2003, she met a woman at a friend's house and shared a few conversations with her about the possibility of starting an orphanage in Africa.

"We didn't get into any real great lengths about it," she says. "When I decided to go, I thought, that's exactly what Ben wished for. You can't give every child everything, but certainly you can improve the lives of some, and I think he would like that.
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Every day was a struggle to navigate mind-boggling bureaucracy.

When the school opened in a rented room in March 2005, nearly 600 children wanted to register. They had room for 60.

After the school opened, Paliwoda returned to Canada with empty pockets. She'd run up her credit cards, called in debts, tapped her savings to the tune of $80,000, taken money from her retirement fund.

Over the next two years Benny's Hope consumed Paliwoda's days, and both she and Britner travelled back and forth between Edmonton and Njewa to keep the school going.

In Canada, Paliwoda sold her house and put much of the proceeds into Benny's Hope. Paliwoda's older sister, Marilyn Summersgill, became chairwoman of the board, and a small group of volunteers coalesced around her to raise money.

On July 27, 2007, they started building. Chief Njewa gave them land, and village men and women came to clear the brush. Volunteers made bricks. Paliwoda hauled cement bags with the car, two at a time. They had no electricity and few tools; the cement was mixed by hand in holes dug in the ground. From the pile of bricks emerged a three-room schoolhouse with bright white windows and space for a garden in front.

In September 2007, twenty-four women and one man came from Ontario to put the roof on the school, build desks and put up the finishing touches.

The grand opening was held on March 7, 2008.

Video: teens living in the war of Eastern Congo

Medecins Sans Frontieres presents this first installment in a video series called "Suirvive." The series features the voices of teens who are living in the war going on in the Eastern Congo. The first installment introduces us to 14 year old Bahati.

Muhammad Yunus visits a Californian University

A new school for social business is about to open at a Californian State University. Social Business is a concept that Muhammad Yunus began to popularize through his idea of microcredit. Social Business strives to provide benefits to the people to fix social ills instead of maximizing profit.

From the Ventura County Star, reporter Jean Cowden Moore recorded Yunus' visit.

Muhammad Yunus, an economist who received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006, spoke at CSU Channel Islands in Camarillo, which is planning to form an Institute for Social Business. The institute, which could open this winter, would teach and research social business — an increasingly popular business model that promotes social responsibility along with profit.

“It’s a new idea of business,” Yunus said in an interview Monday afternoon. “It’s something they should understand — that business can be done for maximizing social impact.”

Yunus shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Grameen Bank, which he founded in Bangladesh in 1983 to provide small loans to impoverished people, mostly women, so they could start their own businesses. The bank now operates in Bangladesh, Kosovo, Turkey, China, Costa Rica, Guatemala and the United States, among other countries.

The idea behind the CSUCI institute is that business can be motivated not just by profit, but also by corporate responsibility — whether it’s providing services in impoverished rural communities, empowering women or offering on-site day care, said Ashish Vaidya, dean of faculty.

“These ideas are becoming more popular, more discussed around the world,” Vaidya said. “We’re asking, ‘How do we make an impact in the region, as well as from a global perspective?’ ”

Similar institutes, often called the Grameen Creative Lab, have been formed at universities around the world, including Rikkyo University in Tokyo, Glasgow Caledonian University in Scotland and the Asian Institute of Technology in Bangkok, Yunus said. He is not directly involved in CSUCI’s institute but came to answer questions from faculty.

Greater political freedom means less poverty according to Afrobarometer

A research project called Afrobarometer has found that the African countries with the greatest political freedom have less poverty.

Afrobarometer uses a set of questions to gauge social, political and economic trends throughout the continent. The research project will go to 12 to 15 different countries every few years to take their samples.

From Joy Online, Afrobarometer releases what their latest round of samples discovered.

In the latest findings from the surveys, conducted in 18 African countries between 2001 and 2008, the Afrobarometer Network found that those countries in Africa with more political freedom displayed lower levels of poverty.

The survey clearly showed that the more a country expanded political liberties and political rights over a given period, the more it reduced poverty during the same period. Countries like Zambia and Ghana, that have undergone a process of democratisation, have experienced steady poverty reduction, while in Zimbabwe, Senegal and Madagascar, as political freedom has decreased, poverty has steadily increased.
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The survey set out to measure what it called "lived poverty", a tool developed by the Afrobarometer Network, an international consortium of researchers who between them interviewed more than 105,000 Africans in four rounds of surveys between 1999 and 2008.
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The Lived Poverty Index (LPI) is determined according to how frequently people go without five basic necessities (enough food to eat, clean water, medicines or medical treatment, cooking fuel and a cash income).

From public attitude surveys conducted last year, Afrobarometer found that on the whole lived poverty has declined between 2000 and 2008 in Ghana, Lesotho, Malawi, Namibia, South Africa, Cape Verde, Kenya, Mozambique and Zambia. It has remained essentially unchanged in Mali, Benin, Madagascar, Senegal and Tanzania, and has shown sharp increases in Botswana, Nigeria and (up to 2005 when the last survey could be conducted) in Zimbabwe.

In every country, the most commonly reported shortage was a cash income, followed by shortages of medical care, food, clean water and cooking fuel, in that order. The typical African citizen went without a cash income "several times" a year and experienced "just one or two" shortages in food and medical care. The average African "never" went without clean water or home cooking fuel (though just barely).

However the experience of a typical African citizen masks substantial variation across countries. For example, while just over half of all South Africans experienced at least one shortage of cash in the previous 12 months, the figure is as high as nine of every ten Malians, Zimbabweans, Basotho, Burkinabe, Beninois and Senegalese.

Fighting intensifies in Southern Philippines

The Philippine army has stepped up an offensive against a rebel Islamic group in the southern marshlands of the country. The fighting has caused thousands of people to flee their homes and creates an aid and refugee emergency.

From Reuters Alert Net, writer Manny Mogato focuses on the refugee situation as well as effect the fighting has on investment in the region.

The offensive and the refugee problem have further pushed back prospects of peace in the oil and gas-rich marshlands of central Mindanao, leaving it mired in poverty. Officials say the social indicators of the six provinces in the region are the lowest in the Philippines.

Last year, a U.N. report said at least 600,000 people fled their homes in the area, the largest number of internally displaced people anywhere in the world.

The numbers dropped subsequently but have crept back to about 500,000 since early May, local officials say. People are crammed into mosques, schools, public gymnasiums and in makeshift houses.

"We didn't expect the sudden rise in the number of displaced families in the last two weeks," said Mishael Argonza of the U.N. World Food Programme, pointing to lists of families fleeing from their homes and farms in Maguindanao, one of the six provinces.

"We were actually expecting the numbers to come down from about 36,000 families to only about 20,000 families by next month. But, we're seeing more people flocking to our camps and many of them from villages not affected by conflict before."
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Ishak Mastura, an economic adviser to the governor of the Muslim Mindanao region, said the nine-month conflict has not only destroyed the local economy but pushed back any prospect of major investments in the southern Philippines.

"Because of the conflict situation, no investment will come in, no matter how attractive the strategic resources are in the area," he told Reuters.

The 45,000-hectare wetlands in central Mindanao are believed to have huge deposits of oil and gas, while copper and gold are abundant in Mindanao's mountain regions.

"No investor in his right mind will be prepared to deal with the risks, such as the issue of conflict and (the region) being difficult to govern," Mastura said. "The risks are too many and the returns may not be as high."

Dambisa Moyo's argument gains attention and opposition

Dambisa Moyo, the author of "Dead Aid" has been all over the world promoting her book, and her ideas are beginning to gain some attention. In "Dead Aid" she claims that international aid and assistance has hurt Africa more than helped it. Moyo's position is that aid has led to corrupt governments and has kept the African people from finding solutions to their own problems or be self sustaining.

From the Financial Times, writer William Wallis details some of the opposisition to her book.

It has been easy for critics to poke holes in both her analysis and her solutions. The book does not establish in any scientific way the link between the hundreds of billions of dollars poured into Africa over decades and the poor performance of economies. It also studiously ignores evidence of development assistance working. Kevin Watkins, director of the United Nations' human development report office, says it is the equivalent of "blaming the fire engine because it is near the fire".

International capital markets have meanwhile become punitively expensive places for poor countries to borrow - hardly the solution now.

But the book is only part of the challenge Ms Moyo poses for an industry accustomed to having all the most vocal campaigners on its side. Her ideas are now proliferating across the internet on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube and on countless blogs. She has been interviewed or reviewed by practically every mainstream western media organisation.

Nor is she popular only among aid critics and cash-strapped governments in the west. She has energised many fellow Africans to join in the debate.

Panicked at the prospect that her ideas are gaining traction, Jeffrey Sachs, the US academic and aid advocate, accused her of endangering lives. Ms Moyo's ideas, he said, were "absolutely pernicious, and could lead to the deaths of millions of people".

Rock star Bob Geldof's aid advocacy organisation, One, has also been mobilising opp-osition to her message. However, an e-mail campaign by a One activist encouraging African NGOs to stand up to her arguments at least partially backfired.

"If Africans feel strongly against her ideas then they should not need to be 'mobilised' by your organisation. More effective would be to open fora for debate where differences of opinion are welcome," responded Iris Mwanza of the Centre for Infectious Disease Research in Zambia.

A story about Vietnamese school children

Oxfam activist Izzy Bensaad had a chance to write an opinion piece for the U.K. Newspaper the Edinburgh Evening News. In his commentary, Bensaad appeals to the British government for more funding for international aid and development. As an example on how international aid can help, Bensaad relates this story told to him from an Oxfam worker in Vietnam.

I had a timely reminder of that this week, just before yesterday's Department for International Development's white paper consultation. I met Trang, a Vietnamese programme officer working with Oxfam in his country.

Trang told me about the school in the area where he works and what children have to do to get any sort of education.

For a child to go to school they must set off on their journey in the early morning to begin a minimum trek of two hours.

There are no cafeterias so no-one can complain about sloppy school dinners; children take a bag of rice to sustain them during the long day of staring at the poorly qualified teacher dictating words at the packed rows of desks, in a dialect which is foreign to them.

Trang told me of the poverty that disables his community every day.

What struck me most was the perpetual cycle of need caused by the lack of education: 72 million children in developing countries have no education, more than two in every three of them girls.

These children may never learn the skills that represent their best chance of escaping poverty.

We have the power to change this. With Oxfam's support the school Trang told me about has changed. It has a kitchen, local assistant teachers that can help overcome language barriers, a better learning environment and they are working with the DFID to improve the methodology of teaching practice.

CEO of Heifer Foundation resigns

The CEO for the Heifer Foundation has resigned due to an investigation of plagiarism and copyright infringement. Janet Ginn submitted her resignation to Heifer's board of trustees.

Ginn wrote a book called "Circle of Giving" in 2006 which was published by the now defunct Eudora Press.

From North West Arkansas News, Samantha Friedman gathers together what little details are being released on this story.

"As a leading global philanthropic organization, Heifer Foundation must conduct itself with the utmost integrity," board chairman Ronald McLean said in the statement. "Whether true or not, we cannot allow allegations of improper conduct to distract from the life-changing work of the Heifer organization, our people and our generous donors."

McLean, of Chesapeake, Va., declined to comment further.

Ginn didn't return a message left on her home phone seeking comment about the board's decision.

Greg Spradlin, foundation spokesman, wouldn't describe the details of the allegations or of an investigation into the allegations.

The board of Heifer International, a hunger-relief charity based in Little Rock, established the foundation in 1990. The entities are legally separate and each conducts its own fundraising, said Heifer International spokesman Tina Hall.

"The purpose was to build an endowment, and the endowment would provide ongoing support for Heifer's work," Hall said. "The purpose of our fundraising [at Heifer International] is to support our projects in our country-program offices and to help lift people out of poverty. We provide the livestock training and related services to smallscale farmers and communities worldwide."

Because of the foundation's independent nature, Hall said, the reasons for Ginn's departure shouldn't affect Heifer's work or donors' loyalty, a point echoed by Spradlin.

"I think that the donors will understand because they're really supportive of the overall mission of Heifer International and their work around the world, and that's really their commitment," Spradlin said. "We've reached out to several of our donors to give them courtesy calls to let them know."

Ginn was named chief executive in 2001. In 1998, she began working at the foundation as vice president of marketing.

Canada again chooses not to give 0.7% GNP to development aid

The Canadian government announced yesterday that they will keep funding levels the same for international development aid. Despite receiving much criticism for not increasing the amount of aid, Canada says they will work to make their aid dollars more effective.

Activists wanted Canada to increase spending of aid to 0.7% of it's gross domestic product, which is the amount they say is needed from the developed world to effectively remove poverty.

From Canada's Financial Post, writer Mike Blanchfield attended the press conference that made the announcement.

International Co-operation Minister Bev Oda announced Wednesday a new set of foreign aid spending priorities — but no new money — as she took a swipe at celebrity activists such as U2's Bono and fellow rock singer Bob Geldof, the organizer of Live Aid African poverty relief concerts.

"What I will talk about is not something that aims to please Irish rock stars," Oda said off the top of a major policy speech at the University of Toronto.

Oda appeared determined to head off criticism of the absence of any increase in foreign aid spending or a commitment to increase Canada's approximately $4 billion in foreign aid to meet the United Nations target of 0.7 per cent of GDP.

Canada's rate stands at about 0.35 per cent of GDP, and that shortfall has put both the ruling Conservatives and their Liberal predecessors in the crosshairs of high-profile, anti-poverty celebrity activists such as Bono and Geldof.

Oda said the Conservative government's focus would be to make Canada's aid spending more accountable at a time of great economic hardship across the globe.

The Canadian International Development Agency will now focus on three core policy priorities: increasing food security, stimulating sustainable growth and alleviating problems that affect children and youth.

A new feature will require CIDA to table an annual Development for Results report in Parliament "that will show Canadians how their tax dollars are making a difference."

World Vision president Rich Stearns on working with the U.S President

The head of the world's largest Christian charitable organization is now a part of the Faith Based Initiative in the White House. Rich Stearns of World Vision was asked by Barack Obama to join a council to advise him on the Faith Based program.

In this interview that we found at the Federal Way Mirror, reporter Andy Hobbs asked Rich Stearns about his work for the President.

Mirror: How do you see your role on the advisory council, and how do you see World Vision's role changing or growing?

Rich Stearns: A lot of this remains to be seen. What President Obama has said is that he wants this council, which is very diverse, to dig into four issues. Those four issues are making abortions less frequent in America; number two is assisting in the economic recovery — how can faith-based and neighborhood organizations assist in the economic recovery because in a time like this, more people are homeless, the food banks need more food, the soup kitchens need to serve more meals. Even things like drug addiction programs become more important as people are driven into economic dire straits.

