A single NGO and India’s foremost energy research institute, Teri, has single-handedly provided solar-powered lights to over 500,000 homes throughout rural India.
No less than five years ago, much of rural India had no access to electricity, instead using kerosene lamps that were not only dangerous but also bad for the environment. These 400,000 people had no access to any form of electricity, and another 100,000 had only an inconsistent and unreliable connection.
In the last five years, Teri has provided these people with a much better alternative – solar-powered, LED lamps using solar panels and batteries.
As part of the Lighting One Billion Lives initiative, started in 2007, the NGO coordinates the distribution of lamps to some 2,000 villages, works with vendors and manufacturers to lower the price of lamps, trains personnel and provides tech support, and works with various other organizations to help run the charging stations. Each charging station provides around 50 solar-powered LED lamps that also double as phone chargers.
Teri has already seen a huge improvement in the cost and efficiency of the lamps. When started, the lamps costed around $100 each, however, the price is now down to $15-30 per lamp, and the battery life has tripled.
Teri, other NGOs, Bollywood stars, and individuals sponsor villages to provide the lanterns initially, after which a local villager becomes in charge of renting each lantern, for no more than the price of kerosene, on a daily basis.
The benefits of the program have been huge, including increased health benefits and cleaner air, more light for children to continue their schooling after dark, benefits for medical practices and shops, and entrepreneurship that villagers learn by manning the charging stations. At the current rate that Teri is coordinating villages to receive charging stations, soon almost every Indian village may have a clean, renewable light source.
Although India has been aiming to improve and increase its energy grid, the priority has been on cities and businesses, with rural villages not expected to receive electricity infrastructure for years, if at all.
Teri plans to expand their system of charging stations and LED solar lamps to various other countries including Afghanistan, Burma, Pakistan, Kenya, Ethiopia and Sierra Leone.
– Christina Kindlon
Source: The Guardian
How Can Golden Rice Help End World Hunger
In an interview with National Public Radio, Dr. Barry spoke enthusiastically about engineering new types of rice pointing out that it is the staple food of a couple of billion people. His passion for the crop led to a career at IRRI and he quickly began working on Golden Rice which he explains has the potential to greatly benefit those living in impoverished conditions. IRRI hopes to distribute the GMO rice in Bangladesh and the Philippines, where the institute is located.
Vitamin A deficiency is a result of malnourishment and a limited diet. The consequences of this deficiency include tissue damage, blindness, and a weakened immune system. For those millions of people affected by vitamin A deficiency, one cup of Golden Rice a day could provide half the amount needed for a healthy diet. “This product has the potential to reduce the suffering of women and children and save lives,” said Dr. Barry. IRRI is working with nonprofit organizations to ensure the super rice reaches those who need it most. Once it has passed food and safety regulations, we will begin to see the real impact of Golden Rice.
– Mary Penn
Source: IrishCentral
Photo: Forbes
Fearing Foreign Aid Loss
Since the 2001 invasion, the international community has contributed financially to Afghanistan in a drastic manner leading to many improvements and proving to be an obstacle in the face of the Taliban and some Al-Qaeda. One example of this is how a program funded by the European Union has allowed Afghan street children to receive a proper education. Although the U.S. Agency for International Development has built close to 700 schools and provided excellent health care facilities leading to a reduction in child mortality, the money is now at stake. The Afghan government is said to be unready to fill the gap after their four years grant expires next month.
Additionally, the U.S. has now shifted its aid focus from funding projects that yield fast and direct progress such as building schools and clinics to a more sustainable approach allowing the Afghan government to develop and maintain programs themselves. There are still many complications and controversies regarding the channeling of the money through the Afghan government which some fear may be susceptible to corruption. The fear is that this would lead to the wasting of money rather than it being put to good use and producing sustainable and valuable progress. Thus, the shift in U.S. focus may certainly lead to more efficiency in terms of development and how the money is being put to use as opposed to its past “uncoordinated spending” according to Afghan officials.
– Leen Abdallah
Source: Frontier Post
Indonesia Seeks to End Shackling of Mentally Ill
As a member of a Parliamentary Health Commission, Nova Rianti Yusuf claims that “pasung” persists because people “cannot afford mental health care and [try] to escape the stigma associated with mental illness.” Unfortunately for many of those individuals who are shackled, there was often no official diagnosis before they were victimized.
Indonesia is working to centralize its mental health system in order to better serve its large population, which is the fourth largest out of all the countries in the world. A psychiatrist known simply as Asmarahadi, who works at a state mental hospital in Jakarta, claims that conditions have drastically improved over the past decade. The old problems, like a lack of infrastructure and medication, have faded away. New problems remain, but they seem less impossible to solve: Asmarahadi explains that nowadays, “treatment failure is usually caused by a lack of patients’ compliance and family support.” And as far as “pasung” goes, the director of mental health at the Health Ministry, Diah Setia Utami, lists ending the practice as one of her priorities for 2013.
