Living in poverty often means consuming contaminated drinking water. Assembled by the Blum Center for Global Engagement, Katya Cherukumilli earned recognition in June 2015 at the University of California Irvine’s Designing Solutions for Poverty challenge. She has been addressing and innovating ways to cheaply eradicate fluoride from drinking water by using a remediation solution in groundwater. In doing so, she is helping to protect those without any other source for cleaner water.
Katya Cherukumilli developed a cheap way to use bauxite, a material that produces alumina and aluminum, in order to filter out fluoride in drinking water. She is a PhD student at the University of California, Berkley, set to complete an Environmental Engineering Degree in 2017. Her work with the Gadgil Lab for Energy and Water Research found a cheap solution to the problem concerning fluorosis.
The Gadgil Lab is located at the University of California, Berkley. Its mission is to alleviate poverty using research and engineering studies. Katya Cherukumilli is working specifically with fluoride removal. Having been born near the district of interest, Nalgonda, she feels, according to Alex Chan with Daily Pilot, “This is something that is very close to my heart. Access to clean water does not seem like something people should die for.”
According to Gadgil Lab, drinking excessive levels of fluoride, above 1.5 mg/L, can cause anemia, discolored enamel and bone deformities, also known as skeletal fluorosis. Affected groundwater exists on a global scale in places like Sri Lanka, China, Est African Rift Valley, northern Mexico and Argentina.
With 200 million people drinking toxic water, 66 million in India are at risk. A site is open for examining the water in Telegana, where contamination is the most acute and fixated. Ten percent of this district has been affected and 10,000 are permanently deformed.
Groundwater in the Nalgonda District in India has a toxic amount of fluoride that causes deformities with excess intake. Skeletal fluorosis patients reside here. Granite rocks underground are breaking apart and contaminating drinking water with fluoride.
A toxic level of fluoride in drinking water is a problem that has been known for six decades. When rural areas cannot reach safer alternatives, the problem continues. Responding to this issue takes time and manpower. Areas where innovations are costly, difficult to set up or culturally ineffective make it difficult to introduce defluoridation. Gadgil Lab lists a few requirement guidelines addressing the issues.
Any technology useful to the cause must be local, affordable, and appropriate for the culture. It should require minimal maintenance and must function very successfully in the rural area.
To satisfy these requirements, Cherukumilli has been researching bauxite ore. She found that remediating groundwater fluoride needs to be more cost-effective. Cherukumilli is refining bauxite in order to minimize expenditure per person per year from $50 to $1.
Her method to reduce cost includes improving sustainability, so less material is required. Also less energy and carbon costs are needed to solve the issue.
Forty community leaders, scientists, business partners and investors at the competition agreed her progress in this field of study has absolute potential. It will protect the less fortunate from further disfigurement that affects them socially, economically and medically. Her presentation at the Irvine’s Designing Solutions for Poverty challenge received the popular vote among three others.
– Katie Groe
Sources: GADGIL Lab 1, GADGIL Lab 2, The Orange County Register, The Daily Pilot, GADGIL Lab 3
Photo: Daily Pilot
Unlocking Accessibility for People with Disabilities in Paraguay
Through improving labor access, Paraguay has made recent advancements to become a more inclusive and equal society. Although only 15% of people worldwide have disabilities, an estimated 80% of them are out of work. Fundacion Saraki is at the forefront of finding employment and thus improving the lives of people with disabilities in Paraguay. Its first step was to work toward compliance with a congressional law providing labor inclusion in public institutions.
Congress agreed to grant the foundation an agreement for the “Effective Labor Inclusion” of those with disabilities in both the private and public sectors. Through this, Fundacion Saraki has begun to work toward increasing access to jobs with companies such as McDonald’s and Supermercados España, a Paraguayan supermarket chain. Both companies recently hired interns with disabilities who were later offered jobs with the companies in Capiata and San Lorenzo, two cities near the capital, Asunción.
The foundation has also worked to improve building access. Working with architecture students from local universities, the foundation is working toward raising building standards in the country. Students inspect the buildings and make recommendations to the companies housed there on how to improve their construction to accommodate disabled workers and customers. Thus, this solution is an improvement for both those with disabilities who can enjoy increased services and the companies who serve them in increasing their consumer base. They have also worked toward improving bus conditions to increase the ease of riding for everyone.
