Going on vacation!

Hello everyone! Your humble blooger is starting his vacation, NOW! We're going to a wonderful land far north of home that is absent of any computers, routers, or T1 lines. This will be my son's first time to experience the strange wonder of this mysterious land. So posting will be a little more sporadic than usual in the coming days.

Our brother from the same mother will be on putting some posts up while we are away. So fear not, there will be a trickle or two of news that we will not miss. We will return on Monday, August 10th.

Thank you so much for following, reading and being a part of this blog. Since we have started to venture into Facebook and Twitter, it's a great joy to see some of our followers have joined us on those sites as well. We just hope that you will be able to use the info gathered here to advocate for those less fortunate, or to empower you to continue working for them. Because basically that is what this blog is for, shedding light on a subject that many "newspeople" avoid.

This brother from the same mother has designed a new header for the blog, so we hope to unveil that when we return. So we hope to give the blog a bit of an upgrade in look before autumn begins.

Again, many thanks for reading!

WFP may stop air flights without new money

Air flights to refugee camps in Chad may have to be suspended by the World Food Programme. The food aid arm of the United Nations is facing a budget shortfall that threatens the flights. The WFP blames the lack of money from world governments cutting donations due to the global recession. The WFP says that flights can be restored if they receive new donations.

From Reuters, writer Daniel Flynn describes the threat to flights.

The U.N. Humanitarian Air Service (UNHAS), operated by WFP, will run out money for its services in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea by the end of August, the agency said. It needs $10 million to keep these services open until the end of the year.
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In February, WFP was forced to close the air service in the West African countries of Ivory Coast and Niger. The service in Niger, one of the world's poorest and least developed states, is expected to resume in August after a donation from the U.N. Common Emergency Relief Fund.

In Chad, UNHAS' six aircraft carry an average of 4,000 humanitarian passengers a month to 10 destinations, where they provide assistance to 250,000 Darfur refugees and 180,000 internally displaced people in the country's east.

"How will WFP reach the hungry? How will doctors reach their patients? How will people have clean water if the engineers who help to build wells can't get there?" asked Pierre Carrasse, head of WFP's aviation branch, in a statement.

Barrow said that if flights were suspended, WFP staff and other aid workers could travel by road but this would be slow due to the large distances involved and frequently dangerous due to rugged terrain and banditry.

WFP Executive Director Josette Sheeran said on Wednesday the organisation had received pledges for only $3.7 billion of the $6.7 billion it required in funding for 2009.

Exhibit of a poor family home at the Ohio State Fair

This year the Ohio State Fair will have the home of a poor family as one of it's displays. The exhibit is sponsored by Habitat for Humanity and Thrivent Financial. After touring the home, visitors are encouraged to give donations to the two groups.

From this Associated Press article that we found at the Newark Advocate we read more details of the display. The home sounds a like your humble blogger's house in too many ways.

An exhibit at the Ohio State Fair depicts the home of a family in poverty, with light provided by a bare bulb hung from the ceiling and plaster off the walls.

Its sponsors said they hope people will be inspired into action by the display, housed inside a tractor-trailer near one of the fair entrances.

The grim scene also shows broken windows partially covered by tattered curtains, a 1970s space heater being used for warmth, and an electrical outlet packed with plugs.

Muhammad Yunus to receive Medal of Freedom

We congratulate Dr. Muhammad Yunus as he will soon receive a Medal of Freedom from U.S. President Barack Obama. The medal is the highest civilian honor in the U.S.. Yunus will receive the award in recognition for his pioneering work in microcredit. He first came up with the idea of giving small loans to poor people without collateral back in the 1970s.

From Microfinance Focus, we find this reprint of an interview conducted in March with Dr. Yunus.

MF FOCUS: Microfinance is an established and recognised instrument to fight poverty today. Many people are confident and hope that poverty can be eliminated through it. Isn’t it too simple just to rely on microfinance?

Dr. Yunus: You don’t have to. Nobody is forcing you to do that. If somebody wants to do Microcredit, fine. I wouldn’t say this is something everybody should have. Nobody says it is the only solution. Human beings are very multi-dimensional. Microfinance is one of the many, many things.

MF FOCUS: Social business is an additional way. Do you identify enough potential for social business to make a real difference, globally?

Dr. Yunus: Yes of course. Definitely it is a global and not a local issue. There are two kinds of businesses: One is business to make money, the other business is to change the world. This one is with the intention of changing the world and not to have any personal gain from that. It is all dedicated to make a difference. It is addressing a social issue, to resolve it. You can do that.

MF FOCUS: What are the factors that make social businesses successful?

Dr. Yunus: A good business plan, good ideas and use the creativity in the most creative way.

MF FOCUS: Microfinance as well as Social businesses have to be highly efficient. How is it possible to maintain or re-introduce the social mission back into microfinance?

Dr. Yunus: Whenever something gets popular, actually catches attention, there are people who take advantage of that and misuse it. It happens in everything. When Big brands are popular, it gets imitated by fake ones. Same thing happens with microcredit. People name it microcredit but in fact it is not microcredit. It is something completely different.
People have to be made aware of what is microcredit and why it is important to stick to the real microcredit and not the one which has a different motivation. But while you are looking at the microcredit itself, even good people may have wrong ideas, which makes them shift away from the whole idea, the mission. We have to be very careful and remind ourselves, what is our mission. That is why we have meetings (Sa-dhan conference) like this, to rediscover your mission and then re-adjust your work to the mission.

Racial disparities in health

A new study that examines health care in West Virginia finds that disparities along races exist in health factors. Health Care For America Now says that amongst African-Americans more people with diabetes and more babies die than those with from other races. The study also has data that shows that rates of poverty are higher with ethnic minorities.

Instead of grabbing a snippet that has people talking about the possible causes, we decided to grab more stats for this post. From the Charleston Daily Mail reporter Michelle Saxton dives deeper into the report.

# West Virginia's infant mortality rate for black babies from 2003 to 2005 was 12 out of 1,000 live births, which is 60 percent higher than the 7.5 figure for white babies, the report shows.

# The life expectancy for a black person is six to 10 years shorter than that of a white person.

# The diabetes mortality rate for blacks is 85.3 deaths per 100,000 people compared to 33.3 for whites.

# The rate of annual AIDS cases for blacks is 41.8 per 100,000 compared to 3.7 for whites.

# About 32 percent of blacks live in poverty compared to 19 percent of whites.

# About 32 percent of blacks are enrolled in Medicaid compared to 17 percent of whites.

Microcredit for women in Rwanda

A microcredit effort operated by Rwanda's central bank focuses on making loans to women. Rwandan women who want to start up coffee shops, stores or agriculture business can apply at the countries banks for the loans.

The program started in early July and already some government officials say the selection process is not strict enough. With access to small loans being new in the country, some women do not have a business plan for how to repay the loan. The central bank says they will begin an education program for women to combat the problem.

For a further description on the new microcredit operation in Rwanda we turn to this snippet from IPS reporter Aimable Twahirwa.

The Rwanda central bank has established a mechanism of micro loans for all financial institutions that lend to female entrepreneurs. Loans for projects declared viable are against collateral guarantees, to be paid back over a long period.

Since the establishment of this new credit scheme early this year, at least 6,568 women have received assistance for micro- and small enterprises from the government, international donors and NGOs worth 890,000 U.S. dollars, according to the central bank.

According to Kanimba, many of these are associations that own both coffee farms and shops, for instance, in a new initiative to finance the reduction of poverty.

The associations "served as (one of) the main tools to address the multiple causes of poverty, unemployment and social exclusion especially in rural areas," minister Mujawamariya remarked. "Slowly but surely, the lives of rural women are changing following the new credit scheme," she told IPS.

But businesswoman Solange Uwimbabazi, who runs a shop at Nyabugogo market near Kigali city, insists that it is quite difficult for poor women to access credit in a situation where the process of allocation of loans by banks is far from transparent.

"There is discrimination," the entrepreneur, a mother of five, observes. "Some groups of women are excluded to benefit from loans. The wealthiest groups are considered the most," she adds.

A profile of a Poco drug user

A new drug named Poco is giving people in Buenos Aries, Argentina an escape from poverty. The use of Poco has flourished in a poor neighborhood just outside of the city, giving it's users an intense but short high. Many who give up on their hopes of providing for themselves or family turn to the drug for an escape.

Accompanying his story in the New York Times, reporter Alexel Barrionuevo has this video profiling on of Poco's users. An update on how he is doing follows the jump.



The story picks up on Mr. Eche reentry into rehab.

Mr. Eche was wasting away before his mother’s eyes in late May when the police picked him up for suspected paco possession. Mrs. Acuña intervened and got a judge to drop the criminal case on the condition that she would check him into yet another psychiatric hospital.

On June 14, Mr. Eche’s birthday, the family surprised him at the hospital. They ate cake on a patio with an unexpected visitor — Mr. Eche’s son, Enzo, 5, who was granted special permission to enter the hospital. Mr. Eche began crying when Enzo ran into his arms, Mrs. Acuña said.

She is thankful for small blessings. With swine flu raging through Buenos Aires, Mr. Eche’s stay at the hospital has kept him from sleeping on the streets and being at greater risk of catching the virus, she said.

In another month, Mr. Eche will have to leave the hospital. His mother said she hoped to get him into yet another treatment center, this one run by a church. “I have to have faith that he will recover,” she said. “I will raise my hopes yet again.”

Beyond the police raids, Mrs. Acuña said, politicians need to get to the root of what is causing paco’s spread. Oculta’s residents are starving for jobs with decent salaries to help break the cycle of hopelessness that is creating whole families of paco addicts and dealers, she said.

She and her husband said they hoped to find the money to turn the upper floor of their diner into an integrated drug-prevention center employing psychologists and professional counselors.

Ultimately, only Oculta can save itself, Mrs. Acuña said.

New report says 3 million Italians are in poverty

A new study says that three million people in Italy live in absolute poverty. The statistics service ISTAT defines absolute poverty as having less than what is deemed essential for life.

From this Agence France-Presse story that we found at News.Com.Au, we read more stats from the survey.

Absolute poverty is defined by the "incapacity to acquire goods and services necessary to attain a lifestyle held as the minimum acceptable,'' which means everything from food, clothing and education to medical care or entertainment.

The number of families falling below Italy's poverty line is 1.126 million, the institute's report said, 2.893 million individuals or 4.6 per cent of the population, although the numbers are broadly in line with 2007 figures.

In the southern Mezzogiorno region, the rate has shot up from 5.8 per cent to 7.9 per cent in the new annual results.

New initiative to help the poor in the San Francisco Bay area

A San Francisco Bay area charity has announced more money to go into programs to help the poor in the are. The Marin Community Foundation announced a five year, 15 million dollar funding for various programs. Programs include a savings program that will match the money people save. Other programs include job training skills and micro-enterprise start-ups.

From the Marin Independent Journal, reporter Richard Halstead talks to the foundation about the efforts.

"Through this new initiative," said foundation President Thomas Peters, "we'll fund efforts to help people learn new job skills, understand personal finances, benefit from financial services that meet their needs, receive support to start their own business and avoid economic crises."

Peters said Marin's high cost of living makes it difficult for the working poor to move out of poverty. According to the Marin County Department of Health and Human Services, there are nearly 23,000 families in Marin who have trouble covering such basic needs as housing, food and health care.

"A parent with two children needs an annual income of $68,000 to be regarded as fully self-sufficient," Peter said. "But since that would require the earnings equivalent of working four minimum-wage jobs, many Marin families can't reach that goal."

Peters said the foundation will spend about $3 million per year on the effort. It has already awarded $600,000 in grants to two San Francisco-based nonprofits.

Earned Assets Resource Network, which helps low-income families establish savings accounts by matching families' personal contributions with philanthropic and federal government funds, will receive a one-year, $350,000 grant from the foundation, Peters said.

Women's Initiative for Self Employment, which provides low-income women with training and ongoing support to start their own businesses, will receive a one-year $250,000 grant. WISE has a Novato training office.

"These are the kinds of efforts that help families become more stable and economically secure for the long term," Peters said.

IMF to increase lending, $14 billion through 2014

The International Monetary Fund says it will begin to increase lending to poor nations. The fund says that the world has higher financing needs due to the global recession, and the sharp rises in food and fuel prices that preceded the recession.

From this Associated Press story that we found at the Lexington Herald Leader, writer Harry Dunphy gives us more of the IMF's statement.

The IMF said it expected to provide up to $17 billion to these countries through 2014, including up to $8 billion over the next two years. In addition, the fund said low income countries would not have to pay interest on any outstanding IMF loans through 2011.

The resources to increase lending will come in part from the sale of IMF gold, the fund said.

"This is an unprecedented scaling up of IMF support for the poorest countries, in sub-Saharan Africa and all over the world," said Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the head of the IMF.

He said the G-20 countries at their April meeting asked the IMF to respond to the global financial crisis, which has hit low income countries so hard "and we are responding with a historic set of actions in terms of support for the world's poor."

The $8 billion over the next two years exceeds the G-20 call for $6 billion in new lending to low income countries.

Strauss-Kahn said the new resources the fund was providing and new means of delivering them "should help millions of people from falling into poverty."

A new method of treating tuberculosis in South Africa

A new program started by Medecins Sans Frontieres is helping to make the treatment of tuberculosis easier on it's patients. In South Africa, those sick with TB were effectively quarantined in hospitals to prevent the spread of the virus, but once people realized that they would be locked up for a long time many did not come forward for treatment. The MSF program treats the people in their homes, but they must promise not to leave the homes.

From the New York Times, reporter Celia Dugger explains the new treatment further.

Under South Africa’s current policy, Ms. Vani would normally have been whisked away to a hospital after tuberculosis was diagnosed and isolated from the public for a grueling regimen of toxic, hard-to-tolerate pills and injections, lasting months.

In the neighboring Eastern Cape Province, patients have effectively been imprisoned in a hospital encircled by fences topped with razor wire, and dozens of them have escaped in desperate bids to reunite with their families. Both the Eastern Cape and Western Cape Provinces have sought court orders to compel the return of runaways.

But in this case, Ms. Vani is being treated in a local clinic and lives at home under a pilot program run by Doctors Without Borders and supported by both the city of Cape Town and Western Cape Province. The idea is to show that such patients can be successfully treated in an impoverished community like Khayelitsha even while they are still infectious.

For Ms. Vani to continue in the program, Ms. Beko had to ensure that the young woman could live at home during her treatment with minimal risk of infecting others. Tuberculosis spreads through the air when patients cough and sneeze, and the germs could get trapped in the tiny room where Ms. Vani lives alone.

“They may send you to the hospital, as there are no windows in the house,” Ms. Beko said with a doubtful shake of her head.

Ms. Vani, eager to avoid a long-term hospitalization, promised that she would remain alone in the house and only see friends outside in the open air. “I already told my boyfriend it would not be good for him to sleep over,” she said through a paper mask that covered her mouth.

Drug-resistant tuberculosis is a mounting global health threat. The World Health Organization reported the highest rates of it ever last year. Some 500,000 of the 9 million new cases of tuberculosis in 2007, the most recent estimates, failed to respond to the standard, inexpensive first-line drugs. About 150,000 people died of drug-resistant TB.

Video: Yes, even China needs microcredit

China has experienced great economic growth in recent years, but the growth has largely been concentrated in the cities. Rural China has experienced little if any of the economic growth. So, yes there is a need for microcredit in the country.

Two young entrepreneurs have started a microcredit venture to provide loans to the 200 million in China who are still in poverty. Wokai or "I Start" has a website that features peer-to-peer lending similar to Kiva.

From MSNBC, reporter Ed Flanagan tells us more about microcredit venture. A video with one it's founders is featured after the jump.

Founded eight months ago by 25-year-olds, Casey Wilson and Courtney McColgan, Wokai is the convergence of the pair’s shared interest in economic development and China. The pair, who met in a Chinese language program at Beijing’s Tsinghua University in 2006, created a microfinance program to help provide assistance to some of China’s estimated 228 million people who have no access to basic financial services.

Wilson and McColgan created a Web site that they’ve coined "Facebook for Farmers" – it features many of the core characteristics of Web 2.0: social networking, blogging and interactive media.

Functioning similarly to the one of the more established microfinance sites, Kiva.org, Wokai’s online system of peer-to-peer loans allows potential lenders to scan the profiles of pre-screened rural Chinese borrowers and decide for themselves who they want to loan money to.

The loans are small – the average loans is around $300 – and are mostly used by farmers to invest in simple business improvements such as adding additional livestock or buying new products for dry goods stores.

To attract loans and help develop the organization, Wokai has enlisted an army of young volunteers both in the United States and China. They have assisted in everything from website development to working directly with field partners in China to screen potential borrowers. Meanwhile, member chapters in San Francisco, Seattle and New York help drive awareness and donations through localized fund raising events.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Flaws in data make in hard to have Kids Count

As a part of the Annie E. Casey's 2009 Kids Count Report, the Foundation included a special report that talked about the lack of good poverty data. The report pointed to an outdated measurement of poverty that our government still uses that hasn't been updated since the 1960's. The Foundation says that the lack of good data hurts the cause of helping vulnerable children in the states.

From this Associated Press article that we found at Google News, reporter David Crary talked to the Casey Foundation Senior Vice President, Patrick McCarthy.

In its special report on national data, the Casey Foundation said "perhaps the single most glaring shortfall comes in our efforts to measure poverty, the key performance indicator that rises above all others in its impact on children's futures."

The poverty formula still used by the federal government, which Casey called "thoroughly outdated," was developed in the 1960s. It calculates the cost of a basic grocery budget for a given family size and multiplies the total by three because food, in the '60s, represented one-third of a typical family budget.

The formula has not been recalculated since then even though, according to Casey, food now accounts for only about one-seventh of a typical family's budget.

The formula takes no account of child care, transportation, health insurance, and certain government benefits such as food stamps and housing vouchers. Also — except for Alaska and Hawaii — it does not reflect regional differences in the cost of living.

McCarthy said the National Academy of Sciences has developed some recommendations for a new formula that would take many of these additional factors into consideration, and a bill reflecting the proposals has been introduced in Congress.

Skeptics in various camps worry that any changes might cause harm by either increasing or decreasing the number of families officially defined as poor, said McCarthy. "But the reality is, we need an accurate count."

The poverty measure — used to determine eligibility for various benefits — has been a source of concern to many advocacy groups over the years.

Kinsey Dinan, a senior policy associate with the National Center for Children in Poverty at Columbia University, said the current system potentially disadvantages families that don't receive substantial government assistance and those living in areas with high living costs.

Search continues for Haitian immigrants from boat wreckage

The search continues today for the Haitian immigrants who fled to the U.S. but didn't make it. The boat filled with over 200 passengers ran into a reef just off the coast of the Turks and Caicos Islands, the waves broke the ship a part.

So far 80 people are missing, The U.S. Coast Guard is going to continue to look, but says that the chances of finding more survivors are slim. From this Associated Press story that we found at WRAL, reporter Jennifer Kay talked to the local Coast Guard about the search.

Authorities cautioned that the outlook for more survivors wasn't bright given the long hours that had passed since the accident. Anyone still in the water would be struggling with 23 mph (37 kph) winds and 6-foot (2-meter) seas, officials said.

"We hope that there are survivors and we can get them medical attention," U.S. Coast Guard Petty Officer 1st Class Jennifer Johnson said. "However, as time goes by, it becomes less and less likely because of exposure and fatigue."

She said Coast Guard ships, airplanes and a helicopter joined local authorities and volunteers in searching a 1,600-square-mile area Tuesday.

Turks and Caicos officials were moving quickly to send the ill-fated migrants back to impoverished Haiti, saying 60 were flown home Tuesday. Fifty-eight more spent Tuesday night under blankets on cots in a gym, and an unspecified number were at another detention site or in the hospital. The bodies of the unlucky 15 lay in a makeshift morgue.

It still wasn't clear when the boat wrecked. Johnson said the accident occurred Monday afternoon, but Deputy Police Commissioner Hubert Hughes said it could have happened Sunday night. Turks and Caicos reported the disaster Monday to the Coast Guard, which patrols the area for drug traffickers and illegal migrants and helps in search and rescue efforts.

The sailboat, crowded with about 200 men, women and teenagers fleeing Haiti's deep poverty, broke up as it tried to maneuver through treacherous coral reefs and was struck by heavy swells near West Caicos. It's part of an archipelago that has proved deadly for Haitians trying to escape their homeland's misery to find a better life elsewhere.

