Seventy years after U.S. occupation, the Haitian people work to overcome systemic poverty, global injustices, and acute health concerns.
The root of Haiti’s poverty began in 1492 when it was first colonized. In 1697, began the onset of French colonialism, which aimed to exploit the Haitian people and land for-profit.
Since independence, a litany of Haitian-born leaders have ascended to power, but remain unsuccessful in their efforts to substantially improve living standards in Haiti.
The World Bank associates the poverty of the Haitian people to instability and corruption within in the government. Misallocation of funds has degraded the quality of public services, (e.g. – the justice system, education, infrastructure), which are requisites of a functioning state.
Haiti’s stunted economy compounds the poverty of the Haitian people. As a result of political instability, private investment, both foreign and domestic, remains below levels of moderate poverty reduction efforts.
A recent estimate found that the investment/GDP ratio in Haiti is near 10 percent, which would require growth rates of at least five percent each year to reverse the poverty of the Haitian people.
Comparatively, the Haitian people are the recipients of the lowest spending in human capital. In total, per capita, health spending in Haiti is at $21 while the regional (Latin America) and global (Sub-Saharan Africa) levels enjoy a spending of $202 and $38, respectively.
The poverty of the Haitian people is best demonstrated by the barriers to healthcare. Population studies found that the most reliable indicator of health service usage is socioeconomic status.
Despite a modest amount of free healthcare clinics, 76 percent of Haitian births occur at home. The lack of hospitalized births is a result of the absence of funding to pay for transport from the home and to the hospital.
Consequently, the maternal mortality rate is 100 times that of North America – 1,122/100,000.
The World Bank, however, refuses to be complacent with the poverty of the Haitian people. In the annual Poverty Reduction and Equity report, four areas were identified, which could bear a severely positive impact in the effort to reduce poverty in Haiti.
Notably, the call for an increase in the “assistance provided by external donors”, which stresses the importance of foreign assistance, along with a refined system to implement the aid.
Now more than ever, it is incumbent on the international community to prevent the further decrease of living standards of the Haitian people. Foreign assistance, promotion of good governance, and donation of medical practices and personnel are vital to reducing the poverty of the Haitian people.
– Adam George
Photo: Flickr
How to Become a Member of Congress
At one point or another, I am sure many people have wondered how to become a member of Congress. Is it as simple as getting a few campaign donations and a few votes, or is there a bit more to it?
There are really three key aspects that need to be satisfied to become a member of Congress. The constitutional requirements, the Federal Election Commission (FEC) filing requirements and then the overarching personal qualities that voters are looking for from their leaders. Below I have summarized the items needed to identify how to become a member of Congress.
How to Become a Member of Congress: Requirements and Qualifications
Constitutional Requirements
These requirements are highlighted in Article 1, Section 2 of the US constitution:
If you can satisfy these three basic requirements, then you are eligible. But eligibility is the easy part.
FEC Filing Requirements
Now that you have the FEC requirements satisfied, we need to examine what qualities voters are looking for. The requirements are just a part of how to become a member of congress.
Top 5 Qualities of Political Leaders
As obvious as these may be, this is the core of what voters want from their elected officials. A recent Gallup poll showed that 53% of Americans want their leaders to compromise, opposed to 21% that wanted their leaders to stick to their principles. The ability to compromise reflects all of these five qualities.
If you follow the steps above, you can take the first step on your journey to start enacting the change you want to see in the world by becoming a member of Congress.
– Brian Faust
Photo: Flickr
Poverty of the Haitian People
Seventy years after U.S. occupation, the Haitian people work to overcome systemic poverty, global injustices, and acute health concerns.
The root of Haiti’s poverty began in 1492 when it was first colonized. In 1697, began the onset of French colonialism, which aimed to exploit the Haitian people and land for-profit.
Since independence, a litany of Haitian-born leaders have ascended to power, but remain unsuccessful in their efforts to substantially improve living standards in Haiti.
The World Bank associates the poverty of the Haitian people to instability and corruption within in the government. Misallocation of funds has degraded the quality of public services, (e.g. – the justice system, education, infrastructure), which are requisites of a functioning state.
