So, you’ve got your education, you finally finished that internship during your undergrad, you have participated in a thousand mock interviews, and your resume has been polished at least 100 times. Now you just have to find that job you’ve been working toward your entire career. Here are seven websites to help you find policy jobs:
1. USAJOBS
USAJobs.gov is a helpful resource when it comes to finding a policy or federal job. According to USAJOBS, “The Pathways Programs offer clear paths to Federal internships for students from high school through post-graduate school and to careers for recent graduates, and provide meaningful training and career development opportunities for individuals who are at the beginning of their Federal service.” Programs include the Pathways Internship Program, Recent Graduates Program and the Presidential Management Fellows Program.
The site also has additional helpful resources that allow users to search federal occupations by college major, look through a comprehensive A-Z list of federal agencies, find an internship, or recent graduate job by a keyword, salary, pay grade, category, location, department or agency.
2. Going Global
Going Global is committed to providing “grassroots intelligence” through their team of in country researchers. They monitor and update the career information and resources that are delivered to users. GoinGlobal.com allows the user to easily find international jobs and policy jobs. Their website provides country specific career and employment information for 30 countries and its database search allows users to search by country, profession or topic.
3. International Organization Careers
According to International Organization Careers, “International Organization Careers is brought to you by the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of International Organization Affairs (IO). IO is the U.S. government’s primary interlocutor with the United Nations and a host of other international agencies and organizations.”
IO Careers allows users to register for job alerts online, search international organization jobs database and filter the search by organizations, grades, professional fields, and locations, subscribe to jobs, assists students and young professionals, lists federal agencies, provides other employment possibilities.
4. Partnership for Public Service
According to their website, “The Partnership is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that believes good government starts with good people. By strengthening the civil service, and the systems that are supposed to support them, we help government serve the needs of all Americans.”
The Partnership goes above and beyond by actually getting involved and challenging policymakers and our government to have quality employees. Their website provides users with ample amounts of resources for programs and services for Federal Management, Federal HR, Political Appointees, Higher Education, Private Sector and Congress.
5. House of Representatives
The U.S. House of Representatives can be a great resource for those seeking policy jobs online. This website allows users to see how to apply for various positions within the House as well as employment positions with members and committees and positions with other House organizations. The site also provides information for new employees and information for former employees.
6. United States Senate
Like the House, the U.S. Senate holds various resources and information about employment and policy positions. According to senate.org, “The Placement Office assists Senators and Senate Committees with filling entry-level through professional staff vacancies by providing resumes of qualified candidates. The Office is nonpartisan and administered by the United States Senate Office of the Sergeant at Arms. Read the Placement Brochure and complete the required Applicant Referral Form to begin registration in the Resume Bank.”
The Senate Employment Bulletin is published as a service to Senate offices that choose to advertise staff vacancies. The listing is posted online and revised throughout the week.
7. State and Local Government on the Net
State employment websites include agencies that conduct studies, publish labor market statistics, and often enforce occupational safety regulations. These agencies process unemployment claims, administer workmen’s compensation programs, handle workplace discrimination complaints, and sometimes sponsor job fairs.
This site states that it is “The Official State, County, & City Government Website Locator.” All 50 states are listed on this page with various websites of departments, divisions, industries and employment opportunities, allowing users to skim through a variety of helpful links that correspond with the state of their choice.
– Eastin Shipman
Sources: USAJOBS, Going Global, International Organization Careers 1, International Organization Careers 2, Partnership for Public Service 1, Partnership for Public Service 2, U.S. House of Representatives, U.S. Senate 1, U.S. Senate 2, State and Local Government
Photo: Business Marketing Blog
Key Anti-Poverty Legislation to Look For in 2015
The dawn of 2015 not only means a new year, but also a new legislative session for the freshly initiated 114th Congress.
In this new legislative session, old anti-poverty bills that died in committee last year have a chance to be reintroduced, and other new foreign assistance bills are being introduced for the first time.
One newly reintroduced bill is H.R. 57: The Equal Rights and Access for the Women of South Sudan Act. The bill, introduced on Jan. 6 by Texas Representative Sheila Jackson Lee, promotes the belief that much more U.S. assistance is necessary in South Sudan, particularly with regards to women’s prosperity.