Another analysis of Nigeria

The violence continues in Nigeria, in the latest round 80 people died after Islamic militants attached police. The oil rich country of Nigeria is also the poorest in Africa. It's people only get more frustrated as it's government only gets more corrupt.

The Associated Press today has a good analysis on the problems in Nigeria. Wrirter Michelle Faul has covered Africa for over 25 years.

The militants have carried out a string of devastating attacks on pipelines and other oil installations as well as kidnappings of petroleum company employees.

When the oil militants attacked a fuel depot in Lagos, the economic capital — for the first time striking outside the delta — the government reacted by freeing a long-jailed leader of the movement and urging negotiations.

But that fight likely will continue as long as the government fails to address decades-long grievances about the unrelenting poverty of the delta people.

In the north, governments have done little over the years beyond commissioning reports after particularly bloody bouts of violence, never acting on them because those orchestrating the violence have links to well-placed members of the elite that has controlled successive governments.

The foot soldiers are ill-educated manual workers who are easy to manipulate: one of the names of the radical sect behind the latest violence is "Boko Haram," which means "Western education is sin."

It's one of the legacies of British colonization that never has been rectified. The colonizers ruled the north of Nigeria indirectly through sultans and caliphs. In the south, they governed directly and missionaries brought Western education. The gulf remains to this day.

Corruption and inefficiency are blamed for the persisting poverty in Nigeria, the world's eighth-biggest oil exporter and fifth-largest source of U.S. oil imports.

Some Nigerians were hopeful 10 years ago when decades of corrupt and brutal military rule ended, and again two years ago when they had the first handover of power from one civilian president to another.

But both former President Olusegun Obasanjo and current President Umaru Yar'Adua have links to the powerful military — and that has helped perpetuate Nigeria's cycle of corruption.

Youths starve to fight hunger

Youth from throughout Baldwin County, Alabama participated in a 30 hour fast over this past weekend. The event raised money for World Vision, and the youths also helped out at the county soup kitchen.

From the Press Register, reporter Andrew Dunning tells us what moved the youth to starve.

"This is the first time youths from St. Andrew by the Sea Community Church in Gulf Shores, Providence United Methodist Church in Spanish Fort and Christ Presbyterian Church in Daphne have teamed up to participate in the 30-hour Famine," said Sharla Berry, director of Youth Ministries at Christ Presbyterian Church.

Berry said that the kids started the 30-hour fast at 6 p.m. Friday when youths gathered to hold a candlelight service. The participants lit 600 candles — one for each child who died from hunger in that hour.

The participants got only water or other liquids for hydration during the 30 hours.

"I'm participating in the 30-hour Famine to help raise awareness about world hunger, especially in Third World countries," said Jim Hollis, 16, of St. Andrew by the Sea Community Church.

"We try and raise money by asking people for donations," Hollis said. "We tell them that $360 allows World Vision the opportunity to feed a child for one year."

Most of the youths are taking part in the famine to raise awareness of world hunger, but some participants, like 14-year-old Harrison York of Christ Presbyterian Church, have gone above and beyond to make a difference in a child's life.

York said this was his second time to participate in the 30-hour Famine event and he also sponsors a child through World Vision for $32 a month, which makes sure a child gets the food and nutrition he or she needs to survive.

2009 Kids Count Report released

The Annie E Casey Foundation has released their yearly roundup of child well being in the states, called the "2009 Kids Count Report"

The latest statistics in this report are from 2007 so most of the effects of the global recession are not yet factored into this report. However, our home state of Michigan; that basically had a one-state recession before all others joined us, had a sharp increase in children living in poverty.

From the Washington Times article on the report, writer Carol Morello breaks down the report. For all of the stats and graphs, go to the Kids Count Data Center provided by the Annie E. Casey Foundation.

"Our take-away is that even going into the recession, the economic outlook for a lot of families was dire," said Laura Beavers, the national Kids Count coordinator. "There was a flattening of the median income, and the poverty level was creeping up year after year."

Some regional differences stood out. States in New England and the Northern Plains all scored relatively high in an overall composite of the 10 indicators. And the 10 states with the lowest rankings were all in the South or Southwest.

Both Virginia and Maryland declined in the 50-state rankings. Virginia slipped from 15th to 16th, and Maryland slid from 19th to 25th. The District was not ranked because it's a city, but it saw improvements almost across the board; the percentage of children living in poverty, for example, decreased from 30 percent in 2000 to 23 percent in 2007. The decline might be a reflection of poor families being priced out of gentrifying neighborhoods.

In an ominous harbinger of the future, states that were roiled by economic difficulties early in the decade saw the dramatic effect a worsening economy has on children.

In Michigan, for example, the rate of children living in poverty rose by more than a third, from 14 percent in 2000 to 19 percent in 2007. In Ohio, the number went up by almost a fifth in the same period, from 16 percent to 19 percent.

Ethiopia receives emergency money to fight malnutrition

The U.N.'s Emergency Response Fund has released six million dollars to Ethiopia. The country is going through severe malnutrition, due to a large shortfall in food. The rainy season in Ethiopia was not wet enough and caused the shortage in food.

From the IRIN, we read more of the emergency response.

Ethiopia is facing challenges in providing food, health, nutrition, water and sanitation, emergency shelter, agriculture and livelihoods, according to the UN Humanitarian Coordinator, Fidele Sarassoro.

To counter these challenges, the UN has allocated US$6 million from its Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF).

“I have directed the humanitarian community jointly to agree on priority areas in which this new money can immediately be put to use," Sarassoro said.

At the same time, the federal Disaster Risk Management and Food Security Sector (DRMFSS) has announced that rising malnutrition and food insecurity were a growing concern and likely to lead to 6.2 million Ethiopians relying on food aid, out of a population of approximately 77 million.

At present, 4.9 million people in the country benefit from relief food.

According to the DRMFSS, the country has a shortfall of 176,000T of food. However, this is likely to increase to 390,000T in the months up to December 2009.

"Because of the existing shortfall, only three of the six planned rounds of food allocations have been distributed to date," the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), said in a statement on 20 July.

Comment: Not "Dead Aid" but Reverse Aid

In one of the most controversial books about international aid in recient years, Dambisa Moyo says that African nations are worse off than they were 50 years ago. In her book "Dead Aid" she uses the figure of $1 trillion dollars when talking about the total amount of money that has been spent in African aid.

However in this commentary from Joy Online, Dr. Nii Moi Thompson challenges the figure and describes why it may not be entirely accurate. At the same time, Dr Thompson shows an unwanted side-effect that some aid loans have on African nations. Dr. Thompson is a development economist who lives in Ghana.

First is the exact scale of the “aid” that Moyo tells us, with irritating frequency, has been “transferred to Africa” over the past 50 years with seemingly no meaningful reciprocity. She parrots the oft-repeated claim of “US$1 trillion,” a figure whose origin and credibility remain murky, at best.

But that’s only half the problem of Dead Aid. The other (unspoken) half is the amount of money that poor countries have transferred to rich countries over the same period.

Perhaps for Moyo there is no data on this other transfer to warrant its discussion, but the case of Ghana (a poster child of the aid-underdevelopment paradox) shows why such an omission cannot be ignored for whatever reason.

In 1994 (five years before donors labeled it “heavily indebted” and “poor”), Ghana’s budget statement made the following grim disclosure about its 1993 performance: “In the second half of the year, Ghana also obtained a Compensatory and Contingency Financing Facility [from the IMF] equivalent to US$65.1 million. At the same time an amount of US$67.9 million was paid back to the IMF, thereby showing a net outflow to the IMF of US$2.8 million.” If every African country in 1993 sent out an average of US$2.8 million more to donors than it received, that would be about US$150 million in net transfers, a princely sum for a continent supposedly hard up for development finance.

Of course we cannot forget the well-known disparity between what donors publicly pledge to “transfer” (headline aid) and what they eventually give to, or for, poor countries (pipeline aid). For example, data from Ghana’s Ministry of Finance shows that between 1990 and 2006, donors promised some US$1.1 billion in aid to the education sector but actually disbursed US$766.9 million
But even here we must distinguish between “disbursements” and “transfers”. Some donors insist, as a matter of commercial policy, that a portion of disbursed aid (sometimes as high as 75%) be spent on imports, including consultancy services, from their home countries; very little money is actually “transferred” to the recipient countries.

Besides the well-known problems with such “tied aid”, poor countries also lose large amounts of their own monies to rich countries through such practices as transfer pricing (self-dealing) and invoice-tampering by unscrupulous multi-nationals, as well as the abuse of tax holidays granted to these multi-nationals ostensibly to help stimulate economic growth in poor countries. In Ghana, some multi-nationals have been known to sell off their assets to others, typically from their home countries, just as their tax holiday is about to expire for them to pay taxes. The tax holiday is effectively extended, depriving Ghana of resources for development and, paradoxically, deepening its aid dependence.

Perhaps rather than Dead Aid we should be talking about Reverse Aid.

Numbers of poor children in the UK increases

Save The Children of the U.K. says the amount of poor children in the country is increasing. The charities survey specifically says that 60% of children in Wales have neither parent employed.

From this story at Wales Online, writer Darren Devine tells us more about the survey.

Research by Save the Children shows around 192,000 youngsters across the nation live in poverty.

Save the Children says there’s been a rise in children living in workless homes in some parts of Wales compared with previous years.

Areas where the numbers of children living in workless families have increased are Bridgend, Carmarthenshire, Flintshire, Swansea and Pembrokeshire.

Workless families have to make tough choices between food, heating and transport costs.

Children from poorer families often experience ill health and delayed development, suffer accidents and become pregnant as teenagers. They also miss out on school trips, out-of-hours activities and extra tuition.

Eleri Thomas, head of Save the Children in Wales, said access to child care and well-paid jobs remain two of the most significant barriers for parents trying to overcome poverty.

She said: “Large inequalities remain in health and in educational attainment, where the narrowing of the gap between poor children and their peers has stalled and we need to address this, both on a national and local government level.

“Families should be supported into work, but they need good quality affordable child care and we need to make sure that employment is paying decent wages and offers long-term job security.”

Haitian boat escaping to the U.S. capsize and drowns

A boat full of Haitians trying to find a better life in the U.S. capsized and sank near the Turks and Caicos Islands. The U.S. Coast Guard says they have found 113 survivors, but 85 people are still missing. The boat struck a reef nearby the islands as it was trying to elude from police.

From this Assoicated Press story that we found at KSWB, San Diego, reporter Vivian Tyson gives us more on the wreck.

"Our main goal right now is just to get everybody out of the water and get medical attention for those who need it," said Petty Officer Third Class Sabrina Elgammal, a Coast Guard spokeswoman.

The shipwreck happened around 2 p.m. Monday. By late evening, Turks and Caicos authorities using small boats had rescued about 40 people stranded on a reef 2 miles (3 kilometers) southeast of West Caicos island. Many others were later found on a nearby reef, Moorlag said.

The boat carrying up to 200 Haitians had been at sea for three days when passengers saw a police vessel and accidentally steered the boat onto a reef as they tried to hide, survivor Alces Julien told The Associated Press at a hospital were some survivors were receiving treatment.

Elgammal said information from survivors indicates that between 160 and 200 people were on board when the vessel capsized near this island chain north of Haiti and southeast of the Bahamas. She said the cause of the accident is under investigation.

A Coast Guard cutter has been searching through the night for survivors, and Moorlag said a helicopter and a jet will join the search at first light. He said a C-130 aircraft was expected Tuesday morning to help in the search.

Haitians routinely take to the seas in rickety, overcrowded boats in hopes of escaping poverty in the Western Hemisphere's poorest nation.

Task force on poverty begins in Colorado

Colorado state government has begun a task force to examine ways the state can cut it's the numbers of poor people. Members of the task force are trying to look at economic solutions as well as government assistance.

This Associated Press article that we found at Forbes.com, writer Steven K. Paulson describes the task force goals.

Rep. John Kefalas, a Democrat from Fort Collins who chairs the Economic Opportunity Reduction Task Force Committee, said the 10-member committee will look at the root causes of poverty and try to determine why some parts of the state have more poverty than others.

"We've given ourselves a year, to December of 2010, to put together a plan of action," Kefalas said.

Jodie Levin-Epstein, spokeswoman for the Center for Law and Social Policy, a nonprofit organization focused on laws and policies that affect poverty, told lawmakers that Colorado is one of the worst states in the nation when it comes to dealing with the issue.

She said people who are trying to get out of poverty are stymied by poverty measures that are based on life in the past century, when moms stayed at home and husbands were the breadwinner. She said lawmakers have failed to take into account the cost of health care, transportation and tax policies that make it difficult for families to escape poverty.

"We need to figure out ways to make work work," she told the panel.

Video Protests in South Africa

The BBC has video of another round of protests in South Africa. Garbage collectors are now striking, demanding a %15 increase in pay. The workers say that they have not been able to afford food since the large jump in food prices last year. An article from the BBC is included after the jump.



This article from the BBC has further details on the strikes.

Striking South African municipal workers have emptied piles of rubbish onto the streets during a march to demand a wage increase.

Police fired rubber bullets to disperse protesters in Limpopo Province, who police said had become "disorderly".

The ruling ANC has reportedly condemned the workers' behaviour. Recent strikes and unrest are seen as the major challenges for President Jacob Zuma.

About 150,000 workers have stopped work demanding a 15% pay rise.

Workers say they are unable to make a living from their current wages because of high food prices.

President Zuma has called for understanding from workers, but the BBC's Jonah Fisher in Johannesburg says crowd-pleasing promises he made during his election campaign are proving hard to keep.

Our correspondent says a pledge to create 500,000 new jobs has already been retracted.

A documentary on Honduras making the film festival circuit

A new documentary that focuses on Honduran poverty is making the rounds at film festivals. Blinded by Open Arms is produced by Alexie Elfmont a 24 year old recent College graduate from Miami. Elfmont and some friends traveled down to Honduras to film a fund raising video for a non-profit, but decided to stay longer and make a film.

From the Miami Herald, reporter Susana Montes-Delgado details some of the young film crews encounters.

For 17 days, the filmmakers interviewed former M-13 (Mara Salvatrucha) and M-18 gang members, drug addicts, lawyers, policemen, politicians and prison officials.

They filmed children begging on street corners, inhaling glue and sleeping on sheets of cardboard. Their stories have a common theme: extreme poverty, low education rates and broken homes. More than 50 percent of the Honduran population lives below the poverty line.

The young filmmaker took her camera into San Pedro Sula's prison, where prostitution and rapes are common. Foreigners are the most common target of kidnappings. Although there are women in the prison, it is not divided by gender, Elfmont said.

``We went inside with one policeman. I remember walking through the prison and feeling the eyes of the inmates fixated on our bodies,'' she said. ``I felt I was a piece of meat and that at any moment, something could happen to me.''

Later that night, filmmakers went out with a Honduran SWAT team that regularly patrols the streets. They came across a 13-year-old boy who appears in the film sniffing glue.

``Why are you in the street?'' Elfmont asks.

``Because I don't have a family,'' he replies.

Sabillon was impressed with the candor of those interviewed.

``Nobody does this in Honduras,'' he said, discussing the film. ``In a way, people are victims of the system and they wanted to be heard.''

Peer to Peer microcredit

An Indian business website is doing a special series on Social Entrepreneurship, which is starting business with the goal of human benefit instead of only a goal for profit. The latest installment of the Pluggd.In series has a profile of a peer to peer microcredit website. The site Rang De gives individuals the opportunity to make the microcredit loans to low income people.

From Pluggd.In is this interview with Rang De founder, Ram NK.

Rang De is a social business with a strong focus on becoming a sustainable and scalable business that provides access to capital. Rang De is able to provide microcredit at low cost as we source social investments from individual investors. The unique proposition we offer to the social investor is that they have the ability to select an individual borrower to whom the money goes to – based on business activity and geography. Social Investor also has the ability to monitor the progress made by the borrower through a unique wellness score. Rang De engages with a network of grassroot organizations to help in screening borrowers, disbursing the loan and collecting repayments.

While the social investor gets a tangible social return and a nominal financial return of 2% flat p.a. or 3.5% APY, the field partners get 5% flat p.a. to cover their operational costs. Rang De charges 1% flat p.a. to cover its transaction costs. Rang De ensures that the borrower pays no more than 8.5% flat p.a. as interest towards the loan. There are no hidden charges or processing fees.
Startup Journey
# What made you start Rang De? And how did you go about it?

The journey started in December 2006 when I was giving a serious thought to coming back to India after a short stint in the UK. Having started as a senior consultant in Vignette and going on to become the Principal Consultant in the company, I decided that it was time to quit my corporate career and return to India and do something that is socially relevant. The desire to do something socially relevant was always there but did not have the financial means or the know how to take the plunge. After a successful career and a small amount of savings, I thought the time is now or never.Then the question of what could bring about a sustainable impact in India began to occupy my thoughts. That’s how we decided on doing something in the microcredit space. Prior to that the other causes that I really wanted to work on were – child labour, domestic help and social media.

Somehow, microcredit seemed to be the most promising as it had the potential to alleviate poverty on a large scale. Also because the root cause of almost every social problem in India emanates from poverty. Our initial research brought out a startling fact: 90% of the total estimated demand for microcredit of Rs. 200,000 cr was still unmet and that 80% of India’s population still does not have access to any form of credit.

Rang De was started with a seed funding of 6000 GBP from the founders and unconditional support from our technology(sen-sei.in) and creative(niyati.com) partners. We subsequently received funding from CSO Partners – a strategic partner of ICICI Foundation.

Did you always wanted to be a social entrepreneur?

Yes. Right from my college days, I was involved in getting people together to do something for a social cause. During my second year of engineering I organized a fund raising event where we celebrated the birthdays of 40 children from an orphanage run by Missionaries of Charity. They were simple acts of charity and volunteering. This continued during my professional life as well. I volunteered for NGOs during weekends and holidays.

Searching for Good

A search engine will give a penny to your favorite charity each time you do an internet search. Goodsearch.com has over 81,000 participating non-profits, who are not charged anything for their participation, they simply receive a check each year.

From this description that we found at Examiner.com, writer Tracy Aiello tells us more about the search engine. Tracy's article contains some other good fair-trade and charitable ideas.

Searching for Good: Mother Teresa didn’t search the latest Hollywood gossip, but I’m sure she’d bless the result. Goodsearch.com, is the simplest answer to giving back – let your web browser do it for you. Launched by a brother and sister team in 2005, Goodsearch, powered by Yahoo!, donates about a penny to a non-profit of your choice for every search executed. The site has more than 80,000 non-profits and schools registered, but if your favorite isn’t on the list, just add it, and search away. Think of it, search for quotes on Gandhi, AND give money to the Youth Federation for World Peace. Nonprofits aren’t charged to be part of the program, they just receive a check every December, which founder JJ Ramberg says is “the most fun day of the whole year!”

After realizing that their idea worked, the do-gooding family launched GoodShop.com, an online shopping center that adds to the pennies, donating a percentage of online purchases to the charity or school of your choice. There are more than 1,000 popular online merchants participating and coupons and discounts to add to the fun.

A third of British seniors in poverty

A third of British seniors are living in poverty according to new statistics. The European Commission says that 30 percent of UK pensioners are living below the poverty line, the fourth highest rate in all of Europe.

Advocates for the poor are urging for immediate action to tackle the problem.

From the Pocklington Post, we read more of the stats and the reaction.

Age Concern and Help the Aged called for ministers to act through measures such as reforming the benefits and pension system.

The figures come ahead of the Work and Pension Committee's review of Government efforts to tackle pensioner poverty, which is published on Thursday.

The EU research, which compared relative poverty in the 27 member states, showed nearly one in three UK over-65s were at risk of poverty in 2007, the same proportion as in Lithuania (30%).

It revealed that in most leading European economies, pensioner poverty levels were either below or slightly above the EU average of 19%.

While the UK fared better than the 51% in Cyprus (51%), Latvia (33%), and Estonia (33%), the figures show British pensioners are worse off than Romania, where 19% fell below the poverty threshold, Poland (8%) and France (13%). Pensioners in the Czech Republic are least likely to be living in poverty, with 5% below the threshold of an income of 60% of the national median, according to the figures.

