Foreign aid is a topic that stirs controversy, with each side maintaining significant weight in their argument.
“You know the excuses: We can’t afford foreign aid anymore, or we’re wasting money pouring it into these poor countries, or we can’t buy friends—other countries just take the money and dislike us for giving it. Well, all these excuses are just that, excuses—and they’re dead wrong,” Ronald Reagan said in 1987.
The United States’ stance on foreign aid changes with each administration. The phrase, “you are damned if you do, you are damned if you don’t” comes to mind.
Foreign aid has been categorized as “soft power” since the late 1980s. “Soft power” is the ability of a country to persuade others to do what it wants without force or coercion. Joseph Nye coined the phrase, arguing that security relies on winning people as much as winning wars.
Since the 1980s, soft power has become central in U.S. foreign policy practices. Is foreign aid a tool in the soft power toolbox?
Nye believes aid is purchasing power, not soft power. Despite the nuances of whether aid is categorized as purchasing power or soft power, foreign aid is important for the United States to achieve interests abroad.
According to Phil Vernon, “currency of soft power is values, institutions, culture and policy, then soft power is exercised by the choices you make and the actions you take, not by what you say.” If this is true, aid should be accompanied by anti-corruption monitoring organizations, tools of economic sustainability and keys of independence. The goal is not to have a country depending on the United States, but to provide the tools for a state to become independent.
If the United States does not ensure and monitor the aid given, corruption will prevent the money from reaching the population in need. Monitoring programs are even more vital than aid itself. Corruption is the kryptonite to foreign aid.
According to the National Bureau of Economic Research, the more corrupt the government is, the more aid the state receives. There is no evidence that an increase in foreign aid reduces corruption.
Currently, corruption is not being punished. This lack of acknowledgment is only encouraging governments to abuse international funds. If corruption is reflected in next year’s funding, people will suffer. If the population suffers on the government’s behalf, this is motivation for the population to vote in order to correct the situation. Thus, reducing corruption will be imminent.
Despite the controversies and arguments surrounding international aid, it is important to remember that giving aid to corrupt governments is not giving aid to the people. Corrupt governments must be punished in some way in order to reduce international corruption. Corruption is the kryptonite to U.S. foreign policy success. U.S. interests must be maintained, and aid is a tool in the toolbox for doing just that.
– Danielle Preskitt
Photo: Flickr
Improving Access to Education in Africa
The Shule Foundation has two goals. The first of these goals is to expand access to education in Africa by building schools and not just classrooms. The second is to implement a unique self-sustaining model that will exceed the educational needs of all children. The Shule Foundation builds high-quality schools in rural villages across Africa, recycling surplus into scholarships for underserved students.
While many do have access to education in the world, there are still many problems which need to be addressed, especially in specific areas. Of the children that do get the opportunity to attend school, 250 million cannot read or write after four years. Fifty percent of the out-of-school children in the world live across Africa. The Shule Foundation was created to address the conditions of education across Africa including under-skilled teachers, limited resources, overcrowded classrooms, no electricity and a lack of nutrition.
The Shule Foundation believes education is a human right. The organization is dedicated to expanding access to quality education to children in Africa by providing various opportunities. Its goal is to improve the quality of education, increase family income, empower women and girls and produce a more financially stable population across Africa. The opportunities the campaign provides are funded through a few solutions.
The first solution is called the Kitalu Shule Project. The project aims to increase early childhood education and to build preschools that support early development. With this form of nourishment, better opportunities are created for children in the future.
The campaign’s plan is to build primary schools in Jeeja and Uganda and from there expand throughout Africa. The schools will provide the children with two meals a day, access to health care and better sanitary facilities.
The Miche (Seedling) Project is another favorable concept that the Shule Foundation has come up with. The organization planned a concept that starts with educating the community on farming, in turn yielding more crops that provide proceeds to build better schools. This is the Shule Foundation’s plan toward sustainability.
With this project, the Shule Foundation has turned 20 acres of land into efficient organic farms. Along with this successful step, the project will educate farmers on best crop practices, empower women and girls in the workforce, help raise funds for schools in different communities as well as provide food for the schools built.