Through cooperation with USAID and the National Democratic Institute, the foundation has reached an agreement with Paraguay’s Superior National Electoral Tribunal to ensure improved participation of those with disabilities in the country’s upcoming election in November 2015. These organizations have recently published a manual titled “Equal Access: How To Include Persons with Disabilities in Elections and Political Processes.” Through this publication and continuing efforts on the part of all involved organizations, previous obstacles that prevented disabled people from voting in elections will be removed. Because those who are disabled are often also poor and marginalized, their voices in the political process are crucial.
“We are trying to work the government because in Paraguay disabilities have not been a priority, and we hope to have a greater impact on the private industry as well,” said Fundacion Saraki’s Executive Director Maria Jose Cabezudo Cuevas. Indeed, improving the quality of life and increasing opportunities for those with disabilities supports success and creates a more inclusive, fairer society for everyone.
– Jenny Wheeler
Sources: USAID, National Democratic Institute
Photo: USAID
Baltimore City Schools Provide Free Meals to All Students
Worldwide, approximately 805 million people are classified as hungry. They do not have access to enough food to provide adequate nutrition and calories, putting them at risk for malnutrition or starvation. Although most of those affected by world hunger live in developing countries, about 15 million people in developed countries also struggle to put enough food on the table.
For children, struggling with hunger can be particularly devastating. As of 2013, about 15.8 million children in the United States live in food insecure households, and households with children reported food insecurity at a higher rate than those without.
Hunger has a clear negative impact on children’s education. Inadequate nutrition has been proven to delay brain development and impair the ability to learn. Children who do not have enough to eat at home often receive lower test scores and have more absences. They are also more likely to repeat a grade. Their reduced academic achievements could be linked to the fact that hunger can impair one’s ability to concentrate. Furthermore, they display more behavioral problems, such as higher rates of aggression and oppositional behavior.
Without enough food, children cannot properly learn. Recently, Baltimore City, where 84% of children qualified for the Free and Reduced Price Meal Program, has made tackling this issue a priority. Despite the fact that Maryland is one of the wealthiest states in America, 36.5%of Baltimore’s children live below the poverty level. Now, they can all receive a free breakfast and lunch at school, regardless of income level.
The Community Eligibility Provision, a part of the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010, states that entire schools are eligible for free meals if 40% of the students come from low-income families. Maryland adopted this program under state legislation passed in the General Assembly. Over 2,000 U.S. districts are now participating in this program, with Baltimore City as the largest.
The federal government will be reimbursing the schools based on the number of meals that they serve, so the district does not anticipate any negative financial impact. Previously, students eligible for free or reduced meals may not have claimed them for a number of reasons. They may have been embarrassed or did not realize that they qualified. If their parents or guardians spoke limited English or struggled to fill out the paperwork for another reason, they may never have received free meals. Now, any stigma and limitations are gone and all students have access to free meals with no explanations or paperwork necessary.
This program is a step forward in ending childhood hunger in the United States. Other developed countries have similar programs. In Finland, legislation passed in 1948 allows free meals for all students from pre-primary to upper-secondary education. All enrolled in compulsory education enjoy free school lunches regardless of income in Sweden and Estonia. While many developing countries utilize school feeding programs with the assistance of organizations such as the World Food Programme or UNICEF, the programs in Finland, Estonia, Sweden and now Baltimore could provide a model for other developed countries to follow. Feeding the world’s children goes hand-in-hand with providing quality education.
– Jane Harkness
Sources: Care2 , Feeding America , Finnish National Board of Education , The Food Effect , Maryland Alliance for the Poor , Uppsala Universitet , World Food Programme 1 , World Food Programme 2
Photo: Baltimore Post Examiner
Misleading Poverty Statistics in Argentina
Earlier this year, the President of Argentina Cristina Kirchner publicly decreed Argentina’s level of poverty to be among the lowest in the world. While such an announcement should receive admiration and praise from other global leaders, Argentina has instead been put under the microscope for possibly falsifying information about its poverty statistics.
