Women in India have been sporting small dots between their eyebrows since the third or fourth century. The mark is called a bindi and is a Hindu tradition.
Historically, it has been worn for religious purposes or to show that a woman is married. Today, women of all ages wear the bindi just as a beauty mark.
A nonprofit organization based in Nashik, India has come up with a new reason to wear the bindi. The Neelvasant Medical Foundation and Research Center, in partnership with Grey Group Singapore, a company that makes advertisements, wants the bindi to become a source of iodine.
The two organizations initiated the Life Saving Dot program that coats bindis with a full daily recommended dose of iodine. Dr Prachi Pawar is the leader of the project. He explains that the skin can absorb the essential micronutrient, but the nonprofit is still studying just how efficient the dots are.
“It would have been more satisfying—and convincing—if [the organizers] had done a bit of work beforehand to show that it actually delivers iodine,” says Michael Zimmerman. He is a nutrition researcher for the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich.
Roland Kupka is a micronutrient senior adviser for UNICEF. He points out that no one knows for sure if the iodine stays on the bindi. There is a chance that it might evaporate off when women spend time in the sun.
India is one of 54 countries struggling with iodine sufficiency. The soil there lacks iodine and, therefore, so do the crops. Iodized salt is unavailable to a third of all families in the country. According to UNICEF, 66 percent of families worldwide have access.
Iodine is necessary for the manufacture of thyroid hormones. For pregnant women, it is crucial for the development of the fetus’ brain. Iodine deficiency is the greatest cause of preventable but irreversible brain damage in the world. It also causes depression and weight gain in adults. Children can suffer from mental health issues like retardation and even death.
So far, more than 30,000 women in about 100 villages throughout India have been given the special iodine bindis. The organizations are starting to plan a system to produce and distribute them on a large scale.
If the Life Saving bindis are successful at administering iodine, they will be an affordable nutritional supplement: 10 repees, about 16 cents, for a package of 30 bindis.
The Neevlasant Medical Foundation and Research Center is a nongovernmental organization that strives to support rural and tribal parts of India and other developing countries. Started in August of 2005, they have specific programs for health, environment conservation, finance, child/women development, mental health and water conversation.
– Lillian Sickler
Sources: NPR, YouTube, Neelvasant Foundation, Indian Journal of Medical Research, Huffington Post, The Times of India, WHO
Photo: Health Life
Life Saving Dot: The New Bindi
Women in India have been sporting small dots between their eyebrows since the third or fourth century. The mark is called a bindi and is a Hindu tradition.
Historically, it has been worn for religious purposes or to show that a woman is married. Today, women of all ages wear the bindi just as a beauty mark.
A nonprofit organization based in Nashik, India has come up with a new reason to wear the bindi. The Neelvasant Medical Foundation and Research Center, in partnership with Grey Group Singapore, a company that makes advertisements, wants the bindi to become a source of iodine.
The two organizations initiated the Life Saving Dot program that coats bindis with a full daily recommended dose of iodine. Dr Prachi Pawar is the leader of the project. He explains that the skin can absorb the essential micronutrient, but the nonprofit is still studying just how efficient the dots are.
“It would have been more satisfying—and convincing—if [the organizers] had done a bit of work beforehand to show that it actually delivers iodine,” says Michael Zimmerman. He is a nutrition researcher for the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich.
Roland Kupka is a micronutrient senior adviser for UNICEF. He points out that no one knows for sure if the iodine stays on the bindi. There is a chance that it might evaporate off when women spend time in the sun.
India is one of 54 countries struggling with iodine sufficiency. The soil there lacks iodine and, therefore, so do the crops. Iodized salt is unavailable to a third of all families in the country. According to UNICEF, 66 percent of families worldwide have access.
Iodine is necessary for the manufacture of thyroid hormones. For pregnant women, it is crucial for the development of the fetus’ brain. Iodine deficiency is the greatest cause of preventable but irreversible brain damage in the world. It also causes depression and weight gain in adults. Children can suffer from mental health issues like retardation and even death.