Haiti’s stunted economy compounds the poverty of the Haitian people. As a result of political instability, private investment, both foreign and domestic, remains below levels of moderate poverty reduction efforts.
A recent estimate found that the investment/GDP ratio in Haiti is near 10 percent, which would require growth rates of at least five percent each year to reverse the poverty of the Haitian people.
Comparatively, the Haitian people are the recipients of the lowest spending in human capital. In total, per capita, health spending in Haiti is at $21 while the regional (Latin America) and global (Sub-Saharan Africa) levels enjoy a spending of $202 and $38, respectively.
The poverty of the Haitian people is best demonstrated by the barriers to healthcare. Population studies found that the most reliable indicator of health service usage is socioeconomic status.
Despite a modest amount of free healthcare clinics, 76 percent of Haitian births occur at home. The lack of hospitalized births is a result of the absence of funding to pay for transport from the home and to the hospital.
Consequently, the maternal mortality rate is 100 times that of North America – 1,122/100,000.
The World Bank, however, refuses to be complacent with the poverty of the Haitian people. In the annual Poverty Reduction and Equity report, four areas were identified, which could bear a severely positive impact in the effort to reduce poverty in Haiti.
Notably, the call for an increase in the “assistance provided by external donors”, which stresses the importance of foreign assistance, along with a refined system to implement the aid.
Now more than ever, it is incumbent on the international community to prevent the further decrease of living standards of the Haitian people. Foreign assistance, promotion of good governance, and donation of medical practices and personnel are vital to reducing the poverty of the Haitian people.
– Adam George
Photo: Flickr
Pakistan Reading Project
Muhammad Baligh Ur Rehman, Pakistan’s Minister of State for Federal Education, spoke this month of the fundamental importance of reading, citing the first word taught in Quran, ‘Iqra’ which means ‘read.’ The minister’s statement came in response to an education workshop hosted by the Pakistan Reading Project and USAID.
The four-day workshop gathered educators from provincial groups across Pakistan to frame individual Reading Improvement Strategies (RIS) to be finalized and applied to their respective provinces as part of official educational programming. This workshop was just one of many that the Pakistan Reading Project has organized to provide support for provincial and regional departments of education throughout Pakistan. The primary focus is the enhancement reading instruction strategies for children in grades one and two. The $165 million, five-year project is, through such workshops as these, promoting the adaptation and implementation of sustainable policies to improve teaching and education standards.
The Pakistan Reading Project’s strategy is threefold: improve learning environments for reading in the classroom, advance policies and systems for reading instruction and rally community-based support for reading. In doing so, the project intends to reach 1.3 million students in grades one and two with reading interventions, not to mention training more than 23,000 teachers in reading instruction and developing reading curricula for more than 100 collegiate teaching programs.
From scholarships and grants for students pursuing teaching degrees to mobile bus libraries that bring books directly to children and their communities, the Pakistan Reading Program aims to comprehensively integrate reading into the lives of Pakistani children. The holistic approach of incorporating reading into both the institutional and communal lives of Pakistanis ensures the sustainability of the project’s efforts. In this way, children in Pakistan will be developmentally prepared for educational challenges they will face throughout their lives and consequently better able to pursue their goals and break from the cycle of poverty.
– Robin Lee
Photo: Flickr
10 Ways to Respond to Ethnic Cleansing in South Sudan
More than two decades after at least 800,000 people were killed in Rwanda, the situation seems poised to repeat itself in the world’s youngest country. More than one million people have fled South Sudan since violence erupted in the country in 2013, creating the largest mass exodus of any Central African conflict since the Rwandan genocide. In light of a new U.N. declaration that the country is on the brink of disaster and that ethnic cleansing is under way, it is imperative that the international community responds differently than it did in 1994. Here are 10 ways that the international community — from leaders to citizens — can respond to ethnic cleansing in South Sudan.
The United States has pushed for sanctions and an arms embargo against South Sudan, but the U.N. vote on such measures has been pushed back following opposition from Russia, China and others. However, this measure is imperative as it is the simplest and most effective way for the international community to curb ethnic cleansing in South Sudan.