The Shule Foundation does not just focus on increasing access to education in Africa; it also provides the concept and tools to work toward building schools and sustaining them. By introducing agricultural technologies, it will provide income to gain financial independence for not only the schools but also for families in communities across Africa.
– Brandi Gomez
Photo: Flickr
New Study: Zika Virus Kills Cancer Cells
To most, “Zika virus” is synonymous with “devastation.” Here is a quick summary of Zika’s recent global impact:
What positive news related to this devastating threat could possibly exist?
In a startling new study, the Washington University School of Medicine—in conjunction with the University of California San Diego School of Medicine—assert that Zika virus kills cancer cells in adult human brains. The Journal of Experimental Medicine published the results in a report in early September. It posits that injecting the Zika virus into the brain at the same time as surgery could potentially remove life-threatening tumors.
The Zika virus attacks malignant brain tumors called glioblastomas. Glioblastoma is one of the most challenging cancers to treat. The conventional treatment is brain surgery followed by radiation and rounds of chemotherapy within 2 to 4 weeks after surgery. Follow-up procedures must begin as soon after surgery as possible, as new glioblastomas can generate rapidly. Frequent patient observation with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) or computed tomography (CT) scans is another vital element of ongoing medical care.
Still, most tumors reappear within six months. A small population of cells, called glioblastoma stem cells, often survives the treatments and continues to divide, producing new tumor cells to replace the ones killed by the cancer drugs. Glioblastoma stem cells are hard to kill because they can avoid the body’s immune system and are resistant to chemotherapy and radiation. However, researchers believe that the Zika virus kills cancer cells, preventing new tumors from recurring after surgically removing the original tumor.
Despite such aggressive treatment, glioblastoma cells remain deadly: most patients die within 15 months. According to the American Association of Neurological Surgeons, nearly 52 percent of all primary brain tumors are glioblastomas. Each year in the United States, this widespread form of brain cancer affects approximately 12,000 people. U.S. Sen. John McCain announced he is battling with glioblastoma in July 2017.
The Washington University – University of California San Diego School experiment revealed that the Zika virus favored destroying glioblastoma stem cells over normal brain cells in mice. Two weeks later, the mice with Zika virus injected into their cancerous tumors exhibited smaller tumors than those without the virus. Mice with Zika virus injected into their brain tumors seemed to survive longer than those without the injections.
Despite differences in the biological systems of mice and humans, the research team believes their proposal the Zika virus kills cancer cells merits pursuing. The joint research team hopes to begin human trials in the next 18 months.
According to Michael S. Diamond, MD, Ph.D., the Herbert S. Gasser Professor of Medicine at Washington University School of Medicine, “These cells are highly resistant to conventional therapies.” Diamond continued, “While the Zika virus does harm to the brains of developing fetuses, it may prove effectual in the treatment of glioblastoma in adult brains.”
– Heather Hopkins
Photo: Flickr
Human Rights in the Solomon Islands
The Solomon Islands is a beautiful group of islands in the South Pacific Ocean where some of World War II’s most intense warfare took place. The nation’s official tourism site says “Step back in time, the islands remain unspoiled.” The Solomon Islands gained independence in 1978, two years after it began governing itself. Today, more than 600,000 people live in this parliamentary democracy. When it comes to the protection of human rights in the Solomon Islands, the nation is fairly successful. However, important failures do occur, such as violence and discrimination against women and unreasonably long pretrial detentions.
Women in the Solomon Islands have struggled to gain a role in the nation’s political discourse. While there are no laws explicitly forbidding women or minorities engagement in the political process, antiquated cultural norms have made it challenging for women to get involved. The nation’s parliament consists of 50 members, yet only one woman. The government wants to fix this and has passed laws aimed to increase the number of women in politics, but so far nothing has been successful.
Violence against women in the Solomon Islands is also quite prevalent. According to a 2011 World Health Organization report, more than 50 percent of women in the Solomon Islands experienced sexual violence by a partner at some point in their life. Incidents like these are often underreported due to women having a number of concerns, such as fear of backlash and concern over breaking a cultural norm.
