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Efforts to Limit the Spread of Diseases in Kenya

Diseases in Kenya
As a country with a population growing by more than one million people per year, the Sub-Saharan African nation of Kenya struggles to treat and contain diseases. Kenya is a densely populated nation that experiences significant treatable diseases due to a lack of economic development and poor water quality. Common diseases in Kenya such as malaria, HIV/AIDS and lower respiratory infections remain a consistent threat to the population though significant progress has been made in recent years.

Today’s biggest threat is HIV/AIDS, which was Kenya’s leading cause of death in the last 10 years, killing 36,000 people in 2015. This number is down from 54,000 in 2012, however, as HIV prevention programs were greatly successful in reducing new infections and raising awareness about the disease. The National AIDS Control Council (NACC) headed the effort and is currently working toward a set of objectives to achieve by 2019, including reducing new HIV infections by 75% and reducing AIDS-related mortality by 25%.

Kenya has a high rate of water-borne illnesses such as malaria, dengue fever and schistosomiasis. In a country where 70% of the 46 million people are at risk for malaria, preventative efforts in recent years focused on highest-risk areas to curb the spread of the diseases in Kenya. Efforts such as the use of intermittent preventative treatment and insect-treated nets have played a crucial role in dropping the malaria prevalence by 3% between 2010 and 2015. Anti-malaria measures have contributed to a 29% drop in child mortality since 2008.

Kenya also faces threats from bacterial diseases such as tuberculosis. Typhoid fever rates are highest among children age two to four, and the disease disproportionately affects those in urban areas and slums.

One of the most significant factors preventing the treatment of common diseases in Kenya is the lack of hospitals and other healthcare infrastructure. Currently, Kenya has just one doctor and only 12 nurses for every 10,000 people.

Friction between the Kenyan government and doctors adds to the problems mounting in the country’s continuing fight against preventable disease. In March of 2017, Kenyan doctors ended their 100-day strike, aimed at increasing pay and restoring run-down public health facilities. A lack of funding may also create future problems when it comes to preventable disease. In December 2016, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria announced that its package toward malaria programs in Kenya would be cut in half.

While significant progress was made to reduce the threat of preventable diseases like HIV and malaria, Kenyans remain at risk. With a rapidly growing population and limited availability of healthcare resources, Kenya will continue to face challenges to keep its population healthy and needs to remain vigilant to prevent further spread of disease.

– Nick Dugan

Photo: Flickr

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What Is Smallholder Market Support?

Smallholder Market Support
What is smallholder market support? Through the continued and increased bolstering of small-scale producers, it may be the best way to achieve Zero Hunger.

The Zero Hunger Challenge, launched in 2012, combines all five elements of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in an effort to “end hunger, eliminate all forms of malnutrition, and build inclusive and sustainable food systems.”

One of the U.N.’s SDGs is to bring an end to rural poverty by increasing the incomes of small-scale producers and thus increasing their productivity. The success of small-scale farmers is essential to the success of the Zero Hunger Challenge and feeding the growing population. Increasing smallholders’ productivity starts with improving their livelihoods, and this is where smallholder market support comes in.

Smallholder farmers make up the majority of the world’s impoverished people, despite the fact they produce most of the world’s food. Smallholder farmers face many challenges that hinder their capacities. These challenges include a lack of post-harvest management, suitable storage and productive markets or financing. This is not to mention the challenge farmers face in producing enough to make it through the season and generating a small surplus, a goal not easily achieved.

The World Food Programme has developed innovative solutions that has aided two million smallholder farmers in 60 countries in their agricultural development. Two of the most profound solutions include Purchase for Progress (P4P) and Home-Grown School Feeding.

P4P aids in connecting smallholders to larger markets and, in turn, widening their range of crops and broadening business opportunities. Home-Grown School Feeding links domestic smallholders with national schools to supplement their meal systems. Both of these programs, among many other effective agendas implemented, utilize private-sector and government systems to support smallholders.

