Peace in Sudan has proven to be a challenging goal. Sudan has been fraught with violence from the beginning. British and Egyptian forces relinquished Sudan in 1956. With imperialistically-sanctioned divisions between the north and south and little institutional direction, the new nation was immediately thrown into confusion and instability. The first military coup occurred two years after independence. Since then, peace in Sudan has been an abstract concept that the nation desperately needs but has only seen intermittently.
Conflict after Conflict
Economically, Sudan has been heavily reliant on oil since the discovery of oil fields in what is now South Sudan. The country began exporting oil in 1999. Ultimately, Sudan secured the industry’s overwhelming importance in the accumulation of the country’s revenue. In 2011, oil exports accounted for 98 percent of the revenue for the southern government. The discovery of oil has had a longstanding effect on tensions between the north and south, specifically, regarding who controls the trade and reaps the subsequent benefits. Although oil reserves are abundant in the south, the north established the refineries and trade hubs.
Frustrations over the regions’ codependency have manifested in intense fighting between the north and south. Conflicts over the small, oil-rich region of Abyei in 2002 is a good example. The oil industry has remained at the core of the lack of peace in Sudan because of its role in perpetuating regional struggles.
South Sudan
The conflict between northern and southern Sudan was not brought upon merely by oil. For more than 50 years, South Sudan was overwhelmed with civil wars, experiencing only brief periods of peace. The first civil war began in this region in 1962. Unfortunately, conflict is still prevalent in the country today. This decades-old conflict now consists of unending violence and countless accounts of human rights violations. The U.N. reported events taking place in the country such as ethnic and sexual violence, which may amount to be war crimes. These circumstances serve as a consistent threat to solidarity or reconciliation in Sudan.
The Sudanese civil war was largely due to colonizer-enforced divisions between northern Muslims, southern Christians and Animists. In fact, former president Omar al-Bashir was responsible for the unrelenting assault on the lives of southern Sudanese. For 30 years, Sudan was under the control of Omar al-Bashir, who ruled ruthlessly as a pro-Arab dictator in continuous oppression and violations of human rights. Beginning in February of 2003, he brutally ordered the systematic killings at Darfur, a region in western Sudan.
Anti-government groups accused the al-Bashir administration of neglect. Subsequently, an onslaught of ethnic cleansing ensued, displacing more than 3 million people and taking the lives of over 400,000. The conflict ended only when South Sudan was at last granted independence through a referendum obtaining the backing of 99 percent of voters in 2011. However, the longstanding friction between the north and south still plagues the two countries today.
Glimpses of Peace and Hope
There have been many attempts to end conflict and strife in order to protect the lives of Sudanese directly affected by the ongoing violence perpetrated by dictatorship, neglect and oppression. The U.N. Security Council intervened in 2003, in order to provide humanitarian relief in an attempt to stabilize the region. For example, in Darfur, it created the United Nations Hybrid Operation in Darfur (UNAMID) in 2007, which allows for current, ongoing facilitation of peace talks between rebel groups and the government of Sudan. UNAMID has allowed for peacekeeping operations to provide mediation to conflicting groups and aid to civilians affected by continuing violence.
A breath of fresh air came in 2005 when the Government of Sudan and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement signed the Comprehensive Peace Agreement in a historic resolution to lead the country on a road to development and stability. This was the start of a hopeful understanding between conflicting groups in Sudan to invest in the distribution of resources in order to begin bettering the lives of its people. Most recently, in 2019, the Transitional Government of Sudan and Darfur armed forces signed a peace agreement in an effort to express both sides’ willingness to establish peace in Sudan.
Sudan is seemingly seesawing between one conflict and another. Where peace is established or agreements are reached in one area, violence ensues elsewhere. Protests are not uncommon, but the people of Sudan are fighting for democracy and to bring attention to the necessity of elections and a civilian-led government. Peace in Sudan is not an impossible task. With the combined determination of international organizations and internal efforts to establish inclusive institutions, Sudan has hope of bringing itself out of its violent past.