Ivan Šimonović, the U.N. Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights, stressed the importance of a death toll in 2014. He said public information had the power to “deter continued violations of human rights” and keep communities informed. “Only reliable reporting can help them to reconcile, knowing that both sides have been involved as perpetrators as well as victims,” he said.
The U.N. approved the deployment of a regional protection force in August, and South Sudan finally agreed to the deployment in late November. In an editorial for Al Jazeera, three South Sudanese writers stressed the importance of this force, and suggested that its powers included “monitoring, disarming and demobilizing any armed group targeting civilians”.
Human rights organizations have expressed concerns that the focus on ethnic cleansing in South Sudan will allow perpetrators of crimes such as destruction of property, rape and murder to go unpunished. Amnesty International has urged the African Union Commission and the South Sudanese government to establish a hybrid court so that all crimes are appropriately prosecuted.
World leaders must put structures in place to ensure an effective response to genocide. In the U.S., President Obama had the Atrocities Prevention Board created to facilitate a multilateral response to atrocities and genocide globally. But it is the job of citizens to ensure that these structures function as intended.
According to Dr. Gregory H. Stanton, president of Genocide Watch, an early warning system will help prevent further genocides and ensure that countries are able to respond quickly and effectively when a nation is showing warning signs characteristic of genocide.
Experts believe that the perceived power vacuum that will be left after president Obama leaves office could be a trigger for ethnic cleansing in South Sudan. It is the job of the new administration to confront this vacuum and ensure that the security of human rights remains a global priority.
Congressional leaders must continue to fight to hold human rights abusers to account, and promote peace, by passing bills like the recently-approved Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act.
The United Nations must continue to monitor and prioritize the situation in South Sudan, offering aid, guidance, and resolutions in pursuit of peace.
– Eva Kennedy
Photo: Flickr
10 Facts About Mexican Drug Cartels
Continual and sensational news coverage of Mexican drug cartels may have desensitized people to the realities and sources of the violence. It is easy to forget how long the crisis imposed by the cartel has gone on and how far it is from over. To place the issue back into perspective, discussed below are 10 facts about Mexican drug cartels and the ways through which the government has attempted to deal with them.
Mexican Drug Cartels: Facts and Figures
By demilitarizing the war on drugs and reestablishing faith in the government, Mexico can begin to heal. The DEA recently emphasized the importance of coupling strategies: the targeting of high-profile cartel members by law enforcement and the provision of community outreach programs to end the opioid epidemic in Mexico and the United States. Long-term solutions must integrate security with social services to pursue prosperity.
– Robin Lee
Photo: Flickr
Underwear for Hope, by Naja
Fast fashion products are meant to imitate trends from major fashion events, such as New York Fashion Week. Naja’s products are stylish and resemble these trends, but are unique in that, like slow fashion trends, those working to make the products are paid fairly and empowered to create sturdy, quality products.
Female empowerment starts with economic independence. Naja employs economically-marginalized single mothers and female head of households. Fair pay and health benefits are included in the package, but the real beauty of Naja’s model comes in that it offers flexible scheduling and full support for its workers’ children, including paying for school lunches and other necessities. In addition, the company has vertically integrated parts of its supply chain, enabling it to have greater control over conditions for the productive processes.
Naja also combines advocacy with businesses by raising consumer awareness of the difficult realities of living in war-torn and violent countries. The main program it does this through is the Underwear for Hope program. Half of the proceeds from this program are taken home by the women making the products, and the other half is donated to the Golondrinas Foundation, which teaches women micro-entrepreneurship. This is in addition to the two percent of total revenue from all sales Naja donates to Colombian education charities.
Underwear for Hope provides a stable, living income and a chance to work from home for impoverished women in Colombia. The program teaches women to sew, a skill useful both at home for supporting a family and as a primary source of income. The women in the program make the lingerie wash bags Naja includes when a customer orders a bra. This helps to spread the message about Naja’s goals and to humanize the products women wear by matching a face to the product, just as Naja does on its website when customers look at a specific product.