Poor neighborhoods have great effect on children's future earnings, says Pew

The neighborhood you are raised in has a significant impact on your future livelihood, according to a new study from the Pew Charitable Trust. The Pew research says that African American children who were raised in poor neighborhoods have a greater chance of earning less when they grow up than white children. Pew says this is because less white children live in poor neighborhoods.

From this article in the Washington Post, writer Alec MacGillis explains the difference.

The Pew Charitable Trusts Economic Mobility Project caused a stir two years ago by reporting that nearly half of African American children born to middle-class parents in the 1950s and '60s had fallen to a lower economic status as adults, a rate of downward mobility far higher than that for whites.

This week, Pew will release findings of a study that helps explain that economic fragility, pointing to the fact that middle-class blacks are far more likely than whites to live in high-poverty neighborhoods, which has a negative effect on even the better-off children raised there. The impact of neighborhoods is greater than other factors in children's backgrounds, Pew concludes.

Even as African Americans have made gains in wealth and income, the report found, black children and white children are often raised in starkly different environments. Two out of three black children born from 1985 through 2000 were raised in neighborhoods with at least a 20 percent poverty rate, compared with just 6 percent of white children, a disparity virtually unchanged from three decades prior.

Even middle-class black children have been more likely to grow up in poor neighborhoods: Half of black children born between 1955 and 1970 in families with incomes of $62,000 or higher in today's dollars grew up in high-poverty neighborhoods. But virtually no white middle-income children grew up in poor areas.

Using a study that has tracked more than 5,000 families since 1968, the Pew research found that no other factor, including parents' education, employment or marital status, was as important as neighborhood poverty in explaining why black children were so much more likely than whites to lose income as adults.

"We've known that neighborhood matters . . . but this does it in a new and powerful way," said John E. Morton, who directs Pew's economic policy unit. "Neighborhoods become a significant drag not just on the poor, but on those who would otherwise be stable."

Not much talking being done now at the WTO

Ambassadors at the World Trade Organization says there is not a lot of negotiations going on. That is despite a G-8 pledge to complete a global trade pact by the end of next year. Not much will be done for the rest of the summer, because many WTO diplomats go on vacation in August.

From this Associated Press story that we found at the Gloucester Daily Times, we read more about the slow WTO.

"Mismatch" was the word used by ambassadors Friday at the 153-member World Trade Organization in comparing that promise to reality on the ground.

They said the current talks were falling far short of the pace and intensity needed to wrap up a deal once promised as a recipe for lifting millions of people out of poverty and adding billions of dollars to the global economy.

There is a "marked and embarrassing gap" between what world leaders and top trade ministers have called for and what is being accomplished in talks, Australia's ambassador Peter Grey told a meeting of the WTO membership.

Washington's outgoing envoy Peter Allgeier said there was "no doubt" that the slow progress of technical work was failing to match the ambition of politicians, while his Indian counterpart Ujal Singh Bhatia claimed there was a "striking lack of energy" in WTO negotiations.

Bhatia said the disconnect threatens to damage the credibility of the WTO and world leaders, who have voiced their support for the Doha round at recent summits in Bali, Indonesia; Paris; L'Aquila, Italy; and Singapore.

The global trade talks were supposed to be completed in 2004 and have been at a standstill for months.

The Imagine Cup from Microsoft

We know all about the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, but his company Microsoft also does some things to help poverty fight. Microsoft organizes the "Imagine Cup" that invites teens to submit technological advancements that can help the environment or those in poverty.

From Monday Morning, we learn more about the competition and one example of one of the entries.

“They really are taking on all these problems”, Joe Wilson, Microsoft senior director of academic initiatives, told media prior to the finals.

“This audience wants social change in a way generations before didn’t, and innovations in technology are coming from these people who live with it, not from the guys in the corporations”.

More than 300,000 students from some 110 countries competed in the greatest turnout seen at the Imagine Cup since it was launched in 2002.

Teams containing a total of 444 college students faced off in Cairo on July 9 for top spots in nine categories, including software design, robotics and game development.

“It’s befitting that we do this here in Cairo”, said Walid Abu-Hadba, corporate vice president for Microsoft’s Developer and Platform Evangelism Group. “Egypt is the cradle of civilization”.
...

Team Wafree from South Korea won top honors in an “embedded” category for creating an easy-to-use machine for raising insects that can be used as food sources in parts of the world where fertile land and water are scarce.

Each winning team gets 25,000 dollars to divide between members as they see fit, according to Microsoft.

Bringing power to the people of the Niger Delta

We have had quite a few posts lately about the armed conflict in Nigeria. The rebel factions have fought the government over frustration from having little or no access to basic services or to the oil revenues.

An article we found in Ethical Corporation Magazine touches on some projects that have helped to bring power to the people of the Niger Delta. Writers Emma Wilson and Brian Shaad also suggest some ways that more progress can be made in the region.

Total’s Egi Electrification Programme is an IPP and a community development project undertaken in partnership with the Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC). The aim is to provide uninterrupted electricity to all communities of Egi District in Rivers State, in the Niger Delta.

A 13 MW independent power plant uses associated gas from the nearby Obagi field. The plant generates electricity that is distributed through a local transmission network.

The project includes the renovation, expansion and activation of the electricity network in communities already connected to the grid, and a new transmission network to bring more communities onto the grid.

The Bonny Utility Company is different example of collaboration between industry, government and the community, on Bonny Island in the Niger Delta. Power is generated from a turbine using gas from the liquefied natural gas (LNG) facility.

The local government has provided land and tax breaks. Local industry partners including NNPC, Shell, Total, Eni and Mobil subsidise the power services.

Electricity is supplied free up to an agreed limit. Above this, every customer can obtain additional services at a subsidised rate via a pre-payment model. (About 20% of customers use just the free electricity)

Over 75% of the utility’s employees are taken from the local population and there is a policy of preference for local contractors. The community is also involved in the running of the utility via the Bonny Kingdom Development Committee.
...

We suggest three scenarios for international oil and gas companies in facilitating local access to energy, based on level of commitment to tackling energy poverty and climate change.

The basic step is to improve current practice, while focusing on core business opportunities, for example by engaging meaningfully with local people and diverting associated gas for local energy needs rather than flaring it.

Pushing the boundaries a little further, large oil and gas companies might engage in innovative partnerships with governments, donors, NGOs and communities and direct social investment funding not only towards gas-based projects, but also towards renewable energy projects.

A more radical approach might entail establishing sustainable community-based utilities for decentralised power generation (using gas or renewables) and taking a more decisive role in the policy arena to promote investment in low-carbon energy systems and energy efficiency.

If international oil and gas companies are to engage in tackling energy poverty, they can’t do it alone. They and development practitioners need to overcome their traditional reluctance to collaborate on such initiatives.

Video of Muhammad Yunus on barriers to fighting poverty

In this video that we found at Current TV, Muhammad Yunus talks about barriers to fighting poverty, from attitudes to laws.

Donating money to wear street clothes

Students from an UK school got to shed their uniforms for a day, but it came at a price. Students had to donate to come into school in any street clothes, the money went to a charity that operates a orphanage in South Kenya.

From the Shield Gazette, writer Angela Reed explains the fundraiser.

Pupils at St Aloysius RC Infants in Hebburn held a non-uniform day and raised £270 for The Akhonya Trust, a Gateshead-based charity that supports a rural area in western Kenya.

It runs a home for 130 children orphaned by HIV/Aids and pays for corrective surgery, such as club feet, cleft palate and bowed legs.

It also supports an organisation called SAIPEH (Support Activities in Poverty Eradication and Health), which has just set up a feeding centre in a small village called Manyasa.

The money raised by the school allowed the Trust to buy a pure-bred cow and a goat for the feeding centre, which provides 30 orphans with two basic meals a day.

The goat has been named Aaron, after five-year-old pupil Aaron McDowell, who donated all his savings.

The children were asked to come up with a name for the cow and agreed on Milky.

The effects of the Somali pirates on aid

The Hufington Post has an interview with Steve Hansch of the Open Society Institute. Hansch just returned from Somalia after researching the pirates and political climate in the country.

Piracy began threatening international vessels in one of the main international shipping routes lying off the Somali coast after the collapse of the government there in 1991. Who are the pirates?

They are often unemployed young men, primarily from Puntland in Somalia, who have seen their fishing decline because of overfishing of their waters by international fishing. They've found that if they occasionally intercept people, the insurance companies reward them for it.

Has piracy been affecting the distribution of aid relief to the local civilian population?

No, the pirates have on occasion boarded food shipments, but overall an enormous amount of aid has been delivered. There's a completely different phenomenon going on in Somalia which I don't want to refer to as 'piracy'. In the central part of Somalia where the main aid needs are, aid workers and doctors have been taken hostage. It's obviously similar to the piracy, but it's not the same as boarding a ship. Now there are no longer ex-pat aid staff working in Somalia. The level of ex-pat aid staff working in the area is the lowest area per aid dollar spent in any country.

Aid agencies have been saying for some time now that Somalia is a highly dangerous place to work in given the continued political instability, violence, and kidnappings. After the recent assaults on UN offices in Somalia, a UN official said yesterday that the UN would not 'back out' of the country, but is it feasible to continue humanitarian efforts in this environment?

A gang takes people hostage and hopes it will make them millionaires because the government of those hostages will step in and pay the ransom. Governments have created a market by being willing to pay millions of dollars. Most aid professionals are working for NGOs and the ransoms that have been paid have not been negotiated at the initiative of those organizations, which could use their position to work through mediators. Governments have leapfrogged the NGOs.

Are aid agency ex-pat staff likely to return in the coming months?

I don't know when they'll go back in. Crime is a funny thing. In the long term history, some things don't seem to change.

What is the situation regarding aid distribution now?

Aid is not just about taking stuff and distributing it. The largest share of U.S. government aid is in food aid, and it's being distributed through local Somali NGOs. But the more professional people from other countries are the people who would do the project supervising and monitoring, and they are not able to get through. One of the things humanitarian people do is make sure that key things are done; it's not just about spending dollars. That's been dramatically reduced, and that phenomenon is really being seen this year. Effectively in 2009, there are no ex-pats working in Somalia.

A government response and a peaceful protest in South Africa

Some of the protests have begun to settle down in South Africa. Earlier this week, violent protests erupted after people took to the streets to protest the lack of basic services many have in the country. Many years after apartheid ended, many people still don't have access to water or decent housing in South Africa.

From Reuters written by Marius Bosch we read of the governments response and one peaceful protest that happened Wednesday.

South Africa's government on Thursday threatened to crack down on violent protests which erupted this week over jobs and living conditions, posing an early challenge to President Jacob Zuma.

Police fired rubber bullets and teargas on Wednesday at township rioters who were calling for the removal of local officials of the ruling ANC party they accuse of corruption. Scores of protesters have been arrested.
...

Police said calm had returned to Siyathemba township, southeast of Johannesburg, after four days of rebellion. Violence flared in various townships after a series of strikes.

The unrest, with scenes reminiscent of attacks against foreigners last year that killed 62 people, have dented South Africa's hope of showing a positive image less than a year before the country hosts the soccer World Cup.

In the Ramaphosa squatter settlement east of Johannesburg, one of the main trouble spots during last year's violence, thousands of residents staged a peaceful protest march.

Watched by heavily armed police, the protesters carried placards. One said: "Poor service delivery is what we hate."

Many South Africans say local governments have failed to provide jobs, housing, sanitation and medical services, and have instead promoted a culture of nepotism.

"I want to live like Zuma in a house with electricity. I'm tired of living in a shack, I want a flush toilet," said Nicolas Mabitsela, who lives in the Ramaphosa settlement.

Drawing attention to endosulfan

The fair trade underwear company Pants to Poverty is organizing protests to warn about the use of a chemical in cotton processing. Pants to Poverty is organizing the protest in 16 different countries, and is getting help from celebrities from the UK and Bollywood.

From the Ethiopian Review, we read more about the chemical that is getting the attention.

They are calling for a ban on the use of the harmful pesticide endosulfan, used in underwear production.

It can cause cancer, birth defects, respiratory problems and sterility among cotton farmers and their families.

Pants To Poverty, a Fairtrade underwear company, says toxic cotton pants containing traces of the chemical are being sold on the UK high street.

Just one pair of non-organic cotton pants can use 10ml of the chemical – enough to kill a person if directly exposed.

Ben Ramsden, founder of Pants To Poverty said: "Using pants as our metaphor, this campaign explains both the good and the bad about the cotton industry and points towards a brighter future."

Laboratory tests on 1,000 pairs of pants from UK shops showed one in 50 tested positive for the dangerous pesticide.

It has been banned in 62 countries due to its high toxicity, but its use is still permitted in India and other developing nations.

A new stove to help those in poverty

A new stove is being developed in the UK to help those in poverty make more efficient use of wood fires. Most poor in the under-developed world use wood fires to cook, but most of the energy conducted in the fire goes up in smoke. The SCORE stove helps to contain that energy and use if for other means.

From the website Gizmag, writer Paul Lester tells us more about the invention.

Two years ago experts began work on a revolutionary new stove that could help reduce poverty in third world countries. The £2m SCORE project (Stove for Cooking, Refrigeration and Electricity) was designed to offer cooking, refrigeration and energy production from a wood-powered generator and subsequent developments have now brought the project to a point where it can be mass-produced.

With two billion people worldwide using open fires to cook and around 93% of the energy produced going to waste, a suitable way to harness this power and transform it into usable energy would seem to have obvious benefits. Now able to utilize other material including dung and other locally available biomass, the unit would be capable of converting heat into acoustic energy and then electricity, for around one hour’s use per kilogram of fuel.

The cost target for the generator is £20 per household, and with SCORE currently being tested in the UK and Nepal the team is now looking for sponsorship in order to take the product to the locations for which it is intended.

Project director Paul H. Riley is optimistic about the future: “We have had tremendous interest in the SCORE project from around the world and the SCORE community —launched a few months ago — is working extremely well. This includes entrepreneurs and volunteers that adapt the stove for local use among its members.”

Unemployment statistics from Kentucky

A new Brookings Institution study finds that unemployment in the U.S. is becoming more of a suburban problem than an inner city problem.

From Louisville, Kentucky's Courier Journal, reporter Jere Downs gives us some stats on the poor in his local area.

As the recession drags through a second year, the Brookings report found that poverty is weighing on suburban areas, particularly newer, far-flung settlements. Of the largest 100 U.S. metro areas, Louisville is among 75 where the burden is growing faster outside of cities, according to the nonprofit think-tank based in Washington, D.C., which analyzed the growth of the jobless rate, new unemployment claims and applications for federal food stamp assistance in cities versus suburbs over a one-year span.

Researchers considered Jefferson County the region's primary urban area. They compared its economic status with the surrounding Bullitt, Henry, Meade, Nelson, Oldham, Shelby and Trimble counties in Kentucky and Indiana's Clark, Floyd, Harrison and Washington counties.

In those suburban counties, the number of jobless rose 88 percent, from 14,492 people in May last year to 27,241 two months ago, said Elizabeth Kneebone, a co-author of the report entitled "The Crabgrass Recession. Suburbs Feeling More Pain than Past Downturn."

In contrast, Jefferson County's jobless rose 72 percent, to 37,193 from 21,580, in the same time period, she said.
...

From May 2008 to May 2009, Jefferson County's jobless rate rose 4.3 percentage points, to 10.3 percent from 6 percent, of those available to work, the report found. In surrounding counties, the rate of unemployed rose 4.7 percentage points, to 10 percent from 5.3 percent.

Applications for federal food stamp assistance, however, climbed at a higher rate in Jefferson County than in surrounding areas from January 2008 to January 2009, Kneebone said. Within Jefferson County, those receiving food stamps rose 10.6 percent, to 101,510 recipients from 91,755. In the surrounding counties, those on food stamp aid rose only 7.7 percent, to 49,109 from 45,591.

Two different Nigeria's

As a part of a series of reports on Nigeria, the Financial Times has an overview of the country and it's path to economic growth. There are two very different Nigeria's; one has a large boom in the private sector, the second is the slow path to provide basic services to people due special interests inside it's government.

Writers Matthew Green and Tom Burgis develop the two countries story further.

From the hawkers dodging traffic in the choked streets of Lagos to the billionaire oligarchs in penthouses above, Nigeria seethes with restless ambition and an awareness of potential unfulfilled.

Yet 10 years after the country’s transition from military to civilian rule, progress towards reversing decades of declining living standards and restoring the social contract between the government and the people is still agonisingly slow.

In the 26 months since President Umaru Yar’Adua took office, frustration has intensified.

On paper, his promised reforms in energy, power and infrastructure could lay the foundation for an economic lift-off that would transform the prospects of Nigerians.

Faith in his government’s ability to deliver, however, is evaporating. With the political class gearing up for general elections in 2011 – that risk degenerating into a repeat of the mayhem sponsored by rival politicians in 2007 – even the most ebullient of Mr Yar’Adua’s ministers acknowledge time is running out.
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That Nigeria has survived repeated bouts of political and economic crisis since independence in 1960 is a tribute to its people’s resilience: yet there is a sense today that the country is teetering between two very different futures.

The optimistic one is that a burst of private-sector led growth, unleashed by government action to solve the chronic power crisis diversifies the economy and spurs a rapid re-emergence of the middle class.

Companies such as HiTV, a satellite television station profiled in this report, show that dynamic businesses can offer jobs to the country’s army of unemployed graduates. The sheer scale of the Nigerian market continues to act as a magnet for investors and an inspiration for entrepreneurs.

The second vision is bleaker, informed by images of communal violence that killed several hundred people in the city of Jos in November that underscore the growing social pressures.

Nigeria’s population – 40 per cent of which is under 15 – will grow from 140m in 2005 to more than 200m by 2025, according to the United Nations. Even today, only a fraction has access to clean water, adequate housing or healthcare.

For a teenage generation warehoused in a failing state education system the consumer lifestyles championed by hip-hop stars and on homegrown TV channels remain a seductive yet remote aspiration – nowhere more so than in the rapidly de-industrialising north.

“The collapse of the architecture of governance means the government has lost its moral authority to hold things together,” says Matthew Hassan-Kukah, vicar-general of the archdiocese of Kaduna and a respected commentator. “People are falling back on vigilante groups.”

Analysis on the causes of hunger in Uganda

A great analysis from Uganda's The Monitor tries to look into the root causes of hunger in the nation. In her piece, author Evelyn Lirri looks into several factors such as the armed conflict, people too poor to purchase food, failures of government, and climate change.

For our snippet, we focus on the inability to purchase food and population growth, but we encourage you to give the full article a read. We found the analysis at All Africa.

While the number of people living in abject poverty - described as living on less than a dollar, or Shs2,100 a day - has fallen from 56 per cent in 1992 to about 30 per cent today, the subsistence nature of the country's agricultural sector means many do not have cash incomes to buy food when needed.

Many of those with a cash income have simply been priced out of the food market. Figures from the Uganda Bureau of Statistics show that inflation hit double digits earlier this year on the back of high food prices as drought and exports to lucrative emerging markets put pressure on food supplies.

Food inflation, according to the Uganda Bureau of Statistics (Ubos) stood at 23.8 per cent for the year ending May 2009. The rising food prices were initially a blessing to producers, says State Minister for Disaster Preparedness and Refugees, Musa Ecweru.

"The risk has been that at times they sell almost everything and at the end of the day, the money they have is not able to buy food when there is a crisis," he said.

According to Prof. Nuwagaba, while official figures put the number of Ugandans employed in the agricultural sector at 70 per cent, the reality on the ground shows many young people are quitting agriculture for petty jobs in urban centres like riding boda boda (motorcycle taxis).
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Another problem contributing to Uganda's hunger is the unchecked population which is currently growing at 3.2 per cent annually, says Prof. Nuwagaba.

This means that every 20 years, the population is expected to double and by 2025, the population will be 56 million and 106 million people by 2050.

Projections for the year 2000 to 2050 indicate that a growing population will increase pressure on the available land. At the current growth rate, population density, which is around 124 people per square kilometre, will reach 233 in 2025 and 438 in 2050. Increasing land conflicts across the country are probably a pointer of things to come.

This population growth has not been matched by growth in food production; a country which had only five million people and was self-sufficient in food when the first census was carried out in 1948, is now on the brink of starvation as its tries to feed more people from a finite size of land without managing the elements.

