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2008-06-21T04:46:00.000Z

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help stop climate-wrecking in Bali

2007-12-13T00:13:00.000Z

Hi,

I just signed an emergency petition trying to save the crucial climate change talks in Bali, Indonesia right now by telling the US, Canada and Japan to stop blocking an agreement. You can sign it here:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/bali_emergency/98.php?cl_tf_sign=1

Almost all countries have agreed to cut rich country carbon emissions by 2020--which scientists say is crucial to stop catastrophic global warming, and will also help bring China and the developing world onboard. But with just 2 days left in the conference, the US and its close allies Canada and Japan have rejected any mention of such cuts.

We can't let three governments hold the world hostage and block agreement on this desperate issue.

There's still 2 days left to turn this around - click below to sign the petition - it will be delivered direct to summit delegates, through stunts and in media advertisements, so our voices will actually be heard. But we need a lot of us, fast, to join in if we're going to make a difference. Just click on the link to add your name:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/bali_emergency/98.php?cl_tf_sign=1

Thanks!

You are receiving this email because someone sent it to you via the "tell-a-friend" tool at Avaaz.org. Avaaz retains no information about individuals contacted through this tool. Avaaz will not send you further messages without your consent--although your friends could, of course, send you another message.

Cemetery Kids

2007-10-13T03:03:00.000Z

At the beginning of 2006, Samantha, Tiffany and Alex J.R (all 1st generation Canadians) went to the Philippines to visit their parents' homeland. There they were exposed to the harsh realities of the streets of the overpopulated city of Manila; witnessing children living amongst the dead in local cemeteries. Families facing extreme poverty built their homes around tombstones of the wealthy deceased.

After observing these shocking living conditions, they decided to return for the month of February 2007, to document this crisis and see what they can do to help.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The documentary focuses on a 15 year old boy named Kevin, who was born
and raised in North Cemetery, Santa Cruz, Manila. The eldest of 7 children,
Kevin was forced to take on a great deal of responsibilities for his
family and act as a father figure to his siblings.

The simplicities of life unfold through his eyes as the filmmakers
accompany him through his daily routines. Where drugs, violence and
theft are the easiest routes for youth to take, Kevin found an
interest in music instead. Along with three other children (between
the ages of 8 and 15 years old), Kevin would meet three times a week
in a place called "The River of Joy" to play music together as a
band. All four children coming from different slum areas, use their
love for music and friendship as an escape to deal with their own life situations.

please take a second to check our teasers on youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55hToLkrrWA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTJHImpM-_g

The purpose of the HOT SAUCE project is to create awareness of such surreal
environments and to inspire change for street children who are often
neglected and underestimated.

This is an independent project and to move forward we need your support and donations. One of the primary goals for the HOT SAUCE project is to eventually provide the children from North Cemetery with resources and programs (ie.music & creative arts) so they can have a chance to reach their full potentials.

Feel free to contact us:

cemetery.kids@gmail.com

Additional Info:
www.myspace.com/hotsauceproject

How to Fight Poverty: 8 Programs That Work #8

2007-08-03T05:50:00.000Z

VIII. Hold the Patient's Hand

Tuberculosis is curable. Millions of people alive today can personally attest to the power of antibiotics. A simple course of four antibiotics, which costs as little as $11, can now vanquish a dreaded killer.

So why do nearly 2 million people a year still die of it? Because these antibiotics must be taken daily for six to nine months. That means that the local health clinic must have a steady supply. Patients must continue to take the full course even though they stop coughing, and the medicine causes nasty side effects. TB strikes mostly the poor, especially those living in crowded conditions. Many of them are migrants, who may be lost to the health system when they move.

If they don't finish the course, terrible things can happen. Patients stay sick, but now with a form of TB resistant to the basic drugs. Medicines that can cure this form of TB can cost $10,000, and the course of treatment is two years. Because of poor adherence, resistance has reached the point where some forms of TB are incurable. South Africa is battling an outbreak of this extremely resistant TB, and no doubt many other places are as well – they just don't know it yet.

The solution is a strategy invented in Tanzania in the 1970s and now in use all over the world, called DOTS, for Directly Observed Treatment, Short-course.

DOTS has several components – among them good supply management and diagnosis – but what is key is what it is named for. Someone becomes a pill pal, with the job of watching the patient swallow the medicines. This can be a neighbor, a family member, or a community health worker.

DOTS is now widespread – it covers about 60 percent of the world's diagnosed TB cases. It greatly improves the chance of cure. DOTS gives patients a social incentive to take their pills. But sometimes other layers of incentive are necessary as well. In her book " Millions Saved ," Ruth Levine, the director of programs at the Center for Global Development in Washington, writes about China's TB program. In 1990, TB in China was the leading cause of death in adults, killing 360,000 people that year. The next year, China switched to DOTS.

China found a way to make DOTS even more effective – by relying on the market. With help from the World Bank, China's government pays village health workers to find TB patients, get them to the lab for periodic sputum checks, and see them through the full treatment course. The pill pal gets a bonus, too, as does the health center. China's TB cure rate went from 52 percent to 95 percent, which prevents 30,000 TB deaths per year. Rates of resistant TB are far lower in the parts of China where DOTS is used.

DOTS is one of the most cost-effective health programs around. Each cure costs just $100, and brings a return of $60 for every dollar spent. It works because the drugs are cheap and it relies on community workers instead of doctors. The DOTS strategy recognizes that the promise of being cured is not always enough to change the way people behave. It uses social – and occasionally monetary – incentives to get the community and the patient working towards health.

These are not the only good programs. There are many more out there – family planning, provision of small amounts of nutrients such as Vitamin A , agroforestry to restore the fertility of soil, to name a few. But the above eight are some of the best.

