Information and stories about poverty reduction.

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The World Alliance of Cities Against Poverty

The World Alliance of Cities Against PovertyOne voice may not always be enough for the world to hear, but when a community of more than 900 cities joins together to combat and confront development challenges such as global poverty, being heard is a guarantee. The World Alliance of Cities Against Poverty (WACAP) is a network of more than 900 cities, some of them located in nations such as the United Kingdom, Turkey, Ethiopia, among many more. This vast number of cities collaborate together to mobilize change with individuals, governments, and anyone willing to bring a helping hand into confronting and ending global poverty.

When a community comes together, there is the power of partnership and collaboration to depend upon. With this strength magnified, the ability of the network to make strides in development is multiplied.

When a city wants to join WACAP, they don’t only envision an improvement in their own communities, but an open opportunity to help fight urban poverty everywhere. This is the idea of cities helping cities. The cooperation between the cities is a vision of strengthening development. In the mission of WACAP, this vision is comprised of sustainable development in the urban context, understood through economic, environmental, and social dimensions.

Poverty kills thousands and leaves many people leading lives of constant despair and struggle. In order to create hope for these people living in poverty-stricken cities, WACAP is in an enduring partnership that will work to alleviate their suffering and build community networks that people can rely on.

– Jada Chin

Source: WACAP

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The South Asian Paradox

The South Asian Paradox
South Asia is experiencing what one World Bank economic advisor is calling the South Asian Development Paradox. Ejaz Ghani notes that despite experiencing rapid economic growth, the region still houses the largest concentration of people living in poverty in the world. Ghani writes on his observations and makes recommendations on how to remedy this South Asian Paradox.

India makes up nearly 80 percent of South Asia’s GDP and is recognized as an emerging economic powerhouse. This progress is being experienced as well by other South Asian countries transitioning from low-income to middle-income status. Regardless, what is being seen right now is a shift in the “geography of poverty.” More than 70 percent of the world’s poor are now concentrated not in low-income countries but in these middle-income countries with more poor people in South Asia than there are in Sub-Saharan Africa. Ghani predicts that this is a pattern that is likely to continue over the next decade.

In South Asia, the number of poor has increased from 549 million in 1981 to 595 million in 2005. In India, where three-quarters of these poor reside, the numbers rose from 420 million to 455 million. Oddly enough, the poverty rate for India fell from 60 percent to 40 percent in this same time frame. Conventional wisdom has associated decreasing poverty rates to growth. Poverty rates are indeed going down but not at fast enough rates to reduce the number of poor people. This lag in poverty reduction is not due in part to underperformance as India, China, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh are in line with the global trend and what economic growth would predict it to be. Unfortunately, South Asian countries have not fared as well as China and Thailand. Merely being on par with the global trend is not enough for South Asia, which has the largest concentration of the poor.

Ghani posits two big questions for South Asia:

• Has the pace of poverty reduction kept up with the pace of income growth?
• Has the pace of human development and gender parties kept up with the pace of income growth?

With what is being seen happening in South Asia, the alternative view that growth by itself without improving social indicators such as education, health, and women’s participation in economic activities may not be enough, seems to ring true. He compares India to China, which has roughly the same population. Both have witnessed an increase in inequality of distribution of wealth across people, with inequality in China increasing more rapidly. Despite this, China has seen much faster poverty reduction while India has experienced much slower economic growth.

Ghani notes that South Asia lags behind in education, health and gender inequality. In India, the growth enrollment ratio in secondary school, the ratio of the number of students attending university to the number of students attending school, is 40 percent, much lower than East Asia’s which is at 70 percent. Also, the region is plagued with the highest rates of malnutrition and the largest number of undernourished children in the world. In terms of gender inequality, women’s labor-force participation rate in South Asia is the lowest in the world.

To address this South Asian Paradox, Ghani prescribes direct policy interventions to accelerate social progress. In particular, he stresses the importance of improving gender inclusiveness. By reducing gender inequality in the workforce and education, South Asia can hope to see a revolutionary transformation in society.