The bill aims to channel greater portions of U.S. relief assistance to local South Sudanese groups, particularly Sudanese women’s organizations, as well as increase women’s access to land, water, agricultural inputs, credit, and property, among other goals.
On Jan. 9, California Representative Barbara Lee introduced House Concurrent Resolution 6, which promotes the belief that the U.S. should annually dedicate at least one percent of GDP for nonmilitary assistance programs.
According to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, the US currently spends approximately $31 billion, or 0.19 percent of GDP, on nonmilitary foreign assistance annually.
The concurrent resolution would require majority approval from both houses of Congress, but would not require approval from President Obama.
A handful of other anti-poverty bills either died in committee last year, or passed one house but failed to go past committee in the other.
One such bill was the Global Food Security Act of 2014, which authorized a new U.S. foreign assistance strategy to reduce global hunger and improve nutritional outcomes in developing countries. The bill passed the House last September but died in committee in the Senate.
The House Electrify Africa Act, which promoted greater access to electricity and renewable energy in Sub-Saharan Africa, saw a similar fate last year. The bill passed the House last May but never got past a committee vote in the Senate.
Nevertheless, it is not unusual for failed bills to be reintroduced and passed in a new session. The Paul Simon Water for the World Act of 2014 promoted revisions to a 2005 act of the same name that provided greater access to clean water for over 2.5 billion people worldwide. The revised bill was first introduced in 2011, and was reintroduced every year thereafter until it was signed into law in December 2014.
– Katrina Beedy
Sources: Government Tracker 1, Government Tracker 2, Government Tracker 3, Government Tracker 4, Government Tracker 5, The Borgen Project, Slate, Water Aid, U.S. Congress
Photo: Digital
Alaffia’s Beauty Products Make Global Impact
A premium skin-care company called Alaffia empowers local people in Togo by handcrafting beauty products prepared from Certified Fair Trade shea butter. Better yet, all of the sales from Alaffia’s beauty products contribute to the livelihood of West African communities.
Alaffia offers creams, soaps, lotions and hair-care products made from the indigenous shea tree. Alaffia operates at a local level, employing women in need and enabling youth to stay in school to complete their educations.
This company is essential to West African women because they have difficulty obtaining employment since they are oftentimes not able to access education. Exclusion from the workforce leaves them vulnerable and often unable to support their families. Alaffia directly employs around 500 women in co-ops throughout Togo to cultivate shea by hand. These women are compensated with fair wages for their work and they bring unique knowledge and handcrafting skills to the job.
The company was founded by Togolese native Olowo-n’djo Tchala in 2004 after he realized the need to combat gender inequality and poverty. Alaffia was founded on Tchala’s belief that everyone deserves equality, empowerment and beauty.
Furthermore, Alaffia uses its profits to sponsor philanthropic projects in Togo. One such project is called “Bicycles for Education,” which provides disadvantaged students with bikes to get to and from school. So far, it has helped more than 6,300 students in Togo. Alaffia donates metal roofs, seats, and school supplies to rural schools through its “School Supplies and Repairs” project to create a functional learning environment for youth.
Alaffia has also provided over 3,200 pregnant women with pre- and post-natal care, and has funded the planting of 25,000 trees to combat climate change.
While philanthropy and environmental benefits certainly set Alaffia apart from other major beauty companies, Alaffia products are also made with unrefined ingredients and contain no synthetic fragrances or genetically modified organisms. They are vegan, gluten free and an ideal alternative line for those with sensitive skin.
These products help Africans profit from their natural resources and create sustainable goods that help our planet, empower local communities, and improve education for students.
Alaffia products can be purchased at natural and organic food stores such as Lassen’s and Whole Foods.
– Jenn Hartmann
Sources: Alaffia, Thurston Talk
Photo: Hello Beautiful
Seven Helpful Sites for Policy Jobs
So, you’ve got your education, you finally finished that internship during your undergrad, you have participated in a thousand mock interviews, and your resume has been polished at least 100 times. Now you just have to find that job you’ve been working toward your entire career. Here are seven websites to help you find policy jobs:
1. USAJOBS
USAJobs.gov is a helpful resource when it comes to finding a policy or federal job. According to USAJOBS, “The Pathways Programs offer clear paths to Federal internships for students from high school through post-graduate school and to careers for recent graduates, and provide meaningful training and career development opportunities for individuals who are at the beginning of their Federal service.” Programs include the Pathways Internship Program, Recent Graduates Program and the Presidential Management Fellows Program.
