The Gates Foundation and the company TechnoServe have developed a solution to the endemic poverty of smallholder farmers in Africa — The Coffee Initiative. Across Rwanda, Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania and more, the Initiative empowers each wrung of the business ladder involved in the coffee-making process, increasing income and lifting communities out of poverty.
Today, around 4.2 million households of smallholder coffee farmers (20 million households) live below the poverty line.
“Without access to technical knowledge, professional processing and milling services, reliable markets or working capital, these farming families are forced to sell their coffee at low prices. Under these circumstances, it is extremely difficult for these farmers to escape poverty, despite the backbreaking work they put into their coffee harvests,” explains the Gates Foundation on its website, Impatient Optimists.
The Coffee Initiative has helped to break this cycle in many communities. TechnoServe adapts its education programs and implementation strategy to the unique cultural, financial and physical context of each farm.
It aims to help communities realize their potential; East Africa is one of the most conducive places in the world for coffee to grow. Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda and Tanzania have rich soil, high altitude and temperate climates, enabling them to produce some of the most high-quality coffee in the world.
To help communities reach their full potential, TechnoServe teaches private, coffee export companies how to work with credit, quality assurance, administration and price risk management.
These export companies then sell their newly acquired services to small coffee cooperative farms, enabling increased effectiveness and efficiency for both farms and service providers.
Every level of business involved in the coffee-making process benefits from TechnoServe’s initiative and has the incentive to continue to implement the new techniques they have learned.
“The smallholder farmers earn more, as they can sell the higher-quality beans for a premium to more reliable markets. (Beneficiaries of the program saw their coffee incomes increase by an average of 22% across the region, while that figure rose to 50% in Rwanda.) The coffee service providers, meanwhile, collect a percentage of the sales and thus have strong incentives to continue providing services and financing to the coffee farmers. And the financial institutions have gained a reliable customer base with a strong record of repayment, encouraging them to continue to provide financing,” explains Impatient Optimists.
Technoserve teaches smallholder farmers how to improve the quality, sustainability and yield size of their coffee. Farmers who participated in the education program increased their coffee yields on average by 42 percent.
TechnoServe has built over 266 wet mills, which process raw beans, since 2000. Over 250,000 farmers have benefited from this. TechnoServe also facilitated lasting relationships between small farms and large, corporate coffee roasting companies, which are now purchasing more coffee from East Africa.
“For instance, the ‘Uzuri African Blend’ from Peet’s Coffee & Tea consists entirely of coffee from Coffee Initiative clients and represents the company’s first African coffee blend. Similarly, high-end coffee roasters Intelligentsia and Stumptown Coffee Roasters have marketed individual Ethiopia wet mill client coffees as single-origin products with the cooperative name displayed on the coffee package,” explains TechnoServe.
The Coffee Initiative has made an enduring impact in Ethiopia. Ethiopians have grown coffee for centuries; however, they previously used traditional, dry processing methods. Little attention was given to quality.
Though the climate and altitude were perfect to produce high-quality beans, the region was known for bad coffee. Farmers received very little for their crops and, subsequently, remained impoverished.
In 2010, the Coffee Initiative took action in Ethiopia. One hundred local farms unified into a cooperative called Duromina. TechnoServe helped them with financial planning and built a wet mill so the coop could fully wash its coffee.
Just two years later, a panel of judges voted Duromina’s coffee the best in Africa. “Buyers from Stumptown Coffee Roasters described Duromina’s coffee as an ‘extremely complex yet clean cup that flaunts notes of lemon, cinnamon, sweet hops, ginger and nectarine accented by jasmine,’” says TechnoServe’s website.
Duromina repaid its loan in just one year, rather than the four-year plan. “In 2012, four major international roasters purchased 71 metric tons of green coffee through direct trade relationships with Duromine, paying an average of $3.68 per pound, a 65 percent premium over the international commodity price,” explains TechnoServe.
The community experienced economic stimulation, and with this new income, were able to improve the quality of life. For instance, the cooperative invested in a bridge. Before it was built, during the rainy season the river would flood and cut off community members’ access to markets and medical clinics.