Number three is responsible fatherhood, which includes things like how do we reduce teenage pregnancies and how do we strengthen families, especially for the poor. President Obama's got a particular penchant for that, I think because he sees the problem with intact families and fathers in the African American community in particular.

The fourth is a kind of a broad international religious cooperation and understanding.

What do you mean?

To say it a different way, how can faith-based organizations better promote international religious harmony? There's one task force of the council that will be focused on interfaith religious dialogue. There's another task force that will be focused on international development in the world of faith-based organizations in what we do, relief and development.

How will Obama's approach to faith-based partnerships and initiatives compare to George W. Bush's along those lines? Do you see any differences or similarities?

I think in some ways it's continuing. When President Bush announced his faith-based initiative, one of his goals was to — he called it leveling the playing field, so that faith-based organizations could compete for government grants on a level playing field with non-faith-based organizations. In many places in government, faith-based organizations were either not welcome, or the red tape was such that it was really too difficult for faith-based organizations to get their act together to apply for grants because they required quite a bit of administrative red tape — difficult for small organizations in particular to fill out all the forms and comply with all the reporting requirements.

Initially it was to look at every department of the government and say: Are you friendly to faith-based organizations, and do they have a legitimate opportunity to partner with the government and receive government grants?

So I think President Obama wants to continue that part of it. When we met with him in the Oval Office, he said something like this: I was a community organizer in Chicago in the neighborhoods, and he said, I saw the effectiveness of local and faith-based organizations. And he said, you were the folks who always took care of folks who fell through the cracks. And he said, you didn't care whether they were Muslim, Christian, Atheist, Jewish — if they needed help, you were there to help them. And he said that's what makes America strong, the vitality of our faith communities, the vitality of our neighborhood organizations. He said, I want to support that, I want to help that, I don't want to hinder it. Because it's kind of the safety net below the safety net.

So I think he's sincere about how we help faith-based organizations be more successful in the delivery of social services. How can the government facilitate that? It's not always monetary. There are probably other ways the government could facilitate partnerships. It might be something like allowing access to some of the public schools or the prisons. There are things for the government to facilitate partnerships that don't involve money, maybe just lowering barriers and giving access to faith-based and neighborhood organizations.

The Family Independence Initiative of San Francisco

Despite a tight budget, San Francisco's mayor Gavin Newsom plans on expanding a cash transfer program that helps families in poverty. The Family Independence Initiative gives money to families who improve their lives through education, health or savings.

From this KGO story, reporter Carolyn Tyler describes how the program works.

The child slaves who were once used in camel races

Even though they now use robots, the United Arab Emirates trafficked in children to use in camel races. The children were used as jockeys because of their light weight and were in slavery to the camel owners.

The UAE is paying reparations to the children formerly used in the races. Some 879 children from Bangladesh, Sudan and Pakistan will receive a share of 1.45 million dollars.

From Al Jazerra, writer Nicolas Haque profiles one of the former jockeys, Shameen Miah

Shameem was just three years old when he travelled to the Gulf state of Dubai.

Lured by the promise of a better life, his family says they sold all of their land and belongings, even going into debt, in order to pay for the move.

His father says he paid $4,500 dollars to migrant traffickers who had promised him gainful employment in the UAE. The traffickers had arranged for the children to work as well.

On arrival in Dubai, Shameem and his two brothers - then aged five and six - were separated from their parents to take part in camel races.

A toddler, Shameem had only just learnt to walk when he was first sat upon a camel's back.

"I used to be so scared of the camels, at the beginning I would fall off the camels all the time," Shameem says.

His brother Muna says that Shameem was so small that he had to be strapped on to the camel.

'Deliberately starved'

Their terrified screams allegedly drove the camels to race even faster, much to the satisfaction of the camel owners.

Prized for their light weight, child jockeys tell of being deliberately starved, often going days without food, in order to keep them below 20 kilos.

"The camel owners would weigh us, if we ate too much, they would give us electrical shocks. I was so scared of them, I remember, if I would lose a race they would beat us," Shameem says.

To this day, Shameem still bears the scars of five years of abuse by his employer, and countless falls. Many other child jockeys, however, have suffered much worse, sustaining life long injuries from being trampled under the charging camels.

Some are known to have died.

Creating Chalk Art for World Vision

As a fundraiser for World Vision, students from Mariner High School in Everett, Washington created art to show faces of poverty. The students created chalk drawings that shows to fellow students the plight of children in the under developed world.

From the Herald, writer Eric Stevick watched the students create the artwork.

The images of children from Third World countries stare up from the concrete sidewalks in front of Mariner High School.

Drawn in chalk in bright shades of yellow, red and blue, they will fade with the next rainfall.

In some ways, the fleeting dust portraits are an apt medium to tell stories of children from Sudan, Rwanda, Cambodia and other countries ravaged by conflict, hunger and subsistence living. Chances are they, too, will have short lives.

"We are trying to get through to them that poverty exists well beyond the U.S. borders," said Clayte Huber, a Mariner social studies teacher.

The project, which has been done over one day each spring for the last three years, teams up senior social studies students who do research with fine arts students who craft the drawings on their hands and knees. Mariner also is collecting money this week that will be donated to World Vision, an international relief organization.

Armed with blueprints and grids, Tana McKenna, Lia Sagun, Liliya Leonchyk and Brittaney Rizzo re-created a photo of a 6-year-old Cambodian girl who helps her family scavenge for food.

Minutes of reflection turned to hours hunched over their portraits.

McKenna, a senior, said she hopes it will make her schoolmates pause.

"When you look down, it's a good opportunity to think about others," she said.

A good bee sting analogy

At a conference in Alberta writer Charles Karelis gave a pretty good analogy for living poor. From the Calgary Herald reporter Jason Markusoff made note of the analogy and Karelis idea of tax credits.

Charles Karelis likens poverty to getting one bee sting on your hand and five on your torso.

If somebody offered to sell you a dab of salve for the hand sting, would you bother buying it?

"Getting rid of the sting on your hand would be like quieting a shout in a riot. It won't make much difference," the U. S. philosopher and author on poverty said Wednesday.

The troubles of poverty, like stings, add up, and make small relief efforts not worthwhile, Karelis explained to the Canadian Social Forum.

"Just as it is rational to pay very little for one dab when you have six stings, it may be rational for the poor person to work very little to relieve one of her troubles when she still has much more."

The three-day forum, the first of its kind in Canada, brought together several hundred social-agency workers, provincial and local government officials, academics, business figures and advocates from towns and cities throughout Canada to share strategies on reducing poverty.

Karelis recommended government tax credits or supplements that would add to low-income workers' wages, a tactic he suggested is a better incentive than ordinary strings-attached welfare policies.

"It raises work motivation by making non-work more expensive,"said the author of The Persistence of Poverty:Why the Economics of the Well-Off Can't Help the Poor.

A wrap-up of the World Agriculture Forum

The World Agricultural Forum took place in St. Louis, Missouri this week. The topics at the forum had a lot to do with Africa, ranging from famine deaths, to the amount of agricultural aid to biotech seeds.

From this Reuters article that we found at Vision, author Christine Stebbins tells us how the forum addressed the need for political stability in sub-Saharan Africa.

"Investment is not going to flow into unstable areas. It is not going to flow into poorly governed areas no matter what the natural resource space is -- it's just not going to happen," J.B. Penn, chief economist with equipment maker John Deere and former USDA economist, told a round-table at the World Agricultural Forum here this week.

"First and foremost, we've got to get the political system right. Then investment will follow. With the investment comes the technology," Penn said.

Africa, as it has for decades in the post-World War Two independence era, continues to be the leading destination for world food aid shipments but also for deaths from famine.

Political chaos in Zimbabwe that turned the nation from a grain exporter to a hunger crisis is often cited by investors.

"Particularly at risk of widespread famine are over a dozen so-called "left-behind" countries, almost all in sub-Saharan Africa, that feature severe and increasing natural resources constraints coupled with high population growth and limited nonagricultural income possibilities," the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations said on May 4.

With the recession in rich countries, there are few fresh infusions of investment capital flowing into Africa, with much of the recent investment coming from private foundations funded by Bill and Melinda Gates, Warren Buffett and the Rockefellers, experts say.

Gary Blumenthal, chief executive of agricultural consultancy World Perspectives, told the forum: "Only 10 percent of all foreign direct investment around the world went into the food category. If you look at agricultural production, it was 0.006 percent."

Investment to transport grains and livestock and improve water and irrigation are key to Africa progress, experts said.

How to truly fight al-Qaeda

In his latest commentary, Jeffrey Sachs explains how a peaceful foreign policy is preferable to a violent one. Especially in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where development could do a lot more to defeat al-Qaeda than doubling military force.

We found the commentary in Today's Zaman from Turkey. Although it's not included in our snippet, Sachs also has stats on military spending compared to other areas of spending in the U.S. budget.

American foreign policy has failed in recent years mainly because the United States relied on military force to address problems that demand development assistance and diplomacy.

Young men become fighters in places like Sudan, Somalia, Pakistan and Afghanistan because they lack gainful employment. Extreme ideologies influence people when they can't feed their families and when lack of access to family planning leads to an unwanted population explosion. US President Barack Obama has raised hopes for a new strategy, but so far the forces of continuity in US policy are dominating the forces of change.
...

Both Afghanistan and the neighboring provinces of Pakistan are impoverished regions, with vast unemployment, bulging youth populations, prolonged droughts, widespread hunger and pervasive economic deprivation. It is easy for the Taliban and al-Qaeda to mobilize fighters under such conditions.

The problem is that a US military response is essentially useless under these conditions and can easily inflame the situation rather than resolve it. Among other problems, the US relies heavily on drones and bombers, leading to a high civilian death toll, which is inflaming public attitudes against the US. After one recent disaster, in which more than 100 civilians died, the Pentagon immediately insisted that such bombing operations would continue. A recent survey showed overwhelming Pakistani opposition to US military incursions into their country.

Obama is doubling down in Afghanistan, by raising the number of US troops from 38,000 to 68,000 and perhaps more later. There are also risks that the US will get involved much more heavily in the fighting in Pakistan. The new US commanding general in Afghanistan is reportedly a specialist in “counter-insurgency,” which could well involve surreptitious engagement by US operatives in Pakistan. If so, the results could prove catastrophic, leading to a spreading war in an unstable country of 180 million people.

What is disconcerting, however, is not only the relentless financing and spread of war, but also the lack of an alternative US strategy. Obama and his top advisers have spoken regularly about the need to address the underlying sources of conflict, including poverty and unemployment. A few billion dollars has been recommended to fund economic aid for Afghanistan and Pakistan. But this remains a small amount compared to military outlays, and an overarching framework to support economic development is missing.

Before investing hundreds of billions of dollars more in failing military operations, the Obama administration should rethink its policy and lay out a viable strategy to US citizens and the world. It's high time for a strategy of peace through sustainable development -- including investments in health, education, livelihoods, water and sanitation and irrigation -- in today's hotspots, starting with Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Such a strategy cannot simply emerge as a byproduct of US military campaigns. Rather, it will have to be developed proactively, with a sense of urgency and in close partnership with the affected countries and the communities within them. A shift in focus to economic development will save a vast number of lives and convert the unthinkably large economic costs of war into economic benefits through development. Obama must act before today's crisis explodes into an even larger disaster.

Creating human trafficking laws in South Africa

South Africa has never had any laws on human trafficking. Now the government has created a commission to form new laws to combat this social ill.

From the Independent On Line, we read how the absence of a law made the policing of human trafficking in South Africa difficult.

Until now, human traffickers could only be charged with kidnapping, or, when relevant, assault and murder.

Women and children are most vulnerable, most often being used in prostitution rackets.

South Africa is party, however, to the UN's protocol to prevent, suppress and punish trafficking in persons, especially women and children, and is therefore required to enact appropriate legislation.

A human rights activist and executive board member of the Southern Africa Network against Trafficking and the Abuse of Children (Santac), Vusi Ndukuya, welcomed the bill.

"It is often very difficult to prosecute traffickers because trafficking in persons itself is a very complex issue involving different actions and the involvement of different people," Ndukuya said.

Ndukuya said that one example of the complexity of the issue was the recent case of three children from Mozambique who were transported from Mozambique to South Africa while lying drugged on the back seat of a car.

"Would this be considered a case of trafficking or kidnapping?" asked Ndukuya.

The children were taken through the border illegally, but managed to escape once they had reached South Africa.

The poor in the U.S. give more than the rich

It has been discovered that the poor in the U.S. give more of their money to charity than the rich. A new study from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics' has found that the poor give a greater percentage of their money than any other income bracket. This study also confirms that women give more than men, and older Americans give more than the young.

From this McClatchy Newspapers story, writer Frank Greve profiles on such poor giver.

When Jody Richards saw a homeless man begging outside a downtown McDonald's recently, he bought the man a cheeseburger. There's nothing unusual about that, except that Richards is homeless, too, and the 99-cent cheeseburger was an outsized chunk of the $9.50 he'd earned that day from panhandling.

The generosity of poor people isn't so much rare as rarely noticed, however. In fact, America's poor donate more, in percentage terms, than higher-income groups do, surveys of charitable giving show. What's more, their generosity declines less in hard times than the generosity of richer givers does.

"The lowest-income fifth (of the population) always give at more than their capacity," said Virginia Hodgkinson, former vice president for research at Independent Sector, a Washington-based association of major nonprofit agencies. "The next two-fifths give at capacity, and those above that are capable of giving two or three times more than they give."

Indeed, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics' latest survey of consumer expenditure found that the poorest fifth of America's households contributed an average of 4.3 percent of their incomes to charitable organizations in 2007. The richest fifth gave at less than half that rate, 2.1 percent.

The figures probably undercount remittances by legal and illegal immigrants to family and friends back home, a multibillion-dollar outlay to which the poor contribute disproportionally.

None of the middle fifths of America's households, in contrast, gave away as much as 3 percent of their incomes.

"As a rule, people who have money don't know people in need," saId Tanya Davis, 40, a laid-off security guard and single mother.

Certainly, better-off people aren't hit up by friends and kin as often as Davis said she was, having earned a reputation for generosity while she was working.

Now getting by on $110 a week in unemployment insurance and $314 a month in welfare, Davis still fields two or three appeals a week, she said, and lays out $5 or $10 weekly.

To explain her giving, Davis offered the two reasons most commonly heard in three days of conversations with low-income donors:

"I believe that the more I give, the more I receive, and that God loves a cheerful giver," Davis said. "Plus I've been in their position, and someday I might be again."

Mass rapes continue in Liberia

Despite ending over five years ago, one ugly thing from the civil war in Liberia remains; mass rapes. Occurring regularly during the war, the men who were desensitized to it, continue to rape young women during peace time.