The site also has additional helpful resources that allow users to search federal occupations by college major, look through a comprehensive A-Z list of federal agencies, find an internship, or recent graduate job by a keyword, salary, pay grade, category, location, department or agency.
2. Going Global
Going Global is committed to providing “grassroots intelligence” through their team of in country researchers. They monitor and update the career information and resources that are delivered to users. GoinGlobal.com allows the user to easily find international jobs and policy jobs. Their website provides country specific career and employment information for 30 countries and its database search allows users to search by country, profession or topic.
3. International Organization Careers
According to International Organization Careers, “International Organization Careers is brought to you by the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of International Organization Affairs (IO). IO is the U.S. government’s primary interlocutor with the United Nations and a host of other international agencies and organizations.”
IO Careers allows users to register for job alerts online, search international organization jobs database and filter the search by organizations, grades, professional fields, and locations, subscribe to jobs, assists students and young professionals, lists federal agencies, provides other employment possibilities.
4. Partnership for Public Service
According to their website, “The Partnership is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that believes good government starts with good people. By strengthening the civil service, and the systems that are supposed to support them, we help government serve the needs of all Americans.”
The Partnership goes above and beyond by actually getting involved and challenging policymakers and our government to have quality employees. Their website provides users with ample amounts of resources for programs and services for Federal Management, Federal HR, Political Appointees, Higher Education, Private Sector and Congress.
5. House of Representatives
The U.S. House of Representatives can be a great resource for those seeking policy jobs online. This website allows users to see how to apply for various positions within the House as well as employment positions with members and committees and positions with other House organizations. The site also provides information for new employees and information for former employees.
6. United States Senate
Like the House, the U.S. Senate holds various resources and information about employment and policy positions. According to senate.org, “The Placement Office assists Senators and Senate Committees with filling entry-level through professional staff vacancies by providing resumes of qualified candidates. The Office is nonpartisan and administered by the United States Senate Office of the Sergeant at Arms. Read the Placement Brochure and complete the required Applicant Referral Form to begin registration in the Resume Bank.”
The Senate Employment Bulletin is published as a service to Senate offices that choose to advertise staff vacancies. The listing is posted online and revised throughout the week.
7. State and Local Government on the Net
State employment websites include agencies that conduct studies, publish labor market statistics, and often enforce occupational safety regulations. These agencies process unemployment claims, administer workmen’s compensation programs, handle workplace discrimination complaints, and sometimes sponsor job fairs.
This site states that it is “The Official State, County, & City Government Website Locator.” All 50 states are listed on this page with various websites of departments, divisions, industries and employment opportunities, allowing users to skim through a variety of helpful links that correspond with the state of their choice.
– Eastin Shipman
Sources: USAJOBS, Going Global, International Organization Careers 1, International Organization Careers 2, Partnership for Public Service 1, Partnership for Public Service 2, U.S. House of Representatives, U.S. Senate 1, U.S. Senate 2, State and Local Government
Photo: Business Marketing Blog
How Falling Oil Prices Affect the Poor
Decreasing oil prices directly correlates with the price of food. Fuel transports food and with lowered oil prices, the cost of food is dropping. The price of fuel is important to the global market, because it dictates how imports and exports are priced.
The cost of petroleum determines the cost of agricultural products, like corn and wheat. The price of these crops includes the cost of transportation, chemicals and pesticides – all of which are made from petroleum.
Impoverished citizens will often spend over 50 percent of their budget on food. For instance, in Vietnam, parents will spend 65 percent of their budget on food for themselves and their families. With decreased prices in food, families living in developing countries will be able to purchase larger quantities.
While many living in developing countries are benefiting from the fall in oil prices, there is a population who is not benefiting from lowered oil prices. The fall in oil prices negatively affects independent farmers and crop growers.
These farmers do not use large amounts of pesticides or fuel to transport their goods. Therefore, the decreasing price in oil does not affect their cost in production and distribution. These farmers transport their food only a short distance. Disconnected from the global market, these small-holder farmers are at a disadvantage.