Last week, President Kirchner appeared at U.N. Food and Agriculture meeting in Rome and boasted her country’s supposed impressive poverty numbers. Kirchner was quoted as saying, “Today the poverty rate is less than 5 percent, and the rate of indigence is 1.27 percent, which has made Argentina one of the most egalitarian countries.” Her claims would place Argentina near the top of the list of economically successful countries, but her remarks have come under fire by prominent Argentinean figures for being inaccurate and misrepresenting Argentina’s true economic status.
The Catholic University of Argentina was one of the earliest critics of President Kirchner’s report on poverty citing a study conducted in April of 2014 that reported a 27% poverty rate in Argentina. The University attributed the blame in flawed figures to Argentina’s statistical research center INDEC.
According to an article published by the International Business Times, “critics have long questioned the poverty figures that have been on the books, saying they were based on controversial methodology with manipulated inflation estimates that drove down the calculation of food prices factored into the poverty rate figure.” Thus, Argentina finds itself reporting inaccurate statistics as a result of poor government decisions.
On May 15th of this year, PanAm Post published an article reporting Argentina’s unsuccessful attempt at increasing public spending to reduce poverty levels. An excerpt from the article states that public spending “has been directed to the energy sector, to the payment of public-sector workers, and offering access to pensions and public services to an additional four million people.”
The article also goes on to criticize INDEC for manipulating figures to conceal the accurate poverty rate in Argentina. The article concludes by reporting that between 2011 and 2013, Argentina spent roughly $36 billion while poverty levels remained unchanged. It appears that Argentina’s experiment has failed and it is finally time to admit error and find a new, honest approach to reduce poverty.
– Diego Alejandro Catala
Sources: Blog of the Panam Post: The Canal, International Business Times
Photo: The Guardian
How Sevenly Raises Awareness and Funds Through Art and Design
Sevenly has become an outlet to create awareness about different causes around the world and collect funding.
They team up with different charities and organizations to create purchasable art. Every purchase that a person makes results in a donation to charity. People can buy shirts, prints, special edition products and many other things in the Sevenly Finds collection.
Every week, Sevenly chooses a certain charity and organization and gives $7 of each purchase to that charity.
The apparel company was founded in 2011 and, according to an article published by Mashable, Sevenly sold 864 shirts in their first week, raising $6,125 for charity. Sevenly’s mantra is “People Matter,” and they focus on promoting the causes of the charities they work with by creating videos that explain the mission of each one.
According to an article published by the Los Angeles Times, Sevenly makes donations to seven causes—anti-slavery, clean water, hunger relief, medical help, disaster relief, miscellaneous aid and anti-poverty.
Every week that Sevenly chooses a charity, their designers create typography and images that they can put on their t-shirts, bags, hoodies and different products. These products are sold for seven days to raise money for the cause that they are supporting that specific week.
Sevenly also created a project in which each subscribed customer receives a box of different goodies worth $150 of Sevenly’s socially conscious brands. Seven percent of each CAUSEBOX purchased is donated to various charities and world-changing causes.
According to Sevenly’s CAUSEBOX website, the CAUSEBOX is a way to provide meals, education, jobs, water and many other necessities to people around the world that are in need.
A PRWeb’s article mentions that Sevenly’s CAUSEBOX products are specifically created for this box. Each subscriber will have this box delivered every three months and there are two options for subscriptions. Customers can subscribe in a quarterly subscription of $54.95 per box or in an annual subscription of $199.80 that includes 4 boxes a year for $49.95.
Another part of the CAUSEBOX by Sevenly is that subscribers can choose the charity to which their donation goes.
Fans and CAUSEBOX subscribers are able to share their thoughts and love for the causes that this box supports by joining the community with #CAUSEBOXLOVE in social media.
This apparel company has the purpose to support good causes around the world by generating awareness by the products they sell. From shirts and hoodies to jewelry and prints, Sevenly approaches these causes with the use of art and design and raises $7 for each bought product.
CAUSEBOX by Sevenly is a different approach that the company uses to spread awareness and donate to good causes around the world. It is more interactive in that, while subscribers obtain a box worth $150 of Sevenly’s socially conscious brands, they also get to select the cause to which they wish to donate.
