City council members of Boulder meet with the homeless

A forum at a homeless shelter invited city council members of Boulder, Colorado to hear their concerns. Only four of the 13 council members showed up.

Homeless people in Boulder and many parts of the U.S. don't have enough shelter beds available to them. So when they have to sleep outside instead, they often get ticketed or arrested for "camping".

From the Boulder Daily Camera, writer Erica Meltzer details the meeting.

Four of the 13 Boulder City Council candidates -- businessman and endurance athlete Barry Siff, artist and former university professor Jyotsna Raj, Landmarks Board chairman and attorney Tim Plass, and care provider and activist Rob Smoke -- attended the forum at the Carriage House Community Table. Carriage House provides a case manager, access to showers, laundry and computers, and a daytime shelter in downtown Boulder.

Homeless people and their advocates expressed frustration and, at times, flashes of anger over what they see as ignorance, indifference and even hostility from other segments of Boulder society.

On the one hand, there aren't enough shelter beds to accommodate all the homeless in Boulder. On the other hand, sleeping outside is illegal, and homeless people can be ticketed, fined and sentenced to community service for camping.

One man told of being issued a ticket for "camping" because he was sitting on a bench under a tree. Another woman told of being made to wait outside in the snow for over an hour, while other bus passengers without the large backpack that marked her as homeless got to wait inside the bus station.

Case manager Heather Pauze has seen 26 deaths among her clients over the last 18 months. A homeless man was found dead near Walnut and Ninth streets on Wednesday morning. Though the cause of death has not been determined, police believe the weather may have been a factor.

The homeless people at the meeting urged the city to place a moratorium on enforcement of the no-camping rules while changes to the law are considered; provide a central place for people to store belongings, shower and change clothes; and allow the construction of cheap, single-resident housing.

Another typhoon hits the Philippines

Another typhoon has hit the Philippines, the fourth one in a month. The latest named Typhoon Mirinae has killed five people and swept away hundreds of homes. This typhoon strikes just when people who were displaced earlier were considering returning home.

From Relief Web, this Deutsche Presse Agentur story gives us the details of the latest storm.

Hundreds of houses in shore areas were swept away by huge waves when Typhoon Mirinae hit land late Friday in Quezon province, 120 kilometres south-east of Manila.

An 8-year-old girl and a 78-year-old woman drowned before dawn on Saturday when a river suddenly rose in Pagsanjan town in Laguna province, 55 kilometres south of Manila, according to town Mayor Emilio Ramon Ejercito III.

He blamed the sudden rise of the river on a release by a nearby dam of a hydroelectric power plant.

Two more people were killed in Daet town in Camarines Norte province, while one drowned in Pililia town in Rizal province.

Four people were missing, including a man and his 3-year-old son whose car fell into a river after a bridge collapsed in Batangas City.

Lieutenant Colonel Ernesto Torres, spokesman of the National Disaster Coordinating Council (NDCC), said several roads in the eastern provinces of Laguna, Rizal, Quezon and Camarines Norte were impassable due to landslides.

He added that several bridges collapsed or were swept away by floodwaters.

Torres said Mirinae caused widespread power outages in the eastern provinces of Camarines Norte, Quezon, Rizal, Cavite, Batangas and the suburbs of Manila.

A photographer returns to help Myanmar refugees

A former resident of Ashland, Oregon spends his days helping the refugees of the Thailand-Myanmar border. Fred Stockwell is a professional photographer and once took photos of the refugee camp for a non-governmental organization. Stockwell was so touched by the people's predicament that he left America to spend time helping them.

From the Ashland Daily Tidings, writer Chris Honoré tells Stockell's story.

It was in 2007 that Stockwell sold everything, left Ashland, and returned to Mae Sot, a city he had discovered by chance while on a photographic assignment for a non-governmental organization years earlier. And it was on that initial trip that he discovered the people of the Mae Sot dump. He vowed to return and do what he could.

But where and how to begin? He knew he was a stranger in a strange land, could not speak Thai or Burmese, and had only limited resources. It was an impulse of generosity, tempered by years of world travel.

"My first trips there (to the dump) were physically and emotionally overwhelming," Stockwell wrote in an e-mail. "The stench, poverty, and general living conditions had more impact on me than anything I had previously experienced.

"I wanted to do something, but didn't know what to do. I was faced with the common dilemma: Do I give a fish so they can eat for a day? Or do I teach them to fish, so they can live forever?"

Stockwell soon noticed that the children were walking barefooted among rats and snakes and shards of glass and metal, their feet cut, the wounds infected, open sores weeping.

"They know how to fish," he realized. "They just don't have the right equipment."

And so he decided that what the children needed were shoes, more specifically rubber boots which he found at a local store. He began making frequent trips to the dump with as many boots as he could carry. He realized he needed help and found people willing to assist, some from as far away as Ashland.

Rubber boots evolved into health care. Not only was the dump hazardous — a petri dish of hepatitis, cholera, typhoid fever, skin diseases and asthma — but the people there also suffered from malaria and dengue fever and intestinal parasites, all causing chronic illnesses and death. Malaria can be prevented by something as simple and effective as mosquito netting. Stockwell found the nets and as the weather turned cool, he located blankets as well.

Women grow 80% of the food in Africa

Usually, the image of a farmer in Africa is of a male. However, women are responsible for 80% of Africa's food production.

From All Africa we read this interview with Annina Lubbock of the International Fund for Agricultural Development. Lubbuck is asked about gender integration efforts in developing Africa's agriculture.

Can you describe what Ifad's gender mainstreaming efforts entail?

I would say our approach to gender has two prongs. We use gender mainstreaming but we consider that gender mainstreaming is an instrument towards an end; it is not an end unto itself. So that means giving attention to how gender is addressed in all aspects of project design, from the identification of the activities, to monitoring and evaluation of them, to the management arrangements. It also means designing and implementing specific actions that will actually empower women, especially rural women. Our main entry point for improving the status of women is their economic empowerment. We think that's a precondition to all the rest.

It's also improving women's decision-making and to improve their overall wellbeing. Their labor load continues to be so high and services so poor in rural areas they will actually be constrained from engaging in more productive activities and income generating activities.

To what extent has gender mainstreaming been successful so far?

We did a survey of the performance of projects on gender and what we found is where the projects are having greatest is success is in building women's capacity and knowledge. After that definitely the improvement of women's income earning capacity. [It has been] less successful in improving women's decision making role at the community level because here you have a whole series of cultural restraints to deal with, which is stronger in some areas than others. Of course there are some [communities] which are very conservative where it's not really recognized that women can have a public role. The public space is supposed to be a man's space.

Interestingly, what we found is projects really need to do more to reduce women's workload. Very often women have been given more opportunities, they're earning more income, they're producing more, they're participating more, but their workload has increased. Sometimes they accept that because in exchange for that they have a higher status, they're more listened to in the communities and they've got more income to spend for their families.

What are the greatest obstacles to achieving household food security in Africa?

The obstacles are multiple - from environmental degradation, climate change, population pressure, governance, international food prices and so on. But I would say one of the key elements is precisely the lack of recognition of the role that women have in producing food, but also in generating the income with which they buy food. There is so much evidence that women use their income differently than men. They tend to use it for the family and they are the ones who buy the food. Not recognizing this means that women have not received targeted support, because women have specific roles and constraints so the types of services they get have to be differentiated. This is a major stumbling block, especially in Africa.

Just how important women are to food production in Africa?

Women's labor is behind 80 percent of the food production in Africa, which is extremely high. It's higher than in any other region in the world and yet women are doing all of this with a hand tied behind their back. They have the same problems that all smallholder farmers have in terms of access to markets, to inputs, to credit, but then on top of that they have their own specific constraints as women.

[This] means they have little time to juggle between their productive and reproductive roles, they have less income to finance except microfinance, they don't have access to banks because of lack of collateral, less access to land, less access to services. Extension contacts are very limited and according to the [Food and Agriculture Organization] only five percent of extension contacts worldwide are with women farmers. Only 15 percent of extension workers are women, and in some contexts this is a determining factor in actually reaching women.

Aid workers under increased risk

In the past year, 122 aid workers have died worldwide. The people at the front lines of giving food and comfort are often at great danger, and that danger has only increased in recent years.

From the Voice of America, writer Rachel Smalley gives us this examination on why aid workers are targeted.

Aid workers around the world often find themselves at risk, despite their efforts to remain above the conflict. Last year some 260 humanitarian workers suffered attacks -- 122 died. Taliban militants killed nine people, including at least six U.N. workers, in an attack on an international guesthouse in Kabul October 28.

Heavily armed militants stormed this Kabul guest-house used by several international organizations, including the United Nations. And the Taliban warned of more bloodshed in the lead up to the second round of voting in the Afghan elections.
UN High Commission for Refugees spokesman Peter Kessler says there is great concern about the increasing number of attacks on aid workers. "They often realize that there's the U.N., there's the aid community, they are symbols of what 'I feel is wrong with this situation," he states, "They are symbols of western involvement. I'll target them.'"

UNHCR has lost three aid workers in Pakistan this year -- including a Serbian national who died in the bombing of a luxury hotel in Peshawar in June.

The attack on the guest house in Kabul contributes to a grim year in the region for the UN. Five aid workers died in Pakistan in early October in a bombing of the World Food Program's offices in Islamabad.

World Food Program senior spokeswoman Caroline Hurford states, "We've lost staff in Somalia, we've now lost staff in Pakistan, we've had injuries elsewhere, so we're very much aware of this dilemma, because our mandate is to try to get out to some of the most remote and dangerous regions where people really need our help," she said.

Some charities are replacing international aid workers with local nationals in an effort to reduce attacks. Heather Hughes is a security adviser with the charity group, Oxfam. "Our ability to be out in the countryside and be outside of Kabul has significantly decreased. We are much less able to travel freely than we were even two years ago," Hughes said.

UNHCR officials say their mandate is unchanged, but how the agency operates in conflict zones is evolving.

"Clearly we have to ensure that while we don't scale back the aid effort, in situations that are tenuous only the most vitally needed staff -- the staff doing the most important work -- are exposed to threats," Kessler asserts.

Aid officials say they their agencies are impartial, operating independently of any military force. But some agencies do work in partnership with armed forces -- the Netherlands and NATO provided naval escorts to secure the World Food Program's route into Somalia late last year.

Caroline Hurford says it was a matter of life or death for millions of Somalis, "Of course it's not necessarily a good thing to be accompanied by the military but if it's a question or getting food there or not, and helping out the hungry -- or not -- then I think it's worthwhile," she adds.

Once on dry land, the risk to humanitarians is great. Reaching the displaced and the desperate in Somalia means travelling through hostile, unstable regions.

But even when an aid agency operates in a low visibility capacity, Oxfam's Heather Hughes says the nature of humanitarian work means safety can never be guaranteed.

"We like to be able to identify what the risks are," Hughes says, "and then manage them to an extent that that's possible, but in any location where we work, we can't exclude risk altogether."

Whether it's in Afghanistan, Somalia or Sudan where terrorists often target aid workers, or more recently in Pakistan.

Zambia government disbands anti-corruption task force

The government of Zambia has disbanded an anti-corruption task force saying it's was too expensive to maintain.

Experts say that scrapping the anti-corruption efforts will cost the country in aid. Already, 33 million dollars have been withheld from donors. The withholding stems from charges of 5 million dollars being stolen from the health department by government officials.

From Reuters, we read more about the strange decision from Zambia.

Vice President George Kunda said late on Thursday the government would consolidate operations of the main Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) after disbanding the task force, which had become expensive to finance.

"The cabinet agreed on Wednesday that the task force on corruption would be transformed into a department in the ACC and all its cases will be taken over by the commission," Kunda said.

Some Western donors have withheld $33 million in aid to the Health Ministry after prosecutors said some senior officials had stolen $5 million from the health budget.

Lusaka professor of economics Oliver Saasa said the move would hurt Zambia's chances for getting more aid.

"It is a double edged sword with long-term effects of how much money donors will give Zambia, if we are seen to backtrack in the fight against corruption," Saasa told Reuters.

The anti-corruption task force was formed by the late president Levy Mwanawasa to investigate graft during the administration of former president Frederick Chiluba, which ended in 2001 after he served two five-year terms.

Many critics of the China-Congo deal

China and Congo recently inked a deal that will allow China to mine copper out of the country. In exchange, China agrees to pay for and build 4,000 kilometers of roadway and 2,000 kilometers of railway.

The agreement has many critics, most of all the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, also many anti-corruption advocates are opposed to the deal.

To hear more of the critics side, we go to this analysis from reporter Stephanie Nieuwoudt of the IPS.

As part of the Sicomines deal, China will build a road network stretching for 4,000 km and a railway system spanning 3,200 km. This is a much needed development in a country the size of Western Europe and the second largest in Africa but with only 200 km of tarred road.

The building of a transport network is of strategic importance to the Chinese. It will make it easy to transport the copper (China has a concession to extract 10,6 million tons) and cobalt (626,619 tons) from mines in the Katanga region. Katanga province is part of the so-called Copperbelt and reaches from Angola through the DRC to Zambia.

The Sicomines agreement pulls in three Chinese companies: the China Railway Group, Sinohydro Corporation and the Metallurgical Group Corporation. These companies will have a controlling interest of 68 percent. The Congolese parastatal Gecamines has a 32 percent interest.

"It remains to be seen to what extent the agreement will bear fruit," Johanna Jansson, a researcher at the Centre for Chinese Studies at the University of Stellenbosch near Cape Town, told IPS in an interview. "Very few of the projects agreed upon have as yet been implemented."

The deal has not gone down well amongst critics. Jansson pointed out that one of the major contentious issues was the demand by the Chinese that the Congolese state guarantee the repayment of infrastructure investments, should the profits from the mining project not be sufficient.

Jansson said that this issue was resolved in August this year. This happened only because the International Monetary Fund indicated that it was not willing to continue a three year poverty reduction and growth programme in the DRC if the latter's government was potentially beholden to China in terms of debt.

There has also been criticism from those who fear that the government has, through this deal, found a way to line the pockets of government officials. In general, "African governments have to be careful of bilateral agreements which are only beneficial to a small number of people in the short term," Dr Rita Cooma, CEO of a New York-based management consulting firm, told IPS at the recent China-Africa Business Summit.

Jansson also raised the issue of Congolese negotiators having the necessary capacity to take on the Chinese negotiators, a perennial problem besetting African countries in all trade and economic talks.

Another call to reform US Food aid

In the midst of the drought still effecting Ethiopia, Oxfam is calling on the US government to reform food aid.

Oxfam and many other advocates say that US food aid would be more efficient if it would buy food locally to the aid recipients. Instead, US law requires the food aid to be bought in America, then having to ship the food half way across the world. This errent law both makes for expensive transportation costs and less benefit to the economies of the developing world.

From this ABC News piece, reporter Dana Hugees illistrates the problem further.

A hungry Ethiopia gets 70 percent of its aid from the U.S., but according to a new report by the aid organization Oxfam International, that help comes at a cost.

U.S. law requires that food aid money be spent on food grown in the U.S., at least half of it must be packed in the U.S. and most of it must be transported in U.S. ships. The Oxfam report, "Band Aids and Beyond," claims that is far more expensive and time consuming than buying food in the region.

"For roughly $1 spent on aid, the U.S. taxpayer is paying $2 to get it here," said Carolyn Gluck, an Oxfam spokeswoman.

American aid policies also undermine long-term development strategies that could break the cycle of drought and starvation in Ethiopia.

"It's like having a health service that's running on emergency ambulances to deal with the sick all the time," said Gluck. "You can't just deal with the problem. You need to treat the underlying causes, otherwise you'll be locked into this endless cycle of foreign food donors."
...

"It is a clumsy resource," Chris Barnett, a development economics professor at Cornell University, told ABC News. Barrett, the former editor of the American Journal of Agricultural Economics, said the current food aid system is not only expensive, but counter-productive to the idea of helping a country in an emergency.
...

There is a major push by international aid groups and analysts for reform in the laws, something that Barnett says members of Congress who have agricultural constituent interests are resistant to adopt.

"Not many congressmen like giving up domain," said Barrett. "Congressional committees that are dealing with agriculture and shipping don't have the same interests or backgrounds as the foreign affairs and foreign relations committees do. They're viewing it in the broader context of farming, not in terms of development."

Flash flooding in Kenya

After going months without a single drop, Kenya is now receiving too much rain. Heavy downpours are causing flash floods and is forcing people to flee their homes.

From IRIN, we read more about the next humanitarian situation in Kenya.

After days of heavy rain, flash floods in Kenya's coastal Magarini district have displaced at least 500 families, sweeping away houses and livestock, officials said.

Most of the affected families were from Kurawa and Kanagoni villages in Magarini. Many have already sought alternative shelter, with some heading to a camp for the displaced along the Malindi-Garissa highway.

John Manasseh, a local leader, told IRIN on 28 October: "We had assumed that since the rains were delayed at the beginning of the year, we would not experience any flooding. We even started cultivating our farms in readiness for the rain, but it seems we were all wrong."

Most of the coastal region has been dry, having not had rains since early 2009. In August, the Kenya Meteorological Department warned that the country could soon experience El Niño-related enhanced rainfall. Already, heavy rains have been reported in many parts of the country, with Coast Province being the latest to experience flooding.

The Magarini flash floods occurred a day after two people reportedly died in Kolongoni village in neighbouring Kilifi district, after a house in which they were sleeping collapsed after a downpour, crushing them.

Jillo Galgalo, one of those displaced by the floods in Magarini, said they lacked clean water for domestic use and were at risk of infection from waterborne diseases.

"Most pit latrines have been washed away because nobody expected any floods to occur this soon," Galgalo said. "We are in dire need of clean water because most water points are now filled with all sorts of waste, including human waste and cow dung."

Along with the neighbouring Tana River district - where roads connecting the towns of Mombasa, Garissa and Lamu have been cut off due to the rains - roads in Kilifi have not been spared, with most roads connecting local trading centres impassable.

Security issues

At least 100 trucks and passenger vehicles plying several routes along the north coast region have either become stuck in mud or were parked by the roadside. Most of the drivers, especially those on the Malindi-Garissa route, have expressed concern over possible bandit attacks.

"Our main concern is security, keeping in mind the number of times we've had cases of fellow drivers being attacked by armed bandits in recent times," Abdalla Musa, a truck driver, said.

However, the Tana Delta district commissioner, Ireri Ngatia, said the government would provide security for all drivers using the route.

Ngatia and his Magarini counterpart, Richard Kananu, have also appealed to residents living in low-lying areas to move to higher ground.

Meanwhile, the Kenya Red Cross Society and other humanitarian organizations are assessing the situation and preparing to start providing the necessary assistance.

Putting caps on what you pay for health care

Putting a cap on how much one pays in out-of-pocket expenses for health care is a big debate now in Washington D.C. As a part of the US health care bill package, both the house and senate have established different price caps on what people would pay per year for health care.

To sift through some of the plans and debate, we go to this McClatchy Newspapers story written by David Lightman,

According to the American Journal of Medicine study, out-of-pocket medical costs averaged $17,943 for all medically bankrupt families in 2007 -- $26,971 for uninsured families and $17,749 for those who had private insurance at the outset.

The House bill would cap annual out-of-pocket medical expenses at $5,000 per individual and $10,000 per family starting in 2013. New plans offered through new employers, as well as policies sold through the proposed health insurance exchange, a marketplace where consumers can compare plans and prices, would be subject to limits.

Most employers today offer policies with limits on out-of-pocket expenses. Under Senate proposals, existing employer plans would be exempt from the limits, but the House would require employer plans to have caps in place by 2019.

The Senate legislation would tie the annual out-of-pocket limits to those that exist under current law for health savings accounts, which will be $5,950 and $11,900 in 2010 but should increase by the time new rules would go into effect in 2013 under the proposed legislation.

Out-of-pocket expenses are expected to include co-payments for medical services and prescription drugs, deductibles and co-insurance, though premium payments wouldn't count toward the out-of-pocket maximum.

Once a consumer reached the limit, his or her plan would pay 100 percent of further expenses.

"This is a pretty significant improvement," said Linda Blumberg, an economist at the Urban Institute, a center-left Washington research group.

The health insurance industry disagrees.

"We don't believe a cap is the best way to control rising health care costs," said Robert Zirkelbach, a spokesman for America's Health Insurance Plans, the industry trade group.

Mr. and Mrs. Gates goes to Washington

Bill and Melinda Gates are beginning to do some lobbying on behalf of the world's poor. They are urging Washington's policymakers to continue funding US aid programs.

In a speech made at the capitol today, the Gateses were armed with charts, PowerPoint slides, and videos that show what US aid has accomplished in recent years, and what it could continue to accomplish.

From CNET, writer Ina Fried watched the web cast of the presentation.

"When it comes to global health, Bill and I are optimists--but we're impatient optimists," Melinda Gates said in a statement ahead of a speech on Tuesday. "The world is getting better, but it's not getting better for everyone, and it's not getting better fast enough."

Melinda Gates pointed to a program in South Africa where antiviral treatments are helping those living with HIV, but she said that for every two getting the treatment, there are five others that are missing out.

"That's the kind of thing that makes us impatient optimists," she said.
...

In his speech, Bill Gates noted that the U.S. government has increased its spending on global health each of the last 10 years and said that the investment is paying off.

"We're here to say two words you don't often hear about government programs," Bill Gates said. "Thank you."

He pointed to what he called the most beautiful picture he had ever seen--a chart of childhood deaths worldwide that shows death falling by more than half since 1960, when 20 million kids a year died annually.

But, he said, even the current level of 9 million childhood deaths a year is too many. Gates called on policymakers to commit to reducing by nearly half the number of children that die each year, from the present level of 9 million per year to less than 5 million by 2025.

"U.S. support has already helped to reduce deaths of young children by more than 50 percent in the past 50 years," Bill Gates said in a statement ahead of the speech. "If we keep up our commitment, it's possible to cut child mortality in half again--just 15 years from now. What's more, we can do it with proven interventions that already exist."

Poverty is growing, and so is the sex slavery of children

1.8 million children worldwide are caught in commercial sex exploitation, and the business is booming. Those with perverse appetites have easier access to children through technology such as the internet. Also, children in poverty are easily lured into the sex slavery through promises of money food or candy.