So far, more than 30,000 women in about 100 villages throughout India have been given the special iodine bindis. The organizations are starting to plan a system to produce and distribute them on a large scale.
If the Life Saving bindis are successful at administering iodine, they will be an affordable nutritional supplement: 10 repees, about 16 cents, for a package of 30 bindis.
The Neevlasant Medical Foundation and Research Center is a nongovernmental organization that strives to support rural and tribal parts of India and other developing countries. Started in August of 2005, they have specific programs for health, environment conservation, finance, child/women development, mental health and water conversation.
– Lillian Sickler
Sources: NPR, YouTube, Neelvasant Foundation, Indian Journal of Medical Research, Huffington Post, The Times of India, WHO
Photo: Health Life
What is the Definition of Philanthropy?
According to the Merriam Webster Dictionary, philanthropy is defined as “goodwill to fellow members of the human race; especially active effort to promote human welfare.” Additionally, philanthropy is “an act or gift done or made for humanitarian purposes,” or “an organization distributing or supported by funds set aside for humanitarian purposes.”
This is interesting to consider. The majority of the time, most of us tend to think of philanthropy as the large donation of money to humanitarian or environmental causes. We tend to think of famous philanthropists like Andrew Carnegie and John Rockefeller. More recently, we might think of Bill Gates and Warren Buffet.
What is a Philanthropist
However, a philanthropist does not only have to be someone who donates large sums of money to worthy causes. The definition of philanthropy says that one has to have a goodwill to humankind and an interest in promoting human welfare. One can accomplish this in a multitude of different ways.
A philanthropist could be someone who is educating herself on humanitarian issues. She could figure out what issues are salient to her, what issues are most dire or what issues people do not acknowledge as much. She could also learn the most effective solutions to this issue. The philanthropist could use this education in order to build her dedication to an issue and make the most change.
A philanthropist could be someone who consistently does community service for a humanitarian organization or a cause that he supports. He could dedicate his time to this organization and help using the skills that he possesses.
A philanthropist could be someone who works for a nonprofit or humanitarian organization. This person could dedicate his or her career to a valuable cause. She could work on the ground or in policy reform.
Finally, someone could donate a percentage of their income to a cause or humanitarian organization. The amount of money does not necessarily have to be large.
In conclusion, it is important to remember that a philanthropist has to make an “active effort to promote human welfare.” This means that a philanthropist is not exclusively someone who donates a lot of money to humanitarian causes. A philanthropist makes a significant effort to change a societal problem, in the best way that he or she can. A philanthropist finds an issue resonates with her, and she does what she can to help. Philanthropy is about dedication to humanitarian issues. It is not always about money.
– Ella Cady
Sources: Huffington Post, Merriam Webster, About.com, Biography Online
Photo: LTD
What is Advocacy?
Advocacy is a concept with a short definition but an extensive explanation. In a very broad sense, advocacy is simply supporting a cause. The cause could be anything from human rights to animal rights and anything in between and beyond. An advocate works on behalf of another person or a group of people (or animals) who are voiceless or too vulnerable to promote their own causes and obtain help.
Advocates can work on the behalf of individuals, such as a parent for a child. Other examples include a teacher for a student, a doctor for a patient and a lawyer for a client. Relatives can also hire individual advocates who are trained and specialize in specific causes. Advocating for the disabled is one example.
Advocates can also work for groups that support individuals or larger numbers of people. Nonprofit organizations, such as charities or public arts organizations, are one type. An example is The Borgen Project. Another type are nongovernmental organizations that include Doctors Without Borders and Amnesty International.
Depending on the context of the situation, whether it be social, legal, medical or political, advocates use different skills and types of activities to benefit the people they support. Most advocacy involves at least researching, educating and organizing. The following list of activities, while not comprehensive, includes the most common advocacy activities.
These activities help form the backbone of advocacy. They enable advocates to support, defend and safeguard the children, families, communities and causes they represent. In these small and large ways, advocacy efforts effectively empower the vulnerable and give voice to the voiceless.