– Diana Fernanda Leon
Sources: Mashable, Sevenly 1, Los Angeles Times , Sevenly 2 , PR Web
Photo: Blog
Katya Cherukumilli Takes on Poverty in Rural India with Bauxite
Living in poverty often means consuming contaminated drinking water. Assembled by the Blum Center for Global Engagement, Katya Cherukumilli earned recognition in June 2015 at the University of California Irvine’s Designing Solutions for Poverty challenge. She has been addressing and innovating ways to cheaply eradicate fluoride from drinking water by using a remediation solution in groundwater. In doing so, she is helping to protect those without any other source for cleaner water.
Katya Cherukumilli developed a cheap way to use bauxite, a material that produces alumina and aluminum, in order to filter out fluoride in drinking water. She is a PhD student at the University of California, Berkley, set to complete an Environmental Engineering Degree in 2017. Her work with the Gadgil Lab for Energy and Water Research found a cheap solution to the problem concerning fluorosis.
The Gadgil Lab is located at the University of California, Berkley. Its mission is to alleviate poverty using research and engineering studies. Katya Cherukumilli is working specifically with fluoride removal. Having been born near the district of interest, Nalgonda, she feels, according to Alex Chan with Daily Pilot, “This is something that is very close to my heart. Access to clean water does not seem like something people should die for.”
According to Gadgil Lab, drinking excessive levels of fluoride, above 1.5 mg/L, can cause anemia, discolored enamel and bone deformities, also known as skeletal fluorosis. Affected groundwater exists on a global scale in places like Sri Lanka, China, Est African Rift Valley, northern Mexico and Argentina.
With 200 million people drinking toxic water, 66 million in India are at risk. A site is open for examining the water in Telegana, where contamination is the most acute and fixated. Ten percent of this district has been affected and 10,000 are permanently deformed.
Groundwater in the Nalgonda District in India has a toxic amount of fluoride that causes deformities with excess intake. Skeletal fluorosis patients reside here. Granite rocks underground are breaking apart and contaminating drinking water with fluoride.
A toxic level of fluoride in drinking water is a problem that has been known for six decades. When rural areas cannot reach safer alternatives, the problem continues. Responding to this issue takes time and manpower. Areas where innovations are costly, difficult to set up or culturally ineffective make it difficult to introduce defluoridation. Gadgil Lab lists a few requirement guidelines addressing the issues.
Any technology useful to the cause must be local, affordable, and appropriate for the culture. It should require minimal maintenance and must function very successfully in the rural area.
To satisfy these requirements, Cherukumilli has been researching bauxite ore. She found that remediating groundwater fluoride needs to be more cost-effective. Cherukumilli is refining bauxite in order to minimize expenditure per person per year from $50 to $1.
Her method to reduce cost includes improving sustainability, so less material is required. Also less energy and carbon costs are needed to solve the issue.
Forty community leaders, scientists, business partners and investors at the competition agreed her progress in this field of study has absolute potential. It will protect the less fortunate from further disfigurement that affects them socially, economically and medically. Her presentation at the Irvine’s Designing Solutions for Poverty challenge received the popular vote among three others.
– Katie Groe
Sources: GADGIL Lab 1, GADGIL Lab 2, The Orange County Register, The Daily Pilot, GADGIL Lab 3
Photo: Daily Pilot
Little Known Facts About Macedonia
Most Americans don’t know that Macedonia, a small country just north of Greece, exists, let alone that it is a nation riddled with distress. Many facts about Macedonia go unnoticed. Gaining its independence from Yugoslavia in 1991, Macedonia is a young country that still faces many challenges. Macedonia has yet to solve the dispute with Greece that erupted over the origin of its name, has restricted media freedom and has limited rights for minorities. Macedonia’s membership in NATO was blocked by Greece at the Alliance’s Summit of Bucharest in 2008, and as a result the nation struggles with economic growth.
The population of Macedonia stands at around 2 million, with a median age of 36.8 years. The population is growing at a rate of 0.21 percent, ranking 180 out of all the countries in the world, and there is currently much controversy surrounding the treatment of migrants to the country. The Macedonian birth rate is 11.64 per 1,000 persons (ranked 171 out of the world’s nations), and the death rate is approximately 9 per 1,000 (ranked 66 in the world). 57 percent of the population lives in an urban environment, and luckily almost 100 percent of this population has access to drinking water.