– Jessica Ball
Photo: Flickr
How AI Could Reshape Education in India
India has the largest K-12 educational system in the world with 260 million students. However, it still ranks low globally on academic achievement and student performance. Nearly half of students lack basic literacy and math skills after studying in school for five years. However, the rise of new classroom technologies, such as artificial intelligence (AI), shows promising hope for rural communities seeking to improve student success. Here is how AI could reshape education in India.
The Challenges
Thirty-eight percent of government public school students in grade three are unable to read simple words. Only 27 percent of students could perform double-digit subtraction. Teacher preparedness and competency is also a reported issue. In one study, only 11 percent of government school teachers in the Indian state of Bihar could demonstrate the steps by which to solve a three-digit by one-digit division problem.
Surprisingly, a survey through the Center for Global Development has found no significant correlation between high teacher salaries and achievement in India. After evaluating per capita GDP and economic context, Indian teachers receive relatively good pay. Nevertheless, reports determined that low-cost private schools had similar learning levels where teachers received significantly less pay. The results highlight the need for more highly trained teachers and better professional preparedness programs.
Notwithstanding these educational challenges, early evidence shows a number of adaptive AI programs offer promise in mitigating the educational deficits in poor educational communities and schools. Oftentimes, these programs supplement the traditional curriculum and even absent teachers. This is how AI could reshape education in India.
How AI Could Reshape Education in India
The Future for India’s Education
What is evident thus far, especially from the implementation of Mindspark, is that AI has the potential to address gaps in education in India for poor, rural communities that lack high-quality teachers and programs. Access to effective tools is currently in favor of wealthier communities in India. Forbes India opines that more investment from the government, nonprofits and companies is necessary to expand the influence of these new technologies into the communities that need them. India, which already has one of the world’s largest software industries and telecommunications systems, may prove how AI could reshape education in India with investments in education technology.
– Caleb Cummings
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
Poverty Rates of Filipinos in Different Regions
Crystal Tai, a journalist from South China Morning Post, reported that Filipinos were the largest immigrant minority in Alaska. They represent at least 15 percent of the population. According to the article, Filipinos have been in the state since the late 1700s, often heading to the Last Frontier for jobs. Many held positions as sailors, ore sorters and salmon cannery workers. People would eventually describe these seasonal workers and their descendants as Alaskeros. Some of the descendants came from Filipino soldiers who married Alaska Natives. Filipinos in the Philippines, Filipinos in the United States, Alaska Natives and Filipinos in Alaska or Alaskeros tend to have different economic outcomes. Poverty rates of Filipinos in different regions look different because each region brings out different challenges.
However, it is hard to tell which data belongs to which group as people continue to aggregate them or forget them altogether. People may have even overlooked Filipinos when it came to their status as Asians among other Asian countries. Some even describe Filipinos as the “orphans of the Pacific.” Researchers often overlook native people. As a result, Alaskeros and Filipino descendants in Alaska, in general, suffer from a multi-dimensional statistical invisibility cloak. The descendants of the Philippines in these respective regions deserve an honest look at how poverty has evolved or changed. Looking at each group individually might help distinguish the data.
Poverty in the Philippines
A December 2019 article of the Philippine Daily Inquirer declared that the poverty rate in the archipelago had fallen to 16.6 percent. It decreased from 23.3 percent in 2015. However, there is a difference between the poverty incidence of the Philippines and the subsistence incidence. The subsistence incidence is the proportion of Filipino families whose incomes fall below the food threshold. For the Philippines, the per capita food threshold was P1,505.6 per month in 2018. The poverty threshold was P2,145.36 per month for an individual or P10,726.79 for a family of five. ” Research group IBON stated that one could consider the Philippine Statistics Authority’s (PSA) April 2019 report on poverty misleading.