“So many people were injured falling into the river when attempting to cross during heavy rain. We could not benefit from many government services because of the river, and some pregnant women even died because they could not reach the clinic,” said Nizamu Abamecha to TechnoServe, Duromina’s chairmen. Today, because of the Coffee Initiative, more remote community members are able to cross the river during the rainy season.
Farmers have also been able to invest in tin roofs, new furniture and solar power. Many are now able to send their children to primary school, and some can send their children to even secondary school or college.
– Aaron Andree
Sources: Global Dev Incubator, Impatient Optimists, Technoserve
Photo: TechnoServe
Education Under ISIS: A ‘Generation in Darkness’
Since last summer, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) has fought to expand its self-declared Muslim caliphate. Now, many fear that the group’s new schools are irreversibly affecting an entire generation of children.
One of ISIS’s key tactics for expansion is the indoctrination of children to support jihad. In the past year, the group has swept through schools in its conquered territories, changing curriculums to reflect its extreme interpretation of Islam.
When ISIS fighters seized the city of Deir Ezzor in Syria, they closed schools and forced teachers to attend retraining sessions in Islamic education. According to Ahmad, a teacher of 14 years in Deir Ezzor, the training did little to address the problems with Syria’s educational system. Instead, ISIS leaders used these courses to weed out potentially disloyal teachers.
ISIS has imposed strict new rules for students as well as teachers. To complete the required training program, teachers must pledge their allegiance to ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Male and female students and teachers are taught in separate classrooms or schools. Girls and women also must wear the niqab, a full-body veil that leaves only the eyes visible. The Hisbah, the ISIS religious police force, monitors schools to make sure teachers and students follow the Islamist guidelines.
Recently, ISIS reopened schools in Deir Ezzor, which for now serve only male students and run for just four hours a day. The schools operate out of volunteers’ houses, not the public buildings previously used as schools. According to Ahmad, schools for girls will reopen when female teachers have completed their Islamic education courses.
Ahmad chose to quit teaching rather than remain a part of the worsening education system. Still, he fears for the children in ISIS-run schools. “The Islamic State aims to raise this generation in darkness and to instill aggression and extremism in them,” he explains. “Children are preoccupied with fighting and vengeance…what they learn in the Islamic State schools nurtures and validates such urges.”
In Deir Ezzor, as in many parts of Syria under ISIS control, the extremist group has instated an entirely new curriculum, banning subjects like history, philosophy and music and arts. ISIS leaders claim that these subjects from the formerly secular curriculum conflict with Islamic teachings. Science is a particularly tricky subject. In schools where physics and chemistry are still allowed, teachers must carefully explain to students that scientific laws come from God. The teaching of evolution is completely banned.
In some Syrian schools, new subjects like ‘Islamic jurisprudence’ and ‘biography of the prophet’ have been added to the curriculum. The group has also removed all reference to the country’s name ‘Syria’ from textbooks, replacing it instead with ‘The Islamic State.’
Despite teaching this ISIS-approved curriculum, many teachers are still technically employed by the Syrian government in Damascus. However, ISIS forbids the acquisition of money from the Syrian government and threatens to kill teachers who collect their salaries. One lifelong Raqqa teacher claimed that as of November of this year, she hadn’t received her government salary in over six months. Now living in Turkey, she says that barely 30 percent of eligible students in her Syrian hometown still attend school. “Nobody wants to send their kids to school anymore because they would probably be recruited to fight and kill in the ISIS army,” she explains.
The choice for families, however, is a difficult one. Now that ISIS has destroyed secular schools in areas under its control, parents must decide whether to send their children to a radical Islamist school or no school at all. Even worse is the possibility that their children might be recruited for ISIS’s militant training camps, where young men are indoctrinated with a love of jihad. The camps teach courses on weapons and explosives, and boys as young as eight learn how to behead “infidels” and opposition fighters.
ISIS’s use of education to influence children promises trouble in the years to come. Even the defeat of the extremist group would not entirely wipe away the fundamentalist tendencies of children who have grown up under ISIS control.
One ISIS militant passionately explains how this generation of children has been groomed to inherit the caliphate. “God willing, this generation will fight infidels and apostates, the Americans and their allies,” he says. “The right doctrine has been implanted in these children. All of them love to fight for the sake of building the Islamic State and for the sake of God.”