A few common threads link these eight programs. Many of them rely on the market. Microcredit and property legalization help poor people to start businesses. Other programs pay people for desired behavior. Another common element is a focus on women and girls, who tend to be poorest of the poor and use help more efficiently than men. A lot of these programs got their start when one individual looked at a familiar landscape in a fresh way. The most important things these programs share, however, is that they work -- and with more money they could be working on a grander scale.

Credit: NYtimes,
By TINA ROSENBERG

How to Fight Poverty: 8 Programs That Work #7

2007-08-01T05:48:00.000Z

VII. A Green Revolution for Africa

What was probably the single most effective antipoverty program in world history began in northern Mexico in the 1940s. Test plots showed that new varieties of dwarf wheat resisted many plant pests and diseases, and doubled or tripled the usual yields. Similar improvements followed in corn and rice. The Rockefeller and Ford Foundations spread the seeds to India and Pakistan, and parts of Asia, Latin America and North Africa, along with irrigation techniques, pesticides and fertilizer.

The Green Revolution is not yet over – productivity continues to increase, and even faster than in the early days. It has prevented famine and brought improvements in income, health and survival to hundreds of millions of people.

But few of them are in sub-Saharan Africa. Africa's farmers get less than half the amount of grain per acre that Asian farmers get. From 1980 to 2000, India's agricultural yields rose 28 percent. Africa's dropped by 7 percent.

A Green Revolution for Africa is a challenge. Africa's climate is much more varied than south Asia's, so what crops need varies from place to place. Africa's infrastructure is worse than India's was, the soil is more degraded and AIDS is killing off the continent's labor force.

But while a single Green Revolution benefiting all of Africa may not be possible, a patchwork of Green Revolutions is. Indeed, this is happening.

The Earth Institute at Columbia University is working with 78 villages across Africa to help them improve crop yields, part of a demonstration project trying to attack several different causes of poverty at once. Each village gets help with crops, clean water, nutrition, schools and health, for a total cost of no more than $110 per person per year. The Millennium Village project hopes to show that conquering poverty is possible for very little money. In agriculture, the project provides appropriate seeds and fertilizers to farmers who pledge to contribute part of their surplus to local schools for their lunch program. The subsidies diminish as farmers become able to buy the seeds and fertilizers themselves, and after three years the farmers are on their own.

Even after just one year, success has been notable. Farmers are growing a minimum of 3.5 times as much grain as before, with one village in Rwanda increasing its output 62-fold.

Can this be done on a large scale? The evidence says yes.

Ethiopia – a country once emblematic of crop failure and hunger – has doubled food production in the last 10 years and the government says it will double again by 2010. Malawi's harvest this year was double that of last year. Ethiopia's strategy was to provide farmers with better seed, more fertilizer, and hundreds of extension agents to spread good techniques. Malawi began to pick up 75 percent of the cost of farmers' fertilizer and seed. Many farmers are now able to feed their families and sell surplus crops for the first time. Part of the advance has been luck – good rains. But success today will give farmers a cushion and better tools for withstanding the next drought.

The initial costs of improving crop yields is daunting for many governments in Africa. But if the Millennium Villages and countries like Ethiopia and Malawi can show success, they will make a strong case that farmers mainly need a one-time boost and that the benefits are great for Africa's poorest and most vulnerable to drought.

Credit: NYtimes,
By TINA ROSENBERG

How to Fight Poverty: 8 Programs That Work #6

2007-07-30T05:47:00.000Z

VI. Target the Decision-Makers

Suppose you are a parent in rural India, or parts of Africa, or China. You are poor. School is available for your children. But you may have to pay school fees, and you must buy uniforms and books. The nearest school is in the next village – a dangerous walk for a young girl.

Besides, you need your daughter at home to fetch water and take care of her younger siblings. You know that education is important – but it is your sons who will support you when you are old, while your daughters will become part of their husbands' families. Your decision is easy – the boys, and only the boys, go to school.

Gene Sperling, formerly President Clinton's national economic advisor, now at the Council on Foreign Relations, likes to talk about the central paradox in girls' education : Going to school is good for girls. Educated girls make more money. They are more productive farmers and have smaller, healthier, better-educated families of their own. They are even less likely to catch the AIDS virus. Educating girls is also great policy for a nation. Closing the educational gender gap boosts economic growth.

But educating girls is not necessarily good for parents – and they make the decisions. Most poor people in the world live in societies in which the girl marries into her husband's family. Educating a daughter, these cultures say, is like watering a neighbor's garden. Parents will send their girls to school only if the costs are very low.

That's one reason why far fewer girls than boys go to school. Of children in primary school today, 150 million will drop out before they finish – two thirds of them girls. In Africa, the majority of girls do not finish primary school.

School is often very expensive. School fees in some countries, such as the Congo, are more than the national per capita income. When Tanzania abolished school fees in January, 2002, school attendance doubled overnight – and most of the new students were girls. There are other costs. Parents must buy books and uniforms. When Kenya tried abolishing fees for uniforms, books and school construction in some places, students stayed in school 15 percent longer.

The other cost to parents is the lost value of the girls' work at home. To solve this problem, many countries now pay families to send children, especially girls, to school. It is a central feature of Oportunidades-style cash payments, for example. Bangladesh's government provides 15 to 20 kilograms of grain, mainly wheat, per month to families of poor boys and girls if they maintain 85 percent attendance in primary school. The government also pays a stipend to all girls in rural areas in grades 6 through 10, covering the cost of tuition, exams, books, supplies, uniforms, transportation and even kerosene for lamps to study by. The girls must keep up minimum grades, attend classes and not get married until out of school. This program has boosted girls' enrollment from 27 percent to 60 percent.

Bangladesh is also home to the schools run by BRAC, the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee. BRAC's community schools have doubled the completion rates of government schools by overcoming the hidden obstacles to educating girls.. BRAC runs more than 30,000 schools for poor students, many in places where the nearest government school is far away. Teachers are women – often local high school graduates given training by BRAC. These features reassure parents that their daughters will be safe on the way to school and while in class. School schedules work around harvests and allow girls to be home during peak chore times. BRAC schools are run in close consultation with parents and do everything possible to help parents give their daughters the gift of learning.