Fast fashion works by attracting a customer base looking for on-trend clothing while supporting a cause. Naja competes for this customer base by creating runway-worthy products with unique artistic designs, showing that fashion can be both slow and trendy. Naja also incorporates eco-friendly materials, such as recycled plastics, and eco-friendly production methods, such as digital printing, to attract and build their socially-conscious consumer base.
– Lucas Woodling
Photo: Flickr
Five Space Inventions Helping the Developing World
From non-stick frying pans to squirt guns to keeping our homes warm, innovations that originated as space inventions are used each and every day right here on earth. But, some space inventions have become even more useful than ever imagined, and are now helping fight poverty in the developing world. Here is a look at five space inventions and some of the ways each helps to alleviate human suffering.
Baby Blankets
From NASA’s efforts in the 1980s to create a material that could both insulate and cool astronauts facing extreme temperatures during spacewalks came phase-change materials, or PCM’s. Although this material never made it into astronaut’s gloves, the space invention that emerged proved effective for insulating. In 2013, Jen Chen created a company called Embrace Innovations, which makes swaddles and blankets using PCM technology. The Embrace business model is simple: buy a blanket or swaddle for your baby and one is donated to a baby in need in the developing world. To date, 200,000 babies have been reached across 10 countries.
Solar Energy
When NASA began studying Environmental Research Aircraft and Sensor Technology (ERAST) to develop uninhabited aircraft that could sustain long-duration flights without interruption, the need for new innovative solar power sources became paramount. Among the space inventions that resulted: single-crystal silicon solar cells that significantly reduced the cost of solar power. With billions still living without electricity worldwide, solar power has proved effective in helping get clean water, mobile charging, and general illumination to the developing world.
Freeze-dried Food
Through an alliance with Nestle, in the pre-Apollo era, NASA developed a technique for freeze-drying food which made the transportation of numerous orbital delight feasible. Today, freeze-dried food is used to prevent spoilage while providing life-saving nutrient-rich substance to people suffering from hunger in the developing world. For example, Stop Hunger Now, a non-profit based out of Raleigh, North Carolina, operates meal-packing programs in 20 cities worldwide. They ship dehydrated rice and soy meals that are fortified with 23 nutrients and vitamins to not only help solve the problem of hunger in the world but also help provide essential nutrients to those living with a vitamin or mineral deficiency.
Baby Formula
In an effort to alleviate some of the challenges of eating in space while also reducing waste, NASA, with the contracted help of Marietta Laboratories, worked with micro-algae to develop a special three-in-one food source. The invention didn’t work out as space-food; however, Marietta’s research provided the technology used to place nutritional supplements into infant formula and baby food. One in four children around the world suffers from chronic malnutrition that stunts their growth. And, due to poverty and poor nutrition, an estimated 200 million children under age five suffer from under-developed cognition. With nutrient-enriched baby food, organizations helping to fight poverty and malnutrition in the developing world have a better chance to reach children during the most critical stages of development — conception to two years.
Satellites
Some space inventions have not only changed the world but also changed the way we look at it. While the link between satellites, NASA and space are obvious, their ability to help feed those living in the developing world is a bit more complex. Satellites can generate images of vegetation that, in turn, can measure “greenness” and provide real-time rainfall data and imagery. Thus, this space invention helps officials and policy-makers monitor for potential crop failures throughout the developing world. With better prediction capabilities comes better awareness, and with better awareness comes the ability to prevent food shortages. NASA has even teamed up with the USAID through a new environmental monitoring program in West Africa called SERVIR-West Africa. The program plans to enhance the use of data collected from satellite imagery to help fight hunger by helping officials better manage climate issues that affect crop harvesting and nutritional planning.
– Ashley Henyan
Photo: Flickr
Ten Facts About the Iraq War
The Iraq War, also known as the Third Gulf War, began on March 20th, 2003. Causes of the war are the Global War on Terrorism in response to the attacks on September 11th, the intention to eliminate weapons of mass destruction and the intention to arrest Saddam Hussein and then abolish his regime.