The rest of Macedonia’s problems aside, malnutrition is not much of an issue. Although between 1.3% percent and 2.1 percent of children under the age of 5 are underweight, this statistic puts Macedonia at 128th in the world, which not bad considering all the countries that rank higher and the few that fall below, including the United States and Australia.
However, this does not mean that malnutrition is not a problem, and this percentage should still be regarded as significant and given adequate attention, as no children should have to go without proper nutrition. The most urgent of Macedonia’s struggles, however, is the current conflict with Ethnic Albanians and the treatment of migrants, and it is key that these issues are dealt with first and foremost.
-Katie Pickle
Sources: CIA, BBC
Photo: Flickr
The Struggle of Immigrants at Sea in Southeast Asia
Imagine living in a country which does not even consider you a citizen solely because of your religious beliefs, and now imagine trying to leave such a country, only to be turned away by several others, leaving you stranded in the ocean with dwindling food supplies and no clean water.
This horrible scenario has been a reality for around 11,000 Rohingya Muslims who are attempting to flee the country of Myanmar. The Rohingya and Bangladeshi peoples have been fleeing from Myanmar for many years as a result of religious persecution and in search of new jobs respectively.
Usually, immigrants have relied on normal passages to allow legal entry into their destinations, but this is being cracked down on. With increasing populations, countries such as Malaysia are being forced to make tough decisions when it comes to the plight of these immigrants’ lives.
In the past, the Rohingya people have paid human traffickers to smuggle them into neighboring countries such as Thailand, Indonesia, and Malaysia, but with populations rapidly increasing, Malaysia has blockaded the north-western border to prevent immigrants from entering Thailand. With more and more countries turning away immigrants, or “boat-people,” as the locals refer to them, many have taken to the sea, but with traffickers being highly persecuted, they are often left abandoned at sea.
Several ships have already sunk and many local fishermen have been attempting to rescue what passengers they can. However, no good deed goes unpunished. Fishermen have been instructed not to rescue any migrants unless their boat is sinking, and some have even had to watch people drown because entry via boat would deem an illegal migration into the country.
Luckily, 3000 individuals have been rescued from the abandoned boats, but hospitals in Malaysia do not have the means to treat all of the individuals suffering from starvation, dehydration and sickness.
The mayor of one of the coastal towns receiving “boat-people” has called for the necessity of aid from NGOs and the World Health Organization. These are small island towns which do not have the capacity to care for such a large number of people. Many surviving immigrants recount major fights over food on the boats.
Because people were stranded for such long periods of time, it is an absolute wonder that so many managed to survive. However, there are still 8,000 individuals stranded at sea. The U.N. has condemned the refusal of immigrants from Myanmar by these countries. Even with help on the way, there is growing concern that time is running out.
One survivor stated, “We were hoping that more ships would be found, and that more people would be rescued and allowed to come onto shore. Unfortunately, this did not seem to have happened.”
While fishermen continue to attempt to provide as much aid as they can to the individuals stranded at sea, it is high time the government intervened and rescued these ‘boat-people’. Regardless of an individual’s religious background or ethnic make-up, everyone deserves to be rescued. This is an atrocity which can soon turn into a tragedy, hopefully these people can find safe homes soon.
– Sumita Tellakat
Sources: BBC, IB Times,
Photo: Aljazeera
Poverty in Shenyang, China
Serving as one of the largest economic, industrial and governmental zones in Northeastern China, Shenyang demonstrates the efficacy of urban poverty alleviation programs.
Generally, within the nation of China, a large portion of the population is characterized by suffering from a large income disparity variable, as well as the insufficient provisioning of basic necessities such as food, sanitary water, and extracurricular, educational, and recreational amenities. However, the population of Shenyang attests to the ability of the Chinese government to effectively alleviate poverty within certain urban areas, as this city maintains a record of 100 percent of the population receiving access to all basic services and amenities enumerated above.
National policies and strategic programs within China have allowed the provisioning of regional authoritative decisions regarding infrastructural development initiatives, subsequently encouraging the inclusion and implementation of socioeconomic programs designed to alleviate high rates of poverty based on localized variables.