According to PSA, poor Filipinos fell to 21 percent in the first semester of 2018. This was 23.1 million poor Filipinos down from 27.6 percent or 28.8 million poor Filipinos in the first semester of 2015. IBON observed that the improvements were based on daily per capita poverty. The research group did not consider these thresholds to be decent minimum standards for basic necessities. It found the official poverty line to be too low and grossly underestimating the true number of poor Filipinos. If one were to take the average of the poverty rates of Filipinos in different regions, the variable of the country of the Philippines would bring the average down.
Filipinos in the United States
The Migration Policy Institute states that the United States is home to the largest number of Filipinos abroad with 1.9 million residing in the country in 2017. The rate of poverty for Filipinos in the United States was 8.8 percent in 2015. The median household income for Filipinos living in the U.S. in 2015 was $80,000.
Identifying Minorities on a Census
According to a Census.gov fact sheet on American Indians and Alaska Natives, 19.9 percent of Alaska’s population identified as a member of one of the two groups, alone or a combination, in 2016. That was the highest share for this race group of any state.
In 2014, the Pew Research Center listed the poverty incidence for Alaska Natives and American Indians as the highest in the United States with 26 percent of this group living in poverty. Another 2014 Pew Research Center article found that millions of Americans who had selected one race or ethnicity in the 2000 census had changed it in the 2010 census. Hispanics, mixed-race individuals, American Indians and Pacific Islanders were the ones most likely to do so. The article noted that a variety of factors could influence why people decide to change their race or ethnicity on a census form. They might discover an ancestor of another racial or ethnic group or they might discover that there are benefits to ticking a certain box.
A 2014 meta-analysis of how researchers studied multiracial populations over 20 years, even noted that “not reporting data from multiracial participants, or combining data from all mixed subgroups together into a single “multiracial” category) have led to conflicting representations in the literature.” The difficulty in coming by accurate research on Native populations is determined both by researchers’ oversimplifications and by participants’ complex and changing views on race, their own or otherwise. Accord
Poverty in Alaska
There are many Alaskans who are Filipino descents. Nez Danguilan, a local Filipino community leader, noted that most Alaskans do not even realize that they are of partial Filipino descent. People start to realize when they communicate with more recent arrivals from the Philippines. Filipinos appear to have low rates of poverty in the United States and both Filipinos and Alaska Natives share a history of colonialism. This particular Asian group appears to be one of the more successful Asian populations. However, the poverty rate of Filipino descendants who live in Alaska specifically remains unclear.
It is difficult to tell which policies Alaskeros would be interested in. The poverty rates of Filipinos in different regions are diverse. Thus the policies could end up being very diverse as well. A good place to start however would be with disaggregating data on AAPIs. The census conflates Asians and Pacific Islanders. In addition, the Census conflates Alaskan Natives and Native Americans.
Hence, an Alaskero has the added issue of the truths of their communities getting scattered among three or four different statistical identifiers. In December 2019, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo vetoed a bill that would require state agencies to disaggregate and collect data on Asian American and Pacific Islanders of different ethnic backgrounds. As a result, this issue continues to be important and the 2020 census needs to take the differences of these groups into account. The different poverty rates of Filipinos in different regions demonstrate that.
The Road to Peace in Sudan
Conflict after Conflict
Economically, Sudan has been heavily reliant on oil since the discovery of oil fields in what is now South Sudan. The country began exporting oil in 1999. Ultimately, Sudan secured the industry’s overwhelming importance in the accumulation of the country’s revenue. In 2011, oil exports accounted for 98 percent of the revenue for the southern government. The discovery of oil has had a longstanding effect on tensions between the north and south, specifically, regarding who controls the trade and reaps the subsequent benefits. Although oil reserves are abundant in the south, the north established the refineries and trade hubs.
Frustrations over the regions’ codependency have manifested in intense fighting between the north and south. Conflicts over the small, oil-rich region of Abyei in 2002 is a good example. The oil industry has remained at the core of the lack of peace in Sudan because of its role in perpetuating regional struggles.