Credit: NYtimes,
By TINA ROSENBERG

How to Fight Poverty: 8 Programs That Work #5

2007-07-28T05:46:00.000Z

V. Link Up the Villages

When Shenggen Fan, now 45, was growing up in a village in China, it could take two days to get to Shanghai by motorboat and then bus. It took him an hour to walk to high school. Farmers grew only products they could eat or sell to their neighbors.

Now when he lands in Shanghai, he can drive to his family's home in three hours. The high school is a 10-minute bike ride from his house. Farmers now buy animal feed and fertilizer from trucks visiting the village, and sell other visitors the cereals, watermelons and pigs they raise. The village has grown much more prosperous.

What has changed? Roads. Dirt trails were first replaced with all-weather roads made of broken bricks mixed with dirt, with drainage. Then the road to town was paved.

Almost everything people need to be able to live decently requires a road. A good dirt road with ditches is fine, or one built by villagers themselves with local stones or locally-made bricks. It just needs to be a road that allows a farmer to push his products to market in a hand cart, and that lets buses and trucks get from the village to the main trunk roads. The villagers themselves can maintain it.

Roads allow farmers to market their products, and bring in fertilizer and seeds. They let rural residents take non-farming jobs in nearby towns. Sick people can get to the hospital in time. Roads make it easier for the government to bring in water and electricity. Children can get to school faster, which means more will go. "With roads, people travel out and bring in new knowledge," says Mr. Fan. "They change their behavior. Roads are a window to the outside world. In extreme cases, roads are life-saving – in the Ethiopian famine of 1984 and 1985, thousands of people died because they could not be reached by food aid."

Today Mr. Fan is a Senior Research Fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute in Washington. The studies he and his colleagues have done on how poor governments should spend their money show that building small feeder roads is one of the single most effective ways to fight poverty (pdf). In India, it would be the single most effective antipoverty program, the group concluded. Feeder roads would also be among the best ways to spend money in Africa and China.

Rural roads are not glamorous. Government officials want to build highways, not feeder roads. China, for example, has expanded its national highway system by 44 percent a year since 1988. But rural roads have expanded only 3 percent a year. In Africa, fewer than 10 percent of feeder roads are currently passable during the rainy season, effectively cutting off villages for months at a time.

Thirty years ago, the World Bank concentrated on infrastructure. But many of its projects to build dams, highways and electrical plants were plagued with corruption and waste, or ended up hurting poor people. Building infrastructure, including roads, got a bad name. What's needed today is the infrastructure equivalent of microcredit – small projects for villagers that are a necessary first step out of poverty.

Credit: NYtimes,
By TINA ROSENBERG

How to Fight Poverty: 8 Programs That Work #4

2007-07-26T05:42:00.000Z

IV. Bribe the Poor

In 1995, the Mexican peso crashed and the economy contracted by 6 percent. At the time, Santiago Levy, the deputy finance minister, realized that the country's antipoverty programs were going to fail its poor. The programs were a hodgepodge of food subsidies, adopted in response to powerful food producers. They were inefficient because they targeted foods everyone ate, rich and poor. Some even targeted foods the poor don't eat, such as bread – poor Mexicans eat tortillas.

Mr. Levy saw a looming disaster – but also an opportunity to build political support for an antipoverty program that worked. Stealthily, he organized a pilot project to test a new idea in Campeche, far away from the capital so it would draw little notice. He began a program to pay poor mothers to keep their children in school and take their kids to the health clinic. He compared the results to poverty figures in a group of similar villages without the program. It was a great success. Data in hand, he persuaded President Ernesto Zedillo to phase in the new program and phase out the food subsidies.

Oportunidades, formerly called Progresa, is now embraced by all parties in Mexico and, with financing from the World Bank, is helping virtually every poor family. It not only focuses antipoverty spending on those who really need it, it does so in a way that encourages families to break the cycle of poverty for their children.

The average family in Oportunidades gets $35 a month – about a quarter of the rural family income. Families with many children in school can get up to $153 a month, a ceiling imposed to avoid providing incentive to have more children.

From the beginning, Oportunidades built in rigorous evaluation. Those studies have shown that it does focus its help on Mexico's poorest people, and that the money is producing good results. Children are bigger and healthier. Oportunidades has also cut child labor and led to more schooling – in rural areas, for example, the number of children starting high school increased 85 percent. Moreover, by paying women, Oportunidades has augmented their power inside the family without increasing domestic violence.

There are fashions in foreign aid, and Oportunidades is hot. The World Bank sings its praises (pdf). So far 25 countries have adopted some version. New York mayor Michael Bloomberg just announced he is looking for donors to finance a pilot program to test whether New Yorkers, too, can be bribed out of poverty.

Credit: NYtimes,
By TINA ROSENBERG

How to Fight Poverty: 8 Programs That Work #3

2007-07-24T05:43:00.000Z

II. Microcredit: The 62-Cent Solution

In 1976, a Bangladeshi economist named Muhammad Yunus came upon a group of 42 artisans – but perhaps the more appropriate word is "slaves." They made crafts such as chair seats, and used materials lent to them each day at exorbitant rates of interest by the buyer of their work. They were forever in debt, unable to turn enough profit to buy their materials in advance at market prices. Mr. Yunus gave the group a loan from his pocket that averaged 62 cents per person. With that, they bought their freedom.

Twenty years later, the Grameen Bank, the organization Mr. Yunus founded, has lent small sums of money to 6.7 million people in Bangladesh, almost all of them women, many of whom had never before touched money. It offers savings, insurance, home mortgages, pension funds, scholarships, credit for families to buy fertilizer, build latrines or dig wells, and a program of no-interest loans for beggars, so they can offer candy or dried chiles for sale as they go house to house.