New U.N. report measures poverty in Arab countries

A new report from the UN's Development Program measures the development standards of the Arab region. The report called "Challenges to Human Security in the Arab Countries" uses the term "human security" when talking about basic needs.

The report from the UN gives us a few statistics of poverty inArab nations that are worth noting. We found a summary of those stats at the MEMRI Blog.

A survey of a sample representing 65% of the population indicates that the average level of poverty was the lowest in Lebanon and Syria with a rate of 28.6-30 percent, the highest in Yemen at 59.9 percent, and 41 percent in Egypt.

Based on the survey, the report estimates that 65 million people live at the poverty line.

In 2005, unemployment was estimated at 14.4% in the Arab countries, compared with 6.3 percent globally. Unemployment among youth represents the biggest social challenge.

Violent protests of a lack of basic services in South Africa

Riots are breaking out in South Africa as protesters a getting angry over a lack of basic services in the country. People without water or decent housing have taken to the streets to protest.

From the BBC, we read more about the latest violent protests and the conditions behind them.

Police have fired rubber bullets at demonstrators in Johannesburg, the Western Cape and the north-eastern region of Mpumalanga.

More than 100 people have been arrested during the past week.

In Mpumalanga, there were reports of foreign-owned businesses being looted as foreigners sought police protection.
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President Jacob Zuma promised to improve service delivery when he came to power in May, and said fighting poverty was his priority.

South Africa announced in June that it was facing its worst recession in 17 years.

The recession and job losses have added fuel to long-standing grievances over the government's failure to deliver basic services, and the protests are the most direct challenge to President Zuma since he came to power, our correspondent adds.

Fifteen years after the African National Congress won its first election, over a million South Africans still live in shacks, many without access to electricity or running water.

Jeffrey Sachs warns of red tape tying up the G-8 food security pledge

In his latest commentary, Jeffrey Sachs applauds the G-8 decision to put 20 billion dollars into agriculture.

A few years ago, research conducted by the UN's Millennium Project found that food production could dramatically increase if small, peasant farmers are given good seeds and fertilizer to grow with. So the G-8 pledge of money hopes to give more of these inputs to small farmers.

However, Sachs says that a lot could stand in the way of getting the inputs to the farmers. Sachs warns against the aid money being tied up in bureaucracies and red tape. We found his latest commentary at the Business World Online.

A consensus has now been reached on the need to assist smallholders, but obstacles remain. Perhaps the main risk is that the "aid bureaucracies" now trip over each other to try to get their hands on the $20 billion, so that much of it gets taken up by meetings, expert consultations, overhead, reports, and further meetings. "Partnerships" of donors can become an expensive end in themselves, merely delaying real action.

If donor governments really want results, they should take the money out of the hands of 30 or more separate aid bureaucracies and pool it in one or two places, the most logical being the World Bank in Washington and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) in Rome. One or both of these agencies would then have an account with several billion dollars.

Governments in hunger-stricken regions, especially Africa, would then submit national action plans that would provide details on how they would use the donor funds to get high-yield seeds, fertilizer, irrigation, farm tools, storage silos, and local advice to impoverished farmers. An independent expert panel would review the national plans to verify their scientific and managerial coherence. Assuming that a plan passes muster, the money to support it would quickly be disbursed. Afterward, each national program would be monitored, audited, and evaluated.

This approach is straightforward, efficient, accountable, and scientifically sound. Two major recent success stories in aid have used this approach: the Global Alliance on Vaccines and Immunizations, which successfully gets immunizations to young children, and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB, and Malaria, which supports national action plans to battle these killer diseases. Both have saved millions of lives during the past decade, and have paved the way to a new more efficient and scientifically sound method of development assistance.

Not surprisingly, many UN agencies and aid agencies in rich countries fight this approach. All too often, the fight is about turf, rather than about the most effective way to speed help to the poor. Obama, Rudd, Zapatero, and other forward-thinking leaders can therefore make a huge difference by following up on their pledges at the G-8 and insisting that the aid really works. The bureaucracies must be bypassed to get help to where it is needed: in the soil tilled by the world’s poorest farm families.

Sex education and microcredit from a creative Thai NGO

It's an older story, but we we wanted to link this piece on a non-governmental organization from Thailand that uses creative even unconventional means to promote safe sex in the country. Population and Community Development Association was formed over 35 years ago to promote safe sex and abstinence in a country where people laugh at the Thai translation for condom.

From INSEAD Knowledge, writer Karen Cho tells us about safe sex and microcredit programs run by PDA.

PDA’s creative tactics included a microcredit programme targeted at mothers. Instead of encouraging mothers to have another child, they were told they each would win a pig if they refrained from getting pregnant. They listened, and not only got their pig, but raised the animals for six months and even managed to sell them for a profit.

“So the message was: ‘the more children you have, they poorer you become.’ We try to get them to focus their time and energy on income generation rather than having children,” says Kulapongse.

She says the average number of children per household has since fallen to 1.2 from seven. “It’s a huge achievement of Thailand overall, including PDA – the population growth rate has decreased from 3.3 to 0.3 per cent.”
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Operating on the belief that local people are best suited to shape and sustain their own development, PDA set up the Village Development Bank, part of a development initiative to eradicate poverty. It provides microcredit financing, which would be otherwise unavailable, to villages to start their own enterprises.

“We believe that the poor are still poor because they lack two things: access to credit and business, and life skills training. The Village Development Bank gives villagers access to microloans with affordable interest rates. We also give them skills to run the fund, distribute loans and do bookkeeping. After that, we also encourage them to use the profits from this microcredit fund towards development activities for their own village, so it’s very sustainable and it works,” says Kulapongse.

She adds that this kind of model has been developed against a backdrop of PDA’s experience in rural development stretching more than 25 years. It is a long-term process and requires a lot of participation from villagers to ensure the bottom-up approach, but definitely yields positive and concrete results, she says. In tsunami-affected areas, for example, “not only did the fund grow, but the mindset and attitude of the villagers changed too. With consistent monitoring and skills enhancement, it changed the role of women and youth in that area.”

Indonesian officials arrested for taking money from anti-poverty fund

Officials in Indonesia has been arrested after being accused of taking money from an anti-poverty fund.

From the Jakarta Post, writers Indra Harsaputra and Achmad Faisal tell us about the latest arrest in the corruption investigation.

Prosecutors in East Java arrested Tuesday former provincial legislative council speaker Fathorrasjid for allegedly embezzling a Rp 13 billion from a poverty eradication fund.

Fathorrasjid is believed to have misused the fund allotted by the East Java administration for the People's Socio-Economic Empowerment Program (P2SEM), said provincial chief prosecutor Zul-karnaen.

He added Fathorrasjid was now being held at Medaeng Penitentiary.

"We questioned him for about two hours to seek information about the case," Zulkarnaen said in a press conference at his office in Surabaya.

"Based on Article 31 of the corruption law, and evidence we found during the investigation, we decided to arrest Fathorrasjid as a suspect."

He said investigators were now focussing on digging up more information in the case, to see how many more people are involved.

"We've also received information from 10 other local prosecutor's offices in East Java that say they have also found other cases where P2SEM funds have been embezzled," Zulkarnaen said.

Comments on U.S. aid delivery

There has long been talk about changing the delivery of U. S. aid to foreign nations. Now that President Barack Obama wants to see changes the talk has become more serious. A majority of the U.S. aid money goes to U.S. organizations, corporations or farmers. Instead of the organizations or farmers of the under-developed world, even President Obama admits this.

From the magazine Foreign Policy, we found a couple of great comments on the subject. One from Paul O'Brien of Oxfam America and another from Andrew M. Mwenda editor of Ugandan newspaper The Independent. The comments come from a recent roundtable discussion the magazine held on U. S. aid, the previous link contains a few more.

Paul O'Brien, Oxfam America

What do we know [about foreign aid] that actually works? For Oxfam that is about [local] ownership. Why do we care about ownership? Because all the aid in the world is not going to get the bottom billion out of poverty. We all know it. If we want sustainable solutions, it's about [local states and citizens] working together in a political and economic compact where states actually care about having legitimacy from their citizens.

Right now if you're a USAID professional on the ground and you're trying to build local country capacity, essentially, you have to use U.S. contractors and even [U.S.] NGOs, because they're the only ones who understand the complexities of the Washington bureaucratic system. People aren't getting the contracts because they're the most capable at leaving sustainable capacity behind. We've got to fix that.

Andrew M. Mwenda, The Independent (Uganda)

In their search for revenues to sustain themselves in power, Africa's rulers do not find it in their own interest to build productive and profitable arrangements with their own citizens. Governments in Africa find it much more productive to enter negotiations with the international community for aid. If governments had to depend on their own citizens for revenues, they would be driven -- by self-interest -- to listen to their citizens about the policies and institutions necessary for economic growth.
Comments on U. S. Aid
The result of aid is actually to disarticulate the state from the citizen. The citizen in Africa does not look at the state as an institution that is supposed to serve the common good. Instead, they begin looking at the state as a patron who gives gifts that fall from heaven like manna. In this case they fall from the Western world in the form of aid.

Aid should be aimed at promoting innovation, not at rewarding failure. Currently, aid goes to countries that have failed, and therefore, aid tends to be a reward for failure. Even in dysfunctional states, you may find pockets of efficiency -- some public institutions that perform a very good function. I think those should be supported. Uganda has a very incompetent and corrupt state, so my view is that you should not give money to the state of Uganda. But the state of Uganda is not homogeneous. There are pockets of efficiency in that ocean of incompetence.

Of all Western governments, I find the U.S. government to have the most corrupt and patronage-ridden political system. If the U.S. president says, "I am putting up $15 billion for XYZ," that money must be appropriated by Congress. The moment Congress sits to discuss that money, lobbyists arrive. By the time Congress appropriates that money, for every dollar, 80 cents has been chopped off to U.S. companies. So American aid is not about the recipient; it is about American companies. How then do you change that? It is up to you Americans. American aid is the most inefficient type of aid I have looked at.

500,000 Ghanaians could fall into poverty by 2010

Ghana is used an African success story and for good reason. The country had a great reduction in poverty from 1999 to 2006. The percentage of those in poverty in Ghana was at 36 percent but is now at 29 percent.

Now the World Bank predicts that 500,000 Ghanaians could fall back under the poverty line by 2010. In fact, the bank admits a policy that the bank persuaded the Ghanaian government to follow could contribute to the increase. The bank hopes that could turn around in the long term.

From Modern Ghana, this Stateman article quotes a World Bank report on the situatiuon.

Explaining what may give rise to an increase in income poverty for the next two years, the World Bank refers to the tight fiscal policy it has persuaded the Mills government to implement. It says, poverty will rise further “because the planned macroeconomic adjustment entails increased cost recovery in the energy sector and increased taxation, staff forecasts aggregate per capita private consumption growth to fall, which will result in income poverty rising by as much as 2 percentage points between 2008 and 2010 (an additional 500,000 people below the poverty line at US$1.25 a day) assuming unchanged income distribution.”

Meanwhile, under the New Patriotic Party , the World Bank admits that “all major regions recorded reductions in poverty,” with some achieving them much more rapidly than others.

Unfortunately, the bulk of poverty has become concentrated in the three northern regions which now comprise about 80 percent of the poor.

Efforts to address the special needs of these lagging regions had been initiated in the recent past, and there are “ongoing efforts to amplify them in the context of an ambitious Savanna Accelerated Development initiative which is supported by several Development Partners (DPs) including the Bank,” the report adds.

Though the NPP has been portrayed by its political opponents as anti-poor, the World Bank admits that when “the domestic price of food rose substantially against that of non food items between November 2007 and July 2008,” the Kufuor administration, went ahead to protect the purchasing power of the poor with “ tax exemptions on fuel and food instituted in 2008 and still operational, and by a scaling up of safety nets (including additional health and educational benefits, a new program of direct transfers to the ultra-poor, and subsidies for fertilizers in food insecure regions).”

A look at the new museum at Heifer International

Heifer International's new museum showcases the work it does for those in poverty around the world. The museum at Heifer's headquarters in Little Rock Arkansas, attempts to show solutions at solving poverty instead of just showing the problems.

From The News Leader of Springfield Missouri, Associated Press writer Chuck Bartels visited the museum.

The museum, called Heifer Village, opened in June and will add an important element to Heifer educational programs, which demonstrate the charity's mission to provide animals and training so the world's poor can have sustainable nutrition.

Narrative elements run through the museum's exhibits, showing the effects that fair trade, clean water or mosquito netting can have. Under a ceiling of rich, amber-stained wood, natural light falls on the exhibits as the building itself demonstrates sustainability strategies.

In a section focusing on education, a visitor can sit at a desk equipped with a touch-screen computer to go through a variety of scenarios. The visitor picks from four children who live in different parts of the world, each of them poor. Going from screen to screen, the user makes choices that the child might have to make, for instance, about whether to ask for more food or to see a doctor.

There are no right or wrong answers, but the user learns more about the situations faced by poor families and how one decision leads to making another.

"Each scenario would lead you on a different path," Heifer Village operations manager Kent Modlin said.

FRIEND's in Fiji

The Foundation for Rural Integrated Enterprise N Development or FRIEND is a NGO from Fiji that we were introduced this morning. FRIEND sells homemade jams pickles and crafts made by those in poverty to help them climb out of it.

From this profile in the Fiji Times, we learn more about organization that started in 2001.

The aim was to link the use of natural resources and skills to alleviate poverty.

The vision was to create a base where communities with no outreach opportunities could come together within different programs such as income generation, a saving scheme and educational workshops to create an environment of self reliant people.

Ms Kiran moved to Lautoka to start the organisation although this was challenging.

She said initially not many people were willing to come on board but now there are many strong partnerships. Three volunteers started working with her seven years ago, two of whom are still with FRIEND as full-time staff.

"Although we were complemented for being a breakthrough NGO, we've also been accused of being a social enterprise and business oriented but we have shown we're here to stay," Ms Kiran said. "It's not a simple task marrying the natural resources and skills it is also about community building."

Apart from food products, art and hand-crafted cards available in up market outlets around Fiji, FRIEND's products include recycled paper frames, paintings and stone paper weights.

An attempt to make India slum-free

India's government wants to try to eliminate the slums around it's major cities. The head of Housing and Urban Development is asking her department to give more rights to the slum dwellers. She also wants to begin building infrastructure in the slums and provide it's dwellers with affordable housing.

From Headlines India, writer Kavita Bajeli-Datt tells us more about the plan.

In an effort to make India slum-free in five years, Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation Minister Kumari Selja has urged state chief ministers to prepare an "inclusive master plan" that addresses the concerns of the urban poor.

In her letter she asked state governments to develop an urban land policy and a legal framework that accords property rights to urban slum dwellers and gives them a life of dignity.

Noting that master plans have excluded the poor from urban development, thus driving them to illegal settlements, Selja said: "There is need to develop an urban land policy and a legal framework for according security of property right to the slum dwellers and the urban poor."

She said the states could consider amending town planning, urban area development and municipal laws to reserve land to build affordable housing that has basic amenities.

The minister also wrote that the states should prepare and implement "inclusive" master plans by following a participatory process and ensure that the concerns of the urban poor, especially slum-dwellers, are adequately addressed in the process of urban planning and development.

Organ trafficking in Egypt

Egypt is one of five international hot spots for organ trafficking. The practice of selling one's organs for a large sum on money. Some who are desperate to get out of debt or poverty will sell off parts of their own bodies for money.

The practice is also widespread in the countries of China, Pakistan, the Philippines and Colombia according to the World Health Organization

One of the reasons that organ harvesting is prevalent in Egypt is because taking organ's from cadavers or those who just died is against the law in the country.

From this article from IPS, reporter Cam McGrath talks to an Washington based NGO, the Coalition for Organ-Failure Solutions about the situation in Egypt.

Experts say the absence of legislation regulating human organ transplants has made Egypt an international "hotspot" for kidney trafficking. Up to 95 percent of the 3,000 legal kidney transplants per year, and hundreds of illegal ones, involve a commercial transaction.

A nationwide ban on organ transplants from cadavers means all kidneys must be harvested from live donors. Most are sourced from destitute young Egyptians, who are coerced into selling their kidney to pay off debts or meet rising living costs.

"They call them 'commercial living donors', but the name is misleading as really they are more victims than donors," says Kabir Karim, COFS's Egypt programme director.

A kidney can be purchased for as low as 15,000 dollars on Cairo's black market, though the donor only receives about 2,500 dollars of this. The rest goes to hospitals, laboratories and agents.

Brokers lurk in the coffee shops of Cairo slums, targeting the poor. "Over 90 percent of donors don't have a regular job, and are either in debt because of their circumstances, or have gotten married and can't pay the rent," says Amr Mostafa, a field researcher for COFS. "Brokers approach them and promise a way out of debt, if they agree to donate their kidney."

The donors are misled about the risks and talked into taking examinations at hospitals and private labs. The results are used to match donors to clients, often wealthy Gulf Arabs, who use forged documents to circumvent a ban on transplants to unrelated or non-Egyptian recipients.

"If a hospital has its paperwork in order including signed donor consent forms, it can pretty much operate with impunity," a clinic doctor told IPS. Only if a patient dies does it become felony.

About 80 percent of donors suffer deterioration of health after surgery, according to a COFS study. "Most of the time people complain of tiredness," says Karim. "A lot of these donors have a job that requires physical labour, but (after the operation) they get tired quickly and can't do their work. That of course affects their job, and they soon get fired.

"It's a vicious circle for them," he says. "They sell a kidney because they are in debt and spend the money within about six months. They are still in debt, but now they are less capable of working than before, so they are in a worse situation."

Studying microcredit effectiveness

If you could find a problem with microcredit it might be that it is hard to measure if it actually moves people out of poverty. Most studies have compared borrowers to non-borrowers. Researchers have found it difficult to measure what would happen to a microcredit borrower if he did not take the loan.

From this article that we found at The Economist, we take this look at recent research into microcredit.

The pervasiveness of these self-selection issues has led researchers to devise experiments that allow them to ensure that participation in a programme is determined essentially by chance. Two new papers* apply this idea to measure the effect of access to microcredit. Researchers from the Poverty Action Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) worked with an Indian microfinance firm to ensure that 52 randomly chosen slums in the city of Hyderabad were given access to microfinance, while 52 other slums, which were equally suitable and where the lender was also keen to expand, were denied it. This allowed the researchers to see clearly the effect of microcredit on an entire community. Dean Karlan of Yale University and Jonathan Zinman of Dartmouth College carried out a similar exercise in the Philippines, this time at the level of the individual borrower. They tweaked the credit-scoring software of a microfinance firm so that only a random subset of people with marginal credit histories were accepted as clients. These clients could then be compared with those who sought credit but were denied it.

Broadly speaking, neither study found that microcredit reduced poverty. There was no effect on average household consumption, at least within a year to 18 months of the experiment. The study in the Philippines also measured the probability of being under the poverty line and the quality of food that people ate, and again found no effects. Microcredit may not even be the most useful financial service for the majority of poor people. Only one in five loans in the Hyderabad study actually led to the creation of a new business. Providing people with safe places to store their (small) savings may help them more in the long run.
Small and perfectly formed?

That said, microcredit did have discernible effects. In India, people in the slums that had access to microcredit were more likely to cut down on things like tobacco and alcohol in favour of durable goods (particularly items such as pushcarts or cooking pans that are used heavily by traders and food-stall owners). One reason average consumption failed to increase may therefore be that more people were diverting some of their own income into starting or expanding their businesses. Microcredit clearly allowed more people to overcome the barrier posed by start-up costs. The MIT researchers found that as many as one-third more businesses had opened in slums which had a microcredit branch. This may mean that even though there was no measurable impact on poverty during the study period, there may well be some over a longer time-frame as these businesses prosper.

Tiny loans are unlikely to be enough to allow these businesses to grow to an efficient scale, of course. But the role of microcredit in allowing people to signal their creditworthiness is valuable, especially if their success makes banks more willing to lend them larger sums and leads to even more economic activity. By being willing to take a risk on entrepreneurial sorts who lack any other way to start a business, microcredit may help reduce poverty in the long run, even if its short-run effects are negligible.

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Technology increases use of food stamps in farmers markets

Access to healthy food for the poor in the U.S. has been made a little easier. Instead of the paper coupons, food stamps are now issued as debit cards, and card terminals have been provided to some farmers markets. Not only has food stamp use increased, but markets with the terminals have also seen more purchases by regular credit and debit cards.

