Archive for category: Global Poverty

Key articles and information on global poverty.

,

Improved Education in Mexico for the Rural and Indigenous

Education in MexicoApproximately 15 percent of the Mexican population is indigenous and more than half of the state of Oaxaca’s population identifies as indigenous, according to the U.N. But the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, mandating non-discrimination and the right to education in Mexico, is unfortunately not enforced in all states.

Each state has its local legislation that can overlook the national provisions. Former U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay states Mexican women suffer from discrimination not only based on their gender but also on their ethnicity.

Indigenous populations are also more likely to live in poverty and experience food insecurity.

Despite the U.N.’s claim that indigenous populations in Mexico are behind in bilingual education and administration of justice, there have been improvements.

CONAFE is an organization under the federal government of Mexico that is taking on the challenge of spreading education to various Mexican populations. Not only does the institution design education plans, it also evaluates them in order to increase education levels in Mexico. The organization is in charge of rural education in Mexico.

The organization has assisted with increasing basic educational attainment. CONAFE increased the participants of expansion of early child development services by 80 percent. Additionally, the organization expanded its services to 172 of the most marginalized areas in Mexico.

Furthermore, CONAFE has proven its progress with reports that grade three scores improved by nearly 79 points, grade six by 35 points and grade nine by nearly 70 points.

CONAFE continues to provide support in the most marginalized communities of Mexico while utilizing a community-based approach. The organization presents to parents ways to best teach their children while specifically targeting fathers who have shown low participation.

Overall, CONAFE has provided educational outreach to 48,640 parents nearly reaching their target. Aside from this program, the government of Mexico has also focused on strengthening indigenous education.

UNESCO has constructed an additional program for post-2015 in Mexico based on the Millennium Development Goals that will continue for another 36 months. The organization claims the country has already achieved a 94 percent improvement in literacy, with Mexico City at the top with a literacy rate of 99 percent.

The project hopes to construct additional sustainable schools built around the indigenous style of living. It also aims to ensure that national education policy will evolve according to education for sustainable development in the coming years.

The state of Chiapas serves as a prime example of the possibilities of success through education interventions. Many programs continue to seek progress in indigenous Mexican communities while citing Chiapas’s quick literacy improvements in the past decade.

The U.N. states that the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples will continue to be utilized in the country for support of indigenous rights.

Once the country with the lowest education scores, according to OECD, signs of continued progress for education in Mexico persist.

– Mayra Vega

Sources: World Bank 1, OECD, United Nations, World Bank 2, World Bank 3, World Bank 4, World Bank 5
Photo: Huffington Post

,

Poverty in Angola: Causes, Updates and Statistics

Poverty in Angola
Despite its economic success in the booming oil industry, poverty in Angola is a serious concern. The fact that a majority of Angolans live in extreme poverty contrasts greatly with the country’s booming economy. Angola is one of Africa’s most resource-rich countries. It is the second-largest oil producer in Africa and the fourth-largest producer of diamonds. In addition, the country is rich in such resources as minerals, lumber and fish. Although the oil industry in Angola brings in a majority of the state’s revenue, two-thirds of the population live on less than $2 a day and do not see the benefits of the industry.

The government claims that poverty rates have dropped in recent years, yet corruption is still a major factor. The question remains: “Where is this money?” Government elites and employees reap the benefits of the oil industry, while many Angolans live in arduous conditions. Additionally, the country possesses high infant mortality rates, poor access to clean water and sanitation and high illiteracy rates.

The civil war from 1975 to 2002 left Angola devastated, with countless deaths and millions of internally displaced persons. Angola can now boast a revived economic situation and an up-and-coming international profile. However, the country still has a great deal of work to do in its commitment to alleviate poverty in Angola.

The 2016 Human Development Index ranks Angola 149 out of 186 on the poverty scale, as poverty permeates the entire nation. Poverty in Angola is greater in rural areas, which contains 38.5 percent of the population. In fact, 94 percent of rural households are categorized as poor.

There is a very low electrification rate in rural areas of Angola, with only 6% of rural households having access to electricity. A considerable amount of the population (38 percent) does not have access to safe water sources. Consequently, the mortality rate for children under five is around 17 percent. In addition, many children do not have access to education, making future employment difficult. In fact, 34.6 percent of people have unequal access to education. As a result, 28.9 percent of the population have an unequal income.

