Archive for category: Global Poverty

Key articles and information on global poverty.

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Early Childhood Development Now, Success Later

Child_Education

Children can be underestimated. They are born with the ability to absorb the world around them, and their experiences shape them in unique ways. The effects of early childhood development can have a significant impact on their success when it is time for school and future careers.

By age three, children’s brains are 82 percent of their adult size. It is vital to exercise the brain in its earliest years in order to reach developmental milestones later. Everyday activities like talking, reading and singing strengthen young children’s minds.

Trillions of neural synapses, or brain-cell connections, form in the first few years of a baby’s life. Connections will be lost indefinitely if a child is not stimulated with interaction and early experiences.

Playing, speaking and singing to babies prepares them to have a larger vocabulary, succeed in school and even increases their chance of graduating high school.

“The evidence is vast: exposing children before the age of five to stimulating environments strengthens their language development, social and emotional health, problem solving abilities, memory function, use of logic, analytical skills and ability to cope with new situations – leading to significantly better performance later in school,” said Alice Albright, Chief Executive Officer of Global Partnership for Education, in a Huffpost Education blog.

Albright points out that countries around the world have recently embraced the evidence and began to invest in their early childhood development programs.

Although early childhood development is important purely for the well-being of children, research has shown profound economic benefits as well. According to the Huffpost blog, for every dollar countries spend on pre-school programs, there is a $7 to $8 of economic, health and social progress.

Successful initiatives begin well before pre-school, with pre-natal maternal health, proper nutrition for breastfeeding mothers and adult caregiving skills.

Many cultures around the world benefit from classes that train the community to provide nurturing and age-appropriate activities in pre-school. Particularly low-income and disadvantaged communities often need extra efforts to create an engaging environment that will strengthen the cognitive development of children under two.

Quality early childhood care feeds a child’s ability to reach their full potential and contribute to their society.

Some obstacles developing countries encounter in establishing Early childhood care and education (ECCE) programs are a lack of funding, limited country capacity and low social demand. Organizations like Global Partnership for Education combat these barriers by providing technical and financial support, providing grants to finance the programs and supporting capacity development and knowledge sharing by pointing to the evidence.

Even though children do not talk back initially, they will learn and understand faster if they are engaged and spoken to. It is vital to educate populations around the world on the impact of early childhood care on development because it is not always prioritized simply for lack of knowledge. Quality ECCE can transform the resilience of communities and reap economic benefits.

– Emily Ednoff

Photo: Flickr

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New App Makes Tracking Healthcare Data in India Easier

tracking healthcare data

With assistance from UNICEF, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare in India has introduced an Android-based tablet application called Auxiliary Nurse Midwives Online (ANMOL). This app makes recording and tracking healthcare data easier and more efficient.

In India, there are 293,000 Auxiliary Nurse Midwives (ANM), according to UNICEF. They are village-level health workers and are the first point of contact between communities and health services in India.

Typically, ANMs serve 3,000 to 5,000 people each and their work consists of providing primary health care services, nutrition and immunization programs, as well as child health and family planning services.

One crucial aspect of their job is collecting and tracking healthcare data. This is often seen as a slow, time-consuming process since ANMs must enter the data into registers, which are eventually entered into a central server.

The time spent maintaining registries could easily be reduced, which is ANMOL’s main objective. Manually updating the information is also problematic, as there are risks of information being entered incorrectly, or too late.

The ANMOL app is a multifaceted mobile tablet-based application and offers a solution to improving data collection and the overall standards of child and maternal health service provision in India.

It makes the work of ANMs paperless, bringing them online and exponentially reduces the time it takes to enter healthcare data into the central database.

“[ANMs] are able to use the tablets to enter and update the service records of beneficiaries on real time basis, ensuring prompt data entry and updates,” stated a report by UNICEF.

“ANMOL is aimed at improving the quality, effectiveness and timeliness of the delivery of quality services, specifically to rural populations, to ensure better healthcare for women and children,” said Dr. Srihari Dutta, Health Specialist at UNICEF India.

The app brings awareness to rural populations and educates them on different healthcare initiatives.

India, the world’s second most populous country, will benefit greatly from such an application, which allows for rapid entry of millions of individuals’ health information.