– Caitlin Harrison
Sources: ABC News, Wall Street Journal, Wall Street Journal 2, Syria Deeply, Vice News
Photo: ABC News
Khaled Hosseini Foundation: 2015 Update
Khaled Hosseini has worked hard to give back to his native country of Afghanistan over the years. His novels show the ravages of poverty, gender discrimination, militant oppression and children being orphaned in Afghanistan. Unfortunately, what he describes in his novels is not limited to fiction.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) reports that Afghans are displaced due to insurgency, and that the country’s stability is still threatened in 2015. Although the violence continues, many of the previously displaced citizens are returning to Afghanistan, primarily in urban regions. UNHCR also reports that “currently, there is no national asylum and refugee legislation in Afghanistan, so UNHCR is conducting refugee status determination (RSD).”
The Khaled Hosseini Foundation has partnered with UNHCR to help the Afghan people, especially refugees, move out of poverty by providing educational and economic opportunities, building shelters and supplying healthcare for women and children.
Those are broad categories and great initiatives but they are not unreachable: people’s lives are being positively affected through the financial support that the foundation has given, which has gone towards the following programs:
There are many more wonderful programs that the Khaled Hosseini Foundation is supporting through grants and funding, all for the purpose of helping the people of Afghanistan, but most of the programs have the same foci as the ones mentioned above: providing shelter and helping women and children become educated and receive proper healthcare.
The foundation also offers many ways for individuals to become involved and help raise funds and awareness for the people of Afghanistan.
The Khaled Hosseini Foundation is creating an impact among the Afghan people through direct support of vital needs in the communities. Hosseini is also using his influence as an author to open the eyes of his readers to the needs of the Afghan impoverished.
If you would like to learn more about his foundation, click here; to incorporate his books into your lesson plans, visit SOS.
– Megan Ivy
Sources: Khaled Hosseini Foundation, Student Outreach for Shelters, UN Refugee Agency 1, UN Refugee Agency 2
Photo: Yahoo
Corruption in Angola Kills Children
Currently, there are over six million child deaths every year. However, there are few countries on earth more deadly for children than Angola, a Southwestern African province with one-fifth of its children dying before the age of five.
Despite this figure, Angola is also home to one of the most flourishing oil and mining industries, with its highest paid business people earning salaries in the billion dollar range.
Anti-corruption evaluations of Angola’s oil businesses have stated, “The Angolan procurement system is corrupt as procurement laws are inadequately enforced. Foreign investors should note that they are often encouraged to partner with Angolan companies, many of which are front organizations for government officials whose integrity and accountability are frequently questioned by observers.”
Many of these “foreign investors” are U.S. companies, which provide large sums of money to help Angola’s oil economy grow. The oil industry in Angola receives a large proportion of its funding and contributing companies from the Western world, namely Peru and the U.S.
According to the International Business Times, “U.S. oil giants ExxonMobil and Chevron Corp., as well as the UK’s BP and Angolan Sonangol operate other offshore oil projects in the country while Peru’s PlusPetrol and private Angolan-owned Somoil operate two different onshore projects. The American firm Marathon Oil (NYSE: MRO), Italy’s Eni (NYSE: ENI) and Brazilian firm Petrobras (NYSE: PBR) each own various stakes in projects there as well.”
Since the oil and mining sector is a substantial source of the country’s income, corrupt government officials often design their policies around its preservation, even to the neglect of their own people.
Op-Ed Columnist Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times has devoted much time and energy to highlight this overlooked corruption. He has published several reports and documentaries of his findings and experiences in Angola, many of which contain shocking content that is difficult to watch.
Kristof revealed that the Angolan government has reduced its healthcare funding by 30 percent, despite the fact that over 50 percent of Angolans have zero access to any type of healthcare. Highly equipped hospitals and clinic facilities do exist, but the few doctors and nurses working there are uneducated and limited in their ability to assist those in need. Not only are these doctors and nurses uneducated, but they are often forced to sell their drug shipments on the black market in order to earn a decent profit.
Kristoff states, “A generation ago, the United States supported a brutal warlord, Jonas Savimbi, in Angola’s civil war. He lost. Now, because of oil interests, we have allied ourselves with the corrupt and autocratic winner, President José Eduardo dos Santos, in a way that also will also be remembered with embarrassment.”