Overall, developing countries are benefiting from the decrease in oil prices, with the exception of small-holder farmers.
Lower oil prices can potentially benefit developing countries in another way, through investment. With lower oil prices, investment is possible because high oil importing countries have the opportunity to invest increased amounts into improving rural infrastructure and social services.
– Maxine Gordon
Sources: Yahoo, New York Times, Reuters
Photo: Inquisiter
The Future of Food Security
According to the World Bank, the world’s population is set to reach over 9 billion by 2050. With food security already a challenge, how will agriculture meet the food security needs of a much larger population?
According to Chris Brett, global head of sustainability at Olam International, food security success will depend on what he calls the ‘four A’s’—availability, accessibility, affordability and adequacy.
Availability, says Brett, will depend on smallholders’ access to land rights and financial support. Brett believes that policy-makers should look at ways to encourage lending, and increase the extent to which farmers legally own the lands that they cultivate.
As over 2 billion people depend on smallholder farms for their livelihoods, augmenting the smallholders’ ability to prosper could potentially go a long way to reduce poverty.
Banks, however, are unlikely to lend to farmers in disaster-prone areas. Farmers in such areas face the difficult choice between investing in safe but unprofitable crops, or riskier though potentially more lucrative alternatives.
According to a recent article by Gaby Ramm and Roland Steinmann, agriculture insurance presents a potential solution to the conundrum faced by farmers in risk-prone regions. Pilot study results suggest that insurance can indeed play a role in encouraging farmers to engage in more lucrative practices. In India, farmers with rainfall insurance displayed a tendency to gravitate toward cash crops, which—though vulnerable to rainfall deficits—produce much greater returns.
Furthermore, insurance can also indirectly allow farmers access to more credit, by encouraging lenders to lend with more frequency and confidence. This, in turn, leads to further capital investments.
Smallholders can also benefit from cooperation with large-scale agriculture. According to Brett, cooperation between large-scale and small-scale agriculture can be mutually beneficial, and can increase yields through pre-financing and training in skills such as inter-cropping.
Brett also notes that, while Africa’s agricultural potential is enormous, investments in infrastructure will be necessary for that potential to be fully realized. It is estimated that Africa needs $55 million in agricultural investment to guarantee self-sufficiency.
– Parker Carroll
Sources: Poverty Action, The Guardian 1, The Guardian 2
Photo: WSJ
Poverty in Singapore
Singapore has a population of almost 6 million people with a $297.9 billion GDP which is growing at the average rate of 3.9 percent every year. Singapore is one of the richest Asian countries per capita. In 2012, Singapore city was ranked as the sixth most expensive city to live in the world—after cities including Tokyo, Sydney and Oslo. Despite these statistics, one-tenth of Singapore’s population is currently living in poverty.
Today, the income inequalities have become more noticeable than ever. Unlike large countries such as China or India where there is a distinct difference between urban towns and rural villages, Singapore is a small island where both the wealthy and poor live in proximity to each other.
Out of 136 countries considered, Singapore currently ranks the 26th most income disparate. This makes them the second most income unequal country in Asia. According to the Singapore government, over 105,000 families live in poverty. This translates to about one in 10 family homes, or 378,000 people.
While Singapore has the highest concentration of millionaires in the world and has an average per capita income of over $52,000, there are 105,000 families left with $5 to spend per day and 114,000 individual residents making less than $805 per month.
Furthermore, the purchasing power of the poor has significantly dropped. It has been determined that the top 10 percent wager-earning households earn as much as 25 times more than the bottom 10 percent. While the top earners saw their real wages increase, those on the bottom saw their real wages decrease. It is further distressing to realize that the price of goods and services rose by 13.1 percent since 2012.
Poverty in Singapore Today
Singapore had never had an official poverty line to measure the rates of poverty in their country. However, the Singaporean Parliament chose to establish a rough definition after neighboring Hong Kong created guidelines to better identify and take strides towards relieving the financial stress those particular citizens.
Currently, while Singapore has no acceptable measure of poverty, they consider any four person household that makes less than $1,250 per month as somewhat struggling. The $1,250 figure is considered the average a four person household would typically spend on food, clothing and shelter per month.
