Archive for category: Development

Information and stories on development news.

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Top 10 Hunger Stats


Recent growth and investment in agriculture in Eastern Asia and Latin America have put the regions on the path toward eliminating hunger. On the other hand, climate change, conflict and poverty have prevented more than 50 countries from reaching international food availability goals. This list of the top 10 hunger stats references in-depth studies and highlights global trends. Additionally, the list offers perspective into the effects of hunger on impoverished communities. Ahead are the top 10 hunger stats.

10 Hunger Statistics

  1. Between 2014 and 2016, 794.6 million people faced undernourishment around the globe. This is equivalent to 10.9 percent of the global population.
  2. Of those undernourished between 2014 and 2016, 779.9 million lived in developing regions. This number is equivalent to 12.9 percent of the population of developing areas.
  3. In Africa alone, 232.5 million people were undernourished between 2014 and 2016. This represents 20 percent of the African population.
  4. Undernourishment in Eastern Asia has fallen by nearly 50 percent in the last two decades, from 295 million undernourished between 1990-1992 to 145 million undernourished between 2014-16.
  5. In 2011, undernutrition was estimated to be the cause of 3.1 million child deaths — 45 percent of all child deaths.
  6. In 2013, 51 million children under the age of five suffered from wasting, or a decrease in fat and muscle tissue, with 17 million of those affected severely. Two-thirds of those children lived in Asia and almost one-third lived in Africa.
  7. In developing countries, close to 40 percent of preschool children are estimated to be anemic, or iron-deficient.
  8. An estimated 250 million preschool children across the globe do not have adequate levels of Vitamin A. Of those 250 million children, between 250,000 and 500,000 go blind each year. Additionally, half of that number die within 12 months of onset.
  9. Conflict increases hunger. In 2012, the estimated number of conflict-affected residents represented 21 percent of the estimated 805 million undernourished people in that year.
  10. In 2013, there were a dozen countries with a rate of under-five mortality at 10 percent or higher. They are all on the continent of Africa. The country of Angola is the only country in the world with an under-five mortality rate greater than 15 percent.

Hunger begets hunger. Many times malnutrition and undernourishment leads to low weight and poor human growth and development. These symptoms cause future health and financial problems. These top 10 hunger stats represent that, while the numbers of hunger are improving, past deficiencies have stunted growth for many nations.

– Shaun Savarese

Photo: Flickr

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How Big Thinkers Use Technology to Fight Poverty


Technology has long been considered one of the most useful tools in combating global poverty. New developments continue to show even more promise in this regard. Two prominent thinkers have made recent strides toward finding dramatic new breakthroughs in using technology to fight poverty.

Rob Nail is the CEO and co-founder of Singularity University, a global community created to take on the greatest challenges facing the world today with the use of exponential technologies. Having already worked directly with the government of Uruguay to provide 100 percent of young students with interconnected laptops and tablets, Nail is now looking to the future of education by applying those technologies.

“Imagine five and six-year-old kids learning coding and robotics. What will Uruguay look like 15 years from now?” Nail told Forbes in a January interview. “That can translate into us creating a world of abundance, as we like to call it.” Nail has also worked with existing industrial giants such as Lowe’s and GE in creating technological programs to fight poverty.

Nail is not alone in his quest for using technology to fight poverty. In December, Stanford University launched a dedicated Poverty and Technology Lab. The lab seeks innovative technological solutions to the problem of ongoing global inequality.

The Poverty and Technology lab was announced during December’s Summit on Poverty and Opportunity, a two-day event held on Stanford University’s campus. Attendees included tech juggernauts, such as Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and ex-Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer.

The lab’s founding director Elisabeth Mason told Buzzfeed news that the lab will develop an entirely new field of academic study “that applies the premises and tools of technology to the policies and processes of fighting poverty.” Mason holds extensive experience in fighting poverty as the Senior Advisor at the Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality. She was awarded the New Yorker of the Year honor by NY1 in 2015.

The Fourth Industrial Revolution, more commonly referred to online as 4IR, is the name for the radical globalization of cyber networks poised to revolutionize the way businesses operate today. It is comprised of three main components: the Industrial Internet of Things, which are machines that collect and act on information, Big Data, which is the mass capturing of data itself, and Digital Infrastructure, which securely connects all the devices.

With their passion for social justice and vision of a future where poverty is nothing more than a historical memory, both Nail and Mason are primed to be major figures in 4IR by using technology to fight poverty.

– Dan Krajewski

Photo: Flickr

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What One Woman Is Doing to Bring Change to Poverty

Sarah Emerson is the Director of Women Empowered Initiative at PCI Global and is the driving force behind the idea that women’s participation in the global economy can allow them to live up to their full economic and social potential while reducing global poverty.

