President Barack Obama visited Kenya and Ethiopia earlier this summer to draw global attention to challenges facing development organizations throughout Africa, including establishing more widespread access to electricity.
While those large-scale initiatives are important in providing poor regions with economic opportunity, another initiative, equally important, went largely uncovered: community-based development.
Community-based (or “community-driven”) development is defined by Rural Poverty Portal as “a way to manage development, including the design and implementation of policies and projects, [which] facilitates access by poor rural people to social, human, and physical capital.”
Strategies used by community-based organizations include enabling targeted communities to design their own anti-poverty policies, establishing the means for good long-term governance, and prioritizing the impact of public expenditures from the “bottom of the pyramid” up.
Wayne Firestone, CEO of International Lifeline Fund, points to the malaria epidemic in northern Uganda as a phenomenon that could benefit from the inclusion of local communities.
Previous top-down health initiatives, such as indoor residual spraying interventions, he said, have lowered the immunity of residents, made them complacent in taking preventative measures, and have generally made communities more vulnerable to the disease.
Such initiatives would become more effective if they included local communities in “the design, implementation and maintenance of solutions.”
While local communities have voiced their desire to become more involved in decision-making processes, their national governments have started to endorse that sentiment on a global level.
One of the primary takeaways from the Financing for Development Conference in Addis Ababa earlier this year was that developing countries want to take “greater ownership” over their development through domestic resource mobilization (DRM), a process in which countries raise and allocate their own development funding.
USAID associate administrator Eric Postel notes that while DRM has historically been overlooked in global anti-poverty efforts, the international community has begun to realize its importance for countries hoping to escape poverty.
“DRM is hardly a new concept, but one that has unfortunately been out of the spotlight for many years. I remember attending the aid effectiveness conference in Busan, South Korea, in 2011.
Support for DRM was barely discussed there,” he wrote in an article for Devex. “Since then, the global community has coalesced around the importance of this transitional bridge from a nation’s receiving international aid assistance to its sustainable providing for its own.”
While some developing countries may never realize absolute autonomy in directing their own anti-poverty initiatives, DRM is a positive step for countries hoping to become more self-reliant. Earlier this year, Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta made an appeal to African countries to stop accepting international aid entirely.
Although certainly not in the best interest of many African civilians, that position reflects the common and natural desire among poor countries to achieve sustainability and self-determination.
Indeed, the lack of cohesion among rural communities like those in northern Uganda can make community-based development difficult, primarily because it takes time to establish functioning bodies vested with the ability to prioritize community needs.
According to Firestone, however, development assistance ought to be rethought in ways that will enable communities to participate in the management of their own affairs.
“For decades, development assistance has created a culture in which these communities are recipients, not leaders of their own solutions,” he said.
“Many development thinkers have started conversations around how we can shift that culture to make sustainable progress; how residents of poor, rural communities can be problem solvers rather than problems, and can embrace changes they generate internally.”
– Zach VeShancey
Sources: Devex 1, Devex 2, Rural Poverty Portal
Photo: Flickr
Wood for Maternal Healthcare in Haiti
The island nation of Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, with one in four inhabitants of this small Caribbean nation living in extreme poverty. Plagued by political instability, as well as the devastating aftermath of the 2010 earthquake, the country of Haiti is still struggling for recovery.
In the wake of the worst earthquake in a 200-year history for Haiti, an estimated 1.5 million people were left homeless. The rehabilitation process for the affected population is crippled by the financial hardships of the country. According to a World Bank report, one in two Haitians live in poverty, living on less than $3 a day.
The extreme poverty conditions in the country have unsurprisingly affected the healthcare system as well. The insufficient healthcare system was dealt a further blow after the earthquake of 2010, which is estimated to have destroyed 60 percent of the healthcare infrastructure in Haiti.
The deterioration of the healthcare system has especially affected the maternal and neonatal health in the country. According to UNICEF, maternal mortality in Haiti is 35 women out of every thousand; neonatal health care is equally abysmal, with 3.1 percent of newborns dying within the first month after birth.