From the New York Times, writer Katie Zezima reports on the changes.

The use of food stamps at farmers’ markets has been authorized for some time. But the program has been limited because the federal government in 2004 replaced the traditional paper food stamp coupons with debit cards that were processed through electronic benefit transfer terminals. The system is expensive, costing about $1,100 for each terminal, plus monthly fees; furthermore, the majority of farmers’ markets operate outdoors, with no means to accept the debit card.

“There’s a large expense associated with putting a terminal in each farmer’s hand,” said Jeff Cole, executive director of the Massachusetts Association of Farmers’ Markets.

Over the past five years, though, states and the federal government, with help from nonprofit organizations, have made hundreds of thousands of terminals available at farmers’ markets. Two years ago, Montana started a program to introduce terminals at 42 farmers’ markets; in Iowa, the state gives wireless machines to farmers and pays all monthly fees associated with them. New Jersey started giving the machines to farmers this month.

“It opens up the market to a whole new clientele, and it allows the recipients better access to better foods and fresh foods,” said Jane Aiudi, director of the market and production development division of the Maine Agriculture Department.

As of the end of the 2008 fiscal year, 753 farmers’ markets nationwide had accepted food stamp benefits, a 34 percent increase over the previous year, according to the federal Agriculture Department. Sales to customers using food stamps at the markets totaled $2.7 million in the 2008 fiscal year, the most recent period for which records are available.

Those who advocate expanding the program say that doing so is crucial to encouraging the purchase of healthy food.

Somali street gangs in Minnesota

Over 32,000 ex-Somalis have settled into the state of Minnesota. While many flourish with their new lives in America, some young Somali have formed street gangs. The violence amongst the street gangs is on the rise, and has drawn some attention in the national press with the gang killing of Ahmednur Ali who was a student and youth volunteer.

From this Associated Press story that we found at CBS News, a Somali community organizer reacts to the crime.

"It was all gang activity, totally, 100 percent," said Shukri Adan, a former Somali community organizer who estimated in a 2007 report for the city that between 400 and 500 young Somalis were active in gangs. "The police don't want to say that but everybody else knows that."

Despite anger and despair over the killings in Minnesota's Somali community - the nation's largest - police and prosecutors have struggled to catch and try the killers. Few witnesses have stepped forward because of a fear of reprisal and deep-rooted distrust of authority. More than half of Minnesota's Somalis are living in poverty, according to state statistics, and many complain that authorities are biased against Somalis because of their Islamic faith.

Last month, prosecutors dropped the murder charge against the teenage boy in Ali's case after one witness backed out and another apparently fled the state.

Gangs like the Somali Hot Boyz, the Somali Mafia and Madhibaan with Attitude have grown more active in recent years, said Jeanine Brudenell, the Minneapolis Police Department's Somali liaison officer.

The recent spate of killings started in December 2007, when two Somali men, ages 27 and 25, were found shot to death at a south Minneapolis home. No arrests have been made in that case.

They culminated last September, when a man was fatally shot outside of the Village Market Mall, a cluster of Somali-owned businesses and a popular destination for local Somalis. Investigators believe the shooter was retaliating for the death of his cousin, one of the other slain Somalis. The mall shooting was the only of the seven slayings for which anyone was convicted - 23-year-old Hassan Mohamed Abdillahi.
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A gang expert in California said economic and social factors are more likely to blame for the spike in gang activity than any spillover of violence from war-ravaged Somalia.

"When there's unemployment and poverty and lack of external support, there's gangs," said Jorja Leap, a social welfare professor at the University of California Los Angeles and former gang adviser to the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department.

Baby Harvesting

An especially disturbing form of human trafficking called "Baby Harvesting" is taking place in Nigeria. However we learned about it today from a story in Ghana, as officials there want to make sure it does not occur in their own country.

From Joy Online, writer Ebenezer Hanson recieved a description of the practice.

Baby Harvesting is the act of luring teenage girls who are economically challenged to cities in the name of adoption according to Mr. Eric Boakye Peasah, the Counter-trafficking Field Manager of the International Organization for Migration (I0M).

Mr. Peasah explained that these unsuspecting girls are usually kept in homes where men are arranged to have sexual intercourse repeatedly with them until they get pregnant. He explained further that the girls are usually provided with antenatal care until they give birth after which the babies are plucked from these unfortunate girls who are then paid off.

"It has not yet occurred in Ghana but once it is happening in Nigeria we must all take steps to forestall it in this country," he told stakeholders at the launching of a Legal Resources Centre (LRC) capacity building for law enforcement officers and victim service providers in Trafficking in Persons in Accra.

He revealed that a group of swindlers has been busted in Nigeria for engaging in 'Baby Harvesting' which must serve as warning signs to Ghanaians.

Also happening in Nigeria, Mr. Peasah further disclosed, is the mind boggling act known as 'Touching'. With these adults without any modicum of conscience turn themselves into 'gynaecologists' and examine the private parts of girls. Those who are found with 'suitable' genitals are adopted and when they grow to become teenagers, they are pushed into prostitution.

The growing problem of illegal gambling in Myanmar

Myanmar is having a growing problem with illegal gambling in the country. People who are earning only 1 to 3 US dollars a day are spending large portions of their money on the illegal numbers games. Many of the poor are lured into the gambling with dreams of big winnings and a way out of their lives in poverty.

Prosecution of the gambling is difficult because most police in Myanmar can be bought off with a bribe, some receive a cut of the money if the winner is from their patrol.

From IRIN, we learn more about the gambling from NGO's who are witnessing the problem.

On the streets of Yangon, the former capital, the so-called "two digits" illegal lottery is so popular that development workers call it one of the most serious problems facing the children of poor families. It is especially popular among the poorest, who can least afford to lose their daily wages of US$1-$3.

Agents willing to take bets are everywhere - in cities, market towns and rural areas across Southeast Asia's second-largest nation of 58 million. But there is no social safety net, nothing to stop a family from going under when the betting losses add up.

"They bet because they think they'll get a big win, and then their troubles will be over," said a Burmese community worker, who runs self-help groups for poor women living in temporary shelters around Yangon.

''When they've lost everything they must give up their house, take their children out of school and send them to work. Often they will end up begging.''

Myanmar's citizens are no better off now than 20 years ago, and most subsist on an average annual income of less than $200 per capita, the US State Department reports.

According to a 2005 UN Development Programme (UNDP) household survey, one-third of Myanmar's population lives below the poverty line.

Inflation is adding to the economic burden, with the price of rice, for example, up by 30 percent over the past year alone.

In an extensive survey by an international NGO, Myanmar children cited gambling as one of their biggest problems.

This story hits home for me, because we just decided to stop playing the legal lottery here in our home state of Michigan. Even those of us who are not poor will dream of having more. But those "dreams" seem pretty selfish in comparison to those who only earn a dollar a day.

A new World Bank loan for Mozambique

Mozambique has just signed on to a new batch of loans from the World Bank. The loan should help to develop information technology and health services in the country.

From News 24, we get more details on what the loans will go for.

The agreements which were signed by World Bank interim representative, Luiz Tavares and Cuereneia consisted of a $75.6m agreement to fund health and information technology from the World Bank and another one of $15.6m from the Canadian government, $4.3m from the Swedish government and $7.9m from the Russian government.

Cuereneia said projects run by the ministries of science and technology, health and transport and communications would benefit from the loans.

Tavares said the amount destined for the health sector would seek to reduce high mortality rates in children and women caused by malaria, tuberculosis, HIV/Aids and pregnancy complications.

It would also fund the construction of 25 health centres in three poor northern provinces.

Anti-homeless laws make some cities "mean"

A national law advocacy group has put a mid-sized Michigan city into the list of the meanest cities for homeless people. The study ranks the top ten cities that are unfriendly to the homeless, Kalamazoo, Michigan joins Los Angeles, Orlando, Atlanta and others.

The law center that complied the reports says some loitering laws Kalamazoo have are anti-homeless. From this story in the Kalamazoo Gazette, reporter Kathy Jessup explains.

The report, issued by the National Coalition for the Homeless and the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty, put Kalamazoo in the top 10 alongside larger cities such as San Francisco, Atlanta and Orlando, Fla. Los Angeles was No. 1 in the ranking.

The groups said the rankings are based on factors that include "the number of anti-homeless laws in the city, the enforcement of those laws, the general political climate toward homeless people in the city and the city's history of criminalization measures."

According to the report, Kalamazoo's designation is based largely on a 2007 controversy over a city ordinance prohibiting overnight sleeping in public parks and on rules passed in 2008 for downtown's Kalamazoo Transportation Center that addressed loitering, panhandling and illegal substances.

The report says information on Kalamazoo's ordinances and arrests was provided by Michigan People's Action, formerly known as the Kalamazoo Homeless Action Network.

KHAN has been a longtime advocate for local homeless people and an outspoken critic of Kalamazoo Department of Public Safety enforcement practices. The network participated in 2007 talks that shaped the city's park-use, panhandling and loitering ordinances.
The report says dozens of homeless people were arrested in Kalamazoo in 2007 and 2008 for alleged violations in parks and at the transportation center.

Michael Evans, who was the lead organizer of KHAN and one of the people arrested, said most of the charges were eventually dropped after the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty provided legal assistance.

The MDG progress report for 2009

Yesterday the United Nations released their annual report on the progress the world has made in meeting the Millennium Development Goals. The report says that the global recession has slowed progress in meeting the goals, and in some cases, has even reversed any gains made since the year 2000.

This summary of the report from Mail and Guardian, Faranaaz Parker gives us some statistics found in the report. More from the U.N. after the jump.

The report showed that the proportion of employed people living on less than $1,25 a day (about R10) had returned to 64%. This is a drop of 6% since last year. The figure is now the same as it was ten years ago. In addition, the number of people suffering from hunger increased last year due to escalating food prices -- 29% of the population in Sub-Saharan Africa is undernourished.
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The MDG on which the least progress has been made over the years is maternal health. The UN says 536 000 women die during pregnancy, in childbirth or of labour-related complications, and 99% of these deaths occur in developing countries. With 900 deaths per 100 000 live births, Sub-Saharan Africa is lagging far behind the rest of the world in maternal health.

Here is a summary of the report from the U.N.'s press release. You can click here to download the entire report.

Gains in the eradication of hunger since the early 1990s—when the proportion of hungry people decreased from 20 per cent in 1990-92 to 16 per cent in 2004-06—were reversed in 2008, largely due to higher food prices. A decrease in international food prices in the second half of 2008 has since failed to translate into more affordable food for most people around the world.

• In the period 1990 to 2005, the number of people living on less than $1.25 a day decreased from 1.8 billion to 1.4 billion (prior to the economic crisis and higher food prices). But major gains in the fight against extreme poverty are likely to stall, indicators show, although data are not yet available to reveal the full impact of the recent economic downturn. In 2009, an estimated 55 million to 90 million more people will be living in extreme poverty than anticipated before the crisis.

• More than one-quarter of children in developing regions are underweight for their age, and the meagre progress on child nutrition from 1990 to 2007 is insufficient to meet the 2015 target. This will likely be eroded further by high food prices and economic turmoil.

• Global unemployment in 2009 could reach 6.1 to 7.0 per cent for men and 6.5 to 7.4 per cent for women, many of whom remain trapped in insecure – often unpaid– jobs, holding back progress towards gender equality.

Furthermore, the report suggests that many global gains were due to a dramatic fall in poverty rates in East Asia. Elsewhere, progress has been slower. Sub-Saharan Africa counted 100 million more extremely poor people in 2005 than in 1990, and the poverty rate remained above 50 per cent.

Malnutrition emergency in Kenya

Malnutrition levels for children in Northern Kenya have risen above emergency levels. The lack of food is due to extended droughts in the already arid climate that has little farm land.

From this IRIN story that we found at Reuters, we learn more about the dangerous situation in Kenya.

"Poor rains in April, May and June worsened food insecurity in the region, where 74 percent of the population [estimated at 550,000] already depends on food aid," Vincent Kahi, the health coordinator for the International Rescue Committee (IRC), said on 15 July at a press briefing in Nairobi.

He said at least 50 percent of child deaths in the region were due to malnutrition or had malnutrition as an underlying cause of death.

Turkana is a mostly arid region, with little agriculture. Most of the population depends on livestock, but the viability of pastoralism is being undermined by recurrent and increasingly unpredictable droughts and armed conflict with groups from neighbouring regions or countries.

Across the country, "food security prospects for the coming months are dismal", according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

"In [the north-central] Samburu district, the percentage of children under-five considered at risk of malnutrition increased to 29.4 from 21.8 last month. In Moyale [in the northeast], the nutrition status of children below five years declined, with the percentage of children rated at risk of malnutrition rising to 35 percent from 30.6 in April," OCHA warned in a weekly bulletin.

"The decline was attributed to higher food prices and reduced availability of food," it added.

"Given the very poor outcomes of the long rains, the situation is expected to seriously deteriorate, especially in districts receiving no or limited support, if nutrition interventions do not maintain higher levels of coverage in some districts e.g. Kajiado, Kinango, Marsabit, Wajir, Turkana, West Pokot, and do not scale-up in others i.e. Isiolo, Samburu, Baringo," the report warned.

The Speedboats of Albania

Albania has a huge human trafficking problem, where woman are lied to or sold to men who take them to other parts of Europe to work as sex slaves. Experts fear that a recient change in laws could make the problem grow. It's a law involving speedboats.

From this New York Times article, Dan Bilefsky examines the problem. We would highly recommend hitting our link to the full article, that gives more about the history of history of human trafficking in Albania, as well as a harrowing tale from one of it's victims.

So many women, men and children had been trafficked abroad to work as prostitutes, forced laborers or beggars that the Albanian government three years ago barred all Albanian citizens from using speedboats, the favored transportation used by traffickers to get people out of the country.

This drastic measure, coupled with stricter border controls and revenge killings of traffickers by victims’ families, had a significant effect, reducing trafficking by more than half and all but ending Albania’s role as a major transit point for people trafficked to Western Europe from eastern and southern parts of the Continent, say experts who follow trafficking.

But the ban prompted loud protests from fishermen and people in the tourism industry, and in May it was reversed. Law enforcement and human rights officials are concerned that as a result, human trafficking may explode anew — at an especially difficult time.

The financial crisis, many experts said, could increase human trafficking around the world. A United States State Department report in June warned of the potential risk, saying that the crisis is causing “a shrinking demand for labor and a growing supply of workers willing to take ever greater risks for economic opportunities.”

In the case of Albania, a poor, southern Balkan country that joined NATO in April and seeks to join the European Union, the government’s ability to fight trafficking is viewed as a critical test.
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At the height of the trafficking, experts estimate, thousands of women, men and children were taken to nearby Greece and Italy and elsewhere for sexual exploitation or forced labor.

The United Nations estimates that 12.3 million people globally are employed in sexual servitude or forced labor. Many are lured by fake engagements, real marriages or false job offers. In some cases, victims have been sold by their families. Others go voluntarily.

A young woman who does a missions trip every summer

An article in today's Naperville Sun introduces us to a young volunteer who goes to on a mission trip every year, and plans to do more. In the past, Allie Griffin has gone to help victims of Hurricane Katrina and worked at a Native American Reservation. After watching a documentary about the war in Uganda, she began to look for a trip to Africa.

From this story from reporter Angela Bender, we are introduced to Griffin and her mission trip for this summer.

The trip took Griffin to Kampala, Uganda, with about 20 other volunteers from the United States and Canada ranging in age from 18 to 70. For two weeks, the missionaries provided medical clinics and worked in orphanages. Afterward, Griffin didn't think twice about signing up to go on another trip this summer.

This year the trip took place in June. After two days of travel to get to Africa, the missionaries stayed in a guesthouse with "running water, a nice bed and good cooking," but were put right to work.

This year Griffin did triage at medical clinics -- taking blood pressure, temperatures and working with sick children, as well as adults. The clinics run all day, with many people coming to see a doctor even if they are not sick, just because they have the opportunity to do so.

"It's exhausting," Griffin said. "And the line just gets longer and longer. When you come home every day, you need to take a shower and go to sleep. It's a good feeling though."

Griffin has seen how people in some of the most poverty-stricken areas of the United States live, but still was not prepared for some of what she witnessed in Africa. With no bathrooms or electricity, but plenty of bugs and stench, Griffin couldn't believe some of the conditions in Kampala.

"The city is more of a slum and that is really sad," Griffin said. "It takes your breath away."

More on the farming success of Malawi

Malawi is one of the good news countries in Africa in regards to food production. Thanks to fertilizer, seeds and irrigation Malawi is now a food exporter.

The government of Malawi conducts a subsidy program for farmers. The government helps with the costs of inputs to help increase farmers yields. The subsidy program takes up 15 percent of Malawi's national budget. Meanwhile, the percentage of those in poverty in the country has fallen to 40 percent from 52 percent.

From this Bloomberg story, writers Frank Jomo and Brian Latham give us more of the good news.

Once the victim of intermittent famines that left 40 percent of the population dependent on international aid just four years ago, Malawi has become a food exporter. Farmers credit a government program of subsidizing fertilizers for the turnaround.

“The world faces massive food shortages, but we have a lesson we can offer to the world,” President Bingu wa Mutharika, who was re-elected in May, told reporters this week. “Our subsidy program is a success and we want other countries to learn from us.”

Other African countries may now get the funds to follow Malawi: The Group of Eight nations on July 10 approved $20 billion in aid over three years to help poor farmers worldwide, mostly through cheaper access to fertilizers and seed.

Neighboring Tanzania began a fertilizer-subsidy program last December. Kenya had already announced plans for a subsidy system to turn it into a net food exporter by 2012, while Uganda increased agricultural spending by 47 percent in the budget announced on June 11.

“Before the subsidies came in during 2005, our crops were poor because we couldn’t afford fertilizer,” said Luckmore Banda, looking out over 5-foot-high corn stalks sprouting from every square inch of available land at his homestead outside Malawi’s commercial capital, Blantyre. “Now, things are on the up and up. Our production is rising and our income is rising.”

Banda, 62, says the subsidies helped lift his income to $5 a day from less than $1 four years ago. About 7.2 million small- scale farmers in a country of 14.3 million have received the subsidies over four years, Treasury Secretary Randson Mwadiwa said in an interview.

Malawi expects to produce an estimated 3.7 million metric tons of corn this year, up 36 percent from 2008 and exceeding the 2.4 million tons needed for self-sufficiency, Finance Minister Ken Kandodo Banda said in a July 3 interview.

Child poverty in Germany

Industrialized nations are seeing an increase in children who are poor, or are under their nation's poverty line. The numbers were high even before the global recession. But now that the industrialized nation's economies are shrinking even more children will become poor.

The BBC produced a great story about Germany today, a nation where already 36% of the children are poor. As we see in the story from reporter Steve Rosenberg, children can still get needs fulfilled,. but it is usually through charity and not through employment.



The accompanying article to the above video, looks at the growing numbers of child poverty in Europe and the U.S.

The German Society for the Protection of Children is even more worried.

It warns of a "massive" increase in child poverty, once the full effects of the recession kick in.

Germany is not alone. Governments around the world appear to be losing the battle against child poverty.

In the UK, ministers have admitted it will now be "very difficult" to meet their target of halving child poverty by 2010.

In the US, which already has one of the worst child poverty rates among industrialised nations, three million more children are expected to slip below the poverty line.

Charities have been criticising the German government for not doing enough to tackle the problem.

"If we have problems with our banks, or with our car producers, the politicians come together to find a solution very quickly. They give money and credits," says Michael Kruse of Deutsches Kinderhilfswerk.

"But when I tell them we have three million children who have no future and no money, nobody comes together to help the children. I think it's the wrong priority of our society."

Building new leaders in social enterprise

Today we ran across this video from the Acumen Fund on a student workshop to help new leaders in social enterprise.

Some fair-trade cosmetic products

Sure there is coffee, tea and cocoa, but there are fair trade beauty products as well. The cosmetics use natural plants or oils from the under-developed world, and give the farmers a decent wage for supplying them.

As we see in the below snippet, the benefits to the farmers go beyond just more money. For the extra cash is invested back into the farmers villages. Sometimes the cosmetic companies will build other benefits for the villages such as new farms, or schools.

From this Redbook magazine article, writer Krista Bennett DeMai tells us about the products in particular.