– Janet Quinn
Sources: Alliance for Justice, Citizens’ Committee for Children
Photo: NAGC
Humanitarian Data Exchange Speeds Up Relief Efforts
Humanitarian relief projects involve massive undertakings, and often organizations employ hundreds or even thousands of aid workers to get the job done. It’s no surprise then that relief efforts require huge amounts of logistic planning and coordination.
This can be difficult to achieve accurately and quickly as communication infrastructure may be downed or poorly developed to begin with.
Further, it is difficult to track the individual efforts of aid workers across large developing, or vastly affected regions. As a result, relief may be slow, disorganized, and ineffective. In order to deliver aid more quickly and efficiently, the UN has teamed up with San Francisco based tech company Frog to develop the Humanitarian Data Exchange, or HDX for short.
The goal of the project is to streamline humanitarian data. In the past, relief workers compiled thousands of documents and data points in a variety of formats. The HDX standardizes the methods in which data is entered and collected, thus making finding specific data points easier with less crucial time wasted.
The HDX contains numerous data points, most complied by aid workers on the ground. The network can be accessed from any computer or mobile device with an Internet connection. Users then search for a specific dataset using a basic search engine.
The data includes region-specific populations, available medical services and their inventories, national poverty indexes, the number of homeless in the area, and hundreds of others.
The UN first implemented the HDX in West Africa during the Ebola epidemic. Currently, aid workers coordinating earthquake relief efforts are most actively using the HDX in Nepal.
The HDX has currently 76 different datasets for Nepal; many of these include maps and topographical information, as remote Nepalese regions are difficult to traverse due to limited infrastructure.
Nepal is not the only country benefitting from more efficient aid; the HDX lists data in 244 locations. Data is available to the public as well, and can be found at their website.
– Joe Kitaj
Sources: Forbes 1, Forbes 2, RW Labs
Photo: Forbes
One Direction Releases Film to End Poverty
Celebrities are constantly in the public eye and every move they make, from where they ate breakfast to who they might be dating, is highlighted in the media. So, when celebrities use their voices to make a positive difference in the world, it does not go unnoticed and it has the power to bring on major change.
Earlier this summer, One Direction launched their action/1D campaign, as part of action/2015, a powerful movement that believes 2015 is the year of creating concrete plans to eradicate extreme poverty, promote justice and equality and fight climate change.
Action/1D encouraged the millions of One Direction fans around the world to submit videos of themselves describing the type of world they would like to live in, in alignment with these plans.
Two months and 80,000 submissions later, action/1D released “Dear World Leaders,” a unique and compelling film composed of young people from 172 countries explaining what they like about the world, but what needs to change.
Calling on international leaders to end extreme poverty, promote universal education, provide clean, safe water for all people and end world hunger, “Dear World Leaders” features today’s youth touching upon many of the Global Goals, a set of 17 initiatives that align with the action/2015 movement.
Action/1D and “Dear World Leaders” provided young people around the world with the opportunity to contribute to important global conversations and movements. The youth of today are the future of tomorrow, so it is inspiring to see how much they care about current events and improving the world.
Now, One Direction is promoting “Dear World Leaders” through social media and on their “On the Road Again” tour, while also encouraging the public to share the film and the hashtag #action1D on social media platforms. Already, #action1D has reached 2.5 billion hits and trended on Twitter for 11 hours after the initial launch of the project.
One Direction unites their harmonic voices to make an important change in the world and impose a lasting difference that will ultimately improve the quality of life for many people. In the public eye, they have the power to raise awareness and gain support in the fight against extreme global poverty.
– Sarah Sheppard
Sources: Global Citizen, Look to the Stars 1 , Look to the Stars 2
Photo: Flickr
UN Report: Overall Global Poverty Has Dropped Dramatically
The U.N.’s 2015 Millennium Development Goals Report, which was released earlier this month, has published findings that show a sharp improvement in overall global poverty.
The U.N.’s report highlights the progress that has been made since their Millennium Development Goals were first established in 2000. This plan, which set targets and timeframes for how to make an impact in global poverty by 2015, has ultimately been remarkably successful.
