Poverty News Blog

New UNICEF study on preventable diseases in the third world

2009-11-20T08:18:00.003-05:00

A new study from UNICEF has prompted a rash of stories about preventable diseases that kill children in the under-developed world. While most of the world focuses it's attention on eradicating AIDS, diseases such as diarrhea and pneumonia kill millions of children a year in the under-developed world.

Our snippet comes from Yahoo News, which we found as we signed into our e-mail this morning. We were somewhat surprised that they would put this story on their front page instead a celebrity piece. Associated Press writer Margie Mason gives us some statistics from UNICEF.

Diarrhea doesn't make headlines. Nor does pneumonia. AIDS and malaria tend to get most of the attention.

Yet even though cheap tools could prevent and cure both diseases, they kill an estimated 3.5 million kids under 5 each a year globally — more than HIV and malaria combined.

"They have been neglected, because donor or partnership mechanisms shifted their emphasis to HIV and AIDS and other issues," said Dr. Tesfaye Shiferaw, a UNICEF official in Africa. "These age-old traditional killers remain with us. The ones dying are the children of the poor."

Global spending on maternal, newborn and child health was about $3.5 billion in 2006, according to a report by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. That same year, nearly $9 billion was devoted to HIV and AIDS, according to UNAIDS.

Pneumonia is the biggest killer of children under 5, claiming more then 2 million lives annually or about 20 percent of all child deaths. AIDS, in contrast, accounts for about 2 percent.

If identified early, pneumonia can be treated with inexpensive antibiotics. Yet UNICEF and the World Health Organization estimate less than 20 percent of those sickened receive the drugs.

A vaccine has been available since 2000 but has not yet reached many children in developing countries. The GAVI Alliance, a global partnership, hopes to introduce it to 42 countries by 2015.

Diarrheal diseases, such as cholera and rotavirus, kill 1.5 million kids each year, most under 2 years old. The children die from dehydration, weakened immune systems and malnutrition. Often they get sick from drinking dirty water.

We guess Senegal will have to export instead

2009-11-19T15:46:00.003-05:00

The rice harvest is booming in Senegal... but no one there wants to eat it. After the food crisis of last year, Senegal decided to produce more rice. The problem is, the tastes of the public still prefer the rice imported from Asia.

It's an example of the public's preference running counter to the efforts to increase local food production to protect against future food price shocks.

From this AFP article that we found at Google News, writer Laurence Boutreux tries to answer why the Senegalese prefer foreign rice.

But the Senegalese, who serve rice with so many meals, said no thanks. Why? That's where it gets sticky.

Explanations range from taste to social standing to the legacy of colonialism. Whatever the reason, the government is now figuring out how to promote locally grown rice and hopes to import none of the staple by 2012.

It seems they may have a hard time achieving that goal. Last year, over three quarters of the 800,000 tonnes of rice consumed by the Senegalese was imported from Asia.

The impetus for change came from the food crisis, which had sent prices of imported rice soaring. Senegal has since been pushing locally grown rice to rely less on agricultural imports, but despite good crops, much remains unsold.
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According to the latest official estimates -- disputed by some producers -- the rice harvest will be at 508,481 tonnes for 2009, up 25 percent compared to 2008.

The figures have prompted a promise from Senegal's agriculture minister that the country "will not import a single kernel of rice in 2012".

But what if no one eats it?

One expert blamed the problem on the legacy of colonialism.

"It dates back to the colonisation," said Wore Gana Seck, the head of the commission for durable development and environment at Senegal's economic and social council.

"Before the Senegalese ate millet and sorghum, but the French imposed a monoculture of peanuts on farmers and imported broken rice from their other colony Indochina for the Senegalese to eat," she says.

Increase in poor children attending New Jersey Schools

2009-11-19T06:13:00.003-05:00

US Census Bureau data released yesterday shows the percentages of poor children in the nation's school districts. For most parts of the US the percentages of poor children increased from 2007 to 2008.

From the Press of Atlantic City, we find this story that examines the school districts in the New Jersey area. Writer Diane D’Amico begins her story by introducing us to an area school principal.

Gladys Lauriello didn’t realize her family was poor when she went to school in Wildwood. But now, as Lauriello works as principal in the same building where she attended class, she recognizes the signs of poverty that characterized her youth.

She wasn’t surprised to learn that U.S. Census Bureau data released Wednesday show that 36 percent of school-age children in Wildwood live in poverty. That’s the highest percentage among school districts in New Jersey.

“It’s probably a low estimate, frankly,” said Lauriello, the Wildwood High School principal.

New Jersey annually ranks at or near the top among the states in household income. But it has some of the poorest school districts in the country, according to The Press of Atlantic City analysis of the census poverty data. And area school districts, including Atlantic City, Pleasantville, Vineland and Bridgeton, number among the nation’s worst in terms of percent or number of children age 5 to 17 living in poverty.

The percentage of impoverished children increased in 70 percent of area school districts from 2007 to 2008. The number of children in poverty grew by 9 percent in Atlantic and Cape May counties and by 16 percent in Ocean County. The number in poverty increased by 5 percent statewide. The percentage of impoverished schoolchildren increased in two-thirds of districts statewide last year, although a number of them grew by less than a percentage point.