These efforts are not only humane and ethical–they are sustainable. The question remains for many: what is smallholder market support and why should it be encouraged and funded? Smallholder market support has the long-term ability to turn current recipients of agricultural assistance into our future global food producers. Smallholder market support can eliminate world hunger within our lifetimes.

– Catherine Fredette

Photo: Flickr

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How Foreign Aid Can Solve Instability in the Sahel Region

Instability in Sahel
The Sahel region is a large transition zone in Africa between the Sahara and Southern Africa. The countries surrounding this belt include Sudan, Niger, Nigeria, Mali and Chad. According to the Permanent Interstate Committee for Drought Control in the Sahel (CILSS), more than 100 million people will inhabit the region by the year 2020, and 200 million will live there by 2050. With such a huge influx of people in this land, the poverty-related problems and instability in the Sahel region need to be addressed.

News outlet Africa Renewal reported that in 2012, 18 million people suffered during a major food crisis in the Sahel region. Just the next year, 11 million were experiencing hunger, more than 10 percent of them being children.

In a press release published by the U.N. in June, U.N. Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed spoke to the joint Economic and Social Council-Peacebuilding Commission on the instability in the Sahel region. He claims that the Sahel region continues to deteriorate due to lack of government and harsh climate conditions; these countries sit right above the equator.

Currently, more than 30 million people in the Sahel region struggle with food insecurity. Terrorism affects many more citizens, driving out law enforcement and government forces. “Efforts to address [this] should be closely coordinated with the work of the United Nations Development Group and the Resident Coordinators of Sahel countries,” stated Mohammed. Not only is he calling for action, but Mohammed explains that action is already being taken.

The U.N. Security Council is deploying a G5 Sahel joint force of 5,000 military and police personnel to collaborate with another military in the area, such as the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA). Together, they will continue to protect citizens and suppress terrorist violence.

Mohammed closed his address by stating, “the Secretary-General, his senior management and I, myself, are committed to improving the efficiency and effectiveness of the United Nations response to crises around the world.”

However, the U.N. isn’t the only organization committed to helping the Sahel region. The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) funds CILSS with around $3.4 million annually. Their mission, as stated on the USAID website, is “to devote efforts towards the search for food security and combating the effects of drought and desertification for a new ecological balance in the Sahel.”

The 2030 Sustainable Development Goals and many organizations are working to end instability in the Sahel region. With the objective of government reform, we will hopefully see goals reached before the end of 2030.

– Vicente Vera

Photo: Flickr

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The Cost of Living in Brazil

Cost of Living in Brazil
The cost of living in any country is a direct result of inflation and the economy. As of June 2017, $1 is equivalent to 3.31 Brazilian real. The cost of living in Brazil does not seem to be high for everyday products such as fruit, bread and eggs when compared to prices in the United States. The costs tend to differ more when it comes to mortgage rates, and gasoline and other imports.

Brazilian cities were more expensive in 2011 than cities such as Los Angeles, New York City, Berlin, Miami, Abu Dhabi and Luxembourg. The inflation rate was 6.5%, while the rate in the U.S. was 3%. The real should have become cheaper, not more expensive. This caused the cost of living in Brazil to rise.

By 2016, the economic situation had not changed much. Brazil, which had been the fifth-largest world economy when it won the Olympics, dropped to the ninth-largest economy after a significant decline in its gross domestic project. It went into its worst recession since the 1930s.

High taxes, poor infrastructure and low labor productivity have contributed to what is known as “Custo Brasil” (“Brazil cost” in English)­­– which refers to the increased costs associated with doing business in Brazil. It is likely that these costs directly impact the cost of living in Brazil.

The 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro was expected to add to the economy while bringing Brazil out of the recession. With an influx of tourists’ spending money, the demand and supply for products should have increased.

More than 400,000 tourists came in for the Olympics and spent about 425 real per day; those 760,000 Brazilians who attended spent an average of 310 real per day. In total, the Olympics generated over $100 million in tourism revenue alone, based on the exchange rate as of August 2016.