Most of the maternal and neonatal deaths are considered largely preventable, given adequate healthcare resources. Accessibility to these resources is another important issue, with less than 36 percent of pregnant women giving birth in any healthcare facility.
The poor state of maternal health has spurred Maternal Life International — a nonprofit organization based in Montana — to direct its efforts for better maternal and neonatal health care at Haiti. Its objective is to build family health offices in the country to assist pregnant women and newborns.
As laudable as its mission is, it is faced with the difficulties of resource scarcity in Haiti. The lack of lumber in Haiti is a major obstacle in rebuilding the country.
The deforestation of Haiti has long been an issue of concern for the island nation, affecting the economic and ecological health of the country. Wood is quite significant for building structures in Haiti, as cement buildings are a danger in a region susceptible to earthquakes.
The volunteers for Wood for Haiti have a solution to the problem: lumber for the family healthcare facility building shipped straight from the forests of Montana. The group of volunteers from Missoula will assist in providing Maternal Life International procure 5 tons of lumber for construction of the family healthcare facility in Haiti.
The volunteers are working first to gather lumber in Butte, where Maternal Life International is based. The lumber is currently stored in a warehouse in Butte to be shipped to Haiti later when the construction projects begin.
The Wood for Haiti is a commendable effort by the Montana lumber industry. The donation of building materials is somewhat of a novel idea in an era of usually monetary donations. It does, however, provide for the delivery of natural resources, which Haiti needs but lacks.
It is not to say that lumber is all Wood for Haiti provides. It also provides vocational training to Haitians for the construction and rebuilding projects. With a combination of resource provision and training local labor, Haiti can be brought that much closer to economic stability.
The collaborative efforts of Wood for Haiti and Maternal Life International are anticipated to be a stepping stone toward improving the standards of maternal health in Haiti and ultimately conditions across the country.
– Atifah Safi
Sources: MATR, UNICEF, Doctors Without Borders, Maternal Life International, CIA
Photo: Google Images
Child Labor to Make Chocolate
Chocolate is produced from the cacao bean, often referred to as cocoa, which is primarily grown in Western Africa. More than 70 percent of the world’s cocoa comes from the countries of Ghana and Cote d’Ivoire in West Africa, where children are often employed in harsh, unsafe conditions to meet the demands of the market. Such labor takes place in order to increase production while keeping prices competitive.
According to the Food Empowerment Project, the farms of Western Africa supply cocoa to international giants such as Hershey’s, Mars and Nestle. Cocoa is grown primarily as an export crop and accounts for 60 percent of the Ivory Coast’s export revenue.
Cocoa farmers, however, earn less than $2 a day, an income below the poverty line. As a result, farmers look for cheap sources of labor to keep their prices competitive.
These low wages perpetuate child trafficking and dangerous conditions for working children. According to the International Labor Rights Forum, children laboring on cocoa farms are exposed to chemicals, long working hours, and the denial of a formal education.
Children are also reportedly forced to use chainsaws and machetes, and they sometimes must drag more than 100 pounds worth of cocoa pods through the forest. If the children do not work fast enough they may be beaten.
The problem is getting worse. Between 2009 and 2014, Child Labor in cocoa production increased by 46 percent. Most of the children in West Africa begin working on the cocoa farms between the age of 12 and 16, although children as young as five have been found working.
An estimated 1.8 million children are being forced to labor on cocoa farms in Western Africa. In Ghana, 10 percent of the children do not attend school, while the number is as high as 40 percent in Cote d’Ivoire.
Despite its prevalence, in Cote d’Ivoire child labor is actually illegal. Offenders could receive one to five years of jail time and up to $2,200 in fines. These laws, however, are rarely enforced.
The country has invested about $40 million to implement projects such as the building and rebuilding of schools and a tracking system to keep at-risk children accounted for and safe. However, without the enforcement of the law many children are not protected by these measures.
Advocates have called on the $60 billion chocolate industry to help alleviate the problem of child labor by paying cocoa farmers a livable wage and consumers to avoid purchasing chocolate that is sourced from Western Africa.