From this op-ed piece in the New York Times, Nicholas Kristof visited Liberia to explore the problem.

In modern times, we’ve seen mass rape as an element of warfare in Congo, Darfur, Bosnia, Rwanda, Liberia — but the lesson here in Liberia in West Africa is that even when the fighting ends, the rape continues. And that brings us to Jackie, a lovely 7-year-old with tight braids and watchful eyes.

Jackie is too young to remember the 14-year civil war in Liberia, from 1989 to 2003, when as many as three-fourths of women were raped. Jackie’s world is one of a bustling, recovering Liberia with a free press and democratically elected leaders.

Yet somehow mass rape survived the end of the war; it has been easier to get men to relinquish their guns than their sense of sexual entitlement. So the security guard at Jackie’s school, a man in his 50s, took the little girl to the beach where, she said, he stripped her and raped her. Finally, he ran off as she lay bleeding and sobbing on the sand.

“I couldn’t walk well, so they took me to hospital,” Jackie told me. It was worse than that: She was hemorrhaging, and the hospital couldn’t stop it. So Jackie was rushed in critical condition to Monrovia’s largest hospital, where she spent weeks recovering.

Jackie is now in a shelter for survivors of sexual violence — and what staggered me is that so many of the girls are pre-teens. A 3-year-old survivor has just moved out, but Jackie jumps rope with girls aged 8 to 11.

Of course, children are raped everywhere, but what is happening in Liberia is different. The war seems to have shattered norms and trained some men to think that when they want sex, they need simply to overpower a girl. Or at school, girls sometimes find that to get good grades, they must have sex with their teachers.

“Rape is a scar that the war left behind,” said Dixon Jlateh, an officer in the national police unit dealing with sexual violence. “Sexual violence is a direct product of the war.”

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The Mochileros of Peru, transporting drugs to escape poverty

In the mountains of Peru, 92 percent of the people live in poverty. With no legal work available young boys often take to transporting coca to the city of Lima. The trek takes the young men through the mountains, where danger and bandits await them.

As found in the Taiwan News, writer Hugo Nedd from Agence France-Press tells us the mochileros story.

They are called "mochileros," or backpackers, many of them mere children, but in the dense jungles of southeast Peru they play a vital role, ferrying drugs on their backs to the outside world.

Traveling the most remote trails at night, this virtually invisible army is recruited from youths with no other way out of the poverty and neglect of the country's coca producing lowlands, experts say.

In the valley between the Apurimac and Ene Rivers, mochileros carry out coca - which is used to produce cocaine - by foot to the Andean highlands and from there to Lima in arduous, danger-filled treks aimed at satisfying the world's demand for the drug.

They travel armed and in groups, sometimes under the protection of Shining Path guerrillas, members of the Maoist group that waged a brutal insurgency in the country.

They can make up to US$150 apiece per trip, but the risks are enormous, with the army on the prowl or bandits laying in wait.

Peru's army chief General Otto Guivobich says "the mochileros don't travel alone but in groups, with the protection that the Shining Path gives them," and acknowledges they are hard to find.

In 2008, the commander of a military operation "encountered a column of mochileros of some 15 armed men, and there was a clash," he said. Seven mochileros were killed and seven firearms were captured, he said.

"Youths who have no secondary school education, seeing that their only option for continuing to study is in Ayacucho or Lima and what that costs, turn to the coca trade and end up as mochileros," said Edgar Licra, governor of the municipality of Llochegua.

In Andean communities, the mochileros are referred to as "the people who walk in the heights," a description also used to refer to the Shining Path.

"You travel at night on the paths that climb the sierra. Sometimes 30 or 40 mochileros will go. For security reasons, the minimum number is ten, with an armed guide and one who guards the rear," a former mochilero said.

The man, who would not give his name or say how he made a living, said he was 24 but had the weather-beaten look of an older man.

"In the group I knew each mochilero was allowed to carry no more than 10 kg for long trips of two or three days. Some asked to carry more to make more money, but they would not let them because they needed to walk quickly," he said.

Why you can't afford to be poor

The poor have to deal with more wastes of time, wastes of their own money, stress and exhaustion than those who are well off. A really good Washington Post story that we found at the Seattle Times, illustrates many of the ways that the poor 'pay' more than the comfortable.

In our snippet, writer DeNeen L. Brown shows us the added costs of laundry and establishing credit.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, more than 37 million people live below the poverty line. The poor know these facts of life. These facts become their lives.

Time is money, they say, and the poor pay more in time, too.

If you are poor, you don't have the luxury of throwing a load into the washer and then taking your morning jog. You wait until Monday, when the laundromat is most likely to be empty, and you load a cart with laundry from four children and drag it to the corner.

"If I had my choice, I would have a washer and a dryer," Nya Oti, 37, said at a Washington, D.C., laundromat. The four loads will take the food-service worker about two hours.

The poor also pay more in hassle: calls from bill collectors, the landlord, the utility company. So they spend money on caller identification because it gives them peace of mind.

The rich have direct deposit for their paychecks. The poor have check-cashing and payday-loan joints, which cost time and money. Payday-loan companies say they are providing an essential service. Critics say these companies prey on people who are the most "economically vulnerable."

"As you've seen with the financial-services industry, if people can cut a profit, they do it," Blumenauer said. "The poor pay more for financial services. A lot of people who are 'unbanked' pay $3 for a money order to pay their electric bill. They pay a 2 percent check-cashing fee because they don't have bank services. The reasons? Part of it is lack of education. But part of it is because people target them. There is evidence that credit-card mills have recently started trolling for the poor. They are targeting the recently bankrupt."

An angry Lenwood Brooks walks out of a check-cashing place in Washington, D.C. "They charged me $15 to cash a $300 check," he says.

Why didn't he go to a bank? He says he lost his driver's license and now his regular bank "won't recognize me as a human. That's why I had to come here. It's a rip-off, but it's like a convenience store. You pay for the convenience."

Then there's credit. The poor don't have it. What they had was a place like First Cash Advance in Washington. Through bulletproof glass, a cashier explained what you needed to get an advance on your paycheck — a pay stub, a legitimate ID, a checkbook. This meant you're doing well enough to have a checking account, but you're still poor.

If you qualify, the fee for borrowing $300 is $46.50.

That was not for a year — it's for seven days, although terms can vary. In effect, the annual percentage rate on your $300 payday loan is 806 percent.

IMF asks for more help for Africa

The economy throughout Africa was growing at six percent a year, that is until the global recession started. Now, the International Monetary Fund fears that Africa may see no growth at all until well after the recession is over.

From the BBC, we hear more of the IMF plea to the international community.

The IMF said that Africa would need at least the doubling of aid promised at the Gleneagles summit in 2005.

"Without additional support, poverty reduction and economic development in Africa could be set back several years and political stability might be endangered in some countries," it said.

In addition, the IMF is planning to lend an additional $6bn (£4bn) to African countries at low interest rates over the next two to three years, after the G20 increased its resources at the London summit in April.

The IMF said it was also making its lending programmes more flexible, streamlining its programmes and making the conditions for lending less tough.

"Fiscal targets have been loosened in 80% of African countries," it said, "giving them more breathing space to deal with the crisis."

The IMF is now providing emergency support to a growing number of African countries, but it warned that more help was needed.

"The IMF cannot stand alone. To help countries weather this storm, all development partners need to follow through," Mr Strauss-Kahn said.

Human trafficking in the United States

A long time human trafficking activist worked throughout the world to battle the problem. But recently Pam Strickland was surprised to find that the problem exists in the US as well.

From the Daily Advance, reporter Kim Grizzard writes more about this modern day slavery that is taking place right here in the US

A year ago, a Farmville woman set out to tell people here that human trafficking exists in the world. On Tuesday, she said that what has been recognized as a global problem also may be a local one.

Pam Strickland told dozens of people meeting as part of a newly formed community action group to combat human trafficking that the local area may now be affected by the world’s fastest-growing criminal enterprise. Described by the U.S. Department of State as a present-day form of slavery, human trafficking exploits people — mostly women and children — forcing them into prostitution or slave labor.

“This is not just an international problem,” said Strickland, community ambassador for Eastern North Carolina Stop Human Trafficking Now. “It exists in the United States and North Carolina.

“We don’t know the scope of the problem in Pitt County because there’s been no one attempting to assess it.”

That is changing, largely due to recent efforts by the Pitt County Sheriff’s Office. Through a U.S. Department of Justice grant, local law enforcement has received nearly half a million dollars to determine the extent of trafficking and how to stop it. The local law enforcement taskforce is one of about a dozen nationwide dedicated to human trafficking.

Leading the effort is Detective Chauncey Congleton, a 15-year law enforcement veteran. Congleton is in charge of a task force that is working to not only enforce the law but to educate r law enforcement officials about human trafficking.

“It’s the fastest growing crime in the world,” Congleton said. “It’s the biggest civil rights violation there is. It’s modern-day slavery.”

Congleton, who spent a decade as a narcotics investigator, said his recent training with the San Jose, Calif., police department’s human trafficking division has helped make him more sensitive to the signs of human trafficking.

Care International vs the Ugandan government in microcredit services

The government of Uganda operates a microcredit program called the Savings and Credit Cooperative Organisations or SCCO's. The government lends money to each local SCCO at 9%, while the local lends out money to the people of Uganda at either 9 or 13 percent interest.

However, another service is operated by Care International which uses a savings and loan style to serve Ugandans. The service from Care has become more popular in some villages do to charges of corruption within the SCCO's. Also, some politicians are using the program as a political tool.

In the latest entry from The Guardian's Katine project, Joseph Malinga tells us about the problem with the SCCO's and why people are using Care International's service instead.

In Uganda, the success of the SACCO programme has been mixed. While the scheme appears to have been successful in western and central Uganda, it has faired less well in the east and north. And the programme has been tainted by corruption, with people's savings being embezzled with impunity.

Each sub-county is expected to have at least one SACCO that would be supported by government through the Uganda Cooperatives Savings and Credit Cooperative Union (UCSUC), the body mandated to oversee the success of the programme.

There is a SACCO in Katine, with a membership of 336, but any benefit of the programme, introduced two years ago, has yet to be fully realised in the sub-county.

It has been claimed that sub-county officials have failed to mobilise residents to benefit from the programme.

The chairman of Katine's SACCO, Sam Emolu, says: "We have a membership fee of Shs 2m, but without savings or anyone coming to borrow, our money is just redundant in the bank."
...

But Katine residents have embraced the village savings and loans associations (VSLAs) that have been introduced in sub-county as part of the Katine project, supervised by the NGO Care International.

The VSLAs are more affordable and residents have more control over their contributions. While SACCOs charge a registration fee of Shs 2,000 ($0.90) and Shs 5,000 for membership, VSLAs charge Shs 200 as a "disaster fee" (the money goes into a fund that can be accessed for emergencies) and Shs 500 for shares. A resident can buy as many shares as they want. Interest rates are high, at 10%.

Cornelius Onaba, the chairman of Emorikikons VSLA, in Olochoi village in Katine parish, says SACCOs are not suitable for the poor.

He says SACCOs exclude of the very needy who cannot afford to pay the fees. He said his VSLA group of 30 members has so far collected Shs 1.2m and all members are responsible for the security of their money.

"The keys to our safe [where money is kept] are with three people, while the box itself is with another person - so by the time you think of stealing, you really need to convince many people. Even then, we do not encourage money to be redundant. We try as much as possible to see that members borrow money and use it for development," he said.

Book Review: comparing two different microcredit programs

The Grameen Bank set the model for microlending. As microcredit banks began in other countries, some have changed the model as they see fit, or to better fit the values of the country the bank will operate in.

Oxford University Press has published a book that compares the models between the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh to the Kashf Bank in Pakistan. Padmini Swaminathan of The Hindu writes this review of Nabiha Syed's work Replicating Dreams.

The book begins on a very promising note by mapping the contours and elements of what constitutes the famed Grameen Solidarity Group Lending Model and its adaptation by Pakistan’s Kashf Foundation. Following the Grameen model, Kashf requires five women to form a peer group in order to obtain a loan. These groups are entirely self-selected, as in the Grameen system, and all five women must live in close proximity to one another and must not be blood relations.

In a notable deviation from the Grameen example, all Kashf borrowers must be married. “The rationale is that unmarried women are prone to moving out of a geographical location after marriage, and moving implicitly indicates loan default.” But, as the author notes, the exclusion of unmarried women means denial of opportunity for single women to build up enough capital and acquire self-sufficiency that could give them a certain amount of economic bargaining power while entering into a marriage contract.

Further, given the conditions within which a bulk of the women in Pakistan have to function, Kashf specifically permits women to obtain loans on behalf of their husbands. “This approach was designed to overcome possible objections to the economic activities and advancement of potential participants.” A little later, the author explicates this point in a different way: “… a chauvinistic society will not tolerate a programme promoting financial independence of women on any other terms but its own.”

Kashf claims that in allowing women to borrow on behalf of men the entire family unit is enabled to get strengthened because the process entails joint family decision-making. Moreover, and this is a striking observation, micro-credit programmes require significant time commitments on a weekly basis and that, in turn, impinge on time that can be accorded to household labour. If the ‘double-bottom’ line of micro-credit, namely women’s empowerment and financial advancement, is to be ensured then, according to Kashf, men need to be included in the process to allay apprehensions of female takeover of hitherto male-dominated space.

Kashf’s own internal audit of its lending programme in 2001 revealed high attrition rates,with much of the attrition resulting from “client expulsion for poor performance rather than from them opting to leave”. An examination of the reasons for differential performance of the programme in Bangladesh and Pakistan brought out, among other things, the fact that institutional differences accounted for much of the disparity in success levels. For example, the author notes, the areas in which Kashf operates are still heavily under feudal control, which militates against any attempt (such as individual entrepreneurship or financial independence) that is even remotely perceived as a threat to its system of organised subordination and hierarchy. “The entry of an institution which encourages individual economic growth, self-empowerment and self-employment and at the same time denies landlords income derived from informal credit offerings would obviously not be welcomed by the feudals.”

The human trafficking trade along the North East Indian border

The border along North East India is largely open and unmanned, so a human trafficking trade exists there without much enforcement against it. Young women are taken across the border to work in brothels for forced sex labor. While boys can be taken to work in coal mines for slave labor. Sex labor victims can be sold for as much as 600 US dollars.

Hasina Kharbhih works for Impulse NGO Network and has done some study into the human trafficking along the border. An summary of an interview with Kharbhih was printed in The Mouring Express. In our snippet, we read an explanation from Kharbhih on why the border is a popular place for taking children.