Microcredit now reaches nearly 100 million clients in more than 100 countries. The World Bank has found that microcredit accounted for 40 percent of the entire reduction in moderate poverty in rural Bangladesh —and that it had an even bigger impact on extremely poor borrowers.

Microcredit raises an entire village's standard of living – even non-borrowers' lives improve. (Lending to men, by contrast, proved not to affect poverty at all.) Studies of microcredit programs all over the world show that it produces higher incomes and better-fed children, and improves a family's ability to survive illness or drought.

To many people, the name Grameen is synonymous with microcredit. But the Grameen Bank is not even the largest microcredit lender in Bangladesh – that is the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee. Nor were Mr. Yunus's 62 cent loans the first – the earliest documented microloan took place in 1973, in Recife, Brazil, lent by Accion International , a group that has now lent over $10 billion.

But what Mr. Yunus and Grameen did – why they are sharing the 2006 Nobel Prize for Peace -- was show how an idea helping a few hundred people could be expanded to help millions. Grameen has also struck the proper balance – it is sustainable and profitable, with $600 million in savings from borrowers as capital. At the same time, it has never forgotten that its mission is to fight poverty, not maximize profit. It charges interest rates far lower than other commercial microlenders.

Grameen developed a model now in use globally. Although it is a bank, in many ways it is the opposite of a bank. Traditional banks in poor countries do not lend to the poor — administrative costs are too high, and the poor were thought to be bad risks. Normal banks stick close to business districts, require collateral, and lend mainly to men.

Grameen turned this on its head. Instead of collateral, Grameen depends on social pressure to guarantee loans. Women form borrowing groups of five, and must pay back their loans regularly for others in the group to be able to get one; borrowers must pledge to eliminate dowry, eat vegetables, have small families and educate their children — requirements not likely to be found at conventional banks.

It has been a decade since Grameen Bank accepted any donations or took loans. But hundreds of newer microfinance groups still look for donors. Accion International, for example, creates new microfinance institutions in 22 countries, which stop needing help once they become profitable. It also trains traditional banks in how to lend to the poor.

Microcredit started as an antipoverty program, but continues as a business. That is one reason it has grown and grown while other forms of aid fight for governments' dollars and attention.

Credit: NYtimes,
By TINA ROSENBERG

How to Fight Poverty: 8 Programs That Work #2

2007-07-22T05:40:00.000Z

II. Give Poor People an Ownership Stake

Look around the edges of any large third world city and you will see vast settlements built by the residents themselves. Migrants from the countryside claim empty plots in nighttime land invasions, put up a blanket with a pole or a cardboard roof and begin stockpiling bricks. Their livelihoods are similarly jerry-rigged. A man will nail together a booth, at which he can sit and repair his neighbors' shoes. A woman will open a window to the street to turn her living room into a mini-bodega, selling cooking oil and rice.

Most people surveying these kingdoms of dust and hope see only poverty. But Hernando de Soto saw something else – untapped wealth. Mr. De Soto, a Peruvian economist, realized that the world's poor own trillions of dollars' worth of assets. But their houses, plots of land and businesses lacked formal title – and so could not be used to do all the things that people in wealthy countries do to turn a little money into a lot of money.

Without title, people can not sell stakes in their businesses, use their homes as collateral for loans, buy insurance, or form limited liability corporations to reduce their personal risk. They cannot get credit in banks. They do not improve their businesses because their investment may suddenly vanish at any moment. They must spend money and time bribing the police to keep from being kicked off their land. In many cases they cannot even get electricity and telephone service.

Mr. De Soto's crusade, which has now marched to El Salvador, Egypt, Mexico, Honduras, Tanzania, El Salvador, the Philippines, Haiti, Albania and elsewhere, attempts to turn these dead assets into living capital. All countries, of course, have ways to register property. But in most poor nations, they involve so much red tape that they are essentially useless for the poor. Mr. De Soto had tried an experiment in Peru – he established a two-sewing machine garment factory in a Lima slum and hired five college students to get all the necessary permits to legalize it. He claims it took them 289 days and cost them 31 times the average monthly minimum wage.

Mr. De Soto likes to say that when he walks through the rice fields in Bali, a different dog barks whenever he crosses from one farm to another. The dogs recognize the assets under their masters' control. But the legal system does not.

To change this, Mr. De Soto founded an organization in Lima called the Institute for Liberty and Democracy. It carries out research on the informal sector. But the governments of Peru and El Salvador have also hired the I.L.D. to run registries that give poor people simple, quick ways to get title for their land, homes and businesses. It also helps them use those titles productively. In other countries, I.L.D. is helping governments design such agencies or train government officials to do this work.

The I.L.D.'s work in Peru means that legalizing a business can now be done in a day, by visiting a single desk. The cost dropped from $1,200 to $174. The group says that between 1990 and 1995, 300,000 titles were registered in urban Lima (pdf), and the value of the underlying land doubled by 1998. Hundreds of thousands of new businesses have been legalized. Poor people saved millions in administrative costs, and Peru raised millions of dollars in new taxes.

Getting title, of course, does not mean that poor people can necessarily turn it into higher incomes. To use newly legal assets, the poor must still contend with banks that won't lend to them, and courts that require bribes and put up other hurdles. Tackling these issues may help solve one of the most vexing drawbacks of globalization and the market economy – in much of the third world, they have tended to benefit only the wealthiest. But establishing property rights is a necessary first step.

Credit: NYtimes,
By TINA ROSENBERG

How to Fight Poverty: 8 Programs That Work #1

2007-07-20T05:38:00.000Z

I. The Gold Standard: Universal Vaccination

Universal vaccination is cost-effective foreign aid at its best. It is so successful, so widely considered essential, that many people today do not realize that it began only 20 years ago.