– Drusilla Gibbs
Sources: Food Is Power, Labor Rights, Anti-Slavery
Photo: Flickr
Education in Rwanda: Highest Enrollment Rates in Africa
The Rwandan elementary educational system has brought the primary completion rate to 72.7 percent in 2012. The completion rate was at 53 percent only four years prior.
There has been an increase in the national budget for education in Rwanda for the 2017-18 year. The budget was 17 percent in 2012 and is projected to rise to 22 percent. This funding will help provide Rwandan students with the opportunity to further their studies.
Rwanda was awarded the Commonwealth Education Good Practice Award in 2012 for its education program. The program is called the Nine Year Basic Education Fast Track Strategies and was designed to provide access to nine years of education for Rwandans. The community-based curriculum emphasizes quality education and community-incorporation.
Classrooms and restrooms have been built in accordance to the program. The program was initiated in 2009 and the success of the program is evident in the increase in enrollment, retention, and completion rates of primary school.
Although Rwanda’s primary school enrollment rates are high, the numbers show that a much smaller percentage of primary school children are continuing on to secondary education. The net enrollment rate for secondary school is 33 percent from 2013. This number does show a slow but steady increase of 3 percent from 2010 when the enrollment rate was at 30 percent.
Rwanda’s prioritization of the education of the youth is shown through the increase in enrollment rates throughout the country. Hopefully, other African countries will be quick to follow Rwanda’s lead.
– Iona Brannon
Sources: Commonwealth, Global Partnership, UNICEF, US Embassy, World Bank
Photo: Living in KiGali
Can Hydropower Alleviate Energy Poverty in Africa?
The World Energy Council (WEC) estimates that only a third of the world’s potential hydropower capacity has been developed.
With this knowledge in mind, an endless expansion of possibilities awaits for future investments in this renewable energy.
In fact, today hydropower is recognized as the cleanest renewable source in the world — the carbon emissions emitted from its lifecycle of construction, operation and decommission are far less in comparison to its renewable friends, wind and solar.
According to an article by SciDev Net, Africa is the world’s fastest growing economy; however, despite the foreseeable opportunities for this emerging continent, millions of people remain in severe poverty.
At the heart of this issue lies energy poverty, with 600 million Africans living without electricity, according to the International Energy Agency (IAE).
This means that more than half of the country’s population lacks access to electricity, rural residents faring worse with just 27.8 percent having access to electricity — what many count today as something they cannot live without.
Despite these harrowing numbers, hydropower use accounts for 84 percent of all non-fossil fuel energy use across Africa, a continent rich in rivers and lakes, making it ripe for this type of energy source.
Among the world’s longest waterways, The Nile is shared by many neighboring countries and offers great potential for hydropower in Africa.
Recognizing this potential, the construction of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) is underway, a structure which will be 145 meters high and its completion planned for 2017. With this height, it will be nearly one and a half times the height of the Victoria Falls and also the largest dam in Africa.
The creation of this dam will benefit many, producing almost triple the amount of Ethiopia’s current electricity production, as the dam is capable of producing six gigawatts of energy in peak output.
Dams harnessing and producing hydropower typically last 50 years without maintenance, producing limitless and continuous power, unlike other sources which are not as dependable.
However, some negative aspects of hydropower include the high costs associated with design and construction and the uncertain impact it will have on local people who call the site of the dam their home.
Although the construction and usage of hydropower “come with a complex set of social and environment challenges,” international hydropower associates are in the process of creating sustainability standards to develop and ensure Africa’s place in a world looking toward hydropower.
Future plans for the implementation of hydropower along Africa’s waterways include the Congo, Niger, Orange and Senegal Rivers, which when combined will have the potential to generate nearly 27 gigawatts of electricity.
As Africa continues to invest in renewable energy sources such as hydropower, an end to energy poverty is possible.
As SciDevNet reveals, “The next few decades could prove critical to the future of Africa’s water, energy and people.”
– Nikki Schaffer
Sources: SciDev, World Energy, World Energy Outlook
Photo: Wikipedia
6 Reasons Breadfruit Can Solve World Hunger
What is breadfruit? Although it sounds fictitious, it is actually a real food with the potential to contribute to the eradication of world hunger.