South Sudan
The conflict between northern and southern Sudan was not brought upon merely by oil. For more than 50 years, South Sudan was overwhelmed with civil wars, experiencing only brief periods of peace. The first civil war began in this region in 1962. Unfortunately, conflict is still prevalent in the country today. This decades-old conflict now consists of unending violence and countless accounts of human rights violations. The U.N. reported events taking place in the country such as ethnic and sexual violence, which may amount to be war crimes. These circumstances serve as a consistent threat to solidarity or reconciliation in Sudan.
The Sudanese civil war was largely due to colonizer-enforced divisions between northern Muslims, southern Christians and Animists. In fact, former president Omar al-Bashir was responsible for the unrelenting assault on the lives of southern Sudanese. For 30 years, Sudan was under the control of Omar al-Bashir, who ruled ruthlessly as a pro-Arab dictator in continuous oppression and violations of human rights. Beginning in February of 2003, he brutally ordered the systematic killings at Darfur, a region in western Sudan.
Anti-government groups accused the al-Bashir administration of neglect. Subsequently, an onslaught of ethnic cleansing ensued, displacing more than 3 million people and taking the lives of over 400,000. The conflict ended only when South Sudan was at last granted independence through a referendum obtaining the backing of 99 percent of voters in 2011. However, the longstanding friction between the north and south still plagues the two countries today.
Glimpses of Peace and Hope
There have been many attempts to end conflict and strife in order to protect the lives of Sudanese directly affected by the ongoing violence perpetrated by dictatorship, neglect and oppression. The U.N. Security Council intervened in 2003, in order to provide humanitarian relief in an attempt to stabilize the region. For example, in Darfur, it created the United Nations Hybrid Operation in Darfur (UNAMID) in 2007, which allows for current, ongoing facilitation of peace talks between rebel groups and the government of Sudan. UNAMID has allowed for peacekeeping operations to provide mediation to conflicting groups and aid to civilians affected by continuing violence.
A breath of fresh air came in 2005 when the Government of Sudan and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement signed the Comprehensive Peace Agreement in a historic resolution to lead the country on a road to development and stability. This was the start of a hopeful understanding between conflicting groups in Sudan to invest in the distribution of resources in order to begin bettering the lives of its people. Most recently, in 2019, the Transitional Government of Sudan and Darfur armed forces signed a peace agreement in an effort to express both sides’ willingness to establish peace in Sudan.
Sudan is seemingly seesawing between one conflict and another. Where peace is established or agreements are reached in one area, violence ensues elsewhere. Protests are not uncommon, but the people of Sudan are fighting for democracy and to bring attention to the necessity of elections and a civilian-led government. Peace in Sudan is not an impossible task. With the combined determination of international organizations and internal efforts to establish inclusive institutions, Sudan has hope of bringing itself out of its violent past.
– Jessica Ball
Photo: Flickr
7 Health Improvements in Afghanistan
Conflict has torn Afghanistan apart. Like all conflicts, it is the innocent civilians that suffer the most. Afghanistan continues to face a great amount of insecurity within its borders. Yet, despite the harsh conditions that are an everyday reality for civilians, the country continues to make additional health improvements. Here are seven health improvements in Afghanistan.
7 Health Improvements in Afghanistan
While Afghanistan is still a country with many problems, one cannot deny that the progress it is making deserves celebration. The Afghan government partly made many of these improvements by actively engaging NGOs to tackle the health issues within its borders.
– Jacob E. Lee
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
The Poverty Reduction Strategy of Tanzania
Recently, the World Bank released its list of nations that most successfully reduced domestic poverty from 2000-2015. The top five countries reduced poverty between 3.2 percent and 2.6 percent between 2000 and 2015, with Tanzania reducing the highest percentage. The top fifteen countries lifted 802.1 million individuals out of poverty. This article outlines the successful poverty reduction strategy of Tanzania and international support that caused the most drastic reductions in poverty around the world.
History of Tanzanian Poverty
Historically, Tanzania has been one of the most impoverished countries in the world. In 2000, 86 percent of Tanzanians were impoverished, but this number dropped to 28 percent in 2018.
Tanzania reduced poverty by 3.2 percent in 11 years, making it the country that reduced poverty the most in the last 15 years. The poverty reduction strategy of Tanzania is due to three elements: reducing income poverty, increasing access to basic necessities and improving government infrastructure.