On the reason the North East remains a hot-spot for human trafficking, Hasina points out that the region shared many international borders, most of which are open and unmanned and these points provided an easy passage in and out of India for organized human trafficking syndicates to operate undetected. She also informed that Nepalese girls have long been in demand, owing to their fair complexion and oriental features. However, greater awareness and networking among Nepalese communities has forced traffickers to turn to alternative sources. Hasina disclosed that the solution has been to target north-eastern girls as there are close physical similarities and the greater socio-political climates are conducive.

Hasina also pointed out that the situation for each of the eight north-eastern states varies. For example, she states that Meghalaya is a major destination due to its coal industry. Estimates suggest that 40,000 children from Nepal and Bangladesh have been trafficked into the coal mines by landowners and exporters for the purpose of slave labor. Furthermore, the highway networks in the north east connect many national and international destinations. In the state of Assam, truckers have used the highway routes to transport drugs and traffic girls. “We have seen truck drivers from all over India deceiving young north eastern children into fake marriages, child labor and sex work”, Hasina says. Another contributing factor is the female sex ratio-decline in northern India.

Resulting from the cultural male child preference, this imbalance has sadly led to many girls being trafficked for marriage.
On the main source, transit and destination points for these victims, Hasina states that from her experience the destinations are usually New Delhi, Mumbai, Pune, Goa, Kolkata and extend as far as Thailand, Singapore and Malaysia. “There are likely to be many more locations throughout India and across the globe, we just haven’t learned of them yet”, she maintains. According to her, Siliguri is the main transit point as it connects many train lines and bus services. It has long been a convenient way to smuggle women and children across the Indo-Nepali border without detection, Hasina discloses in her interview.

While it was generally accepted that people below the poverty line with limited employment opportunities are the most vulnerable to being targeted by human traffickers, Hasina gave an interesting insight into the recent trend whereby young, educated girls seeking employment outside their local area have also been caught up in trafficking. These girls are generally duped / coerced into the commercial sex trade by ill-intentioned employers, she points out. Women and children are also commonly deceived by offers of fake marriages. There have been cases where non-Indian residents (NRIs) have married women as a cheaper alternative to paying domestic staff. Highly educated girls have been exploited and abused in these marriages.

3 out of 4 Arab children in Jerusalem live in poverty

A Civic rights group has concluded a new study that finds that 3 out of 4 Arab children that live in Jerusalem do so in poverty. The Association for Civil Rights in Israel blames the Israeli government for causing this. The ACRI says the governments policy of creating a Jewish majority in Jerusalem and forcing out Arabs is dropping the Arabs into poverty.

From the AFP News via Google, we read more findings of the study.

A total of 74 percent of Arab children in Jerusalem live below the poverty line, as compared with 47.7 percent of the Jewish children in the city, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) said.

It said 66.8 percent of families in predominantly Arab east Jerusalem live in poverty as compared with 23.3 percent of the city's Jewish families, but that only 22 percent of the population receives social services.

In its "State of Human Rights in East Jerusalem" report, the group said residents of annexed east Jerusalem faced discrimination in planning and building, expropriation of lands, minimal investment in physical infrastructure, government and municipal services.

"These are concrete expressions of an Israeli policy designed to secure a Jewish majority in Jerusalem and push Palestinian residents outside the city's borders," it said.

"Life in Jerusalem can be described as a continuing cycle of neglect, discrimination, poverty and shortages.

"These, compounded by construction of the separation barrier cutting Jerusalem off from the West Bank, have led to the social and economic collapse of this part of the city.

"A large majority of east Jerusalem residents do not receive, and cannot afford to buy, the most basic services. The primary victims are the vulnerable populations, the aged, the disabled and children."
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The Israeli group also reported a shortage of 1,700 classrooms in east Jerusalem and a school dropout rate of about 50 percent.

40,000 people in Kosovo have no regular income

A survey conducted by the United Nations Development Program shows deep poverty in the former Serbian province of Kosovo. The survey finds that 40,000 people have no regular income. The lack of employment could disturb the security of the young nation.

From the SE Times, reporter Besa Beqiri tells us more about the situation in Kosovo.

The government aid totals 45 to 75 euros a month -- much less then what a family needs to make a normal living in the country. According to Kosovo Deputy Minister for Labour and Social Welfare Gjergj Dedaj, there are also over 150,000 retirees who also take pensions -- at an average of 70 euros a month -- from the ministry and have been transformed into a category of poor people.

According to reports from the UNDP and other international organizations, about 37% of the population lives in poverty -- below the line of 1.42 euros a day -- and over 17% lives in extreme poverty -- below the line of 93 euro cents a day.

"Poverty can not be reduced through giving people social assistance alone, the opening of the new jobs would reduce poverty. Let's not transform Kosovo into a social state in which people live with social assistance, let's transform it into a place of work," Dedaj said.

"We have an emergency strategy, which is not enough," he said, adding that the ministry does not have its own official figures for the rate of poverty in Kosovo due to the lack of a census and the lack of a registration for family economies.
Emigration plays a major role in keeping families out of extreme poverty, the minister noted. More than half a million Kosovars work in Western countries and send money home, helping to keep their loved ones afloat financially.

A study last year by the Statistical Office of Kosovo and the World Bank said "migration and remittances have been effective ways for households to protect themselves from falling into poverty". It estimated that one in five Kosovars has at least one relative abroad sending them funding.

Because of the global financial crisis, as well as social changes within Kosovo, the amount of remittances has been decreasing, however.

The UNDP says Kosovo has the highest unemployment rate in the Western Balkans -- around 45% of the working-age population is without a job. It also has an extremely young population, with half of its citizens under the age of 25.

"This means that some 30,000 people join the job market every year with little prospect of employment," the UN organisation says.

Two families choose to live in poverty as an experiment

Two families from Utah are doing an experiment to see how difficult it is to be poor in the US. In this TV News story from KSTU, reporter Nicole Hunter shows us what the life is like for the families doing the three week experiment.

5 out of 10 things you can do to fight world hunger

In the latest issue of The Nation, the monthly feature "10 Things" features ways to combat world hunger. Writers Walter Mosley and Rae Gomes give some good ideas here, you can find more by surfing to the full article.

1 Write letters to the editor and op-ed articles in your local paper calling on the government to cut or end subsidies that encourage large agribusinesses to overproduce grains and dump their surpluses on the developing world at sub-market prices. This ultimately places poor communities at the mercy of volatile global commodity prices. Learn more at The Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy for more information.

 2 Ask your representatives in Congress to demand that more foreign food aid be in the form of cash and training rather than food. Farmers in the global South know how to grow food but lack the resources, inputs and tools to farm effectively, develop markets and compete in the world marketplace.

 3 Learn the specifics of what makes products "fair trade." Buy them where available. Download "Green America's Guide to Fair Trade" for a definition of "fair trade" and a list of organizations that follow these specifications.

 4 Conserve energy. With a reduced demand for fuel, global commodity prices--which spiked as the cost of fuel for shipping rose dramatically last year--can remain more stable. This is important because while sending food to poor countries is not the ultimate solution for ending hunger, Food Aid has a role to play due to the desire for variety in food supplies. And, more importantly, natural disasters or political instability will always cause humanitarian emergencies where the flow of aid is crucial.

 5 Pressure the Obama administration to come up with a renewable energy policy that does not stress ethanol and other biofuels. As demand for biofuels has grown over the past few years, farmers in the developed and developing worlds have set aside more and more land for fuel production, degrading the environment and reducing food for human consumption.

Mosquito net use in Mali

A survey of mosquito net use in Mali finds that that some real progress is being made. From the website, Temoust we read the results of the survey.

Malaria-related headlines have focused on Rwanda, Ethiopia and Zanzibar where it has been possible to work in a relatively focused area to bring about large malaria program impacts. Efforts in Mali have slipped under the radar according to Claudia Vondrasek, The VOICES field operations coordinator based in Bamako. Claudia shares results from a Mali national survey conducted by HealthBridge Canada in Aug 2008 that have now become available. Net progress is substantial.

81.1% of households with at least 1 ITN 78.5% children under 5 years of age slept under a net the night before 96.3% of children under 6 years of age slept under a net in households with at least 1 ITN 73.9% of pregnant women slept under a net the night before Two important trends to mention - Not only are we closing the gap in Mali to achieve 2010 LLIN targets (80% use nationally) in Mali, it looks like many countries are making great strides on their way to reaching those targets in recent years. This is mainly due to a sustained commitment by the international partnership to support National Malaria Control Programs to achieve 2010 RBM targets of 80% coverage of key interventions.

The other less heartening trend is the lag time being recorded between grant approval, signature and Phase 1 disbursement. Many suspect this is a function of evaporating resources available for GF grants.

Progress in Mali has been building for the past two years. The US President’s Malaria Initiative has played a key role in “a unique public-private partnership with the American Red Cross, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, and others, the President’s Malaria Initiative (PMI), through USAID, provided $1 million for the purchase of 169,800 long-lasting insecticide-treated mosquito nets (LLINs) as part of a national child survival campaign in Mali conducted in December 2007.”

Drawing attention to sex trafficking

We are going to begin doing more posts on stories concerning child labor and human trafficking in the weeks and years to come. These are two ills of poverty that are not high in the public's awareness. So we hope to shed more light on these problems by beginning to post stories concerning these two ills.

We begin by noting a new report on slavery produced by the UN. The Voice Of America gathered reaction to the fact that the majority of modern day slaves are used for sex.

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime says the most common form of human trafficking is for sexual exploitation. In a recent report on modern slavery, the UN says that about 79 percent of people enslaved each year are coerced into prostitution. Some experts believe the best solution is to focus on decreasing the demand.

Human trafficking for sexual exploitation is a growing problem worldwide, according to experts. The victims are mostly women and girls.

In conflict zones in eastern Africa, many women have been abducted for sex.

But the United Nations reports 20 percent of all trafficking victims are children. Some are forced to be child soldiers.
In regions of extreme poverty, many women become trafficking victims as a means of survival, according to experts.

Mark Lagon, the director of a non profit group that advocates against human trafficking, says the economic crisis could make the problem worse.

"I do think the vulnerability of people to become trafficking victims remains intense because economic desperation, while not the singular cause of human trafficking, is an important one," Lagon said.

A sad sign o' the times; food banks hiring security

In a sad sign of the times, violent incidents have increased at US food banks. With the big increase in need brought on by the global recession, people waiting in line for food will sometimes cut in line forcibly when they think the food will run out. This has forced food banks to hire security to keep the peace.

From the newspaper for Seattle homeless called the Real Change News, writer Cydney Gillis profiles a security guard and the food bank he works for.

Sgt. Dwaine Coverson stands outside the back door of a Wallingford office building, cracking sunflower seeds as he talks about a new part-time job that’s a sign of bad times in Seattle.

Coverson is retired. He spent 29 years with the Seattle police force and says he’d rather be golfing. But three days a week, he shows up at the FamilyWorks Food Bank and Resource Center to keep things orderly in the line — and break up fights.

Thursday before last, Coverson says, he had to break up a fistfight that erupted in the building’s lobby, then separate another set of combatants who were pepper-spraying each other outside the back door. The same day, he says, Seattle police were called after a man threatened one of the workers at the Seattle Public Library branch that shares the building at 45th Street and Woodlawn Avenue.

Over the winter months, says FamilyWorks Director Jake Weber, incidents like these shot up, leading staff to feel unsafe and the food bank and its upstairs landlord —anti-poverty agency Solid Ground (the former Fremont Public Association) — to hire Coverson in January. Though he’s retired, he maintains his certification to wear the uniform, which comes with full police powers and a 9mm Beretta handgun that make him a curiosity to three small children staring through the glass in the lobby.

At least a few food bank clients say they find the officer unnecessary and intimidating. But FamilyWorks isn’t alone. As the recession and layoffs have driven more people to food banks citywide — the individuals served by FamilyWorks skyrocketed 80 percent last year, from 1,937 in 2007 to 3,405 in 2008 — lines, wait times and angst about getting the day’s best pick of food have increased. This has led to jostling and altercations at some facilities, particularly those where clients spend hours waiting outside or in cramped quarters.

To quell incidents, Northwest Harvest’s Cherry Street Food Bank on First Hill hired three security guards in early April. And after negotiating a “good neighbor agreement” with nearby residents, the Ballard Food Bank hired a security guard two years ago and, in March, chose to shut down its meal program at Calvary Lutheran Church over behavioral issues.

The Cherry Street Food Bank set an all-time record in April, serving 2,651 people in a single day, says Claire Acey, a spokesperson for Northwest Harvest. That compares to an average of 1,800 clients a day last year. On the busiest days, and toward the end of the month as disability and Social Security checks run out, Acey says, people will start lining up around 6 a.m. for the food bank’s opening at 9 a.m.

Congress begins to work on providing health care for all

This is kind of off topic, but this could dramatically effect the poor in the US. So we thought a look at what Congress is working into the new health insurance scheme would be worth it.

The bills for health care would require all Americans to have health insurance, but the government would help those making less than $88,000 a year to pay for it.

From this Associated Press article that we found at the Memphis Daily News, reporter Erica Werner obtained documents that give more details on what could be included in the bill.

A document obtained by The Associated Press provides an early look at where Democratic leaders in the House are heading as they try to meet an ambitious July 31 deadline for passing their version of the legislation. The Senate is working on a similar plan, with some key differences.

The plan by the House Energy and Commerce Committee would build on the current system in which employers, government and individuals share responsibility for health insurance.

But it would make major changes: Individuals and employers would face new obligations to help pay for coverage. Insurers would operate under stricter consumer protections. And the government would take added responsibilities for setting insurance rules and providing financial help to low- and middle-income families.

Momentum for a health care overhaul built this week after Obama obtained a pledge from medical providers to help find $2 trillion in savings over 10 years to help pay for his plan.

Even before any legislation has been officially introduced, lawmakers are grappling with dozens of thorny issues. On Thursday, senators debated behind closed doors whether their bill should include the choice of a government insurance plan for middle-income families. Insurers, hospitals and employers are trying to head off such a plan. The issue won't be resolved any time soon.

The House document also calls for a new government insurance plan to compete with private companies. It would be financed by premium payments, not taxpayer dollars.

Insurers are strongly opposed to a government-sponsored plan, saying it would drive them out of business. Democrats say a public plan would help everybody by injecting competition into a health care market that in many areas is dominated by a handful of major insurers.

Heavy fighting returns to Mogadishu, Somalia

Heavy fighting has returned to the capital of Somalia, Mogadishu. It's resulted in a trying back and forth for the city's residents, many return when fighting subsides, the flee when it picks up again.

The return of violence has caused Médecins Sans Frontières to close their medical clinic to protect it's personnel. MSF is the main provider of free health care in the area, and treated over 1200 victims of the violence last year.