Although the total amount of revenue generated remains unknown, companies spent more for the 2016 Rio Olympics than they did in Beijing in 2008 and in London in 2012. Between the revenue from tourism and sponsors, Brazil’s official inflation rate ended 2016 at its lowest level since 2013.

The central bank expects the cost of living to decelerate, with significant decreases having already occurred in the past few months. Brazil is expected to end 2017 with inflation below its target for the first time since 2009.

– Stefanie Podosek

Photo: Flickr

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The Current Cost of Living in Panama

Cost of Living in Panama
Known for its 48-mile canal connecting the Pacific Ocean with the Atlantic Ocean, Panama receives over a million visitors each year. Panama’s beautiful beaches, ecotourism and international festivals can seduce many tourists into making Panama their home rather than a vacation spot. For those who entertain the thought of Panama as their permanent home, it is important to know the cost of living in Panama as well as what it’s like to live there.

Panama has a relatively low cost of living, which can range from $1,120 to $8,000 per month for two people, while the average middle-class salary in Panama is estimated at $1,200 per month. These costs fluctuate depending on what region or city you are going to be living in Panama.

The unemployment rate in Panama is 4.5%. The labor force in Panama is made up of 1.78 million people; a large majority of the population works in services while the rest works in agriculture and industry. The standard workweek in Panama is 48 hours, which is 8 hours more than a full-time work week here in the United States.

While the cost of living in Panama is low, migrants should know much more about Panama before making the decision to move there. For example, while Panama’s crime rate compared to other Central American countries is relatively low; however, it is still high compared to most of the United States. Panama, Colon, Herrera and Chiriqui are among the provinces with the largest cities which had the highest overall crime rate. There has been a pattern of decreasing crime in Panama. Homicide, armed robberies and petty theft rates have all continuously fallen.

Moving from the United States to Panama may come as a huge shock when you realize that Panama’s population is only four million. Approximately one-third of Panama’s population lives in Panama City or the immediate area around it. Panama City is packed with nightlife, shopping areas. The rest of the areas in Panama provide a quiet and relaxed life which provides quicker access to Panama’s nature.

There are many things to consider and know about Panama before turning your yearly vacation into a forever home. While Panama may be very appealing to the eye and its beautiful attractions may coerce someone into a quick move, the cost of living in Panama may be a deciding factor.

– Danyel Harrigan

Photo: Flickr

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Eight Facts About Chattel Slavery

Chattel Slavery
The definition of chattel slavery is a “civil relationship in which one person has absolute power over the life, fortune, and liberty of another.” According to a report issued by the Australia-based Walk Free Foundation, 29.8 million people still exist as slaves in the modern world. Among the enslaved, there are forced laborers, forced prostitutes, child soldiers, child brides in forced marriages and those in the servitude of absolute ownership (chattel slaves). Below are eight facts to illustrate the current state of chattel slavery around the world.

Top Chattel Slavery Facts to Know

  1. Countries with the most chattel slavery include the East African countries of Mauritania and Sudan. Within these countries, people can experience being bought and sold as if they were a commodity.
  2. The enslaved are often captured during raids of villages, with girls as young as ten often seen as easy targets. Branding with hot metal objects is a practice often used to prevent escape, while female genital mutilation and castration are frequently imposed punishments to those who try.
  3. Civil strife in Sudan has created a comeback for slavery within the country, as an increasing number of war prisoners face abduction. As government-armed Arab militias loot villages in the southern regions, they have been known to murder the men and take the women and children to be auctioned off and sold as property. According to James Aguir of Sudan’s Committee for the Eradication of the Abduction of Women and Children, “35,000 slaves remain in bondage in Northern Sudan.”
  4. While Mauritania’s government has continually banned slavery, there is little enforcement effort.  Current estimates claim that 20% of the population are slaves to North African Arabs. As slaves, their only purpose is for house and farm labor and sex.
  5. Children of chattel slaves are born the property of their parents master. As Fatma Mint Mamadou was born a slave in Mauritania, she knew of little else. When questioned if she and the other slave girls in her village were raped, she answered, “Of course they would come in the night when they needed to breed us. Is that what you mean by rape?”
  6. About one in ten Haitian children are sold to wealthier families to become “restaveks” or “stay withs” by poor parents who have few other choices. As these impoverished people normally have no other income source, their only chance of survival often comes from selling their children into forced labor conditions resembling those of chattel slavery.
  7. Rich, developed countries have the lowest rates of slavery. In reference to the Walk Free Global Slavery Index, the Washington Post’s Max Fisher wrote that “effective government policies, rule of law, political stability and development levels all make slavery less likely.”
  8. Slavery is driven by extreme poverty, corruption, and discrimination. As Fisher argues, “When society treats women, ethnic groups or religious minorities as less valuable or less worthy of protection, they are more likely to become slaves”.