According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), more than 27 percent of the gross domestic product in developing countries is lost each year due to women being denied entry into the global economy.

Women like Emerson are driving change while empowering other women to do the same. These women are lifting their families out of poverty and transforming businesses and economies around the world.

Reducing Poverty Worldwide

The initiative has been a mechanism for empowering over 400,000 women around the world to pool their resources and become active participants in their communities while addressing food insecurity and reducing the impact of poverty. It is funded in part by USAID and focuses on self-sustaining women’s savings groups by building self-worth and not just capital. The initiative also builds leadership skills like goal setting, action planning and decision making about investments. These skills allow women to take the lead in the most important areas of their lives.

PCI Global believes that women are the solution to poverty and have the ability to bring about economic and social change to transform the lives of those living in extreme poverty.

Emerson continues to bring change to poverty, while addressing many other economic issues, through her campaigns and future development programs launched all over the world, including San Diego. San Diego is the home for many former refugees, resettled by the U.S. State Department, who need further aid to lift them out of poverty.

PCI Global focuses on women located on the Pacific coast of California who struggle with meeting the basic needs for survival. It also provides empowerment opportunities to low-income ethnic groups who require food, housing and access to medical care to create better standards of living.

PCI Global believes that the initiative has the trajectory to bring change to poverty, one woman and one community at a time.

– Rochelle R. Dean

Photo: Flickr

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Seven Facts About Improved Education in the Maldives


In 2004, a devastating tsunami in the Indian Ocean hit the coasts of several countries in South and Southeast Asia, resulting in massive damage and more than 100 reported casualties in the Maldives. With unwavering aid and support from internal communities and UNICEF, the island country has experienced significant achievements in its health, poverty and economic status, but particularly in the field of education.

The Maldives is the first country in South Asia labeled as an ‘MDG Plus’ country by achieving five of the eight United Nations Millennium Development Goals before 2015.

Because early childhood education is obligatory and free of charge, the country’s net enrollment increased from 51.2 percent in 2001 to 99.6 percent in 2016.

Higher secondary enrollment increased dramatically from 2013 to 2016 due to the successful implementation of the No Child Left Behind policy.

Student passing percentage in GCE O’Level 5-subjects rose significantly from 27 percent in 2009 to 56 percent in 2015. Goals have been set for education in the Maldives to achieve the national target of 60 percent in 2017.

As a direct response to the tsunami disaster, UNICEF brought resources to ‘hard-to-reach’ children through Teacher Resource Centers (TRCs), as a part of its Tsunami Recovery Programme. TRCs allow students to access a global e-network of teacher training and educational resources.

UNICEF ensures that education in the Maldives reaches all children with special needs. In addition, Life-Skills Based Education (LSBE) targets secondary school children and includes lessons on HIV/AIDs, civic education and vocational training to prepare Maldivian youth for adulthood.

Since the Maldives unified its education system in 1978, the literacy rate has risen from 70 percent to 98 percent.

The work of teachers and caregivers in the Maldives continues to put improved learning standards in place. Just as the nation’s overall conditions of life have reached a high since the struggles brought on by natural disaster, education in the Maldives will hopefully only advance in the future.

– Mikaela Frigillana

Photo: Flickr

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Reforming Education in Tonga


Education in Tonga is free and compulsory between ages six and 14, and the literacy rate is approximately 99 percent. Roughly 80 percent of all primary schools and 90 percent of secondary schools are run by religious organizations.

Although there are some post-secondary agricultural, medical, nursing and teaching education programs, most young Tongan people pursue their studies overseas. As a result, many young Tongans live in New Zealand and Australia, while 22.5 percent of their peers residing in Tonga live below the poverty line.

Over the last decade Tonga’s Ministry of Education, Women Affairs and Culture has sought educational reform through the Tonga Education Support Program (TESP), which has been segmented into two phases. TESP I addresses three particular areas of improvement identified by the 2003 Tonga Education Sector Study:

  • Improvement of equitable access universal primary education in the first six years of schooling and quality of universal basic education for all children in Tonga.
  • Improvements to the access to and the quality of “post-basic” education and vocational training in hopes of increasing Tonga’s role in the global economy.
  • Improvements to the administration of education and training to facilitate the prior two goals. In particular, this goal calls for cooperation between both government-funded and nongovernment-funded education programs to serve the national interest of education development.

The Ministry also developed TESP II, an adapted form of the Tonga Education Lakalaka 1 Policy Framework, to improve student, teacher and institutional performance rates across all schools.
Australia has contributed AUD $6.5 million to this project, while New Zealand has cosponsored NZD $8.2 million.