From the Global Post, writer Deena Duzder sheds light on this disturbing trend.

"The recent economic downturn is set to drive more vulnerable children and young people to be exploited by the global sex trade," says Carmen Madrinan, executive director of ECPAT International, the organization that authored the August 2009 report. "The indifference that sustains the criminality, greed and perverse demands of adults for sex with children and young people needs to end."

Increasing poverty in children’s countries of origin and smaller budgets for social services are two of the factors heightening children’s vulnerability. Deterioration of living conditions often compels young people to abandon school in order to contribute to the family income, putting them at risk of seeking livelihood options that lead to their being exploited, according to ECPAT International.

As a result of the current global downturn, hundreds of factories have closed in Thailand, leaving thousands of both Thai and non-Thai workers unemployed. Unemployment is rising at a rate of about 100,000 workers a month and may climb to 1.5 million by the end of the year.

“If you ask me, the government is not correcting the source of the problem,” says Asipong. “It’s just treating the symptoms. Poverty is a big contribution to the problem in Thailand, especially in the countryside. Whether parents or children, both have to struggle to survive.”

Street children and stateless children are extremely vulnerable to commercial sexual exploitation, says Amanda Bissex, UNICEF Thailand's Chief of Child Protection. "We need to improve law enforcement and the economic welfare of children," she says, "but we also need to address people's attitudes and create an environment where there is zero tolerance for abuse of children, whether in their home country or overseas."

Earlier this year, the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crimes stated in its Global Report on Trafficking in Persons that 79 percent of all global trafficking is for sexual exploitation, one of the world's fastest-growing crimes. The report stated that the proportion of minors involved in the various forms of human-trafficking increased from about 15 percent to nearly 22 percent between 2003 and 2007. This past June, the Obama Administration expanded the U.S. watch list of countries suspected of not doing enough to combat human-trafficking, putting more than four dozen nations on notice that they might face sanctions if their records don’t improve.

A new World Bank report on food prices

A new report issued by the World Bank examines food prices across the globe. The bank says that food prices are rising and are close to returning to the high prices seen in 2008 that triggered riots around the globe.

From this monitor article that we found at All Africa, writer Martin Luther Oketch describes the report's details.

"Future prices are expected to remain higher than in the 1990s and are likely to be more volatile. Higher price volatility may dampen supply response to higher average prices, negatively impacting both poor producers and consumers. In addition, the financial crisis has slowed down both growth and trade," the World Bank report reads in part.

The World Bank explains that global food prices more than doubled from 2006 to mid-2008, and then declined by 30 - 40 per cent through to the end of May 2009 before beginning to rise again.

In Uganda, for instance, food prices have been rising since the first quarter of 2008 to-date. Last Month, Uganda Bureau of Statistics said the annual food crops inflation rate for the year ending September 2009 went up to 49.5 per cent from 31.9 per cent in August, placing the blame on reduced supply and high demand for Uganda's food stuffs from the neighbouring countries thus pushing Uganda's inflation to 14.5 per cent.

The changing global context adds new urgency. Sudden increases in food prices in 2008 drove an estimated 100 million more people into poverty. Some 800 million people in the world were malnourished even before the food and economic crisis hit.

The World Bank points out that the seasonal nature of agriculture resulted in a lagged production response. Other than seasonal nature, the World Bank also singles out lower remittances and migration back to rural areas which have lowered purchasing power and pressured household budgets. "Resultant declines in government revenue have curbed the ability of governments to respond," the report reads in part.

Global poverty and hunger were steadily declining prior to the onset of the food crisis in 2007. The number of people suffering from hunger and poverty is now estimated by the United Nation's Food and Agricultural Organization to exceed one billion.

Food prices and hunger in Pakistan

Despite subsidies to keep costs in control for buyers, food prices in Pakistan are rising again. The price for a bag of flour is above what most people earn in a day. The International Food Policy Research Institute say this is one of the reasons why hunger rates in Pakistan are alarming.

From the IRIN, we read more about food prices and hunger in Pakistan.

Razia, a widow from Lahore, looks after three daughters under 15 on a monthly income of Rs 5,000 (about US$60) earned by washing clothes, and like many others she is finding it increasingly difficult to feed her family.

Last month, during Ramadan, she could buy a subsidized 10kg sack of flour at Rs 175 ($2), but prices have now returned to their pre-Ramadan level of Rs 550 ($6.6) per 20kg bag. Other items sold at subsidized rates for Ramadan are also up, she said.

"I bought sugar at Rs 50 [60 US cents] a kilogram from government utility stores last month. Now I pay Rs 60 or more," Razia told IRIN. Like most families, sugar is an essential item for her household. "We use it for tea, and without sweet tea it is hard to get through the day," she said.

Taking note of the hardship caused by soaring sugar prices, Pakistan’s Supreme Court, has ordered sugar to be sold at Rs 40 [48 US cents] a kilogram pending a decision on the matter by a special commission.

“This is a good move by the court. It may offer some relief. Already, because flour is so expensive, we eat less,” said Nazeer Ahmed, 60, a rickshaw driver, adding: "All of us, including my three children, sometimes go to bed with just a mouthful of bread and pickles."

“Food items are costlier, so people are buying less. For example, a dozen eggs which cost around Rs 35 last year, cost Rs 60 this year,” Manzoor Abbas, a shopkeeper at a Lahore market, told IRIN.

“Alarming”

According to the Washington-based International Food Policy Research Institute, levels of hunger in Pakistan are “alarming”.

A recent incident in Karachi is illustrative of people’s desperation: Twenty women and girls, who had gone with hundreds of others to take advantage of free flour being distributed by a shopkeeper, died in a stampede.

The government’s Consumer Price Index (CPI) showed prices in July and August were up 10.93 percent on the same period last year. Annual food inflation at the end of August was 10.59 percent, according to the CPI, and perishable items had gone up 17.27 percent.

Corruption?

There is also a debate about how many people benefited from subsidized food schemes during Ramadan. “Hardly 25-30 percent of the targeted population in Sindh Province was able to benefit from the cheap flour scheme, because there was a lot of corruption and mismanagement,” Muhammad Yousuf, chairman of the Pakistan Flour Mills Association in the southern province, told the media in Karachi.

“Measures to provide relief to the poor by supplying food items… free or at concessional rates, are good as responses to unforeseen disasters… [but] they cannot be recommended as a solution to permanent problems such as poverty,” said I. A. Rehman, secretary-general of the autonomous Human Rights Commission of Pakistan. New policies were needed to eradicate poverty, avoid anarchy and offer permanent solutions, he said.

Another celebrity, another girl's school

Much like what Oprah did in South Africa, Madonna is now building a girl's school in Malawi. Madonna she was inspired by the strength of Malawian woman, so she wanted to do something for them. Social barriers in the country keep girls from learning math and science, so this new school will concentrate on those subjects.

From the Mercury, Associated Press writer Raphael Tenthani attended the school's dedication.

Madonna marked the start of construction of her school for girls in Malawi by planting a tree at the planned site of the $15 million school. The 51-year-old celebrity arrived in the impoverished southern African country on Sunday accompanied by her four children — daughters Lourdes and Mercy, and sons Rocco and David.

Madonna adopted Mercy from Malawi earlier this year and adopted David from the country in 2008.

The singer was dressed in a dark summer dress and a colorful shawl during Monday's ceremony in the town of Chinkhota, some six miles (10 kilometers) from the capital, Lilongwe. Together with eldest daughter Lourdes she planted a Moringa tree, a hardy tree with edible leaves.

"If this school is a success — with God-willing it will be — we will replicate it not only in Malawi but in other parts of the world as well," she said.

The new school will be called the Raising Malawi Academy for Girls and will open by 2011 and educate 500 students, said its future principal, Anjimile Mtila-Opponyo. It will be similar to the school built by TV talk show host Oprah Winfrey in South Africa.

Mtila-Opponyo said the curriculum will emphasize science and mathematics.

Video: Life in Kenya's largest slum, Kibera

This video from Amnesty International introduces us to a few women living in Kenya's largest slum, Kibera. Life can be very hard for the women of the slums, this video shows the poverty there as well as human rights violations.

Starting a new non-profit to help new mothers and babies in Tanzania

Nursing graduate student Michelle Kowalczyk has a heart for Tanzania. The desire to help the people there began with a trip to Africa with the aid group CARE. The trip inspired Kowalczyk to start her own non profit to help new mothers and babies.

From the Omaha World Herald we read more about Kowalczyk's work.

“It’s sad and really poor, but when you see them smile, it just warms up your heart,” said Kowalczyk, who is enrolled at the University of Nebraska Medical Center.

Everything she experienced in Africa influenced her decision to take another step: co-founding a nonprofit organization. It “works in the developing world to better the lives of those in need,” Kowalczyk said.

The idea for a foundation came after she crossed paths with Kim Krowne, another volunteer, in Tanzania. Together they formed Knock Foundation in 2008.

Not only does Kowalczyk help manage a growing non-profit foundation, but she also devotes much of what she earns to help people in Africa.

Kowalczyk started her acute-care adult health graduate program at UNMC in 2008, and plans to graduate in May.

“At the College of Nursing, we are enormously proud of Michelle,” said Janet Cuddigan, chair of College of Nursing’s adult health and illness department. “She truly exemplifies the ‘best and brightest’ in the nursing profession.”

A view of microcredit from a Princess

After a career in banking, Princess Maxima of the Netherlands now works as an United Nations special adviser on Inclusive Finance for Development. She was the opening speaker at a conference of microcredit that is underway in New Delhi.

From this interview from the Business Standard, Sreelatha Menon asks Princess Maxima how she got interested in microcredit, and poses some questions on interest rates charged to the poor.

How did you get interested in the subject of microcredit and financial inclusion?
I am an economist and worked as a banker in New York and Argentina where I was drawn into the area of microcredit. After my marriage, I was invited to the United Nations group on financial inclusion and was later asked to contribute as special advisor.

What are your major worries about financial inclusion?
It is not about microcredit. It is about an array of services such as deposits, insurance products. My core work is to advocate the importance of financial inclusion and I have many agencies such as the International Monetary Fund and International Finance Corporation which are helping me.

How do you help the cause in countries such as India? Do you provide aid to small institutions?
I know people in the sector and I can put people in touch with the right groups.

The growth of microfinance in India is supposed to bridge the gap in financial inclusion. Is it happening?
The growth here is phenomenal at 95 per cent a year. About 20 million Indians now have access to microcredit, compared to less than one million five years ago. This is an impressive growth by any standard. It is also very innovative. The type of services MFIs are bringing to their clients is amazing. But what still has not happened here is MFIs offering deposit services. But it is understood that regulators are concerned about the safety of the money of the poor. When savings products are accessible, they are widely used. For example, in countries such as Kenya and Uganda, when appropriate products are available, savings level has tripled, so has the number of savers.

Health experts want less funding for AIDS

It's not often that you hear someone asking for less funding, but health experts say that the great amount of funding for AIDS have left other diseases in Africa ignored.

Hundreds of thousands of people die of malaria or from pregnancy complications on the continent, yet those illnesses receive only a fraction of the funding that AIDS does. In fact, AIDS health aid has more money than many government health budgets.

From the Guardian, writer Alex Duval Smith expands upon the controversial overhaul request.

Top scientists are demanding a controversial overhaul of health spending in Africa, arguing that the billions of pounds targeted at HIV during the past 20 years have led to a neglect of other killer diseases and basic health problems such as diarrhoea.

Developed countries poured $13.2bn (£8.2bn) last year into efforts to combat HIV, chiefly for Africa, up from $480m in 1996. But only eight countries, all in southern Africa, remain in the grip of a severe Aids crisis, while World Health Organisation data show that five of the biggest killers in Africa are illnesses that affect children under the age of five.

Childhood diarrhoea kills an estimated 1.5 million children under five each year worldwide – at least half of them in Africa – although it is easily treatable with zinc tablets that cost little more than $2 each. Diarrhoea received less than 5% of worldwide research and treatment funding last year.

Daniel Halperin, an HIV epidemiology researcher at the Harvard Medical School of Public Health, said: "There has generally been a misalignment from the donors. It is time for a rethink. Many people in the west believe all Africans are impoverished and infected with HIV. Yet the reality is that most countries have stable HIV prevalence of less than 3%. What most people really need are things such as clean water and family planning. Even tuberculosis and malaria get far less money than HIV. In some cases these sectors have inadvertently been hurt by the focus on HIV."

One of Africa's leading health economists, Alan Whiteside, who is director of the Health Economics and HIV/Aids Research Division at the University of KwaZulu Natal, said the flood of donations towards the battle against Aids had also created the conditions for widespread misuse of the funds. Whiteside played a prominent role in bringing the southern African Aids epidemic to the world's attention in the 1990s. He has also advised the United Nations and Aids2031 – an international expert group set up to chart the best route to tackle Aids in advance of the 50th anniversary of the first report of the illness.

"The lure of Aids money has led in some African countries to large-scale corruption," he said, "and the establishment of non-government organisations as an industry. The achievement of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals by 2015 depends on us getting our focus on Aids right.

Wanted: bailouts for the poor

The global recession was unique that it started in the rich nations but hurt the poor nations the most. The recession dropped millions of people below the poverty line throughout the world.

So, in all the bailout and emergency aid money that have been proposed since the crisis began, how much of that got to the poorest people of the world? According to a couple of aid organizations, not much at all.

From the IPS, writer Francis Kokutse interviews people at Action Aid and CONCORD on bailouts and aid.

The developed world has not acted in good faith towards with Africa and other developing regions in the aftermath of the global financial crisis. Much of the stimulus packages promised have gone to benefit banks in those countries, rather than to help those who have become victims of a problem they did not cause, argued Josef Berger, policy officer at CONCORD, the European Non-governmental (NGO) Confederation for Relief Aid and Development.

IPS interviewed him in Stockholm on the fringe of the European Development Days conference (Oct 22-24), an event held by the European Union Presidency and Commission to "showcase the European Union’s continuing and enduring commitment to development".

Berger pointed out that when the global financial crisis erupted, leaders in the West promised significant assistance. Unfortunately, "these promises are yet to be rolled out. The response has so far not been helpful.

"What we have seen, in general, is the provision of huge sums of money to bail out banks in their respective countries, rather than protect countries that have been made to suffer because of what these banks have done," he added. CONCORD represents more than 1,600 developmental NGOs across Europe and seeks to enhance their influence vis-a-vis European institutions.

Berger believes that civil society organisations in the developing world need to be strengthened to hold their governments accountable so that they would be able to speak out on behalf of their citizenries on issues like this.

Otive Igbuzor, ActionAid’s head of campaigns, told the plenary during the session on the global response to the economic downturn that whilst Group of 20 (G20) countries "were stuttering back to life, millions of people in the developing world are sinking deeper into poverty, reeling from a global crisis they did not cause." ActionAid is a progressive international non-governmental organisation fighting poverty.

Poverty simulation for future social workers

Future social workers had a chance to experience the lives of people they will soon help through a poverty simulation.The Michigan based Poverty Reduction Initiative held the simulation for students at Western Michigan University.

From the Kalamazoo Gazette, writer Rebecca Bakken attended the simulation.

Five Western Michigan University social-work students were put in the shoes of the fictional poverty-stricken Aber family on Oct. 19.

With one unemployed parent, a pregnant 16-year-old daughter and a nearly drained bank account, the family members had to figure out how to pay their bills, get to work and feed their other two small children, an 8-year-old and a 10-year-old, with their limited resources.

The students, along with about 40 other social-work students, were taking part in the Poverty Reduction Initiative’s Poverty Simulation Workshop to see what it is like to be an average family living in poverty.

The students were given packets of information about their new identities and had to make their way through a month of dealing with banks, social services and the police, among other agencies. The students dealt with volunteers playing the roles of people working at such sites.

The students posing as the Abers budgeted as they could with the information given to them. They went to a loan center where they had to take out a $50 loan with a 30 percent interest rate.

When Mrs. Aber was late getting to work because she was getting a transportation pass, her employer put her on probation. Meanwhile, Mr. Aber could get only $25 for a $100 stereo at a pawnshop and was given a notice that he had $500 in outstanding loans from a bank. The Aber children all came home from school that day with school-supply needs, and the family received a malnutrition warning because it had failed to get groceries.

“At the end, some are left in the hole and some maintain,” said Barbara Barton, assistant professor of social work at WMU.

Teens make a documentary on poverty

A group of teens are working on a documentary that exposes poverty in Lafayette Indiana. Making the video is a service project for an after school club the kids belong to. The teens say making the film really opened their eyes to the problem in their home town.

From the Journal and Courier, writer Taya Flores talked to the teens.

A group of local teenagers wanted to bring awareness to this issue. Members of the Keystone Club, a leadership development group at the Lyn Treece Boys and Girls Club of Tippecanoe County, are working on a documentary about poverty in Lafayette.

"The goal is to create an awareness (about) poverty and the issues surrounding poverty," said Dustin Bankhead, program director at the Boys and Girls Club on Beck Lane.

The documentary will be screened Nov. 19 at the Lyn Treece Boys and Girls Club in Lafayette. The documentary is the group's National Keystone Project, an annual project designed to challenge teens to address social issues in their community.
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The teens questioned their subjects about how they defined poverty and if they thought poverty existed in Lafayette.

Working on the documentary was a learning experience for the teens as well.

Before beginning the project, many believed poverty did not exist in Lafayette because it hasn't manifested itself on the streets in the form of urban blight.

"If (you) walk around town, you don't see people on the streets sitting there asking for money," said 14-year-old Cheyenne Russell.

However, after working on the documentary, they realized that poverty is right at home in Lafayette.

"My family receives Medicaid and we have had food stamps in the past," said 15-year-old Selina Gaeta. "Most of us are in poverty and just don't realize it."

Ker-Splats Splat Attack

Our friends at Send A Cow have created a new website video game to help drum up donations for a compost called "magic muck". The "magic muck" is a special type of organic compost fortified with extra nutrients. Send A Cow has been working for over 20 years on perfecting the recipe. Send A Cow helps farmers develop their own compost pile of magic muck from plant parts, animal waste and top soil.

The game is called Ker-Splats Splat Attack. In the game, you throw the "magic muck" at animals, the more animals you splat the higher your score, and the more time you get to play. However, splatting animals can be draining on your supply, so every so often you have to retrieve fresh supplies from the bubbling vat of magic muck. From the game, there is a link to raise funds to help develop and teach farmers to make the magic muck themselves.

For some background on the organization, 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.

The game is actually a good teaching moment for children. During the writing of this post we had our two and half year old play a few rounds while explaining the concept to him. Most of it probably goes over his head, but at least it's a start. We have our own compost pile in back, but it's mostly coffee grounds so I doubt it's as nutrient filled as the "magic muck". Anyway, we invite you to give the game a try this weekend.

African Bishops to corrupt government leaders: "repent or leave office"

The African Bishops of the Catholic Church are calling on corrupt African Leaders to "repent and leave office". The message came from a meeting of the African bishops at the Vatican.

From this Associated Press article that we found at the Philadelphia Daily News, writer Nichole Winfield relays the bishops statement.

While praising some Catholic leaders who are doing their public service well, they accused others of having "fallen woefully short in their performance in office."

"The synod calls on such people to repent, or quit the public arena and stop causing havoc to the people and giving the Catholic Church a bad name," the bishops wrote at the end of their monthlong synod.

The bishops didn't name names, but Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe, who has been blamed for presiding over a politically repressive regime that led to the economic collapse of the country, and Angolan President Eduardo dos Santos, whose party swept elections last year that critics say were marred by fraud and corruption, are two well-known Catholic leaders.

The prelates, about 300 from Africa and around the world, also condemned non-Catholic leaders and outside foreign interests for allowing African countries to fall into such devastation, saying "in most cases we are dealing with greed for power and wealth at the expense of the people and nation."

In particular, they cited areas of conflict such as Somalia, the Great Lakes region, Sudan and Guinea.

"Whatever may be the responsibility of foreign interests, there is always the shameful and tragic collusion of the local leaders: politicians who betray and sell out their nations; dirty business people who collude with rapacious multinationals; African arms dealers and traffickers who thrive on small arms that cause great havoc on human lives, and local agents of some international organizations who get paid for peddling toxic ideologies that they don't believe in" - a reference to nongovernment organizations and humanitarian groups that promote abortion rights.

A documentary on the Grameen Foundation

Here is a 16 minute documentary on the work of the Grameen Foundation. While not a microcredit bank itself, the foundation helps other banks to expand microcredit services across the globe.

Wife selling in India

The practice of selling off family members to help pay debts is still prevalent in India. Many times rural farmers will need loans if their crops fail. Rural farmers go to crooked money lenders who charge very high interest rates. Once the interest comes due, the money lenders often ask for the wives of farmers as payment. The low social status of women in India helps to continue this social ill to this day.

From CNN, reporter Sara Sidner touches on the status of women in the country and details on once such incident.

Ranjana Kumari with India's Center for Social Research says the exploitation of women is common in the region. And, she says, there is little support for women in India who have the courage to file a case with authorities.

"Nobody's going to support or help them," Kumari says. "If a family decides not to help them, the system is already not so sensitized towards them, whether it is police, judiciary, whether the legal system. So the women themselves tend to withdraw these cases."

In another village, another story involving another farmer, and money lender.

"I sold my water engine and land and gave back his 30,000 rupees," the farmer says, describing his $600 loan payment.

The farmer, whom CNN is not identifying to protect his wife and children, says the lender then asked him to send his wife to help with chores while the lender's wife was sick. The farmer says he complied, and his children -- including his daughter -- went too.

But the mother never returned. The farmer says he believes she was stolen from him. The daughter says the lender sold her mother to another man.

State authorities say they have investigated the matter and found that the mother denies she was sold and has simply gone to live with a lover.

The daughter says that's not true, and claims that she and her father were told to keep quiet by some of the village leaders. During CNN's interview with the family, officials with the state magistrate's office barged into the farmer's home and began videotaping.

The second Green Revolution in India

Anti-poverty fighters world wide have put an increased emphasis on agriculture in recent years. It was once thought that putting a farmer into a job at a factory was the ideal way to get the world's poor out of poverty. But that strategy proved to be a failure when the need for food and the numbers of hungry increased.