In terms of the percentage of children in poverty, Atlantic City and Bridgeton rank among the worst 10 percent of districts in the nation and Wildwood is in the worst 3 percent. Thirty-two New Jersey districts rank among the 10 percent nationwide with the highest number of impoverished children. Those include Bridgeton, Millville and Pleasantville from this area. Atlantic City and Vineland rank in the worst 5 percent.

Video: a sad tale from India's slums

2009-11-19T06:08:00.001-05:00

In this video from the Guardian, we see the story of Surma, who lost her son to an easily preventable disease. Parmesh died of diarrhea, but it is not an isolated case. The deaths of children in India's slums have doubled in recent years.

The failure of the World Food Summit

2009-11-18T10:20:00.005-05:00

The three day World Food Summit has now concluded in Rome. According to all anti-hunger advocates it was a failure.

A couple of reasons are given for why the summit failed to come up with funding goals or a deadline for ending hunger. Some point to the lack of any ability of the UN's Food and Agricultural Organization to bully developed nations into action. Others say it's a lack of interest by any elected officials of the developed world over people starving to death.

From the IPS, writer Paul Virgo gives us the analysis.

At best it reflects the limits of the U.N. and its flagship body in the fight against hunger, the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), activists say.

At worst, they say it shows wealthy countries’ leaders lack the political will to really to put their backs into solving a problem that - no matter how unjust and scandalous, in a world with more than enough to feed everyone - generally does not directly affect the voters who put them into office.

Either way it is probably bad news for the 1.02 billion people, almost one sixth of the global population, who go to bed every night with empty stomachs.

FAO Director General Jacques Diouf tried to make the best of it Monday after the approval of a toothless declaration.

He pointed out consensus had been achieved on the need to end the long- running decline in agricultural investment, which is one of the major reasons many people in rural areas of developing countries struggle to feed themselves.

But, Diouf admitted "regret" that countries had failed to commit themselves to wiping out hunger by 2025 and that developed nations had not agreed to allocate 44 billion dollars in aid to agriculture per year.

That figure sounds like an awful lot of money, but it was not such an ambitious target if one considers other ways money is spent.
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The summit was skipped by all but one of the leaders of countries in the Group of Eight leading world economic powers - Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi, who only had to take a short drive from his office to reach the FAO’s headquarters.

The G8 pledged to devote 20 million dollars to agricultural aid over the next three years at the L’Aquila summit in July. So some believe the no-shows here imply they want to implement their food security policies via G8 organs or other bodies, such as the World Bank, which has frequently been accused of infringing national sovereignty by trying to promote models of development imported from the West that are not appropriate in poorer countries.

"The absence of the G8 leaders is a clear message that the rich countries are still trying to impose their policies on poor countries," said Sergio Marelli, head of the association of Italian non-governmental organisations (NGOs).

"Agro-food policies and management of resources for their implementation can only be the competence of the specialised United Nations agencies, above all the FAO and the International Fund for Agricultural Development, and should not be handed to the World Bank," Marelli said. "We believe assigning the World Bank the role of policy-maker would mean giving it back to the institution that has the greatest responsibility for the current food crisis."

Aborigine poverty in Australia compared to torture

2009-11-18T09:15:00.001-05:00

A leader of Amnesty International spoke out about aborigine poverty in Australia. Irene Khan compared the poverty to torture and called on Australia's government to end what she called "discriminatory" practices.

From the Sydney Morning Herald, this AAP story recorded Khan's comments.

The poverty experienced by many Aborigines is as morally reprehensible as torture and must be eradicated, Amnesty International secretary-general Irene Khan says.

In Australia for a week-long visit, Ms Khan has also called on the Rudd government to end the discriminatory measures of the Northern Territory intervention into remote indigenous communities.

They were "stigmatising and disempowering an already marginalised people", she said.

Ms Khan visited Aboriginal homeland communities in central Australia before addressing the National Press Club in Canberra on Wednesday.

The poverty she saw northeast of Alice Springs reminded her of a third world country, she said in a statement.

"That indigenous peoples experience human rights violations on a continent of such privilege is not merely disheartening, it is morally outrageous," she said.

"The moral imperative to eradicate such poverty is no less an imperative on government than to eliminate torture."

Ms Khan, the first woman, first Asian and first Muslim to head the world's largest human rights organisation, also blasted federal Labor for continuing the former Howard government's interventionist policies.

She was particularly scathing of the compulsory quarantining of welfare payments and suggested there was a "real risk" Labor could squander an opportunity to change direction.

"The blunt force of the intervention's heavy-handed one-size-fits-all approach cannot deliver the desired results," Ms Khan said.

"The government will not secure the long-term protection of women and children unless there is an integrated human rights solution that empowers peoples and engages them to take responsibility for the solutions."

The Racial Discrimination Act was suspended in the Northern Territory to allow the intervention's more controversial measures to be introduced.

Indigenous Affairs Minister Jenny Macklin has vowed to reinstate the act and will introduce the relevant legislation into federal parliament within days.