– Hanna Darroll
Sources: International Business Times, UNICEF, Business Anti-Corruption Portal, The New York Times,
Photo: Reuters
Celebrities Perform Voice-Overs for UNICEF App
A handful of celebrity actors have donated their skills for the creation of a children’s education project, GivingTales, which features Hans Christian Andersen stories, and aims to benefit UNICEF U.K.
Sir Roger Moore, a twenty-year UNICEF ambassador, heads the venture that animated several of Andersen’s tales. Moore implored the help of Ewan McGregor, Stephen Fry, Joan Collins and more, to perform voice-over work to narrate the stories.
Fry is also a UNICEF ambassador, and he posted on Twitter about his involvement with the app. “Fairy tales for [UNICEF]—read by [Ewan McGregor], Joan Collins, [Sir Roger Moore] and me,” Fry said, adding the link to download the app to end of his tweet.
In addition, Collins said she was excited to participate in the cause. “When [the creators of GivingTales] told me about the UNICEF project in which I was going to read a fairy tale to help the children, I thought it would be wonderful,” Collins said.
UNICEF is very keen on keeping up with children in the digital age. According to the UNICEF publication, “Children’s Rights in the Digital Age,” there is an ever-growing presence of children using digital devices in third world areas. “Some two-thirds of the world’s almost three billion internet users are from the developing world, with the numbers growing every day. Many of these new users are children and young people,” the UNICEF publication said.
However, UNICEF also mentioned that with this spurt of internet usage comes introduction to violence, the ability to view unsuitable content and the possibility of internet addiction.
Klaus Lovgreen, the Chairman of GivingTales, said that he wanted to create digital learning material that involved fairy tales that teach positive and valuable lessons. “[Fairy stories] have proven their worth over many years and are sort of mandatory in nature for children,” Lovgreen said.
UNICEF said that a safe online presence for children can be formed by creating easily-accessible content that promotes digital literacy, internet safety education and cyber savviness. The organization, with several other foundations, co-hosted the very first Digitally Connected seminar on children, youth and digital media. Philip Chan, a UNICEF Australia Young Ambassador, said that the technology empowers children because they may not need an adult to supervise them.
The app allows for interactive learning that goads the reader into participating in the story. According to the GivingTales website, the app offers multiple sounds, music, and narrators, granting children the power to customize their experience. According to Lovegreen, underprivileged children will benefit from the GivingTales app that offers “education from these incredible tales and the learnings that come with them by donating 30 percent of the revenue to UNICEF U.K.”
The voice-overs for UNICEF are available on the App Store, the Google Play store, and the Windows Phone store. GivingTales is free on each app store, and it comes with “The Princess and the Pea.” Each additional story is available for four dollars, so that the app can give a portion of their revenue to UNICEF.
– Fallon Lineberger
Sources: Digital Trends, Giving Tales, Look to the Stars, UNICEF
Photo: BBC
Diminishing Poverty Through Improved Coffee Farmers
The Gates Foundation and the company TechnoServe have developed a solution to the endemic poverty of smallholder farmers in Africa — The Coffee Initiative. Across Rwanda, Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania and more, the Initiative empowers each wrung of the business ladder involved in the coffee-making process, increasing income and lifting communities out of poverty.
Today, around 4.2 million households of smallholder coffee farmers (20 million households) live below the poverty line.
“Without access to technical knowledge, professional processing and milling services, reliable markets or working capital, these farming families are forced to sell their coffee at low prices. Under these circumstances, it is extremely difficult for these farmers to escape poverty, despite the backbreaking work they put into their coffee harvests,” explains the Gates Foundation on its website, Impatient Optimists.
The Coffee Initiative has helped to break this cycle in many communities. TechnoServe adapts its education programs and implementation strategy to the unique cultural, financial and physical context of each farm.
It aims to help communities realize their potential; East Africa is one of the most conducive places in the world for coffee to grow. Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda and Tanzania have rich soil, high altitude and temperate climates, enabling them to produce some of the most high-quality coffee in the world.
To help communities reach their full potential, TechnoServe teaches private, coffee export companies how to work with credit, quality assurance, administration and price risk management.