When Unicef and the World Health Organization started a global effort to vaccinate children against common childhood diseases in 1985, they were met with widespread skepticism. Vaccination rates for children in many countries were appalling – only 20 percent of the world's children in 1980 had gotten their third shot of D.P.T. (diphtheria, pertussis and tetanus) on time, the conventional measure of vaccine coverage.

But the program has had stunning success. By 1990, 75 percent of children had completed their D.P.T. shots on time. Bangladesh went from 9 percent D.P.T. completion in 1987 to 98 percent five years later. Worldwide, children were being immunized against polio and measles as well.

The logistics are heroic. Wars are routinely halted for inoculation campaigns. Entire countries get vaccinated in two days. Measles vaccines are successfully kept cold during day-long journeys by bicycle and canoe.

A full course of immunization, including everything in the supply chain, costs only $30. In the last 20 years this campaign has saved 20 million lives. It has given hundreds of millions of children a better start.

In the 1990s, however, the world's attention turned to other problems, and vaccination rates slipped backwards. Bangladesh fell back to 66 percent in 1999. Every year 27 million children — a quarter of the world's children — go unvaccinated against the basic diseases. Two to three million of these children die. Even for those who survive, these diseases can be crushing, forcing children to drop out of school, and parents to spend time and money they cannot afford on doctors and care for their sick children.

The challenge today is two-fold: to improve basic vaccine coverage, and to put new vaccines into global use. Vaccines now exist to protect children against common diarrheal and pneumococcal killers, against hepatitis B and a common influenza. But they are mainly in use in wealthy countries. Soon there may be a malaria vaccine as well. All these must become part of the universal vaccine package.

Help has come from an organization launched in 2000, the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization. Financed by governments, organizations such as the World Bank and Unicef and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, GAVI gives poor countries money to improve their infrastructure and logistics – and then gives them more if they actually achieve improved vaccination rates. It also helps assure a predictable market for new vaccines, which encourages drug makers to produce them in large quantities. It has helped expand both basic and new vaccine coverage – because of GAVI, for example, 90 million children have been immunized against hepatitis B(pdf).

Immunization became a victim of its success, but close attention and new partnerships are now reviving vaccines. It is a lesson that eternal vigilance is needed, even to protect a program that became venerable practically overnight.

Credit: NYtimes,
By TINA ROSENBERG

Modern Day "Knights" Help Needy Worldwide

2007-04-10T17:48:00.000Z

Modern Day "Knights" Help Needy Worldwide

April 10, 2007

(CBS) Heroes come in all shapes, sizes and ages.

Ed Artis and Jim Laws prove that.

They've gone around the world eight or nine times, helping the poorest people in the most remote places on earth. Often, those places are hostile, and they put themselves in danger.

But Artis, 62, and Laws, 68, figure it sure beats playing golf to pass the time!

They've gone to war zones and storm zones, slept in palaces and potato cellars, met kings and spies, dealt with warlords and nuns, and faced it all with a unique sense of humor.

These two are not only adventurers, but amazing characters in their own right.

They are modern-day knights.

Harry Smith profiled them on The Early Show Tuesday.

Artis and Laws bring food, shelter, medicine and supplies to people who can't fend for themselves. They've been to Rwanda, Afghanistan and Bosnia. They've fed refugees of war, famine and natural disaster.

"We're a couple of old duffers," Artis says. "I mean, we're not buff, action hero kinda guys. We're shaped like pears. Can't hear, can't see. … But, on the day, we get the job done."

To the tune of more than $40 million worth of aid, begging, borrowing — even stealing and bribing when necessary — stumbling into minefields, rescuing nuns, and befriending the locals.

They've had things transported by the Italian army, and by rebel soldiers; they work with local warlords, and don't care about political fallout. All they care about is delivering the goods.

On one mission, Artis and Laws traveled for weeks, in cars and mules, and fought through jungles, just to take the rust off of a connecting cable to provide a village with power that had been off for several years. They also set up a hospital there.

Whenever they take any piece of technology to a village, whether it's a water pump, a solar oven or an X-ray machine, they don't leave until at least 10 people in the village can take it apart and put it back together again.

They've had more flat tires in a single journey than most people have in a lifetime.

Artis and Laws only do the missions they feel like doing, as long as they're "high adventure, as well as service to the community," says Laws.

They do it all through an organization they founded called Knightsbridge. They raise money like any charity but, says Smith, it's their ability to distribute large quantities of aid and medicine directly to the people at the end of the line that sets them apart.

All money donated to Knightsbridge goes directly to the mission. They have a laptop, satellite phones and no staff, so 100 percent of donated funds go to the cause.

For information on how you can help Artis and Laws on their next humanitarian mission, to Darfur, click here.

For information on the documentary "Beyond the Call," featuring Artis and Laws, click here.

Oh, and Artis really IS a knight. He and Laws met in 1993 in Moscos, where Artis became a Knight of Malta, a humanitarian order that dates back to the Crusades.

To see Smith's piece, and learn more about Artis and Laws, including how they got their start in the humanitarian arena and what they did before that, click here.

Source: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/04/10/earlyshow/main2666759.shtml

IYF Partner Highlighted by Clinton Global Initiative

2007-03-08T16:14:00.000Z

IYF Partner Highlighted by Clinton Global Initiative

The Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) is currently featuring on its website a new alliance between IYF partner, the Balkan Children and Youth Foundation (BCYF) , and Studio Moderna, a European marketing firm. This partnership launched a program in 2006 to boost youth employment in Macedonia by providing employability training to 1,000 youth. CGI, a project of the William J. Clinton Foundation, has gained commitments from global leaders totaling US$ 10 billion, benefiting more than 1,000 organizations worldwide.