From the Médecins Sans Frontières website, we read more about the closing of the clinic, and MSF's call for an end to the fighting.

MSF medical teams have treated 112 people for blast and gunshots wounds in Daynile Hospital, in the outskirts of the capital, in just a week since Friday 8 May. 47 of them were women and children under the age of 14.

“With so few medical facilities available in Somalia, it is crucial that people are able to access those that are still functioning,” says Alfonso Laguna, MSF Head of Mission in Somalia.

Recently people had started returning to Mogadishu, but thousands of families have now left the city again looking for a safer environment. They have settled in camps in Daynile and along the road to Afgooye, a town 30km south west of the capital. MSF has been working in these settlements since 2007, providing fifteen millions litres of water per year and relief items. The organisation will need to rapidly scale up distributions to meet the needs of the new arrivals in Daynile and Hawa Abdi areas.

It is currently the rainy season, and many displaced people have no belongings with them at this critical period. Poor living conditions in the overcrowded settlements could become a significant health risk leading to respiratory infections and epidemics.

MSF would like to remind all parties to the conflict in Somalia to respect all medical facilities, their personnel and sick and wounded patients.

How the government-less state on Nepal effects aid to those in poverty

Ever since Nepal's Prime Minister quit his office earlier this month, the country has been without a government, as a coalition leadership keeps failing to form. Aid workers and NGOs in the country says this has severely effected aid to people of Nepal..

The lack of government has effected aid in at least two ways. First, money that the government had previously pledged for flood victims has yet to be released to the people. Secondly, development projects that need government permits or cooperation have been stalled.

From IRIN, we learn more about how the country without a government is effecting anti-povertyy efforts on the ground.

"There is rising concern about the impact on the most vulnerable communities, especially the victims of the Koshi flood," Vincent Omuga, humanitarian affairs officer at the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), told IRIN.

For the past nine months, thousands of people displaced by the Koshi flood have been living in the camps of Sunsari and Saptari of eastern Nepal, nearly 300km south of the capital, Kathmandu.

Before the political crisis, the government had passed a compensation package of thousands of dollars to help resettle the displaced families in their homes.

"But now the relief aid for the displaced will not be delivered because the release of funds is done only through the government," said an international aid worker, who requested anonymity.

Early recovery activities are supported by the UN and other donor agencies through the government.

"All this will be delayed now because the district level decisions by local government offices and institutions depends on the decision of the central level government, which is still lagging behind," the aid worker said.

Meanwhile, local NGO workers are also worried about the impact on their development work as most of their activities depend on their partnership with local government bodies such as the Village Development Committees and District Development Committees, none of which can make any decisions to implement aid projects without permission from central government.

"It is quite unlikely that aid services will be delivered soon until this political deadlock is over," Netra Timilsina, an aid worker and senior official of NGO Federation of Nepal, told IRIN.
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Nepal is one of the poorest countries in the world, with more than 30 percent of its 28 million inhabitants living below the poverty line of less than US$1 a day.

A conference on Nigerian development in Winnipeg

People of Winnipeg, Manitoba will talk about how to help development in Nigeria during a two day conference. The group "Nigerians in Diaspora Organization" includes Nigerian immigrants who invited government and business leaders to discuss how to help their homeland. But, some Nigerian immigrants are critical of the idea of the conference the conference.

From the Winnipeg Free Press, writer Carol Sanders tells us what the conference will focus on and the views of it's critics.

Government officials, professors, and expatriates from Nigeria are gathering in Winnipeg with members of the diaspora to try and solve some of the African country's problems.

Nigerians in Diaspora Organization have organized a two-day conference starting today called Vision 2020: Investing in Energy, Food & Health.

"For a country like Nigeria -- one of the largest economies in west Africa -- we don't have a reliable and affordable supply of electricity," said conference spokesman Ed Onyebuchi.

Nigeria is Africa's largest oil producer, but its people still suffer from intense poverty, corruption and tribal conflict, according to Canada's Foreign Affairs department.

The conference will discuss solutions to problems standing in the way of development, including electricity.
...

Nigerian Florence Okwudili questioned how a conference in Winnipeg can help her former homeland.

"Why talk about 2020 when people are starving in 2009? You can't even get a doctor in a Nigerian hospital," said Okwudili, who visited Nigeria last summer. "It's sad." The diaspora organization member planned to attend the conference but said the time and money involved might have been better spent in the country with the problems.

"Hold a realistic conference in Nigeria and invite the poor people to talk about their problems," said Okwudili, a Canadian citizen.

Habitat for Humanity recieves a huge donation of 100 million

A member of Habitat for Humanity's board of directors has made a huge gift the the charity of 100 million dollars.

Large charitable contributions usually go to a University or for scientific research, so it is rare that gift like this goes to a social charity, especially remarkable in this economy.

From this Associated Press article that we found at Public Opinion Online, we learn more about the giver and what the money will be used for.

The donation comes from J. Ronald Terwilliger of Atlanta, a former chief executive of housing developer Trammell Crow Residential Co. and a longtime member of Habitat's board of directors.

Terwilliger said through his work with Habitat and in the private sector he's witnessed the depths of poverty, seeing people living in cardboard shacks and unspeakable filth, as well as the struggle for middle-class families to find affordable housing.

"People need a decent, safe, clean residence where they can get a good night's sleep and families can be together," he said. "If they have that as an anchor, they have a way to send their kids off to school regularly and a better chance those children will be healthy."

The donation comes at a difficult time for the Americus, Ga.-based organization, which like other nonprofit groups has struggled with increasing demand and slowing donations amid the economic downturn.

"This is a chance to have a really deep impact," said Jonathan Reckford, Habitat's chief executive. "It's an unprecedented commitment that sets a new bar for what's possible, and it encourages other people to give."

Habitat will use $30 million to fund an endowment that will make yearly grants to help build more houses.

The remaining $70 million will set up a micro-finance fund to help low-income families around the world repair and improve their housing.

Star of "Slumdog Millionaire" home demolished

Mumbai city workers have demolished the home of one of the stars of "Slumdog Millionaire". The city claims Azharuddin Mohammed Ismail's family had their home on the land illegally. Despite being a "red carpet" star, Azaruddin still lives in the slums of Mumbai.

From Contact Music, we read more details on the demolition.

The Mumbai slum was the home of Azharuddin Mohammed Ismail, who played the youngest Salim in the blockbuster film, appearing on the red carpet in LA in February.

Officials say the boy's family were living on the land illegally, creating a makeshift shelter in a slum near Mumbai. The authorities have said they will provide alternative accommodation for the family, who say they had no warning there home would be demolished.

Slumdog Millionaire has made more than £140 million in box office takings worldwide, yet the two youngest members of the cast are still living in poverty in slums. However, the film's director and producers have said the children's education has been paid for, as well as a trust fund set up that they will receive when they are older.

Speaking to the BBC, Azharuddin's mother, Shamim Ismail said: "Our house has been broken down by officials. We have not been given any alternate accommodation. Earlier the authorities had said they would give us a house. But I don't think that will happen any more."

Georgia children on the brink of hunger

Video from WSAV.

Brazil's "family grant" program receives charges of corruption

The Bolsa Famila program or, "family grant" is a powerful poverty fighting tool used by Brazil's government. But Bolsa Famila has received charges of corruption after an audit found that 1.23 million people receiving the grants were not in poverty.

Bolsa Family gives money to families in poverty as long as they keep their children in school with good attendance. But the program has been unable to keep track of the children, and doesn't know if as many as 1 million children are still attending school.

From Bloomburg, columnist Alexandre Marinis writes about the problems with the Bolsa Famila.

Brazil’s lauded Bolsa Familia anti- poverty program is suffering as charges of bureaucratic corruption and political abuse multiply.

That’s jeopardizing recent gains in lowering the poverty rate in Latin America’s most-populous nation.

In 2009 the global economic crisis will push 2.7 million people in Latin America and the Caribbean back into extreme poverty, which the World Bank defines as living for less than $1.25 daily.

This reverses more than a third of the region’s poverty reduction gains since 2005, according to the World Bank. The proportional increase of poor people there will be seven times greater than that expected for sub-Saharan Africa.

Bolsa Familia, which loosely translates as “family grant,” is a government-run cash transfer benefit and Brazil’s main tool to combat poverty. The state doles out about 12 billion reais ($5.7 billion) to 46 million people, a quarter of the country’s population.

The World Bank hails it as “a silent revolution” that’s “among the world’s best targeted programs.” The International Labour Organization says the initiative is “the largest income distribution program in the world.” It’s been copied throughout Latin America and some developed nations.

Its goals are unassailable. How it’s being managed is another story.

Consider the case of Billy da Silva Rosa. Billy received 20 reais from the government every month and each of his two brothers got 62 reais. The payments stopped after seven months, when a health inspector discovered Billy was a cat owned by the government employee responsible for running Bolsa Familia in the remote town of Antonio Joao, in Mato Grosso do Sul state.

9 Haitians die in Florida waters trying to flee country

More Haitians trying to escape the country's poverty did not make it to their destination. Nine people died as an overloaded boat hit an object then sank into the water off of Florida's coast.

Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, it's situation has only been made worse by four tropical storms and hurricanes that destroyed last years harvest. The Coast Guard says they have stopped 1377 Haitians from entering the US since the harvest.

From this Associated Press video, we learn more about the rescue efforts.

Muhammad Yunus and collateral

Muhammad Yunus makes another point about the failure of big banks in the global recession. He points to the differences in the use of collateral between the big banks and microcredit banks.

Yunus spoke at the launch of a new study to gather statistics on microcredit. Bangladeshi newspaper The Daily Star collected Yunus' comments.

Nobel laureate Prof Muhammad Yunus said yesterday microcredit could safeguard many retrenched employees from the effects of deepening recession through self-employment.

“It's (microcredit) an important tool to create self-employment. It bears more significance in times of recession, as it shows laid-off employees a way to stand up again on their own,” said Yunus at the launch of Bangladesh Microfinance Statistics for 2007 at the LGED auditorium.

Regarded as the banker to the poor, Yunus said microfinance has so far been immune to the global economic crisis at a time when big banks sought bailout packages to survive, although they had extended loans to borrowers against collateral.

“The banks are failing to retrieve loans although there are collateral, documents and lawyers to get the money back. Now the documents have proved fake,” he said.

The microcredit system is a driver of employment, savings and women's empowerment, he said.

“Microcredit is not free from criticism though. But microcredit is a big achievement for Bangladesh and the list of achievements is long,” said the Nobel laureate.
...

He observed traditional banks are mobilising deposits from the rural economy and investing the money in urban areas, which means a loss of liquidity in the rural economy.

“But microcredit doesn't take the money away from the rural economy. Rather it puts the money in circulation there. We are giving money to those who did not avail themselves of credit earlier,” Yunus. He called for transparency in the activities of microfinance organisations.

Jeffrey Sachs lays into Canada

In his latest commentary, Jeffrey Sachs says Canada has run out of excuses for contributing 0.7 percent of their gross national product to international aid to the world's poor. Dr. Sachs says that a small increase in funding aid could save billions of African Lives.

From Canada.com comes our snippet of Sachs commentary

I've been observing the recent slanging match between Prime Minister Stephen Harper and development activists, including Bono and Bob Geldof, over Canada's commitment to the world's poor. Without getting into the fine points of aid accounting, there is no doubt that Canada's aid commitments these days are rather thin.

In 2002 at a summit in Monterrey, Mexico, Canada joined the rest of the rich world in pledging to make concrete efforts to reach 0.7 per cent of GNP in official development aid. In fact, Canada's effort has stalled at around 0.3 per cent of GNP. But Canada can conveniently hide behind the United States, which weighs in at an even more miserable 0.17 per cent of GNP.

There are few places on the planet as splendid as Canada, so it's truly hard to understand how a prosperous and free people enjoying a life expectancy of more than 80 years have to work overtime to justify spending only 30 cents on each $100 of national income to help people with a life expectancy of only 40 years. Of course, everything one can say about Canada in this regard, one can say with added emphasis about the United States, which not only spends a meagre 17 cents per $100 of income on aid, but does so in the shadow of tax cuts for the rich that amount to roughly $2.50 per $100 of national income.

What is perhaps most puzzling about Canada is that there are so few political voices, from any party, championing practical approaches to tackling extreme poverty around the world. Many Canadians might fret that there is no reliable place to spend extra money, no places where the aid won't simply be ripped off by the allegedly ubiquitous "corrupt African governments." But Canadians need to understand that they could easily allocate funds to places such as Ghana, Madagascar, Mali, Senegal, and Tanzania, all with multi-party democracies, responsible and highly praised governments, and populations suffering from a lack of doctors, nurses, and safe drinking water. They could also make contributions in kind -- medicines, vaccines, seeds, fertilizers, equipment -- making the aid easier to track and harder to steal.

I've had the chance to review the development plans of these countries in considerable detail. They each have highly meritorious programs in education, malaria control, food production and much more, all programs in which Canada's money -- certainly up to 0.7 per cent of GNP -- could be very well used indeed, and easily monitored. It would be straightforward to get one or more major private-sector accounting firms to do audits on such aid, to further ensure Canada's taxpayers that the aid is indeed invested as planned. If the aid goes awry, it could be halted.

Here's another possibility. Canada could direct its increased aid to the International Red Cross and UNICEF to support their campaigns to distribute anti-malaria bed nets to Africa's children and pregnant mothers.

I've seen many children in death throes because their families (and governments) could not afford bed nets for them. I'd be ready at any moment to accompany any Canadian leaders to a rural African clinic so that they too can see children in comas, or in respiratory distress as they die of largely preventable and wholly treatable diseases. It would cost each Canadian merely $100 to fund the $3 billion required to provide comprehensive malaria control across all of Africa. Canada, on its own, could save more than one million African lives per year.

Microcredit conference held at Seattle Pacific University

Seattle Pacific University held a Microcredit conference last weekend. The event featured speakers from Kiva and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Microcredit lenders had booths to display some of the projects they funded, and there were small group sessions to discuss big topics concerning microcredit.

From the Student newspaper at SPU The Falcon, writer Melissa Stefan will tell us more.

"Microcredit is a way to make loans and repayments, so it's more sustainable (than traditional charity)," said Kenman Wong, professor of business and economics, who helped plan the event. "I would even argue that it's more dignified, because people are actually participating, hopefully creating small businesses to help them earn their way out of poverty."

Though the concept is relatively new, interest in microfinance is growing. The conference, which began as an offhand suggestion, attracted participants from as far away as New Hampshire, Florida, Ohio, Oklahoma and North Carolina. The event sold out and nearly 100 people were on the waiting list, Wong said.