From Time magazine we have this look at a second Green Revolution taking place in India. The Indian government has been using money from the growth it has experienced in recent years to improve farming in the country. Reporter Michael Schuman explains some of the programs going on in India.

When the indian national congress took power in 2004, Singh changed course and began an intensive effort to improve the lot of the nation's farmers. Between the 2003-04 and 2008-09 fiscal years, the central government's budget for agriculture quadrupled. Government schemes built rural roads to help farmers get their produce to market, forgave some of their debts and raised minimum purchase prices on cotton, rice and other crops. In 2005, policymakers launched the Bharat Nirman program, aimed at providing electricity, housing and irrigation systems to the country's farmers, and, a year later, the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, which promised at least 100 days of work each year for poor farming households, often on public-works projects to develop infrastructure in the countryside. In the latest federal budget, announced in July, funds allocated for the rural jobs scheme jumped 144% from the previous year to more than $8 billion — making it the largest social-welfare program in the budget — while funding for Bharat Nirman was boosted by 45%. "It was very clear to us that if you want inclusive growth, it is going to require a significant increase in the productivity of land," says Montek Singh Ahluwalia, deputy chairman of India's Planning Commission in New Delhi.

Perhaps no single region of India's vast hinterland has received more concentrated government attention than Vidarbha. One of India's more distressed farming regions, Vidarbha became infamous for its high rate of farmer suicides. The problem became so severe in 2006, when more than 1,250 took their lives, that Singh toured Vidarbha and announced a special $780 million development program for the area, which the locals refer to simply as "the package."

Three years later, K.S. Mulay, a state agricultural officer based in the Vidarbha town of Amravati, proudly reads off a long list of the progress the government has made so far. Nearly $39 million has been spent subsidizing high-yield seeds, Mulay says, plus $24 million on developing fruit orchards and other pricey produce, and another $24 million on building micro-irrigation projects. As Mulay drives down narrow roads through Vidarbha's cotton fields, he stops his jeep every few miles to show off the government's handiwork. First, he marches up a muddy hillside to a small dam the government built to help farmers preserve monsoon rainwater — one of more than 9,000 constructed in the region over the past three years. Next he visits the farm of Bhiamrao Mahore, who received free orange-tree saplings from a state-funded nursery. Mahore hopes his oranges will bring more money than the cotton he had planted before. Next stop is a state-sponsored training session where scores of local farmers collect for a PowerPoint presentation on how best to protect crops during a drought. "We are trying to increase the income and productivity of the farmers," Mulay says. "All the work cannot be done in three years. But it is a beginning."

And, for now, just that. Some Indian economists criticize the government for spending too much on welfare programs, such as the job-guarantee scheme, and not enough on irrigation systems and other investments that could make farms more productive. "Giving a cow won't help a farmer long-term," says Paurnima Sawai, 42, a farmer in Takarakhede Shambhu village. "But money to build a dam is a long-term investment. For years, you get benefits from it." With only 40% of its farmland irrigated, India's entire economic boom is held hostage by the unpredictable monsoon. With much of India's farming areas suffering from drought this year, the government will have a tough time meeting its economic-growth targets. In an August report, Goldman Sachs predicted that this year's weak rains could cause agriculture to contract 2% this fiscal year, making the government's 7% GDP-growth target look "a bit rich." Even Thakare, with his pond, may not have enough water to plant his extra crops this year. Abusaleh Shariff, a senior fellow at IFPRI's New Delhi office, argues that allocating money is only part of the government's task. The farmers also need better training, technology and marketing opportunities. "Do we have any of these? Almost none," Shariff says. "The government program needs to be improved, and we need to devote a lot more resources."

The winner of the 2009 World Food Prize: Gabisa Ejeta

One of the problems of only doing this blog in our spare time is that we miss a lot of important stories. We realized this morning that we forgot to make mention of the 2009 winner of the World Food Prize awarded last week. The World Food Prize is similar to the Nobel Peace Prize, but this prize is given to scientists who make new innovations to help feed the world.

This years winner is Gebisa Ejeta, a professor of agronomy at Purdue University. Ejeta hails from Ethiopia and remembers from his time there the use of the grain sorghum as a staple of the East African diet. His innovations have multiplied sorghum yields many, many times over.

From USA Today, writer Elizabeth Weise details Ejeta's work.

"A lot of people who grew up it the Midwest in the '40s and '50s would remember the old syrup for pancakes, made of milo," as sorghum is sometimes called there, he says.

It's also used to make gluten-free beers for people with celiac disease. But in Africa and Asia, it's a major grain, used in porridge and bread, in making beer and popping like popcorn.

Sorghum feeds 500 million to 700 million people worldwide, Ejeta says. "It's a huge crop in Africa; it's a very important crop in India. In China it's used for making their national alcoholic beverage," baijiu, or white liquor.
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Ejeta, born in a one-room thatched hut in west-central Ethiopia, walked 12 miles to attend a nearby school, returning home only on the weekends. After graduating from Alemaya College in eastern Ethiopia, he received a Ph.D. in plant breeding and genetics from Purdue in 1978.

His then began to work on new sorghum varieties as a researcher at the International Crop Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics in Sudan. Ejeta's hybrid, released in 1983, had yields 150% greater than local sorghum. By 1999, 1 million acres were being harvested by Sudanese farmers, feeding millions in that country. Ejeta also developed a drought-tolerant sorghum hybrid that fit conditions in Niger, which yielded four to five times the national sorghum average for that country.

Next, Ejeta turned his focus to a hugely harmful weed called striga, commonly known as witchweed. This parasite lives off corn, rice, millet, sugar cane and sorghum in much the way that mistletoe lives off trees. The United Nations estimates that it infests up to 40% of the arable savannah land in Africa.

"There was a small area in North and South Carolina that had striga in the 1950s," Ejeta says. "It took the USDA nearly 30 years to eradicate it."

Working with colleagues at Purdue, Ejeta bred a sorghum variety that is resistant to witchweed. Various aid groups have distributed the seed in numerous African countries. Yields have increased as much as four times over local varieties, even in times of severe drought.

"Stand Up" breaks a Guinness world record

To follow-up on the "Stand Up, Take Action" events of the past weekend, more people stood up this year than any year before. In fact, so many people stood up to be counted that it broke a Guinness World Record. 173 million people participated in "Stand Up" events around the world.

From Business Day, re read more about the epic participation in this event.

``Over 3,000 events were held in more than 120 countries in the fourth year of the `Stand Up, Take Action, End Poverty Now!' campaign, last weekend,'' a UN statement made available to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) said.

It said nearly 60 million more people took part in the festivities this year.

It said UN Secretary General Ban Ki moon was joined by 1,500 school children at the UN International School (UNIS) in New York, last Friday in calling for an end to hunger, which currently afflicts one billion people worldwide.

``At least 100 million people in Asia took part in the campaign, while Africa saw the participation of almost 40 million, the Arab region over 30 million, Europe more than 2 million, Latin America and North America some 200,000 each, and Oceania more than 170,000,'' the statement said.

The statement further said that, in spite of the deadly typhoons which recently slammed into the Philippines, more than 35 million people took a stand in that country.

The challenges of a water NGO

Some of the remote villages that are hard to reach are often the last to receive basic services such as sanitation or clean water. A story in All Africa today profiles one such village in Mozambique that has been drinking from a river for generations. The question is, why has this gone on for so long?

From this IPS story that we found at All Africa, writer Jessie Boylan asks some water NGOs why this goes on so long.

WaterAid is an international NGO that works with communities to insall wells, water pumps, and composting latrines. They have a range of basic hand pumps which are cheap enough for communities to afford, and quick and easy to fix.

The NGO claims to have helped 270,000 people gain access to water across Mozambique, and has been working in Niassa Province since 1995.

There are several factors which contribute to water, hygiene and sanitation problems in the province, says Heike Gloeckner, WaterAid's Southern Africa regional programme officer.

"Broadly I would say that the issues we are facing are: water tables are decreasing, population is increasing (in some areas) and topography is making it very hard for our partners to access the aquifer for drilling a borehole," she says.

WaterAid's technical support manager, Erik Harvey, says the sinking water table means communities are forced to rely on outside support to reach deeper more reliable water reserves.

"Most communities have existing survival strategies that can simply be reinforced. Most have basic wells that, with very little effort, can be protected, (lined with bricks, raised above ground level, closed with a lid, used with a single bucket and rope as opposed to many)," he adds.

"In the absence of this, basic filters can be made with layered cloth, or drinking water, particularly for babies, elderly and the ill, can be boiled."

When asked why no one has yet reached villages like Mcondece, Mtepwe and Magachi, Harvey responded, "The process of prioritisation and community selection is normally undertaken by the government with some assistance from WaterAid staff.

"WaterAid's funding is limited," says Harvey, "and we have, where possible, focused on choosing districts that have historically had the lowest coverage levels.

"The key here is to get government to take up our learning, to combine the efforts of all role-players and funds in the sector to reach the unreached villages. WaterAid alone just does not have the resources to reach everywhere."

The refugee camps of Kenya

In the dry areas of the Kenya, people find a place to sleep within refugee camps set up for people who had to flee their home. Not all of the people in these camps are "bums". Some people are ending up in these camps through natural disasters, which seem to be increasing in number. Some people end up in these cities because of war, taking away their safety and their livelihood.

NBC News reporter Martin Fletcher, one of the last of the good TV News journalists, provides this tour of signs posted around one such camp.

They shuffle aimlessly in the dust: 50,000 refugees crammed into thousands of huts made from branches, leaves, mud and plastic in the Kakuma camp in Northern Kenya.

Natives of Ethiopia, Somalia, Sudan, Rwanda, Burundi and Uganda, the refugees have fled wars aggravated by drought, yet even here the supply of water is sporadic. They eat once a day from supplies provided by aid agencies. Kakuma is one of the oldest and largest refugee camps in the world and some people have been here since 1991 when it was established.

They don’t like to talk to strangers about their problems, but the roads are lined by placards, erected by aid agencies, with slogans and exhortations that are like windows into the refugees’ pain.

The most graphic reads: "STOP FEMALE GENITAL MUTILATION – IT IS A HEALTH HAZARD (RISK)." The signs are in English, Kenya’s official language, but since the camp’s residents speak a wide variety of regional and native languages, the words are incomprehensible to most refugees.

However anyone can get the message from the disturbing illustration of a woman kneeling with a razor while a mother offers up her infant girl. Female genital mutilation is almost universal in Somalia and common in neighboring countries.

Another exhorts people to "STOP WIFE INHERITANCE" – the practice of giving a widow to the dead man’s brother. Originally this was done to protect the widow, who may not otherwise find another husband, but aid workers say it reduces women to the level of chattel. It is one of the key issues they raise when trying to educate women about their rights, but there is a major problem: men are the leaders here and they must agree to end the practice.

The tent camps of America

In the warmer areas of the US, people find a place to sleep within tent cities set up for the homeless. Not all of the people in these cities are "bums". Some people are ending up in these camps through job losses, and those have accelerated during the recession. Some people end up in these cities because of illness, taking away all of their money and their livelihood.

From this Al Jazerra story that we found at IPS, Rob Reynolds reporter interviewed a couple who lives in one such city.

They call it Tortilla Flats - a haphazard cluster of tents and tarps sprawling across a sidewalk and a vacant lot smack in the middle of Fresno, a city of 500,000 in California's Central Valley.

The tent city, reminiscent of the Depression-era "Hoovervilles" depicted by author John Steinbeck in his classic novel "The Grapes of Wrath", is home to a shifting population of about 70 homeless people.

That's where I met a couple named Kerry and John. They asked me not to use their last names. They live in a cramped two-person tent strewn with blankets and clothes. Both are native to the Valley. And both are now homeless for the first time in their lives.

Kerry was a preschool teacher until a year ago, when her world caved in. "I got sick," she told me. "Ulcerative colitis. Ended up losing my job, and ended up here. Ran out of health insurance and money and this is what happened."

John, a shy young man who used to work as a barber, told a rambling story about bad breaks, crooked employers and jobs that didn't pan out. Now he passes the time playing with two pigeons he rescued and tamed as pets.

"Gets to the point where time does not mean much anymore," he said. "Time is just time. We're just waiting for the big break - a chance to rebuild our lives."

Homeless camps like this one have formed in several places around California. People here have formed a kind of community, complete with a "town council" of elders who meet nightly.

Many of those living in the camps are chronically homeless men with mental health issues or drug and alcohol problems. But many others are former members of the working or middle classes who have fallen off the economic ladder.

"It's a real shock when you come down here," Kerry said. "You don't know whether people will befriend you or not. People have, luckily. But there are a lot of dangers out here - everywhere you look. Especially at night."

Survey: US sees an increase in child deaths due to abuse and neglect

A new national study says that children dying from abuse and neglect has seen a 35 percent increase since 2001. 1760 children died of abuse or neglect in 2007.

The report from the Every Child Matters Education Fund says that states that have a strong child safety net see less deaths from abuse and neglect.

From the Every Child Matters website, we find out more about the study from this press release.

A report released today shows that 10,440 children in the U.S. are known to have died from abuse and neglect between 2001 and 2007, but experts say the real number may be as much as 50 percent higher. The difference is due to varying definitions of abuse and neglect in the states, as well as inconsistent record-keeping and data collection methodologies. Child protection leaders say the situation makes it impossible to provide an accurate assessment of abuse and neglect of children in America.

The report from the Every Child Matters Education Fund shows that more than 1,760 U.S. children are documented to have died from abuse or neglect in 2007 – a 35 percent increase since 2001. It says that the combination of millions of vulnerable children and inadequate resources leaves states stretched too thin to protect all children who need it.

“It’s heart-wrenching that each day in America, five children will die from abuse and neglect, but what’s worse is that the real number is even larger,” said Michael Petit, president of Every Child Matters Education Fund. “Child abuse and neglect are national problems that require national solutions. That means federal lawmakers must work with states to address what causes it, be more consistent in how data about it are shared, and increase support for the agencies that work to stop it.”

Today’s report serves as a wake-up call for federal lawmakers. National leaders in child protection, law enforcement, educators, policy makers and others are gathering in Washington, DC, today to kick off two days of intensive discussions among diverse organizations to identify the policies and resources needed to reduce deaths from child abuse and neglect. Congress must soon take up work to reauthorize the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act, or CAPTA, which provides federal funding to states to address child abuse and neglect.

The report looks at the most recent state data made available by the federal government. It includes information collected through the National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System, which is supported by the Children’s Bureau of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Administration for Children and Families. It also includes data collected by the U.S. Census Bureau. Highlights show:

Child deaths attributed to abuse or neglect vary significantly by state.
Kentucky had the highest rate of death due to child abuse and neglect in 2007 – 41 deaths, or a rate of 4.09 per 100,000 children in the state. Other states topping the list include South Dakota (4.08), Florida (3.79), Nebraska (3.59) and Missouri (3.51). States with the lowest rate of child death from abuse or neglect in 2007 are Delaware Rhode Island, Idaho, Maine and Montana.

“About half of all children who die from abuse and neglect were previously brought to the attention of authorities – either by another family member, a teacher, physician, neighbor or someone else who cared about their safety and well-being,” said Teresa Huizar, executive director, National Children’s Alliance. “But case workers are routinely stretched too thin, and funding levels are too low. The result is often too little action that is taken too late, and kids die as a result.”

There is nearly a 13-fold difference in the amount that states spend per person to address abuse and neglect.
While there is no funding level or formula that guarantees a reduction in child deaths, states that invest in a strong social safety net for children – including health, social services, education, plus child protection – experience fewer child abuse/neglect deaths, on average. Experts suggest that this is because fewer families experience difficulties in the first place, and that if child abuse does occur, case workers can investigate more cases more thoroughly, thus protecting more children from potential harm.

The report finds that Rhode Island spends the most per capita – spending $181.34 per person to protect children. Other states that make significant investments in comparison with their counterparts include Pennsylvania ($137.89), Alaska ($129.02), Vermont ($126.31), and California ($121.16). The five states spending the lowest amount on child protection per person include South Carolina ($14.72), Mississippi ($28.82), Maine ($31.88), Nevada ($34.02) and Arkansas ($35.99).

“We need a bigger investment in case workers, whether it is number of staff or additional training,” said Rebecca Myers, L.S.W., director, external relations at the National Association of Social Workers. “Child protection workers are often the first line of defense in protecting children living in high-risk situations, but caseloads in some jurisdictions are as high as 60 or more, even though national standards recommend 12 or fewer cases per worker.”

Poverty is closely associated with child abuse and neglect.
Experts say stopping deaths due to child abuse and neglect requires addressing poverty, particularly during challenging economic times. While no level of household income or educational level makes a family immune to this issue, a child living in poverty is 22 times more likely to be abused than children living in families with an annual income of $30,000 or more.

Recent Census figures show that states with the highest levels of children living in poverty are Arizona (26%), New Mexico (26%), Kentucky (24%), Alabama (24%) and Mississippi (24%). States with the lowest levels of child poverty are New Hampshire (9%), Utah (9%), Alaska (10%), Vermont (10%), Maryland (10%) and Connecticut (10%).

Celebrities and others join in support.
Stars from Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, took to Capitol Hill today to help raise awareness. The popular television show chronicles the New York Police Department team that investigates sexually based crimes, including those committed against children. Actors Tamara Tunie (medical examiner Melinda Warner) and B.D. Wong (psychiatrist George Huang) joined in speaking out on the importance of investing in the protection of children.

Organizations supporting the summit this week include the American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children, Association of Maternal and Child Health Programs, Every Child Matters Education Fund, National Association of Social Workers, National Center on Child Death Review and National Children’s Alliance.

The discussion of children’s issues in Washington this week comes exactly 100 years after President Theodore Roosevelt held the first-ever White House summit on children’s issues.

“A century after the first White House summit on children’s issues in America, we are faced with more children dying from abuse and neglect in the United States than in any other industrialized nation,” said Michael Fraser, Ph.D., chief executive officer, Association of Maternal and Child Health Programs. “The U.S. child abuse death rate is among the highest in the world – three times higher than that of Canada, and 11 times higher than that of Italy. We need leaders who will step up for children and make concerted efforts to turn these numbers around with our nation’s state and local maternal and child health professionals.”

Read the full report, learn more about the issue or send an email to elected officials here

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The Every Child Matters Education Fund is a 501(c)(3) non-profit, non-partisan organization working to make children, youth and families a national political priority. We promote the adoption of smart policies for children and youth, including: ensuring that children have access to affordable, comprehensive health care services; expanding early-care and learning opportunities and after-school programs; preventing violence against children in their homes and communities; alleviating child poverty; and addressing the special needs of children with parents in prison.

What will it take to reach a global trade deal by 2010?

The latest deadline for the Doha round of world trade talks is set at 2010. The problem is, many deadlines in this round of talks have come and gone.

The head of the World Trade Organization tried to put some heat on world leaders to start talking and making concessions in remarks made today. However, hopes are dim unless world leaders especially those in Washington are serious in compromising.

From Reuters, writer Jonathan Lynn gives us this round up of opinions.

WTO Director-General Pascal Lamy said countries were making some progress in the latest intensive negotiations in Geneva in areas such as facilitating trade and the technical work necessary to implement an eventual deal in agriculture.

"But I also believe it will be difficult to get to 2010 without a serious acceleration of the pace," Lamy said.

"We need to see real negotiations emerge, not only informal consultations and discussions, but real exchanges among members," the Frenchman told the WTO's General Council.

Leaders of the G20 rich and emerging countries called at their summit in Pittsburgh last month for the Doha round, now in its eighth year, to be completed in 2010.

That was the latest in a series of calls to finish the longest running trade round, launched in late 2001 to open markets and help developing countries prosper through trade.

But the high-level political exhortations have not been matched by compromise and movement in the Geneva talks, leading many to question whether the leaders are sincere in their call for real negotiations.

"Technically the work is almost done. What we are missing now is political will," said Egypt's trade minister, Rachid Mohamed Rachid.

Rachid, echoing a view held by many emerging nations and rich countries alike, said the problem was that Washington -- the key to any deal -- was not engaging fully in the talks.

"The United States has not made their position clear yet vis-a-vis trade," he told a meeting of the Arab-Swiss Chamber of Commerce in response to a question from Reuters.

Bacterial disease outbreak in Philippines flooded waters

Three weeks after it's most recent typhoon, there are still many flooded areas in the Philippines. The flooding has helped to spread a bacterial disease that has killed more than 130 people. The Philippines are asking for additional aid to help fight the outbreak.

From Reuters Alert Net, reporter Manny Mogato tells us more about the outbreak.

More than 130 people had died and nearly 2,000 remained in government hospitals due to leptospirosis, a bacterial infection caused by exposure to animal urine. The bacteria are common in tropical countries with heavy rainfall and frequent flooding.

"We have already sent an SOS to the international community because this is one of the biggest outbreak of leptospirosis not just in the Philippines, but in the world," Tayag told lawmakers at a public hearing in Manila.

He said about 680 cases of leptospirosis were reported every year. From Oct. 1-15, a total of 1,887 cases have been reported in 15 hospitals in Manila region, Tayag said, adding the health department needed about $1 million worth of medicines to contain the disease.

Health authorities said 1.7 million people in Manila and two nearby provinces are at risk because flood waters in these areas are expected to remain until December 2009. The Philippines is bracing for another powerful typhoon in the northern regions on the main island of Luzon, evacuating thousands to avoid death and destruction.

Typhoon Lupit, which means "fierce" in Filipino, was expected to make landfall around the far northern tip of the Luzon region by Thursday and dump more rain on typhoon-weary provinces, said the weather bureau.

Ketsana and Parma damaged or destroyed more than 27 billion pesos ($580 million) in crops and infrastructure.

1 in 6 suffers with poverty in Japan

A new survey shows that Japan has one of the highest rates of poverty amongst developed nations. One of every six Japanese lives in poverty.

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development says that Japan's poverty rate is the fourth highest amongst developed nations. Only the countries of Mexico, Turkey, the United States and Luxembourg were poorer.

From The Straits Times, we read more statistics from Japan.

In Japan's first official calculation of its relative poverty rate, the ministry said 15.7 per cent of Japanese people lived on less than half the median disposable income in 2006.