During travels in the 1980s, the late Anita Roddick, founder of The Body Shop, learned that many of the communities she visited were not getting paid fairly for their ingredients or goods -- often not enough to cover the cost of production or wages. Inspired by the early fair-trade movement happening with coffee and tea, Roddick started a Community Trade program -- working with undeveloped countries that were otherwise powerless in securing a fair price for their products. Twenty-one years later, The Body Shop spends more than $12 million buying ingredients as well as gifts and accessories, like wooden massage tools and tote bags, from suppliers in more than 20 countries. One of those suppliers is a cooperative of sesame farmers in Achuapa, a village in Nicaragua. When Roddick met the farmers in the 1990s, they were struggling to make a living by exporting sesame oil. Roddick worked out a fair price for the sesame oil (now used in more than 40 Body Shop products, including the Moringa Milk Body Lotion, $16) by calculating how much it costs to grow, as well as the community needs: the cost of living, the cost of education, etc. The cosmetics company then gave the farmers a forecast -- somewhat of a contract -- that projected how much sesame oil the company would purchase over the course of, say, a year, giving the farmers a newfound sense of stability and the ability to invest in their community. "We're not about charity," says Graham Clewer, global head of ethical trade at The Body Shop. "A hand up is always better than a handout."

Since this relationship began, the co-op has built eight primary schools that educate 400 children. And it's currently building a boarding house in Achuapa so 40 kids (mostly children of single moms or those who live in neighboring communities) can attend secondary school. There have been other improvements as well: 13 sanitary water wells built; an acupuncture and natural medicine clinic opened by a single mother of six; a bank, which offers low-interest loans and encourages community members to save money; a model farm, to test organic farming methods; and even family workshops to educate the community on complicated social issues like gender equality and domestic violence.

A lipstick is always a quick pick-me-up, but Aveda's Uruku Lip Pigment, $14, helps lift the spirits of millions. Fifteen years ago, Aveda's founder encountered the Yawanawá tribe in Brazil. The tribe was dispersed after losing much of its land to rubber plantations, explains Chuck Bennett, vice president of earth and community care at Aveda. "Culturally, they were on the verge of extinction." To support the tribe, Aveda began purchasing urukum seed from the tribe. The antioxidant-rich seed is used for the tribe's body-painting rituals because of its vibrant red pigment, which Aveda now uses in its Uruku makeup line. Aveda has also initiated local social projects and school development and has provided equipment for urukum production. The goal: "We're working to move beyond the charitable relationship so they can become a fully sustainable community," says Bennett. The tribe has recently secured the rights to 125,000 acres of sacred land (for a total of 450,000), reestablishing their sense of community.

OXFAM responds to President Obama

U.S. President Barack Obama recently called on African leaders to clean up corruption and mis-governance. As a response, OXFAM America is calling on the U. S. government to clean up the way to delivers aid. OXFAM wants more transparency and accountability to the U.S. aid that is handed out to the under-developed world.

We read more about the response from this OXFAM press release.

"Getting to better development assistance will require that donors such as the U.S. keep a close eye on the critical task of building government capacity and institutions directly," said O. Natty B. Davis, II, Reconstruction Minister of Liberia. "This will ensure the efficacy of aid and its ability to deliver results that can have a real impact on the lives of the people in these countries in as short a time as possible."

The panel reflected growing momentum in the foreign aid reform debate in the U.S. Before leaving for Ghana, President Obama was quoted in an AllAfrica.com interview saying, "Our aid policies have been splintered among a variety of agencies. . .Trying to create something steady [and] basing our policies on what works and not on some ideological previous position -- is going to be very important."

Last Friday, Secretary of State Clinton announced that the State Department and USAID will be undertaking America's first-ever Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review (QDDR), in order to streamline the aid bureaucracy and insert development more coherently into debates over national security and foreign policy. In Congress, House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Howard Berman (D-CA) has introduced the Initiating Foreign Assistance Reform Act of 2009 (H.R. 2139), which has more than 75 bipartisan co-sponsors.

"It is a good sign that the administration and Congress are talking about development in a strategic way," said Paul O'Brien, Director of Aid Effectiveness at Oxfam America and one of today's panelists. "But if new strategies are going to deliver for the world's poor, they must be poverty focused. Effective development isn't about fixing short-term political or security problems -- it is about putting people in charge of their own lives. The best signal the U.S. can send to show it is serious about development is to nominate a USAID Administrator who will help rebuild the agency and bring back its capacity to be a true partner in development."

South Florida food bank in danger of closing

A Miami area food bank is danger of shutting down, just when need is greatest. Stop Hunger Food Bank says that unless they receive enough donations by the end of the month, they will be forced to close.

From this article from WFOR, reporter Kimberley Chapin looks into the troubles of the food bank. The WFOR website is also collecting donations to help keep the food bank open.

"This is the first time in our 30 years that we have faced the problem of shutting down," said Executive Director, Julius Littman. That's a big change, considering that at one point, Stop Hunger handed out more than 550 thousand meals a month.

So how could this food bank that serves so many of South Florida's hungry now be facing closure?

Arnold Jean Baptiste of the Children's Services Council, who sits on Stop Hunger's board, explained, "The individuals that used to donate to Stop Hunger now are looking to Stop Hunger in order to survive. The donations they used to get have now gone down; they are working hard to get more food and keep the service going."

With more families lining up for food and a decrease in donation, many sacrifices have been made.

"Our volunteers are working full time and getting paid for half time," said Fox.

But it's a sacrifice that many at Stop Hunger are willing to make, because many of them once turned to Stop Hunger for help themselves; it's something volunteer Seven Rosario knows all too well. "It's always good to have a helping hand, they've helped me and now it's my turn to help someone else," Rosario said.

Ethiopia's aid intake; rising or slowing?

This following article may have a bit of accountant double speak, but we share it because it has important information on the use of aid dollars in Ethiopia's government budget.

The Ethiopian government now says that foreign aid makes up a smaller percentage of it's overall budget. Meaning more revenues for the government have been collected from within it's own boarders. However, the entire budget has increased, so the amount of aid dollars taken in is also growing.

From the Walta information Center, we find this further explanation that we hope will be less confusing.

Information and Public Relations Work Process Owner, Haji Ibssa, told WIC that share of foreign aid and loan has been declining over the past successive years.

The volume of foreign aid and loan Ethiopia is getting has increased over the past years, he said, however, the share of foreign aid and loan has declined to 28.4 percent during the current budget year from over 31 percent previously.

This fact is the result of the effort Ethiopia is making to alleviate its dependency on foreign financial sources, Haji said, underlining that only 10.4 billion birr of the 64.5 billion birr annual budget approved for the 2002 budget year is expected form foreign sources.

Looking more to domestic sources would contribute to efficiently fund and carryout poverty reduction efforts, he said.

A hockey player heads to El Salvador with World Vision

One of our favorite non-Red Wings hockey players was sent by World Vision to the mountains of El Salvador. Mike Fisher of the Ottawa Senators had already sponsored a few children through World Vision. The charity asked him to participate in a trip to film a TV commercial that will be shown in the Ottawa area to gain more child sponsorships.

As well as working with the poor for a few days, Fisher was also able to see some success stories from sponsored children. Including a young woman who was able to sell eggs at a market with the help of some World Vision provided chickens. From this story that we found at Canada.com, writer Wayne Scanlan details the trip.

In South America, Fisher was more or less anonymous, causing a stir just as an outsider visiting some of the poorest villages, barely beyond the bustling capital city of San Salvador.

``Just five minutes outside the city, there is a major, drastic change,'' Fisher says. ``Extreme poverty.''

Fisher has sponsored children through World Vision in the past, helping to pay for basic needs and education, so, when the organization invited him to see El Salvador in the flesh, he was all over it.

``I've always wanted to go somewhere where the conditions are poor, a place like Africa,'' Fisher says. ``Maybe I'll go there next time.''

The rugged Christian from Peterborough, Ont., comes by this missionary zeal naturally. Fisher's uncle, David Fisher, was the chapel leader of the Toronto Blue Jays for 29 years. Mike's sister and father have done missionary work together in Ecuador.

n El Salvador, Fisher spent the first working day visiting villages of squalor, seeing first hand the living conditions of the poor. The conditions of the land alone was a challenge.

``We went up in trucks into the mountains,'' Fisher says. ``It was quite the ride even by truck, and the local people walk in. It takes four hours for this one family just to get into town.''

He won't forget visiting the tiny shack of one family, no food on the premises and eight children living in the one room, about 10 feet by 10 feet.

Anti-trafficking video from The Killers

Rock band The Killers have a new music video that sheds some light on human trafficking. The video is produced in conjunction with UNICEF, MTV EXIT, and the US Agency for International Development. MTV EXIT is a campaign the network has to raise awareness of human trafficking for sex. More about the partnership can be found at UNICEF's press release.

The video is for the Killers song called "Goodnight, Travel Well." Radiohead previously filmed a similar video for their song "All I Need," great song, by the way.

Below is the youtube of The Killers video.

A cease fire in Nigeria

A cease fire had been called in the Niger Delta area of Nigeria. This is where a rebel group has been disrupting oil production and demanding more action from the government to ease poverty there. The rebel group wants the government to give more oil revenues to the people. Nigeria's economy is almost completely dependent on oil.

Nigerian government will probably now be pressured by the big oil companies to negotiate with the rebels as fighting disrupted oil production in the area. However some Nigerian residents are afraid violent rebels will receive more benefits from the oil and take away their share.

From this analysis of the cease fire from the Guardian, reporter Michelle Faul profiles the rebel group and their issues.

The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta has been attacking oil installations, kidnapping petroleum company employees and fighting government troops since January 2006 in what it calls a protest against the unrelenting poverty of people in the Niger Delta. Nigeria's military has fighting a losing battle against opponents using guerrilla tactics in an intricate network of lagoons, creeks, estuaries and mangrove swamps stretching across a million square miles — home to several minority groups and some of Africa's largest oil deposits.

The poverty there has been deepened by more than 50 years of oil production: soil once used for crops is sticky from crude oil leaks, rivers that used to provide fish are slick with oil and the air is acrid with fumes from decades of gas flaring.

The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta called the cease-fire Wednesday saying the government had met one of its demands by releasing ailing rebel leader Henry Okah. It said it wants to negotiate with the government, is busy identifying envoys and hopes the 60-day cease-fire will create "an enabling environment" for negotiations.

President Umar Yar'Adua's special adviser on the southern Delta region, where all Nigeria's oil is produced, responded that the president was "sincere and committed, and is truly poised to turn the Niger Delta into a bastion of peace and development."

But the rebel group has called cease-fires before, the government has made similar promises and all has come to naught. In January, the group called off a four-month cease-fire alleging that the government had broken it, though the government denied that.

The most pressing issue, one the government can address most speedily, is the 13 percent share of national oil revenue allocated to the delta under Nigeria's federal system. Various groups in the region have been demanding an increase that would bring that share up to anywhere from 25 percent to 100 percent of revenue.

But Yar'Adua's government, like its predecessor, is showing little enthusiasm and faces political resistance from other parts of the country that automatically must accept less revenue if more goes to the delta. The economy of Nigeria, Africa's most populous nation of 140 million, is almost totally dependent on oil.

A dissident aid group in Myanmar

A year after a large cyclone destroyed the Irrawaddy Delta of Myanmar people there are still rebuilding. Some of the physical damage has been restored, and Farmers have gone back to growing crops after some loans and donations.

Most of the rebuilding was done by aid groups that were reluctantly allowed in by the government. The military government of Myanmar tries to control everything in the country. The cyclone was too much for the government to control, so they allowed others to do the work of rebuilding.

In this New York Times article we learn of an aid group that uses helping people to be subversive to the government. Mingalar Myanmar was a begun by a family with a history of opposing the government. In this piece we see how building houses and feeding people peacefully opposes a military.

“The government always believes everything will be solved by giving orders,” said Daw Yuza Maw Htoon, who founded Mingalar Myanmar with her husband, U Phone Win. “It failed. They recognize the failure. It’s much beyond their capacity.”

When Cyclone Nargis struck the Irrawaddy Delta in May 2008, killing upwards of 130,000 people, a number of local organizations rallied to offer assistance. After initial resistance, the government agreed to let groups like Mingalar distribute aid independently in the delta. To date, Mingalar alone has reached 700 villages, spent $3 million in the delta and grown to 80 employees from 5. In Nauk Pyan Toe, the village was rebuilt using financing from the Swedish and British governments, a Malaysian charity and a Buddhist organization.

With a $300,000 donation from the Singapore Embassy and Singaporean businesses, Mingalar also built 1,500 boats for the victims of the cyclone.
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The government has announced elections for next year, the first in two decades. Although it appears likely they will be rigged in favor of the military, some foreign observers believe they may also lead to a devolution of some responsibilities and power to civic groups like Mingalar Myanmar.

Mingalar’s work is not political, the organization tells the authorities. And yet in the top-down, yes-sir context of four-and-a-half decades of military rule in Myanmar, it is difficult to see the group’s work as anything but a challenge to the status quo.

Mingalar’s seminars in remote villages encourage collective decision- making and community-based activism, ideas that have been eclipsed by a government that instills fear in those who step out of line.

“The idea is that you have to give priority to people’s opinion,” said Ms. Yuza Maw Htoon.

Holocaust survivors in the U.S.

An eighth grader in New York City did a school project on Holocaust survivors. What he found was many of the survivors are still suffering in some way. 30% of Holocaust survivors living in the U.S. are living in poor conditions.

From this WCBS video, Jennifer McLogan tells us about Joe Klein's discovery.

India and China's progress on meeting the MDGs

In a meeting of the Asian Economic and Social Council, China and India have both submitted reports detailing their economies. China says they can meet some of the Millennium Development Goals ahead of schedule, while India reports a focus on health issues for those in poverty.

From the IPS, reporter Thalif Deen breaks down the reports.

Since 1978, China has accelerated development and reduced its population living in "absolute poverty" from 250 million to 15 million, according to a new report submitted by the Chinese government to the annual ministerial meeting of the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) through Jul. 31.

"We firmly believe that China will achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) fully and on schedule, thereby making an important contribution to the achievement of the Goals at the global level," the report said.

China also boasts it is "the earliest among developing countries to meet the MDGs of eradicating extreme poverty and hunger".

The MDGs include a 50 percent reduction in extreme poverty and hunger; universal primary education; promotion of gender equality; reduction of child mortality by two-thirds; cutbacks in maternal mortality by three-quarters; combating the spread of HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases; ensuring environmental sustainability; and developing a North-South global partnership for development.

China is one of the few developing nations to publicly declare its commitment to meet all eight MDGs by 2015, while most countries have declared their inability to meet the deadline, a situation made worse by the global financial crisis.

Meanwhile, in a report titled "India: Urban Poverty Report 2009", the Ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation points out that over 80 million poor people live in cities and towns of India.

India has shared the growth pattern of some of the fastest growing regions in Asia, according to the study. The country has witnessed around 8.0 percent growth in gross domestic product (GDP) in the last couple of years.

But India's urban population is increasing at a faster rate than its total population of 1.16 billion.

Overall, India's population growth has been steadily decreasing and continues to do so, says Professor Gita Sen of the Centre for Public Policy at the Bangalore-based Indian Institute of Management. She said that National Family Health Surveys point to important reductions in the number of children that women want to have.

Paul Collier and the U.S. President's remarks on Africa

In his latest commentary, Paul Collier analyzes U.S. President Obama's remarks on African leadership. Collier says that besides more aid, perhaps what Africa needs is more accountants. We found Collier's commentary in the Guardian.

The most explosive was that Africa's core problem is its own misgovernance: Africa's persistent poverty has been largely self-inflicted. Obama is the first western leader to have the political space to deliver this tough but necessary message. He does not need a photo-op with smiling Africans to signal to voters back home that he is a compassionate sort of guy. Nor does he risk being denounced. His protection is in part that it is not possible to imagine Obama in a pith helmet; but beyond that, nobody can seriously question Obama's sincere concern to help his father's continent. His statement cannot be interpreted as being the preliminaries to neglect.

Second, the solution to misgovernance will come from within Africa: the key struggle is internal. By choosing to visit Ghana – which recently hosted an honest election, with the governing party narrowly losing – Obama flagged up that leadership depends critically on the integrity of the political process.

Obama has made a clarion call for change, but more importantly, he is the change. Africans see Obama as a fellow African, but unlike most of Africa's own leaders he personifies the leadership values that he preaches. Poor leadership is not intrinsic to African leadership; it is intrinsic only to the people who have jostled their way into presidencies.

Why has the selection of African leadership been so disastrous? The problem lies not with Africans but with the structure of the polities in which they live. Around the world the chance of a stolen election soars if the society is poor, small, and resource-rich. Even then it is not inevitable: Botswana started with just these features yet it is a functioning democracy. But such countries need strong checks and balances such as a free press and what political scientists call "veto points" – independent bases of power that can block presidential decisions. The democratisation that swept across Africa after the fall of the Soviet Union in most cases amounted to little more than elections.

Which takes us to Obama's final message: America will help, where it can, to tilt the balance towards brave people struggling for change. American money will be conditional upon decent governance. Where public money can be looted, the political class – no matter what its original composition – will end up peopled by crooks. In Africa aid is such a major component of public money that the scope for capture matters enormously.

America's Children government report released

A new report released from the U.S. government tracks the well being of children in the states. The report called "America's Children: Key National Indicators of Well-Being, 2009," tells us how America's children are doing in health, education and socially.

A Washington Times columnist gives us some of the results from the report. Cheryl Wetzstein says there is some "good news and bad news."

The report, found at http://childstats.gov/ americaschildren, shows several improvements from last year: More children have health insurance (89 percent); fewer children ages 5 to 14 died as a result of injury (seven per 100,000); fewer 10th-graders regularly smoked (6 percent) or binge-drank (16 percent); and fewer babies were born prematurely (12.7 percent), had low birth weight (8.2 percent) or died before their first birthday (6.7 per 1,000). Fourth- and eighth-graders scored higher in math and reading, and more young adults completed high school (89 percent).

Another welcome change was a steep drop in the number of youths ages 12 to 17 involved in serious violent crimes. The youth-offender rate fell from 17 per 1,000 in 2005 to 11 per 1,000 in 2007, a "very large difference in a very positive direction," said Edward J. Sondik, director of the National Center for Health Statistics.

On the downside, the number of children living in poverty ticked up (18 percent), while the number living with at least one employed parent ticked down (77 percent) - and these data "predate the current economic downturn," said Dr. Duane Alexander, director of the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.

The number of preschoolers who have a family member read to them regularly also fell alarmingly - from 60 percent in 2005 to 55 percent in 2007 - which means more children will be less prepared for school. And, of course, far more children were born to single mothers - in 1980, there were 29 births per 1,000 single women; by 2007, it was 53 births per 1,000.

UK political skirmish on the international aid target of 0.7% GDP

An election is to be held in Britain next week. David Cameron of the conservative Tories is defending increasing international aid for poverty relief to his own party. Conservatives in the party are critical of the government making pledges to increase aid during the global recession.

Cameron knows that keeping the aid promise will win him votes amongst liberals next week. In making his point, Cameron is saying something very true, poverty eradication will lend to less terrorism.

From the Time Online, we hear the case from David Cameron, and reaction from aid watchdog groups.

An incoming Conservative administration would tie cash to proven results, fund a wider variety of projects and give the public a greater say in where aid was spent, he said yesterday.

Mr Cameron said that abandoning the UN target for countries to increase their aid spending to 0.7 per cent of GDP by 2013 would be a serious long-term mistake.

“When you look at some of the major threats to our security today — from terrorism to climate change to war — you know they will only get worse unless we help fight poverty and boost the development of struggling nations,” Mr Cameron said, as he announced the party’s aid strategy.
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But although aid charities gave a general welcome to the Tory aid policies, Mr Cameron was pressed on whether he would divert some of his proposed aid budget towards mitigating the effects of climate change.

“David Cameron must be clear that the sole purpose of these funds is poverty eradication. Funding specifically to deal with climate change must be additional,” said Melanie Ward, the senior UK political adviser to Christian Aid’s senior UK political adviser, Melanie Ward.

Bringing power to the Dertu region of Kenya

A renewable energy project in Kenya is being supported by a grant from France. 250,000 U.S. dollars has been granted to the project to provide energy to an area that has a great number of refugees. Resources in the Dertu area of Kenya are also being strained by a prolonged drought.