The capital city of Luanda, one of the largest cities in Angola, drastically contrasts its outskirts. Just outside the city limits, hundreds of thousands of people live in extreme poverty.With no running water or proper infrastructure for sanitation, disease runs rampant. Diarrheal diseases, cholera, measles and diphtheria are just a few such illnesses.

According to the World Health Organization, there were over 2,000 cholera outbreaks in 2009. Yet, there was only 1 doctor available for every 10,000 people. As a result, countless families lack access to vaccines or clinics to treat these diseases.

In recent years, there have been successful reconstruction programs, including roads, airports, bridges, hospitals and schools. Although the Angolan government is beginning to make progress towards rebuilding, the answer for widespread poverty alleviation lies within the ruling party and channeling the revenue from the oil industry into the hands of Angolan’s themselves.

– Kimber Kraus

Photo: Flickr

, ,

Nutrition Strategy Counters Vitamin A Deficiency in Ghana

Ghana Vitamin A Deficiency
As a leader in fighting extreme global poverty, government agency USAID is currently revolutionizing health and nutrition for northern Ghanaians. In order to counter the vitamin A deficiency from which many people in Ghana suffer, USAID introduced the sweet potato to the country. Since its introduction, the sweet potato has become one of the region’s most popular vegetables, USAID reports.

The implementation of the sweet potato is part of USAID’s 2014-2025 Multi-Sectoral Nutrition Strategy. The project is aligned with the 2025 World Health Assembly Nutrition Targets and focuses on decreasing chronic malnutrition and improving other nutrition investments. According to USAID, over one-third of children under the age of five, in five northern districts, suffer from stunted growth resulting from poor nutrition, so the strategy is crucial for bettering the future generations.

USAID team members visited Ghana last year and taught 439 women in 17 districts how to grow the sweet potato. The crop instantly became admired, with villagers calling it “Alafie Wuljo,” or “healthy potato” in the Dagbani language. Ghanaians have also been taught different ways to cook the potato, such as schoolchildren enjoying sweet potato fries.

“Now everyone wants to grow orange-fleshed sweet potatoes,” said the head of the project, Phillipe LeMay, in a USAID article.

The Nutrition Strategy goes beyond just the sweet potato. The project also focuses on educating farmers about other nutritious crops, linking farmers to markets, helping community members create savings and loans, promoting better hygiene and improving water and sanitation infrastructure.

USAID and the government of Ghana aim to change the lives of roughly 300,000 people with this project. Northern Ghana is an area of particular focus because it is relatively remote with a harsh climate and limited resources. This work will also be assisting with the goals of the U.S. government’s global hunger and food security initiative, Feed the Future. Feed the Future aims to decrease child stunting by 20 percent and double incomes of vulnerable households. With USAID tactics, this is becoming a reality.

The project has received positive responses thus far. The Ghanaian government has taken the initiative to promote a solution to vitamin A deficiency and nutrition in general, according to USAID, which has beneficial long-term effects. The organized training provided by USAID has also educated many people on how to practice proper sanitation and good nutrition.

“I now understand the links between poor sanitation, diarrheal diseases and nutrition,” said West Gonja District member Ama Nuzaara, in a USAID article. “I also make sure that my children wash their hands with soap and water after they use the toilet. I do this for my family’s health and well-being.”

– Kerri Whelan

Sources: USAID 1, JSI, USAID 2, Feed the Future
Photo: Feed the Future

, ,

The Digital Divide

Digital Divide
A report released by the World Bank shows that while technology has expanded, more people have remained poor. This phenomenon is often referred to as the digital divide.

The World Bank finds that more households in developing countries own a mobile phone than have access to electricity or clean water, according to “Digital Dividends,” its 2016 World Development Report.

The digital divide is created because most benefits for private enterprises arrive instantly, such as streamlined communication and information, online convenience and social connectivity throughout the global community.

The investments from these enterprises would ideally generate employment growth and services for those in the developing world — but progress there is more stagnant.

According to the World Bank report, digital dividends have not grown at the same rate as digital technologies because 60 percent of the world’s population does not have Internet access and are therefore unable to participate in the digital economy.

There are also emerging risks – such as polarized labor markets and inequality – that contribute to the digital divide. Routine jobs are replaced when technological advancements are made, which means more unskilled individuals compete for fewer low-wage jobs.

To combat these effects, solutions include infrastructure investment, providing worldwide Internet access and monitoring offline factors of technologies by region.