According to Matters India, in addition to data collection, ANMOL complements the roles of ANMs as counselors by providing readily available information about newborns, pregnant women and mothers in their respective areas.

“Prevention and awareness about non-communicable diseases, which are largely linked to our way of living, dietary habits, and lack of exercise will go a long way in ensuring that the country remains healthy,” said Shri J.P. Nadda, Union Minister of Health and Family Welfare.

On April 6, 2016, the Ministry of Health tweeted, “ANMOL App is Aadhaar enabled and will help in the authentication of records of field workers and beneficiaries. #digital health #TransformingIndia.”

– Michelle Simon

Photo: Flickr

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Task Force for Global Health: Secretariat to Global Organization

Task Force for Global Health

Beginning in 1984 as the Task Force for Child Survival, the Task Force for Global Health started as a leading secretariat for various international health organizations such as UNICEF, The Rockefeller Foundation, and the World Bank. The Task Force worked alongside these global health organizations to design and improve effective child and family wellness, healthcare and survival strategies.

Thirty years later, the Task Force for Global Health has grown into a global nonprofit organization for public health. According to Forbes Magazine, the Task Force is the fourth largest nonprofit in the U.S. Headquartered in Decatur, Georgia, and under the leadership of public health expert Dr. Mark Rosenberg since 1999, the organization stands as the biggest nonprofit in Georgia since its expansion in 2013.

The Task Force focuses on three major areas: improving the efficiency of public health systems and field epidemiology, providing accessible treatment of immunizations and vaccines and eradicating neglected tropical diseases.

However, despite the Task Force’s incredible reputation and longstanding credentials, it remains largely unknown to a majority of the world. In an interview conducted by Georgia Center for Nonprofits’ (GCN) quarterly magazine, Georgia Nonprofit NOW, Rosenberg explains that keeping the Task Force under wraps was not only an intentional but effective strategy.

Rosenberg told GCN, “From the beginning, we have always tried to build coalitions, but it’s not always easy to get organizations to work together. If you want a partnership to work, our founder Bill Foege taught us, you’ve got to shine the light on your partners, and not on yourselves. We focus attention on our partners, and as a result, we are not well known in Georgia.”

The Task Force’s decision to maintain a low-key profile has resulted in high effectivity, not only as a major collaborator to some of the world’s most well-known nonprofit organizations but also as a large scale mobilizer towards peace and health care reform.

The Task Force for Global Health has managed to cover an incredible amount of ground in improving healthcare and offering accessible vaccinations and treatments to approximately 495 million people in 149 countries. The organization provides support and professional level healthcare training programs in 43 countries around the world, which results in widespread, efficient and accessible health care globally. Having formed strong partnerships with private and public healthcare providers and programs worldwide, the Task Force for Global Health has and continues to succeed in bringing about incredible reform and is changing the lives of millions of people every day.

– Jenna Salisbury

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Tablet Computers: Enhancing Global Literacy Rates

Literacy

Researchers from MIT, Tufts and Georgia State University are conducted a study to determine whether tablet computers that have with literacy applications can improve global literacy rates among children living in extremely poor communities.

As part of the first phase of the study, tablets were sent to a pair of Ethiopian villages with no schools or written culture, a suburban South African school with a student-to-teacher teacher ratio of 60 to 1 and a rural school in the U.S. with mostly low-income students.

The tablets contained specially designed apps to help illiterate children ages four to 11 learn letters, sounds and reading fundamentals. The children in Ethiopia had never seen electricity or paper before this study.

Maryanne Wolf, founder and director of Tuft’s Center for Reading and Language Research, visited Ethiopia in 2013 and saw how excited the children were to use the tablets.

“The children learned to be facile so quickly—it was breathtaking,” Wolf said, according to a Tufts Now article.

In the African deployments, students who used the tablets scored much higher than those who did not. The American students also improved their scores dramatically after using the tablets for just four months.

“The whole premise of our project is to harness the best science and innovation to bring education to the world’s most under-resourced children,” associate professor of media arts and sciences at MIT Cynthia Breazeal said, reports an MIT News article.

The main theme of this project is that it is self-starting. The research team purposely did not tell the children what to do with the tablets because if the project expands, they will not be able to bring in coaches to teach the children how to use the apps.