An inability to swiftly move detainees through the criminal justice system is another failure on the part of the government to protect human rights in the Solomon Islands. In fact, about half of the nation’s prisoner population is made up of pretrial detainees. The U.S. Department of State’s 2016 report on human rights in the Solomon Islands states that the average pretrial detention period lasts for about two years. The Solomon Islands needs to address this problem so that people are not effectively prisoners for an extended period of time before they have had a fair trial.
These are important failures, but it is also important to consider that the Solomon Islands has succeeded in many other ways. Prison and detention center conditions generally met international standards, free speech is well-protected and the most recent election was generally free and fair.
Recently, the Solomon Islands has even taken a step towards becoming a global leader in the fight against human rights violations. The nation did so by condemning West Papua human rights abuses at the U.N. Human Rights Council. Some of the human rights violations occurring in West Papua include arrest, torture and the killing of peaceful protestors. The impact of the Solomon Island‘s statement remains to be seen, but no matter the result, it was a powerful action taken by the nation.
– Adam Braunstein
Photo: Flickr
Addressing the Macedonia Poverty Rate
Just north of Greece in southeastern Europe lies the mountainous country of Macedonia, carved by rocky valleys and three large freshwater rivers. The country has a population of 2.1 million people, most of whom have been suffering a few notches below the poverty line. Looking at the Macedonia poverty rate will shed some light on what can be done to better people’s lives.
An estimated 21.5 percent of the Macedonian population lives below the poverty line, per the most recent data. In 2008, the rate was only 1.3 percent. A majority of impoverished people in Macedonia live on only $1.90 per day. Additionally, the country has a poor history of income distribution, as the poorest 20 percent of the population make only one quarter of the income of the richest sector of the population.
Rural poverty is the most rampant in Macedonia, where 40 percent of the population and two-thirds of the country’s poor lives. People in these areas either make their living off of small-scale farming and livestock production or they are among the rural unemployed. Farmers can usually provide only enough food for their families plus a small surplus for selling, while the unemployed have no accessible employment or resources in the rural community. Rural markets have always suffered and, in turn, so has the economic production of agriculture since the collapse of the country’s communist system and the Yugoslav republic divided. Financial resources to bring small farmers back to business then became almost nonexistent. The International Fund for Agricultural Development concludes that the major causes of poverty in the country are massive unemployment following the collapse of the command economy, lack of technical and financial resources for improving agriculture and lack of access to local and international markets for products.
Reports in the last several years note the deepening poverty crisis in Macedonia, which particularly affects young people and families with small children. The poverty rate in 2011 was 30.4 percent, or one in three Macedonians, with more than 40 percent of people under 39 years old being poor. There was also a spike in the percentage of poor married couples with children from 28.9 percent to 35.1 percent between 2010 and 2011. Almost half of all poor people in the country live in small households with five or more family members, creating a worrying trend of families with low incomes and many mouths to feed but not enough resources.
Because they live in low-income households, children and youth are the most adversely affected. A study by UNICEF in 2006 elects that child poverty leads to social exclusion, risky behaviors during adolescence and vulnerability to exploitation. Children are more susceptible to the results of being dependent on an impoverished family: lack of education and future employment, inaccessible resources and support, little food and clean water to nourish growing minds and bodies and declining emotional and physical development. However, UNICEF strongly urges that child poverty become a central point of national policy. Constraints on the country’s progress in alleviating poverty include poor financial management, little public expenditure on healthcare and education, lack of social protection and inadequate legislative and institutional framework which might bring balance back to at-risk families and children. This and other studies on the Macedonia poverty rate reveal the the impacts of poverty on families and individuals are largely irreversible.
By addressing the situation of poverty in Macedonia, the hope for change lies in reform, stronger protective legislation, broader income distribution and an eye-opening call to action benefiting the poor in this country.