While slavery continues throughout many developing nations, the need for strengthening those weakened by poverty is undeniable. As trends have shown, investing in the stability of poorer nations and their people will help enable citizens to stand up against the corruption in their own countries, as well as major human rights violations like chattel slavery.

– Kendra Richardson

Photo: Flickr

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What Can Be Learned from Finland’s Education System


The best way to educate students is something that most countries strive to discover. While most are still searching for answers, Finland has seen dramatic progress in its education system within the recent years. The first realization came in 2000 when Finland’s school system was revealed to have the best readers in the world.

Then again in 2009, Finnish students ranked second in science, third in reading, and sixth in math, among a sample of about 500,000 students worldwide. Ever since these rankings were released, countries around the world have been trying to understand what it is that Finland does so well. Here are some of the unique traits of the Finnish education system:

  1. Delayed start: children in Finland do not start their schooling until age seven. Before the start of their formal education, children spend their time in daycare where they learn through more engaging forms such as play, singing, and games.
  2. Frequent breaks: the education system in Finland continues to highlight the importance of playtime throughout schooling. Children are required to spend 15 minutes outdoors every hour, no matter the weather conditions.
  3. Students do not take standardized tests: contrary to many other countries, the Finnish emphasize their dislike of standardized testing. The Finnish education system discourages any standardized testing before the age of 16.
  4. Teaching is a well-respected profession: becoming a teacher is a rigorous and competitive program in Finland. All teachers must go through a five-year master’s program that is highly selective, only accepting a few hundred of the thousands of students that apply.
  5. Uniformity across the country: Finland’s education systems all have the same goals for their students. Additionally, since their educators come from rigorous programs, all schools have equally qualified teachers. The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development conducted a survey that ranked the differences between the strongest and weakest students as the smallest in the world.

Finland’s education system is very different from those around the world, and yet it is arguably the most successful. The country stresses the importance of play and teaching students to learn not only for the sake of a test but to be more knowledgeable people. Additionally, the teachers themselves know how important their jobs are and therefore dedicate many years of their lives to learning how to be the best educators they can be. For these reasons and more, Finland’s education system is one of the best in the world.

– Olivia Hayes

Photo: Flickr

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What is Food Assistance for Assets and How Does it Work?


More than 10% of the world’s population does not have regular access to food and 50% of these families are farmers. The majority of hungry people live in Asian and African countries. Countries with higher natural disaster rates are not able to access food regularly, due to the destruction of their communities and farmlands. The World Food Programme began the Food Assistance for Assets (FFA) program and other programs like it to help combat this issue. FFA focuses on restoring land and rebuilding communities while assisting people in need, but many people have never heard of it.

Food Assistance for Assets is a program that feeds people and works through them to rehabilitate suffering communities. Through this program, people are given work, such as building and repairing bridges and roads. In return, they gain two things. First, they are paid so that they can buy food for themselves and their families. In addition, the work that they have done helps strengthen and develop their communities, many of which have fallen victim to natural disasters.

While this program may seem to only benefit individuals, it has helped larger communities as well. FFA programs exist in 52 countries, where 10.1 million people have received help from the program. Rehabilitation programs include building water wells and planting trees to restore forests.