Here are 10 facts about the Iraq War:
Both the U.S and Iraq suffered severe financial and human life losses by the time the war officially ended in December 2011. Although Saddam Hussein’s government was officially overturned, no weapons of mass destruction were found. Nevertheless, the war has made lasting impacts on U.S. and Iraqi relations for years to come.
– Liliana Rehorn
Photo: Flickr
Global Education in 2016
Global education in 2016 has seen many successes and many challenges. Advances in technology have increased many children’s access to education and educational materials, but the ongoing refugee crisis has created an education crisis for children in much of the world. Above all, two landmark pieces of legislation, the Education for All Act and the Protecting Girls’ Access to Education in Vulnerable Settings Act have aimed to expand and protect access to education for those all over the world.
While many parts of the world suffering from poverty have limited access to resources such as textbooks and other school supplies, technology has been making strides to replace these things in countries all around the world. E-readers, smartphones and online libraries have been used in places like Sub-Saharan Africa and Haiti, and these advances aim to make education more accessible to children in impoverished regions.
This year has been notable for the refugee crisis, with 2.1 million Syrian children among the many global refugees. School enrollment rates for Syrian children remain lower than those in Sub-Saharan Africa, and refugee children remain five times more likely to be out of school than non-refugee children. This has been a serious challenge to global education in 2016, and it will likely continue well into 2017 and beyond.
Male students globally remain more likely to receive an education than their female counterparts, and this problem is what the Education for All Act hopes to solve. This bill is a bipartisan effort to advance and encourage basic education for all while prioritizing groups who have been marginalized or denied an education due to conflict.
Another effort to improve girls’ access to education worldwide is the Protecting Girls’ Access to Education in Vulnerable Settings Act. This legislation hopes to protect girls who are in danger from conflict or who are refugees by improving their access to education. When they are not enrolled in school, refugee girls are especially vulnerable to dangerous situations such as trafficking, child marriage and underage labor.
Global education has seen both improvements and increased challenges in 2016. While the refugee crisis has seen an uptick in children who are not enrolled in school, the Education for All Act and the Protecting Girls’ Access to Education in Vulnerable Settings Act aim to combat this problem and improve access to education for the most vulnerable and stigmatized.
– Eva Kennedy
Photo: Flickr
Robin Food App Cuts Down on Food Waste and Helps the Poor
Teens in Malaysia won the first Sime Darby’s Young Innovator’s Challenge with the Robin Food App, which connects businesses ready to donate surplus food to local food banks.
The Robin Food App is innovative because it presents a simple solution to two problems Malaysia and many other countries face: hunger and food waste.
Each day Malaysians produce 3,000 metric tons of avoidable food waste—enough food to feed 2.2 million people. About four percent of Malaysians live below the poverty line.
Cutting down on the amount of food wasted worldwide is an essential step to stopping climate change. Agriculture produces more greenhouse gasses than emissions from all cars, trains and airplanes combined.
Grocery stores, hotels, restaurants and other businesses can post on the Robin Food app when they have surplus food. Food banks are then notified of the surplus food in real time, pick up the food and distribute the food to those in need. The app also automatically generates statistics so that users can gain a sense of the impact their donations make.
Robin Food is available both as a web and smartphone app. The mobile app can even be accessed offline in areas that do not have internet access.
The Sime Darby Young Innovator’s Challenge is a new contest that challenges children aged 13-16 to think of a problem and come up with a solution that makes the world a better place. Applicants have the opportunity to participate in regional and national innovation workshops to gain the skills to develop their ideas further. The theme for this year’s contest was tackling poverty.
Sime Darby is a Malaysia-based multinational business conglomeration that has sectors in the plantation, industrial, property, motor and logistics sectors. The corporation is dedicated to bettering society while minimizing the impact on the environment and delivering sustainable development to all stakeholders.
Sime Darby will continue to challenge teens to generate innovative solutions to tackle major issues the world faces with creative solutions. The 2017 Young Innovators Challenge will begin in January. As the Robin Food app saves surplus food and feeds hungry Malaysians, many are excited to see which problems Malaysian teens will solve next.
– Cassie Lipp
Photo: Flickr