“While technology can be extremely helpful in many ways, it’s not going to help us circumvent the failures of development over the last couple of decades. You still have to get the basics right: education, business climate and accountability in government,” said Digital Dividends Co-Director Uwe Deichmann.

Education in the developing world can provide people with the skills needed to utilize digital technologies and become more productive in the workplace, which reduces polarity within the job market, according to the World Bank.

Accountable government agencies should implement policies and regulations that create a competitive digital market so that information costs go down and societies have the opportunity to become more inclusive.

Though growth has slowed in the developing world, organizations have found ways for the poor to benefit from the information and communication technology sector.

Question Box exists as a telecommunications network that provides populations suffering from high illiteracy rates and social or technical barriers with access to information.

According to the Guardian, Question Box has installed a series of ‘call boxes’ in areas of Uganda, that connect disconnected communities to someone with Internet access who can relay answers to questions regarding health, employment or other related issues.

Otherwise disconnected communities have the ability to create successful societies if given access to the digital information many of us take for granted.

– Kelsey Lay

Sources: The Guardian, Question Box, World Bank 1, World Bank 2
Photo: Google Images

5 Global Poverty Infographics Show 2015 Progress

Global poverty is not “too big” to fix but it won’t be solved overnight. Progress is attainable and 2015 was a landmark year in many ways. New data revealed historical progress was achieved, innovative development strategies were pursued and the fight against global poverty continued.

While global poverty persists in 2016, these five global poverty infographics show what the fight looked like last year, how far the global community has come and the importance of continuing the fight this year.

Infographic #1: For the first time, fewer than 10 percent of people in the world were living in extreme poverty.

Infographic 1- 2015_Charts_Poverty-690
Making headlines, the World Bank measured extreme poverty at its lowest level ever. Rising prosperity in countries such as China and India contributed to the reduction. The decrease is also considered a success for the U.N.’s Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the first of which aimed to cut poverty rates in half between 1990 and 2015.

Infographic #2: What are the SDGs about?Infographic 2- sdgs
While 2015 was the target year for the MDGs, it also kicked off the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Taking stock, the international community assessed, applauded and reconsidered what the MDGs accomplished and didn’t. Now, the SDGs aim to carry that momentum forward.

Infographic #3: The 2015 Data Report: Putting the Poorest First.DATA_Report_2015_infographic 3
Data was center stage in 2015 and will continue to be this year. Increased access to data throughout the world has helped aid organizations better understand the dynamics of global poverty. The ONE campaign compiled their data into the 2015 report and advocated for providing aid to the least developed countries first.

Infographic #4: Why invest in women?
Infographic 4- why-invest-in-women
USAID is targeting female populations to maximize the impact of aid and investment. In addition to advocating for gender equality, numerous governments and NGOs have observed women multiplying the benefits they receive and uplifting the greater community.

Infographic #5: Managing the impacts of climate change on global poverty. Infographic 5- Climate and Poverty
These global poverty infographics show that despite success in reducing global poverty rates, the future holds more challenges and uncertainties, such as climate change. In the lead-up to the UN Climate Change Conference, the World Bank raised awareness that climate change may ultimately increase poverty rates. To mitigate this, the World Bank and other organizations began calling for sustainable, “climate-smart” development to ensure poverty reduction continues.

– Cara Kuhlman

Sources: The New Yorker, EurActiv, ONE, USAID, World Bank

, , ,

SOS Children’s Villages

SOS Children’s Villages
SOS Children’s Villages is a nonprofit group whose mission is to provide every child with the opportunity to grow up in a loving home to secure their futures as successful adults.

This international organization was founded in 1949 by Hermann Gmeiner to help orphaned children in Europe rebuild their lives after World War II. Now, SOS Children’s Villages sponsors vulnerable children and fragmented families in 125 countries, across 12 different continents, with headquarters in Cambridge, United Kingdom.

SOS Children’s Villages aims to help families stay together by offering community outreach programs that provide each family with a development plan designed specifically for their needs.

The nonprofit offers aid to children who have lost their parents, those living in an orphaned household and those whose parents suffer from a life-threatening disease. Funding for these villages comes from donations, volunteer workers, corporate partnerships, fundraising and sponsorships that offer donors the chance to support an orphaned child.

Each child that lives in an SOS village receives guaranteed education and health care. Nearly 100,000 children are enrolled in 187 SOS primary and secondary schools. Tens of thousands of people attend the 51 SOS vocational training centers created to enhance employment opportunities.