“What the goals did, by prioritizing and focusing, was actually put together major international donors, civil society partners on the ground, national governments focusing on the same sets of issues,” Mark Suzman, a U.N. official, told NPR. “And that allowed for a focusing of both policy change and resources and attention.”
The report highlights a number of significant changes that have been made since its inception over a decade ago. According to the report, the amount of people living in extreme poverty has dropped to less than half of what it was in 1990, from 1.9 billion to 836 million. The report also points out that overall primary school enrollment in developing regions has reached 91 percent.
“The report confirms that the global efforts to achieve the goals have saved millions of lives and improved conditions for millions more around the world,” said U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.
The report doesn’t shy away from the work that still needs to be done, however. The report’s findings also include the fact that around one billion people still defecate in the open and 28 percent of children in South Asia younger than five can be classified as “moderately or severely underweight.”
“These successes should be celebrated throughout our global community,” Ki-moon added. “At the same time, we are keenly aware of where we have come up short.”
– Alexander Jones
Sources: Aizenman, Economic Times, Sengupta
Life Size Lego: Turning Rubble into Homes
One of the largest and most difficult tasks that aid workers face in disaster relief is finding those affected shelters. When disaster strikes, it either forces people out of their homes or reduces residences to piles of rubble. As for the governments of the affected regions, there exists the enormously expensive logistical challenge of clean up. Structural debris and rubble are the largest solid polluter by volume. One Dutch company may have found a single solution to both of these problems.
The Mobile Factory is, as the name suggests, a compact, and portable concrete production facility. It fits into two standard size shipping containers, and can be sent anywhere in the world with relative ease. It is solar powered as well, and thus can be operated in areas with limited or damaged power grids.
Rubble is fed into the factory and it emerges as liquid concrete. This is only the first step. The concrete is then taken and molded into standardized bricks, called Q-Brixx, that resemble large Lego bricks.
Mobile Factory has pledged to instruct users in how to use the life size lego bricks to build, modestly sized, earthquake-proof shelters. The device allows communities to safely and affordably rebuild, while also removing environmentally and physically hazardous debris.
Mobile Factory is currently being tested on a small scale in Haiti. The 2010 earthquake left 1.3 million Haitians without a home and many of its towns decimated. The Mobile Factory is testing its product where it might be needed most.
The test village is being conducted in a town of 30 families. In addition to receiving Mobile Factory homes, the families are also being instructed in the factory’s operation and how to build the homes. Mobile Factory hopes that this instructional program will empower communities to teach each other how to rebuild.
– Joe Kitaj
Sources: IndieGoGo, The Chive, The Mobile Factory
Photo: The Chive
Kenyan Schoolgirls Dedicate a Poem to Water
Kenyan schoolgirls wrote a poem about water; it meant two beautiful things. One, the girls were receiving a quality education. And, two, their community was given access to healthy sanitation.
“Dear Water” expresses the gratitude the girls have for the newly drilled borehole in their community, which has made their community cleaner and safer. In the poem, the girls describe the great lengths they used to travel to get water, time that would take away from their education. Now, the new source of water has given them more time for studies, eliminated preventable diseases and made a huge difference in many lives.
According to World Vision, a child under five dies every 90 seconds due to diarrhea caused by contaminated water and poor sanitation. Easily accessible and clean water eliminates avoidable deaths. Providing healthy sanitation for people around the world must become a priority in order to break the cycle of extreme poverty.
After gaining access to clean water, the girls were nothing but grateful. Beautifully written and recited, the poem proves the power of quality education. Education also has the power to break the cycle of poverty and contributes to a sustainable lifestyle for many girls. Secondary education reduces the rates of child marriage, therefore lowering the risk of HIV and AIDS in girls and provides the opportunity for girls to work and earn a wage.
Clean water is vital to healthy living and accurately depicted in “Dear Water” as a blessing. Clean water prevents diseases, ensures hydration and provides quality sanitation. When placed directly in a community, it eliminates the need to walk miles and miles to reach it, freeing valuable time for school and guaranteeing that children receive an education, which in addition to healthy sanitation is a key component in ending global poverty.