From Afriquejet, we read more about the power needs in the region.

The Dertu millennium project came at a time Kenya is facing an imminent power shortage and an anticipated increase in the cost of energy.

The country is now looking for alternative sources of power, following a long spell of drought that has led to drastic reduction of water levels in the country’s hydro-power generating dams.

During the last few weeks, there has been drastic reduction of water levels at the country’s main hydro-dam at Masinga, forcing the closure of the 14 megawatt power generating facility.

Ministry of Energy officials said the national power grid had lost 40 megawatts of power as a result of the receding water levels occasioned by the prolonged drought.

Government has, however, appealed to private players to help provide energy through the “Feed in Tariff” policy.

Crisis meeting on the famine in Northern Uganda

The Ugandan government held a crisis meeting to respond to 35 deaths due to starvation in northern Uganda. A food shortage in northern Uganda has been attributed to many factors, from armed conflict to floods and more.

From All Africa Halima Abdallah reports on the emerging famine.

Food stocks in the north and the east have for long been threatened by insecurity -- which made millions of people to be confined to camps for the internally displaced for about two decades as a result of Lord's Resistance Army rebels and Karamajong raiders.

But, of late, merchants from Southern Sudan have been buying virtually everything, from livestock to crops in the field, offering irresistible prices.

MPs, however, cite natural factors such as intermittent floods which cause lower production of food.

In the east, for instance, floods in late 2007 destroyed many crops.

The floods were said to be a result of climate change due to environmental degradation. Subsequently, the area was hit by prolonged drought.

"We are appealing to all Ugandans who have something to offer, the Food and Agricultural Organisation and the World Food Programme, to come to the rescue of our people," said Elijah Okupa, an MP at the crisis meeting.

Ghana receives another visit from a U.S. President

U. S. President Barack Obama is about to visit the African country of Ghana. This will be the third consecutive U. S. President to visit the country. The U. S. continues to pay the visits because of the great strides the country has made in improving it's economy and shrinking poverty.

As a preview to the visit, this story in the Canada's Globe and Mail explains some of the improvements in the country. Writer Geoffrey York also includes some things that Ghana still needs to work on.

Ghana has become the darling of the Western donor community. With its bold programs in health and education, its vibrant democracy, its booming economy and its political stability, Ghana is widely touted as a model for other African countries.

Since 2003, when the new education policy was introduced, the number of school children in Ghana has expanded by a remarkable 1.2 million. Ghana now has one of the highest school-enrolment rates in West Africa, with 83 per cent of its children in school.

Child mortality, for children under the age of 5, has dropped by 30 per cent in the past decade. Malnutrition has declined, the health budget is growing, and only 28 per cent of the population is below the official poverty line, compared with 52 per cent in the early 1990s. Ghana is one of the few African countries on track to meet its goal of cutting poverty in half by 2015. With oil resources now being developed, the country even has an ambitious target of becoming a middle-income country by 2020.
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Ghana's successes, however, are far from complete. There is growing inequality between the rich and the poor. Schools in northern Ghana have much lower enrolment rates than southern schools, and poverty is much higher in the north.

“Stark and rising inequalities have been generated by the growth model that Ghana has pursued in the last decade,” says a recent report by Oxfam.

“Millions of men and women living in northern Ghana have been marginalized from the development process. Poverty levels in two of the three regions are higher than they were in 1991-92.”

Despite its progress, Ghana is still ranked only 142 of the 179 countries in the UN human-development index, which measures quality of life. Some Ghanaians are so poor that they turn to desperate measures. Just last week, when a Ghana International Airlines plane landed at Gatwick Airport near London, the undercarriage contained the dead body of a man who had apparently risked his life to flee the country. He perished at high altitude.

An ark for Malawi's many orphans

A couple of orphanages in Malawi has links to your blogger's home state. Christian Church International which was started in Flint, Michigan operates the Noah's Ark orphanages in Malawi. Noah's Ark takes in children orphaned by AIDS or malaria.

Robin Rosenthal is spending the summer volunteering Malawi and writing about her trip for the Kalamazoo Gazette. yopu can view Robin's blog at Give Good Day. From her latest story, we learn more about the great need for the many children who have lost their parents in Malawi.

In a country where the people literally are starving to death, Noah's Ark has brought hope -- and given life -- to nearly 100 orphans in two communities. Children walk miles in the rising sun to come to the center for breakfast, then turn around and walk back the same path to school. Some make the same trek at lunchtime, while the orphanage takes lunch to others. After school, children rush to the center for a last meal and sometimes more schooling.

Pastor Captain Chisale runs the Mateketa center, which serves a more remote and needy population. He spends about $20 a month for 144 pounds of maize to feed the orphan children. He also grows his own maize to ensure that his family and the families at Noah's Ark have food after the harvest, when food prices nearly double.

"By February, people come here begging for food," he said.

The centers each receive about $500 a month in donations, mostly from the Flint area, to operate. But that isn't enough to meet even the current needs. Often the centers turn to Malawians for donations.

Just before our group arrived, the Chirimba Township center received more than 130 bags of a vitamin-enriched porridge from Feed the Children and a promise of more to come. Sisco said she will take the savings from that donation to buy fresh vegetables for the children, a delicacy in Malawi.

There's no question that orphanages like Noah's Ark are a lifeline in Malawi. But the need continues to outpace resources. Sisco said she's tearfully turned away children.

"It hurts," Sisco said. "I do a lot of praying."

When the Mateketa center opened in 2007, hundreds of children lined up for help. Within walking distance of the center are well over 100 orphans. That number grows with each passing day.

"They're coming to us," Chisale said. "I was born here. I know everyone around. If there's a funeral, there is a kid (left behind)."

On my first day of walking the streets here in Malawi, I watched several men dig a grave, while just a yard away several other men quietly bid farewell to yet another Malawian. I stood from a distance, wondering if another child had been orphaned.

G-8 pledges $20 million for food security

Many expected a pledge of $15 billion, instead the G-8 surpassed that by pledging $20 billion dollars to fight hunger throughout the world. The $20 billion will come from the eight wealthy nations over the next 3 years. Italy will contribute 480 million, Japan and the European Union will each contribute $3 billion.

The G-8 is still trying to catch up from failing on previous pledges. Many analysts say that G-8 surpassed expectations on food security because they did not come up with an agreement on climate change.

More on the new pledges that we hope they keep from the Financial Times and reporter Guy Dinmore.

Management of the fund had not been finally decided but there would be close cooperation between the World Bank and the Rome-based UN food agencies, the minister said.

On the final day of the three-day G8 summit in L’Aquila, central Italy, leaders of the G8 club of rich countries were joined by heads of African governments and international institutions to finalise the multi-billion dollar food security fund for agriculture.

Barack Obama, US president, sat at the same dinner table on Thursday night with Muammer Gaddafi, Libya’s leader, invited to the summit by Italy in his role as head of the African Union.

US deputy national security advisor Denis McDonough told reporters that the US contribution to the fund would be about $3bn over three years. He said late on Thursday that pledges were still “bouncing around”.

Aid organisations will be carefully scrutinising the pledges to make sure that the funding represents new money and has not been stripped from existing budgets elsewhere. Also to be hammered out is what agency or agencies will administer the trust fund. The World Bank is a prime candidate.

Microcredit doesn't stop at small loans

The microcredit revolution isn't stoping with small loans. Many microcredit lenders are offering more services such as savings and checking accounts, life insurance and more. All the new services can help to economically empower those in poverty.

In this commentary that we found at MarketWatch, Elisabeth Rhyne from the Center for Financial Inclusion at Accion International, details some other "micro-banking" advances that have helped the poor of the developing world.

Partnerships for last-mile delivery: In 2001, Brazilian banking authorities introduced the banking correspondent model, a regulatory innovation that has radically transformed access to financial services in Brazil and is being adopted, with regional variations, across Latin America and to a limited degree in India. Brazil allows any enterprise, including supermarkets, lottery kiosks, pharmacies and post offices to act as an agent to one or several banks.

In Brazil today, 95,000 agents are conduits for services such as new accounts, deposits, withdrawals and bill payments. Before the banking agent revolution, almost a third of Brazil's municipalities had no banking services; now they all do. At least 13 million new savings accounts have been opened.

The agent model may be the single most powerful means of localizing banking services. Banking authorities in Peru report that a bank branch costs about $200,000 to set up, while an agent costs just $5,000.

-- Technology: One engine of the agent model is the pre-paid bank card and the humble point-of-sale machine, the device that reads your card at the supermarket checkout counter. A point-of-sale machine typically costs less than $100 vs. thousands for an ATM. Customers can use cards at locations with the point-of-sale machine to make deposits, withdraw cash and pay bills as well as make purchases.

The pre-paid card model avoids risks of over-indebtedness and the problems of complex fees currently bedeviling the U.S. market. For poor people, liberation from the need to pay every bill in cash and in person at the bank branch saves a tremendous amount of time, cost and risk.

An even more flexible and user-centered payment device has taken off in parts of Africa and Asia: the cell phone. In Kenya, the Philippines and South Africa, millions of cell-phone customers use text messaging to withdraw and deposit cash at the same retail outlets where they buy airtime for their phones. They also use the phones to receive their salary, pay off loans and store money, as well as make retail purchases.

-- Product design: Microinsurance providers have proved especially creative in designing products tailored to specific cultural needs. In Latin America, many women balk at buying life insurance because they don't want to enrich their husband's imagined second wife. "Education life" policies therefore provide benefits in the form of school vouchers. Other policies pay out vouchers for food at large grocery chains.

Often, major insurers seeking to crack the low-income market rely on microfinance or microinsurance specialists to design and distribute products that they underwrite. Zurich Financial Services recently announced a partnership with microfinance group Women's World Banking to offer "caregiver insurance," covering a range of expenses arising from a woman's hospitalization.

2010 World Cup could increase human trafficking in South Africa

U. S. Ambassador to South Africa, Luis CdeBaca warned that human trafficking could increase in the country with the coming of the 2010 World Cup. Already within the country girls are trafficked for sexual exploitation, while young boys are are forced into street vending or food service.

From South Africa's News 24, we read more of the ambassador's comments.

"With the 2010 we might see an uptake of prostitution and brothels moving closer to the sites... pimping of children is also on the cards," he said at a Pretoria briefing on human trafficking.

He said 12.3 million people across the world had been victims of trafficking, according to a 2008 report released in June this year.

"Most of the victims were lured by traffickers offering jobs, once in a foreign country they were abused and left with no protection."

He said destitute men, women and children were kept as slaves, or worked as domestic workers or farm labourers, and at times were forced into prostitution to earn money for their traffickers. He said law enforcement agencies need to work with civil society to combat human trafficking.

"Police concentrate on prostitution and not trafficking... these women were first victims of trafficking and forced into prostitution."

Action needed to stop an attempt to cut funding to World Bank’s African donor program

ONE is asking everyone in the states to call their representatives in Congress to stop an amendment that would cut funding to the World Bank’s International Development Association. This fund is the second largest development donor to Africa. The amendment was introduced by Rep. Jerry Lewis a Republican from California.

The call will need to made in the next couple of hours, if not sooner, here is a link to ONE's page that will give you details on calling your representative.

New mothers, new refugees

The violence in Pakistan has created a health emergency for pregnant and new mothers within refugee camps in the country. 69,000 pregnant women have been forced out of northwest Pakistan since the fighting began in April. Doctors within the refugee camps say the new mothers face severe health and nutrition problems.

From the IPS, Ashfaq Yusufzai reports on the displaced mothers.

"Our doctors had examined about 191 newborn children of whom 144 were underweight and 125 severely malnourished," says Dr Abdul Hameed, PPA president. There is severe overcrowding, he confirms. Two or three children can be admitted on each bed. Neither are there labour rooms to handle delivery-related complications, he adds.

"The situation could slip out of control if immediate measures regarding strengthening of childcare in the camps aren't initiated," he told IPS.

UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, John Holmes, who is on a visit to Pakistan, is reported saying, "We still need to do more to help (internally displaced) people both now and in the coming months." Holmes who has visited refugees in camps in Peshawar, Mardan and Swabi, has traveled to Buner district, Thursday.

Antonio Guterres, U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, has described the massive displacement of Pakistani civilians because of the escalating fighting between Pakistani forces and Taliban militants as "the most challenging protection crisis since Rwanda [in the mid-1990s]."

"My son has severe diarrhoea. There is no improvement. He is pale, and not responding to breastfeeding," Jamala Bibi of Buner in the Shah Mansoor camp, Swabi, told this reporter on May 20.

Pakistan has a population of 160.9 million, which is growing at a rate of 1.8 percent. According to observers, the country is unlikely to meet goal 4 and 5 of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which calls for reducing child mortality and improving maternal health respectively, by 15 to 50 percent by 2015.

Every family in the Malakand region has at least five or more children. The conservative Islamic groups allied to the Taliban, who made Dir, Swat and Buner their stronghold two years ago, targeted non governmental organisations (NGOs) working with the community on reproductive health goals. Their field workers were kidnapped and the NGOs threatened with dire consequences if they did not pull out of these districts.

Another disease of poverty: Chagas

This morning Médecins Sans Frontières reminds us of another disease that strikes people in poverty called Chagas. The disease is mostly concentrated in Latin America but there have been a few cases reported in other areas of the world. Chagas kills 14,000 people a year needlessly, as there are drugs that were developed a long time ago that can treat the disease.

From this MSF press release, we learn more background information about the disease, and a call from MSF to more attention to it's eradication.

MSF calls on endemic countries to end the neglect of Chagas sufferers and support diagnosis and treatment for affected people, rather than focusing solely on vector control. Integrating Chagas care into primary healthcare facilities would improve patient access to treatment. MSF also calls for further Research and Development (R&D) efforts into new drugs, rapid diagnosis tests to use in remote settings and better cure tests for one of the world’s most neglected diseases.

Chagas disease is caused by the Trypanosoma cruzi parasite. In most Latin American countries, the disease is transmitted by the ‘kissing bug’ vector, although transmission is also possible from mother to child, through blood transfusions, organ transplants and contaminated food.


Chagas patients may be asymptomatic for years but during the chronic phase of the disease one third develop serious health problems (mainly heart and intestinal complications) that can lead to death. “One of the main problems we have is that for years patients have no symptoms so they do not know they are sick and receive no treatment. Active case detection is essential to find and treat infected people,” explains Dr. Nines Lima, MSF Chagas officer.

About the treatment:
The sooner the disease is detected, the more effective the treatment. The only two existing drugs – benznidazol and nifurtimox – were developed over 35 years ago through research not specifically focusing on Chagas. Although these medicines are very effective in newborn and breastfeeding children, only about 60 to 70 per cent of adolescents and adults are successfully treated. The older the patients are, the greater the likelihood they will experience side effects from the drugs. “Doctors do not treat children, let alone adults, for fear of side effects," said Dr. Tom Ellman, MSF Head of Mission in Bolivia. "We are showing that these effects are manageable in both cases. Leaving patients untreated is no longer ethical.”

The G-8 talks about aid

In the G-8 meeting in Italy the world's eight biggest economies opened the table to other emerging economies. The invites are seen by many as admission that the eight countries alone cannot solve all the worlds problems.

Brazil, China, India, Mexico and South Africa pressed the G-8 on reopening the Doha round of global trade talks. The hope is that a free trade agreement that removes barriers would open more markets to the goods of the under-developed world.

For the focus of our snippet, this Associated Press article tells us what the G-8 said about aid to the underdeveloped world. Writer Colleen Barry made the trip to Italy.

On the issue of aid, Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi said Wednesday that the leaders have decided they need to change the way they help Africa, and introduce a mechanism of accountability to review efforts.

"We want our funds to go to precise investments, schools, buildings and so on," Berlusconi told reporters.

On the issue of aid, Berlusconi has said the G-8 was looking into establishing an agricultural development fund for Africa, to shift away from giving handouts to the poor to helping them grow their own food.

Italy has been under intense criticism going into the G-8 summit for having maintained only 3 percent of its aid pledges of $3.5 billion to Africa made at a 2005 G-8 summit in Gleneagles, Scotland. The G-8 at that time promised to increase aid to sub-Saharan Africa by US$25 billion a year by 2010.

Berlusconi has acknowledged Italy's failure to respect its Glenagles aid pledges, but has said it only was a delay and that he had no other choice but to cut aid because of Italy's mounting debts and the global financial crisis.

"I'm sorry we didn't keep our promises," he said in an interview over the weekend with Bob Geldof, musician and head of the anti-poverty group ONE, which has shamed Italy for its poor performance.

WFP suspends food distribution due to bombings in southern Philippines

The U.N.'s World Food Programme has suspended food distribution in the Southern Philippines due to increased bombings there. The food was being given to hundreds of thousands of people displaced because of the fighting in the area. Fighting has increased between a rebel Muslin faction and the Philippine government.

From this Associated Press article that we found at Google News, reporter Oliver Teves tells us why the fighting has escalated, and the WFP's concerns for safety.

The World Food Program acting director for the Philippines, Alghassim Wurie, said the decision to suspend food distribution was made out of concern for the safety of its workers.

Most of the 63 WFP staffers work out of offices in Iligan and Cotabato. They have distributed 13,000 tons (11,780 metric tons) of food supplies to 578,000 displaced by fighting between government troops and Muslim rebels since August 2008.

Fresh clashes erupted last August after the Supreme Court rejected a proposed peace deal that would have expanded an autonomous Muslim region in the predominantly Roman Catholic nation. Malaysian-brokered peace talks were put on hold.

The government estimates there still are about 348,000 people in evacuation centers or staying with relatives.

"The U.N. in particular is very concerned about staff safety, so we decided to suspend our activities during this week to enable us to understand better the reasons behind these problems," Wurie told The Associated Press.

He said he hoped that by the end of the week the security situation will "calm down" and his agency could resume handing out food — mostly rice but also cooking oil, beans and high energy biscuits.

The agency also restricted movement of its staff, advising them to avoid crowded areas, including mosques and churches, said Pia Facultad, a WFP spokeswoman in Manila.

U.S. to seek a $15 billion dollar pledge from G-8

Reuters has scooped a U.S. plan to seek a new pledge from the G-8. The U.S. government has drafted a proposal that would have the G-8 pledge $15 billion dollars to be given to food security needs in the under-developed world. However, the money would go to a new fund to be operated by the World Bank.

From Reuters, writers Silvia Aloisi and Darren Ennis explain the proposal.

The declaration said Washington was ready to mobilise $3-4 billion and wanted other partners to match that commitment to reach the $15 billion target.

"The funds...would be earmarked for investment in low income countries to implement agriculture development strategies, to finance agricultural infrastructure, land and water management, risk mitigation actions," the declaration said.

It said they would be pooled in a global agriculture and food security trust fund managed by the World Bank. It voiced concern for the impact of the economic crisis, food price volatility and under-investment in agriculture on poverty.

The United States is the world's largest food aid donor, mostly of domestically grown food bought from U.S. farmers.

The European Union has welcomed U.S. President Barack Obama's pledge for new funds, and EU Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said on Monday the bloc would commit another $1 billion per year on top of the money it has already promised -- estimated at around $7 billion to date.

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who will host the G8, said he expected the meeting to slate between 10 and 15 billion dollars for world food security. But the EU is sceptical about the need for a new mechanism, such as the proposed trust fund.
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Aid campaigners are also worried about the lack of details about the funds to be pledged by the G8 summit.

"The devil is always in the detail. Is this new money? Are they including loans as well as grants, bilateral as well as multilateral commitments? The G8 needs to be absolutely transparent about what it is doing," said Oliver Buston of anti-poverty campaign ONE.

Summer's surge in homelessness

Once it gets warm here in the States, many families find themselves without a home. Landlords and relatives are not as patient when the weather gets warm, because the people who get kicked out are not in danger of freezing. Many parents will also try to sacrifice everything they can to stay in their homes, so their children can complete the years schooling.

From The New York Times, writer Julie Bosman looks into this yearly surge in homelessness.

Many New Yorkers view summer as a time for vacations, camp and lazy days at the beach. But city officials have been preparing for quite a different summer ritual: the swelling of the population of homeless families.

They call it the summer surge, and say that this year could be the worst yet.

Because the homeless population this spring was up more than 20 percent over last spring, possibly because of higher unemployment, officials are girding for an all-time high in the number of families in shelters at once, expecting close to 10,000. Already, the number has reached 9,420.