The figure, based on national statistics of income in 2006, was up from a figure of 14.6 per cent for 1997 according to the newly released ministry data.

The ratio could be worse by now as Japanese workers' salaries have fallen amid the economic slump following the 2008 global financial crisis.

Video: Albany, Georgia one of the nations most impoverished cities

Forbes magazine released a list of the 10 most impovershed areas in the US. The cities on the list include McAllen, Texas, Brownsville, Texas, Pine Bluff, Ark., Albany, Ga., Yuma, Ariz., Macon, Ga., Rocky Mount, N.C. El Centro, Calif., and Saginaw and Flint, Mich.

From WALB, comes this video of local reaction to Albany, Georgia being included on the list.

The elite controllers of HIV

This is sort of off topic, but we found this fascinating story into the science of discovering a cure for AIDS.

Some people seem to live with HIV longer than others, and manage to avoid going into AIDS. Scientists are starting to study these groups of people, to see what it is within their bodies that can do what drugs do.

From the Wall Street Journal, reporter Amy Dockser Marcus tells us about the research.

Elite controllers are part of a larger group of "outliers," people who respond atypically to a disease, often by managing to stop it from progressing or by succumbing especially quickly. If researchers can figure out how elite controllers avoid developing AIDS, they might be able to replicate the defenses in other people through a vaccine or new drug.

Efforts to find people who control their disease are also under way in many other health problems such as hypertension, hemophilia, hepatitis C, Parkinson's disease and coronary heart disease. Studying them has yielded important insight into disease and new drugs.

But the breadth of the HIV controllers project, with more than 200 centers around the world examining data from the same group of patients, has yielded findings that may have important new implications: Small groups of people who already are elite controllers can be divided even further. No one is certain whether findings in just a handful of people might ultimately yield treatments helpful for more typical patients. But researchers who are identifying these tiny subgroups of controllers say the more homogenous a group becomes, the easier it is to see what is unique about them. "You want to take out as many variabilities as you can that exist among people," says Dr. Walker.

Studying a subset of controllers, Arthur Kim, an assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, helped make one of the most interesting discoveries. He had been following more than 700 patients with hepatitis C who came into Massachusetts General Hospital. Initially, he was trying to differentiate between two main groups -- the 20%-30% of patients who can fight off the infection, and the remainder, who remain chronically infected, which can lead to major complications such as liver failure.

Within the smaller group of patients able to clear the infection, Dr. Kim found a smaller subset: those able to control both a hepatitis C infection and HIV. He determined that in most instances people whose immune systems were exceedingly good at fighting off both of these viruses had the same genetic mutation.

Now Dr. Kim is using the HIV controllers study to find what he hopes will be 200 people able to clear hepatitis C and control HIV. He believes researchers could uncover new genes and mechanisms that help people fight off viral infections, including tuberculosis and malaria.

Looking at the healthiest of healthy outliers has led to a potential new approach to reducing cholesterol, says Helen H. Hobbs who, along with Jonathan Cohen at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, has been conducting a study aimed at identifying genes contributing to heart disease risk.

Some rain can stop a drought, too much can cause a mudslide

Yesterday we learned that the rain came back to Kenya to quench the country of it's drought. The rains might be coming too fast and hard, as we now see warnings of flooding and mudslides. Action Aid along with Kenya's Emergency Sector Response Plan say flooding could displace 100,000 people.

From this press release that we found at Reuters Alert net, we read more about the warning.

Thousands will be left homeless as floods in Kenya are predicted to follow the country’s worst-ever drought.

The rains have failed in Kenya since 2007 resulting in a prolonged drought with over 10 million people in need of food aid, according to the UN.

The heavy rains in Kenya have started falling and are expected to lead to flooding in different parts of the country, trigger landslides, and make access to some areas impossible. According to scenarios developed in Kenya’s Emergency Sector Response Plan, developed by the government in collaboration with UN and NGOs, the floods will displace 100,000 people and directly affect 1,000,000 people.

Urgent need

There will be urgent need of supplies such as food, shelter and clean water. Above normal rains will bring a sharp increase in child diseases, in particular respiratory infections and diarrhoea. Heavy rains could hurt pastoral livelihoods, especially through increased livestock deaths caused by sudden changes in temperature and grazing conditions. Urban slum areas risk being affected by flash flooding.

As further heavy rains are expected, ActionAid is also preparing for more severe flooding across a wider area by providing humanitarian assistance to those displaced by the floods, as well as those people who have no access to safe water and sanitation services because of the floods.

The effects of conflicts, droughts and floods continue to undermine communities, weakening their ability to cope, and putting lives and livelihoods at risk.

ActionAid's response

ActionAid Kenya Country Director Jean Kamau said: “We used to have regular droughts every 10 years or so. In the 1970s we started having droughts every seven years; in the 1980s they came about every five years and in the 1990s we were getting droughts every two or three years. Since 2000 we have had three major droughts and several dry spells. Now they are coming almost every year.”

She continued, “ActionAid is distributing food in two areas of Isiolo and Mwingi in the Eastern Province under the World Food Programme, where 258,000 people receive food monthly.”

ActionAid is also carrying out activities in Sericho in the North East by providing water to 6,000 drought stricken people, buying animals and providing the meat as relief and providing supplementary food for 2,000 children in the worst affected areas in the Rift Valley and Coast.

The poverty of Blue Ridge reservation

A photographer began a coast to coast project to document poverty in the US. But once he stopped at Pine Ridge Indian reservation, he ended his travels across the country to concentrate on the poverty there. Aaron Huey was shocked by what he saw, saying the reservation "emotionally devastated" him.

From the New York Times Blogs, we find this Q and A with Huey, a gallery of his photos can also be found from the blog.

Q. What were you first impressions of Pine Ridge?

A.I stayed with families in the most violent town on the reservation, a place called Manderson; often referred to as “Murdertown” by locals. I could have never imagined the living conditions that I saw. I knew the statistics about poverty, but the living conditions went far beyond poverty to even deeper, more dysfunctional problems. Black mold all over the walls of childrens’ rooms. Kids eating off the floors. Infants watching violent films on TV all night.

One of my other first impressions was people showing me their scars — self inflicted scars from their gang initiations. A knife heated on a burner until it’s red hot is then pressed on the skin, usually in stripes on the upper arm, creating terrible burns.

Q. Why did you end up going back?

A. I went back because the families invited me back, and because I was so floored by what I had seen that I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Now, I go back because they are family, and because I haven’t found the end of the story. It seems to get more confusing each time I return. I am not getting closer to a conclusion. It just is what it is. My photos are a witness, not a solution. They are the dark and the light and every struggle between.

Q. Is there anything that the rest of the country should know about what you saw?

A. One very important thing to know is that there are a small handful of very positive people and places on Pine Ridge and that they are making a difference. Red Cloud Indian School is a leader among these positive forces, with 13 Gates scholarship recipients graduating from its school in only two years. As one of the most successful schools in the nation, they have completely flipped the paradigm on its head.

As for the problem and what people need to know about it, I’m not sure there is much to do. The Lakota, like most tribes, are self governed. Handouts aren’t the answer. Church groups painting over the gang signs on houses every few summers is not the answer. Pity is not the answer. The Lakota are an incredibly beautiful and proud people. There are pockets of strength in this failed state. They are usually formed around a school or a traditional teacher-medicine man or a strong head of a family who spreads it to his extended family.

I think I honestly want these photos to hurt the viewer. I want people to understand that what they see in these images is a result of a very long and very calculated oppression. It’s convenient that we can now step back and say: “Oh, no! Look. They are doing it to themselves! There is nothing we can do!” Very convenient for us. The story of the Lakota is the story of all indigenous people on every continent — they are steamrolled by the dominant society and pushed to the verge of extinction. Assimilate or die.

When I would return from these trips, people would ask why they don’t just “get over it” — the old pick-themselves-up-by-the-bootstraps argument. But you don’t just “get over” hundreds of years of oppression. Just because the guards went away one day and the prison camp was opened up doesn’t mean there was any place to go. Just because the prison door was opened doesn’t mean that the prisoner mentality doesn’t remain. It does remain, for generations and generations after. And it has left a deep scar on the people.

Examining wage gaps in Latin America

A new study from the Inter-American Development Bank examines wage gaps between ethnic groups and genders. The bank says that the study's findings suggest that education must improve for ethnic minorities in Latin America.

From Starboek News, we read more results from the study.

According to the findings, Afro-descendants and indigenous people earn 28 per cent less than their white peers; males earn 17 per cent more than females when both have the same age and level of education; and education is key to reducing ethnic wage inequalities in the region.

In an unprecedented analysis of household data from 18 nations in Latin America, the study found that women and ethnic minorities are clearly at a disadvantage, an IDB news release said.

Females earn less

Females in the region earn less than their male counterparts even though they are more educated. A simple comparison of average wages indicates that men earn 10 per cent more than women. But once economists compare males and females with the same age and level of education, the wage gap between men and women is 17 per cent.

For seven countries where ethnic data is available, the study found that indigenous and Afro-descendant minorities earn on average 28 per cent less than the white population in the region, when individuals have the same age, gender and level of education. It considered “minorities” people who declared themselves in household surveys as indigenous, black or brown, or speakers of an indigenous language. Despite being the majority in some countries of the study, these groups are considered “minorities”.

The paper provides evidence that the region still faces major challenges in eradicating disadvantages in labour markets based on characteristics like gender or ethnicity.

“Polices aimed at reducing these inequalities are still lacking. This is more than just a moral necessity. It is an essential strategy to reduce poverty in the region,” said IDB economist Hugo Ñopo, the lead author of the study.

New poverty measurement about to become reality

The revised formula for measuring poverty in the US is about to become a reality. Legislation may soon be introduced to change the methodology, or the White House might just resolve to do it on it's own.

The method includes government assistance received by people when measuring income, whereas the old formula did not. The results in changing the formula creates tragic and perhaps not surprising numbers.

From this Associated Press article that we found at WCAX, writer Hope Yen gives us the results.

A revised formula for calculating medical costs and geographic variations show that approximately 47.4 million Americans last year lived in poverty, 7 million more than the government's official figure.

The disparity occurs because of differing formulas the Census Bureau and the National Academy of Science use for calculating the poverty rate. The NAS formula shows the poverty rate to be at 15.8 percent, or nearly 1 in 6 Americans, according to calculations released this week. That's higher than the 13.2 percent, or 39.8 million, figure made available recently under the original government formula.

That measure, created in 1955, does not factor in rising medical care, transportation, child care or geographical variations in living costs. Nor does it consider non-cash government aid when calculating income. As a result, official figures released last month by Censusmay have overlooked millions of poor people, many of them 65 and older.

According to the revised NAS formula:

-About 18.7 percent of Americans 65 and older, or nearly 7.1 million, are in poverty compared to 9.7 percent, or 3.7 million, under the traditional measure. That's due to out-of-pocket expenses from rising Medicare premiums, deductibles and a coverage gap in the prescription drug benefit.

-About 14.3 percent of people 18 to 64, or 27 million, are in poverty, compared to 11.7 percent under the traditional measure. Many of the additional poor are low-income, working people with transportation and child-care costs.

-Child poverty is lower, at about 17.9 percent, or roughly 13.3 million, compared to 19 percent under the traditional measure. That's because single mothers and their children disproportionately receive non-cash aid such as food stamps.

-Poverty rates were higher for non-Hispanic whites (11 percent), Asians (17 percent) and Hispanics (29 percent) when compared to the traditional measure. For blacks, poverty remained flat at 24.7 percent, due to the cushioning effect of non-cash aid.

-The Northeast and West saw bigger jumps in poverty, due largely to cities with higher costs of living such as New York, Boston, Los Angeles and San Francisco.

Natural disasters in the Philippines, effects on meeting the MDGs

From the Inquirer, comes this analysis of the natural disasters in the Philippines. Each time bad weather strikes the nation, it sets it further back from meeting the Millennium Development Goals.

Barely six years before the deadline for achieving its Millennium Development Goals (MDG), the Philippines continues to lag behind on its MDG targets.

Worse, the series of natural disasters that hit the country have further set back government's efforts to reduce, if not eradicate, extreme poverty by 2015.

With the Arroyo administration “on its last mile," it would be great if they could focus hard on the achievement of the country's MDG goals and meeting the needs of the poorest people of this country and leave a great legacy,” said Salil Shetty, director of the United Nations Millennium Campaign.

Shetty was in the country to “remind your leaders of the promises they made” on the country's MDGs.

According to Shetty, the MDGs must be brought to the local level where their achievement will either be won or lost.

When interviewed, Shetty stressed the need for “disaster-proofing” the MDGs, or integrating disaster risk reduction into government's development planning and policies so it could contribute to the achievement of the country's MDGs.

1 in 7 Belgians live in poverty

From Expacta, some statistics on the levels of poverty in Belgium. 15 percent of the Belgium population in poverty translates to 1 in 7 people.

According to figures from the Federal Service Economy, just over 15% of the Belgian population live in poverty.

Between 2004 and 2007 the number of Belgians living under the poverty line stabilised. Since 2007 the number of poor Belgians has most likely grown.

Researchers are quick to point out that the study was conducted before the beginning of the economic crisis. Based on indicative figures for 2008, 21% of Belgians were having a difficult time making ends meet.

According to the report about 11% of people in Flanders were living below the poverty line between 2004 and 2007. Wallonia had 8% more during that period.

Apart from regional differences, there are also sociological differences. Women have more chance of falling into the poverty trap than men (16% for men compared to 14% of women).

Nigeria proposes giving back 10% to oil areas

Lots of important stories today, so we are going to put rush these up there before I run out of time.

From All Africa, the Nigerian government is proposing giving more money from the sale of oil back to the communities that it comes from. Reporter Justus Nduwugwe says the government hopes this will ease the violence in the region.

In order to stem the resurgence of militancy in the Niger Delta, the Federal Government is planning to spend about $376.8 million or about 10 per cent of its total income from oil to develop oil communities in the crisis-prone zone in the next budget year.

According to a report in the Financial Times yesterday, the government is mulling a plan to transfer 10 percent of all oil and gas ventures to those living in the Niger Delta, which has been the site of numerous attacks by militant groups.

If the plan scales through, "the communities would receive cash benefits, delivered through a trust-style mechanism, which they could use individually or pool for social projects... Officials believe the community stakes could be worth more than $376.8 million in the first year".

The London-based newspaper quoted the President's Special Adviser on Oil, Mr. Emmanuel Egbogah, saying that President Umaru Yar'Adua has backed the idea.

Egbogah said the president intends to add the proposal to reforms that the government hopes to enact by the end of the year, which would also impose tougher terms on oil companies who are currently embroiled in a tortuous debate in parliament.

He further said the 10 percent stakes would pay dividends on revenues after taxes and costs to communities, bypassing powerful governors of the eight oil-producing states who were instead calling for an increase in the extra share of petroleum revenues they already receive.

Rain returns to Kenya

The rain has come back to Kenya, but many are still hungry. Meteorologists in Kenya say that crops will not fail this year, as the rain season that has just begun has provided enough water.

However, because of previous dry seasons, millions of people are still hungry in the region. Aid officials from the UN' s World Food Programme say they will continue to provide food to the region.

From this Associated Press article hosted at Google, we learn more on what could be the end of the drought.

Spokesman Ayub Shaka said Monday that drought-stricken areas received enough precipitation last week to indicate that this season's rainfall will not fail. The short rainfall season usually lasts from mid-October to December and the long rains from the beginning of March to the end of May.

Rain has been sparse for the last four seasons. The drought has led to crop failure, deaths of herd animals and widespread hunger.

US to invest $3.5 billion in producing more food

The U.S. has announced that they will spend $3.5 billion dollars to help farmers in the developing world increase their yields. The announcement is part of a pledge fulfillment made by the G-8 to commit $20 billion dollars to the cause.

With more and more people going hungry and more people filling the earth, the investments in agriculture are greatly needed. From the Voice of America, writer Steve Baragona introduces us to one farmer that has benefited from farming improvements.

Grace Ndung'u may provide an example of what the aid could mean for developing-world farmers. Ndung'u farms about one hectare in Murang'a, Kenya, an hour or so outside Nairobi. She says that, like many African farmers, she used to grow just one crop: maize.

Success through diversification

That's a risky strategy that puts farmers at the whim of weather, insects, diseases, and fluctuating markets. But about three years ago, Ndung'u started working with a non-governmental organization that helps educate farmers and improve their productivity. With the program's assistance, she says, "I've diversified. [Before,] I was growing only maize. But now I grow beans….I also grow horticulture products [like] tomatoes, kale, indigenous vegetables, and also various types of fruit."

And she says she is growing more maize, too. "Before, I used to get about eight bags of maize," she says, "but currently, I'm able to get about 17."

And because of all this, Ndung'u says she's making more money – enough to buy another farm and hire more workers.

Experts say if you want to end world hunger and lift people out of poverty, this is the kind of program that deserves support. And they believe that investing in farmers does more to reduce the number of poor and hungry than any other investment.

Agriculture is a good investment

Joachim von Braun, Director-General of the International Food Policy Research Institute in Washington, says if agricultural research and development were to increase from $5 billion a year to $15 billion, "10 years later we will have…300 million [fewer] people among the hungry poor. This is the largest benefit one can achieve with this type of investment."

But investments in agriculture have fallen sharply in recent decades. For example, international donors devoted about 17 percent of their aid budgets to agriculture in the 1970s, compared to about 5 percent today.

Lindiwe Majele Sibanda, heads the Food, Agriculture and Natural Resources Policy Analysis Network, a non-profit consulting group. She says the decline in agricultural aid budgets is partly behind the recent food crisis in Africa.

"As a result of diminished resources and lack of funds for agriculture," she says, "we saw declines in productivity, we saw people moving out of farming to rely more on commodities like minerals, and rely more on imports of food rather than produce their own."

Food prices in parts of Africa today remain significantly higher than they were before the food crisis.

U.S. plans

Speaking at a summit on food security at the United Nations Saturday, Sept. 26, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the U.S. hopes to reverse the recent trend away from agriculture investment.

"International support for agriculture has declined, while contributions to emergency aid have increased," she said. "We will continue, of course, to invest in the crises and the emergencies. But we want to begin to try to alleviate the crises and the emergency by once again enabling people to feed themselves."

The strategy Clinton sketched out includes many of the elements experts say developing- world farmers need most: investments in research and development, access to improved seed and fertilizer, insurance programs for small farmers, as well as improved infrastructure such as roads and storage facilities to help farmers get their products to market.

The Obama administration's $3.5 billion commitment is part of a $20 billion pledge made this summer by G8 group of industrialized nations at their summit in Italy. Many in the agriculture community welcomed the declaration…to a point.

"It's not a big amount"

Ajay Vashee farms 1000 hectares in Zambia and is president of the International Federation of Agricultural Producers. When he heard about the G8 pledge, he says, "My reaction was, 'Great, at least it's on the agenda. People are thinking about it.'"

His wish list for agriculture aid lines up pretty well with what Secretary Clinton has said the U.S. wants to do. But he says the G8's pledge of $20 billion over three years won't be enough.

"If you look at the number of developing countries spread over the number of years this kind of money will be available," he says, "it's not a big amount. I'm not saying it in a condescending way or in a negative way, or being ungrateful. But what I'm saying is, the impact which people might think it's going to generate might not happen."

Vashee adds that climate change is expected to take a toll on African agriculture in particular. So while experts welcome the renewed interest from the United states and other countries, they say investments in agriculture must be both serious and sustained if the war on hunger and poverty is ever to be won.

Nicaragua's brain drain

Since alleged election fraud in 2008, aid coming into Nicaragua has been halted. The aid stoppage from the US and the EU coupled with the global recession has caused a crumbling economy.

Instead of trying to struggle within the nation's borders, young people migrate to other nations. Experts say this further causes a drag on the Nicaraguan economy as the youngest and most talented workers leave.

From the IPS, writer José Adán Silva explains why 60 percent of young Nicaraguans say they would leave if they could.

Between 1990 and 2005, more than 800,000 Nicaraguans left the country, and 400,000 more could migrate by 2010, according to the United Nations Development Programme's Human Development Report 2009, devoted this year to the topic of migration. But local projections put that figure even higher.

The report, "Overcoming Barriers: Human Mobility and Development", adds the caveat that its estimates for 2010 of migration for economic reasons are based on long-term trends, and may not exactly predict the effects of unexpected short-term fluctuations like the ongoing global economic crisis.

According to Bayardo Izabá, the head of the non-governmental Nicaraguan Human Rights Centre (CENIDH), the statistics in the UNDP report are an underestimate. Although the report was released this month, it is based on surveys carried out by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) in 2007.

"Over one million people have left the country because of poverty," Ibaza told IPS. "No one leaves the country for any other reason, and there are another million or more young people who want to migrate."

CENIDH publishes an annual report on the general situation in Nicaragua, including the number of people who migrated and those who were deported back to the country.

The Human Development Report indicates that Nicaraguans living abroad represent 13 percent of the country's population, which was 5.5 million in 2007. Nicaragua is ranked 124th out of 182 countries in terms of its human development index, a measure of a country's success in providing citizens with a long, healthy life, education and decent living standards.

Nicaragua has the lowest human development index in Central America and the second lowest in Latin America after Haiti. The UNDP puts the poverty rate in Nicaragua at 48 percent, and extreme poverty at 17 percent.

The head of the non-governmental Permanent Commission on Human Rights, Marcos Carmona, told IPS that people migrate for two main reasons: chronic poverty that was aggravated by the 1979-1990 civil war, and government neglect because the administration's economic policies are focused on meeting financial obligations to multilateral lenders.

A shift in who is most vulnerable to malaria

Distributing mosquito nets to young children has been so effective that the most vulnerable group to malaria are now children from 5 to 19 years old. A new study shows a shift on the most vulnerable to the disease and calls for changed distribution methods.

From the East African, writer Dagi Kimani details the survey.

The study, funded by the Wellcome Trust and published in the free online journal BMC Public Health says that the shift in vulnerability is due to the fact that younger children are more likely to have access to the few bednets already distributed than their older siblings, who also are exposed to bites by mosquito vectors when they are outdoors.

Data computed from 18 sub-Saharan Africa countries, including those in the East African Communities, from 2005 to 2009 shows that this trend of shifting vulnerability is generally the same across most malaria-endemic areas, the study says.