Within minutes of receiving the tablet, one Ethiopian boy figured out how to turn it on. Within a week, the Ethiopian children had the apps up and running.

The research team is currently analyzing the data collected from the trials. They have also created a nonprofit organization called Curious Learning, which is now looking for partners to help launch larger pilot programs in an effort to improve global literacy rates.

– Kerri Whelan

Photo: Flickr

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WHO and PAHO Launch Worldwide Zika Virus Database

Zika Virus Database

The World Health Organization (WHO) has teamed up with the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) to launch a Zika virus database to list and categorize all scientific studies on the Zika virus worldwide. The project is focused on helping global researchers understand and combat the virus.

The two agencies have identified and collected all investigations and research on Zika, including those that have been, or are in the process of being published and compiled them into a searchable database, according to a recent press release by the PAHO.

Experts creating the Zika virus database included the search mechanism in order to help researchers explore unknown factors about the possible relationship between Zika and congenital malformations.

The WHO declared a public emergency on Feb. 1, 2016, due to Zika’s suspected link to a range of serious health concerns, including birth defects in babies born to mothers who are infected with the virus and the development of neurological disorders in adults.

Researchers have been focused on identifying a correlation between Zika and microcephaly, a rare condition that causes infants to be born with abnormally small heads and brain damage.

Zika is a predominately mosquito-borne disease that arrived in Brazil last spring. Since then, it has spread to 34 countries and territories in the Americas. Between 3 to 4 million people could be infected with the virus by early next year, according to the WHO.

Communities affected by poverty face the most risk, as the virus is easily transmitted in crowded areas where access to sheltered air conditioned space is limited. A lack of running water and waste management combined with poor housing in urban areas also contributes to the continued spread of the virus.

The Zika virus database is part of the WHO’s wider plan to combat the disease globally through its Strategic Response Framework and Joint Operations Plan.

The strategy is currently focusing on mobilizing and coordinating partners, experts and resources to help countries provide medical care, communicate risks and proper protection measures to the affected communities. The initiative also involves fast-track research on vaccine development.

– Lauren Lewis

Photo: Flickr

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Gates Foundation Invests $5 Million on Malaria Research

Malaria Research

According to the Gates Foundation, malaria continues to be a major health concern in almost 100 countries, infecting 207 million people and killing 627,000 individuals in 2012 alone. Despite an increase in malaria funding over the past several years, challenges remain in completely eradicating this disease.

However, fighting malaria is one of the Foundation’s main missions and the organization has contributed $2 billion to the cause to date. Notably, the Gates Foundation launched a multi-year strategy known as Accelerate to Zero in 2013 that focuses on making new partnerships for more efficient, affordable drugs.

In addition, this past April, the organization offered the biotechnology innovations firm Amyris an additional $5 million, in the form of a stock buyback, for its malaria research project.

Amyris is a biotechnology innovation firm whose partnership with the Gates Foundation spans roughly ten years. Replacing the relatively expensive and time-consuming method of directly extracting artemisinin from the Chinese Sweet Wormwood plant, Amyris created a new strain of Baker’s yeast microbes that produce artemisinic acid. According to the firm, the result is a “precursor of artemisinin, an effective anti-malarial drug.”

With malaria research grants from the Gates Foundation and partnership with the Institute for OneWorld Health and the University of California, Berkley, the organization has since distributed the microbes to Sanofi for mass manufacture.

In 2015, the company was awarded the United Nations Global Citizen Award for this continued effort to meet the Millennium Development Goals.

Amyris is also expected to develop faster, cheaper methods of manufacturing pharmaceuticals that otherwise require elaborate processes for extraction.

This year’s renewed grant will ensure the application of this technology and the actual reduced cost of malaria medicine.

According to John Melo, the CEO of Amyris, the firm’s goal is the complete eradication of malaria through low-cost and sustainable cures. He further stressed the importance of future cooperation between private and public sectors in battling other epidemics.

– Haena Chu

Photo: Flickr

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Startup Converts Plastic Waste into 3D Printing Material

3D Printing
Reflow, an Amsterdam-based startup, is using 3D printing technology to transform plastic waste into a valuable resource. According to its website, the company converts recyclable plastic into ethical, high-quality 3D print filament, which is the material needed for 3D printing.

