Archive for category: Global Poverty

Key articles and information on global poverty.

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Teen Creates Mobile Learning Centers

mobile_learning_centers
Technology has helped create a learning landscape that expands the access of education to citizens living in rural villages and children living in poverty. Enrollment numbers are rising, but children are not learning enough when they enter school. Some children are not able to attend school or drop out because their families face financial challenges that keep them from learning and sometimes have to join the workforce.

Mobile phones help increase literacy rates in developing countries by providing access to reading materials. There are 123 million youth who cannot read or write and most of them do not have any access to books. Schools in Sub-Saharan Africa lack the resources to have textbooks for their students.

UNESCO found that many parents read stories to their children from mobile phones and that it helps empower women as they read six times more than men on their mobile devices.

Liza Villanueva, an Anaheim resident, had another idea for mobile learning: a mobile learning bus that travels between cities.

She created an international foundation to help children in rural villages without access to education in the Philippines through a Girl Scout Project. Her community service requirement through the Girl Scout’s Gold Award created an opportunity for Villanueva to invest her time in helping children. Therefore, the iDream Express was created in the Philippines with the support of local churches volunteering to keep the program running to provide access to education in the Philippines.

Villanueva, who is getting ready for her freshman year in college, travels to the Philippines to visit her family. She found out many of the children on the street were not attending school and developed the learning center to provide access to education for these children.

The organization is only a year old, but Villanueva says that there are about 30 children who show up at the different locations for education from the iDream Express. One challenge is that many children wander from city to city because of their living conditions on the street, which makes it hard to keep track of who is showing up to fulfill educational needs.

“I feel that every country is in need of mobile learning centers because education is not accessible, provided for, or enforced everywhere,” says Villanueva. “I plan to expand iDream Express globally, but next in line are Mexico and India.”

The Philippines ranks 80th in the world in access to basic knowledge. 88.2 percent of people are enrolled in primary school, and 75.8 percent are enrolled in upper secondary education. There are still six million young people who are not enrolled in school in the Philippines.

To help Villanueva expand education in the Philippines and around the world, you can donate to the cause on the iDream Express Crowdrise page.

– Donald Gering

Sources: GSMA, The Guardian, OC Register, Social Progress Imperative, UNESCO
Photo: YASC

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Surprises in the Social Progress Index Rankings

Social_Progress_Index_Rankings
The gross domestic product (GDP) has become the primary way to evaluate how countries are doing. However, the Social Progress Index, launched in 2014 by the Social Progress Imperative, aims to provide a more comprehensive picture.

By only looking at the monetary value of goods and services produced within a country, it is easy for data to be skewed or not reflect the full picture. The GDP could be easily skewed by income inequality; consequently, developing countries with high levels of corruption or income equality would be seen as doing better than they actually are.

Purchases made on the black market and payments for cars and appliances besides original down payments are not included, even though this money is used for goods and services. Furthermore, goods produced but not necessarily sold are counted into the GDP, even if the products are sitting in a company warehouse.

The Social Progress Index looks at twelve different components within three different categories: Basic Human Needs, Foundations of Well-Being and Opportunity. In comparison with the GDP rankings, there are a few rankings that shouldn’t be a surprise: Norway, Sweden and Switzerland are the top three; all of the Scandinavian countries are in the top ten.

However, there are countries that, based on GDP, one might expect to be more highly ranked. The United States is sixteenth, China doesn’t break the top seventy and no Middle Eastern oil-producing country is ranked above 35.

Countries many consider to be more developing, such as Panama, Colombia and Malaysia, are in the top fifty countries. Ghana is ranked significantly higher than Nigeria, although they have similar GDPs.

To better understand these rankings, the Social Progress Index also includes scorecards for each country and categorizes elements of the data as either relative strengths or weaknesses.

China, for example, has many relative weaknesses in factors contributing to opportunity, including perceived criminality, political freedoms, average years women spend in school and private property rights. For the United States, freedom over life choices, maternal and child mortality rates and community safety net were among the relative weaknesses.

The Social Progress Index Rankings have much to offer organizations at all levels with regards to information and comparison building. This information can be used to help shape policy, guide partnerships and raise awareness on what can be improved in different countries.

Regardless, the Social Progress Imperative’s Social Progress Index, like other indices such as the OECD Better Life Index, raises important questions as to what individuals consider developed versus developing.