These facts help shed light on the impact of the Food Assistance for Assets programs and emphasizes the work that this program does to provide food to people around the world. There is enough food produced in the world to feed everyone, but without programs like FFA, many people are unable to access or pay for enough food to feed their families. Several organizations, including the U.N., hope that through assistance programs such as the FFA and through the increased sustainability of food, world hunger will be eradicated by 2030.

– Helen Barker

Photo: Flickr

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How to Score a Ticket to the Global Citizen Festival


The Global Citizen Festival launched in 2012 as part of the Global Poverty Project, founded by Hugh Evans and Simon Moss. The movement is based on an online platform and mobile application that utilizes the power of education, communications, advocacy, campaigning and the media to take action against extreme poverty. The Global Poverty Project partners with other organizations such as UNICEF, OXFAM, ONE, Save the Children, The Global Fund and more.

The result of last year’s festival was 1.3 million online actions taken, leading to 44 commitments and announcements. Combined, these announcements are worth $1.9 billion and could impact 199 million people, just from the Global Citizen Festival of 2016 campaign. Commitments have not only been made by U.S. companies such as Walmart, UPS and Johnson & Johnson but also by nations such as the Netherlands and Canada.

With more than 60,000 participants attending the first festival on the Great Lawn in Central Park, the event quickly became popular. In 2016, the performance lineup included Rihanna, Demi Lovato, Kendrick Lamar and Metallica. There were also special guests like Coldplay’s Chris Martin. The band headlined the previous year and Martin is the current Global Citizen Festival curator.

The festival is free, but spectators cannot just attend. Instead, fans must engage with campaigns in order to win Global Citizen Festival spots. Activists can accumulate points that act as currency to bid on tickets to the Global Citizen Festival and other live events. The restriction is that only current campaign points can be used during each campaign.

For the upcoming July Global Citizen Festival in Hamburg, Germany, the organizers plan on handing out 9,000 free tickets to the show to people who sign up and pledge action.

“In bringing the Global Citizen Festival to Germany for the first time, we are calling on the G20 to take action and responsibility for moving forward on the Global Goals,” Global Citizen CEO Hugh Evans said.

– Stefanie Podosek

Photo: Flickr

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Hunger in the Maldives on the Decline

hunger in maldives
Many experts would say the development of the 1,192-island country of the Maldives is an extraordinary success story. In the past three decades, the nation has moved from one of the world’s 20 poorest countries to a middle-income country with almost double the population it had in the early 1980s.

The tropical islands have become a destination for many travelers looking for nature adventures and a huge marine life economy. It is a nation rich in natural beauty, and ecotourism accounts for about 70 percent of employment. More than half of public revenues, almost all exports and close to 80 percent of GDP rely on the ecosystem and biodiversity-based sectors.

According to the Household Income and Expenditure Survey (HIES), rising price levels are impacting the rising poverty rates of the Maldives’ capital, Male. In 2009 and 2010, about 8 percent of the population lived on $1.25 or less a day. The good news is that this number has dropped significantly in the past few years. The nation saw its poverty rates decrease from 40 percent in 1997 to 28 percent in 2004. The World Bank is currently working to calculate the latest numbers.

In December 2016, the Maldives left the Commonwealth of Nations, after joining in 1982. A spokesperson from the Commonwealth Secretariat said the nation received developmental assistance in various ways including education, research studies and strengthening multi-party democracy. Critics of the departure claim that the government is failing the country with this decision and that it would be beneficial for the country to stay engaged with the international community so it can keep working to eradicate hunger in the Maldives.

However, the Maldives minister of foreign affairs Mohamed Asim claims that the help from the Commonwealth was not significant in any way and that the budget for aid shrinks every year. Asim claims in an article in The Independent that the Commonwealth is too preoccupied with trying to leverage its international diplomacy to help develop the smaller nation members.

In the wake of leaving the Commonwealth, the Maldives launched its first international sovereign bonds through the Singapore Stock Exchange in an attempt to boost the economy of the island country according to the Economic Times. The government is confident this will boost the overall economy and that hunger in the Maldives will soon have no significant impact on the islands’ citizens.

– Emily Arnold

Photo: Flickr