Every day, millions of waste collectors in developing countries earn $2 a day sifting through endless masses of garbage. In the developing world, cities are experiencing rapid urbanization, brought about by fast population growth and high immigration rates.

Rapid urban expansion, combined with a lack of infrastructure, leads to the buildup of open waste in low-income neighborhoods, slums and squatter areas. The result is informal waste collection by members of those communities.

Reflow works directly with waste collectors to convert the plastic they pick up into high-quality print filament. The company increases the value of the recycled plastic by up to 20 times, increasing the waste collectors incomes so they earn the wage they deserve.

According to Kickstarter, the Reflow process begins by carefully selecting the plastic needed to make the print filament. The startup then works with local waste collectors to clean PET bottles and shred them into tiny, 6-millimeter plastic flakes.

PET stands for polyethylene terephthalate, which is used in common plastic packaging such as water bottles, soft drink packaging and cosmetics bottles. A report by The Planet Bottle states that PET is popular for its strength, thermo-stability and transparency, while being inexpensive, lightweight and recyclable.

Once the plastic has been shredded, Reflow uses a low-cost, open-source extruder to convert the plastic flakes into 3D print filament. The company partners with universities and their corporate partners to test the filament, before shipping it in recyclable packaging to individuals who use the product for 3D printing.

Of note, 25 percent of Reflow’s profits are invested in local manufacturing and $3 from each roll of filament contributes to waste collectors’ incomes.

According to the Huffington Post, 120 plastic bottles can produce one kilogram of filament. However, Reflow said that the process is not so much about the final product as it is about empowering individual waste collectors and improving their lives.

Typically, waste collectors have to deal with unfair pricing from middle men in the recycling process. Their working conditions are extremely poor, as they collect garbage in toxic areas and must wade through unhygienic environments to find the appropriate waste to recycle.

Reflow also aims to provide the waste collectors with necessary tools to pick up and carry the plastic, so their health is not at risk.

The company is launching their project in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. According to a report by the Global Alliance of Waste Pickers, there are approximately 1,267 waste pickers in Dar es Salaam, who collect, move and trade 20 kilograms of recyclable waste per day. Most waste pickers that were interviewed for the report stated that the nature of their work was “exhausting”, “dangerous” and “unhealthy.”

“Of fifty waste pickers interviewed, forty-three reported that they had been ‘injured or admitted to a health facility’ in the past twelve months due to their recycling operations,” said the report.

So far, Reflow has raised €2,943 of their €25,000 goal (US$ 28,520). “We know this technology is going to transform our societies and lives,” said the company in a statement on their website. “We want to harness this innovation to create a better and more equal world. We want to ensure the revolution is shared.”

– Michelle Simon

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6 Ways to Help Refugees Survive the Crisis

help Refugees

According to the International Rescue Committee, Syrian refugees account for between a quarter and a third of Lebanon’s population. Jordan has about 630,000 Syrian refugees—proportionally, that is the same as the United States taking in all 64 million residents of the United Kingdom.

Those who would like to extend a helpful hand are often unsure of where to begin. Here are six ways to help refugees:

    1. With the Syrian crisis alone resulting in over 4 million refugees, many agencies doing valuable work are stretched thin. A New York Times story on the refugee crisis includes links to several well-ranked charities that are seeking donations to help refugees.
    2. For those interested in more hands-on work, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) connects volunteers to refugee programs worldwide, though this initiative is geared towards highly skilled professionals.
    3. There are several other ways the average person can volunteer, however. The International Rescue Committee has local offices across the United States offering volunteering opportunities, such as working with refugee children or helping adults with their job search.
  1. The White House has a portal for volunteering to help refugees. If you enter your location, it provides a map and list of locations in your area that help refugees. For example, if you enter Washington, D.C., one of the results is the local Ethiopian Community Development Council, which helps African refugees resettle and build new, fruitful lives.
  2. You can also donate items. While many organizations do not accept physical donations like clothing on an international level, many local offices do. The International Refugee Council, for example, says local offices are often in need of items such as clothing and children’s items.
  3. Contact your senators and contact your representative. There are a variety of things you can encourage them to do, such as make pathways to accept refugees, increase funding for foreign aid or give more support to U.N. programs working with refugees.