According to Dr Abdisalan Noor from the Kenyan Medical Research Institute (Kemri)-Wellcome Trust Research Programme who was lead researcher, the findings are significant because they touch on a huge demographic segment that has not received as much attention as it should from existing malaria control efforts.

“First, they (5-19 year olds) represent a large fraction of the population in most developing African communities,” said Dr Noor. “Second, while they may have developed immunity against clinical disease, they will not have developed immunity to the malaria parasite and will therefore continue to contribute transmission in the community.”

According to Dr Noor and his colleagues, the concentration of prevention activities to the most vulnerable — children under five and pregnant mothers — in a bid to meet the targets set by the Abuja Declaration and Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) may have unwittingly left older children at risk.

This is despite the fact that they play a major role in the transmission cycle of malaria.

An estimated 80 per cent of human-to-mosquito transmission comes from those aged over five years, with young adolescents and older children being the peak transmitters.

GOAL aid workers released from captivity

Aid workers for the Irish agency GOAL has been released from three months of captivity in Darfur. Bandits had taken the aid workers and demanded their ransom. Irish and Ugandan officials were able to free the aid workers without paying money.

From Forbes Magazine, we hear of the experiences of captivity from Sharon Cummins of Ireland.

Sharon Commins and colleague Hilda Kuwuki, who both worked for Irish aid agency GOAL, were abducted July 3 and freed without harm Sunday. Commins said they both might have died from broken spirits if not for the moral support they gave each other.

"You could die in there of sadness. You could just die if you didn't lift your spirits," Commins told Irish broadcasters RTE before her departure from the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, aboard Ireland's government jet. "We definitely needed each other. We prayed together and tried to keep each other strong."

Sudanese and Irish authorities say the bandits demanded a ransom but received no money. Commins and Kuwuki were held the longest of three groups of foreign aid workers kidnapped in Sudan's war-torn western border since March. All were eventually freed.

Commins, 33, said she and the 42-year-old Kuwuki were held in the open in mountainous terrain, received two meals a day but little water, were allowed to bathe about every two weeks, and had to sleep on the ground with one blanket each. They were permitted to phone their families once as part of the kidnappers' efforts to extract a reported $1 million ransom.

She said their captors, who numbered from a dozen to about 18 gunmen, amused themselves by pretending to shoot the pair.

"There were mock assassinations on a few occasions, so it was extremely scary. We were always anxious and stressed and upset until the minute we got out," Commins said.

Video: Freezing against poverty in sunny California

With the thousands of "Stand Up, Take Action, End Poverty Now" events that took place over the weekend, we find this unconventional event from California. Dozens of college students took on Santa Barbara's streets and stood frozen for five minutes.

Below is a video of the students and the passers by wondering what is going on. We found the video at KEYT.

No award given for African good governance

African businessman Mo Ibrahim has a yearly award that recognizes a former politician for good governance. This year, Ibrahim could find no winners. The prize comes with a five million dollar award the highest prize of any such award. Festus Mogae, Botswana's former President and former president of Mozambique, Joaquim Chissano are past winners of the award.

From the BBC, we read more about the decision not to give an award this year and what it means for African politicians.

Mr Ibrahim said people could draw their own conclusions about why no prize was awarded this year.

But he said there was "no issue of disrespect" meant towards eligible candidates.

"The prize committee welcomed the progress made on governance in some African countries while noting with concern recent setbacks in other countries," said a statement from the panel which made the decision.

"This year the prize committee has considered some credible candidates. However, after in-depth review, the prize committee could not select a winner."

Former president of Ireland and UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson, one of the panel-members, said that if there had been a similar award for former European leaders this year, it might have been equally difficult to select a worthy winner.

BBC Africa analyst Martin Plaut says Mr Ibrahim established the prize because well-run African democracies are not thick on the ground.

Mr Ibrahim argues that the prize is needed because many African leaders come from poor backgrounds and are tempted to hang on to power for fear that poverty is what awaits them when they give up the levers of power.

Video: Stand Up Against Poverty event at at Ayurveda College, Bangalore

Video: Stand Up Against Poverty in Bangladesh

Video: Stand Up Against Poverty event

Jeffery Sachs says the MDGs can be met if we spend more

At the United Nations yesterday, Jeffrey Sachs said that the international community can meet the Millennium Development Goals if they spend the money necessary. Sachs says more donors are needed to improve infrastructure and fight diseases in the poor countries of the world.

From the Business Mirror, Imelda V. Abaño recorded Sachs' comments.

“We are not running out of time to achieve our development goals,” said Sachs, who is also the director of the Earth Institute and professor of Health Policy and Management at Columbia University. “There is not a goal that can’t be achieved and we need to look at the financial gaps. Instead of commissioning more studies and making more promises, governments should finance, implement and scale up what they had already promised to do.”

In 2006, a suggested figure for achieving the UN plan was $135 billion, rising to $195 billion in 2015.

The MDGs were agreed upon by world leaders at the UN’s Millennium Summit in 2000. They cover eradicating extreme poverty and hunger; achieving universal primary education; promoting gender equality; reducing child mortality; improving maternal health; combating HIV/AIDS; malaria and other diseases; ensuring environmental sustainability; and fostering a global partnership for development.

With less than a year to go before the Summit, this moment represents the last chance for the world to get it right by honoring fiscal commitments and standing by their pledges to fund implementation of the targets, Sachs added.

Sachs regards the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria and the Millennium Villages as successful examples of financing development. The latter refers to a project of Sachs’ Earth Institute, where experts have been working with the residents of villages in Tanzania and Kenya to address their developmental challenges in a systematic and practical way. Some 200 million people in developing countries have received free insecticide-treated bed nets since the Global Fund’s inception in 2002.  Sachs also predicted that a similar fund set up at the World Bank for agriculture with ready access for African agriculture ministers would enable them to double agriculture production in five years.

Giving Africa a say in the International banks

From All Africa we find this African view of getting involved in the International mega-banks. One of the biggest criticisms of the mega-banks like the World Bank and the IMF is that the poorest nations do not have a say as to how the loans are made.

The Chronicle reporter Daniel Nonor interviews a senior research fellow for the Center for Conflict Resolution on why this is important for Africa. Sheila Burwaree also makes a point on how women have been hurt by the global recession, as governments step into try to fix the crisis.

Sheila Bunwaree, Professor of Gender & Development, University of Mauritius and Senior Research at the Center for Conflict Resolution, Cape Town, suggested this in an interview with The Chronicle, at the start of a three day dialogue on gender, Africa and the global financial crises in Accra, yesterday.

Sheila Bunwaree, suggested that a second look needs to be taken at how International Financial Institutions operate, and how Africa can project itself to make its voices heard in major policy formulations, not only from the north or the international financial institution's perspective, but also where inputs could be provided by Africans into the presets, so that the policies are tailor-made to suit the African situation.

"We should also look at the specificities of different countries, because sometimes the realities on the ground are such that we need to be able to understand and appreciate the differences, so that we can get the best solutions, which solutions should be African owned, because when they are imposed in a top to down approach, it would simply not work," she emphasized.

She noted that women have increasingly become disadvantaged by the global recession, as African governments negotiate bail outs and equity loans with private industry, and increasingly privatizing public services to protect it coffers and other national measures as responses to the crises.

She said the crisis presents a multiplicity of problems for women, especially as allocation of resources tend to take place in a discriminatory manner and women become more marginalized, stating that when resources are scarce the first ones to be at the brunt of scarcity of resources are the famine class.

"Stand Up, Take Action" begins today

"Stand Up, Take Action, End Poverty Now!" begins today. Over 100 million people will stand up and be counted as supporting the Millennium Development Goals and will call on world leaders to help meet them.

From this press release that we found at the Millenium Campaign website, is this round up the "Stand Up" events taking place this weekend.

In Nairobi, Kenya, an anti- hunger concert dubbed Free the Hungry Billion, Stand Up and Take Action, will bring together development-conscious musicians from across the African continent, including Oliver Mutukudzi (Zimbabwe), Susan Owiyo (Kenya), Professor Jay (Tanzania), Didier Awadi (Senegal), Ntsiki Mazwai (South Africa), Carlou D (Senegal), Nameless (Kenya) and Wahu (Kenya). Food donations will be collected from attendees.

Also in Kenya, thousands of people are expected to attend the Western Kenya Utamaduni Festival to celebrate the region’s culture through music, drama and bull-fighting performances and advocate for pro-poor development, focused on food security. The event will be hosted by a Member of Parliament who is Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee.

In Nigeria, thousands of people are expected to attend various concerts over the three-day mobilization by performers including Sarah Mitaru and Femi Kuti, who will honor the life and work of renowned African musician/AIDS activist Fela Kuti. The performers will explore the MDGs and the issues of social injustice, exclusion and poverty through song and dance. They will also sign a petition demanding accountability and transparency in their governments in order to achieve the MDGs.

In Zimbabwe, residents from Harare’s high density suburbs are expected to participate in a sports gala organized by Transparency International, where 20 teams will compete in soccer, volleyball and netball games. The activity will provide the residents of the suburbs with a platform to hold their leaders accountable for their promises to end poverty.

In the Philippines, the Millennium Campaign will launch an “I Vote for the MDGs” campaign during “Stand Up” by surveying citizens about the issues they want their leaders to prioritize, in preparation for the May 2010 national and local elections. Results of the survey will be presented to the country’s presidential candidates during a forum on October 20.

In India, citizens will gather at India Gate on October 16 to light a lamp to symbolize the dispersal of the darkness of poverty and illiteracy, against the backdrop of the festival of lights that begins on October 17th across the country. At the event, organized by the National Confederation of Dalit Organizations, intellectuals, Members of Parliament, civil society and youth groups will demand implementation of the Urban Employment Guarantee Act to provide livelihood opportunities to millions of people living in poverty in urban slums across the country.

Also in India, from October 16-18 campaigners from Wada Na Todo Abhiyan will launch the second phase of the “9 is Mine” campaign across more than 100 Parliamentary constituencies, demanding functional health centers and schools in every village, town and city of the country. Across bus stands, schools, hospitals, railway stations, bazaars, parks and places of worship, the public will be asked to assess the functionality of their health centers and schools.

In Bangladesh, tens of thousands of people are expected to attend a massive rally at Bangabandhu National Stadium in Dhaka on October 17, inaugurated by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. The rally will encourage the government to make fighting poverty a major goal of Vision 2021, the long-term plan being developed in advance of the country’s 2021 Golden Jubilee. The event will be telecast on 10 screens in other public places throughout Dhaka.

In Nepal, the President will read a Stand Up Pledge with members of the Constituent assembly at an event organized by the National Planning Commission and UN in Nepal at the President’s Official residence, broadcast live on national television. This will be followed by a concert hosted by the Millennium Campaign and Art of Living, where thousands of people are expected to gather in a large open-air theatre in the heart of Kathmandu on October 16 to Stand Up for peace and the reduction of poverty in Nepal. The concert will feature folk songs, religious songs set to the tune of rock music and performances by some of Nepal’s top singers.

A report will be launched on MDG progress at a poverty hearing in Peru on October 17, bringing together rural citizens to call on their government to combat maternal and child mortality and assure healthcare for women. An “alternative budget” with a concrete plan for how the government can achieve the MDGs will be presented to Parliament.

Across Europe, on October 17 from 7:00-9:00 PM(GMT + 1 hour), radio stations will simultaneously play Bob Marley’s song “Get Up, Stand Up.” The song will also be played often throughout the three-day mobilization in Europe, reminding audiences of the mobilization happening across the globe.

On October 16-17, the cities of Barcelona, Munich, Paris and Milan will be awarded with the “MDG Committed City Seal” for their role in promoting the Millennium Development Goals in their cities. Through a partnership between United Cities and Local Governments (UCLG) and the Millennium Campaign, UCLG members across the world will show their commitments to the MDGs by displaying large white banners on City Halls and other government buildings.

In New York City, citizens will Stand Up and Dance on October 16 at a Friday evening party organized by Mercy Corps and the ONE Campaign to pressure the United States Congress to pass the Roadmap to End Global Hunger plan.

At McGill University in Canada, the entire football stadium will be asked to Stand Up against poverty at the university’s homecoming game on October 17.

Video: CROP walks to fight hunger

During this time of the year when the weather cools down, many people in the US walk to raise money for hunger and poverty relief efforts. The walks are called CROP walks or Communities Responding to Overcome Poverty. The participants collect pledges based on how much they walk. Most of the money stays in the local community.

We found this video of a CROP walk taking place this weekend in Madison Wisconsin. WKOW interviewed Gaston Razafy on the event.

New Jersey woman convicted of human trafficking

A New Jersey woman was convicted of human trafficking and visa fraud yesterday in federal court. She stood accused of luring girls from Togo and Ghana and forcing them to work in her braiding salons for no pay. The women lured in were between the ages of 10 and 19.

From this Associated Press article that we found at MSN Money, writer Samantha Henry explains the conviction, and the two views of the defense and prosecution.

Prosecutors argued that Akouavi Kpade Afolabi, called "Sister" by the women she oversaw, helped bring at least 20 girls between the ages of 10 and 19 from the West African nations of Togo and Ghana on fraudulent visas to New Jersey starting in 2002.

They said she manipulated the impoverished young women, who aspired to live better lives in America, and kept them in slavery-like conditions while stealing all their pay — even tips as meager as 50 cents.

Afolabi's lawyer, Bukie Adetula, countered that his client was considered a benevolent mother figure and revered community leader — both in her native Togo and New Jersey. He said she was known for lending people money and helping young women escape their poverty-stricken homeland to learn a marketable skill in America.

"I don't think the jury quite got it, the whole essence of the defense that this was cultural; the argument that they (Afolabi) brought Togo to America," Adetula said.
...

Paul J. Fishman, the U.S. attorney for New Jersey, said the government will seek a life sentence for Afolabi, even though she could get a lighter sentence under federal guidelines.

"The evidence presented at trial revealed that these young women some as young as 10 years old endured unconscionable indignities," Fishman said in a statement. "The defendant ruled over her victims with threats, violence, even voodoo curses. We will seek an appropriately long sentence that reflects the seriousness of Afolabi's conduct."

During the monthlong trial, prosecutors outlined a scheme they say Afolabi and her ex-husband and son — who have pleaded guilty — used to keep the young women tightly controlled. They said the women were beaten, psychologically abused and, in some cases, sexually abused, while being kept from phoning home, contacting friends or family, or accessing their passports and other documents.

More agriculture efforts for the Gates Foundation

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is announcing expanding their efforts to help agriculture in Africa. The Gates Foundation has done a lot of work in supplying seed and fertilizer but they are now moving into education for farmers and political advocacy for agriculture.

From this Associated Press story that we found at KSL, writer Donna Gordon Blankinship tells us of what this new round of grant money will be used for.

The foundation announced nine grants totaling nearly $120 million a few hours before Bill Gates was scheduled to give his first major speech on agriculture as the keynote speaker at the World Food Prize event in Des Moines, Iowa.

In the past three years, the Gates Foundation has committed $1.4 billion to help small farmers in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia increase their yields and incomes. The foundation got involved in agriculture after years of trying to solve worldwide health problems.

About half of the grants announced Thursday will go toward agriculture research in Africa, including experiments with sorghum, millet, legumes and sweet potatoes. But several unusual projects were included, including proposals to use cell phones and radio programs to educate small farmers.

The foundation gave the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa $15 million to influence agricultural policy in more than a dozen African nations. The alliance won't be lobbying for policy changes, but they will be doing research on what kinds of policy changes would best stimulate agricultural growth in the region and will be training Africans to advocate for themselves.

AGRA plans to train about 400 agriculture economists at several African universities so they can analyze policies and advocate for change, said Namanga Ngongi, president of the alliance, in a telephone interview from Des Moines on Tuesday.

"Technical solutions can only go so far because there are many blockages to development," said Ngongi, who is based in Nairobi, Kenya.

The uneven progress of meeting the MDGs

"Stand Up, Take Action" is an event that focuses on the Millennium Development Goals, 7 goals that governments across the world promised to achieve by 2015. There have been mixed results, and that is a big reason for the event, to show political leaders that the the people want them to take the goals seriously. Many observers have said that the biggest thing standing in the way of meeting the goals is political will.

From the IPS, reporter Evelyn Kiapi interviews Sylvia Mwichuli, deputy director of the U.N. Millennium Campaign, on goal achievement.

IPS: What MDG has seen the most dramatic progress?

SYLVIA MWICHULI: This is a general question which may hide the tremendous progress being made in individual countries. Different countries are scoring differently. Goals that may be met by one country may not be met by another and the reverse is also true.

That said, the goal of universal primary education is most likely to be met by all. According to 2008 United Nations MDGs report, by 2006 the net enrolment ratio exceeded 71 per cent in most of sub-Saharan Africa.

Great strides are being made on gender empowerment. Uganda, Rwanda, Tanzania, Nigeria, South Africa, Malawi and Zambia are on course to realise this goal.

Ghana and most of the North African states are on course to meet all and even surpass some of the targets.


IPS: Where has there been the most dramatic failure?

SM: There are challenges in meeting Goal Three, gender equality and women's empowerment, and Goal Five, improving maternal health.

Girls' primary education enrolment still lags behind that of boys and their dropout rates widen as they go up the ladder of education.

African women still die in great numbers while giving birth. In fact, an African woman's risk of dying from treatable or preventable complications of pregnancy and child birth is 1 in 22 compared to 1 in 7,300 in developed countries.

IPS: What are the major stumbling blocks towards the achievements of the MDGs?

SM: The major stumbling block is failure of political will by both countries of the South and those of the North.

The developed countries - except a notable few - have not kept their end of the bargain on Goal 8 (develop a global partnership for development, including dealing with debt and creating a more open, and non-discriminatory trading and financial system).

With the exception of just 16 countries, Africa's debts have not been cancelled as promised. The countries of the North have not eliminated trade barriers like tariffs on goods from Africa as promised.

And they haven't increased overseas development assistance to the levels promised, while the quality of aid is still a source of concern.

Whereas African states dedicated themselves to creating favourable conditions in their countries, a look at their national action plans and budgetary allocations, shows a lack of commitment.

Many of them think of MDGs as yet another begging opportunity. MDGs aren't about aid but (about) prioritisation and proper use of our own nationally-generated resources.

"Stand Up, Take Action" begins tomorrow

The annual "Stand Up, Take Action, End Poverty Now!" worldwide event begins tomorrow. For the fourth year in a row, demonstrations will take place throughout the world to show support and raise awareness on the Millennium Development Goals. Over 116 million people participated last year to show their support for fighting poverty.

This years "Stand Up Take Action" runs from October 16th to 18, to find an event near you, go to the Stand Up website that features an interactive map that pinpoints all the demonstrations.

From All Africa, reporter Abimbola Akosile sets up the "Stand Up" effort taking place in Nigeria.

As the countdown starts tomorrow, all Nigerians have been called upon to fully participate in this year's 4th annual global 'Stand Up, Take Action, End Poverty Now' mobilisation, which comes up from October 16 to 18.

The period coincides with the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty, when millions of people across the country are expected to call on the nation's decision makers at the local, state and national levels to eradicate extreme poverty and achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

Making the appeal in Lagos during the week, the Executive Director of Nigeria Network of Non-Governmental Organisations (NNNGO) Ms. Yemisi Ransome-Kuti, said this year's mobilisation coincides with the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty.

In 2008, the mobilisation campaign recorded global participation by 116.9 million people, majority from poor countries like Nigeria, and thus breaking the Guinness World Record for the largest mobilisation of human beings in recorded history.

She explained that with just six years left until the 2015 deadline by which world leaders have pledged to achieve the MDGs, "Nigerians are demanding that our leaders deliver on the promises they made in the year 2000 to eradicate extreme poverty and its root causes."

"The MDGs commitments relating to women's empowerment, including the promise to reduce maternal mortality by three-quarters by the year 2015, have seen the least progress", she lamented in an information provided by Mr. Kunle Idowu, NNNGO's media consultant.

Tent City rejected in Tampa

A Catholic Charity had hoped to create a tent city for the homeless in Tampa, Florida. But local government officials rejected the plan after protests from people in a neighboring community.

Once again, the homeless are being told to stay in their own little corner of America, wherever that is. The problem with that is, the recession has created many more homeless, and the recession has closed many more shelters.

From the New York Times, writers Damien Cave and Lynn Waddell tell us how the plans were rejected.

Frank Murphy, president of Catholic Charities for the St. Petersburg Diocese, said the commissioners sidestepped a problem that had been ignored for years. “They just don’t think it’s important, I guess,” he said.

The plan would have used a 12-acre church lot to serve 250 people for up to 90 days in tents and small “casitas” that look like wooden sheds with windows. The diocese opened a similar camp two years ago in nearby Pinellas County, and Mr. Murphy emphasized that the plan for Tampa would have included background checks for the people placed there, along with fences and a round-the-clock police presence.

“People call it a ‘tent city,’ ” Mr. Murphy said. “It’s more a social service model where people come in and do a lot of case work, where we ask, ‘How can we help this person?’ ”

The closest residential neighborhood, East Lake, is across a divided highway and behind a row of businesses — 1,200 feet away in all. That was not nearly enough for Randall Woosely, 46, an unemployed former cab driver living with his sister in East Lake, who came to pressure the commission to vote no.

“I’ve been in jail; I know this criminal element,” Mr. Woosely said, noting that he had just served 10 months on a charge related to stolen property. He added: “I’m not opposed to helping homeless people. It’s just this is no place for that.”

County leaders agreed. Three of those who voted no — Al Higginbotham, Kevin White and Ken Hagan — said there must be a better place for the homeless. They also cited crime as a concern, despite testimony from the police in Pinellas County, who called the camp there a success. Mr. Higginbotham initially seemed to favor the idea. “In these tough financial times, someone has stepped forward and has been willing to reach out a hand of generosity,” he said. “That’s what this country has been foundedon.”
...

Linda Hinson, 61, a retiree in East Lake, said defeat of the camp plan meant “I don’t have to go out and get a gun.” She declared that there were already enough shelters.