Looking at the Social Progress Index and the GDP, the differences between the more holistic Social Progress Index and the money-focused GDP are vast, thus supporting previous research and theories that place well-being at an individual or community level at equal or greater value to economic output.

Priscilla McCelvey

Sources: Quora, Social Progress Imperative, TED
Photo: Pixabay

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Global Peace Index Offers Critical Poverty Insights

Global Peace Index Offers Critical Poverty Insights
The Institute for Economics and Peace, or IEP—a think tank with offices in New York, Mexico City and Sydney—has released the ninth edition of their Global Peace Index. The Index makes use of 23 qualitative and quantitative indicators in an effort to illustrate the levels of peace around the world, highlight trends and inform policymakers.

Safety and security in society, the extent of domestic and international conflict, and the degree of militarization are the three facets that the IEP uses to gauge where global peace stands.

IEP views peace as a prerequisite to solving the major issues facing humanity. “It is a cross-cutting facilitator of progress, making it easier for individuals to produce, businesses to sell, entrepreneurs and scientists to innovate and governments to effectively regulate.”

Therefore, they study what makes societies peaceful in order to contribute to the debate on meeting the challenges facing a 21st century world.

They have identified eight pillars that are hallmarks of peaceful societies. A sound business environment, good relations with neighbors, high levels of human capital, acceptance of the rights of others, low levels of corruption, good governance, free flow of information and an equitable distribution of resources all help to establish peaceful societies. These pillars have complex interactions and “are both interdependent and mutually reinforcing, such that improvements in one factor would tend to strengthen others and vice versa.”

So, how is the world doing? The overall trend since the first edition, in 2008, has been a downward one. Although external conflict has significantly dropped, refugees and internally displaced persons, internal conflict, terrorism and violent demonstrations have more than taken up the slack, setting the stage for a less peaceful world.

Since last year, 81 countries have become more peaceful while 78 states have slipped. European countries continued their peaceful trajectory, while peace levels in the Middle East and North Africa have deteriorated significantly. The United States ranks 94 behind 21 African nations, and Iceland is the most peaceful country.

What is more shocking is that, by IEP calculations, violence cost the world $14.3 trillion in 2014, or 13.4 percent of global GDP. This cost has increased by 15.3 percent since 2008.

If the world was able to decrease violence by a meager 10 percent, enough money would be freed up to decuple (multiply by 10) the current level of official development assistance. This is important because IEP has also identified how closely aligned the Sustainable Development Goals are with the eight pillars of peace, implying that an increase in official development assistance would further reduce violence, putting into motion a virtuous cycle.

Although the idea that peace is beneficial for societies does not offer a radical new insight, IEP and their reports help quantify and illustrate just what type of violence is happening where, and why that may be.

For instance, IEP has found that high income inequality is associated with an increase in violence in urban environments, and that murder rates and urbanization are inversely correlated. These findings lay out a roadmap for policymakers to properly respond to and develop interventions that can help make the world a safer place.

– John Wachter

Sources: Vision of Humanity 1, Vision of Humanity 2
Photo: Visionofhumanity

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Solar Powered Classrooms Coming to Kenya

Solar Powered Classrooms Coming to Kenya
Kenya currently ranks 101st in the world in access to basic information, which includes literacy rates, primary and secondary school enrollments, and gender parity in secondary enrollment. In addition, only 39 percent of the population has internet access.

Safaricom Foundation, an African telco, is looking to change the current landscape by providing every student a school with a room full of computers to boost education in Kenya.

A 20-by-9-foot classroom can hold up to 40 students and be equipped with 11 desktop computers. Each classroom comes with monitors, a server, and a projector. The building is made from local materials to boost local revenues while providing a building with educational value.

Aleutia is a company which builds computers for schools and clinics that are powered by solar panels at a cost of about $20,000. They are currently building solar powered classrooms in 47 villages around Kenya. $10,000 goes toward structural costs and the other $10,000 goes toward the equipment. The solar panels come pre-installed in order to reduce costs.

Two classrooms can be preloaded onto a 40-foot flatbed truck.

Aleutia’s founder, Mike Rosenberg, wants to create local micro-grids that will power communities and allow the power to transfer as needed. So if the school has extra power available it can be transferred to a clinic building that is using more power.

Kenya has made significant progress since 1999 to ensure that more children are getting an education and becoming more literate. They spend on average 6.7 percent of their GNP on education, which is an increase from 5.4 percent in 1999. However, one million children are still not attending school.