“If SOS Children was not here, our children would have become street children, with all the risks this may cause. Today, we are proud of ourselves, and many of us have found dignity. We can now stand on our own feet,” said a mother in Dakar, Senegal, now able to find financial independence thanks to an SOS outreach program.

With 150 SOS villages in 45 African countries, more educational projects are run in Africa than in any other continent. According to UNICEF, educating young people can support economic resilience and stability, as children learn to address family vulnerabilities and gain skills for future employment.

A total of 79 SOS medical centers have been built by the organization, primarily in Africa and the Middle East. In more remote areas that lack clinic access, SOS children train local people in the medical field, passing on first-aid skills and health advice garnered from SOS family health awareness campaigns.

Because vulnerable children often live in non-democratic societies, SOS prides itself on strong communication with central and local governments that hold legal responsibility for the welfare of these children. According to SOS, this has allowed them to bring aid to children in Zimbabwe, where other organizations have been asked to leave.

“As a result of the various economic opportunities that were created for many vulnerable families since the inception of the project [SOS Children’s Villages Ghana], more than 78 percent of caregivers have become more self-reliant and are capable of accessing social services like health, education, water and sanitation without external support,” said Alexander Mar Kekula, National Director of SOS Children’s Villages Ghana.

– Kelsey Lay

Sources: Ghana Web, SOS Children’s Villages 1, SOS Children’s Villages 2, SOS Children’s Villages 3, SOS Children’s Villages 4, SOS Children’s Villages 5, UNICEF, 
Photo: Flickr

, ,

Digital Tech Saving People from Natural Disasters

Digital-Tech-Saving-People-from-Digital TechIn multiple developing countries, more families now have access to digital tech, such as cellphones, than to purified water or electricity. There is still a massive digital separation, however, between the poor and wealthier areas of the world in terms of Internet access.

According to “Digital Dividends,” an annual development report put out by the World Bank, greater strides must be made to connect more individuals to the Internet and to create a space that unchains the benefits of digital technologies for all.

Access to the Internet is crucial in vulnerable regions before, during and after a disaster occurs. Organizations like the Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (GFDRR) have begun to create a wide range of tools that will deal with disaster risk management — but the tools rely heavily on the Internet’s unlimited potential.

Natural disasters can cause terrible damage, especially to the poorest parts of the world. As efforts step up to improve the Internet’s reach across the world, the GFDRR has helped over 160 million people in 60 countries gain improved access to risk information. Using its Open Data for Resilience Initiative (OpenDRI), the GFDRR also helps countries to establish open disaster information platforms.

Innovative approaches to disaster risk, such as crowdsourcing and social data mining, also expand the information base quickly and cheaply. OpenDRI’s community mapping projects deploy local citizens to collect and maintain data about the environment and how it changes during the different stages of a disaster.

By allowing more people to have access to digital tech, not only will they have access to better jobs and opportunities, they will have first-hand knowledge and awareness of impending disasters heading their way. Digital technology also encourages tighter-knit collaboration with the different parts of a region’s government and the private sector.

A prime example of using crowdsourcing to save lives, the FloodTags project is developing a tool to utilize data via Twitter for eye-witness flood observations. Concepts like this provide a constantly updated understanding of the situation, hopefully saving lives that would otherwise be lost in disasters.

After floods hit Jakarta, Indonesia in February 2015, tweets peaked at about 900 per minute, with a major number including information about location and water depth. FloodTags then utilized this information to devise a method for creating real-time maps based on the messages and regional statistics.

While digital tech like FloodTags and GFDRR’s OpenDRI system have steadily improved and saved lives over the last few years, they fall short in areas that do not have access to the Internet. For digital tech to aid everyone everywhere in the world, the remaining countries need to eventually close the gap in Internet access.

– John Gilmore

Sources: GFDRR, Reuters, WE Forum
Picture: Google Images

Facts About the Reach Every Mother and Child Act

Reach Every Mother and ChildThe Reach Every Mother and Child Act of 2015 seeks to provide foreign assistance in order to end preventable maternal, newborn and child deaths globally within a generation.

Every day, approximately 800 women, almost entirely from developing countries, die from preventable causes related to pregnancy and childbirth. The risk of a woman dying in childbirth is 47 times higher in Africa than in the United States. More than 17,000 children under five years old will die daily from treatable conditions.

Aiding women during pregnancy, childbirth and post delivery, newborns in their first 28 days and children under the age of five is of utmost importance.