Studio Moderna learned about BCYF through CGI, and decided to support its efforts to improve the lives and opportunities of young people in Macedonia, where youth unemployment is over 50%. “There is an urgent need to open up jobs for young people in this region,” says Vlado Dimovski, initiator of the Macedonia employability project, “and I believe this alliance will enable us to move quickly and have a real impact.” The program is seeking additional funding, hoping to mobilize 500 businesses to train and place 6,000 Balkan youth in jobs and internships by Fall of 2008.

Read the article on the Clinton Global Initiative's website.

Read more about the International Youth Foundation.

Click for a Cause

2007-02-16T09:52:00.000Z

Hey all it's Alex. It's been a while since I've talked to many of you and some I have probably seen just a few days ago. Anyway, I'm working on my dreams to push some great movements of filming in the Philippines with kids living in cemeteries. Read up on it and vote. Hit me up if you guys are interested in it. Would love your feedback.

I just voted on a great idea to raise money for a charitable goal. If you like it too, please add your vote.

What you're "voting" on is whether you feel the proposed project is worthwhile. When you vote, you're NOT making a financial commitment of any kind; you're simply indicating that you think it's a good idea and should go ahead.

Voting takes less than a minute, and it's easy - so please VOTE NOW, by clicking here
http://www.givemeaning.com/donate/p-project.aspx?gg=782 to review the project profile (and then just click on the Vote icon to cast your vote).

With enough votes, the Project's founder can work towards making the idea a reality.

The Role of "Westerners" in Development

2007-02-06T03:05:00.000Z

I felt like this might be an appropriate place to ask the question: What is the role of the West in Development?

I just came back from an amazing conference in Calgary with an organization, Engineers Without Borders: http://www.ewb.ca/en/index.html, http://conference2007.ewb.ca/and I wanted to share this question with you as well as some of the insights presented to me at the conference.

This question was addressed in an interactive panel discussion I attended as well as by a wonderfully inspiring Ghanaian woman, Adisa Lansah Yakubu. Dr. Apentiik who is a professor of African Studies at the University of Calgary called attention to the gap between our rhetoric and action in the West. Canada, for example, has not increased the amount of our Foreign Aid to 0.7% as we promised in the past. Dr. Apentiik spoke strongly against Westerns tying aid to good governance which encourages a Western model of development as well.

Paul Slomp, and EWB long-term overseas volunteer implied there were assumptions in the question of what Westerners can do for development: that the West has a role, and that we are different. Both Paul, and Adisa Lansah Yakubu in her keynote speech, called for a paradigm shift that recognizes our interconnectedness. Adisa Yakubu said “the West” can learn from Africa and encouraged Westerners who do not know much about Africa to learn more. I also had the opportunity to speak personally with Adisa Yakubu about what kind of development approach she supported, a model of state-led development, or a grassroots model. It was her sincere opinion that the top-down approach advocated by institutions such as the Wold Bank is ineffective because it doesn’t have a human face. Though, I am not entirely convinced of the superiority of grass-roots approaches to development, I am certainly more sceptical about the relevance of World Bank initiatives such as the Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers.

This certainly is an important question considering the aid worker should not want to be part of a bloated administration cost, or come with colonial ideas of creating Western models. Should the West only provide money? Should the West try to project values? Should we learn from other cultures? Should the West focus on developing itself more and ending unfair policies?

Let this be an open forum for discussion on the topic!

Disguising Race: The Sanitisation of Discourses of Development - Dr. Kothari

2007-02-01T12:11:00.001Z

Dr. Uma Kothari "Disguising Race: The Sanitisation of Discourses of Development."

Dr. Uma Kothari, Senior Lecturer in the Institute for Development Policy and Management at the University of Manchester.

Abstract: This paper identifies some of the silences about 'race' in international development that mask its complicity with broader historical and contemporary racial projects. Significantly, this concealment is founded upon the assumption that development takes place in non-racialized spaces and outside of racialized histories. The paper is concerned with how 'race' is disguised and development discourses sanitized through the use of specialized terminology and criteria whereby
race-neutral language continues to distinguish between the different capabilities, characteristics and attributes of Others.

Through this cleansing of development terminology, notions of 'race' are submerged and the development gaze is diverted from considering how racial differentiations might shape our understandings of key concerns of development, namely the dynamics of poverty
and exclusion. Furthermore, however, when a development ethos is framed around a language
of charity, empathy, humanitarianism and justice, and the role of developers is seen primarily to alleviate poverty, it might appear irrefutable that motives are wholly noble. This assumption of noble intention goes a long way in silencing the critical appraisal of development interventions and obscuring racialized relations of power while delimiting attempts to theorize concepts of 'race' in development praxis. This does not mean that questions of diversity and difference are altogether neglected in development, but through a philanthropic frame, ideas about 'race' become subsumed within supposedly more palatable discourses of, for example, 'culture' and 'ethnicity'.

Series Sponsors: The 2006-2007 Speaker Series is sponsored by the Department of Political Science, with the support of the following:
Centre for Constitutional Studies, Peace & Postconflict Studies Program; Canada Research Chair (Political Economy and Social Governance); Canada Research Chair (Social Theory and Social Policy); Augustana Faculty; Faculty of Education; the Middle East and African
Studies(MEAS) program; University of Alberta International Centre; the Master's of Arts Integrated Studies (MAIS); Athabasca University; and the Canadian Association of Cultural Studies.

Concluded sessions are now available on the Department web site in podcasting and video-streaming formats, thanks to the support of the Arts Resource Centre and Academic Information and Communications Technology:

Event URL:
http://www.uofaweb.ualberta.ca/polisci/SpeakersSeries_0607.cfm

DAMU at MAC

2007-01-17T03:19:00.000Z

DAMU at MAC

Young faces with a passion for social progress or a curiosity about how they can make a difference gathered at Bridges, McMaster’s Vegetarian Diversity Café, for a night of music, film and discussion Wednesday January the 10th. Producer Alex Punzalan, who has won accreditation from the United Nations for his work, was there to host the screening of his documentary Why Should I Care? The Reality Behind Youth, and to lead a discussion afterwards.