The 2009 Global Hunger Index

Above is a really neat interactive map distributed by the International Food Policy Institute. You can drag and drop the marker to any country and find the countries 2009 Hunger Index.

On this years report, the IFPI is calling on policy makers worldwide to consider how their decisions will effect the poor. The food and economic crises of the past year has had great impacts on the poor, greater than anyone else. So the IFPI asks world leaders to consider how their efforts to work out of the crises will impact the poor.

From the IFPI website, comes a summary of this year's Global Hunger Index findings, you can download a pdf or the report from here.

The Global Hunger Index (GHI) shows that worldwide progress in reducing hunger remains slow. The 2009 global GHI has fallen by only one quarter from the 1990 GHI. Southeast Asia, the Near East and North Africa, and Latin America and the Caribbean have reduced hunger significantly since 1990, but the GHI remains distressingly high in South Asia, which has made progress since 1990, and in Sub-Saharan Africa, where progress has been marginal.

Some countries achieved noteworthy progress in improving their GHI. Between the 1990 GHI and the 2009 GHI, Kuwait, Tunisia, Fiji, Malaysia, and Turkey had the largest percentage improvements. Angola, Ethiopia, Ghana, Nicaragua, and Vietnam saw the largest absolute improvements in their scores.

Nonetheless, 29 countries have levels of hunger that are alarming or extremely alarming. The countries with the highest 2009 GHI scores are Burundi, Chad, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Eritrea, Ethiopia, and Sierra Leone. In most of the countries with high GHI scores, war and violent conflict have given rise to widespread poverty and food insecurity. Nearly all of the countries in which the GHI rose since 1990 are in Sub-Saharan Africa.

New World Bank loans to India

New loans to India are being made by the World Bank. 4.2 billion dollars will go to India for use in infrastructure, banking systems, and power.

From domain-b.com, we read more deatails of the newly signed loans.

The World Bank will provide total funding to the tune of $1.2 billion to IIFCL. Of this, $1.195 billion will come as long-term IBRD loan to finance infrastructure projects while $5 million will come as grant for capacity building of IIFCL.

The amount is expected to be disbursed by September 2015. IBRD loan is a variable spread loan based on six-monthly LIBOR. It will have a duration of 28 years and a grace of 7.5 years.

IBRD will also provide $2 billion as banking sector support loan, which is part of the series of measures to contain the slowdown and stimulate the economy by assisting public sector banks to keep credit flowing.

Keeping the growth momentum will help contain the adverse effects of the slowdown on employment and poverty, broaden financial inclusion and help production and trade sectors.

While India's banking sector is sound, stable and well regulated and the PSU banks are well capitalised with good asset quality and profitability, the government wants these banks to maintain credit expansion and help contain adverse effects of global slowdown.

One Third of Latin America will meet the MDGs

One third of Latin America is likely to meet the Millennium Development Goals according to Alicia Bárcena, executive secretary of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean. In an interview with IPS she says the goals of child health and primary education will be met. Barcena talked to reporter Suzanne Hoeksema.

IPS: When talking about the Millennium Development Goals, which Latin American and Caribbean countries are expected to meet which goals and which countries are still lagging behind?

ALICIA BÁRCENA: Chile is doing remarkably well and it will most likely be able to stick to the first MDG, reducing extreme poverty by 50 percent. In Honduras, on the other hand, the situation is worrisome with 49.4 percent of the population still living under conditions of extreme poverty.

Uruguay, Argentina, Costa Rica, Brazil, Panama, Venezuela and Mexico have made considerable improvements in terms of poverty reduction and investing in the poor. However, the distribution of wealth and filling the inequality gap remains a huge challenge, particularly in Brazil and Mexico.

One of the continent's major successes in fighting poverty is the Conditional Cash Transfer programme (CCT) which provides money directly to poor families via a social contract with the beneficiaries – sending children to school and bringing them to health centres. Cash provides emergency assistance, while the conditionalities promote longer-term investments in human capital.

CCT has proved to be notably successful when provided to women. The programme does not only make women more independent, it also benefits other MDGs such as primary school attendance by boys and girls and children's health. I expect that most countries will meet both of these goals.

Unfortunately, maternal mortality remains high. The maternal health MDG will not be easily met. First and foremost in the rural oriented countries, women have limited access to health care or they choose to deal with intimate health issues themselves.

Insurance for Ethiopian farmers

American farmers are relatively well protected if their crops fail as many have insurance. But in the under developed world such insurance is non-existent, instead when crops fail people starve unless aid is brought in.

Today's Boston Globe profiles a new insurance program that is being started in Ethiopia by Oxfam America. Writer James F. Smith explains how the new insurance program works.

Villagers have flocked to sign up for the trial farm insurance program since it was launched early this year. Funded by the Rockefeller Foundation and Swiss Re, one of the world’s largest insurance companies, Oxfam America has made drought insurance available for the first time to about 200 households, 38 percent of them headed by women.

The success of the pilot initiative prompted Oxfam America and Swiss Re to commit last month to sharply expand the project, from just one village to five more, with a new Rockefeller grant of $565,000.
...

Marjorie Victor, who heads the program in the Boston Oxfam office, said two-thirds of the villagers opted to work for several days for the local drought-relief agency to pay for their policies; the rest paid cash. The farmers could pick a range of coverage, from just the cost of seeds and other inputs to comprehensive coverage of the value of the harvest. Most chose basic coverage for this season, which ends late this month.

In all, 200 farmers bought policies valued at a total of $2,500.

Oxfam America worked with a local firm, Nyala Insurance Co., to provide the policies, and Swiss Re then provided reinsurance. Because it would be too costly to try to measure each farmer’s actual losses, this is not crop insurance but weather-index insurance: If rainfall is below certain predetermined levels, then payments will be due to farmers.

Oxfam America’s president, Raymond C. Offenheiser, said the program can help achieve household food security in one of the poorest corners of the earth, with the potential to be applied far beyond Ethiopia’s borders. Swiss Re pioneered the weather risk insurance for poor countries, starting in India in 2004. The company says the program there now covers 350,000 farmers.

But nowhere are conditions as difficult as in the arid Horn of Africa.
...

The government and foreign aid groups have forged a food safety net for nearly eight million chronically hungry people. But the lack of rains this year have pushed another 6.2 million into the ranks of those officially in need of food aid in a country of 77 million.

Kenyan drought now killing camels

Shepherding and raising animals has been a popular occupation in Kenya. However, this year's drought has been killing many goats and is now killing camels. Many fear if these weather patterns continue or even worsen, this way of life will no longer exist.

From the BBC, Will Ross gives this account on the drought in Kenya.

Turkana district in north-west Kenya is a harsh environment at the best of times. Driving along the sandy roads with temperatures tipping 40C, the air coming through the car window feels like the blast from a load of hair-driers.

The landscape is desert-like and the only signs of life are the occasional circular mud huts thatched with grass. There is very little vegetation - just a few brown thorny shrubs.

In a dry river bed in Lochoraikey, close to the shrinking Lake Turkana, men and women gathered. The women were on one side - most wearing a mountain of brightly coloured necklaces.

They were sitting in the sand and lying among them were dozens of emaciated goats - concave with protruding ribs.

"I had a herd of 100 goats but just in the last month 40 have died," said Esther Ekouam, who had walked about 15km (10 miles) and had to carry her goat as it was too weak to make the journey.

"Now the children are very weak because, as the animals are dying, they are not getting enough food. This is the worst drought we have had here since 1969."

Ms Ekouam was propping up the head of her goat. But it appeared the animal was already dead.

The woman behind Ms Ekouam was gently rocking a white goat in an attempt to keep it alive. A closer inspection of the group revealed that several other goats were also dead.

Next time I'm in Toronto...

Now I know what club I'm going to next time I'm in Toronto. The El Mocambo Tavern operates as a fund raiser for the area's homeless. The proceeds from the drinks, food and cover at the bar goes to food and shelter for the city's homeless.

From the Toronto Star, writers Craig and Marc Kielburger describe a typical night at the El Mocambo.

In the basement of the El Mocambo Tavern, Abbas Jahangiri leads a team of volunteers in prayer.

A floor up, his staff is busy. Bartenders stock the fridge with fresh beer and clear away cases of empties from the previous night. An indie band unloads gear under the neon palm tree marking the historic entrance of the music hall where the Rolling Stones and Elvis Costello once played.

Down the stairs past rows of canned goods, volunteers bow their heads among deli meats and chopped tomatoes that will soon become sandwiches for the homeless. Jahangiri asks God to bless the food, the poorest of the poor and those suffering in “Darfur, Darfur, Darfur.”

In just a few hours, a typical night will begin at this less-than-typical bar. By making sandwiches, pouring drinks and playing music, everyone who enters the El Mocambo’s doors works towards the same cause: charity.

“We have about 100 volunteers who come here at different times, after they finish work. It’s such a righteous act,” explains Jahangiri. “This place has such a unique culture. It’s a landmark for culture. I wanted to use the name and the music to push for charity.”

This is no “church basement” volunteer group. Instead, the Toronto music hall works for the volunteers. At the end of the night, when bands pack up and tabs are settled, all of the venue’s profits go straight to work as Jahangiri locks his club and takes the sandwiches to the city’s homeless.

The volunteers are part of Jahangiri’s service organization, Serving Charity. They, along with the venue’s bartenders and bands, are integral to funding the group’s activities. That includes sandwiches for the homeless in Canada, as well as projects in Vietnam, India and the Dominican Republic.

“Everything Serving Charity does is picked up by the El Mocambo,” says Jahangiri. “In that way, we use the aspects of music and fame and finance and turn it into something for charity.”

The shows are like small-scale versions of U2’s 360° tour. Both band and barman delicately mix social message with music to create positive social change. Socially-conscious lyrics can usually be heard from the street and the space is often donated to charities for fundraisers. Patrons also get a discount on the cover charge for donating canned goods.

A risk-y commentary from Paul Collier

In his latest commentary, Paul Collier frames a new focus for the World Bank and the IMF for the years after the global economic crisis.

Collier begins be stating the fact that investment in Africa had dried up. Investors even more afraid of risk now after the crisis have put their money back into developed countries. Collier says this is where the World Bank and the IMF should step in, instead of investing in middle income countries.

Our snippet of the commentary comes from the UK's Independent.

Why does this matter? It matters because Africa desperately needs more investment. For decades Africa has been investing only around 20 per cent of national income, whereas Asia is investing around 40 per cent. At these rates, almost regardless of returns, Africa will continue to fall further behind the emerging market economies. Yet Africa simply cannot afford to finance a substantial increase in investment from its internal resources. A domestically financed increase in investment could only come at the expense of consumption.

So if international finance is essential and private international finance is fleeing, the only option is international public finance. Indeed, this is the hour for which the international financial institutions were invented. To date, despite the fury of the street protests in Istanbul, they have "had a good war", being well-led and scaling up their provision of finance enormously. But almost all of that finance has been to the emerging market economies and eastern Europe. The poorest countries have been further marginalised by the crisis.

The underlying reason is not reluctance of the World Bank and the IMF to help, but the way that the G20 have structured their increase in finance. Extra aid, which has traditionally been the source of public finance for the poorest countries, has basically been off the table. Money has been found for the IMF through the issue of Special Drawing Rights (SDR), and for the World Bank through the issue of more IBRD loans, but these instruments have traditionally been largely confined to middle-income countries.

If the countries of the bottom billion are to benefit, the criteria for disbursement will need to be changed. The potential is considerable. Surplus SDRs could be reassigned from the many rich countries that do not need them to the poor countries that do: the French government has already led the way. Flows from the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) to middle-income countries are so enormous that even a modest share would be equivalent to a large increase in aid: it is for this that Zoellick rightly seeks a capital increase for the Bank.

Street protesters should be screaming their support. Yet using SDRs and the IBRD would carry serious risks. Unlike aid, both have to be paid back. Unless the money was well used, resorting to them would have the makings of a new debt crisis without an obvious exit strategy.

What does "well used" actually mean? It is not synonymous with the conventional aid concern that the money should "reach poor people". It means using the money only for investment, which poor people would be highly unlikely to do. And it means investing the money productively. Each of these steps would be a new departure for many African governments.

Traditional medicine in Myanmar

From IRIN, a look at traditional medicine making a comeback in Myanmar.

Four years after contracting rheumatic fever, Mee Naing, 28, finally beat the disease with the help of traditional medicine.

Rheumatic fever can recur if not treated with long-term antibiotics, but because Mee Naing could not afford the medicine, she suffered from a bad bout of the disease for many months.

She finally went to a traditional medicine clinic and underwent a course of pills and balms and her health gradually improved.

"Whatever ailments I have, nowadays I take traditional drugs, which I can afford," said Mee Naing, whose monthly income as a marketing assistant is less than US$40.

More than 85 percent of country's population of about 57.5 million uses traditional medicines, according to government figures, partly to supplement western medicine and partly as an alternative.

"Traditional medicine is quite affordable and accessible for people from all walks of life, which are the fundamental reasons why most people use it," Maung Nyan, president of the Myanmar Traditional Medicine Practitioners' Association, told IRIN.

Practitioners say people in rural areas - about 70 percent of Myanmar's population - rely more on traditional medicine than in urban areas, since it is more widely available and affordable than western medicine.

Traditional medicine is also 10-20 times cheaper than western medicine - a huge factor when 32.7 percent of people live below the poverty line, according to specialists.

Government promotion

Traditional medicine, in the form of pills, powders and balms, has been used in Myanmar since 600 BC, but only recently has the government moved to formalize its role in the healthcare system.

A Traditional Medicine Drug Law introduced in 1996 controls the quality, production and sale of the drugs. The government has also introduced good manufacturing practices, while the production, packaging and storage of medicines have been modernized.

These standards mean that "public trust and confidence in indigenous drugs has greatly been enhanced", notes the World Health Organization in Myanmar in its 2009 health report for the country.

"There is a progressive increase in demand for traditional medicine not only in rural areas but also in urban areas," it states.

There are 14 traditional medicine hospitals, and 237 district and township clinics and sub-centres across the country, while there are more than 10,000 practitioners, according to the Myanmar Traditional Medicine Practitioners' Association.

In 2007, the government established the first national herbal park on 81 hectares of land in the new capital, Naypyidaw, to grow plants to treat diseases such as diarrhoea, dysentery, cholera, diabetes, hypertension, malaria and tuberculosis.

A long tradition

"Traditional medicine has regained its golden age," said Aung Naing, who practises both traditional and western medicine, choosing one or the other depending on a patient's illness.

Most traditional practitioners combine traditional medicines with western equipment, such as blood pressure monitors.

"Traditional medicine is very effective in curing chronic diseases such as diabetes, rheumatic fever, rheumatoid arthritis, hypertension, stroke, paralysis, motor paralysis, malaria, and menstrual disorders," said Mya Win, 66, who has practised traditional medicine for 49 years.

While it cannot cure diseases such as cancer or HIV/AIDS, it has fewer side-effects than western medicine, said Mya Win.

Knowledge of Burmese traditional medicine has been handed down from generation to generation for centuries, and is influenced by traditions from neighbouring countries such as India and China.

Most of the medicines are of plant origin, although animal, mineral or aquatic material is also used.

In 1976, the government established the Institute of Myanmar Traditional Medicine to train traditional medicine practitioners, while the University of Myanmar Traditional Medicine was established in Mandalay in 2001. The curriculum covers traditional medicine, science and basic concepts of western medicine.

"Today, more and more young people are interested in learning traditional medicine as the role of the medicine becomes larger and larger in the country," Aung Myint, the university's rector, told IRIN.

Indonesia, a week after the earthquake

Oxfam's Ian Bray gives us this account on the aid emergency in Indonesia a week after the earthquake. Aid is beginning to flow in to villages that were destroyed as roads and airports are beginning to open up again.

You can place donations to Oxfam's relief efforts at this page of their website.

This is the village of Padang Alai a two and a half hour drive from the city of Padang. It has seen better days. About 90% of the houses are destroyed. The school is a mass of bricks.

Oxfam is trucking water into Mursidah’s village but getting there is not easy. The road is narrow and full of large cracks. The more trucks that pass the more damage is done to the road. Landslides have gouged the surrounding steep hills. The hills remain unstable and there is a fear that the heavy downpours of raining season will cause more landslides. The government has issued storm warnings for the next few days.

Nine villages in this area were cut off for some time before the roads were cleared and two villages are still only accessible by foot. On the day the earthquake struck there were 200 people attending a wedding in one of the villages. The village is now a tomb.

This is the area where the earthquake did its worse. If the houses weren’t shaken to oblivion they were buried under tons of earth, boulders and trees as hills gave way.
...

The scale of the earthquake’s damage is slowly being revealed as the more remote areas are reached. So far some 125,000 houses are destroyed, leaving around 500,000 people homeless, 55 health facilities are piles of rubble, nine bridges are down and 162 roads are in urgent need of repair.

In a display of humanitarian muscle the United States has sent in a ship equipped with helicopters to help with the logistical struggle to shift the huge amounts of aid required. The aid effort is gathering pace and much more visible as aid teams fan out to the villages of a wide-spread ground zero.

Aid was being delivered in the immediate aftermath of the quake. The first few days of a disaster are crucial. In that time it is nearly impossible to get supplies in. Tele-communications are down, airports closed, roadways blocked. The smart money is spent on having aid there ready to go before the humanitarian cavalry has time to arrive. But deciding where to place emergency aid stocks is tricky.

Recycling soap for use in Uganda

Here is a great charity idea, bringing used soap to people in Africa. For those who live on less than a dollar a day, a bar of soap is a luxury and the money could be better spent on food. But it is the inability to stay clean and sterile that is one of the factors that keep many in poverty. Many diseases that could be prevented from using soap make many ill and further unable to provide for themselves.

A former Ugandan who makes his home in Atlanta has found a way to help his homeland. Derreck Kayongo recycles used soap bars from American hotels and sterilizes them for use by the poor in Uganda.

From this Associated Press article that we found at KOAT, writer Dionne Walker explains the soap recycling process.

Cleaning up with used soap sounds, well, dirty.

But Kayongo said soaps will be separated by hotel brand and gently washed to remove makeup and other surface dirt. Next, bars will go into a high-temperature oven where they will melt and transform into a soapy, sterile, slurry. Kayongo said the mixture will go into molds to harden and emerge as large bars of soap.

"All it needs is just cleaning and re-melting and remolding," he said.

Each day, in millions of American hotel rooms, the cleaning staff replaces soap and other toiletries.

Patrick Maher, a consultant to the American Hotel & Lodging Association, said hotels usually throw away used soap. But he said nonprofits have begun stepping up to recycle soap for charitable purposes.

"It's one of the new things this year," Maher said.

One such charity, Florida-based Clean the World, says it has collected about 17,000 pounds of used soap since February for distribution in impoverished countries worldwide.

For the Global Soap Project, Kayongo says he has gathered 10,000 pounds of used hotel soap from 60 hotels in Georgia, Florida and Tennessee. Hotels collect lightly used bars which they place in bins. One of Kayongo's 10 volunteers takes the bars to a donated warehouse near Atlanta that he's using.

Kayongo's own family had once thrived off his father's business making soaps and running a printing press in Uganda. But Kayongo said they went from being members of the middle class to refugees, losing everything under the harsh rule of former Ugandan dictator Idi Amin.

Is it in one's own self interest to fight hunger?

Why should those who are comfortable and well fed help those who are not? Well, it is really in their own self interest to do so.

It is proven that hunger and poverty start wars, terrorism, riots and emigration. So those who are well off should want all people to be fed to create a safer world.

The problem with this argument is not all in the aid community believe it, and many are not telling the developed world that message.

From the IPS, writer Paul Virgo gets into this discussion by interviewing some in the aid community who don't necessarily believe it is in ones self interest to fight hunger.

"I don't buy this argument that if we don't do the right thing they'll come over here and ruin our lives," John Hilary, executive director of the London-based anti-poverty group War on Want tells IPS. "I think that's too near to the far right and the British National Party."

Oxfam International believes the self-interest case is valid, while harbouring concerns that it could be twisted by groups in developed countries to block immigration and imports from developing countries.

"It is true that it is in the developed world's interest to eradicate hunger, but I also perceive some risks in this message," Teresa Cavero, head of research at Oxfam's Spanish section tells IPS.

"With the economic crisis and the temptation for greater protectionism, it could be a double-edged sword. For example, it could be said that by encouraging growth in developing countries, people will have more job opportunities in their homelands and there will be less migration. This may be correct in part, but it does not mean immigration is a bad thing."

It is also true, however, that decades of taking the developed world to task over the need to eradicate hunger as part of a quest for social justice has not been enormously successful.

It could be argued that the developed world will only find the necessary commitment to fighting hunger when the issue climbs to a higher position on the political agenda. And this may not come about unless voters in rich countries see food insecurity as a problem that is in their self-interest to solve.

"I'm more comfortable with the justice message, but it's right that it's in the developed world's interest to fight hunger, and any arguments you build to make the developed countries take action are positive," Cavero says.

"The first thing governments and people in rich countries need to be aware of is the reality we are confronted with. Today we have more and more people in hunger, and the WFP have announced the shameful figure of one billion hungry people has been passed."

While fear is one factor that might stir the well-fed, Dawe sees money as another: "On the economic level, there is a huge reservoir of potential demand for developed world products in developing countries if people break out of hunger and poverty."

Cavero agrees: "We at Oxfam are aware of the role trade can have in economic development if it is conducted under fair rules, which is not the case now, along with strong transparent markets. Healthy growth would lead to improvements in overall welfare, which is good for the South and good for the North.

"It is in the North's interest to have a developing world that is not suffering hunger because the whole economy suffers. If they are free from hunger, they can work on their own development. But you must be free from hunger before you can overcome poverty, and only then can you participate in the global economy. Hunger is a dead weight that's too heavy to allow welfare to be achieved."

Levels of poverty decreased in Botswana in 2007

A new United Nations report says that the percentage of people in Botswana living in poverty decreased during the year 2007. Of course, these statistics were gathered before the global economic recession, but it shows what may have been undone during 2008 and 9.

From Mmegi Online we read this breakdown of poverty levels in Southern Africa.

The 2009 Human Development Index (HDI) report released by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) shows that with a U$13,000 Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita - the highest in Africa - Botswana has managed to reduce the number of people living under US$2 a day from 55 percent to 49 percent of the population as the country continues to fair poorly in human development.