– Jake Simon
Source: IRIN News
Knowledge is Power: Arab Spatial and Food Security in the Middle East
A new tracking tool to measure levels of food security in the Middle East was launched in February. International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) created the tool, known as Arab Spatial, with support from the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR).
The Middle East has long struggled with food security, and researchers, officials, and activists have had a difficult time addressing the problem due to a lack of information. Now, humanitarian aid workers and policymakers working to address food security issues in the region can turn to Arab Spatial for the most up-to-date information on malnutrition, rainfall, crop yields, and much more.
Recent political upheaval has amplified food insecurity in the region. Many Middle Eastern countries depend on foreign imports of staples such as wheat flour. Political and social turmoil has disrupted commerce and economies, leading to lost jobs and even greater struggles for everyday people to put enough food on the table. Statistics on poverty in the Middle East are infrequent and often inaccurate; only about half of the countries provide public access to the numbers.
But Arab Spatial will contribute to more open communication about how best to meet basic human needs in one of the least stable areas of the globe. Perrhian al-Riffai, a senior research analyst with IFPRI, said of Arab Spatial, “High quality and freely accessible knowledge is power, especially for evidence-based research for effective and efficient policy design and implementation throughout the Arab world.”
Arab Spatial measures food security at the national, regional, and local level. More than 150 food security indicators, including information related to poverty, malnutrition, climate, crop production and prices, disease, and trade, can be used to create maps and data. This valuable information should give governments, NGOs, and non-profit organizations working to end food insecurity in the region more power to do so.
– Kat Henrichs
Source: IRN Middle East
Photo: IRN
Women in Zimbabwe Demand Answers
The theme for this year’s International Women’s Day deals with ending violence against women. So did the theme in 2009 (“Ending impunity for violence against women and girls”) and in 2007 (“Women and men united to end violence against women in girls”). While International Women’s Day can choose a theme that highlights different issues plaguing women in rural and urban areas, the UN seems to keep going back to violence against women.
Why?
Violence against women is still a huge issue across the world and looking at Zimbabwe, how large of an issue it is becomes apparent. In Zimbabwe, women may be faced with abuse from their spouses, family members, and even their children. Reported cases of domestic violence have risen from 1,940 cases in 2008 to 10,351 cases in 2011, according to AllAfrica.org. The number of domestic violence cases in 2012 are said to surpass even that number, showing that domestic violence is not going away and bringing attention to the issue, which the UN’s International Women’s Day is doing, as necessary.
Even though the country has taken great strides to end violence against women, a 2010-2011 Zimbabwe Demographic Health Survey shows that 30 percent of women have experienced some form of domestic violence since the age of 15. This violence, most often, comes from the people that women should be able to trust, who are supposed to protect them. Women are asking questions now – “what has to happen for violence against women to end, what are the challenges, who will stand up and look straight in the eyes of perpetrators to say enough is enough?” – and demanding answers.
Women in Zimbabwe are using International Women’s Day to denounce all types of violence against women, and are coming together to demand answers.
– Angela Hooks
Source: AllAfrica
Photo: AllAfrica
Women Farmers Helping to Bring Peace in Kenya
Women in Kenya are going back to a traditional practice to help hold communities together. The practice is that of communal agriculture and through a woman-led initiative, neighbors helping neighbors in farming will hopefully save the lives of over 700,000 Kenyans over a period of 20 years who would have died from inadequate nutrition.
The traditional practice used to be the norm, yet, climate change has made the outcomes of crops unpredictable and scarce resources threatened economic prosperity, forcing many to seek jobs in more urban areas. This weakened bonds between village members, which made maintaining peace within a village difficult and brought up other issues, such as problems between ethnic groups that had been living in harmony before. Weakened bonds between community members predisposed many Kenyan communities to violence in the elections of 2007 and into 2008. According to Nyokabi Wamuyu, a member of the women-led farm initiative, “Some people say they [we]re fighting for land while others do it to take political sides.”
Over the next three years, the women-led farm initiative is aimed at 3,400 women farmers in the eastern areas of Kenya and in the Rift Valley. The mission of the initiative “is to equip the women with skills to make income-generating farming more attractive than subsistence agriculture.” This will be done by teaching women to bond with other women over shared activities, providing activities that will give women the tools and techniques to negotiate prices and access agricultural activities via mobile devices.
This initiative succeeding will hopefully help bridge the gap between genders in Kenya. Even though the new Kenyan Constitution gives women rights to land and property, gender inequality still exists in many rural farm areas.
– Angela Hooks
Source: AllAfrica
Photo: Calista Jones
Growing Nigerian Middle Class Attracts Companies
As living conditions gradually improve for many of the 1 billion people who live in poverty, nowhere is the change so notable as in Africa, where over 300 million people still live in poverty. While the total number of Africans living on less than $1.25 per day has decreased over the past decade, much of this improvement has been in urban areas. 70 percent of Africa’s poor live in rural areas, and most depend on agricultural pursuits for their food and livelihood.