"The massive attendance is a testament to the interest in microfinance and those living in poverty. Microfinance itself is a testament to the power of people recognizing the importance of community in a connected world," said SPU alumnus Jeff Keenan, who served on the conference leadership committee and opened the conference on Friday evening.

"We thought maybe people would drive over from Ballard -- maybe -- and that was our optimistic guess," Wong said. "So we really feel blessed, because there was a lot of hard work, but we never had to push."

Wong partnered with senior Kristin McGunnigle and Brad Stave, who works with VisionFund, to plan the event four months ago. Originally, the event was geared toward businesses and entrepreneurs, though the spectrum was ultimately broadened to focus on the community at hand.

"We thought, 'There's so much interest in Seattle in poverty and global issues ... .' We wanted to educate them and mobilize them to act," Wong said.

The mess of the American safety net

The New York Times has done an exhaustive study of American benefits to the poor. They find that those applying for food assistance, government health insurance, and unemployment insurance can have a difficult time receiving those benefits. Some may find they qualify for one benefit but not another.

Differences in state laws help to complicate the problem, as requirements for food stamps may be different in one state from another. So geography really becomes the determining factor on if a poor person receives help or not.

From The New York Times, reporter Jason DeParle explains some of the differences.

As a measure of the safety net, The New York Times examined state-by-state enrollment in six federal programs and found large variations in the share of needy helped.

Just 50 percent of people eligible for food stamps receive them in California, compared with 98 percent in Missouri. Nineteen percent of the unemployed get jobless benefits in South Dakota, compared with 67 percent in Idaho.

Fifteen states rank among the top 10 in providing one form of aid and the bottom 10 in another. California ranks second in distributing cash welfare but last in food stamps. South Dakota, last in jobless benefits, is first in subsidized housing.

Aid in states most hit by recession is also scattershot. Michigan’s programs reach a comparatively high share of the needy, while South Carolina’s rank in the middle and Nevada’s reach relatively few. All have double-digit unemployment rates.

“The system for helping Americans in need is very fragmented, and it confuses everyone,” said Theda Skocpol, a political scientist at Harvard. “Some people are covered and some people are not, even though they look like they’re in very similar circumstances.”

This complexity is a challenge for President Obama as he reacts to the economic crisis. The February stimulus act contains more than $100 billion in safety net provisions, but much of the aid consists of financial incentives the states are free to reject. Several governors quickly spurned grants to expand unemployment insurance, for example, saying the move would raise business taxes and kill jobs.

Aid programs spend hundreds of billions of dollars and reach tens of millions of people; the food stamp program alone covers more than one in 10 Americans. Yet the safety net leaves few camps satisfied. Liberals say programs are weak compared with other rich countries and are overly deferential to states. Conservatives fault costs and complexity and warn that aid can do harm.

With generous programs “you could be discouraging people from seeking better jobs,” said Stuart Butler of the Heritage Foundation.

Both sides, those who want more spending and those who want less, would unite under Mr. Butler’s description of the status quo. “You’ve got this kind of jigsaw puzzle that doesn’t really fit together, ” he said.

Obama administration proposes to expand the Hope IV program

The Obama administration has a proposal to expand the Hope IV project in it's latest budget. During the Clinton administration, Hope IV brought about the funding to demolish then reconstruct public housing in metro centers. The program is credited with improving public housing. Now, the latest proposal from Obama wants to take the plan a step further by adding schools and transportation to the hosing units.

From the Washington Post, writer By Christina Bellantoni tells us more.

The initiative, if approved by Congress, will operate in the same way by redeveloping public and assisted housing, but it will include community development, and applicants will have to prove the transformation would be catalytic, said Bruce Katz, a senior adviser to Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan.

It also has a "much tighter link" to school reform, he said of HUD's Choice Neighborhoods Initiative.

Sen. Christopher S. "Kit" Bond, Missouri Republican, said he would advocate for the new program because it expands on the successful Hope VI initiative he has championed since its creation in 1992.

He said in an interview that the idea is "to see if we can do something in a coordinated effective effort to end the cycle of poverty and distress … and empower the local residents to have more control over their life."

Mr. Bond cited projects in St. Louis and also on Capitol Hill that are now model communities.

Mr. Katz said Hope VI dramatically lowered crime rates and increased property values in the worst neighborhoods. It merited about $500 million per year in funding during the Clinton administration but was on "life support" during the Bush presidency, Mr. Katz said.

HUD estimates 10 cities would be granted the funding after a competitive process, and to qualify, at least 40 percent of a neighborhood's residents must live below the federal poverty line of about $22,000 for a family of four.

Atlanta, Kansas City, Mo., Philadelphia and San Francisco were cited often during interviews for this story as examples of places with similar programs or where residents could benefit from the "choice" initiative.

Planes used for arms are often also used for aid

The same planes that smuggle weapons are often hired to transport humanitarian aid, according to a new report released today.

The authors of the report suggest enforcing the EU's air safety rules to combat the problem. They say this will help because the planes often carrying the weapons have poor safety standards.

From AFP via Google, we read more of what was contained in the report.

Air cargo carriers used to smuggle weapons to war-torn parts of Africa have also been hired to deliver humanitarian aid and support peacekeeping operations, a leading peace think tank said Tuesday.

The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said in a report that 90 percent of air cargo companies identified in arms trafficking-related reports had been used by UN agencies, European Union and NATO members as well as leading non-governmental organisations to deliver aid.

"For example, UN peacekeeping missions in Sudan have continued to use aircraft operated by (Sudan's) Badr Airlines even after the UN Security Council recommended an aviation ban be imposed on the carrier in response to arms embargo violations," the SIPRI report said.

The report also singled out other African carriers such as Astral Aviation, African International Airlines and the Sudanese-registered Trans Attico as being named in arms trafficking reports.

It also said several US private security firms hired air cargo carriers and aircraft which have been "involved in the trafficking of arms to militias which the US government have designated 'global terrorists'."

The report cited Dyncorp, a company that provides security services for the US government, as having contracted Aerolift, a firm accused by the UN Security Council in 2006 of being involved in arms trading, to supply weapons to an Islamist militia that controls much of southern Somalia.

The militant group, Al-Shabab, was added by the US government to its list of terrorist organisations in March 2008 over alleged links to Al-Qaeda.

Envision: Addressing Global Issues through Documentaries

This weekend in New York, a unique film festival will screen documentaries about global issues. The event called Envision teams the Independent Filmmaker Project with the United Nation’s Department of Public Information. The focus of movies at this year's event are on the plight of women in the under developed world. All the movies will be screened at the Director's Guild Theater in New York City.

A couple of the movies that will be shown include: “Pray the Devil Back to Hell,” about the grassroots peace movement of Liberian women, and “Rough Aunties,” a look at five South African women who use teddy bears to help children explain sexual abuse. Discussion about the films will follow.

Trailers for each of the films can be found at Envision's website.

Fewer US families able to afford health insurance

A new study shows that fewer US families are able to afford health insurance than ever before. This leaves people without employer provided insurance without the ability to obtain health insurance according to HHS' Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, who conducted the study.

From Med Lexicon News, we find out more about the new study's findings.

Some experts have suggested that because 23.8 million uninsured Americans under age 65 who do not have access to employer-based health insurance have incomes above the federal poverty line, they can afford to purchase policies if they so choose. But new data show otherwise.

"Wealth, Income, and The Affordability of Health Insurance," published in the May/June 2009 issue of Health Affairs, shows that measuring families' median net worth - the value of their savings plus other assets minus debt rather than just income - provides more precise estimates of the percentage who could purchase policies if they chose to do so. Until now, most studies have used income alone to estimate how many more Americans could be covered by health insurance.

"This study has important implications for defining who can afford to pay for health insurance in the next wave of health care reform," AHRQ Director Carolyn M. Clancy, M.D., said. "We need accurate, evidence-based findings to ensure that we are providing policymakers with reliable information."

Using national survey data, the researchers found that the median net worth of families who purchased health insurance was $105,819 - nearly 35 times greater than the median net worth of only $3,057 for families who were uninsured. Median net worth means that half the families had net worth above or below that amount.

In contrast, the median income of families who purchased health insurance was $41,086 - only 2.3 times greater than the median income of $17,690 for families who were uninsured.

Laos to begin recognizing NGO's

Communist country Laos will begin to recognize Non-Governmental organizations who are doing work within the country. The aid groups can begin to apply for recognition in November, and these may free them to be able to do more good.

From AFP News via Yahoo, we see reaction to the news from NGO's in other parts of the world.

More than 100 local organisations of various types already exist in the country but are not centrally registered, said Luke Stephens, country director of the Irish-based NGO Concern Worldwide.

The decree provides a clear legal framework for membership-based groups, in contrast to the existing situation under which registration is done on a more ad hoc basis, said Stephens, whose group backed the drafting of the decree.

"Now it's a much more transparent process," he said. "With the former system you could only register if you had connections."

Stephens added that "it's hard to understate the significance" of the decree signed on April 29 by Prime Minister Bouasone Bouphavanh.

"It means anyone can register and then they have a secure and legal way to work and not be hindered by someone that doesn't like them."

Groups would, for example, be able to join together to work on poverty, development, health and other issues facing the country, he said.

"At least we have a decree to set up local NGOs, and that's a big step in Laos," said Isabelle Decout, of the INGO Network, a coordinating body of 65 international aid groups in the country.

Students Helping Honduras

CNN helped to introduce us to a charity that helps to fight poverty in Honduras. Students Helping Honduras has chapters at several college campuses to raise money for development projects in the country.

Co-Founder Shin Fujiyama was profiled for CNN's story. Our snippet of the printed story begins with a trip to Honduras that served as inspiration to Fujiyama. The video of CNN's story follows our snippet.

Today, his organization, Students Helping Honduras, brings education and community projects to children and families in need through student service trips and fundraisers.

"Seeing the country and being able to make a difference really opened my eyes to a lot of things," he says. "I saw such a great need. I wanted to keep helping."

He started by telling his friends about his experience and collecting spare change at his two campus jobs, but Fujiyama found that organizing other students didn't happen so easily.

"When I had my very first meeting, I got all dressed up. And only two people showed up," he says. "I knew I had to keep fighting."
...

Students Helping Honduras is working with community members of Siete de Abril to build a new village. Many of the families lost their belongings to Hurricane Mitch in 1998.

"A lot of them are single mothers. They don't own the land. They all live in cardboard houses. They don't have access to clean water [or] health care, and they didn't have a school," Shin Fujiyama says.

Fujiyama's group helped villagers purchase a new plot of land to rebuild. Its members have helped build 44 homes in the village that has been newly named Villa Soleada ("Sunshine Village"). The organization also is raising funds to build a water tower, an eco-friendly sanitation system and a library and to help provide electricity.

For Fujiyama, who deferred medical school to dedicate himself to his mission in Honduras, the lifestyle is a far cry from private practice, but he says he loves what he is doing.

"I feel like we're making a huge impact. Some people might think that you have to be somebody famous or a millionaire or a doctor to do something," he says. "But we're just everyday students -- people in their 20s. We can do so much. We've got so many things going for us. ... It's just about leveraging what we have. And we have done a great job at that."

Sudan allowing some aid groups back in

The Sudan government is allowing some aid groups back into Darfur. In addition, the government is allowing the aid groups that remain to expand their efforts.

From the BBC, has more of the latest development on Darfur.

Sudan expelled 13 foreign aid groups in March after the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant for Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir.

Meanwhile, the backer of a conference on Darfur says it has been cancelled because of opposition from Sudan.

It was intended to bring together some 400 people from Darfur's diverse ethnic groups in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa.

Pro-government groups as well as those close to Darfuri rebels were included.

Funded by Sudanese expatriate and telecoms entrepreneur Mo Ibrahim, it also had the backing of the UN, the African Union and the Arab League.

"The Sudanese government is obstructing the safe passage of Darfurian delegates from Sudan, forcing us to cancel the conference," his foundation said.

Mr Ibrahim told the BBC delegates had being harassed, their passports withdrawn and that some had been warned they were engaging in activities against the state.

BBC Africa analyst Martin Plaut says work to prepare for the conference has been under way for nearly a year, and UN planes and helicopters had been on standby to help airlift the delegates to Ethiopia.

The UN says that up to 300,000 people have died during the conflict in Darfur and 2.7 million been driven from their homes.

Don't forget to leave food out for your letter carrier Saturday

Make sure you leave more than letters for your mailman on Saturday. The National Association of Letter Carriers will have their annual "Stamp Out Hunger" food drive. The event encourages people to donate non-perishable food items the the post officers will contribute to local food banks.

Out of the thousands of stories we have come across, we pick out one from our home state. From The Saginaw News, writer Jean Spenner explains the event further.

A U.S Postal Service letter carrier, Patty Sedlock will work twice as hard as normal Saturday, and the thought gives her chills -- in a good way.

As she delivers the mail on her walking route in the Handley Elementary School neighborhood, she will pick up donations for the Stamp Out Hunger food drive effort, the nation's largest single-day drive.

Last year, Sedlock picked up food enough to fill 16 large plastic mail tubs.

"You don't get extra pay and you don't get extra time, so you know you have to work extra hard," said Sedlock, 50, of Saginaw.

"You think that you would dread working on that day, and you do," said the veteran letter carrier, who has participated each of her 10 years on the job. "Then you start thinking about why you're doing it ... and I'm getting goosebumps on my legs right now just talking about it.

"It's so unbelievably rewarding, and people are so generous. It makes it so worth it."
It's so easy for residents to participate, she pointed out.

They need only leave a sturdy bag containing nonperishable foods in boxes or cans next to their mailbox prior to the time of regular mail delivery on Saturday.

"Witnesses To Hunger" visits Washington

Some time ago, we came across a photo exhibit called "Witnesses To Hunger" The exhibit featured the photos taken by poor women in Philadelphia and shows their fight to make ends meet.

A Pennsylvania senator has helped to bring the photo exhibit to Capitol Hill, along with the women who took the photos.

From the Philadelphia Enquirer, writer Alfred Lubrano details the women's visit.

The exhibit, which opened Monday and closes tomorrow, was paid for by Chilton's office through donations and was sponsored by Sen. Robert P. Casey Jr. (D., Pa.). "I'm deeply grateful to these women for opening their lives to be documented and exhibited to the people in Washington and beyond," Casey said.

Sen. Arlen Specter (D., Pa.) joined Casey in praising the women, saying the photos were "especially effective in telling people what is going on."

Emotional and awed, the women were giddy on the bus ride down, listening to Beyoncé and marveling at the turn of events that has made them the object of so much attention.

"I'm floored, shocked, and amazed at all this," said Erica Smalley, 24. "This project is helping me not be negative about my life, though I have to say I still get depressed."