But Ms Khan warned Labor needed to do so "in line with Australia's international obligations not to discriminate against indigenous peoples".

Poverty cause of war according to Afghanistan's residents

2009-11-18T06:50:00.004-05:00

Further proof that the fight in Afghanistan should not be waged by soldiers but by humanitarians and social businesspeople comes from Oxfam today. While people in the West believe the cause of the war in Afghanistan is the Taliban, a survey shows that most of Afghanistan's residents believe that poverty is it's cause.

From Reuters, writer Jonathon Burch details the survey from Oxfam.

After three decades of war, Afghanistan remains one of the poorest and least developed countries in the world. It is also one of the most corrupt. Unemployment stands at 40 percent and more than half the country live below the poverty line.

On top of that, violence is at its highest levels since U.S.-backed Afghan forces toppled the Taliban in late 2001.

The report, based on a survey of more than 700 ordinary Afghans by British charity Oxfam and several local aid groups, found that 70 percent of people questioned viewed poverty and unemployment as the main drivers of the conflict.

Nearly half of those surveyed said corruption and the ineffectiveness of their government were the main reasons for the continued fighting, while 36 percent said the Taliban insurgency was to blame.

The 704 respondents from around the country were allowed to give multiple answers on reasons for the conflict.
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There are some 110,000 foreign soldiers in Afghanistan, 68,000 of them American, trying to quell a strengthening Taliban insurgency that has spread to previously peaceful areas.

U.S. President Barack Obama is in the final stages of deciding whether to send up to 40,000 more U.S. troops.

But ordinary Afghans are frustrated at the slow pace of development, endemic corruption and the inability of Afghan and international security forces to stop the violence.

Instead, one of the poorest nations in the world will soon see more American soldiers coming into the country. So our question is, how do soldiers fight poverty? Most likely by killing those who live in it.

New survey on child exploitation in the UK

2009-11-18T06:43:00.003-05:00

A UK children's charity has conducted a study that says there needs to give more help given to sexually exploited children. But the results were not all bad, the charity Barnado's is encouraged by the steps that are beginning to be made in fighting the problem.

The survey also finds that the criminals who exploit and traffic children are becoming more sophisticated in their efforts.

From the UK's Huddersfield Examiner, writer Nick Lavigueur gives us the survey for us.

Based on a survey of Barnardo’s 21 specialist sexual exploitation services, the report revealed around 80% of local authorities did not have any specialist work for sexually exploited children and young people.

The report also revealed more than 1,000 children had been referred to Barnardo’s after being sexually exploited over the course of last year (2007/8).

Barnados also revealed that of the 609 sexually exploited children and young people they are currently working with, 90 appear to have been trafficked within the UK – approximately one in six.

Recent research carried out in Yorkshire also identified children as young as 11 and 12 were being sexually exploited.

Barnardo’s Chief Executive Martin Narey said: “We don’t know the true extent of this problem, but we do know, however hidden from the public eye it might be, it affects many thousands of children.

Rich Nation vs Poor Nation again at Food Summit

2009-11-17T14:35:00.003-05:00

Again the fight between wealthy and poor nations is seen at an international summit. The battle is taking center stage again this week at the UN's World Food Summit taking place in Rome.

Poor nations attending the summit are criticizing agricultural practices of the rich nations. While the rich nations are fighting any concrete deadlines or new funding levels for hunger.

From this story on the summit that we found at the New York Times, writer Neil MacFarquhar describes the battle.

In the hard-fought negotiations over a draft declaration from the three-day talks, richer nations succeeded in removing a goal to end world hunger by 2025 and declined to commit to increasing agricultural aid to nearly 20 percent of all international development aid, where it peaked in 1980 before gradually falling.

Instead, the draft declaration restated the United Nations target of halving world hunger by 2015 and said that eradicating hunger should come “at the earliest possible date.” Diplomats from wealthier countries argued that creating a deadline for eradicating hunger was unrealistic, according to officials involved in the negotiations. The United Nations estimates that the number of people facing hunger around the world rose to more than one billion this year.

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations had hoped the meeting would set an agriculture aid target of $44 billion annually toward helping farmers in poorer countries. To meet demand by 2050, agriculture output needs to grow by 70 percent, the organization said.

The draft declaration instead commits to “substantially increase” agriculture aid. Leaders of industrialized nations meeting in Italy last July agreed to spend more than $22 billion on agriculture aid over the next three years, but not all of that constitutes new aid, and the nations have been slow to figure out how it might be distributed.

The Rome conference was prompted by a sharp rise in the price of basic commodities like rice and wheat that incited food riots in many countries in 2008, a crisis that Ban Ki-moon, the United Nations secretary general, warned could easily be repeated.

The pope decried the “greed which causes speculation to rear its head even in the marketing of cereals, as if food were to be treated just like any other commodity.” Rising demand, weather and supply shocks, and not speculation alone, are considered to be at the root of the food crisis.

Hunger protests planned in Pakistan

2009-11-17T10:49:00.003-05:00

Protest are planned throughout Pakistan this weekend give voice to rampant food insecurity in the country. 60 million Pakistanis struggle to put food on the table. Global Call to Action Against Poverty will organize the rallies.