Primary education in Kenya is free, but families do not have the money or resources to provide for their children to excel in school and compete globally. The classrooms from Aleutia and Safaricom can reduce the costs for families and help Kenyan children become more competitive on the global level by providing them with resources not available to other parts of the world.

An estimated 20,000 kids will benefit from the classrooms in 47 Kenyan counties that are gaining energy from the sun to provide internet access and learning resources to students.

– Donald Gering

Sources: Fast Company, Good News Network, Social Progress Imperative, UNESCO
Photo: Google Images

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Humanitarian Response Faces Increasing Pressure to Reform

Humanitarian_Response
The humanitarian system is facing increasing demand to reform its approach to crisis response. The demands are for the system to become more flexible and transparent in order to better meet needs, utilize resources more efficiently as well as improve local capacity. But, why now?

Our world is changing rapidly and there is an increasing demand to solve new problems in an ever-changing world of ongoing conflict. As a result, UN’s Secretary-General has initiated the World Humanitarian Summit to be held in Istanbul on May 23-24, 2016, where he seeks to challenge the ways humanitarian organizations work together to deliver aid and save lives.

In 2014, $23 billion was spent on crisis response. Yet, the international emergency aid system is still failing vulnerable regions such as Syria and Ukraine.

IRIN, an independent, nonprofit news organization, suggested various ways UN humanitarianism could change to Ertharin Cousin, head of the World Food Programme (WFP), and Kyung-wha Kang, Assistant Secretary-General of the UN’s humanitarian coordination body, OCHA.

Among the many ideas for reform is localizing the humanitarian response system. This not only involves having the local communities making crisis response decisions, but also changing the humanitarian funding methods. Currently, larger organizations such as OCHA and WFP receive the vast majority of the funding, while local organizations receive little funding.

Another important reform proposal, is making the top jobs available to everyone, not just permanent members of the Security Council. This is something the UN has been heavily criticized for.

Having only people on the inside of the organization and not bringing an outside perspective is definitely not conducive to change. It’s also not conducive to avoiding politicisation, one of the many causes of humanitarian problems.

Despite all of these ideas, the question still remains – is reform the answer to a more efficacious humanitarian response system or should we get rid of the system all together?

– Paula Acevedo

Sources: IRIN News, World Humanitarian Summit
Photo: Flickr

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H&M Designs T-Shirts for Global Citizen Festival

Global_Citizen_Festival
H&M is known for providing fashionable and affordable styles for men, women and children. However, the Swedish clothing store chain also does its part to promote sustainability across the world. That’s right – H&M knows how to make fashion sustainable.

A proud partner of the Global Poverty Project, H&M is dedicated to supporting the mission to end extreme global poverty and building sustainable lives for people around the world.

By default, H&M is also in a partnership with Global Citizen, the online platform for the Global Poverty Project that provides crucial information about ongoing problems in the world and actions global citizens can take to eliminate them.

Most recently, H&M and Global Citizen have launched an exclusive t-shirt line to promote the Global Citizen Festival this fall. Musicians Coldplay and Ed Sheeran also contributed to the designs to show their support for the fight against global poverty. Coldplay and Sheeran will also perform at the Global Citizen Festival on September 26th.

Each shirt has a design unique to the musician and is made entirely of sustainable materials. At $9.95, the shirts are on sale at all H&M locations in the U.S. and 25 percent of the proceeds go to Global Citizen.

Furthermore, H&M encourages customers to donate gently used clothing to be recycled. Donation stations are located in every H&M store nationwide until Sept. 17, in a box that advertises the Festival.

Tickets for the Festival are free of monetary charge. Instead, guests must earn their tickets by taking actions against poverty. For every customer that purchases a t-shirt or donates clothing, H&M will provide them with the opportunity to earn free tickets.

Sheeran expressed his excitement to work alongside H&M and Global Citizen to create a shirt that fights back against poverty, uniting people to take meaningful action. T-shirts and fashion are no longer all about style; fashion is now also about taking sustainable steps towards a positive future.

– Sarah Sheppard

Sources: PR News Wire, Global Citizen 1, Global Citizen 2
Photo: Google Images

Salt-Tolerant Plants: The Crop of the Future

salt_tolerant_plants
Farmers along India’s coast struggle to make a living, owing their hardships to the rising sea level, an issue negatively impacting countries around the world. Scientists believe there is a solution: salt-tolerant plants.