– Olivia Cyr
Photo: Flickr
How to Help People in Bhutan
Bhutan is a tiny, isolated, primarily Buddhist kingdom in the Himalayas that has only permitted television since 1998. In a country that measures development by Gross National Happiness in lieu in of Gross Domestic Product, does it make sense to ask how to help people in Bhutan? Given the often discriminatory treatment of journalists, non-Buddhists, the disabled, women and especially Nepali-speakers, the answer is yes—this question should still be asked.
Bhutan has had an extremely rapid transition from an absolute monarchy to a constitutional monarchy with the establishment of political parties in 2007 and held its first election in 2008. The Freedom House upgraded the country’s Freedom Status in 2009 from “not free” to “partly free,” citing the below reasons:
In the 2017 Trafficking in Persons Report, the State Department Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons determined that the government of Bhutan did not fully meet minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking. The government did demonstrate increasing efforts compared to the previous reporting period. In an example of how to help people in Bhutan, the National Commission for Women and Children (NCWC) partnered with an international organization to conduct training on anti-trafficking toolkits and also to facilitate reports on Bhutan laws and policies on trafficking. Bhutan, over the last five years, has still remained a source and destination country for both forced labor and sex trafficking.
Bhutan has no formal relations with the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council and accepts financial assistance from primarily India, leaving Bhutan isolated from much of the world. It has recently shown a willingness to move toward democratic ideals and is also seeking to increase tourism after a long history of shunning foreigners. Learning how to help people in Bhutan means working to ensure adequate funding for the NGOs and other agencies dedicated to assisting the Bhutanese officials. One must work to stay vigilant and continue to support organizations dedicated to combating violations of human rights in Bhutan.
– Michael Carmack
Photo: Flickr
On the Micronesia Poverty Rate
According to the Asian Development Bank, the Micronesia poverty rate has reached 41.2 percent this year. Out of the Asian Pacific countries, it has the second highest poverty rate.
Additionally, while the percentage of the population that lived on less than $1.90 a day in 2000 was 46 percent, it declined to 17.4 in 2013, according to The World Bank. While the Micronesia poverty rate is seemingly high, the middle class has been expanding in recent years.
As of 2000, the richest 20 percent owned 65.9 percent of the wealth, while the middle classes owned about 27 percent of the wealth. In contrast, in 2013, the richest 20 percent owned about 48 percent of the wealth, while the middle class owned 37 percent. The poorest 20 percent have also increased their earnings from 1.4 percent of the wealth in 2000 to 5 percent in 2013.
The wealth inequality trend has also decreased in Micronesia in recent years. At 63.3 percent in 2000, the trend dropped to 42.5 percent in 2013. The Gross National Income (GNI) has increased around $100 from 2015 to 2016.
However, the GDP growth has slowed from 3.8 percent to around 2 percent in the past year. The decrease in growth was due to a drought in 2016, which led to water rationing, emergency shipments of water and increased health concerns. El Niño caused the drought itself.
Earning around $20 million annually, the fishing industry is the main source of income for Micronesia. The market value of tuna in the region is around $200 million per year, but Micronesians don’t take advantage of this resource. As of right now, agriculture is a vital component to the economy because of the contributions it makes to per capita income, export earnings and subsistence production. The agriculture and fishing industries make up 42 percent of the GDP for Micronesia.
To decrease the Micronesia poverty rate, there is promise in the tourism industry especially considering the abundance of marine and natural beauty. What is currently hindering the tourism industry, however, is the limited air transportation, land-use issues, and competition with surrounding islands of similar atmosphere.
– Sydney Roeder
Photo: Flickr
Corruption: Kryptonite to Foreign Aid
Foreign aid is a topic that stirs controversy, with each side maintaining significant weight in their argument.
“You know the excuses: We can’t afford foreign aid anymore, or we’re wasting money pouring it into these poor countries, or we can’t buy friends—other countries just take the money and dislike us for giving it. Well, all these excuses are just that, excuses—and they’re dead wrong,” Ronald Reagan said in 1987.
The United States’ stance on foreign aid changes with each administration. The phrase, “you are damned if you do, you are damned if you don’t” comes to mind.
Foreign aid has been categorized as “soft power” since the late 1980s. “Soft power” is the ability of a country to persuade others to do what it wants without force or coercion. Joseph Nye coined the phrase, arguing that security relies on winning people as much as winning wars.