Lack of comprehensive reporting has made it difficult to assess whether or not these education development programs have successfully achieved their goals, but from what has been reported, these programs show promise in improving education in Tonga. The Ministry also expects to achieve at least 99 percent access to and participation in formal education programs and 99 percent retention and completion in the coming years.

– Casie Wilson

Photo: Flickr

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Social Policy Tackles Poverty in Uruguay

Uruguay

Poverty in Uruguay was at borderline catastrophic levels less than 15 years ago. Uruguay has made strides over the past decade to dig itself out of a massive hole and has brought its poverty levels from nearly 50% to below 10%. Its success is due in large part to government action — via a safety net to lift those at the bottom to a more manageable level with the help of leaders who lead by example.

In 2002, Uruguay fell into one of the worst financial crises in its history, which was heavily influenced by the Argentine depression and the Brazilian Financial Crisis. That year, unemployment shot from 10% to 18%, GDP fell by 11%, and poverty in Uruguay doubled. By the time 2004 came, the poverty rate in Uruguay had reached a peak of 39.9%, of which children made up almost 60%.

Thanks to the implementation of new governmental policies targeted at improving the quality of life of its citizens, poverty in Uruguay fell to 9.7% in 2015, and its GDP grew to $56 billion. One of the reasons for this turnaround was taking care of Uruguay’s weakest and most vulnerable first, via the Emergency Social Program. Enacted in 2005 by then-president Tabare Vasquez, it provides the safety net necessary to slowly lift the citizens of Uruguay back to their feet. An allowance program was also created during this time, providing families in poverty a means to live — 700 pesos a month (on average), or about $31.

After Vasquez, poverty in Uruguay continued to fall during the term of Jose Mujica — “The World’s Poorest President.” Mujica was the president of Uruguay from 2010-2015 and did not live in the presidential palace, but instead on a modest farm outside the capital city. He donated 90% of his earnings (about $12,000 per month) to charity and the people he represented and is quoted as saying, “I’m not the poorest president. The poorest is the one who needs a lot to live.”

Uruguay has experienced a drastic turnaround since its economic crisis due to economic growth, introducing social safety nets and strong leadership from the presidents who governed during this time. It still utilizes high levels of social spending and agricultural exports, and current projections are that Uruguay’s growth will continue to climb in the coming years, leaving the high rates of poverty in Uruguay a thing of the past.

– Dustin Jayroe

Photo: Flickr

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VGEL Builds Vocational Education in Rajasthan

Education in Rajasthan
The Rajasthan government and the Rajasthan Skill and Livelihood Development Corporation (RSLDC) have agreed to partner with Virtual Global Education Ltd. (VGEL) in aiding unemployed youth by providing vocational education in Rajasthan, specifically in the cities of Gudha, Toonga, Reengus, Pipar City, Palsana, Kotputli, Bhopalgarh and Jodhpur.

The initial stages of the program are set to reach out to at least 6,000 unemployed youth in the first phase, but it is hoped to reach more than 25,000 by the end of this financial year. This first phase will offer training opportunities in business process outsourcing, nursing, telecommunications, accounting, renewable energy branches, business and finance.

RSLDC has partnered with career development programs similar to VGEL in the past. These programs include the Employment Linked Skill Training Program (ELSTP). The program provides students between the ages of 18 and 35 with a number of job training courses in the fashion, hospitality and marketing industries.

For years, school enrollment and child labor restrictions have been a contentious issue in India’s rural northwestern states, including Gujarat, Maharashtra and Rajasthan. These states are the country’s largest producers of cotton and rank among the highest for the proportional share of children aged five to 14 engaged in child labor in India.

According to the most recent region-specific data collected in 2011, roughly 66% of Rajasthan citizens are literate. Of the population, 79% of men and 52% of women are able to read and write. While these rates show improvement from the 60% recorded in 2001, they are still short of India’s national literacy rate of 69%.

In response to the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act passed in 2009, education in Rajasthan has undergone rigorous reform. Among initiatives to improve learning conditions for rural public schools, education officials have called for the implementation of vocational programs in order to increase students’ chances of finding employment in a variety of industries.

– Casie Wilson

Photo: Flickr

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US Benefits of Global Health Initiatives


Healing the sick and preventing disease worldwide are more than merely altruistic goals: they contribute directly to the economic and physical prosperity of the U.S. as a whole. Here are three U.S. benefits of global health initiatives:

1. Prevention is cheap, while intervention is expensive. The Ebola crisis in West Africa between 2014 and 2016 incurred enormous costs worldwide to contain the spread of the virus. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the U.S. alone spent a whopping $2.37 billion responding to the epidemic. By contrast, the U.S. spends no money at all treating smallpox, because preventative measures such as vaccines and education have eradicated the disease entirely. Moreover, the cost of effective aid is surprisingly low. The less than one percent of the U.S. federal budget that goes to foreign aid has resulted in a 60% reduction in reported deaths from malaria.