The figure compares poorly with South Africa, which has 42 percent of its population living on less than US$2 a day, and favourably with Namibia, which is at 62 percent.
The report, which uses 2007 data before the financial crisis, says Botswana is placed at position 125 out of 185 countries in the study; from position 124 out of 177 countries last year.

South Africa is at position 129 from last year's 121, while Namibia is at position 128.
Other African countries ranked ahead of Botswana in terms of human development such as Gabon, Egypt, Tunisia and Algeria have nearly half as much GDP per capita, a development which suggests Botswana's inadequate efforts in turning resources into poverty alleviation.

According to the UNDP, the HDI provides a composite measure of three dimensions of human development: living a long and healthy life (measured by life expectancy), being educated (measured by adult literacy and gross enrolment in education) and having a decent standard of living (measured by purchasing power parity, PPP, income).

According to the report, the life expectancy of a Motswana at birth is 53 years compared to South Africa's 51 years and Namibia's 60 years. On education, 82 percent of Batswana are able to read and write, compared with South Africa and Namibia at 88 percent each.

The report says that as measured by the Human Poverty Index (HPI), 22.9 percent of Botswana's 2 million people live below minimum threshold levels in each of the dimensions of the human development index. South Africa's HPI is at 25 percent while Namibia's is at 17 percent.

'Jesus es Mana,' giving food to Juarez, Mexico

Jesus Ruiz once left the city of Juarez, Mexico and vowed to never come back. Years later, his wife Maria visited Juarez and convinced her husband to do something about the poverty there. The family started the charity 'Jesus es Mana,' they return to Juarez every weekend to bring food to the people of Juarez.

From the Voice of America, reporter Roger Hsu gives us the heartwarming profile of the Ruiz family charity.

A river - and an international border - separate the city of Juarez in Mexico and El Paso in the United States. Even though they are in many respects worlds apart - Juarez is poor and crime-ridden and El Paso is prosperous and relatively safe - the two cities are bound by powerful ties. One of them is the family of Jesus and Maria Ruiz and the charity they have started.

U.S. Interstate 10 is a major thoroughfare in the city of El Paso, Texas, bustling with traffic night and day. Just several hundred meters to the south, on the hilltops overlooking the interstate, sit the concrete houses of Juarez, Mexico.

Jesus and Maria Ruiz and their 19-year-old daughter Liz and 13-year-old son Jesus Jr. live in a quiet suburb of El Paso. Like 80 percent of the city's residents, they're Latin American.

Every weekend the family makes a trip across the border into Mexico. They go not to visit relatives or friends but to help people in need.

"Once you cross the border [into Mexico] you see so many people there already, people all over the place. You see a lot of people who are hungry, who need food, who need money, who are asking for your help," said daughter Liz.

All along the way, they have to watch out for drug dealers and kidnappers. They also have to be wary of the police, many of whom are corrupt. One hour after leaving their home in El Paso, they arrive in one of Juarez's poor suburbs.

"These are the outskirts of Juarez. Usually the outskirts are the areas that's being forgotten," Maria said.

As on every weekend, the family's destination is an aid office that is the base they use to deliver goods to the poor.

"When we come over, it's not only the food. We bring hygiene supplies and school supplies," Maria explains.

By 9 o'clock on this morning, almost 200 people are lining up outside the aid office. The volunteers inside pack rice, canned food and vegetables into paper bags. All the people in line receive a free lunch and a large bag to collect 10 items of clothing, one pair of shoes and soap and shampoo.

Jesus is no stranger to poverty. He was born and grew up in Juarez. He came to the United States, illegally, when he was 14. The difference struck him immediately - and angered him.

"In those 14 years I lived in Juarez, I experienced poverty, I experienced everything that they are living right now till today, it has not changed even a bit. When I came across, I made a promise to myself, I turned around and I was so upset with the country and the society, the way they handle things, I screamed and I yelled to Juarez and said Juarez, Mexico I will never, ever, come back to you, turned around and left," Jesus explains.

But it was Maria, who was born in the United States, who changed his mind. She made her first visit to Mexico more than 10 years ago, for the funeral of a relative, and was shocked by the poverty. "I had to tell my husband, I said, 'I have to go back and I had to do something.' I couldn't just turn around and say 'Oh' and pretend I didn't see anything," she says. "I told him I want to do something, and he said, 'What do you want to do?' and I said, 'I want to take apples, oranges and bananas and sweet breads to the kids to the school.'"

Soon, when word got out on what they wanted to do, people in and around El Paso began donating money, clothing and food to the ministry that the couple started, Jesus es mana, which translates as Jesus is the bread of life. With the approval of the local government in Juarez, Maria and Jesus built a church and an aid office on an abandoned lot in the middle of the slum.

As for the Ruizes, they gave so much to the ministry they started that their living standard in El Paso was close to that of those they were helping in Juarez.

"Even though we were living under the poverty level, when I would cross the border and see other people's need, then my needs were nothing compared to what their needs are," Maria said.

As the ministry they started has grown, so have their ambitions. They are now building a community kitchen with space to feed 500, an orphanage for 100 residents and a trade school.

Why do they do it? "When you make a child smile," Maria says, "it's awesome."

A profile of Lift Micro-Finance

A microcredit concern that operates in Nigeria received a write up in the Vanguard. Lift Micro-Finance works in Nigeria to help the poor move out of poverty. Most of Lift's loans go to women.

From All Africa, Moses Nosike interviews Lift's managing director.

A Benin-based Micro-Finance bank, Lift Micro-Finance, a subsidiary of Lift Above Poverty (LAPO) has vowed to tackle poverty and give hope to many especially women who are the bread winners of families, through its credit delivery, recovery strategies and customer relations.

According to the Managing Director of LAPO, Mr. Ehigiamusoe "We are fighting poverty in the land by consistently providing credit facilities to small, and medium enterprises.

"We also help in reducing unemployment among youths by providing soft loans that can help them establish themselves since government alone cannot provide all the jobs needed by thecitizens."

He said that the bank in its pursuit to elevate more families in Nigeria has disbursed a total of N339,367.00 (Three hundred and thirty-nine million, three hundred and sixty seven thousand) naira before now. "It has also rolled out attractive customer-focused products in its three new credit centres with increased staff strength from 28 to 38."

Mr. Ehigiamusoe also said the micro-finance bank renders financial advisory services, consumer loans/overdrafts, savings and investments among others.

"In the same vein, LAPO agricultural and rural development initiative also provides affordable credit and extension services to rural farmers in Nigeria towards meeting their financial and technical needs."

On the development initiative outreach of the company, he said it has expanded from 176 in 2007 to 1,239 in 2008, representing 95% while annual disbursement rose from N15 million in 2007 to N124 million in 2008 with portfolio risk remaining below 0.5%.

Questioning Muhammad Yunus

We hear from a former Nobel Peace Prize winner today from a little Q and A from Time Magazine.

Muhammad Yunus won the award for starting the practice of microcredit, small loans to people who do not have collateral. Yunus began the practice in Bangladesh because poor people there only had access to credit through loan sharks who would charge outrageous interest.

Our snippet contains 4 out of the 10 questions that Time readers gave to Yunus.

Do you think it is ethical to charge the poor interest and make a profit out of it?

Hasan Iqbal

SUNDSVALL, SWEDEN

In Bangladesh, Grameen Bank charges the lowest rate among all microcredit programs, and yes, we make a profit. But Grameen Bank is owned by the borrowers, so when we make a profit, it goes back to the borrowers as dividends.

Are microloans taking a hit because of the recession?

Katie Malone

POINT MARION, PA.

We use very local money that is going to the local poor, so there is no way the hit taken by the financial centers of the world could be transmitted to us. We don't see fluctuations in repayment rates or anything like that. We are O.K.

How would you help the world out of recession?

Azmath Shamrad

NEWCASTLE, ENGLAND

The system failed us. There's no reason why we should resuscitate it. We have to make absolutely sure that we don't go back to the same old normalcy. We should be creating a new normalcy. That opportunity has to be taken.

Microfinancing empowers Bangladeshi women. Is it driving cultural change?

Lucas Torrin, OTTAWA

The most dramatic thing that has happened in Bangladesh in the past 25 years is the total change in the status of women. Microcredit has played a very important role in that, particularly with poor women.

The risks of obesity in Africa

Even though malnutrition exists in Africa at higher levels than anywhere else, nutritionists are warning against obesity in the continent. Those who live in the cities or slums have sedentary lifestyles and have access to a lot of fatty foods.

From the IRIN, we read a roundup of some nutritionist opinions of the risks of obesity in Africa

Africa faces a double burden of obesity and hunger as millions take up increasingly sedentary lives in cities and the global financial crisis hits rural populations’ food security, nutritionists warn.

Under-nutrition continues to plague sub-Saharan Africa, where 32 percent of the world's hungry people live. However, those migrating from the countryside to cities are eating too much fatty food, leading to rising rates of obesity, diabetes, hypertension and high blood pressure, delegates at the International Congress of Nutrition (ICN) in Bangkok were told.

“The problem in Africa is [that] both under- and over-nutrition are the worst in the world. We really are facing a double burden,” Hester Vorster, of the Centre for Excellence in Nutrition at South Africa's North-West University, told the congress, which runs until 9 October.

“Over-nutrition is much the same thing as what we see in the west. Significant numbers of Africans have migrated to the cities and they are eating the wrong foods. So for Africa, the burden of disease is increasing all the time,” Jean-Claude Mbanya of the University of Yaoundé in Cameroon, and president-elect of the Belgium-based International Diabetes Federation, said.

Both over- and under-nutrition can be caused by poverty and food insecurity, with the urban poor unable to access or afford fresh and nutritious food, Helene Delisle, a nutritionist at the University of Montreal in Canada, told IRIN.

In some northern and southern African countries, over-nutrition has surpassed under-nutrition, but there is a complete lack of awareness about the new problems it brings, she said.

“These countries are not aware of it. In many areas, obesity is seen not as a problem, but as a positive sign that you are doing well in life,” she said.

Meanwhile, lower-income countries continue to suffer mainly from under-nutrition, which has actually increased over the past five years, thanks to the food price crisis of 2008 and the global financial crisis, Delisle said.

Obesity on the rise

Statistics from the World Health Organization (WHO) show how obesity has risen while under-nutrition has persisted in some countries.

In Madagascar in 1992, just 1.6 percent of children were overweight, while 35.5 percent were underweight and 60.9 percent suffered stunted growth. By 2004, 6.2 percent of children were overweight while 36.8 percent were underweight, and 52.8 percent were stunted.

The rate of overweight and obese women also doubled between 1997 and 2004, to 8.1 percent overall.

And in 1987, 5.5 percent of Moroccan children were overweight; by 2004, that figure had increased to 13.3 percent.

Obesity is also on the rise in Uganda, although under-nutrition continues to pose the biggest problem, with about 40 percent of children under five suffering from stunted physical growth and mental development due to a lack of vitamins and nutrient-rich food.

Obesity and other so-called “lifestyle diseases” are widely regarded as a problem only for older people in Uganda but are increasingly prevalent in young men, Elizabeth Madraa, the head of food and nutrition at Uganda's Ministry of Health, and a delegate at the congress, told IRIN.

Anaemia in teenage girls is also increasing due to a lack of iron in diets, she said. And in another new trend, Ugandan mothers are increasingly choosing to give their babies powdered milk rather than breast-feeding them.

“They buy milk powder because they see it advertised, and we have to fight that. We need to address all this as a nutrition problem,” Madraa said.

Greater awareness

Mbanya called for awareness campaigns and legislation to fight the negative effects of a poor diet fuelled partly by advertising. “If we want our people to change their habits we have to make it easy for them to have healthy choices,” he said.

However, progress is hampered by the poor status of nutritional science in Africa, experts say.

Few well-defined job openings, poor salaries and recognition, and a plethora of competing curricula taught by unqualified trainers are among the challenges, said Tola Atinmo, Nigerian president of the Federation of African Nutrition Societies.

"At the moment in Africa, nutrition is everybody's problem but nobody's business," said Atinmo.

What was discussed at the IMF annual meetings

The annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund wrapped up today. The major topic of conversation was expanding the say of poorer nations in the institution, and perhaps expanding it's role in the world's economy to prevent future crises.

From the Washington Post, writer Anthony Faiola summarizes the two divisive issues.

At a major summit in Pittsburgh last month, leaders from the Group of 20 major economies, including President Obama, reiterated calls for an enhanced global role for the IMF. One fundamental change would be in the ranks of nations that call the shots there.

Founded in the wake of World War II, the IMF has served as a lender of last resort to countries in financial crisis -- most often developing nations -- through rescue packages that often came with strict demands for fiscal restraint and free-market reforms. The United States, Europe and Japan -- the major contributors to the IMF -- have held the most sway over those decisions, including which countries received money, how much and with what kind of strings attached.

Although the IMF has begun easing its lending restrictions and conditions to cope with the global economic crisis, the "new fund" would give emerging economies more long-term say over the IMF's policies and lending practices. It would do that by redistributing voting rights within the fund, giving a roughly 50-50 split to the developing and developed worlds.

Yet who gains, and who loses, is in hot contention. Those set to suffer most are smaller European nations -- such as Belgium -- which hold about as much voting rights within the IMF as China. But even larger powers, such as Britain, voiced a measure of alarm this week at the notion of their clout being diluted, while China and others fiercely argued that they should be awarded even more power.
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Just as divisive is how to recraft the IMF's mission in the wake of the crisis.

Over the past two years, the IMF has been the center of the effort to more closely monitor economies around the world to prevent a repeat of the current crisis that started in the United States. To beef up the fund's ability to cope with meltdowns from Eastern Europe to Africa, leading nations have committed hundreds of billions of dollars to the fund's war chest in recent months. Diplomats, however, agreed in Istanbul to study whether the IMF should now be armed with far more, perhaps even allowing it to serve as a depository for world reserves.

Such changes, however, would take years to unfold. What could come more quickly, though, is a heightened mandate for the fund as a global monitor of economic policies both in the developed and developing worlds.

It has been key to coordinating national efforts thus far to combat the crisis, coming up, for instance, with targets for fiscal stimulus spending. This week, world financial chiefs asked the IMF to draft new guidelines for an "orderly and cooperative exit" from that spending when the time is right. The fund is also being asked to study offering more bank-like services to well-run developing nations, perhaps allowing them to pay a fee for the right to access quick and easy loans.

Yet many nations, including the United States, remain cautious of vesting too much power with the fund, and few in Istanbul this week were talking about granting it any powers to enforce its decisions.

Former President Carter travels to Hispaniola

Former President Jimmy Carter is traveling to the island of Hispaniola to begin a malaria fighting initiative through his foundation. The island contains the two countries Haiti and the Dominican Republic. The goals for the new malaria fight is for the two governments to work together to fight the disease, because mosquitoes have no respect for nations.... in a manner of speaking.

From the Associated Press article hosted at Google News, writer Greg Bluesteon interviewedthe former president. More information about the malaria project and much more can be found at the Carter Center website.

Former President Jimmy Carter will visit the two countries Wednesday in hopes of spurring their leaders to join an island-wide pact to fight the disease.

Carter will also check in on the progress of a $200,000 pilot project established by the nonprofit Carter Center that local health officials say has helped curb the spread of malaria.

The pilot project in Ouanaminthe and neighboring Dajabon, in the Dominican Republic, purchases nets treated with insecticide for residents to hang over their beds, microscopes to help lab technicians diagnose malaria samples and motorbikes so field workers can zip along cramped alleys to test and treat residents.

The center's goal is to remove from this corner of the world the last vestiges of malaria, a disease that causes high fevers and flulike symptoms and kills more than one million people each year, most of them in Africa. It also would eliminate the threat of the disease spreading to nearby islands, including Jamaica and the Bahamas.

The goal is to show the leaders of the two countries that it's more costly to neglect malaria than to erase it, said Dr. Don Hopkins, the director of the Carter Center's health programs. But he said only a combined effort between the two countries will eliminate the disease.

"We want to help both sides raise their sights up from the day-to-day battle with these two diseases and agree on the aspiration that where they should be trying to go is an ultimate target date to eliminate both diseases from the island," he said.

In an interview before the trip, Carter said he's committed to traveling to "the most distant and small and isolated and poverty-stricken villages in the deserts, in the jungles and in the poorest countries on Earth" and wiping out diseases that have long been distant memories in richer countries.

"It's a very different kind of life than any person could sort of do while still in the White House," Carter said.

Obama's urban renewal efforts in the US

It may have not hit the headlines in the US, but the Obama administration is making urban renewal a priority. The Obama administration will include several plans in next years budget that will fight poverty through cooperative efforts across many government departments. The administration also plans on using stimulus money to help fund efforts it deems worthy.

From the Washington Post, reporter Michael A. Fletcher writes about the many challenges of arms of government "co-operating" and some of the proposed measures.

Still, many obstacles remain. Federal agencies must learn how to cooperate more closely, a process that officials say is more difficult than it sounds. Agencies are set up to funnel policy and money through their own chains of command, not across the government.

In addition, the policy relies on alliances between historically contentious suburban and city officials. The administration plans to use federal grants to reward cities for cooperating with their suburban neighbors, which in many parts of the country are increasingly beset by traditionally urban problems such as crime, failing schools and declining neighborhoods.

Also, state governments must be on board. Much of the $787 billion federal stimulus package was structured in ways that left states in charge of the final distribution, largely forfeiting the federal government's role in reshaping how the money is eventually spent. A report released by the U.S. Conference of Mayors found that major metropolitan areas were shortchanged in the first round of stimulus transportation spending administered by states.
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In its budget for next year, the administration has proposed creating programs that would fight poverty through tightly linked services and improvements. The Choice Neighborhoods Initiative would expand on the Hope VI program, which financed the redevelopment of decrepit public housing by funding projects that improve surrounding areas, by adding housing, sidewalks, parks and other amenities.

Also, the Education Department is offering planning grants to nonprofit organizations to develop full-service programs to guide young people from birth through college. The hope is to replicate the success of the Harlem Children's Zone, a nonprofit that provides services such as medical care, day care and charter schools, and is credited with increasing academic achievement for many of the 11,000 students in its programs.

So far, much of the administration's work to transform the federal policy toward metropolitan areas has proceeded below the radar, but people who work in the field are nonetheless hopeful.

A round up of the aid pledges to the Philippines

Reuters Alert Net has a complete breakdown of all of the pledges in aid that have been promised to the Philippines. The United Nations asked the international community for 75 million dollars to aid the typhoon hit country. Only 17 million has been pledged so far.

Our snippet only contains some of the "big" countries, a complete list can be found here.

EUROPEAN UNION

- The European Union and some member-states, including Spain, France, Germany and Switzerland, have contributed a total of $5.6 million.

UNITED NATIONS

The World Food Programme has committed to deliver about $500,000 worth of rice and brought in 3 helicopters and 7 boats to help deliver food and relief materials to flooded areas.

The World Health Organisation has promised $42,000 in relief funds while UNICEF has initially provided $226,350 in food and relief materials.

ASIAN DEVELOPMENT BANK

- $3 million in cash donation

UNITED STATES

- $100,000 in relief efforts. Jerry cans and hygiene kits worth $400,000 were being brought by chartered flight last week. The U.S. military has deployed two ships, 11 heavy-lift helicopters and engineering equipment to help in the clean up effort.

CHINA

- $140,000 in donations, including contributions from Huawei Corporation.

JAPAN

- $220,000 worth of relief goods, including thousands of blankets and sleeping bags, waters tanks and water purifiers.

2 million babies and mothers die a child birth

A new study says that the number of deaths due to childbirth outnumber child deaths due to malaria or AIDS. Over 2 million children and mothers die from childbirth complications.

The study says that this is due to lack of medical care and professionals in rural areas. Most of the deaths occur in remote villages in Africa or Southern Asia where there are no skilled health workers.

From this Associated Press article that we found at WISN, writer Celean Jacobson reveals the statistics. For more information on poverty effects on child birth can be found at the International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics website .

The study, released Tuesday at the International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics world congress being held in Cape Town, also showed that such deaths could be easily avoided.

"The world will continue to miss the unheard cry of the 230 babies who die every hour from childbirth complications," unless there is better planning and implementation of policies, according to the study.

Some 1.02 million babies are stillborn and another 904,000 die soon after birth. By comparison, 820,000 children die from malaria and 208,000 die from HIV/AIDS worldwide.

About 42 percent of the world's 536,000 maternal deaths also occur during childbirth, according to the study. Deaths in Africa and South Asia account for three-quarters of the maternal and infant deaths.

The research was led by Save the Children, the Gates Foundation and Johns Hopkins University with investigators from a dozen countries. It was published in the October edition of the federation's journal.
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The report said that many of the deaths could be avoided with improvements in basic health care, and training for local health care workers to perform emergency cesarean sections and other lifesaving techniques.
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Poverty is one of the main causes of these deaths. In wealthier countries most women give birth with a skilled attendant while in poor countries, few women do.

Aid reaches remote Indonesian villages after earthquake

Aid is finally reaching remote villages in Indoneasia after the September 30th earthquake. The earthquake caused mudslides that swept away entire villages. Many remote areas were cutoff to assistance as many roads were swept away.

From this Associated Press article that we found at Toronto's 680 News, writer Eric Talmadge says that many survivors are seeing aid workers for the first time in their lives.

House after house in the village of Lubuk Laweh lay toppled, their owners scrounging through them for tarps and other belongings. Children ran into the street crying "please, help me" as a truck convoy of food and water supplies rattled in.

Large parts of the provincial capital of Padang and nearby villages were destroyed in the Sept. 30 quake. The official death toll was 704 but could reach into the thousands. About 180,000 buildings - half of them homes - were severely damaged or flattened, Indonesia's Disaster Management Agency said.
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Aid workers handed out bottled water and packets of instant noodles in the village in the first major aid delivery to reach it. The road to the village had been blocked by debris.

Aid workers from at least 20 countries are descending on West Sumatra, including the largest contingent of U.S. military since the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami that killed around 130,000 people in nearby Aceh province.

Like most of Indonesia, West Sumatra province had no functioning health system even before the quake and an influx of international aid has prompted all sorts of people to seek help.