The night started out with the thought-provoking music of Samolian-born poet and rapper, K’Naan. “We keep holding on, and we keep being strong” echoed across the dimly light walls. Many students from non-governmental organizations such as Engineers Without Borders, AIESEC, and Students for Education, Empowerment, and Development were present to support their beliefs that it’s important to get involved in our communities, including our global community.

The documentary took the audience into the lives of youth in the Kiberian slums in Kenya where they struggle to obtain an education. Participants addressed the question “why should I care?” through the positive stories of people that got involved in their communities. Smiles, laughter and music from a drama team in Kiberia drove the point home that community involvement can be fun and empowering. Leaders in the community also stressed the importance of community involvement to a well-rounded education.

How Should I Care?

If the movie provided an example for why we should care, the discussion revealed that the audience had differing opinions on HOW we should care. On the issue of whether to act or stand idly by the Holy Qur’an describes how one should act in response to issues: it says if you see something bad happening, try to stop it; if you can’t stop it, then condemn it by speaking about it; and if you can’t speak about, then condemn it in your heart. I do not propose to be religious, but rather to point out religion offers an answer about the level of appropriate activism.

Marka Jansen is an Engineers Without Borders volunteer who spend the summer in Ghana. She challenged Alex on the decision to film a documentary: “What would the people in the Kiberian slums have wanted if you gave them the option of doing whatever they wanted to with the money it cost to produce the documentary?”

Her question raises two good points. She suggests that it is difficult to determine the needs of underdeveloped communities, and that there is an opportunity cost associated with social activism that is important to consider. Activists can waste many scarce resources on social development if they lead to no marked improvement in the lives of the people they intend to improve.

Measuring improvement is a huge challenge though, and I don’t propose to have the answer. I would argue that measuring impact is something we do need to do, however, so that we are directing our resources (including our own volunteerism) towards the best possible outcomes.

Art can Inspire

This is not to say that documentaries such as Why Should I Care? are not important in the effort to reduce people’s apathy. In fact, taking into consideration that Alex has shown the film to people across the globe through AIESEC’s networks, great potential exists to encourage people to act, especially when the audience is comprised of people that have not considered the benefits of volunteering. It nevertheless remains difficult to measure the effects.

DAMU supports the screening of Why Should I Care? and has started to create networks of youth across the globe. In fact, DAMU estimates that over 10 000 people have been exposed to the film already. If all these people work together and critically address the needs of their communities, the potential impact of the documentary is high.

Aside from the effect the film may have on the audience, DAMU has also raised over $2000 and spent that money on giving a student a full education. The student now spends his free time giving back to the community by volunteering in the slums. The organization has also worked with various partners to enhance the capacity of rural clinics in Kenya. DAMU firmly believes in a philosophy of sustainability, that you shouldn’t give a person a fish, but rather must teach her/him to fish.

Film can inspire as the workshop showed. When asked what medium is best suited to leading a social revolution--music, the internet, or film—there were powerful rationales for music and film leading a social revolution. Joel Hilchey, from Engineer’s without borders said “music appeals to primal instincts…you feel it in your heart.”

Film, however, combines music and images in a powerful and persuasive combination. Why Should I Care? appeals to people’s sense of empathy and you understand that the Kiberian slums have needs, as does our own community.

The debate is far from settled after this event at McMaster. It is difficult to determine if good intentions are enough to make progress in our communities. We need to be critical of how we are using our resources to ensure that they aid the people they are intended to benefit. The event drew my attention to three quotations from Martin Luther King Junior:

“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.” However, we must consider, “Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity,” as so many well intentioned efforts have repeatedly failed.

And finally, “All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence.”

Thanks to Alex Punzalan for coming out to make this night possible! Your energy and artistic gifts are appreciated. Good luck on your next work, Dying to Live in the Philippines. J Please feel free to share your comments about this article!

Blood Diamond - review

2007-01-07T19:12:00.000Z

Just watched this movie last night and decided to give my 2 cents worth.
Like many before it, Blood Diamonds takes some of the darkest truths in the world and delivers it to the laziest of people... Thats right, not even you reading this. The couch potatoes that surf the TV mindlessly looking to find an escape from responsibility.

How do I convince you that the diamond you just bought costs a 1000 people their lives... how can I convince you that the fuel you just filled your tank with was at the cost of 4 towns and 500 women and children...

Wait thats just it. The thing that worries me the most is that when people watch these movies, and see it as just another fiction, they become desensitized. And then what will we be left with?

Oh yes, the film in review paints a holistic picture of the problems in Sierra Leone in the early 90's, and similar problems faced in many other countries like Uganda at the moment. In fact, it goes the extra mile to have the viewer sympathize with the Blood diamond smuggler (played by DiCaprio), while exploiting the good intentions of a Jounralist (Jennifer Connelly). Overall this movie shows devastating truths locked in hollywood style explosions and emotional scenes.

For anyone that has been to Africa, you will have a much greater appretiation for its accuracy, for those that have yet to venture to this paradise, now is your chance.

"T.I.A." - This Is Africa.

Jobless Youth Make Gains in Latin America

2007-01-03T11:22:00.002Z

Jobless Youth Make Gains in Latin America
entra 21 Evaluation Study Demonstrates Program's Impact, Learnings

Baltimore, MD: Disadvantaged youth who are provided a comprehensive package of training, mentoring, and job placement support are finding success in the job market. A recent report released by the International Youth Foundation documents the progress being made to secure employment by graduates of entra 21, a regional job training program aimed at addressing the soaring unemployment rates amoung young people in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Among the reported findings:
Six months after graduating from the program, 54% of entra 21 participants were working, and 80% of those jobs were full-time
Salaries for those who were previously working doubled or better after graduation from the program in three of the six projects studied.
Employers surveyed reported being highly satisfied with entra 21 graduates and considered their job performance to be equivalent to or better than that of other employees in similar positions.
The levels of education improved among participants, with the rate of re-enrollment in formal education more than doubling among entra 21 graduates.
Entra 21 is cited by the World Bank as one of ten promising employability programs now operating around the world in its recently published World Development Report 2007: "Development and the Next Generation."