These export companies then sell their newly acquired services to small coffee cooperative farms, enabling increased effectiveness and efficiency for both farms and service providers.
Every level of business involved in the coffee-making process benefits from TechnoServe’s initiative and has the incentive to continue to implement the new techniques they have learned.
“The smallholder farmers earn more, as they can sell the higher-quality beans for a premium to more reliable markets. (Beneficiaries of the program saw their coffee incomes increase by an average of 22% across the region, while that figure rose to 50% in Rwanda.) The coffee service providers, meanwhile, collect a percentage of the sales and thus have strong incentives to continue providing services and financing to the coffee farmers. And the financial institutions have gained a reliable customer base with a strong record of repayment, encouraging them to continue to provide financing,” explains Impatient Optimists.
Technoserve teaches smallholder farmers how to improve the quality, sustainability and yield size of their coffee. Farmers who participated in the education program increased their coffee yields on average by 42 percent.
TechnoServe has built over 266 wet mills, which process raw beans, since 2000. Over 250,000 farmers have benefited from this. TechnoServe also facilitated lasting relationships between small farms and large, corporate coffee roasting companies, which are now purchasing more coffee from East Africa.
“For instance, the ‘Uzuri African Blend’ from Peet’s Coffee & Tea consists entirely of coffee from Coffee Initiative clients and represents the company’s first African coffee blend. Similarly, high-end coffee roasters Intelligentsia and Stumptown Coffee Roasters have marketed individual Ethiopia wet mill client coffees as single-origin products with the cooperative name displayed on the coffee package,” explains TechnoServe.
The Coffee Initiative has made an enduring impact in Ethiopia. Ethiopians have grown coffee for centuries; however, they previously used traditional, dry processing methods. Little attention was given to quality.
Though the climate and altitude were perfect to produce high-quality beans, the region was known for bad coffee. Farmers received very little for their crops and, subsequently, remained impoverished.
In 2010, the Coffee Initiative took action in Ethiopia. One hundred local farms unified into a cooperative called Duromina. TechnoServe helped them with financial planning and built a wet mill so the coop could fully wash its coffee.
Just two years later, a panel of judges voted Duromina’s coffee the best in Africa. “Buyers from Stumptown Coffee Roasters described Duromina’s coffee as an ‘extremely complex yet clean cup that flaunts notes of lemon, cinnamon, sweet hops, ginger and nectarine accented by jasmine,’” says TechnoServe’s website.
Duromina repaid its loan in just one year, rather than the four-year plan. “In 2012, four major international roasters purchased 71 metric tons of green coffee through direct trade relationships with Duromine, paying an average of $3.68 per pound, a 65 percent premium over the international commodity price,” explains TechnoServe.
The community experienced economic stimulation, and with this new income, were able to improve the quality of life. For instance, the cooperative invested in a bridge. Before it was built, during the rainy season the river would flood and cut off community members’ access to markets and medical clinics.
“So many people were injured falling into the river when attempting to cross during heavy rain. We could not benefit from many government services because of the river, and some pregnant women even died because they could not reach the clinic,” said Nizamu Abamecha to TechnoServe, Duromina’s chairmen. Today, because of the Coffee Initiative, more remote community members are able to cross the river during the rainy season.
Farmers have also been able to invest in tin roofs, new furniture and solar power. Many are now able to send their children to primary school, and some can send their children to even secondary school or college.
– Aaron Andree
Sources: Global Dev Incubator, Impatient Optimists, Technoserve
Photo: TechnoServe
10 Breakthroughs That Will Help Women and Children
Since the Millennium Development Goals were adopted in 2000, global poverty has nearly halved. There have been huge advancements in medicine and more people than before having access to clean drinking water.
However, despite these advancements, women and children are still the most at risk. Because of the uneven progress in reducing global poverty for women and children, the Every Woman Every Child movement was started. Policymakers, donors, healthcare professionals and many others come together to find a solution to the uneven progress in reducing global poverty for women and children.
PATH released a list of Top 10 Technologies in 2015 for Women and Children that will help achieve the Millennium Development Goals. Here is a summary of each:
For Women:
1. Nonpneumatic AntiShock Garment is used to prevent postpartum hemorrhaging. It compresses the body and circulates blood to the vital organs after the mother has given birth.