"We have treated nearly 400 people in the past four days," said Yoshi Kazu Yamada, the deputy of a Japanese medical team in Padang Pariaman district, where about 100 people were lining up outside tents waiting for treatment.

"At first it was flesh wounds, but now it is more people seeking help for chronic conditions like diabetes," he said. "These problems were not caused by the quake, but they need care."

Mauritius best governed in Africa, according to two surveys

Two different studies ranking African governance from best to worst both have the country of Mauritius as the best.

The New York Times article on the corruption studies focuses on a squabble that caused them to split into two. Harvard political scientist, Robert Rotberg, and Sudan philanthropist, Mo Ibrahim, used to work together on the project, but differences over control and the final say led to the split.

For our snippet, we go to an analysis of the rankings from the two surveys, and the results are very similar. Writer Celia Dugger breaks down the data for us.

The two rival ratings count 9 out of 10 of the same countries among the best and worst governed, though not in the same order. Among the best governed, both name Mauritius, Seychelles, Cape Verde, Botswana, Tunisia, Ghana, Namibia, South Africa and São Tomé and Príncipe. The Rotberg index also includes Algeria in the top 10, while the Ibrahim index counts Lesotho.

Among the worst performers, both count Guinea, Zimbabwe, Eritrea, Central African Republic, Ivory Coast, Congo, Chad, Sudan and Somalia. For the Rotberg index, Angola made the bottom 10, while the Ibrahim index included Equatorial Guinea.

They had more substantive differences over rankings for nations in the middle. For example, the Rotberg index ranked Malawi, a small, impoverished southern African nation, 14th, while the Ibrahim index put it 25th.

Daniel Kaufmann, a Brookings Institution expert on corruption who is advising the Ibrahim Foundation, said the effort to make the index an African assessment of African governance could add to its influence on a continent where there is still suspicion of Western research.

“It will be harder to reject because of the Africanization,” said Mr. Kaufmann, who was formerly at the World Bank Institute, where he shaped its global governance ratings.

The Ibrahim Foundation has placed full-page advertisements in newspapers in 45 African countries describing its findings in local languages, an attempt to inform a broader public and to encourage civic groups to take advantage of the trove of information on its Web site.

Advisers on the Ibrahim index say it relies on more recent data — from 2008, as well as 2007 — and tracks a broader array of information, including assessments by experts, than does the Rotberg index.

World Vision seeks donations for India

World Vision is calling for donations to help with the new drought in India. Drought is affecting North and Central India, while floods are washing away crops in Southern India. Food prices have already sharply increased due to the weather.

From this World Vision press release, we read more about the food insecurity in India.

Massive food shortages are now impacting hundreds of millions of Indians with floods and droughts setting back efforts to combat poverty by years, warns World Vision.

The failure of the monsoon in the north, northeast and some parts of western India, has resulted in 22% below normal rains for the country. Millions of farmers are now suffering from failed harvests or crops destroyed by flood waters. Any rains would now come to late to help farmers.

"India is now entering a period of severe food vulnerability," said Dr Jayakumar Christian, National Director for World Vision India. "We are seeing our development work set back by years." He said 350 million Indians were drought affected - including in 52 of World Vision's 135 project areas a.

Dr Christian said the floods in Southern India had caught people and the government by surprise, leaving 1.5 million homeless and over 200 dead. Over 200,000 homes had been destroyed.

"The sudden floods came as a real shock to people living in Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra because the region has not experienced anything like this in more than 100 years. These are not disaster prone areas," he said.

World Vision is now appealing for USD$2 million to meet the immediate needs of flood survivors who have been driven from their homes into relief camps. Those floods have destroyed crops and impacted some 20 million people, with scores of villages cut off.

The agency's relief workers have been providing cooked food, family packs of household items, mosquito nets, cooking utensils and clothing to thousands of survivors in relief camps in the states of Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka as part of an initial USD$200,000 response. Aid support would extend to thousands more people over the coming days.

World Vision hopes to raise USD$2million to ramp up its response to meet the needs of 100,000 people.

Dr Christian said: "Rates of malnourishment are already extremely high in India. Almost half of all under-fives are malnourished and these droughts and floods are pushing families to the very edge. What is needed is a massive coordinated response involving the federal and central governments, and local and international NGOs to make sure food aid gets through."

Without assistance he warned that crop failures and losses would lead to:

Mass migration from rural areas to the cities Increased indebtedness among farmers Parents pulling children out of school to work instead Increased vulnerabilities for children, including the risk of children being trafficked into labour or sexual exploitation

VIDEO: Anti IMF protests in Turkey

Annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank are now being held in Istanbul. As you will see in this video, some of the people there don't want them around.

The drug fueled war in Yemen

The war between Shiite rebels and the Yemen government continues with no end in sight. Fueled by drugs and poverty, the soldiers often turn to drugs to forget their plight. Leaves from the quat plant are often the only thing sold in war torn areas.

From this Associated Press article that we found at WPLG, writer Ahmed Al-Haj describes the conditions in Yemen.

Resting between frenetic bursts of fighting with tenacious Shiite rebels in the north, many Yemeni soldiers pass the day chewing qat leaves -- the mild stimulant plant that is the impoverished Arab nation's traditional drug of choice.

For the beleaguered troops dispatched to Yemen's rugged Saada province, the chewing sessions offer a welcome high and suppress fears that the rebels may have the upper hand against an army lacking basic gear such as helmets and body armor.

The Yemeni army has been embroiled in a five-year conflict with Saada's rebels that erupted when Shiite fighters took up arms against the central government, complaining of neglect and the widening influence of hard-line Sunni fundamentalists, some of whom consider Shiites heretics.

Shiites make up 30 percent of Yemen's population of 22 million.
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Government efforts to contain the rebellion have been hampered by a separate, secessionist movement in the south, as well as Yemen's crippling poverty and plummeting oil revenues. Some officials also blame corruption in the military for the failure to uproot the rebels.

The fighting, which has displaced about 150,000 people since 2004, flared up in August, with rebels capturing an army post on a strategic highway between the capital and the Saudi border.

The escalation has killed unknown numbers on both sides and crammed tens of thousands of the newly displaced into camps, schools and barns turned into shelters, while aid groups struggle to bring in supplies.

International relief agencies have urged the government to open up corridors to the trapped civilians.

"I have been living here in Harf Sofyan with my 12 family members for two months now, sleeping in the open and under the trees," said teacher Jamal Amin al-Jatham. "We have nothing now after we fled the fighting."

Drought in India sends food prices rising

We have heard a lot about the drought in East Africa, but India's monsoon season just ended, and there wasn't much rainfall. Already food prices are soaring in India and economists fear it will further undo gains made against poverty in the last 10 years.

From the Wall Street Journal writer Vibhuti Agarwal tells us the extent of India's drought.

The drought could threaten India's otherwise robust economic growth. About half of India's 1.2 billion people depend on agriculture for their livelihood.

Many economists forecast that gross domestic product will expand about 6% this year, but the weak monsoon already has sent food prices skyrocketing and is expected to stoke inflation.

"The monsoon this year has left the country with the worst drought since 1972," said Awadhesh Kumar, the forecasting officer at the Indian Meteorological Department in New Delhi.

Among the worst-affected regions were the major rice- and cereal-growing northern and western states of Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said in August that the government had enough food stocks to handle the prolonged drought. But the drought is expected to have a severe impact on the rural poor, a focus of the current government, which was re-elected earlier this year on a platform of improving life for ordinary Indians.

"The government has failed to pull the poor out of the crisis," said Devinder Sharma, a food-policy analyst at the Forum for Biotechnology and Food Security based in New Delhi.

"The severe drought has pushed back the household economy of farmers in the rural areas by 10 years."

Free school lunch enrollment increases in California

School districts across the states often use free or reduced cost school lunches to determine poverty in their districts. For the state of California, the students applying for free meals has increased at a dramatic rate, the largest increase in a decade.

From the Palo Alto Online, writer Chris Kenrick looks at a new report issued from the Lucile Packard Foundation.

Nearly 19,000 more California children enrolled in the federally subsidized meal program over the last school year, pushing the total enrollment to 53 percent of California public school students, according to the Palo Alto-based Lucile Packard Foundation for Children's Health.

Locally, 7.7 percent of Palo Alto school children qualified for the program this year, up from 6.6 percent in 2007.

In East Palo Alto and East Menlo Park, which is served by the Ravenswood City School District, 85.2 percent of children qualified for the program, up from 84.3 percent in 2007.

In Menlo Park and Los Altos, the number of children qualifying for the program was less than 5 percent.

Countywide, 37.7 percent of school children in Santa Clara County qualified for the program, as did 33.7 percent of school children in San Mateo County.

To qualify for the federal lunch subsidy program, a child's family income must fall below 185 percent of the federal poverty level, which is $40,793 for a family of four in 2009.

The numbers were made available through Kidsdata, a project of the Lucile Packard Foundation for Children's Health that aims to provide reliable data on the health and well-being of children. Most of the data is from public sources, though some comes from the foundation's Bay Area Parent Poll.

Indiana sees a jump in poverty level in 2008

Your blogger's home state of Michigan has seen many jobs go to Indiana instead of coming here. Indiana seems to do a good job of attracting business down there thanks to favorable tax breaks.

But Indiana' proximity to Detroit means it was reliant on the auto industry as well. The effects of the car bankruptcy's has hit Indiana hard according to the US Census Bureau.

In another of our series of the Community Surveys, Indianapolis Star Press gives us the results for Indiana.

The percentage of Hoosiers living in poverty increased to 13.1 percent in 2008, up from 12.3 percent the year before, according to the Census Bureau's annual American Community Survey.

That survey estimates that more than 807,000 Hoosiers were living in poverty in 2008, up from 757,000 in 2007.

The numbers are particularly disturbing for black and Hispanic Hoosiers. In 2007, 25.5 percent of blacks and 22.2 percent of Hispanics lived below the poverty line, compared with 10.4 percent of whites. But this year's survey shows those numbers have climbed to 28.1 percent of blacks and 23.7 percent of Hispanics. The percentage of whites rose more slowly, to 11 percent.

Experts who work with the homeless and help distribute food stamps say Indiana's increased poverty rates reflect what they've seen since last year: More Hoosiers are struggling to make ends meet and feed their families.

"These numbers are directly related to what we've been seeing, that's for sure," said Rich Adams, deputy director of the state's Division of Family Resources, which distributes food stamps. "We've seen a steady increase in the number of people needing food stamps for the last several years."

The census survey found that California, Florida, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Hawaii and Connecticut also had significant statistical increases in their poverty rates.

VIDEO: Communities under water in the Philippines

Save the Children has posted a video from the Philippines that highlights the need for aid after Tropical Storm Ketsana. On September 26 the storm caused widespread flooding through Manila washing away homes and communities. This video shows an entire community trying to get to dry ground.



From the related press release, Save The Children describes some of their rescue work in the Philippines.

Due to our preparedness efforts on the ground in the Philippines, we were able to respond quickly to the tropical storm. We have distributed hundreds of emergency kits to affected children; these include essentials such as clothes and soap. Plastic jugs to store water will also be provided.

This work will be expanded to reach affected children and their families who are staying outside evacuation centres. Teams of staff continue to conduct rapid assessments in affected communities. As part of the assessments, Save the Children will prioritise childrens need for psychosocial support.

Terre Vivante; a microcredit operation in Mauritania

The Voice of America has a profile of a microcredit organization in Mauritania that is turning women into businesswomen. The non-profit Terre Vivante is a co-operative that gives little loans to women in the area. The women are often selling goods at markets and the little loans help them to improve their shops.

From the Voice of America, writer Anne Look examines one success story from the co-op.

In Mauritania, women often bear the brunt of the country's crushing poverty, but a local nonprofit organization is trying to change that by turning wives and mothers into entrepreneurs.

Ticket to success?

Emetoulahi Mint Ahmedou Saleme used to spend most days at home with her four children, while her husband bartered and sold what he could to scrape by. Saleme and her husband could not afford to send the children to school. They could not always afford to feed them.

Now, Saleme earns up to $15 a day selling cold drinks at a market near her home in the El Mina slum on the outskirts of Nouakchott. The secret to her success? A small, white refrigerator given to her by a local women's co-operative, Terre Vivante.

Saleme says this has been successful project for her. It has definitely improved her daily life and living conditions. She says her income is not only larger but also more regular, which enables her to send her children to school. She can buy them food, clothing, school supplies and medicines. She says it has been a great project for the family.

Smiling, Saleme opens the fridge. Small plastic baggies filled with water and homemade bissap juice are piled in the freezer. Neat rows of soda bottles line the inside of the refrigerator door.

Realizing that cold drinks would sell much better in the scorching desert heat, Saleme says she approached Terre Vivante with her business plan last year. Now, she is the one giving her husband money to support his trading business.

Non-profit invests in women

Founded in 1993, Terre Vivante invests in women via non-formal education classes and micro-finance projects, like Saleme's, in the hopes of finding a long-term path to success for impoverished families.

The non-profit's director, Moulaye Ahmed Ould Abdel Jelil, says the group focuses on women because they are often the most impacted by poverty.

Jelil says if a woman's husband works, he often keeps the money for himself. He says it is the wife who takes care of the family. She does the shopping, prepares the meals and takes care of the children's clothing, education and health care. He says the husband works, but often what he brings home is not enough. It is the woman's responsibility to economize and get by on whatever he gives to the family. He says that is just the reality of Mauritanian society, and women suffer as a result.

He says female entrepreneurs, like Saleme, are a relatively new phenomenon in Mauritania, as women struggle to make ends meet for their families.

Educational programs lead to better life

Mauritania is one of the poorest countries in the world. On average, people there live on about two dollars a day. Terre Vivante has found that families in the Nouakchott's slums eat just two meals a day, and what food they do eat is low in nutritional value. As the cost of living rises, Jelil has seen fathers abandoning the families they can no longer support.

In Mauritania, educating girls is often a low-priority, especially in poor families, and most women do not receive more than a primary school education, if that. To fill in the gaps, Terre Vivante's educational programs cover a range of topics from basic literacy and computer skills to nutrition and HIV/AIDS prevention.

The group has also organized cooperatives to help rural women develop business plans and purchase goats, sheep and cattle using micro-credit loans. Jelil says they are in the process of developing a similar micro-credit program for women in Nouakchott's slums.

Jelil says empowering women is essential in the predominantly Muslim country where women are often subjugated to men.

He says the more financially independent a woman is, the more of a voice she has and the less dependent she is on others. He says that allows her to express herself and her values with dignity. He says that is what his organization is working towards: women who can be strong and proud of what they have done.

Giving back

Since partnering with Terre Vivante, Saleme has become a literacy teacher for other women in the cooperative and her fridge has become a source of inspiration for the women in her neighborhood.

Saleme says the project has been great for the women, who ask her where she got the fridge because they would like to do something similar. She says others would like to be trained on sewing machines, fabric painting and even on computers so they can do their own accounting. Her friends already have a business painting veils and would like training on how to expand their business.

A textile business. A public drinking fountain for the neighborhood. A fridge. The women in El Mina have big ideas, Saleme says, they just need a little help to get started.

Writing a book to climb out of poverty

A student newspaper gives us this inspiring story of a woman taking it upon herself to get out of poverty. The Independent Florida Alligator introduces us to Marcee Winthrop. Marcee has lived in poverty for two decades, but is publishing a book about her experiences to help climb out of it.

Writer Jared Misner tells us about the book and what stuck Marcee in poverty for so long

Marcee Winthrop just wants to smile again.

But Winthrop's constant struggle against poverty has changed nearly every aspect of her life, including her smile.

"I used to smile so much people called me 'Smiley,'" Winthrop said as one of her last remaining teeth wiggled from the inside of her mouth like an autumn leaf waiting to fall from a branch. "I used to have a beautiful smile."

Dressed in a vibrantly colored floral-print blouse, Winthrop, 54, said she's lived in poverty for two decades following a string of poorly selected husbands and an inability to find a job, a problem that Winthrop said stems from her appearance.

But that's all about to change.

Winthrop published "Poverty Revolution Part One: Skimming the Surface" in May as part of her New Year's Resolution to her daughter, Maralisa, to get out of poverty before the end of the year.

Since its publication, the book has sold more than 50 copies at about $20 a piece, and Winthrop said she's on her way to keeping her promise to her daughter.

"We can see the light at the end of the tunnel," Winthrop said. "We're just not there yet."

As a result of her first book's success, Winthrop plans to write at least five more in a "Poverty Revolution" series.

The second of the series, "Poverty Revolution Part Two: In The Depths," is already in the works and should be published just in time for Christmas, she said.

For those of you without a job, I would encourage you to take a similar path. Sell your skills or services directly to people, instead of bothering finding a job. Especially now, as the economy in the States is not growing fast enough for businesses to hire people. If you can write a book, write it, if you can wash windows, put an ad in craigslist and start washing, if you can recycle pallets, get your nail gun ready and do it.

Poverty triples in the Gaza strip

Behind the blockade, the Palestinian people have seen a tripling of poverty within the West Bank. The United Nations says that 1 in 5 Palestinians are in poverty, or 300,000 total.

From this Associated Press article that we found at MSN money we learn more about the humanitarian situation behind walls.

Gaza's economy has foundered under an Israeli-Egyptian border blockade imposed after the Islamic militant group Hamas seized control of the territory in 2007 from forces loyal to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

John Ging, the U.N. Relief and Works Agency's top official in Gaza, called the rise in poverty a "predictable consequence" of the border blockade.

"The suffering, the impoverishment, the misery of the people here in Gaza continues to rise because of a man-made crisis, a political failure," Ging told reporters.

The blockade's toll on Gaza residents was compounded by Israel's winter offensive in the strip that aimed to stop Palestinian rocket fire at southern Israel. Thousands of homes, government buildings and businesses were destroyed during the Israeli campaign.

U.N. staff said the rise also reflects improved monitoring of refugees' economic conditions.

The U.N. agency provides services, including emergency food rations, to 750,000 of Gaza's 1.4 million residents. Those who are unable to feed their families are considered "abject poor" and receive extra aid, the agency said.

More amendments being debated on US Health Care Bill

Some proposals are being considered in the US Health Care bill that Senators hope will make coverage more affordable. The bill originally imposed fines on people who could not afford insurance, but a new amendment seeks to give an exception to people who incomes are too low.

From the New York Times, writer David M. Herszenhorn explains some of the proposals being considered.

Among the proposals under consideration is an amendment by Senator Maria Cantwell, Democrat of Washington, that would create a “basic health plan” for Americans earning less than 200 percent of the federal poverty level, or $44,100 for a family of four. The proposal would let states develop or expand various existing insurance programs that now typically cover people who qualify for Medicaid. Small states could develop plans jointly.

The Baucus bill would already expand Medicaid to Americans earning up to 133 percent of poverty, and Ms. Cantwell’s proposal would effectively expand it further. But because her plan is expected to be cheaper than providing subsidies to those low-income people to buy their own insurance, it could save money that could be used to make other provisions of the bill more generous.

Other potential components of the affordability package include a proposal by Senator Olympia J. Snowe, Republican of Maine, to phase in the financial penalty for people who fail to obtain health insurance.

There is also an amendment by Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, that would allow exemptions from the penalty if insurance would cost more than 7 percent of household income. The bill currently sets the exemption at 10 percent of income.

A temporary improvement in Alabama

One of the poorest states in the nation actually saw improvement in it's poverty percentage in 2008. More people moved above the poverty line in Alabama than any other state in the union.

From the Tuscaloosa News, this Associated Press article tells us about the improvement that might be short lived.

The numbers were gathered in 2008 and reflect “the calm before the storm” of the recession hit the state, said Kimble Forrister, director of Alabama Arise. At the time, the state’s unemployment rate was better than the rest of the nation, Forrister said.

The census figures reported Wednesday by the Press-Register in Mobile show that the number of people below the poverty line fell by 47,000 to 712,835. That was the largest numerical drop of any state.

Alabama’s poverty rate fell 1.2 points to 15.7 percent. Alabama is tied with South Carolina with the 10th highest rate of poverty in the country. Nationwide, the poverty rate rose to 13.2 percent, an 11-year high.

“The effects of the recession did not occur until after this data was collected,” Forrister said. “At the time our unemployment rate was better than the rest of the nation.”

Alabama’s unemployment rate was below the national average for all of 2008 before soaring above the national average in January 2009 for the first time since May 2001.

“The news in 2008 shows that Alabama was doing the right things. We were creating jobs,” Forrister said. He said he expects Alabama’s poverty rate numbers to be back up for 2009.
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Also, one-time stimulus payments to individuals disproportionately boosted incomes in poorer states in 2008, earlier statistics have shown.

Alabama was one of only three states that saw poverty rates fall significantly. Louisiana’s rate fell 1.3 percentage points to 17.3 percent, and Texas’s rate fell 0.5 percentage points to 15.8 percent. Both states were boosted by strong energy sectors last year.

145,000 Minnesota children living in poverty

Some statistics will be released today to tell us the numbers of Minnesota children in poverty. The report also warns on the effects of poverty on the children, resulting in a "toxic stress" that will hamper development and well being.

From the Minneapolis Star Tribune, writer Warren Wolfe fills us in.

Rising child poverty means that more Minnesota children are suffering physical and emotional "toxic stress" that, for some, will result in irreversible delays in brain development, according to a new report that tracks 14 indicators of child well-being over the last decade.

Even in the best years, more than 100,000 Minnesota children live poverty. But the past few years have not been good for children, according to the 2009 Kids Count report by the Children's Defense Fund-Minnesota.

About 140,000 Minnesota children were in poverty last year - up from 106,000 in 2001 - and the current recession may have pushed that number as high as 180,000, said Kara Arzamendia, the report's main author and the agency's research director.

"Kids are resilient, and the wonder is that some overcome the effects of poverty," said Jim Koppel, president of the nonprofit agency. "But there's a lot of research that shows a lasting impact of poverty on many children. That hurts the children and it hurts society with more crime, fewer trained workers and a range of social problems."

In its annual Kids Count report, the Children's Defense Fund examines a range of demographic, education, health, income and other government-collected data.

The report expands on a state-by-state analysis by the Annie E. Casey Foundation released in August that found Minnesota second-best among the states.