Since the 1980s, soft power has become central in U.S. foreign policy practices. Is foreign aid a tool in the soft power toolbox?
Nye believes aid is purchasing power, not soft power. Despite the nuances of whether aid is categorized as purchasing power or soft power, foreign aid is important for the United States to achieve interests abroad.
According to Phil Vernon, “currency of soft power is values, institutions, culture and policy, then soft power is exercised by the choices you make and the actions you take, not by what you say.” If this is true, aid should be accompanied by anti-corruption monitoring organizations, tools of economic sustainability and keys of independence. The goal is not to have a country depending on the United States, but to provide the tools for a state to become independent.
If the United States does not ensure and monitor the aid given, corruption will prevent the money from reaching the population in need. Monitoring programs are even more vital than aid itself. Corruption is the kryptonite to foreign aid.
According to the National Bureau of Economic Research, the more corrupt the government is, the more aid the state receives. There is no evidence that an increase in foreign aid reduces corruption.
Currently, corruption is not being punished. This lack of acknowledgment is only encouraging governments to abuse international funds. If corruption is reflected in next year’s funding, people will suffer. If the population suffers on the government’s behalf, this is motivation for the population to vote in order to correct the situation. Thus, reducing corruption will be imminent.
Despite the controversies and arguments surrounding international aid, it is important to remember that giving aid to corrupt governments is not giving aid to the people. Corrupt governments must be punished in some way in order to reduce international corruption. Corruption is the kryptonite to U.S. foreign policy success. U.S. interests must be maintained, and aid is a tool in the toolbox for doing just that.
– Danielle Preskitt
Photo: Flickr
How to Help People in Algeria: Three Key Organizations
Algeria is located in Northern Africa and serves as the gateway between continental Europe and Africa. Over 50 percent of Algeria’s rural population lives below the national poverty line and unemployment is high in young and rural populations. Algeria serves as a transit destination for human trafficking, for purposes of travel to Europe or for forced labor. Poverty in Algeria leads to a lack of access to proper housing, sanitation facilities and education and medical infrastructure. Here are a few ways to help poverty-affected people in Algeria:
SOS Children’s Villages
Algeria is home to more than 500,000 orphaned children. These children, who grow up with no parental protection or in dysfunctional family structures, are more likely to face social exclusion and poverty. Additionally, they are more likely to be exploited and drawn to criminal activities. SOS Children’s Villages provides young people and children in Algeria with daycare and medical assistance. This organization focuses on awareness, prevention, reporting and responding in regards to child abuse and negligence. The SOS Children’s Villages works in accordance with the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Donors can either sponsor a child, sponsor a village or make a donation directly to SOS Children’s Villages through their website.
World Food Project USA
The World Food Project USA (WFP) has worked in Algeria since 1986. Per month, WFP provides more than 125,000 food rations to hungry people in Algeria. WFP also strives to tackle childhood hunger by providing healthy mid-morning snacks to 32,500 school children. Furthermore, WFP has 29 nutrition centers in Algeria, where they provide education and treatment for anemia, nutrition problems and growth stunting for children under five and for pregnant women.
People wanting to get involved can donate directly to WFP online or by mail. WFP also encourages other creative ways to raise money such as organizing a fundraiser or downloading the ShareTheMeal app, where users can provide a child with one meal for just 50 cents.
Handicap International
Handicap International strives to promote the social inclusion and improve the lives of the most vulnerable people in Algeria. Though Algeria has been relatively progressive in passing legislation for handicap persons, these persons are still not fully included in society. Handicap International advocates for public voices for handicapped individuals. This organization also collaborates with healthcare professionals and education stakeholders to provide specialized treatment for handicapped adults and children. Handicap International accepts monetary donations in addition to vehicle donations. Handicap International also asks Americans to sign a petition to encourage President Trump to submit the Mine Ban Treaty to the Senate. More than 90 percent of land mine victims are civilians. Land mine injuries can be fatal or result in major disabilities.
Whether you support children, hungry people or the disabled, these three organizations are all great places to start helping those suffering from poverty in Algeria.