– Sarah Sheppard
Sources: Global Citizen, World Vision, YouTube,
Photo: World Vision
Maternal Instinct: Indian Women Take on a Corrupt Medical System
A group of 40 volunteers is cracking down on the corrupt medical system in India and taking a stand against the country’s soaring rate of maternal deaths.
Prenatal care at government-run medical facilities is supposed to be free of charge, but as Monika Singh discovered, not every woman is aware of this, and some doctors are more than willing to exploit their ignorance.
“Why are you charging for medicine? It’s supposed to be free for pregnant women in a government hospital,” challenged Singh when a doctor tried to make an ill mother-to-be pay for her medicine.
Armed with Nokia phones and a list of codes, Singh and fellow volunteers routinely visit a number of villages, interviewing expecting and new mothers and families. Using simple numeric codes, interviewees can text the volunteer’s details of their pregnancy and related care. For example, texting the number 25 means no ambulance was available when needed.
Cases of women being turned away from hospitals, women being extorted and forced to bribe their way to treatment, and even cases of women dying on the way to the hospital after being denied treatment at multiple clinics are just a few of the examples of the rampant corruption of the Indian medical system.
An estimated 50,000 women in India die each year from pregnancy-related causes, accounting for 17 percent of global maternal deaths each year. While there are countries with much higher rates of maternal death, the sheer volume of annual maternal deaths is unprecedented.
Aside from malnutrition and a lack of enforcement of laws meant to protect expecting mothers, many women say they are too afraid to pursue their rights, even when they know them. “They don’t have the courage to pursue their rights proactively. That’s the challenge,” said Singh. But the presence of volunteers is encouraging more women to speak out about the injustices they have faced.
Improvements have been seen, however, since Singh and her fellow volunteers took to the streets. Working with the End Maternal Mortality Now (EndMMNow) scheme, the volunteers say it is now the doctors who are afraid of them, not the other way around.
“The workers fear these volunteers. They’re afraid they will report a case about them, so now they do their jobs properly,” said Arpana Choudhury, who follows up on reported cases.
The EndMMNow program compiles the reports that they receive to create an interactive map, clearly showing areas needing the most urgent attention, hoping that a clear depiction of the need for reform will prompt much-needed government attention.
– Gina Lehner
Sources: The Guardian, WHO
Photo: Flickr
Six Instagram Accounts to Follow for a Glimpse of Global Poverty
Instagram is a social media outlet that allows users all around the world to share photos. The social network has more than 300 million monthly active users in a world that is captivated by visuals. Although Instagram can serve as an announcement for what’s for dinner, it has been influential in allowing people across continents a glimpse into one another’s lives.
An important aspect of Instagram is its ability to make those whom we will never meet relatable to us. This aspect can be applied to A-list celebrities such as Taylor Swift and Hugh Jackman, as well as to the poor villagers in North Africa. Instagram can humanize the poor and mobilize the able.
Listed below are a few Instagram accounts that do an excellent job showing the beauty as well as the tragic poverty of developing countries.
1. Lynsey Addario @lynseyaddario
American Photo Magazine named Lynsey Addario, currently living in London, one of the five most influential photographers in the past 25 years.
2. Marcus Bleasdale @marcusbleasdale
Marcus Bleasdale is a documentary photographer working in the Central African Republic. His coverage of poverty-stricken conflict zones has earned him the Amnesty International Award for Media 2014.
3. Andrew Quilty @andrewquilty
Andrew Quilty is an Australian documentary photographer working in Afghanistan.
4. Phil Moore @philmoorephoto
Phil Moore is a British freelance photographer documenting life in Burundi.
5. Everyday Africa @everydayafrica
Everyday Africa is a project started by Peter DiCampo and Austin Merrill to show what life in Africa is really like. The account features many African and non-African photographers in their daily lives.
6. Everyday Asia @everydayasia
Everyday Asia is based after Everyday Africa, showing what life in different parts of Asia is like.
– Iona Brannon
Sources: Global Insider, Lynsey Addario, Marcus Bleasdale, Andrew Quilty, Phil Moore, Everyday Africa
Photo: Everyday Africa