A government subsidy program to provide low cost bread to people has many concerns over corruption. The massive subsidies continue even while the government faces bankruptcy. To help avoid a collapse, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have promised aid to Pakistan.

For more on the suspect subsidy program, we go to this IPS article written by Zofeen Ebrahim.

Even an initiative such as ‘sasti roti’ (cheap unleavened bread) being provided by the provincial government of Punjab is suspect. Questions are being asked about its sustainability on the one hand and, on the other, why it cannot be extended to provinces like Sindh.

Haris Gazdar, a Karachi-based economist, said: "We must know who is paying for it. Is it the government, farmers through lower procurement rate or other provinces through forced up market prices due to reduced supply from (largely farming) Punjab?"

"It is coming out from our own (provincial) budget. We are slashing down our non-developmental budget and the administrative expenditure significantly," said Sajjad Ahmed Bhutta, district coordination officer in Lahore, capital of the Punjab.

"Out of 5,000 tandoors (clay ovens) in Lahore, 3,200 are registered with the government’s scheme to sell the rotis at fixed rates,’’ said Bahadur Khan, president of the Nanbai (leavened bread-makers) Association of Lahore. The scheme has also been introduced in other big cities of the province including Rawalpindi, Faisalabad, Muzaffargarh, Sargodha, Liah, Dera Ghazi Khan, Bhakkar and a few others.

For its part the government is providing these tandoor shops with flour at a subsidised rate of Rs 250 (three US dollars) per kg when the same is selling in retail shops at Rs 333 (four dollars) per kg.

"But this solution can't go on indefinitely without fixing the local production problem which is in the hands of big feudals," said Najma Sadeque, a senior journalist and development expert. "It also means there was no major physical wheat shortage in the first place.’’

Many believe that it was the food crisis more than terrorism or anything else that proved to be former president Pervez Musharraf’s undoing at the February elections where irate voters trounced the party that backed him.

Musharraf appeared aware of the brewing crisis and, during the last two years of his nearly nine years in power, resorted to dishing out massive subsidies on wheat and other staples that economists say the country is still paying for.

Musharraf’s successor, President Asif Ali Zardari, is now trying his best to convince Pakistanis that his government is capable of steering the country out of the mess - mainly by seeking a bailout worth 10 billion dollars and stave off bankruptcy.

UK aid money to Nigeria sees sharp increase in a decade

2009-11-17T06:17:00.002-05:00

The UK's assistance to Nigeria has skyrocketed in the past 10 years. Starting at 15 million pounds in 1999, it is now at 120 million in 2009. The figures are according to the Department for International Development.

From the Daily Champion story that we found at All Africa, we read more about the funding levels.

It said the aid would rise to 140 million pounds in 2010, adding that the gesture was in recognition of Nigeria's poverty reduction challenge and reform efforts.

It said the DFID was delighted to be participating in the launch of a joint country partnership strategy with other agencies as it would ensure that international assistance was focused on the right priorities.

It stated that the initiative would also allow development partners to co-ordinate more effectively with the National Planning Commission to avoid duplication of efforts and increase the impact of the assistance.

The assistance, the statement said, would ensure that Nigeria utilised its own resources more efficiently and effectively to achieve the MDGs.

New health alliance to fight the "other" diseases

2009-11-17T06:13:00.003-05:00

A new alliance has gathered to fight non-communicable disease in the under-developed world. This new health alliance includes organizations from the US, India and China. Health issues such as tobacco use, and pollution kill 11.5 million people per year.

From this AFP article that we found at Google News, we read more about the new alliance and what it plans to combat.

The Global Alliance for Chronic Disease, which brings together institutions managing an estimated 80 percent of all public health research funding worldwide, announced its first targets for action in a statement this week.

The alliance said it would seek to reduce hypertension, tobacco use and the indoor pollution caused by the types of cooking stoves used in many developing countries.

The group, founded last year by organizations from the United States, China, India, Canada, Britain and Australia, said the three priorities were chosen because they contribute to one in five deaths worldwide each year.

The targets were selected during the organization's inaugural scientific summit, held in November in New Delhi, India.

According to the World Health Organization, which belongs to the group's board, chronic non-communicable diseases (CNCDs) were responsible for some 60 percent of the 58 million deaths worldwide recorded in 2006.

The number of deaths caused by CNCDs is twice the combined total of deaths from HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria, maternal and peri-natal conditions and nutritional deficiencies, according to the alliance.

"The health impact and socio-economic cost of CNCDs is enormous and rising, upending efforts to combat poverty," the group said in a statement.

More Americans struggling with hunger

2009-11-16T15:54:00.003-05:00

The number of Americans who struggled to put food on the table increased again last year. One in Seven American families struggled with hunger according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. This is the highest percentage since the USDA began the survey.

Many hunger and anti-poverty advocates were not surprised by the higher numbers given the economic recession.

From this Associated Press story that we found at Oregon Live, we read more stats from the survey as well as some quotes from the head of the USDA.

That's 14.6 percent of U.S. households, or about 49 million people. The numbers are a significant increase from 2007, when 11.1 percent of U.S. households suffered from what USDA classifies as "food insecurity" -- not having enough food for an active, healthy lifestyle.