– Christiana Lano
Photo: Flickr
Causes of Poverty in Kenya: The Relevance of Education
There are three major causes of poverty in Kenya relating to a lack of adequate education, even though Kenya is a country that values education and recognizes its long-term benefits for the nation. Kenya is in dire need of assistance to rise above the poverty line, considering 45.9 percent of the population were below that line in 2005.
Kenya is a society that values education highly; in fact, 95.6 percent of youth were enrolled in basic education in 2000 and 108.9 percent were enrolled in 2015. The data exceeds 100 percent due to overage and underage Kenyans attending school. The influx in enrollment was partially caused by the abolishment of entry fees for primary schools in 2006.
However, the first of many causes of poverty in Kenya is the amount of funding the schools require from Kenyans and government officials to provide adequate materials and resources. Just this month, a Kenyan youth mentor named Michael Wanjala, who was raised in Nairobi, shared: “The thing that pushed me so much was one day when mom went to ask for a loan of 2,000 shillings to pay for my education…It was so hard. I had to go and ask for textbooks. I had to go and ask for a uniform, for shoes.”
Overpopulation is the second issue because the vast quantity of enrolled children today means there is a higher demand in resources for a well-equipped, productive learning environment.
Furthermore, a poor quality education is another one of the causes of poverty in Kenya. A high number of children are cramped together in classrooms, there are minimal teaching materials and each class has a single teacher. With a poor teacher to student ratio, children who learn differently end up getting left behind because the teacher does not have a chance to serve each child individually. Those children who are left behind remain enrolled in school until they can catch up, adding to the amount of resources needed, since there is not an even ratio of new students to graduated students.
The Ministry of Education has already established a Directorate of Quality Assurance and Standards under the Education Act of Kenya to begin the process of monitoring teachers’ performances and to improve the quality of Kenya’s basic education.
Simply because many Kenyan children attend school does not necessarily mean that they are benefitting from the experience as much as they could be. If they were provided with more schools, teachers, resources and extra funding for additional materials, then their attendance in primary schools would make a greater impact on the country’s poor. Kenya’s school system needs to match the demand caused by their large population so that children can obtain a quality education and – hopefully – be better equipped to lift themselves out of poverty and succeed in the future.
– Brianna White
Photo: Flickr
Mobile Empowers Farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa
That being said, the impact of a nation’s agricultural systems is still so significant that a one percent increase in agricultural per capita GDP would actually cause a decrease in the poverty gap five times larger than a one percent increase in per capita GDP of any other area. Further, it is a widely shared belief amongst development economists that the area most impacted by agricultural growth is in non-farm income and employment. In other words, no matter how large or small a nation’s agricultural sector is, it has an immense impact on the nation overall. As a result, it is no wonder that addressing the agricultural sector is inherently necessary in the effort to address the 40 percent of the world’s poor that live in the Sub-Saharan Africa region.
Such is exactly why the work of Esoko Networks Limited is so important. As a technology platform that works to bridge the information gap for farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa, Esoko strives to improve the production yield and make farmers more market savvy through multiple facets – and all through the personal ease of the ever-ubiquitous mobile phone. Esoko provides up-to-date market information such as current prices and also includes weather alerts – the latter being an increasingly serious matter, as fluctuating environmental conditions due to climate change has forced changes in agricultural practices in many areas. Additionally, Esoko allows individuals to share information regarding agricultural practices and technologies, old and new, effectively creating a farmer-specific library of information from which to learn and improve one’s production.
Perhaps most exciting, this technology also has a feature which allows buyers and sellers to identify and connect with each other – creating a mini-market that can focus specifically on interactions between smallholder farmers while also providing access to larger markets. As a final measure, Esoko has included a system to survey the individuals who use their technology. This system has been so effective that it has brought down UNICEF’s profiling error rate to an astonishing zero percent – it was previously at 55 percent.
Overall, Esoko has been found to increase income for those farmers who use it by about 10 percent- and all by simply creating a network for farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa to communicate, connect and learn.
– Kailee Nardi
Photo: Flickr