Much of the country’s poverty is created by the influx of foreign workers taking blue collar jobs that were once held by native Singaporeans. Foreign workers unfortunately mean cheaper labor. There is always a cost to globalization, and this time it has affected Singaporeans in their own home.
Despite the large, wealthy buildings in Singapore, many are often struggling to find affordable housing. Those that cannot make it live in tiny government-owned apartments that are barely bigger than 13 square feet. In those cases, rent is paid to the government according to how much they can afford to pay, children from impoverished backgrounds attend school on fees subsidized by the government and food is provided not by the wages earned but by charitable donations.
While Singapore does not have abject poverty like one would find in various parts of Africa, being unable to afford living in your country is an issue that any government should address and find solutions.
– Christina Cho
Sources: BBC, Singaporeans Against Poverty, Al Jazeera, World Bank
Photo: SMU
What Causes Hunger in Africa
What causes hunger in Africa? To be certain, Africa is by no means a single entity. The second largest continent on Earth, Africa is an enormous landmass that is home to a wide variety of landscapes, cultures and people.
That said, the continent is also home to much of the world’s hunger, spread across several of the world’s poorest countries. Approximately 30 million people in Africa face the effects of severe food insecurity, including malnutrition, starvation and poverty.
Ending hunger not just in Africa but wherever it occurs is crucial to solving impoverishment and, accordingly, is a leading priority for many humanitarian organizations.
Causes of Hunger in Africa
1. Lack of Infrastructure
Many of the African countries in which there is widespread hunger are countries in which there is also plenty of food. Agriculture is the leading economic industry in several of the hungriest African nations including Niger, Ethiopia and Somalia.
The issue is not that there is a lack of food, the issue is that there are are often no reliable pathways for getting that food from the fields into that hands of the people who need it the most. Many hungry countries lack accessible rural roads on which food could be transported into the countryside.
Where it does not already exist, building the infrastructure necessary for distributing food is essential to ending hunger in Africa.
2. Poverty
Poverty is a cause of hunger in Africa as well as an effect. Nearly a third of individuals living in sub-Saharan Africa are “undernourished,” and 41 percent of people in that same area live on less than U.S. $1 daily. That’s no coincidence; high rates of poverty are correlated with high rates of hunger because acquiring adequate food provisions requires ample resources, not only financial but social as practical as well.
3. Gender Inequality
According to one of the most successful hunger-focused humanitarian organizations, The Hunger Project, gender inequality is a major driving force behind hunger because food tends to go further in the hands of women. When women have adequate food supplies, they as well as their families experience better health and social outcomes than when men have sole control of food rations.
However, in many African nations experiencing hunger crises, though women do the majority of agricultural work, they do not control their own access to food. Addressing gender inequality where it occurs in Africa will be central to eradicating hunger.
4. AIDS
AIDS is especially prevalent in southern Africa (Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe), where approximately six million people are estimated to live with the condition. Not only does AIDS render these individuals too sick to do any sort of agricultural work (which, if farming is their livelihood, can throw them into poverty), it can also render them to sick to leave their homes to acquire food for themselves and their families.
– Elise L. Riley
Sources: Save the Children, The Hunger Project, World Food Programme
Photo: Ceasefire Magazine
New Hope in the Fight Against Dengue
After decades of searching, scientists may have finally found a vaccine for dengue, one of the developing world’s most feared infectious diseases.
Researchers released a new report confirming the efficacy of the vaccine after the conclusion of a study lasting four years and involving over 20,000 school-aged children in Colombia, Brazil, Mexico, Puerto Rico and Honduras. The study has proven the new drug to be overwhelmingly effective, and both scientists and doctors around the world are celebrating this monumental achievement. The efficacy of the vaccine against severe dengue was 95.5 percent.
Dengue is a mosquito-borne viral infection that affects nearly 400 million people annually. It is a leading cause of serious illness and death among children in many Latin American and Asian countries, and has been spreading violently throughout the developing world since the late 1950s.
The absence of a dependable treatment for the disease has made dengue a particularly terrifying illness in the global south. The debilitating muscle and joint pains associated with cases of severe dengue have earned the disease its nickname, ‘break-bone fever’. Infected individuals can also suffer crippling headaches, nausea, vomiting and a painful rash across the back and chest. Nearly 500,000 people, most of them children, die from the disease each year.