2. Magnesium Sulfate is a low-cost, effective drug in treating life-threatening convulsions, preeclampsia and eclampsia, all pregnancy-related conditions.
3. Sayana Press is a new form of injectable contraceptive that is packaged in a one-time use, simple to administer needle. This increases women’s access to contraceptives and eliminates the risk of transmitting disease through sharing needles.
For Newborns:
4. Helping Babies Breathe is a program and simulator created to train 1 million birth attendants to make sure the baby takes it’s first breath, regardless of where it is born.
5. Chlorhexidine is a low-cost antiseptic that prevents the disease from entering the baby’s system through the newly-cut umbilical cord.
6. Continuous Positive Airway Pressure Device is designed to help premature babies breathe. It is an air and water pump system that gently flows pressurized air into the baby’s lungs.
For Children:
7. Kit Yamoyo is a bundled package of zinc and oral rehydration solution, which are affordable diarrhea treatment. Cola Life created the Kit Yamoyo to pack with Coca-Cola bottles that are delivered to Africa to spread the cure to diarrhea.
8. Phone Oximeter is a low-cost mobile health platform that allows people to test their blood oxygen levels using a sensor on the phone to test for pneumonia. The device then tells them the diagnosis and treatment options without needing access to a doctor.
9. Rotavac is an effective vaccine to cure rotavirus, the cause of deadly diarrhea. It costs $1 per dose and has already become widely available in India, changing the lives of thousands.
10. Backpack PLUS Project is a toolkit made to empower health workers in areas where the patients may never be within proximity to a doctor. The prototype includes medicines, diagnostics and supplies to increase the number of lives saved.
– Hannah Resnick
Sources: PATH, Every Woman Every Child
Photo: African Union
Major US Solar Panel Manufacturer Plans New Investments in Africa
“Africa’s greatest growth challenge is energy, and there’s a serious need to quickly get additional generation capacity in place to meet increasing energy demands,” says Luc Graré, senior vice president EMEA at REC Solar. In a renewed effort to meet the vast demand for economically sustainable energy resources within developing regions, REC, a U.S. solar panel producer, recently announced ambitions to increase program investments and product installation within Africa.
A total of 621 million people – over two-thirds of Africa’s population – currently live without basic access to electricity. With large-scale power scarcities proving to reduce a developing nation’s economic growth rate by an estimated 2 – 4 percent annually, it is essential to note the multitude of costs associated with energy deficits across Africa.
Last month, a new report published by the Africa Progress Panel estimated that the 138 million African households living on less than $2.50 per day spent over $10 billion last year on energy resources such as firewood, candles, kerosene and charcoal. The report also claims that such impoverished homes annually pay on average 70 times more for energy than a household within a developed city such as Manhattan.
While the North African nation of Nigeria remained a top-10 global producer for oil last year, nearly 100 million Nigerian citizens still rely annually on the burning of charcoal and firewood to provide light and heating within their homes. With toxic byproducts released from the burning of such resources killing an estimated 600,000 people per year – nearly half of them children – it is imperative that we find a more sustainable and economical energy solution for Africa.
While the energy crisis within Africa seldom garners significant media attention, a comprehensive solution to this problem is necessary in order to guarantee successes within other forms of regional development. Researchers of the Africa Progress Panel have noted the potential efficacy of off-grid solar power installments, which would provide both infrastructural support to various development programs and stronger attention to other important socio-economic issues such as health and education.
Energy development experts have noted the largely untapped potential of sub-Saharan Africa, which maintains an admirable environment and landscape for the construction of low-cost, off-grid solar power systems. REC now offers a SolarBox installation kit for a 20-50kW off-grid solar system, which is comprised of multiple solar panel arrays, an inverter, a diesel generator and a deep cycle battery bank, all of which are contained within a single shipping container and exercise immediate deployment capabilities.
These units have been praised by numerous sustainable energy researchers for their efficacy in low costs, ease of transport and off-grid capabilities. REC recently donated a 20kW SolarBox unit to Bantayan Island in the Philippines, a community that was severely affected by the impact of Typhoon Haiyan in 2013. REC has predicted the installation of over 100 GW of off-grid solar panel systems by 2030 within developing residential areas of Africa.