This list is a good starting point for those interesting in aiding refugees to overcome global crises.

– Emily Milakovic

Photo: Flickr

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Cricket Without Boundaries Raises Awareness

Cricket Without Boundaries

Cricket Without Boundaries (CWB) is a U.K. based charity, founded in 2005. The organization is dedicated to raising awareness about the HIV/AIDs epidemic occurring in various impoverished communities.

CWB does this through integrating lessons about HIV and AIDs with cricket instruction. These cricket programs are designed to, “break down the barriers of discrimination, empower individuals and educate about HIV/AIDs prevention and testing.”

This charity is currently involved in five African countries: Botswana, Cameroon, Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda. Within these countries, CWB offers cricket coaching programs as well as comprehensive sexual education.

The organization aims to go beyond the traditional approach to understanding sexual education as a method for fighting transmitting STIs. This traditional method involves abstinence, being faithful to a single partner, condom use and testing (ABC and T). CWB includes this approach in its lessons but also understands that HIV spreads despite abstinence and faithfulness.

The charity wants to provide accurate sexual education to both genders to further protect women and girls (among the most vulnerable) from HIV. By eliminating the gender gap in sexual education, CWB has a stronger impact in these communities.

By focusing on prevention and healthy sexual relationships, the organization has successfully educated thousands of adults and children. CWB trains various coaches within these countries to create a sustainable community-level program.

The charity states that it has, “coached over 65,000 children, who will be the next generation of cricketers, passing on skills and knowledge in cricket grounds, schools and communities, both about cricket and about the disease.”

By utilizing sport to build a supportive community that educates both adults and children about HIV/AIDS, Cricket Without Boundaries provides a model of disease prevention that can be applied globally.

CWB has gained traction over the years in major news sources such as BBC and CNN. In 2014, CNN conducted interviews within one of the charity’s projects in Rwanda.

Eric Hirwa, a member of Rwanda’s national cricket team, is among the individuals interviewed who train and educate hundreds of Rwandan children each week. The most recent UNAIDS data estimated 210,000 people living with HIV in the country.

This same report estimated 85,000 children to be orphaned as a result of AIDS and 3,000 deaths due to the virus. Rwanda is just one example of the vulnerable communities CWB targets.

Funding Cricket Without Boundaries and other similar organizations can significantly improve the current state of the HIV/AIDS crisis in the developing world.

– Saroja Koneru

Photo: Flickr

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UN: Helping Impoverished Women in Nepal

Women in Nepal

On April 25, 2015, an earthquake in Nepal pushed an estimated 1 million people below the poverty line. Before the disaster, the poverty prevalence in Nepal was already at 23.8 percent. The World Bank also predicted that by this year, up to 982,000 more people would be pushed into poverty, including many women in Nepal.

The U.N. Deputy Secretary-General Jan Eliasson recently visited the women in Nepal affected by the earthquakes at the Chautara U.N. multipurpose women’s center. The center provides counseling and trauma assistance, information dissemination and recovery-related activities.

“This is a very different experience for me,” Eliasson said during the visit, according to a U.N. Women article. “I met with women and young girls who despite all odds are getting on with their lives. This is a sign of resilience. It is important for them to be able to clear the rubble and rebuild their lives.”

The earthquake that hit Nepal affected agriculture, education, water and sanitation and health—crucial aspects of development. People were pushed into poverty because they lost their homes, income opportunities, personal items and livestock.

Worse, up to 70 percent of the people pushed into poverty from the earthquake live in rural hills and mountains that are already developmentally vulnerable.

During the visit, a young woman named Sita Shrestha shared her experience of a leadership training program offered by the women’s center. She told the Secretary-General that the program allowed her to fundraise, organize villagers and supply water to individual houses.

“The training and this project have changed my life,” Shrestha said at the visit, reports U.N. Women. “I want to join a humanitarian organization like the U.N. in the future.”

The U.N. multipurpose women’s center is focused on delivering sustainable services to women in Nepal. The center also now focuses on enhancing the capacity of local women’s groups to ensure equality with regard to disaster recovery, reconstruction and preparedness initiatives.

– Kerri Whelan

Photo: Flickr