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.