– James Thornton
Sources: The Guardian, Energy Matters
Photo: Awake Africa
Redeeming Redemption Hospital
The hospital in Monrovia was unable to manage the flood of ill patients. It lacked adequate supplies and suffered a staff shortage after workers refused to come to work for fear of contracting the virus. In total, 12 workers at Redemption Hospital died from Ebola.
As a result, instead of quelling the outbreak, the hospital began to exacerbate it until Redemption was forced to close its doors.
Up until the Ebola disaster, the hospital was used to treating dire cases with very little resources. Liberia had just 51 doctors to treat the entire population of 4 million people. As a free hospital, the staff could not bring themselves to turn anyone away.
When Ebola hit, this did not change. Redemption had only 205 beds but they housed 400 patients, squeezing two—sometimes three—patients into a single bed. This was a lethal decision and one of the reasons that the Ebola outbreak that struck West Africa became the world’s biggest.
Ebola is known as the “caregiver’s disease” because it spreads when people take care of ill family members. Plus, often funerals in that part of the world require touching corpses still carrying the deadly virus. Because many people in West Africa do not know important aspects about the spread of contagion, many blunders were made.
With help from the USAID and the International Rescue Committee, a non-governmental organization, Redemption Hospital reopened its doors in January 2015. It has been equipped with proper supplies and staff members who are trained to adequately use them.
Each patient admitted into the hospital must undergo screening for any chance they could be sick with Ebola or other infectious illnesses. Anyone with suspicious symptoms are moved immediately to the hospital’s new isolation unit.
Staff have also been provided with proper training on how to prevent and control infectious diseases. The pediatric and emergency ward have each been renovated and new washing machines have been installed for effective disinfection. An industrial incinerator to rid of waste was added to the hospital as well.
Health care workers are hoping that Liberia is able to bounce back with similar improvements that the hospital has, with more people, more training and more preparation for a health crisis.
“This does provide an opportunity to take a big step forward,” explains Justin Pendarvis who specializes in public health with USAID.
Elizabeth Hamann was involved in the IRC’s initiate to reopen Redemption. “The same way that HIV changed the way you practice medicine in the U.S., Ebola should change the way we practice medicine here,” she says.
Liberia now has 4,000 health care workers equipped with special training and are able to work in Ebola treatment centers. Redemption Hospital now treats 1,000 people per week.
– Lillian Sickler
Sources: The Atlantic, USAID,
Photo: USAID
The Life of Women in Afghanistan
Afghanistan is well known for its cultural and religious mistreatment of women. During the height of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, fundamentalists in accord with a strict interpretation of Islam implemented a wide array of behavioral laws against Afghan women.
According to the Revolutionary Association of Women of Afghanistan (RAWA), woman could be criminalized for working outside of the home, participating in any activity outside of the home (unless accompanied by a mahram, or a male relative), not wearing a burqa, wearing heels or makeup, laughing loudly, being photographed or filmed, playing sports, riding unaccompanied in a taxi, riding on a bicycle or motorcycle, looking at strangers, appearing on the balcony of her own home, receiving medical treatment from a male doctor and being educated, among others.
These regulations seriously constrain the personal freedoms of women in domestic and social realms of interaction. Women who violate or are even accused of violating these strict rules are subject to lashes, public stoning and other cruel policing tactics. Fear is used as a control mechanism to suppress women’s voices and actions on a daily basis. In Afghanistan, each woman must choose between expressing her free will and being violently punished for doing so.
Afghan women activists who try to rebel against this unfair treatment are often threatened with death in order to suppress their voices. Human Rights Watch reported in 2015, “Other setbacks for women’s rights in 2014 included a continuing series of attacks on, threats toward, and assassinations of, high-profile women, including police women and activists, to which the government failed to respond with meaningful measures to protect women at risk. The implementation by law enforcement officials of Afghanistan’s landmark 2009 Law on the Elimination of Violence Against Women remained poor, with many cases of violence against women ignored or resolved through ‘mediation’ that denied victims their day in court.”
Women for Women International is one of several organizations working to help women suffering from abuse, marginalization, poverty and lack of human rights due to war and conflict in Afghanistan.