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said the numbers could be higher in 2009 because of the global economic slowdown.

"This report suggests its time for America to get very serious about food security and hunger," Vilsack told reporters during a conference call.

The USDA said Monday that 5.7 percent of those who struggled for food experienced "very low food security," meaning household members reduced their food intake.

The numbers dovetail with dire economic conditions for many Americans. And they may not take the full measure of America's current struggles with hunger: Vilsack and the report's lead author, Mark Nord with USDA's economic research service, both emphasized that the numbers reflected the situation in 2008 and that the economy's continued troubles in 2009 would likely mean higher numbers next year.

The report also showed an increasing number of children in the United States are suffering food insecurity. In 2008, 16.7 million children were classified as food insecure, 4.3 million more than in 2007.

Mo Ibrahim says some African states are not viable

2009-11-16T14:34:00.003-05:00

African Mobile Phone tycoon Mo Ibrahim spoke at a two day conference promoting good corruption free government in the African continent. Ibrahim says that governments need to integrate or else their states would perish. Ibrahim urged conference attenders ask if their leaders are really serious about solving problems.

From Reuters writer Katrina Manson attended the conference and gives us some quotes from Ibrahim's speech.

"Some of our countries, and I'm really sorry to say this, are just not viable," the Sudanese mobile phone tycoon said.

"We need scale and we need that now -- not tomorrow, the next year or the year after."

Several overlapping regional groupings throughout the continent are trying to knit their economies closer together, but the pace and extent of integration is slower than hoped.

"Intra-African trade is 4-5 percent of our international trade. Why? This is unacceptable, unviable, and people need to stand up and say this," Ibrahim said.

"Who are we to think that we can have 53 tiny little countries and be ready to compete with China, India, Europe, the Americans? It is a fallacy."

The $5 million Ibrahim Prize, which has previously been awarded to outgoing presidents Joaquim Chissano of Mozambique and Festus Mogae of Botswana, was not awarded this year.

Judges led by former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said although there were some credible candidates, they would not make an award. They did not explain why.

Push for new "green" jobs not helping the poor

2009-11-16T10:52:00.003-05:00

A new study finds that the new "green" jobs are not going to the poor. A leading think tank shows that the US Obama administration push to create green jobs is not helping poor or minority Americans.

As one of the features of the stimulus package that the US government released earlier this year, 200 million dollars was to be spent in creating "green" jobs or jobs that will help the environment. The authors of the study looked to see if the 200 million dollars helped the lives of the poor in the US.

From IPS, Haider Rizvi reveals the report's details.

"The communities of colour are hardest hit [by joblessness]," said Terry Keleher, who co-authored the report, "Green Equity Toolkit: Standards and strategies for advancing race, gender and economic equality in the green economy".

"They can benefit from the emerging green economy. But that is not happening," he told IPS.

The report, released this week by the Oakland, California-based Applied Research Center, says that a vast majority of green jobs are being filled by white men, even though there is no scarcity of talent among people of colour and women of all ethnicities.

According to Keleher's findings, which he concluded in collaboration with his colleague Yvonne Liu, African Americans and Latinos comprise less than 30 percent of those employed in green industries and economies.

"Gender disparities are even starker," said Liu, who found that African American women are employed in only 1.5 percent of the energy sector workforce. The numbers are even worse as far as Asian and Latino women are concerned. Their share in jobs stands at 1.0 and 0.7 percent, respectively.

The term "green economy" refers to businesses that care about environmental protection, energy efficiency, preservation of biodiversity, community self-reliance, and sustainable development.
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Both Keleher and Liu argue that the Obama administration should continue its quest for economic recovery and the efforts to promote a green economy. But, they insist that such efforts are not likely to produce positive results if millions of jobless people from minority communities are not offered equal opportunities.

Farming yes, but beekeeping too

2009-11-16T09:19:00.004-05:00

We often talk about small-farming as a means of poverty alleviation. In addition to growing grains, an article we found today talks about beekeeping in Zimbabwe being used as a means for generating income.

Zimbabwe was once known as a honey making haven. In recent years however, many of the tress that bees built their hives upon have been chopped down.

From All Africa writer Shingai Jena describes this project to help train beekeepers in Zimbabwe. Jena also spells out the profits that can come from a good harvest of honey.

The idea of beekeeping as a means of alleviating poverty was conceived as way back as 1992 when the country was implementing the Economic Structural Adjustment Programme when Zimbabwe was hit by drought.

In order to overcome effects of the devastating drought, some concerned individuals who included Women's Affairs, Gender and Community Development Minister Olivia Muchena founded the Zimbabwe Farmers Development Trust with the view to identify low cost projects of alleviating poverty and agreed on beekeeping.

ZDFT executive director, Tichasiyana Mapondera, said beekeeping was agreed on because of its minimum funding requirements since it uses readily available natural resources such as land, trees and the bees.

At inception, the project targeted small-scale farmers as well as rural communities in and around the Hurungwe district of Mashonaland West province as a pilot project.

To date it has been launched in more than 25 districts in the country.