Other cities are noticing a similar trend. In Toledo, Ohio, one overcrowded shelter has been turning away dozens of people each night. In Charlotte, N.C., a shelter that is typically open only in winter has stayed open for the summer to meet demand, which is 20 percent higher than last summer. Across town, a Salvation Army shelter is so full, it has set up mats on the floors.

The reasons are varied but simple. Landlords who are reluctant to evict during winter are less hesitant when it is warmer. Parents like the Maldonados, who have endured poor housing conditions to spare their children agitation and humiliation at school, finally pack up and leave. And relatives who have taken in families in cramped apartments lose patience when children are suddenly underfoot all day long.

“When school’s open, families tend to stay where they are,” said Deronda Metz, the director of social services for the Salvation Army in Charlotte. “And when school’s out, they’re told it’s time to go.”

In New York, the number of homeless families applying for shelter in the summer has been 28 percent higher than the rest of the year the last three years. Their first stop is the intake center, a 24-hour, sprawling 66,000-square-foot brick building in the Bronx. They must walk through metal detectors, must submit to questioning from social workers and, after hours of waiting for their names to be called, are bused to a temporary hotel room or apartment.

Workers have begun to make room for the hundreds of extra families that are expected at the center this summer. On the second floor, all of the cubicles in one room were dismantled, replaced by rows of plastic chairs to make a waiting room for up to 114 people. Rows of boxy light gray metal lockers — each large enough to hold several suitcases — were installed. Employees at the intake center are being limited to one week of vacation during July and August.

Just a few hours after the public schools let out for summer, families began trickling into the center, their faces tight with stress. One woman walked briskly inside with her young son, who wore a bright blue backpack and held an armful of books. Another woman, who would not give her name, waited outside with her daughter, who had just finished second grade. “My sister said we couldn’t stay with her anymore,” she said, fanning herself for some relief from the humidity. “I said once she’s done with school, we’d get out.”

Comment: Climate change effects on food security

President of the Society of Landscape Architects of Nigeria, Niyi Kehinde, analyzes the effects of climate change on African food production. Kehinde observes that a couple of countries have already experienced a decrease of rainfall that is attributed to the climate change theory. We found Kenhinde's analysis at All Africa.

The topical issue now is the alarm raised on food shortage. Africa indeed is in trouble. Africa has been a continent of drought in parts for decades. Climate change may in fact be the last straw that will break the camels back. This is so because food supplement from other lands may not be readily available any more due to global shortage. Can Africa indeed survive the onslaught of global food shortage and global warming. Here is the answer.

"Because of its poverty, its dependence on locally grown food, recurrent droughts and floods, the civil unrest and political instability of failed states and diseases like malaria and AIDS pandemic, parts of Africa are in crisis or live on the edge of crisis. Global warming will make coping with these problems worse in some cases much worse"(EEN)

Since Africa largely depends on rain fed agriculture for her existence, any disruption in the amount of rainfall available to Africa will definitely spell doom.

The reality though scary, is that global warming (climate change) has been projected to reduce rainfall in even areas now known as water-scare environment by between 5% - 20%.

Countries like Niger, Chad, Sudan, Burkina Faso are definitely endangered already. The situation will be exacerbated if further reduction in these countries are experienced.

Countries like Nigeria, Cameroon, Ghana are already bearing a lot of burden on behalf of the sub-Saharan countries. This writer believes that until a country like Nigeria includes Chad, Niger, Burkina Faso in her food budget and production, she (Nigeria) will continue to experience the hunger -induced influx of citizens of the named countries in to Nigeria. Now that food scarcity is predicted for the next decades, how many of these 'aliens' will Nigeria support. The Xenophobia going on in South Africa has to do with the matter of the stomach. South Africans believe that foreigners especially Zimbabweans who flee their country to avoid hunger are dislocating them from their own livelihood. Africa has been described as a top notcher among the failed states of the world.

Britain aims to press the other rich nations on aid in G-8 meeting

Britain has gone on record to say that they will not cut aid to the under-developed world despite the global economic recession. The International Development Secretary for Britain said they will also press the other rich nations to do the same during the G-8 meetings in Italy this week.

Britain is going to begin targeting their aid to several countries. They named the countries Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Nepal, Nigeria and Yemen will receive half of all of their aid budget.

From Reuters, we read more of Britain's goals for the G-8 meeting.

International Development Secretary Douglas Alexander said Britain was on track to raise foreign aid to the U.N. target of 0.7 percent of gross national income by 2013 but other countries were lagging behind their promises.

Britain will raise the matter at this week's G8 summit in Italy, he said.

"We will be looking to create the opportunity for countries which are off-track to make commitments that will bring them back on track," Alexander told journalists.

"It is not a surprise that the policies of the host will be closely scrutinised at the end of the week."

Aid groups have singled out Italy for criticism, with anti-poverty campaigner Bob Geldof grilling Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi in a weekend interview, saying he had slashed, not raised, aid to Africa since 2005.

"I am sorry, we made a mistake," Berlusconi responded, saying Italy's debt mountain and the economic crisis had forced the cut.

At their 2005 summit the G8, which comprises the United States, Britain, Germany, Italy, France, Russia, Canada and Japan, promised to more than double aid to Africa by 2010 and to aim for the 0.7 percent target.

A preview of the G-8

The G-8 begins to meet tomorrow in Italy. There is a lot of concern amongst anti-poverty activists as to how much the issues of poverty will be addressed at the meeting. Host country Italy has not done well in meeting their commitments to fund aid to the under-developed world. If fact, Italy has cut back on some of the funding.

So during tomorrow's three hour meeting food security will share the agenda with global warming. As a preview of what might be talked about in regards to food security, we turn to this article that we found at the Irish Times, writer Jamie Smith fills us in.

The G8 states are also expected to sign up to a new food security initiative, which aims to replace food aid with more sustainable aid to farmers in the developing world. The Financial Times reported yesterday that the G8 would set up an $12 billion fund to disburse over three years to reverse “the tendency of decreasing official development aid and national financing to agriculture”. The US and Japan are likely to supply $6-8 billion and the EU and Canada the rest.

The initiative may dampen criticism aimed at G8 states for failing to live up to commitments they made in Scotland in 2005 to halve world poverty and hunger by 2015. Since this announcement it is estimated a further 150 million people live in hunger, bringing the global total to more than one billion, says Tom Arnold chief executive of Concern. He said he welcomed the announcement, which mirrored many of the recommendations in the Hunger Task Force report commissioned by the Government.

The food security initiative represents a major shift in US policy. It is the world’s biggest food aid donor disbursing $2 billion per year to poor countries, much of which was provided by US farmers – a powerful lobby in Washington.

Forbes ranks the microcredit lenders

The story we linked to this morning on microcredit in Bosnia mentioned a Forbes ranking of microcredit lenders. This ranking was new to us, so we wanted to link to it in a new post.

Forbes used factors to rank the microcredit lenders such as the size of the lender, the risk of their portfolio, and the percentage of return. The top 3 were ASA from Bangladesh, Bandhan (Society and NBFC) of India and Banco do Nordeste from Brazil. Grameen Bank was ranked 16th on the Forbes list.

Forbes used information gathered by the Microfinance Information Exchange to compile the list.

Microcredit going strong in Bosnia

After the war in Bosnia was over it was microcredit that helped the country find it's way out of the devastation. According to an AFP article, The 15 microcredit banks in Bosnia have 400,000 clients with a portfolio of 500 million euro's.

Analysts say that microcredit in Bosnia is still on solid ground despite the global economic recession. Defaults in loans have increased, but the banks there have enough resources to make it out of the recession.

From this AFP article hosted at Google News, reporter Sabina Niksic visited some of the banks in Bosnia.

In the Sarajevo suburb of Lukavica, women gather once a month at one of them, the Mikra agency, to collect money which repays their loans.

Mikra uses different models of lending to the poor, including the so-called village banking model where loans are granted to groups of people in which peer pressure and collective responsibility helps ensure payments are made.

Loans can grow only if the initial debt is paid off.

"In Lukavica, we have 270 clients, but only three or four have difficulties repaying loans," Mikra's Vedran Zametica told AFP.

But the global economic crisis is having an effect on this sector, which since 1996 registered a steady default rate of less than 1.0 percent.

"The trend of growth of portfolios at risk started at the end of 2008," Nejra Nalic, the director of Mi-Bospo micro-credit foundation, told AFP.

"Since October last year until the end of May 2009, the percentage of our portfolio at risk has grown by 100 percent," said Nalic.

However, experts say micro-credit remains one of the healthiest segments of Bosnia's economy
...

During crises, micro-credit remains the only hope for people like Nagorka Govedarica who at the end of Bosnia's 1992-1995 war was a widow struggling to raise five children on a meager school teacher's salary.

Today, in her house near Sarajevo, Govedarica runs a private day-care centre for 60 children in which two of her daughters work thanks to a micro-credit loan.

"All I had was a good business idea and this house, I was not eligible for a bank loan, but I borrowed from Mikra," Govedarica told AFP.

Govedarica has outgrown micro-finance and is now also borrowing from banks, but her experience with Mikra has taught her not to take more than she can repay.

Malaria vaccine researcher wins Kiwanis World Service Medal

Virginia native Col. Donald "Gray" Heppner Jr. has won the Kiwanis 2009 World Service Award. Heppner won the award for his work developing a malaria fighting vaccine.

From the Richmond Times Dispatch, writer Christa Desrets gives us more background on Heppner's work.

After studying infectious diseases at the University of Virginia and completing internal training at the University of Minnesota, he began working at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research.

"It was really a dynamic and inspiring place," he said, where he and about 2,000 employees are connected to the tropical world through overseas laboratories, field sites and more than 40 years of work. They also work with GlaxoSmithKline pharmaceuticals and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation "right in the heart of where tropical diseases afflict people most."

In the early 1990s, Heppner volunteered to be a test subject for a malaria vaccine. He said the process involved holding his arm to a cardboard cup that contained five mosquitoes carrying malaria -- he related it to receiving a week's worth of exposure to the disease in five minutes.

"The worst part," he said, "was actually realizing the vaccine wasn't effective."

The next-worst part was living through the flulike symptoms and the side effects of treatment, he said. "Both of those experiences convinced me of the need for a malaria vaccine," he said.

That's where the vaccine (known as RTS,S) comes in, Heppner said.

"We've worked for more than 20 years on this promising RTS,S vaccine," he said. "We've tested it here, we've tested it in England, in Asia and in Africa. . . . It looks like it would reduce severe malaria by 50 percent, and that's huge."

Comment: World Vision's wishes for next weeks G-8

With the G-8 meeting in Italy next week, aid organizations around the world are making their voices heard on what they would like to see done. Advocacy campaigns director for World Vision Patrick Watt, has written an opinion that the G-8 needs to firm up their commitments to aid that they made back in 2005.

From The Huffington Post, we find this snippet of Watt's commentary

Four years on, what was dubbed a 'Marshall Plan' for Africa in 2005 risks disintegrating into a partial plan:

* While non-G8 donors, responsible for a quarter of the total aid increase, are delivering on their side of the deal, aid from the G8 countries has actually fallen. So far, G8 countries have raised aid by just one third of the total they pledged in 2005.
* Italy, the host nation, continues to slash its aid spending, and now gives less than a fifth of one per cent of its national income to poverty reduction.


Failure to deliver on recent promises will cost the G8 heavily in terms of credibility. But more importantly, it threatens a huge social cost at a time when the global recession is hitting low-income countries hardest.

The World Bank estimates that as many as 2.8 million additional child deaths could result between now and 2015 unless urgent action is taken to mitigate the impact of the economic slowdown on household income and public spending.

Some G8 countries -- most notably Italy -- have suggested that the fiscal squeeze in Europe and North America makes delivery of current pledges unaffordable. But on closer scrutiny this is a flimsy alibi: the global aid increase promised by 2010 is equivalent to just 2% of the total stimulus package announced for G8 countries at the London G20, and would be equivalent to about 1% of public spending in most EU member states.

Inaction by the G8 is the real unaffordable luxury, not least from the perspective of the 9.2 million children who continue to die each year from easily preventable disease. Where the G8 has delivered additional aid for areas such as health, it has made a lasting and positive impact.

A 90% reduction in deaths from measles in Africa since 2001, and provision of life-saving antiretroviral drugs for 4 million people with HIV and AIDS would not have been possible without the support of G8 countries. This is a platform that needs to be built on when the G8 meet in L'Aquila, not squandered.

Video: Child poverty rate in South Dakota

In efforts to decrease the poverty rate in South Dakota, the organization Voices for Children has launched a new website called Bridge to Benefits.

South Dakota has the second highest poverty rate in the upper mid-west. Voices for Children hopes to change that through the new website. At Bridge to Benefits, parents can find public support programs and tax benefits.

From this video from KOTA, reporter Makenzi Henderson talked to Voices for Children about the website.

Caribbean leaders meet to work on the global recession effects

We finally came across a perspective on how the global economic recession is effecting the Caribbean. The region depends heavily on tourism money for it's economy, and of course, not many are traveling now.

Not only are Caribbean countries suffering from less tourists, but the governments there have been unable to stimulate the economy. Some do not have enough resources to put money back into the economy. Others are unable to obtain loans from the big banks, because they are considered to be middle level economies.

From the Miami Herald, Americas reporter Jacqueline Charles fills us in.

As leaders of the 15-member Caribbean Community begin a four-day summit in Guyana on Thursday focusing on regional issues from immigration to trade to climate change, coming up with a one-size-fits-all regional plan to protect their already vulnerable economies from peril will top the agenda.

Once believing they were insulated from the financial crisis gripping the United Kingdom, and their largest trading partner, the United States, Caribbean governments are increasingly worried as remittances decline, foreign investors dwindle and tourism dampens.

In the Bahamas, the decline in U.S. travelers has triggered layoffs at popular hotels while one resort -- the Four Seasons in Exuma -- shut its doors in May.

In Barbados, European vacationers -- no longer able to afford their Caribbean dream -- are putting luxury condos and beachfront homes up for sale.

But it's not just tourism that is taking a hit.

In Jamaica, plunging demand for aluminum products has triggered layoffs and cuts in production at bauxite plants. A decline in remittances and the depreciating Jamaican dollar have forced the government to raise interest rates while other Caribbean governments have reduced them in hope of stimulating local economies.

Send A Cow

A new friend of ours called our attention to a charity based in the UK called Send A Cow. The charity helps with agriculture in Africa giving small farmers more skills and even more livestock.

Send A Cow began in 1988 when a group of farmers sent female cows to poverty stricken families in Africa. The families agrees to send the first female calf to another family in need. The gift of 25 cows multiplied into many more.

As Send A Cow grew, they began to teach African farmers techniques to increase their yields. They also began to adapt sending livestock to helping families with the water and feed needed to maintain the cows. Send A Cow also began to give smaller livestock such a goats.

Send A Cow has offices in four African countries, their website has a page dedicated to each country to explain the work do in each. In Ethiopia, farmers there have to deal with soil erosion, as heavy rains there wash away the nutrient filled soil. In Rwanda, Send A Cow began to work with the returning refuges after the violence in 1994. The work in Cameroon focuses on water preservation as the country has an eight month dry season every year.

Below is a movie that shows what effect the work of Send A Cow. Peter Reade started a Send A Cow program in Rwanda in 1998, he returned 10 years later to visit those same families.

World Bank lending reaches a record high

World Bank lending hit a record high in the fiscal year just ended. The Bank says that they have increased lending in response to the global economic recession. $58.8 billion in loans have been made in the fiscal year 2009, that is a 54 percent increase.

From this AFP story that we found at the Hindustan Times, we find a quote from bank director Robert Zoellick and a further breakdown of the numbers.

"Millions of people are still suffering, and we must continue to help countries safeguard priority expenditures, including on essential infrastructure, investment in human capital, and social safety nets, or we will further jeopardize hard-fought gains over recent years in overcoming poverty," he said.

For 2009, the bank supported 767 projects to promote economic growth, fight poverty, and assist private businesses.

It included $ 20.7 billion in infrastructure financing, a critical sector to provide the foundation for rapid recovery from the crisis and job creation, the bank said in a statement.

Support for safety nets and other social protection programs totaled $ 4.5 billion.

Masters degrees in poverty eradication

The John T and Cathrene T MacArthur Foundation has donated money to universities to begin masters programs in poverty reduction. The programs will train students to help the under developed world and will provide lots of field experience with universities in South America and Africa.

From the Independent Florida Alligator, writer Megan Taylor explains the grant further.

The foundation has donated $7.6 million to 10 universities worldwide to develop these master’s programs over the next three years.

UF received the donation after competing against 70 other applicant universities worldwide.

In North America, only UF and Emory University in Atlanta, were awarded grants from the foundation.

The curriculum, emphasizing practical experience in the field, will consist of courses in management and in the natural, health and social sciences,.

The program, jointly administered by the centers for Latin American and African studies, will have relatively small class sizes.

“We anticipate admitting some 20 students per class; since it will be a two-year program, this means some 40 would be enrolled at a given time once the program is up and running,” said Leonardo Villalón, director of the Center for African Studies at UF.

Indonesia's poverty rate falls

A nation with one of the highest rates of poverty in Asia has seen it's percentage fall. Indonesia's poverty rate has fallen to 14.15 from 15.42 a year ago.

From this Reuters story that we found in the Guardian, we read some of the factors that may have led to the drop.

The number of poor people fell to 32.53 million in March, from 34.96 million in the same period a year, the bureau said, based on a survey of 68,000 households. The total population is about 226 million.

The government defines those who spend less than 200,262 rupiah a month on average as below the poverty line. One of the most important factors affecting monthly spending is the price of rice, a staple food.

Rice accounts for about a quarter of monthly spending for the poor in the cities, and about 35 percent of the spending for the poor living in villages.

The price of rice rose 7.8 percent in March compared to a year ago, a slower pace than inflation over the same period, the bureau said, adding that farmers' average daily income increased around 13 percent in the period.

North Koreans going hungry without aid

North Korea suffered a devastating famine in the mid-1990's. Ever since that time, the country has depended on foreign aid to feed it's people. That aid has stopped since North Korea's began testing of nuclear weapons.

Now, the UN's World Food Programme says the hunger and malnutrition are at dangerous levels, and they themselves are unable to feed everyone.

From this Gruadian article, Tania Branigan tells us more about the WFP's statement.

The UN aid agency said it was reaching fewer than a third of those targeted and about a fifth of those in need.

It blamed a lack of international donations, with none since the state's nuclear test in May, and said it faced new restrictions from Pyongyang. It said it had received 15% of the $504m it needed.

Torben Due, the WFP's representative for North Korea, told reporters in Beijing that since January it had been delivering reduced food packages and reaching 1.7 million people. "It is amongst the lowest [number] we're ever had in the DPRK [North Korea]," he said.

The agency estimates that 8.7 million people need food aid, and the emergency operation launched last autumn aimed to reach 6.2 million. It has been distributing a tenth of the 40,000 metric tonnes it aimed to deliver each month.

"There's a need to do more, and that's why we are asking these donor countries for more," Due said.

2/3rds of Haiti's debt canceled

$1.2 billion dollars of Haiti's debt was canceled yesterday by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. The two mega banks have an debt cancellation program, where a country can have their debts forgiven as long as they do mandated changes to the way the country operates.

Haiti had to do some audits, adopt new laws and change debt reporting. Haiti did all of this while suffering through food riots and four tropical storms last year.

From the St. Augustine Record, Jonathan Katz tells us more on how the debt forgiveness will ease Haiti's situation.

The actions erased nearly two-thirds of Haiti's outstanding debt. As of April, Haiti owned more than $1.9 billion, according to the Washington-based Center for Economic and Policy Research.

"This is a pretty big victory, definitely. This is what we've been wanting," said Dan Beeton, an analyst with the center, said by phone from Washington. "It's a shame it had to take so long."

Until now, the desperately poor country, where more than 80 percent of its approximately 9 million people live on less than $2 a day, has been paying about $1.6 million each month to the World Bank, according to debt relief advocates at the Jubilee USA Network.

A significant portion of the debt forgiven Tuesday dates back to loans that lined the pockets of Haiti's dictators, especially Francois "Papa Doc" and Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier, whose father-son dynasty ended in a 1986 popular rebellion.