Chilton said "Witnesses" had turned isolated, impoverished women into a growing sisterhood with a camaraderie none had ever experienced.

"Remember, ladies," Chilton told the women as the bus motored toward the Capitol complex, "enjoy yourselves. This is all about you and your power."

Before entering the Senate building's three-story rotunda, the women changed from their street clothes into the donated ensembles. The transformation that the outfits created was quickly evident, as though the dark suits and dresses enhanced self-esteem.

"You all look good," said Ashley Ortiz, 24. In November, she had declared that the world needs "bottom feeders. . . . Who do you get to step on if not me?"

A moving story of a Canadian athlete visiting a malnourished child in Uganda

Canadian Olympic rower Jane Rumball is involved in the charity Right To Play. Part of her duties as ambassador takes her to under developed countries to visit with the kids that the charity helps. "Right To Play" uses sports as a tool for development in the children.

Jane Runball related her recent visit to Uganda to columnist Bruce Hallihan of The Daily Gleaner.

"The scene was one I will never forget: crowds of joyful, boisterous African children laughing and clapping, giggling at the awkward muzungu Olympic athlete who couldn't match their rhythm to save her life!

"It all happened under the unbelievably blue Ugandan sky, with rich red earth and lush greenery surrounding. It was surreal. For a moment, we probably all forgot where we were: Nakivale refugee camp, home to almost 50,000 displaced persons who had to flee their countries in order to survive. Immense poverty, rampant diseases, and unspoken stories of conflict.

"Nothing here seemed to faze the children, though ... for a brief moment in time, everyone at the school in Nakivale forgot about conflict, hunger, poverty, and sickness. Instead, we laughed, danced, got rich African soil all over our faces and bodies."
...

Rumball wrote more, but this part stuck with me the most:

"At a particularly difficult stop along the way in Nakivale, I found a little friend who I will never forget. She was a beautiful but severely malnourished girl who held tightly onto my hand throughout all the games.

"She had severely infected bumps on the side of her head, but still tried to dress up with earrings that looked like they were fashioned out of paper clips. Once she realized that she could hold my hand, she started slowing to rub her face on my arm.

"For a brief moment I wanted to pull away for fear of somehow getting that infection transmitted to my own skin ... but then I realized that most people probably do draw back and make her feel bad.

"I wanted to be different and let her just stay put beside me for the rest of the session," Rumball said. "It ended up being a very special moment for both of us, I think. She started to get into the games and laughed and danced like the other children around her. "Right To Play's tagline is 'when children play, the world wins'. Most of us would probably agree with that intuitively, but it came to life for me in the Ugandan refugee camp called Nakivale."

Anticipating a new child poverty report in the UK

New child poverty figures are about to be released in the UK. The government there has a goal of halving child poverty by 2010, but many anti-poverty groups fear that the new figures will show that the government is not doing enough.

From IC Scotland, we look at the buildup to the poverty report release.

Official figures on poverty levels in the UK are due to be published.

They come amid growing fears that the Government is set to miss its target to halve the number of children being brought up in financial hardship.

Campaigners are concerned the statistics will show that the chances of achieving the goal of halving child poverty by 2010-11 are looking increasingly remote.

The 2010-11 milestone was originally set in 1999 by then Prime Minister Tony Blair - when 3.4 million children were defined as living in poverty. It was set as an interim target on the way to eradicating child poverty altogether by 2020.

Since then ministers say that they have succeeded in lifting 600,000 children out of poverty, while a further 500,000 will be helped by measures that have been put in place since 2007.

However that still leaves a further 600,000 if the 2010-11 target is to be met.

In its report on the Budget, the Commons Treasury Committee complained of the lack of any new measures to tackle child poverty and it warned that the Government was set to miss its target by a "significant margin".

Save the Children also expressed concern that the latest figures could show little improvement, or even a worsening of the situation.

The charity urged the Government not to abandon the 2010-11 target in the face of the recession.

"Our sense is that the figures will be as bad or even slightly worse this year. If that is the case, that puts a question mark over the 2010-11 target which is deeply worrying for us," said Save the Children spokesman Dominic Nutt.

3.5 million hungry children in the US

3.5 million children in the United States are at risk of hunger according to a new survey. The survey uses government census numbers to gauge hunger with children. These hungry children are more at risk for developmental or cognitive damage.

The study found that percentages varied from state to state, depending on unemployment and poverty levels in each state.

From this Associated Press story that we found at KOAT, Mary Clare Jalonick breaks down the survey's numbers.

The not-for-profit advocacy group Feeding America based its findings on 2005-2007 data from the U.S. Census Bureau and the Agriculture Department. The study, released Thursday, is the first to look at these numbers for children under the age of 5, according to the group.

The study also shows that in 11 states, more than 20 percent of children under 5 are at risk of going hungry. Louisiana has the highest rate, with just under a quarter of children at risk, followed by North Carolina, Ohio, Kentucky, Texas, New Mexico, Kansas, South Carolina, Tennessee, Idaho and Arkansas.

According to the Agriculture Department, 11 percent of households lacked enough food for an active, healthy life, before the economy worsened late last year.

The study looks at a range of children who are at risk, from those who have low quality or variety of food to those who regularly experience hunger.

A lack of nutritious food, especially in the earliest formative years, can have a lasting impact on physical and behavioral health, along with development and academic achievement.

"These children without the availability of nutrition don't have the chance to spring back," said Vicki Escarra, president and chief executive of Feeding America.

Escarra said the group is lobbying Congress and the White House for more federal funding for food bank programs that target young children. President Barack Obama has pledged to expand food aid and end childhood hunger by 2015.

...
The study was paid for by The ConAgra Foods Foundation, a charity arm of the large food company.

Comment from Josette Sherran of the World Food Programme

Earlier this week, some officials from the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization said the fight against hunger could be lost. But in an opinion piece that we found today in the Huffington Post, Josette Sheeran Executive Director of the World Food Programme, is more optimistic.

In her opinion piece, Sherran begins be stating some of things she's learned, then gives an example of a great victory in the fight against hunger.

Most importantly, however, I have learned that hunger is a winnable problem that we can all help solve. Today the world is nourishing more people than ever before in human history. Ending hunger and malnutrition is not rocket science: it requires no new huge scientific breakthroughs. Between 1969 and 2004, we cut the proportion of hunger by half. Most recently, nations such as China, Brazil, Ghana, Malawi, Vietnam, Thailand and many others have been making serious gains against hunger.

In fact, less than 20 years ago China was WFP's biggest program. Today we provide no food aid to China. These nations follow the success of Europe and Japan in beating hunger after World War II. Many nations such as Ireland - the land of my own ancestors - only broke the cycle of famine, hunger and agricultural impoverishment a few generations ago.

Wherever I go, I always take with me a humble red plastic cup. It's a cup that came from Lillian, a little girl from Rwanda who once filled it each school day in one of WFP's school feeding programs. We gave Lillian a new cup, but for her and for 20 million school children fed by WFP, this cup may be the only food they receive each day. We have even seen many children take the incredible step of eating only half of their rations - so they can bring home the rest to brothers and sisters too young to go to school. http://www.wfp.org/content/fill-cup-fact-sheet.

In 2008, when food prices doubled, we at WFP were faced with a terrible dilemma: do we cut rations in half - or feed half of our beneficiaries?

Instead, I appealed to the world and a miracle happened: the world stepped forward and refused to let a food crisis become a humanitarian tragedy. By extending and expanding our school feeding programs and adding millions to our rolls, we were able to quell food riots and cool things down.

Former Senator George McGovern, one of the principal architects of our country's own school lunch programs, has a dream - that no child on earth would go to school hungry. What would it cost the world to say every schoolchild who needs it has at least a cup of nourishing food each day? Less than $3 billion a year - and in a year we read in the news that Christmas bonuses on Wall Street totaled more than $30 billion.

This is not permanent charity - as dozens of countries have "graduated" from food aid and school feeding programs, once food security is assured. As world leaders prepare for the G-8 Summit this summer, there will be a lot of talk about the economic crisis and financial rescues. But as we worry about Wall Street and Main Street, let us not forgot about the places where there are no streets - and make sure that we put a human rescue package at the top of the list. Let's keep the red cup filled. Learn more at: www.wfp.org

Zimbabwe economy shrank 14% last year

The Zimbabwe economy shrank 14% last year according to an e-mailed statement from the International Monetary Fund. The fund says the contraction in the countries economic caused "catastrophic" poverty.

From Bloomberg, reporters Nasreen Seria and Mike Cohentells tell us more of what was in the IMF's statement.

Between 2000 and 2007, the economy shrunk 40 percent, while inflation was estimated at a record 500 billion percent last September, the Washington-based lender said in an e-mailed statement today. The economy will probably rebound this year, expanding an estimated 2.8 percent, the IMF forecast.

Zimbabwe’s economy has shrunk every year this past decade after President Robert Mugabe seized farms belonging to white farmers to redistribute to blacks. That slashed export earnings, resulting in shortages of food, fuel and foreign exchange. Mugabe agreed this year to share power with the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, paving the way for Zimbabwe to begin negotiating with the IMF and other lenders for loans.

“A decade of high inflation, severe economic decline, and rising poverty has culminated in an acute, ongoing humanitarian crisis,” the IMF said. “Zimbabwe is now at a critical juncture.”

The IMF’s Executive Board agreed today to lift its suspension of “technical assistance” to Zimbabwe and plans to help the country with advice on tax policy, payments systems and banking supervision, the fund said.

The IMF requires Zimbabwe to clear its arrears to all multinational lenders and demonstrate a sound policy track record before it can resume lending to the southern African nation. Zimbabwe’s debt arrears total about $3.8 billion, with about $133 million owed to the IMF and a total of $1.1 billion to the World Bank and the African Development Bank.

Poverty numbers up in Maine

A new study from the University of Maine shows the percentage of people in poverty rising in that state as well. The increase mirrors the trend nationwide, and is similar to what was reported in Wisconsin this morning.

From this Associated Press story found at WMTW, we look further into Maine's numbers.

The Bangor Daily News reports that the 12.2 percent figure is about 1 percentage point lower than the national average and compares to Maine's 2000-01 poverty rate of 10.1 percent.

Researcher Ann Atcheson said traditionally, when a recession ends, poverty rates continue to rise.

Broken out by counties, Washington County was the highest with a poverty rate of 20.1 percent, while York County was lowest at 8.2 percent.

The poverty line in the report is defined as $20,650 for a family of four.

Video: Poverty's vicious cycle from CBS News

A group of NGOs say the Asian Development Bank does more harm than good

Recently the Asian Development Bank pledged to triple it's lending to help Asian poverty. During the global recession the bank wanted to do more to prevent the effects the recession will have in creating many more poor people. They felt the best way to do this was to increase the number of projects the bank lends to.

However, a group on Non-Governmental Organizations has blasted the ADB, saying their anti-poverty projects do more harm than good. They claim that their projects displace people from their homes, hurt the environment, and does not lift people out of poverty.

From this IRIN story that we found in Reuters Alert Net, we learn more about what this group of NGOs have to say.

But the NGO Forum on ADB, a network of 250 activist groups that has been monitoring the bank's activities since 1992, called the move "irresponsible and dangerous", alleging the region had experienced forced displacement and environmental degradation caused by ADB-funded projects.

The NGO Forum said the capital increase was largely designed for private sector clients and big infrastructure, and numerous studies had shown that such financing did not benefit the poorest.

"If not managed well, this 200 percent general capital increase could easily translate into a more than 200 percent increase in social and environmental harm," Red Constantino, executive director of the NGO Forum, said in a statement.

According to the International Accountability Project, a global development watchdog, at current rates, approximately 15 million people in the world every year are forcibly displaced from their homes, communities and lands to make way for large development projects such as mines, dams, power plants, infrastructure and plantations.

In Nepal, 20,000 people will be forced to move from their land to make way for the planned ADB-funded West Seti Hydropower Project in the northwest, said Ratan Bandari, whose family will be among those relocated if the project goes ahead.

"We're not provided with any information about the project, except from reports," Bandari told IRIN at the ADB annual meeting on the Indonesian island of Bali from 2 to 5 May.

"There's no internal investment in the project. There are so many problems. There's no information and there's no meaningful consultation with the locals," he said.

Kuroda said the bank had done its best to make its projects environmentally sustainable.

"We have appropriate accountability mechanisms through which any complaints regarding environmental safeguards, resettlement issues could be resolved appropriately," Kuroda told a news conference on 2 May in Bali.

"I think ADB has learned quite a lot from past experiences and we have made substantial progress and I must say most of our infrastructure projects actually improve the environment," he said.

Wisconsin poverty level increases to 12 percent

The University of Wisconsin has released a new report on the state's poverty rates. The report claims that the global recession in increasing the number of people in poverty in the state. The percentage of Wisconsin citizens in poverty is up 1.8 percent to 12.6 percent of the state's total population.

From The Badger Herald, reporter Rachel Vesco breaks down the numbers.

The report — put together by the University of Wisconsin’s Institute for Research on Poverty — hopes to influence state policies that will help citizens living in poverty while exposing the depth of poverty in the state.

Milwaukee County has the state’s highest poverty rate at 17.3 percent, but the rate varies greatly throughout the county. Ten counties in the northwestern part of Wisconsin tied for second with rates of 14.4 percent each, while Rock County rested in third with a rate of 12.8 percent.

Waukesha County has the state’s lowest poverty rate, 3.7 percent.

The report also found statewide enrollment of individuals in the Supplementary Nutritional Assistance Program has escalated. Since 2007, enrollment in the program increased by 37 percent, rising in every county and demographic region of the state. In some counties, enrollment increased by more than 50 percent.

Timothy Smeeding, director of the IRP, said he was most surprised to see the large increase in citizens on SNAP over the past two years.

“I was surprised to see how fast people need food stamps. That was pretty amazing,” Smeeding said.

Smeeding said if he could, he would like to go back and evaluate the effect other state and federal policies have had on poverty, like the policies included in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

How poverty contributed to the Swine Flu deaths in Mexico

We don't want to join in the media freak-out about swine flu, but we did find this story relevant to poverty.

Medical experts are looking into why there were many more deaths in Mexico than elsewhere. The medical community blames poverty and self medication as some of the causes for the death toll.

From this Washington Post article that we found in The Spokesman Review, writers Joshua Partlow And William Booth also point to the illnesses spread throughout densely populated areas.

Among the largest concentrations of swine flu cases is in Iztapalapa, with nearly 2 million people the densest, most populous of Mexico City’s 16 districts, and also one of the poorest, said Miguel Angel Lezana, the government’s top epidemiologist.