They state on their website, “Decades of violence in Afghanistan have left millions of women and girls displaced or widowed. Common discriminatory practices, amplified by extremist groups, often make it dangerous for women to seek education, healthcare services, employment, or, in some cases, even to leave their homes.”
The Afghan Women’s Mission, founded in 2000, is another such organization created to support the humanitarian and political efforts of RAWA. Their website states, “Projects include many programs run by Afghan women including Malalai Clinic, schools, orphanages, agricultural programs, demonstrations and functions in support of women’s and human rights. We are an all-volunteer organization based in the United States.”
Despite the noble efforts of organizations like these, the situation remains virtually the same since the Taliban regime. Just earlier this year, the violent burning and murder of several women’s rights activists in Afghanistan shocked the world. If the situation for women is ever going to get better, meaningful reform needs to happen now.
– Hanna Darroll
Sources: Afghan Women Mission, Trust in Education, Scribd, Women for Women, Human Rights Watch,
Photo: RT
Pakistan’s Innovative Drinking Water ATMs
Drinking water ATMs? In recent years, severe water shortages have challenged an already energy-starved Pakistan. Now, Punjab province is installing solar-powered ATMs that can distribute clean water to residents.
The small, two-foot boxes function just like normal ATMs, with one notable difference. Instead of cash, the machines dispense clean drinking water, which in times of extreme water scarcity can be more valuable than money.
Punjab Saaf Pani (Clean Water) Company and the research center Innovations for Poverty Alleviation Lab (IPAL) created the drinking water ATMs to give residents in “rural and urban fringe areas” access to clean water. The ATMs provide water free of charge to beneficiary families, and communities will be responsible for pooling funds for the machinery’s maintenance charges.
To operate the machines, users scan a smart card to verify their identities, then push the machine’s red and green buttons to collect their daily share of water. The system will allow each family to collect up to 30 liters of water a day.
The project also aims to help the Pakistani government reduce water waste. To help the government track the exact amount of water dispensed in each location, a central server for the machines will virtually record water use in real-time.
Currently, Pakistan has few water conservation programs in place. One official noted, “There is a national habit of extravagance,” regarding resources like water, electricity and gas. The drinking water ATM system will help the government regulate the population’s consumption of water for home and agricultural use.
Because agriculture alone makes up 21 percent of Pakistan’s GDP, proper water management is key to the growth of the country’s economy. The Indus River stretches the length of Pakistan and feeds irrigation canals nationwide. Water shortages due to drought and mismanagement can affect major exports such as vegetables, wheat and cotton.
The Indus Basin aquifer, which provides fresh water to Pakistan and India, also faces a shortage crisis. There are few alternatives to excessive aquifer use in the densely populated region, and the underground water table is being depleted faster than it can recharge. As a result, the Indus Basin is now the second most stressed aquifer in the world.
To address this worsening water crisis, Punjab Saaf Pani Company and IPAL plan to install 20 initial ATMs at water filtration centers in Punjab, Pakistan’s most populous province. The project will start in three Punjabi districts with serious water contamination issues. According to the program manager at IPAL, this first round of installations will benefit over 17,500 families.
The Punjabi government has pledged the equivalent of almost $200 million to clean water efforts through 2017. It plans to expand its current programs to provide 35 million people with access to safe drinking water.
In February, Pakistan’s minister for water and energy warned that both climate change and government waste have taken a toll on the country’s water supply. “Under the present situation, in the next six to seven years, Pakistan can be a water-starved country,” he stated.
Nationwide, 35 percent of Pakistan’s population lacks access to clean drinking water. In rural areas of Punjab province, that number is as low as 13 percent.
The recent heatwave in Pakistan brought international attention to the government’s mismanagement of the water crisis. Over 1,200 people have died as a result of dehydration, heat stroke and other heat-related causes, though the government has denied accountability for the deaths.
Many experts consider ineffective governance at the national level the biggest obstacle to water security in Pakistan. Muhammad Farasat Iqbal, chief executive officer of Punjab Saaf Pani Company, says that while access to clean water has become a top priority of the provincial government, it will take the concerted effort of the national government to effect real change across Pakistan.
– Caitlin Harrison
Sources: Washington Post, Reuters, New York Times, Government of Pakistan Ministry of Finance, Time
Photo: Tribune