However, withdrawal of support by the W.K. Kellogg foundation which provided funding for producing modern beekeeping materials has hampered progress as plans were underway to spread the project to other parts of the country.

"We urgently need a US$100 000 cash injection to facilitate further training programmes and remuneration of staff who train and manufacture beekeeping equipment," said Mapondera.

The funding required is small compared to the profits that farmers generate per year from honey production.

With raw honey going for up to US$2 per kilogramme, a small-scale farmer with an average of 100 modern Kenyan top bar hives which produce at least 30 kilogrammes each of raw honey and are harvested four times a year, earns at least US$6 000 per quarter.

In Buhera, there are more than 300 communal farmers involved in beekeeping who, when harvests are good, produce up to 1, 2 tonnes per quarter, which translates into a gross total of income of US$1 million a year.

With such impressive figures, words such as destitute and unemployed would cease to exist in the Zimbabwean vocubulary.

Taking into consideration that workers in the country are earning on average US$150 per month, rural folk would not find any reason to envy their relatives in urban areas who toil the whole month to get paid.

Professor to give away half of future earnings

2009-11-14T09:59:00.002-05:00

An ethics professor from Oxford says he will give away 1 million dollars in future earnings to fight global poverty. The give away will be over half of his future salary.

From the Daily Mail, we hear from Dr Tory Ord on his reasons for doing this.

Dr Toby Ord, an academic at Oxford University, will give up 10 per cent of his annual salary, plus any yearly earnings above £20,000 for the rest of his career.

He calculated he should earn about £1.5 million and said he realised that if he was to continue living modestly he would be able to give away £1 million of this to help others.

Today's launch of his Giving What We Can society will encourage others to do the same, he said.

Dr Ord, a 30-year-old research associate at Oxford's Future of Humanity Institute, said: 'Life on my current income is very good.

'If I spent the extra money on myself I could go on holiday more often, get an iPhone, eat out at expensive restaurants. It would be nice, but not all that much better.

'So I have a choice between greatly improving the lives of tens of thousands of people or adding a few extras to my life. Put like that, it is an easy choice.

'Once you get used to the idea, it is actually not much of a burden.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1227766/Ethics-professor-pledges-away-1million-lifetime-earnings-help-fight-poverty-developing-world.html?ITO=1490&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+dailymail%2Fhome+%28Home+%7C+Mail+Online%29#ixzz0WqWabtLT

"the poor cannot eat promises."

2009-11-14T09:44:00.003-05:00

Aid organizations and even some arm's of the United Nations are expressing frustration over another missed opportunity. Next week, the World Food Summit will take place at the UN, but the aid groups say that not much action is likely. Most of the heads of state from the G-8 will not attend the meeting. Also, pledges might be made from the summit, but they are unlikely to include new measures or money.

The Food and Agriculture Organization has started an online petition for people to sign to show the summit that the world wants action, to take a look go to www.1billionhungry.org.

From the IPS, writer Paul Virgo surveys the frustration.

The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) is holding the summit to give fresh impetus to the fight against hunger, a scourge it says now affects over a billion people - almost a sixth of the global population.

United States President Barack Obama is not expected to attend the event, which will run from Monday to Wednesday at the FAO's Rome headquarters, and so far Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi is the only leader of a G8 country to confirm his presence.

"It's a tragedy that the world leaders are not going to attend the summit," Daniel Berman of health and humanitarian assistance NGO Medecins sans Frontieres told a news conference.

Many experts are also concerned that, as often happens at such meetings, after lots of fine talk there will be little that ties nations down to taking action at the end of the summit. Indeed, the first such food summit in 1996 set the goal of reducing hunger by half from around then 825 million sufferers at that time by 2015, but instead the world has moved in the opposite direction.

"We may get more good declarations, but what is the substance behind it? I doubt there will be specific financial commitments next week," Markus Giger of the University of Bern's Centre for Development and Environment tells IPS.

"The number of hungry and malnourished people is rising. Countries must do more. We are far from reaching our targets. It's unacceptable."

A draft of the summit declaration contains little that was not stated by the G8 group of the world's leading economic powers at the L'Aquila summit in July.

In L'Aquila the G8 promised to "act with the scale and urgency needed to achieve sustainable global food security", among other things by reducing trade distortions in negotiations at the World Trade Organisation and mobilising 20 billion dollars over the next three years for sustainable agriculture in developing countries.

But diplomatic sources told Reuters news agency that less than a quarter of that eye-catching figure will actually be fresh cash.

"The declaration is just a rehash of old platitudes," said Francisco Sarmento, the food rights coordinator of ActionAid. "It says hunger will be halved by 2015 but fails to commit any new resources to achieve this or provide any way of holding governments to account...Unfortunately the poor cannot eat promises."

Interview with Eugene Cho of One Day's Wages

2009-11-14T09:28:00.003-05:00

This video helps to promote the efforts of Eugene Cho, who started One Day's Wages. The website encourages people to donate one day of their year's wages to fight extreme global poverty.

In this CBS News video, Shira Lazar conducts the interview with Cho.