For those middle class Africans who live in cities, however, there are more opportunities than ever before to spend money at global corporations. Huge multi-national businesses such as Wal-Mart, as well as fast food chains and restaurants such as KFC and Domino’s Pizza, have continued to invest in Africa’s growing economy by opening new locations in urban and semi-urban areas.
Nigeria is at the forefront of business growth and development in Africa. With over 160 million inhabitants, Nigeria is Africa’s most populous country. Over 60 percent of those 160 million people, most of them in rural areas, still live below the poverty line. However, about a quarter of the country’s population falls into the middle class, earning between $480 and $645 per month. As the Nigerian middle class grows, its appetite for foreign brands, services, and foods has also grown.
Nigeria’s urban residents pay the equivalent of $22 USD for a double bacon cheeseburger at the restaurant chain Johnny Rockets, which recently opened a diner in Lagos, Nigeria’s largest city. A milkshake costs $11.25 USD. For the Nigerian middle class, dining at Johnny Rockets is a luxury they can afford only occasionally.
While those who have moved above the poverty line and into the middle class should have freedom in where and how to spend money, it is worthwhile to examine the potential negative impacts of the growth of multi-national corporations. The growth of global businesses contributes to ever-greater wealth inequality, as money becomes concentrated in the hands of the few who own and operate those businesses. Developing countries are better served by investing in and establishing strong local economies that utilize local talent and labor, support locally owned businesses, and keep wealth within the community.
– Kat Henrichs
Sources: Huffington Post, Rural Poverty Portal
Photo: Restaurant News
NGO Brings Light to Rural India with Solar Lamps
A single NGO and India’s foremost energy research institute, Teri, has single-handedly provided solar-powered lights to over 500,000 homes throughout rural India.
No less than five years ago, much of rural India had no access to electricity, instead using kerosene lamps that were not only dangerous but also bad for the environment. These 400,000 people had no access to any form of electricity, and another 100,000 had only an inconsistent and unreliable connection.
In the last five years, Teri has provided these people with a much better alternative – solar-powered, LED lamps using solar panels and batteries.
As part of the Lighting One Billion Lives initiative, started in 2007, the NGO coordinates the distribution of lamps to some 2,000 villages, works with vendors and manufacturers to lower the price of lamps, trains personnel and provides tech support, and works with various other organizations to help run the charging stations. Each charging station provides around 50 solar-powered LED lamps that also double as phone chargers.
Teri has already seen a huge improvement in the cost and efficiency of the lamps. When started, the lamps costed around $100 each, however, the price is now down to $15-30 per lamp, and the battery life has tripled.
Teri, other NGOs, Bollywood stars, and individuals sponsor villages to provide the lanterns initially, after which a local villager becomes in charge of renting each lantern, for no more than the price of kerosene, on a daily basis.
The benefits of the program have been huge, including increased health benefits and cleaner air, more light for children to continue their schooling after dark, benefits for medical practices and shops, and entrepreneurship that villagers learn by manning the charging stations. At the current rate that Teri is coordinating villages to receive charging stations, soon almost every Indian village may have a clean, renewable light source.
Although India has been aiming to improve and increase its energy grid, the priority has been on cities and businesses, with rural villages not expected to receive electricity infrastructure for years, if at all.
Teri plans to expand their system of charging stations and LED solar lamps to various other countries including Afghanistan, Burma, Pakistan, Kenya, Ethiopia and Sierra Leone.
– Christina Kindlon
Source: The Guardian
Mexico’s First Midwifery School
Guadalupe Maniero, the school’s director, explains that in Mexico, “hospitals are oversaturated, and so it’s a big problem.” Since the 2011 law that grants midwives a place among the country’s legally accepted medical professions, age-old stigmas have begun to fade. By helping to deliver babies, doctors have much more time to spend focusing on dangerous births in which the child and/or mother are in danger.
The four-year program grants its graduates certificates that allow them to practice in legitimate health centers. By interweaving longstanding cultural traditions with modern-day needs and practices, Mexico’s first midwifery school has the potential to benefit the entire country for years to come.
– Jake Simon
Source: NPR
Take a Quiz – Feed a Family in Syria
The questions range from the cost of living expenses to refugee status. One question asks, “Of all the refugees now living in Jordan how many are women & children?” Answer: of this particular Jordanian population of 60,000 refugees – 75% are women & children. The WFP provides nutritious ready-to-eat meals for anyone in need.
The UN has just counted the one-millionth refugee coming out of Syria. More than 70,000 people have died and two million have been internally displaced since the conflict began almost two years ago. Starting as demonstrations against the government of President Bashar al-Assad, the protests quickly turned violent as opponents of Mr. Assad took up arms against the brutal crackdown coming from the authorities. There is still no resolution in sight.
Find out more – and feed a family in Syria for a day.
– Mary Purcell
Source: WFP, BBC
Photo: unostamps