Read more about the study
Download Entering the World of Work: Results from Six entra 21 Youth Employment Projects: An Executive Summary

Approaching International Events

2007-01-03T10:57:00.001Z

CONFERENCES AND EVENTS
Register for the 2007 UN Commission on the Status of Women
26 February to 9 March 2007
The deadline is fast approaching for accredited NGOs to register for participation in the 51st session of the UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) to be held at UN headquarters in New York. In accordance with its 2007-2009 multi-year program of work, the CSW will consider "The elimination of all forms of discrimination and violence against the girl child" as its priority theme. In accordance with the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the definition of "child" and "girl child" is persons younger than 18 years, unless under the law applicable to the child, majority is attained earlier. For more information, see www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/egm/elim-disc-viol-girlchild/egm_elim_disc_viol_girlchild.htm

An International Conference on Social Transformations and Education
Application Deadline: 15 January 2007
The conference will be held at the University of Gdansk, Poland, in 15-17 June 2007. The conference will create a forum for debates on current processes of learning, adaptation and resistance taking place in rapidly changing societies. For more information, see www.change.univ.gda.pl

Strategic human resources management in a global context
7 February 2007, Geneva, Switzerland
Aimed at senior managers with responsibility for people management, this one day conference will cover issues such as resourcing, management and learning, addressing both the humanitarian-emergency and development-focused perspectives. For more information, see www.peopleinaid.org/events/default.aspx

Barefoot Workshops

2006-12-30T12:00:00.000Z

Barefoot Workshops is a media and music based educational organization where adults and youth are taught video, photography, music, and art as a way to document their surroundings, make change in the world and most importantly make change in themselves. With Barefoot, growing and learning as an artist means growing and learning as an individual.

http://www.barefootworkshops.com

A friend of a friend made the video in cape town, its really well done.
Reminds me of this girl Allison I met in Kenya in 2005 who gave public speeches about living with HIV AIDS. I still have her recorded on video. Her story is so powerful, it still echos in my ear.

I think the video movement is our chance to expose the world to media that they deserve to see, not the mainstream stuff that the MNC giants think we should watch. No boardroom discussion can create the epic story or tragedy of life as it unfolds around us on a daily basis.

Happy New Years everyone, May 2007 be YOUR year.

Accelerating Social Change through Video

2006-12-30T10:46:00.000Z

Accelerating Social Change through Video
In 1999 the World Bank asked 60,000 people living on less than a dollar a day to identify the biggest hurdle to their advancement. It wasn't food, shelter or health care. It was access to a voice. By empowering people to tell their stories, video gives a voice to the voiceless, and to the people who fight for them.

Video Volunteers believes that media can provide marginalized people with a platform for voice and accelerate social change. In collaboration with Drishti Media Collective in Ahmedabad, India, Video Volunteers is working to create a global network of 100s of rural or peri-urban Video Producers who produce and share media across the barriers of illiteracy, poverty and media neglect.

Our core activity is establishing sustainable Community Video Units (CVUs) in partnership with leading NGOs. Each Community Video Unit (CVU) comprises up to 10 community members, primarily women, who produce one "Video News Magazine" each month that is shown back to communities using wide-screen projectors or local cable networks. In 2006, ten CVUs are launching in India. Collectively, these CVUs will produce one hundred videos in their first year alone, on issues of social justice, development and human rights, that will be seen by thousands of people in their communities, providing a local, national and global platform for voice.

Website: http://www.videovolunteers.org/

inspiration, again and again

2006-12-30T07:25:00.000Z

Inspiration to me is knowing that even in a small capacity DAMU has begun a movement.

Even though we are all scattered all over the world doing our little part to help this planet, to help turn apathy to empathy, our message has touched the lives of thousands of people.

Just today a friend contacted me for advice on screening the "Why Should I Care?" Documentary, and throwing an event with local artists and NGOs.

A few weeks ago I was contacted by someone in Russia that wanted to get a copy of the documentary for the screening.

It's happening people. It's happening.

The muingi (movement) in us all

2006-12-03T11:22:00.000Z

By: Neha

Life is filled with happy moments - most of which occur when an unexpected, or chanced event has occurred

those moments that catch us by surprise often give us the greatest joy

by taking a chance towards the unexpected, by submersing our biggest critic, our inner rational hesitation, we open ourselves to other people, societies, ways of thinking, cultures, to life

compassion, one of the greatest and most blessed human emotions, not only enables humans to save lives, but it also enables others to live

this hidden connection that we possess with every human being forms a chain of progression, of development of the human soul

when enough people act intelligently and compassionately, life is formed, sustained, prolonged and developed
you see, there is a mau mau movement in everyday life

we all experience it

when we compare which coffee shops to go to, we mentally calculate the more ethical business - tending to the consciousness, the awareness, the responsibility we feel to the whole

from the moment we wake up, to the time of sleep, and even in our dreams, we are uprising

we demonstrate this muingi when we vote for our leaders, buy newspapers, participate in rallies, pick our inner battles, travel to get more aware, educate ourselves and our children, question the norms of society, interact with others and demonstrate a drive to learn...for it's when the minute particulars are tended to that change for the better occurs.

Something simple. Something silly. Something impactful.

2006-11-15T12:24:00.000Z

"November 21, 2006 is the 34th annual World Hello Day. Anyone can participate in World Hello Day simply by greeting ten people. This demonstrates the importance of personal communication for preserving peace."

http://www.worldhelloday.org/

Peace,