Economic Growth
The first strategy focuses on sustainable economic growth, which includes decreasing inflation and focusing on growing parts of the economy that have the largest poor population. The employment and empowerment programs utilized in these strategies focus on agriculture, manufacturing, mining and tourism in addition to macroeconomic growth in exports and imports. Between 2000 and 2015, Tanzania’s export volume grew from 120 to 272, making it the world’s 130th largest exporter. This successfully increased Tanzania’s GDP from $13.3 billion to $47.3 billion.
Tanzania’s unemployment rate dropped from 12.9 percent in 2001 to 10.3 percent in 2014, because of the liquid capital that injected into Tanzania’s economy, a focus on job creation and an industrial transition that opened new jobs. The economic focus of the Tanzanian government lifted thousands of individuals out of poverty and made it the seventh-largest economy in Africa.
The Impoverished Individual
The second strategy focuses on the personal needs of those in poverty. Poverty reduction efforts seek to increase the quality of life and ensure that those in poverty have access to social welfare. Efforts concentrated on education, clean water, sanitation and health services. Because of these efforts, Tanzania increased the number of individuals who had access to clean water by 9 percent between 1990 and 2009. In the same period of time, Tanzania’s health care became more accessible. As a result, child mortality rates dropped from 162 to 108, infant mortality rates dropped from 99 to 68 and the rate of malaria contraction dropped from 40.9 percent to 40.1 percent.
Another poverty reduction strategy focused on education. Tanzania made education more accessible by increasing funding for education, bettering its transportation mechanisms (including roads) and emphasizing vocational education and education for girls. This focus on education increased school enrollment from 68.8 percent in 2000 to 84.6 percent in 2015.
Tanzania’s Commitment to its People
The third strategy is one of the governmental commitments to the impoverished Tanzanian people. This included ensuring the enforcement of the law, the accountability of the government for its people and the prioritizing of stability in order to avoid poverty. The IMF reported that Tanzania has become more accountable to its people, less corrupt and has increased citizen participation in governance, thus ensuring an effective political framework.
International Participation in Tanzania’s Poverty Reduction Strategies
The international community was critical to Tanzania’s successful poverty reduction. The United States, Tanzania’s largest source of aid, began giving Tanzania foreign aid in 2006. In that year, the U.S. gave $151.29 million. This number increased every year, with the U.S. giving Tanzania $633.5 million in aid in 2015. This aid has consistently gone towards the very areas in which Tanzania has seen the most improvement: humanitarian aid, governance, education, economic development and health.
While Tanzania still has a long way to go until it completely eliminates poverty, it has made significant progress since the beginning of the millennium. The poverty reduction strategies of Tanzania, including economic growth, investment in individuals and infrastructure and governance development, have been successful to a great extent. International aid has consistently been a contributing factor to Tanzania’s ability to reduce poverty and has successfully targeted the areas in which Tanzania required the most improvement.
– Denise Sprimont
Photo: Flickr
10 Facts About Life Expectancy in Honduras
Honduras is a Central American country with a population of nearly 10 million people. Though the country has faced extreme poverty and disease, there have been significant signs of improvement in the country’s overall quality of life. These 10 facts about life expectancy in Honduras detail the improvements the country has made throughout its history.
10 Facts About Life Expectancy in Honduras
Although Honduras still needs to make progress in health care and safe water access, it has made a lot of improvements for its citizens in recent years. Honduras should be able to continue ensuring a long, healthy life for its citizens by continuing its improvements.