A small community that once received guaranteed income

2009-11-14T09:09:00.003-05:00

An almost forgotten experiment proved just how much a decent income can help people's health and education. A small community in Manitoba, Canada participated in a study back in the mid-70's where every person in the town received a living wage for five years. During those years, the student in the community stayed in school longer, and the residents rarely ever had to rely on Canada's health system.

From The Vancouver Sun, writer Norma Greenaway helped to unearth the almost forgotten study.

"Once upon a time in Canada, there was a town where no one was poor."

No, this is not the opening line of some yet to be written fairy tale. It's the opening line in the summary of a new report that contains some heartening news buried in a long ago and mostly forgotten experiment that ensured all residents in a small Manitoba community were guaranteed a minimum annual income for five years in the mid-1970s.

With Canada awash in flu fears, corporate bankruptcies, rising joblessness and pension woes, the gradual unearthing of a tiny piece of 'utopian' history seems a timely reminder of the benefits of daring to dream.

So far, researcher Evelyn Forget has discovered that from 1974 through 1978, the residents of Dauphin were less likely to draw on the medical system than a control group elsewhere in the province. Dauphin's young people also stayed in high school longer. Within years of the experiment shutting down, those trend lines disappeared, Forget says.

Forget is banking on learning more about what was known as the MINCOME experiment once she gets access to about 1,800 sealed boxes, which, among other things, are jammed with personal surveys of Dauphin residents who lived the experiment.
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While it lasted, about one-third of Dauphin's 10,000 poor residents got monthly cheques to boost their incomes.

The actual dollar figures from the period seem shockingly small in today's world. The formula for the guaranteed minimum income translated into incomes in 1974, for example, that ranged from $1,255 for a single person to about $4,000 for families of four or five people.

The program's costs ballooned as the 1970s progressed and inflation took off, spurred in particular by skyrocketing oil prices at the time.

Though there remains much to learn from the little-studied experiment, Forget says she's increasingly persuaded a guaranteed minimum income is a "more reasonable, more just, more efficient and cheaper way" of eliminating poverty than the current system of targeted support

A high profile donation to ACCION USA

2009-11-13T15:01:00.003-05:00

We found this mention of a donation to ACCION USA interesting. Craigslist founder Craig Newmark is a supporter of microcredit here in the states and worldwide.

From Microfinance Focus, we read more on the donation.

ACCION USA, a pioneer and leader in U.S. microfinance that provides critical capital and financial education to small businesses, has been awarded a gift by Craigslist founder Craig Newmark, to support its person-to-person microlending activities on the Website Kiva.org. Craigslist is a centralized network of online communities, featuring free online classified advertisements.

Mr. Newmark is a strong supporter of microfinance internationally. “ACCION USA’s work in providing microfinance to small business owners here in the United States is commendable,” said Mr. Newmark. “As a business owner myself, I understand that access to loans to grow a business is critical. I am proud to support ACCION USA’s Kiva lending program.”

According to Gina Harman, president and CEO at ACCION USA, the funds will help the organization continue its partnership with Kiva.org, a Website that connects entrepreneurs in need of business capital worldwide with individuals who make loans in $25 increments. Launched in June 2009, the partnership marked the first time that people could lend to entrepreneurs in the U.S. via the Kiva.org platform.

UN food summit next week

2009-11-13T13:59:00.003-05:00

Next week, the United Nations hosts a food summit. Ahead of the gathering officials are preparing a statement that will be ratified by Nation's members.

The draft of the document makes promises for all nations to make combating hunger a priority. Humanitarian aid groups say that the language within the draft is not tough enough.

From this Associated Press article that is hosted at Google News, writer Ariel David took a peek at the document.

A draft declaration for next week's U.N. food summit would commit world leaders to a new hunger-fighting strategy by pledging to increase agricultural development aid to help the world's 1 billion hungry people feed themselves.

However, the draft obtained Thursday by The Associated Press does not include a 2025 deadline for eradicating hunger, a goal sought by the United Nations.

Also missing are specific money commitments, such as the $44 billion in yearly agricultural aid that the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization says will be necessary in the coming decades.

Hunger now affects a record 1.02 billion people globally — or one in six — with the financial meltdown, high food prices, drought and war blamed for recent increases, the FAO says.
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Humanitarian groups said, however, that the document was weak, and that the three-day Rome summit starting Monday could fail if world leaders don't allocate new resources and come up with mechanisms to hold governments to their commitments.

Under the draft, developed countries would "commit to a crucial, decisive shift" that aims to "substantially increase the share" of aid invested in agriculture to help the world's poor become less dependent on direct food assistance.

20 million need food aid in East Africa

2009-11-12T10:22:00.003-05:00

20 million people in East Africa are in desperate need of food aid according to the United Nations. Drought and war have been the biggest contributing factors to the hunger.

From Reuters, writer Silvia Aloisi gives us the details of the UN report.

"The situation is very worrying due to expected crop and pasture failures from poor rains in several areas, the increase in conflicts, trade disruptions and continuing high food prices," the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said.

In its latest report on food and crop prospects (www.fao.org), FAO said delayed rains and dry spells often followed by floods had hurt crops and pastures in Kenya, Eritrea, Ethiopia and Uganda.