2. Healthy populations overseas keep Americans healthy. The modern highly globalized environment, which includes growth in short term travel and international transport of goods, makes communicable diseases likelier than ever before to become cross-continent pandemics. Investing in global health helps to ensure U.S. citizens are kept safe from exposure to diseases with the potential to become epidemics. This is a well-known fact in the medical world, as the concept of community immunity, more commonly known as herd immunity, prevents infectious diseases from reaching those even with the most vulnerable immune systems. Each case of Ebola, SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome), influenza or any other similar virulent infection prevented in Africa is one less threat to an American citizen at risk. The physical health of the American people is one more of many U.S. benefits of global health initiatives.

3. Healthy people make good consumers of American products. Every person living in extreme poverty can result in an opportunity to create a productive member of economic society. As people emerge from struggling with subsistence living and gain access to more money, they create demand for products and services that can be created in America. This directly results in a financial boon to the local U.S. economy. Foreign aid is not just charity; it is an investment in the expansion of the free market. In fact, global health experts estimate that for every one dollar invested in global health, the U.S. is repaid 20 dollars.

Recent political shifts in the U.S. and England have caused concern among philanthropists that the issue of foreign aid, which has long been bipartisan, is at risk of being politicized. Bill Gates told USA Today on February 14: “If you interpret America First (the campaign tagline of President Trump) in certain ways, it would suggest not prioritizing the stability of Africa and American leadership.” Despite these fears, hope remains among experienced proponents of global health initiatives that these new administrations will view global health initiatives as long term investments in their home countries.

– Dan Krajewski

Photo: Flickr

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Ten Reforms in the Last Decade to Improve Education in Taiwan


Students coming out of Taiwan have routinely placed high on international test scores. However, a common concern about this region of the world is that there is too much emphasis on memorization and examination, stifling students’ creativity to create graduates who can test well but lack the critical thinking necessary for many of the world’s jobs.

The Ministry of Education in Taiwan has tackled this concern with a variety of reforms. Here are 10 reforms that have been implemented in the past decade to improve education in Taiwan:

  1. Taiwan’s Ministry of Education, which oversees education in Taiwan, stated that their goal is to replace the right to an education with the right to learn, to place focus on citizens and to make education “learner-centered.”
  2. As a response to the country’s low birth rate, Taiwan’s Ministry of Education announced in 2015 that they would be merging universities to better accommodate students who pursue higher education in the country.
  3. In 2009, Taiwan introduced a new reading program called “Happy Reading 101,” which increased the amount of time allocated for reading in schools, expanded elementary and junior high libraries and encouraged schools to promote reading-friendly activities. After the implementation, Taiwan improved its reading performance on the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), jumping from 23rd in 2009 to 4th in 2012.
  4. To place less pressure on students hoping to continue their education, Taiwan’s Ministry of Education began promoting an “exam-free pathway” to high school. This pathway encourages high schools to look at residency status, civic involvement, extracurricular activities and other factors when accepting students, rather than on test scores alone.
  5. Education in Taiwan now focuses on implementing decentralized curricula to better serve students, with many schools developing Curriculum Development Education Committees to make education student-centered.
  6. In 2014, the Ministry of Education added three years of mandatory schooling to be completed after junior high. The implementation of compulsory secondary education ensures that each student is prepared for their next step in life, be it the vocational or academic track.
  7. According to World Education News and Reviews, arts education in Taiwan is now available to all students, with classes such as music and fine arts being added to the curriculum.
  8. Taiwan has made improvements to schools’ vocational education and training (VET) programs, which help prepare students who choose the vocational track in high school for their career goals.
  9. Taiwan’s Ministry of Education supported e-learning and began encouraging schools to prepare students for a technological world in 2014.
  10. In 2015, the Ministry of Education cut the application process for high school in half and began requiring high schools to admit at least 50% of students based on results of the Comprehensive Assessment Program. The Ministry hopes this reform will place less stress on students as they apply to secondary schooling.

Though these reforms are relatively new to the system of education in Taiwan, the country has already seen improvement. More students have become enrolled in higher education institutions and been given more opportunities to continue their education. In fact, the Ministry of Education reports that the college acceptance rate has steadily risen from 20 percent in the 1970s to over 90 percent as of 2012. Also, according to World Education News and Reviews, the literacy rate in Taiwan has steadily increased throughout the years, going from 86 percent in 1998 to 98.5 percent as of 2014.

Taiwan only hopes to improve the country’s education with goals “to re-orient education toward positive social values, to reshape the education system into an effective model, to reset reasonable resources, to reconstruct partnerships and to solidify learning scholarship” between now and 2023.

– Jacqueline Artz

Photo: Flickr