“It’s an area with a huge demographic concentration. Since this is a disease that is transmitted and spread by personal contact, when you have this huge accumulation (of) people in a rather small area, you have a greater opportunity to spread the disease,” Lezana said. “Besides, these are the people with not actual lack of access, but difficulty getting access to medical facilities, so they get there late to the doctor or the ERs in case they need it.”

The reasons behind this delay have little to do with apathy, according to Mexican patients and doctors.

“Delaying medical care is a characteristic of poverty. For people living close to the edge, taking off a day to visit a doctor or staying home sick is literally taking food out of their mouths,” said Paul Gertler, a professor of economics at the School of Public Health at the University of California at Berkeley, who has worked in Mexico.

Mexico has three parallel health care systems. Workers who are employed by the government or private companies are part of the national social security system, as are their families. When they go to a hospital or doctor, the care is mostly free. The uninsured, about 50 percent of the population, include the unemployed and those who work in the informal economy. They also have access to health care, at public clinics and hospitals run by the Health Ministry. They are required to pay for services, but the amount is based on their income. It is often just a few dollars for a doctor’s visit. About 3 percent of people visit private hospitals using insurance or, if they are wealthy enough, by paying in cash.

“Mexico is a country with a lot of self-medication,” said Homero Martinez, a researcher at the Rand Corporation in Los Angeles who specializes in the study of the Mexican health care system. “You can go to the pharmacies, they are open 24 hours a day, they deliver, and you can buy all the medicine you want for yourself – and your neighbors.”

During the outbreak, when masses of people became concerned about the possibility of infection, patients waited hours to see doctors. Some family members slept overnight on the sidewalks. The government deployed more than 100 ad hoc clinics – trucks and tents staffed with doctors and nurses – to quickly screen for prospective flu cases. At one mobile clinic in Iztapalapa, residents last week said they had waited for up to four hours to see the doctor. At one point, care was delayed further because a crying boy had a high fever and the doctor wanted him rushed to a hospital, but no ambulance was available.

Health care has become more accessible during the outbreak. Calderon decreed last week that all public and private hospitals provide care for people with flu symptoms.

Road building project in Bangladesh to employ poor women

A government funded road building project will employ poor women to help them climb out of poverty. Bangladesh announced the new project yesterday that will employ over 24,000 women. The employment will not only give the women a wage but will also deposit money into savings accounts set up for them.

This story from The New Nation details the project for us.

The women, mostly widow, divorced and abandoned were employed under a two-year contract for rural road maintenance and getting Taka 100 per day.

The initiative was taken under a Local government division project titled 'Rural Employment Opportunities for Public Assets (REOPA),' being implemented at a cost of 28.55 crore with financial assistance of European Commission and UNDP.

Of the daily wage, each of the women will get Taka 70 and rest Taka 30 will be deposited as savings in their own bank accounts, as they could use the savings in various income generation activities in future.

This was revealed on Monday at a media dialogue, organised by the local government division at the Jatiya Press Club here to exchange views with the journalists about different aspects of the project. Senior journalist Farid Hossain moderated the discussion while project director of REOPA Akmal Hossain, leader of the international team of REOPA project Goran Jonson and counselor of European Commission Dr Klaus Dieter Gautsch spoke.

Five women of the project beneficiaries were also present on the occasion.

Akmal Hossain said the objective of the project will significantly contribute to poverty alleviation in rural areas and mainstreaming destitute women into development activities in line with the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) and Bangladesh's Commitment to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

Thirty destitute women have been employed from each of the 388 unions at first phase and 33 destitute women each at second phase for maintenance of 30 kilometre rural road of each union annually. After completion of the two-year cycle, the women would be involved themselves in various income generating activities as they will get nearly Taka 22,000 from their savings. "During the project period we are also providing various training like cow and goat rearing and poultry as the women could be able to sustain their present socio-economic condition," Akmal said.

FAO: The fight against world hunger could be lost

The UN's Food and Agriculture Organization is very alarmed over the increase in hungry people. Now one billion people are hungry compared to 850 million ten years ago. The FAO doesn't even blame the current global recession for the problem, but says the increase began in the 1980's.

Leaders from the FAO made statements on the increase of hunger ahead of meetings in Paris. From the Voice of America, reporter Joe DeCapua covered the statements.

Experts from the FAO and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development open a two-day meeting in Paris Tuesday to discuss the problem. Joseph Schmidhuber, head of the FAO's Global Perspectives Unit, spoke from Rome about the growing number of people labeled as hungry or malnourished.

"We've seen first a stagnation in the number of under nourished people and then actually we saw quite an increase. And we expect a further increase due to the financial and economic crisis. The first increase was essentially an increase that reduced implicit incomes through higher food prices and the second one is an increase that will reduce explicit incomes and purchasing power through the financial and economic crisis," he says.

The Paris meeting will look for long-term solutions. "The meeting will focus on investing in agriculture and food security. What we sense now is an urgent need to step up investment in agriculture in order to avoid the situation as we had in the early 1980s," he says.

The economic crisis of the 1980s, triggered in part by a debt crisis, brought a sharp downturn in investment in agriculture. Schmidhuber says that resulted in "a reduction of production and stagnation in the fight against hunger."

Last June, in Rome, international donors held an emergency meeting in Rome on soaring food prices and widespread food shortages. Asked whether anything substantial has come from that meeting, he says, "What we've seen is actually that international prices went down considerably. There's no doubt about that." However, what did not happen in many countries was an equal decline in national prices. In fact, in some cases food prices actually rose.

"One of the problems we see as an organization is that we saw enormous pledges in 2008 in the meeting…but there was relatively little follow-up in terms of actual investment. So, we saw pledges to the tune of $26 billion and we saw…actual money coming forward to the tune of $2 billion."

Sanctuary Trust: eliminating homelessness in Shelby County Alabama

Here is a story about a great program that strives to eliminate homelessness in a county of Alabama. The Sanctuary Trust finds homeless people in the county and has a group of churches sponsor the family. The Trust provides a temporary home, while the churches help with other needs, like food or starting savings.

From The Birmingham News, writer Scottie Vickery introduces us to two leaders of the program.

If Ken Flowers and Werner Beiersdoerfer have their way, the issue of homelessness in Shelby County will be eliminated one family at a time.

Already the men, trustees with the Sanctuary Trust for Shelby County, can mark two Montevallo families off their list.

Each of the families -- a father with two daughters and a single mother with five children -- lived for several months in transitional housing provided by the trust.

The Calera-based ministry works with churches to provide free housing, food and other needs to families struggling to get back on their feet. U.S. Census Bureau figures show that 6.9 percent of Shelby County residents live in poverty.
...
"We can love these people back to life again," said Mark Davis, pastor of Christian Life Fellowship in Calera, which will soon sponsor families in that community.

"We can surround them with the support they need," he said. "It's a great chance to help people put their lives back together after having to endure a lot of hardship and struggle."

And that, Flowers said, is the goal. A Calera businessman who wishes to remain anonymous provided the start-up money for Sanctuary Trust in 2007. Others soon came on board, and the ministry is now privately funded by a small corps of Shelby County businessmen, Flowers said.

Once the trust was formed, Beiersdoerfer and Flowers met with pastors and staff from Shelby County social service agencies to determine what the needs were.
...

In Shelby County, the trust bought a home in Montevallo in April 2008, and the first two families to go through the program have lived there.

Two duplexes are under construction in Montevallo, and the trust has bought three more lots in the city. In addition, the trust owns five lots in The Glades of Whippoorwill subdivision in Calera, and Flowers hopes construction will begin there as soon as the Montevallo duplexes are finished.

Food pantry in California looks for a new home

Anyone have a building to lend? From the San Gabriel Tribune, comes this story of a Californian food bank looking for a new home. Writer Amanda Baumfeld explains why the food bank is looking for a new place.

The San Gabriel Unified School District plans to evict an emergency food pantry used by low income families to make way for a fitness center at Del Mar High School, authorities said.

Now, the People for People food pantry must find a new home - and a place to store 70 tons of food. The non-profit organization has inhabited a rent-free warehouse on the campus for the past 10 years.

"The school district has been great; they need their space," said Wathena Morrison , People for People treasurer. "We are just hoping someone can loan us a place for a year or two to give us a chance to find something else."

The school district needs the L-shaped building to proceed with a construction project that will provide additional classrooms and a fitness center for the high school, according to Marla Nadolney , district project manager. About 60 students in grades 9 through 12 attend the tiny high school, according to county records.

The project is being paid for with bond money approved by residents a year ago, Nadolney added.

Although they have until July, People for People is scrambling to find a building before May 9 when the annual Stamp Out Hunger Food Drive is held by the Post Office.

The food pantry gets 70 to 90 tons of food as a result of the drive which last them about a year.

"The problem is where are we going to put that food," asked Norene Rand , executive director.

The effect of the global recession on Ghana

Ghana, the only country in Africa to have met the Millennium Development Goal on hunger is now seeing more people struggle to find food thanks to the global recession. The drop in exports and investments that the recession has caused are leaving more in Ghana vulnerable to going hungry.

From this IRIN story that we found at All Africa, the UN's Food and Agriculture Director comments on the situation.

"Ghana has shown that real progress against hunger, malnutrition and poverty can be achieved, through increased investment and diversity in agriculture, and better access to food," said FAO Director-General Jacques Diouf in a 23 April statement. "But Ghana will need greater support in identifying and helping the millions of people who remain food insecure and vulnerable."

"The economic crisis is already starting to affect people in Africa. The early impacts in Ghana are small, but they could get worse depending on how the situation evolves," Bauer said.

Price drops in cash crops such as shea nuts, export drops in some raw materials including timber, and remittance cuts could all contribute to people's increased vulnerability to food insecurity, says WFP.

But chief director at the Agriculture Ministry, Dr. Nurah Gyiele, said Ghanaians are "safe" from food insecurity this year. "I do not anticipate any clear and present danger on any significant scale in terms of food shortages because we still have maize stocks on the market," he said. "And there is no shortage in any of the other crops [rice, yams, cassava]...we can say that this year we are safe and even if there is a challenge we will be up to it."

The government has placed 900 metric tons of emergency rice and maize stocks in the regions where people are most prone to food insecurity: Northern Region, Upper East and Upper West, and plans to provide a further 900 mt over the course of 2009 as well as stocking the 10 regional capitals, according to Gyiele.

But some subsistence farmers in the north say they are already struggling to get by.

"The price of everything has gone up," said John Akarebo, shea nut farmer and father of six, in Northern region. "I spend about 80 percent of my earnings feeding the family. It is very difficult. If it were not for the government's policy to make basic education free, my children's education would be threatened."

An analysis of the Asian Development Bank's mission

With the announcement of more money for loans, the Asian Development Bank begins it's annual meeting to set policy for the upcoming year. The bank has had trouble pleasing it's critics after the economic expansions in China and India, and now the global depression.

From Forbes comes this analysis of the bank from reporter Stephen Wright.

Just two years ago, the Asian Development Bank was struggling with an identity crisis of sorts as a wave of new prosperity called into question its basic mission: lifting millions out of extreme poverty.

Now, as Asia sputters amid the global slowdown, the problem facing much of the region is no longer ensuring the fruits of rising affluence are spread evenly - but eking out any growth at all.

Armed with a much bigger war chest, the ADB - which starts its annual meeting in Bali, Indonesia, on Saturday - is renewing its pledge to fight poverty and preparing to take a bigger role in the region.

That might seem good news for Asia, but it's not universally welcomed. Some critics say its financing would be better left to the private sector while activists fault ADB-funded projects for harming the very people they aim to help.

On Thursday, the bank's 67 member countries approved a tripling of the ADB's capital to $165 billion, expanding the lender's ability to fight the global economic crisis and finance infrastructure and other projects in partnership with the private sector.

"We must do all we can to prevent the reversal of hard-won gains for our region in social and economic development, and in poverty reduction," ADB President Haruhiko Kuroda said in a statement.

On the sidelines of the meeting, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations along with China, Japan and South Korea are likely to approve enlarging an emergency currency pool to $120 billion - and make the funds easier to access in a crisis.

Psychotherapy for the developing world

Providing mental health to the poor in the developing world has been greatly overlooked. Research suggests that mental health issues are more prevalent in the developing world that in the fast paced developed world.

The Scientific American has a great story on a team of therapists working with refugess of the Somalian civil war. From writer Mason Inman, we see how therapy helped one who exeperience the civil war as a child.

It had been four years since 13-year-old Mohamed Abdul escaped civil war in Somalia, but he still had nightmares and flashbacks. When he was nine years old, a crowd fleeing a street shooting trampled him, putting him in the hos­pital for two weeks. A month later he saw the aftermath of an apparent massacre: about 20 corpses floating in the ocean. Soon after, militia-men shot him in the leg, knocked him unconscious, then raped his best friend, a girl named Halimo.

Recovering in the hospital, Abdul (not his real name) was overwhelmed by fear—and guilt, for not having helped Halimo. He felt unprovoked fury: he mistook people he knew well for the rapist and threatened to kill them. A few months later Abdul fled his homeland and landed in the Nakivale refugee settlement in Uganda. “I felt as if there were two personalities living inside me,” he said at the time. “One was smart and kind and normal; the other one was crazy and violent.”

Abdul had post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), an ailment characterized by fear, hyperarousal and vivid replays of the traumatic event. Fortunately, this refugee camp had an extraordinary resource. Psychologist Frank Neuner of Bielefeld University in Germany was offering “narrative exposure therapy” to its 14,400 Africans, mostly Rwandans. The approach coaxes trauma survivors to assimilate their troubling memories into their life stories and thereby regain some emotional balance.

After four 60- to 90-minute therapy sessions, Abdul’s flashbacks and nightmares disappeared; he was still easily startled but no longer felt out of control. His doctors deemed him “cured.”

Researchers and aid workers have historically overlooked mental health in developing countries, focusing instead on issues such as malnutrition, disease and high infant mortality, but that is changing. “What’s changed in the past 10 years is the realization that mental health is not separate from general health,” explains child psychiatrist Atif Rahman of the University of Liverpool in England.

Recent psychotherapy trials have achieved remarkable success in improving the lives of war survivors such as Abdul, poor mothers with postpartum depression and others victimized by the stresses of extreme poverty. The keys to a workable program for the impoverished include training ordinary citizens to be counselors and, in some cases, disguising the remedy as something other than a fix for emotional troubles.

Although many people think of mental illness as a plague of fast-paced modern life, some psychiatric ailments are actually more prevalent in the developing world, according to the World Health Organization. Of the several dozen wars and armed conflicts around the globe, nearly all are in developing countries, and this violence is leading to PTSD, which hinders recovery after the conflicts subside. Across South Asia, new mothers suffer from depression more frequently than they do in richer countries, according to a 2003 report by Rahman and his colleagues.