In Somalia and Sudan, poor weather has worsened a food emergency due to civil wars, with 3.6 million and 5.9 million people in need of food aid, respectively. In the case of Somalia, that is about 50 percent of the total population.

The U.N. agency is hosting a world food summit in Rome next week, hoping to win broad support for an increase in agricultural investments in poor countries to help them feed themselves.

Maize production in Kenya, east Africa's biggest economy, is expected to be 30 percent down on last year. About 3.8 million Kenyans, mainly living in pastoral and marginal agricultural areas, are in need of emergency food assistance, FAO said.

That number rises to 6.2 million people in Ethiopia, where late and erratic rains have damaged maize and sorghum crops and reduced availability of pastures in many parts of the country.

Monsanto, friend or foe?

2009-11-11T11:05:00.005-05:00

The debate on bio-tech foods and seeds wears on. Food production must double by 2050, and the only way to do that is with genetically modified foods. However, many critics say the foods only poison us and the earth.

Reuters has this exhaustive profile on Monsanto that we found at the Independent On-line. Monsanto is a leading agriculture company that is spending lots of money on improving seeds and yields in hopes that the farmers will turn to their products.

Writer Carey Gillam began the story by talking of a visit from Monsanto's Vice President of research Rob Fraley, with his friend Dr Norman Borlaug.

The topic of Fraley's final conversation with his friend that day underscored the unfolding of a modern era of global agriculture. In this new paradigm, traditional plant breeding is giving way to the high-tech tools of rich corporations like Monsanto, which are playing an increasingly powerful role in determining how and what the world eats. It is also generating controversy, as critics continue to question the safety of biotech crops, and fear increasing control of the global food supply by giant corporations.

Still, few dispute that something needs to be done. The United Nations has said that food production must double by 2050 to meet the demand of the world's growing population and that innovative strategies are needed to combat hunger and malnutrition that already afflict more than 1 billion people.

Amid this dire outlook, St Louis, Missouri-based Monsanto - along with its biggest corporate rivals, charitable foundations, public researchers and others - is forming a loose coalition of interests instigating a second Green Revolution.

"What we do builds on what he started," Fraley said of Borlaug, who died in September at the age of 95.

Founded in 1901 as a maker of saccharine, Monsanto has undergone several evolutions of its own.

The company spends an estimated $2-million a day on agriculture research and development - more than any other company.

It employs about 400 scientists in four St Louis-area research facilities, applying an array of new technologies to plant genetics, with a goal of doubling yields in major crops, such as corn and soybeans, between now and 2030.

"If we do that successfully, it won't just be good for Monsanto, it will be good for the world," Fraley said.

As it positions itself to be a leader in advancing a global fight against hunger, Monsanto has started working with nonprofit organisations in poor nations, donating research and genetics to help needy farmers.

The moves run parallel to Monsanto's commercial sales of high-priced seeds and agricultural chemicals to farmers in wealthy nations, which has made the company a darling of Wall Street and helped it post record net sales of $11,7-billion and net income of $2,1-billion for fiscal 2009.

The US Department of Agriculture and governments around the world are encouraging Monsanto - as well as rivals DuPont, Dow Chemical, BASF and other corporate interests - to work with academics, foundations and public institutions on how to increase food production globally.

Drought-tolerant crops, particularly corn, are high on the agenda amid concerns about a changing climate. Improved wheat is also a major goal.

Corn and wheat account for about 40 percent of the world's food and 25 percent of calories consumed in developing countries, and millions of people get more than half of their daily calories from corn and wheat alone, according to the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organisation.

"We want to encourage the private sector to help shape research. These are important issues for all Americans and the world," said Roger Beachy, President Barack Obama's newly appointed director of the US National Institute of Food and Agriculture.

Anti-poverty activist Robert Corad passes away

2009-11-11T09:54:00.003-05:00

An anti-poverty activist who helped to build one of the biggest agencies for the poor was laid to rest yesterday. Robert Corad pushed policy makers in Washington and in Massachusetts to help the people that Action for Boston Community Development served.

From the Boston Globe, writer Adrian Walker attended the funeral.

Coard, who died last week at the age of 82, has been celebrated as the guiding force behind Action for Boston Community Development, the city’s largest and most influential antipoverty agency.

But Coard’s friends, allies, and admirers gathered not only to celebrate his life, but perhaps get a glimpse of the private and elusive man behind the good works.

Representative Edward Markey, who had shared a close relationship with Coard for many years, delivered a lengthy eulogy that sought to capture the scale of Coard’s influence.

He invoked Edward M. Kennedy’s famous tribute to his fallen brother, Robert: “a good and decent man who saw wrong and tried to right it, saw suffering and tried to heal it.’’

But he also remembered a man who struck respect, if not fear, into the elected officials he called upon to do the agency’s bidding in Washington and at the State House.

“For generations of Boston politicians . . . Ed Markey included, ABCD didn’t stand for Action for Boston Community Development; it stood for Anything Bob Coard Desires,’’ Markey said.

Nationally, Coard helped engineer legislation nearly 30 years ago requiring federal funding for community action programs, ensuring that the movement ABCD exemplifies would survive, regardless of which party was in power.