Breadfruit is shaped like a football and has a prickly texture. The fruit grows on trees and is highly nutritious. It is not well known because many people find it bland and tasteless.
However, there are 6 reasons why food critics should stop turning up their noses at this fruit and they all pertain to helping starving people.
– Kelsey Parrotte
Sources: Business Insider, National Tropical Botanical Garden, Wall Street Journal, Huffington Post
Malala Yousafzai: Fighting for Global Education
In 2012, 15-year-old Malala Yousafzai was shot three times by the Taliban because she was fighting for her right to attend school. Three years later, the youngest Nobel Peace Prize winner is creating a social movement through her activism regarding global education.
Now 18 years old, Yousafzai has called on the United States and other leading powers to devote more of their foreign policy to educational opportunities for needy children around the world.
“World leaders…are only focusing on six years of education, or nine years,” she said at a panel event co-hosted by Foreign Policy, Vital Voices, and the Malala Fund at the Carnegie Endowment in Washington. “This is not how we are going to achieve success in our future. It is necessary we provide 12 years of quality education to every child.”
Around the world, 57 million children of primary school age do not attend school, with half of these children living in sub-Saharan Africa. Out of these children, 54 percent who do not attend primary school are girls.
Yousafzai argues that leading world powers spend too much on their military forces and should promote, “Books, not bullets. Books, not bombs.”
According to the U.S. Department of Defense archives, $663 billion of the U.S. budget goes towards the military while a mere 0.1 percent is used for foreign aid, including global education.
As Yousafzai continues her global activism and promotion of the Malala Fund, the Nobel Peace Prize winner is finishing her high school education in England because she is afraid the Taliban will kill her if she tries returning to Pakistan.
While finishing school is her top priority, the activist also has a documentary being released on October 2. The documentary “He Named Me Malala” will follow Yousafzai’s life as she completes schoolwork, visits schoolgirls in Nigeria, and viewers will even have the opportunity to see the aftermath of the gunshot injuries as she undergoes surgery and physical therapy.
“I made a choice not to tell the global political story,” said film director Davis Guggenheim during the Q&A after the Telluride Film Festival screening. “As a father of two daughters, I wanted to tell the story of… why did this amazing girl happen?”
As the documentary’s release date to the public approaches, there are high hopes that the film will start a conversation and make a lasting impact on the current state of global education.
– Alexandra Korman
Sources: BMZ, Fast Coexist, Foreign Policy, Los Angeles Times
Photo: Flickr
Anti-Poverty Efforts: Integrate Targeted Communities
President Barack Obama visited Kenya and Ethiopia earlier this summer to draw global attention to challenges facing development organizations throughout Africa, including establishing more widespread access to electricity.
While those large-scale initiatives are important in providing poor regions with economic opportunity, another initiative, equally important, went largely uncovered: community-based development.
Community-based (or “community-driven”) development is defined by Rural Poverty Portal as “a way to manage development, including the design and implementation of policies and projects, [which] facilitates access by poor rural people to social, human, and physical capital.”
Strategies used by community-based organizations include enabling targeted communities to design their own anti-poverty policies, establishing the means for good long-term governance, and prioritizing the impact of public expenditures from the “bottom of the pyramid” up.
Wayne Firestone, CEO of International Lifeline Fund, points to the malaria epidemic in northern Uganda as a phenomenon that could benefit from the inclusion of local communities.
Previous top-down health initiatives, such as indoor residual spraying interventions, he said, have lowered the immunity of residents, made them complacent in taking preventative measures, and have generally made communities more vulnerable to the disease.
Such initiatives would become more effective if they included local communities in “the design, implementation and maintenance of solutions.”
While local communities have voiced their desire to become more involved in decision-making processes, their national governments have started to endorse that sentiment on a global level.
One of the primary takeaways from the Financing for Development Conference in Addis Ababa earlier this year was that developing countries want to take “greater ownership” over their development through domestic resource mobilization (DRM), a process in which countries raise and allocate their own development funding.
USAID associate administrator Eric Postel notes that while DRM has historically been overlooked in global anti-poverty efforts, the international community has begun to realize its importance for countries hoping to escape poverty.