Countries that experience the greatest need and highest burden of maternal and child deaths around the world will be primary targets. This strategy focuses on evidence-based interventions, country ownership, monitoring and evaluating programs, transparency and accountability, sustainability and public-private financing mechanisms.

The U.S. government will work with target countries and donors to implement a five-year plan established by the president to achieve the goal of ending preventable maternal and newborn deaths within a generation.

A Child and Maternal Survival Coordinator role will be created to oversee the strategy and ensure all U.S. government funds appropriated are used for international maternal and child health and nutrition programs.

USAID grants, contracts and cooperative agreements designated for the strategy will include targets for increased implementation of high-impact, evidence-based interventions and baseline measurements to quantify progress.

The president will publicly report on the U.S. government’s progress in implementing the strategy annually. Maternal and child health and nutrition initiatives will be detailed in the report along with descriptions of interventions or program designs, reporting on grants, contracts and cooperative agreements awarded and any innovative public-private financing tools that could be used to fund the strategy.

USAID is authorized to grant loans, set aside funds for the implementation of financing tools and make equity investments to carry out provisions of this act.

As of Jan. 29, 2016, the act has received bipartisan support from 37 Democrats and 28 Republicans in the House of Representatives and six Democrats and five Republicans in the Senate.

– Summer Jackson

Sources: Borgen Project, Senate, Thomas – Library of Congress
Photo: Art Connect International

Innovation Building Resilience and Prosperity for the Poor

Prosperity for the PoorTechnology and partnerships are crucial when it comes to poverty eradication. According to the Global Resilience Partnership, investing in innovation and cooperation is not only a game-changer but also the key to building resilience and prosperity for the poor.

Using its network to bring the public and private sectors together to work toward resilience and high impact innovations, the Global Resilience Partnership intends to put an end to vulnerability creating community issues through multi-sectoral collaboration.

With cooperation between the organization’s partners – the Rockefeller Foundation, USAID and the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida) – the organization is currently engaged in eight projects to build long-term resilience in the Horn of Africa, the Sahel and Southeast Asia.

Global Resilience Partnership is hoping to foster the capacity to recover quickly from issues such as climate change, food insecurity and population growth in impoverished communities through technological innovation and multi-sectoral resource sharing.

Countless aid organizations have observed the devastating impact on development that communities face after a disruptive event. It has also been seen that the ability of a community to bounce back from a disaster or crisis is time-sensitive. The longer that a community remains disrupted, the more difficult it is to get back on track.

The theory behind this drive for partnership is that each sector holds a piece of the puzzle to creating resilience and prosperity for the poor. Individually, efforts are only a fraction of the solution. It’s when the pieces are put together that the bigger picture of a lasting solution is achieved.

Executive Director Dr. Luca Alinovi stressed the importance of this theory even more in a letter calling for continued investment in resilience in 2016: “We will only make progress when we start to ‘join the dots’ and activate different stakeholders to talk to each [other], work together and make each other stronger.”

Connecting the dots must be done on three levels: global, regional, local.

Globally, the Rockefeller Foundation, USAID and Sida have collectively invested $150 million to increase global resilience and establish regional collaborations.

Regionally, partnerships are developed, utilizing and supporting collaboration between local level connections. Currently, the organization is still focusing heavily on this phase of regional partnership development, which is arguably the most critical phase in establishing a lasting and impactful local level solution.

Once at a local level, the organization will mobilize and encourage local and regional institutions, the private sector, governmental development agencies, nongovernmental organizations and humanitarian organizations to work together on the behalf of local communities to help increase prosperity for the poor.

“When we foster resilient livelihoods, men, women and families are better able to cope with chronic stresses and acute disasters,” wrote Alinovi. “A resilience mindset is proactive, focused on root causes, systematic changes and long-term impacts. Resilience is critical to achieving all of our ambitious global goals from eradicating hunger to ending extreme poverty.”

But the establishment of resilience solutions and multi-sectoral cooperation is easier said than done and requires a strategic plan to accomplish its goals. As Henry Ford, founder of the Ford Motor Company, said, “Coming together is a beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is success.”

The Global Resilience Partnership clearly agrees with this sentiment. The organization’s formula for success hinges on “programs that help surface innovation and long-term collaboration amongst the region-wide ecosystem of diverse local actors.”

Starting with a foundation of analytic diagnosis of a region’s problems, followed by the mobilization of a collaborative team to address the identified problems, solutions are developed to meet the unique circumstances. These solutions are then shared with the network and beyond to inspire free and radical change.