– Alyson Kaufman
Photo: Pixabay
Life Expectancy in Bosnia and Herzegovina
Bosnia and Herzegovina is a country located in the Balkan region of Eastern Europe. The country has been one of the center points of the Yugoslavian Wars that tore across the area in the 1990s. It was the location of countless atrocities, such as the massacre at Srebrenica in 1995. The impact of these events still exists across the country today, despite 25 years of improvements and advancements. Part of this impact was the reduction in life expectancy in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
10 Facts About Life Expectancy in Bosnia and Herzegovina
These 10 facts show how damaging the war has been on the general health and lifespan of the population. While the years since have seen improvements, they have not been enough to bring Bosnia and Herzegovina to par with the rest of the world. Damaged public infrastructure, lack of focus on preventative care and deteriorating environmental conditions are some of the primary reasons behind the slow increase of the country’s life expectancy.
– Neil Singh
Photo: Flickr
5 Mental Health Effects of the Yazidi Genocide
In the past few years, the Yazidi populations of northern Iraq and northern Syria have faced forced migration, war, the enslavement of women and girls and genocide. These traumatic events have resulted in several, severe psychological problems among Yazidis. A lack of adequate treatment and a prolonged sense of threat compounds the five mental health effects of the Yazidi genocide.
The Yazidis, a Kurdish religious minority, practice a non-Abrahamic, monotheistic religion called Yazidism. When the so-called Islamic State declared a caliphate in Iraq and Syria, it specifically targeted the Yazidis as non-Arab, non-Sunni Muslims. ISIS has committed atrocities against the Yazidis to the level of genocide, according to the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC); these crimes included the enslavement of women and girls, torture and mass killings. This violence caused many Yazidis to suffer from severe mental health disorders.
5 Mental Health Effects of the Yazidi Genocide
In the aftermath of ISIS’ genocide against the Yazidis of northern Iraq and northern Syria, many survivors have experienced mental health problems stemming from the trauma. These genocidal atrocities will have long-term psychological effects on the Yazidis, but such issues can be mitigated by psychological care. The five mental health effects of the Yazidi genocide outlined above prove the necessity of such health care for populations that have endured genocide and extreme violence.
– Sarah Frazer
Photo: Flickr
Improving Public Health in Mali
Mali is a nation that has had both ups and downs in recent decades where public health is concerned. Food and waterborne diseases are particularly problematic within the country. The degree of risk for attracting some sort of major illness or infection within Mali is very high. Among the top 10 causes of death in Mali are neonatal disorders, malaria, malnutrition and lower respiratory infections. Many of the issues surrounding public health in Mali largely correlate with access to food and clean drinking water.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
The CDC has been working in a close partnership with the country since 1996 in an effort to provide aid for public health in Mali. A CDC epidemiologist first began working with Mali on stopping diseases like smallpox and measles. However, its mission within the nation’s borders has expanded. One goal of the CDC’s current partnership with the nation is to improve public health in Mali. The CDC is expanding access to solutions for vaccine-preventable illnesses and other leading causes of death. Another goal is strengthening the country’s laboratory and workforce capacity to help it be more prepared for disease outbreaks.
The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID)
Despite some serious achievements within the health sector of the country, public health in Mali still remains one of the largest concerns within its borders. The newest strategy under the U.S. Agency for International Development focuses heavily on development within the region in several different ways. It prioritizes the comprehensive packaging of high-impact health services at the community level and pushes for making said necessary health initiatives accessible to those who need it the most. Additionally, the organization supports the goals of the U.S. Government Global Health Initiative. The organization is continuously looking for ways to improve public health by making effective, quality health services to Mali’s citizens.
Prioritizing Mothers and Children
Even more specifically, Mali and initiatives must give special attention to mothers and children within the country as part of any approach to improving public health in Mali. Some organizations prioritize this above all else, like Mali Health. Its approach focuses on promoting financial health and stability. Mali Health removes financial barriers that stand in the way for many citizens of Mali. The thinking behind this approach is that with fewer financial barriers posing as obstacles for mothers, they will be able to seek out medical care for themselves and their children easier than it may have been previously to do so. Approaching public health in Mali primarily by tackling issues that heavily affect mothers and children first is an intuitive idea. Doing so means that healthier mothers are able to raise healthier children. The children will live and thrive past the years where certain illnesses can be particularly deadly. In addition, when more children survive and thrive, it leads to successes in Mali’s workforce, population growth and economic growth.