According to a study done by the Indian Space Organization (ISO) and the Central Water Commission (CWC), the coast of India has lost nearly 96.6 square miles over the past 15 years.

Due a combination of increased sea level and natural disasters including cyclones and tsunamis, Indian scientists from the M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation (MSSRF) are left with few options.

“The biggest problem in India is just the very large population. We can say people can relocate, but where could we even accommodate all those who need to move inland?” said M.S. Swaminathan.

Since the rising sea level is becoming a crisis, M.S. Swaminathan scientists have created a small greenhouse with salt-tolerant plants known as halophytes to test crossbreeding and gene modification. Currently, 350 salt-tolerant plant species could possibly become crops in the future.

“Saltwater agriculture is considered a futuristic area. But it really shouldn’t be,” said marine biologist V. Selvam, the M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation’s Director of Coastal Research. “Very soon there won’t be enough land and water to meet our needs.”

According to the UN’s Food and Agricultural Organization, the world population is set to rise nine billion by 2050, driving the demand for food up 60 percent. It is imperative for world leaders to find nearly 296 million acres of farmland to keep up with the staggering increase of food.

University of Arizona Environmental Science professor Edward Glenn believes the world’s irrigated acreage could be increased 50 percent by reusing saline water and salinized crop fields for halophytes.

“As with aquaculture replacing wild fisheries, it is inevitable that halophytes will have their day,” he said.

Unfortunately, in small villages along the coast of India, salt-tolerant plants are negatively impacting the area.

Within the village of Tetakudi, salt-tolerant plants Salicornia brachiate and Suaeda maritime are known to the villagers as “chicken feet” due to their weed-like growth. The plants’ uncontrolled growth has already forced 12 families to move elsewhere.

If this trend continues, experts say these costal regions will be forced to grow non-food crops including biofuels.

– Alexandra Korman

Sources: BBC, CBC, Hindustan Times
Photo: CBC

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Improving Education Levels for Women in the Middle East

women_in_the_middle_east
Women in the Middle East are subjected to extreme patriarchal systems that often deprive them of their human rights and their dignity. In 1995, Dr. Golnar Mehrah a UNICEF education consultant published a report titled “Girls drop out of primary school in the Middle East and North Africa.”

In his report, Dr. Mehrah set out to discover why despite the fact that girls’ enrollment rates had increased significantly since 1985, girls were dropping out before the 5th grade. In this report, he found that there existed a gender disparity in the enrollment of girls in primary school in the Middle East and North Africa. The primary reason for both male and female dropouts in the Middle East and North Africa region was poverty.

Their parents pulled them from school in order to help with domestic and agricultural tasks. In many cases, there were a lack of basic programs for students such as an available teacher for a given grade. In some villages in the Middle East and North Africa regions lack educators past a certain grade level making it difficult for students to be promoted to the next grade.

A report by the Population Reference Bureau on the Middle East and North Africa region sheds light on the challenges that women face in the region. Two key factors highlighted in the report was the MENA culture and the oil based economy. The report shows a clear gender biased toward men in the region.

In the report, women were asked if they could only afford to send one child to a university and they had a son and a daughter who would it be. An overwhelming majority of the women said they would pay for their son over their daughter to go to school. The statistics were shocking with 39 percent in favor of the son going on to higher education and only 8 percent in favor of the daughters.

There is a clear son preference in Middle Eastern culture that has privileged them with certain advantages in their society. In certain places in the MENA region this gender biased is enforced by a set of codified laws. This trend is slowly changing with the rise of women activists in Islamic society who demand better treatment for women.

Recently a news report from U.S. News and World Report shows a rise in enrollment rates for women in several countries in the Middle East and North Africa region as of 2014. The current global score for the Middle East and North Africa region is 31 which is actually higher than the global average of 30.

As foreign aid and development enter the region, many MENA countries are seeing the economic benefits of breaking away from rigid tradition and encouraging women’s participation in education. Egypt, in particular, is making great strides toward women’s education.

– Robert Cross

Sources: Public Reference Bureau, UNICEF Report, US News and World Report
Photo: Open Equal Free

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Médecins Sans Frontières Responds to Congo Measles Outbreak

Measles_outbreak
A measles outbreak has been occurring in the Democratic Republic of Congo since the beginning of the year, with 16,500 cases reported from January to June.

The Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF – also known as Doctors Without Borders in the U.S.) was able to take responsive measures starting in March, vaccinating over 287,000 children either to combat measles or to prevent it.