Initial news of the drug’s potential broke in late 2011, when French pharmaceutical company Sanofi Pasteur announced plans to release the new antiviral medication by mid-2015. Since that time, research teams have been working tirelessly in many countries spanning both Asia and Latin America, where the disease is most prevalent. Meticulously testing patients, administering vaccinations and recording their findings, scientists have emerged from the study with new certainty in the drug’s effectiveness.
Relaying the good news on Jan. 8, Sanofi Pasteur reported the overall efficacy of the drug to be 60.8 percent for children between the ages of nine and 16 who received three doses of the vaccine over a 12-month period. Furthermore, the study confirmed 80.3 percent reduction in the risk of hospitalization for dengue-infected individuals. The crowning achievement of the study, however, was the accomplishment of a 95.5 percent protection rate against the most deadly form of the disease, a discovery that is projected to save countless lives in countries from India to Brazil.
Past efforts to control dengue have relied heavily on preventative practices such as destroying mosquito egg-laying habitats and spraying insecticides intended to kill the disease-carrying mosquito vector. Without an effective antiviral medication available to treat infected individuals, however, the fight against dengue has been violent—and often deadly—for economically disadvantaged communities in tropical areas of the world. Because of the mosquito’s ability to adapt to many diverse environments, and its skill for finding hidden deposits of stagnant water in both rural and urban areas, regions affected by dengue quickly find the disease to reach epidemic proportions amongst their populations.
The introduction of the new dengue vaccine serves as a beacon of hope in the world’s fight against deadly pathogens, and will prove to empower millions of people in the developing world in their own fight against poverty.
– Brady Thomas Mott
Sources: New England Journal of Medicine, WHO
Photo: Top News
Education in Equatorial Guinea Lacking
Millennium Challenge Corps Helps Philippines
The Millennium Challenge Corps, or MCC, recently announced that the Philippines is eligible to receive another five-year extension on funding. The MCC is funded by the U.S. Congress and is meant to be an incentive for countries who actively reform policies to improve government functions.
This new five-year plan is intended to continue funding poverty alleviation projects within the Philippines. Washington recently announced the Philippines’ eligibility to continue the program.
“The selection of the Philippines for a second compact is a recognition of President Aquino’s commitment to good governance. I believe a smooth transition to a second compact will help the Philippines in further institutionalizing good governance policies and reforms,” said Ambassador Jose Cuisia, Jr.
The compact will aid the country in further deterrence of corruption. The Philippines’ government has operated under these regulations and is looking forward to reaping the benefits of continued funding.
The Millennium Challenge Corporation was founded in January 2004 by U.S. Congress. The MCC is an independent agency is committed to intelligently funding U.S. aid to countries in need of support. A part of its mission focuses on country-lead solutions that enable the countries to prioritize the areas of concern they find to be the most pertinent.
In addition, the chosen countries set up local MCC headquarters in order to monitor progress and work closely with the people and programs they are implementing. The MCC works in the world’s most severely impoverished countries in order to strengthen infrastructure to help lift people out of poverty.
The MCC operates on three main principles that are prerequisites for countries to be considered as eligible to receive funds: good governance, economic freedom and investments in their citizens. Although these requirements are loosely worded and give room to numerous interpretations, the MCC goes through a strict identification process to identify candidates for the long-term funds.
This will be the Philippines second compact. The first compact, awarded in 2010, comprised of $214.4 million to repair infrastructure and roads and another $120 million for poverty alleviation projects and community affairs.
In addition to the Philippines, Nepal and Mongolia were also selected by the Board of Directors to be eligible for funding and investment.
For the MCC to continue funding a country the country must show gradual improvement. One of methods of measurement the board uses to evaluate is per capita income level. The countries who receive compacts from the MCC have to show an increase from a Low Income Category to Low Middle Income Category.
Overall, the MCC was founded on principles that support international development through direct funding to areas the countries they decide to be the most pertinent to overcoming poverty. The MCC allows the countries to choose how they believe their country should best spend the money it has been given.
– Maxine Gordon
Sources: Yahoo News, MCC
Photo: Wall Street Journal