Clean Water in Mali
Another integral approach to solving the issues which plague public health in Mali is one that focuses primarily on clean water. Diarrheal diseases are especially lethal and often emerge out of a lack of access to clean and safe drinking water. One nonprofit organization, Medicine for Mali, has drilled 28 clean water wells within the country in hopes of providing cleaner water to its citizens. Solar even powers some of these wells and the organization has provided training within the villages it services so that users know how to maintain and repair the wells. It is through organizations like these that profound impacts are visible on public health in Mali. The implementation of health services and wells can change the lives of thousands of people all at once. This sparks a movement to help a nation on its path to growth.
Like many other countries, Mali still needs improvement in order to become substantially healthier. Public health in Mali still faces many issues. The real challenge lies in ensuring that clean drinking water, necessary medications and vaccinations and preventive health services are accessible throughout the country. The country should undoubtedly achieve this through the combined efforts of nonprofit organizations, its government, its citizens and foreign aid agencies in the U.S.
– Hannah Easley
Photo: Flickr
Bill Gates Foundation to Reduce Poverty in China
The Game Plan
Despite the issues that a more urbanized China has, it has produced positive results during the past 70 years by lifting more than 850 million people out of poverty over a span of 40 years. Meanwhile, others have developed their own plans to get themselves out of poverty by using business sense. One example is when a local Shibadong farmer named Shi Quanhou worked his way out of poverty by running an agritainment farm.
Agritainment is a compound word for farms that include both agriculture and entertainment. These farms might include pumpkin patches, petting zoos and corn mazes, among other attractions for a family-friendly atmosphere. Although one cannot say this about other farmers, Quanzhou underwent this plan in a desperate measure to help him provide a more secure and prosperous life for his family. Farmers have also found a 12.1% increase in their income by transitioning their farms to agritainment farms.
China’s Success
With many people still underprivileged, The Gates Foundation Poverty China project also offered its support during this stretch with three solutions that incorporate working with government agencies, advocating for financial services, health care and childhood nutrition. The organization also added a partnership with the State Council Leading Group Office of Poverty Alleviation and Development to research how to remedy these issues through experience within China and also between China and other countries. Establishing stronger platforms that encourage participation in the relief efforts to end poverty has also been part of its long-term plan. The Gates Foundation Poverty China is closing in on completing what could very well be the largest turnaround of this global issue in the world’s history.
Helping Health
The Gates Foundation Poverty China plan includes a $33 million grant to combat tuberculosis to the Chinese Ministry of Health. This partnership intends to better detect tuberculosis cases and find a cure for those suffering from it. With more than 1.5 million cases each year, this partnership is providing innovative tests, along with patient monitoring strategies to deliver improved treatment and diagnoses across the country.
Additionally, China has developed a plan to decrease TB by creating The Chinese Infectious and Endemic Disease Control Project (IEDC) back in 1991. The World Bank partly funded $58 million to it and the World Health Organization (WHO) developed it in 1989. The IEDC was a booming success, curing 85% of identified patients within two years of its implementation. TB cases decreased by more than 36% between 1990 and 2000, about 4.1% each year.
Infinite Improvement
People have widely recognized China for its dramatic improvement. U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres pointed out that China has contributed the most to its cause over the last decade. This turnaround means that the livelihoods of many will boost China’s economy and build a more prosperous nation. With that plan in motion, China has almost eradicated rural poverty by refocusing on areas where the poorest live in places with poor infrastructure and have special needs. China went from a staggering 97.5% in 1978 to a meager 3.1% among the rural population at the end of 2017.
With 2020 already underway, President Xi Jinping has informed the Chinese people that anyone in an impoverished state should receive medical benefits, such as insurance, aid and allowances. With the Gates Foundation Poverty China plan and China’s campaigns and multiple partnerships with local governments, China’s ability to avert its national catastrophe will not only gain global attention from other suffering countries or have more fortunate nations lend a hand, but will be able to lend help of its own.
– Tom Cintula
Photo: Flickr