Since May, all of the children aged 6 months to 10 years in the Malemba Nkulu health zone – 101,000 in total – were vaccinated.

Over 500 members of the MSF team have been deployed to respond to the measles outbreak in the Congolese provinces. They are working to transport and administer vaccines and care for those afflicted by the disease. But the fight against measles calls for more than just brave, skillful responders.

The challenges in treating the epidemic are great and many, but organizations like MSF overcome them by being aware of these challenges so that they can be addressed.

The last time that Katanga (the Congolese province where the most cases are being seen) had a measles outbreak this serious was in 2011. MSF and other organizations involved in treating this outbreak are drawing on the lessons they learned from 2011 to treat this outbreak more efficiently.

The head of the MSF mission in the Congo, Jean-Guy Vataux, cites several barriers to fighting the disease: “shortage of funds, running out of vaccines, problems maintaining the cold chain. . . and a lack of qualified human resources.”

Shortage of funds is a problem humanitarian organizations have always been familiar with. Organizations like the Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF) and the Measles and Rubella Immunization Initiative provide grants to humanitarian organizations – they have funded several vaccination campaigns during the current outbreak.

Donations from governments, organizations, corporations, and individuals can be sent to groups like these, or also straight to the organizations fighting the disease on the ground (MSF, WHO, etc.)

Beyond the scope of finance, organizations are working together to make sure they reach as many people as possible.

In Sudan, health professionals involved in the response have noted the increased effectiveness of response when different organizations, such as MSF and UNICEF, work together. It is through the teamwork of different organizations that barriers, like marshy roads that make villages difficult to access, can be evaluated and worked through.

The Ministry of Health in Sudan and WHO are working together on a plan of action to help about 180,000 people in the Zamzam camp. Currently, the camp has ongoing routine immunizations for children and pregnant women. Eight different vaccination centers are up and running, staffed by 20 vaccinators.

Areas such as case investigation and response measures are also being reevaluated for efficiency. Investigations are particularly pertinent because oftentimes, the disease goes untreated, ad thus deaths go unreported and statistics are inaccurate. Without a proper understanding of the situation, resources can’t be allocated to where they are needed.

According to Dr. Malik Alabbasi, Director-General of the Public Health Care Directorate in the Federal Ministry of Health, recent reports have already reflected improvement in case management and implementation of vaccines.

The situation in the Congo and Sudan is grim in many ways, but through the collective effort of organizations determined to make a difference, the fight against measles is making slow and steady progress.

– Emily Dieckman

Sources: All Africa, WHO, MSF 1, MSF 2, Reuters, Time, OCHA, Vaccine News Daily
Photo: Doctors Without Borders

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Humanitarian Data Exchange Speeds Up Relief Efforts

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Humanitarian relief projects involve massive undertakings, and often organizations employ hundreds or even thousands of aid workers to get the job done. It’s no surprise then that relief efforts require huge amounts of logistic planning and coordination.

This can be difficult to achieve accurately and quickly as communication infrastructure may be downed or poorly developed to begin with.

Further, it is difficult to track the individual efforts of aid workers across large developing, or vastly affected regions. As a result, relief may be slow, disorganized, and ineffective. In order to deliver aid more quickly and efficiently, the UN has teamed up with San Francisco based tech company Frog to develop the Humanitarian Data Exchange, or HDX for short.

The goal of the project is to streamline humanitarian data. In the past, relief workers compiled thousands of documents and data points in a variety of formats. The HDX standardizes the methods in which data is entered and collected, thus making finding specific data points easier with less crucial time wasted.

The HDX contains numerous data points, most complied by aid workers on the ground. The network can be accessed from any computer or mobile device with an Internet connection. Users then search for a specific dataset using a basic search engine.

The data includes region-specific populations, available medical services and their inventories, national poverty indexes, the number of homeless in the area, and hundreds of others.

The UN first implemented the HDX in West Africa during the Ebola epidemic. Currently, aid workers coordinating earthquake relief efforts are most actively using the HDX in Nepal.

The HDX has currently 76 different datasets for Nepal; many of these include maps and topographical information, as remote Nepalese regions are difficult to traverse due to limited infrastructure.

Nepal is not the only country benefitting from more efficient aid; the HDX lists data in 244 locations. Data is available to the public as well, and can be found at their website.

– Joe Kitaj

Sources: Forbes 1, Forbes 2, RW Labs
Photo: Forbes