Despite the notable successes of the regional government of Shenyang, recent government actions have resulted in an increasing limitation of regional control and a decrease in state capital investment. These actions have resulted in the failure of certain state-owned businesses and subsequent increase in regional unemployment rates. Researchers are currently studying how these economic shifts will ultimately affect the rate of urban poverty within Shenyang.
-James Thornton
Sources: The Mirror, Muse,
Photo: Time
The State of Food Insecurity Report
An important aspect in the success of the Millennium Development and Sustainable Development goals is the recording of progress over time. The State of Food Insecurity Report by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) helps look at the initiatives that have worked to sustain food security in developing nations. Focusing on hunger is the first step to ending poverty and maintaining sustainable development. By looking at economic growth, agricultural productivity and international trade, development can be improved according to what continues to work.
The State of Food Insecurity Report finds that “about 795 million people are undernourished globally, down 167 million over the last decade, and 216 million less than in 1990-92,” according to FAO. Although food insecurity has been declining, there is still a chance of stagnation if economic growth slows in Central Asia, Western Asia, and South Africa.
The Millennium Development Goals reach their deadline this year, therefore, new goals have been developed. The Sustainable Development Goals focus on innovative ways to eradicate poverty for good. One way the U.N. does this is to educate farmers on how to efficiently grow crops. This helps feed families in surrounding regions and provides income for farmers to help with economic growth. Taking a sustainable approach to food security, rather than exporting food, maintains the distribution of goods.
Although the report focuses on hunger, many aspects of development affect the result of food security in developing populations. The economic growth of a nation positively affects the nourishment of people in poor countries. However, the report also notes that “it also must include social protections, which include basic human rights and a safety net providing basic needs,” according to Deseret News.
Poverty continues to decline with the implementation of the MDGs and SDGs. Despite this, there still remain people in underdeveloped countries who experience malnutrition and a limited access to education. “The 2015 report not only estimates the progress already achieved, but also identifies remaining problems, and provides guidance on which policies should be emphasized in the future,” says the FAO. The importance of tracking the progress of development goal plans will help the U.N. come closer to completing its ultimate goal of eradicating poverty by 2030.
-Kimberly Quitzon
Sources: Food and Agriculture Organization 1, Deseret News, Food and Agricultural Organization 2,
Photo: Dr. John La Puma
How Poverty in Mexico Affects U.S. Immigration Policies
Understanding poverty in Mexico can help us further understand immigration rates into the United States and how to create more effective policies regarding immigration in the U.S.
Immigrants from Mexico typically have a higher rate of poverty than those who are native to their country, which is referring to American natives. Approximately 25 percent of Mexican born immigrants live in conditions that are considered impoverished while living in the U.S.
This means that many immigrants that migrate to the U.S. are eligible for state-funded programs, despite having immigrant status. This leads to the controversy that many hear about in the U.S. Numerous policies regarding immigration take into consideration that many immigrants are living in poverty, and would be in need of government assistance in order to sustain a normal and healthy life.
Mexican immigrants have been the largest group of immigrants to migrate to the U.S. since the 1980s and therefore, it is not surprising that many immigration policies are directed more so to that group of the population. This is particularly important because this means that policies take into consideration that many immigrations are living in impoverished conditions and will therefore be more dependent on the government.
This is a largely contributing factor to the strict policies regarding immigration and deportation over the last twenty years or so in the U.S. Becoming a U.S. citizen and immigration into the U.S. particularly from Mexico is more difficult than it has ever been and the economic pull has much to do with such strict policies.
Poverty stricken Mexican immigrants have traveled to the U.S. with hopes for more economic prosperity, however, this is often more difficult than many immigrants anticipate. Despite finding minimum wage jobs, if that, many do not make enough money to find themselves or their families living above the poverty line. Therefore, many continue living under a poverty status and are depending on the state and government funding.
Unfortunately, a great deal Mexican immigrants find themselves continuing to live in poverty after leaving their native country, on their journey to live out the American Dream. That being said, the U.S. government has created policies with these conditions and potential outcomes in mind.
– Alexandrea Jacinto
Sources: Center for Immigration Studies, Migration Policy Institute
Photo: Flickr