“DRM is hardly a new concept, but one that has unfortunately been out of the spotlight for many years. I remember attending the aid effectiveness conference in Busan, South Korea, in 2011.
Support for DRM was barely discussed there,” he wrote in an article for Devex. “Since then, the global community has coalesced around the importance of this transitional bridge from a nation’s receiving international aid assistance to its sustainable providing for its own.”
While some developing countries may never realize absolute autonomy in directing their own anti-poverty initiatives, DRM is a positive step for countries hoping to become more self-reliant. Earlier this year, Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta made an appeal to African countries to stop accepting international aid entirely.
Although certainly not in the best interest of many African civilians, that position reflects the common and natural desire among poor countries to achieve sustainability and self-determination.
Indeed, the lack of cohesion among rural communities like those in northern Uganda can make community-based development difficult, primarily because it takes time to establish functioning bodies vested with the ability to prioritize community needs.
According to Firestone, however, development assistance ought to be rethought in ways that will enable communities to participate in the management of their own affairs.
“For decades, development assistance has created a culture in which these communities are recipients, not leaders of their own solutions,” he said.
“Many development thinkers have started conversations around how we can shift that culture to make sustainable progress; how residents of poor, rural communities can be problem solvers rather than problems, and can embrace changes they generate internally.”
– Zach VeShancey
Sources: Devex 1, Devex 2, Rural Poverty Portal
Photo: Flickr
NeoVent Reaches Babies in the Developing World
In rural parts of the developing world, health care is iffy at best. If there is a healthcare facility, it often lacks trained employees and equipment. The equipment may even be outdated due to the expense to update it. And, too often, people traveling to a healthcare facility die in their travels.
This is the case seen in newborns when they are born in a rural village and must make the voyage to the nearest healthcare facility. It is very common for premature newborns to have difficulty breathing.
“Hospitals supply continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) to keep the lungs ‘open’ as the baby breathes on its own. However, very premature babies who cannot breathe on their own require dual pressure treatment along with CPAP to provide both negative and positive pressure to the lungs at a normal breathing frequency.”
In first world countries, this is an easy fix because they are usually born at a hospital with the necessary equipment. However, this is not true in the rural parts of the developing world. Babies that need treatment for underdeveloped lungs do not have access to the dual pressure treatment system because the equipment is expensive, difficult to operate, or hard to upkeep.
According to the World Health Organization, the mortality rate of premature infants in underdeveloped countries can be up to eight times higher than in the U.S., due to lack of resources. But there is hope for the newborn babies of the developing world.
Stephen John and Joseph Barnett, two engineering students at Western Michigan University (WMU), invented the NeoVent. This device is an easy-to-operate dual-pressure system that is aimed at helping premature babies breathe.
“The NeoVent consists of an innovative oscillatory relief valve, and is driven by excess air generated by the CPAP machine. Air at a constant pressure is transported from the CPAP machines into the child’s airway via a tube. The tube is submerged into water to produce bubbles, which are caught in a small inverted bowl on the relief valve.”
As this tube fills bubbles, a positive pressure is applied to the infant’s lungs, bringing in air. And as the bubbles disperse, a negative pressure is applied to the infant’s lungs, pulling air out of the lungs. This is seen as a breathing motion on the infant’s chest.
By keeping the developing world in mind, John and Barnett have priced the machine at a mere $25. The engineering students plan to implement the NeoVent in limited resource facilities in Nepal, Kenya and Uganda.
John and Barnett received $3,500 as U.S. winners of the 2015 James Dyson Award. The students plan to use this money to start clinical trials and manufacture a second round of production level devices.
The NeoVent also won the Lemelson-MIT undergraduate “Cure It” competition and the Brian Thomas Entrepreneurial competition at Western Michigan University. In addition to these awards, NeoVent is also the recipient of a VentureWell E-teams grants and a research grant from WMU’s honors college.
NeoVent maybe not look like the expensive technology in state of the art hospitals, but it functions just the same. By creating an effective and affordable device, John and Barnett will be saving many premature infants’ lives in the developing world.