Through Global Resilience Partnership’s commitment to creating resilience and prosperity for the poor and vulnerable, the organization is paving the way for a new way of thinking about aid and development. As Alinovi put it, “Technology is a problem-solver, and the acceleration it provides is giving us the chance to make the difference.”

– Claire Colby

Sources: Global Resilience Partnership, The Guardian
Photo: CGIAR

, ,

Major Programs That Lilly Endowment Supports

Lilly EndowmentFounded in 1937 by three members of the Lilly Family (J.K. Lilly Sr. and his two sons, Eli and J.K. Jr.), Lilly Endowment is one of the largest private philanthropic organizations in the United States. Based in Indianapolis, it derives the bulk of its funding from gifts of stock in the family pharmaceutical business, Eli Lilly and Company.

Lilly Endowment focuses its activities on education, religion and community development. The founders of the endowment had a burning desire to help the people of Indiana; thus, the bulk of charitable initiatives and grants offered by the organization are geared towards activities in Indiana.

Since its inception, various programs have been developed under each of the endowment’s principal focus areas. These are programs that the organization funds on a regular basis.

Lilly Endowment recognizes the importance of education as an instrument of change and development. The organization gives grants to educational institutions and programs that seek to improve the quality of education across Indiana. Emphasis is placed on supporting higher learning institutions in order to increase the number of people with a bachelor’s degree. This is in response to Indiana’s ranking as one of the states with the highest number of people over 25 without a bachelor’s degree.

The three major programs in the education division are the Community Scholarship Program, the Teacher Creativity Fellowship Program and the Summer Youth Program Fund.

Established in 1987, the Teacher Creativity Fellowship Program was developed with the aim of renewing the commitment of educators across Indiana to delivering quality education. During the program, school media specialists, teachers, guidance counselors and principals are given financial backing and time to tend to their personal development and growth.

The Community Scholarship Program was founded in 1998 and seeks to improve the level of higher education attainment in Indiana. The program offers four-year, full tuition scholarships with an additional 900 dollars per year for educational materials. Community foundations in Indiana play an integral role in the administration of the scholarships.

The most recent program that was added to the education section is the Summer Youth Program Fund. Through this program, Lilly Endowment provides grants to organizations that provide constructive and safe activities for children from 4-19 years of age to engage in during the summer. Organizations that receive funding include tutoring centers, churches, community and sports centers, art centers, overnight camps, parks and theaters.

Eli Lilly once mentioned in Madison Magazine that the cause closest to his heart was character education. In order to bring about the development of individuals with moral fibre and upright character, Eli Lilly supported numerous religious causes leading to the establishment of the religious arm of the endowment.

The religious branch of Lilly Endowment seeks to enrich the lives of Christians and congregations across America by improving the capacity of pastors already engaged in the work of ministry and educating a new crop of pastors. They do this through supporting theological institutions and providing opportunities for established ministers to renew their commitment to ministry.

The Indiana and National clergy renewal programs are long-standing initiatives that Lilly Endowment supports as part of its religion arm. Founded in the years 1999 and 2000, respectively, the programs seek to provide pastors with time they can use to recharge their spiritual batteries in order to better serve in ministry. Congregations also use the programs as opportunities to grow the capacities of lay pastors.

The programs both offer grants of up to $50,000 to churches for renewal of their pastors.

Community development is the third major division of Lilly Endowment. Under this section, the organization funds programs that improve the quality of life in Indiana. These are programs that create the kind of economy that can attract lucrative, developmental businesses to the state. Projects and organizations that have received funding in the past include low-income housing projects, neighborhood revitalization projects and arts and culture organizations.

An initiative under community development is the Giving Indiana Funds for Tomorrow (GIFT) program.

Established in 1990, the endowment uses GIFT to support the establishment, growth and success of community foundations in Indiana’s 92 counties. The community foundations, in turn, provide Lilly Endowment with an avenue to improve the quality of life throughout Indiana. The GIFT program has undergone five phases and is currently in its sixth phase.

The continuous growth and expansion of these programs will enable Lilly Endowment to fulfill its overall objective of creating change and fostering development in Indiana.

— June Samo

Sources: Lilly Endowment Community Development, Lilly Endowment Religion, Lilly Endowment Education, Lilly Endowment, General, Learning to Give, ISI News
Photo: TECHPOINT