– Kerri Szulak
Sources: Machine Design, WMU News
Photo: Flickr
USAID Sets New Goals for Maternal Health
The United States Agency for International Development, or USAID, is a government organization in charge of allocating funds and aid to global issues.
Millions around the globe have felt such power and emotion in the form of kisses, hugs, listening ears, and countless late nights.
However, maternal and child survival continues to be among the key issues that feed into the poverty crisis in developing countries around the world.
According to the UN, “a woman dies from complications in childbirth every minute – about 529,000 each year – the vast majority of them in developing countries.”
As part of the Millennium Development Goals, which concluded earlier this year in 2015, several countries banded together in order to increase maternal and child survival by three-quarters. While the target was not met, significant progress was made and millions of lives were saved in countries that normally do not receive the care and resources required for a healthy delivery.
Now that 2015 is coming to an end, many countries and organizations are now setting new goals to improve maternal and child survival. USAID recently came out with its new goal to reach an additional 38 million women with increased access to care during childbirth.
With this goal in mind, an action plan was put together in order to achieve this milestone. On their site the organization stated, “the USAID report details how to reach 38 million of the most vulnerable women around the world with increased access to health care during delivery by 2020.”
This plan includes a focus on 24 target countries including, but not limited to Ethiopia, Nepal, Afghanistan, Haiti, and India.
With this aid, more mothers have had access to care during and after the birth of their children. A recent article from the USAID Impact blog reported successes within some of these target countries.
The organization reports that in Ethiopia, 38,000 workers have been trained and dispatched around the country to help mothers and children. In Nepal, female workers travel to provide women with antiseptic gel, free of charge, to reduce infant infection. Malawi has increased efforts to save infants born without fully developed lungs.
Similar stories are beginning to flourish in developing countries around the world. With countries receiving the necessary resources and aid during this vulnerable time for both mother and child, lives are being saved and general health standards improved.
The survival of these mothers and children around the globe is imperative if we are to alleviate the poverty crisis our world now faces.
To quote the USAID Impact post, “When a child dies, and when a mother dies giving birth, it is a tragedy for all of us…because it continues the cycle of extreme poverty that holds the entire world back. Together, we can break that cycle.”
When a mother is lost, children and fathers feel the strain and the community as a whole is affected. When a child is lost, the community misses out on that child’s potential accomplishments and impact. With USAID reaching out to the formerly unreachable, maternal and child survival increases and the community as a whole improves.
– Katherine Martin
Sources: UNICEF, USAID 1, USAID 2
Photo: pixabay
Should We be Accepting Refugees in America?
As Europe continues to struggle with a steady stream of refugees from Syria, Iraq and beyond, the United States is still debating a proper policy response to the crisis. It begs the question – what are the implications for accepting refugees in America on a large scale?
White House discussions regarding U.S. refugee policy have been held in recent weeks, but it still seems that the Obama administration is far from making a concrete decision.
President Obama has stated that the U.S. will accept around 10,000 Syrian refugees over the next year, but more longstanding U.S. involvement has yet to be confirmed.
In a recent op-ed for the New York Times, director of migration and refugee services of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops William Canny laid out some key ways that genuine U.S. involvement could greatly aid Syrian refugees.
“In addition, the United States can resettle a much larger number of the 4 million Syrian refugees than the 1,600 we have to date,” Canny says. “The U.S. refugee program could absorb as many as 100,000 Syrian refugees if the political will to do so existed. Security checks are in place to ensure that those resettled are not a threat to us.”
According to the UN, 7.6 million Syrians have been internally displaced since the beginning of the conflict in 2011, and an additional 4.1 million have been displaced outside of the country altogether. The need for increased U.S. response is growing rapidly.
“A robust U.S. commitment to the resettlement of Syrian refugees would encourage other reluctant nations, especially those in Europe, to accept more and to keep their doors open until this horrific conflict can be ended,” Canny continues. “It also would show that the United States is not indifferent to human suffering and remains, as always, a beacon of hope to the world.”
– Alexander Jones
Sources: New York Times, US News, Washington Post
Photo: Google Images