– Rafael Panlilio

Source: World Bank

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3 Important Factors For Haiti Earthquake Recovery

3 Important Factors For Haiti Earthquake Recovery
Despite global outreach following the massive earthquake on January 12, 2010, Haiti has been stalled in effectively alleviating the widespread poverty historic to the island, which has increased dramatically after the disaster. President Michel Martelly, elected twenty months ago, has recently proposed a five-point plan of employment, rule of law, education, environment, and energy to help lift his country out of turmoil. But this plan will not affect stagnation unless Haiti addresses its dysfunctional political system, public frustration, and donor fatigue.

1. Political System
The political system in Haiti is one factor that is working against the Haiti earthquake recovery. The system is conducive to winner-takes-all politics, which makes compromise, an essential aspect of a stable political system, difficult to attain. It is also unhelpful that President Martelly faces an opposition-dominated parliament that only exacerbates the inability to compromise. Haiti does not currently have any strong political parties that represent the majority of its poor citizens. This has lead to a system that relies mainly on cronyism rather than public support in order to get things done.

2. Public Frustration
The unfair political climate has led to frustration among the Haitian public. A staggering 350,000 citizens that lost their homes during the earthquake over two years ago are still living in camp settlements across the capital. These people are waiting to see tangible improvements to their daily lives. Their plight has not been made any easier by the drought, two tropical storms and rising food prices. The president faced 128 public protests across Haiti between the months of August and October alone, according to the International Crisis Group.

3. Donor Fatigue
Not only the general public, but also foreign aid donors are feeling frustration over Haiti’s political gridlock. The lack of transparency with foreign aid funds and lack of progress in reconstruction is causing Canada, one of the biggest supporters of Haitian renewal, to reconsider tens of millions of dollars that was meant for the country. According to figures published by the United Nations, only half of the $6.04 billion pledged to Haiti since the earthquake has been disbursed to the country thus far, and only ten percent of that figure was distributed directly to the government. Until Haiti finds a solution for its political woes, the financial aid that Haiti’s earthquake recovery needs could be in a gridlock of its own.

While these issues are important to consider for the Haiti earthquake recovery, it is also important to keep in mind that the international community is still deeply interested in seeing a Haitian recovery. Identifying the key obstacles to any issue is the first step to solving them. Hopefully, steps two to infinity will present themselves sooner rather than later.

– Sean Morales

Source: AlertNet
Photo: Christian Science Monitor

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Teenager Helps Residents of a Garbage Dump

Teenager Helps Residents of a Garbage DumpWhile most teenage girls her age are reluctant to take out the trash, Courtney Quigley is begging her parents to return to Guatemala City to help the poverty-stricken residents of a garbage dump there. In the past, Courtney has worked with Potter House, a nonprofit which helps the 11,000 people living in the garbage dump. Out of that population, 6,500 are children.

According to the Lake Zurich Patch, Courtney first fell in love with Guatemala when she was nine and her family took a trip to build playgrounds with Kids Around the World, an organization whose primary goal is to provide safe play equipment for children who find it difficult to be “just a kid.” Courtney describes the garbage dump as being 40 acres filled with trash and yet the children somehow manage to stay positive and in high spirits.

While her family has been on other mission trips, Courtney has fallen in love with Guatemala. She was able to return in 2011, meeting a family of seven who lived in a 9 x 10 shack. One of the children, a 15-year-old girl, was pregnant and Courtney decided that something needed to be done to help improve their living condition.

To help, Courtney and her friends are hosting a “Hope’s in Style” fashion show fundraiser on February 24 at the Garlands Center in Barrington, Illinois.

Although she is now living in the United States, the memory of the children in Guatemala still remains vivid in her mind.

“There is nothing here that is hopeful, but when you shake hands, hug, and talk to people, they are so full of hope, so full of faith,” Courtney said. Their determination to make the best of their situation is what inspires her to keep moving forward.

 – Pete Grapentien

Source: Lake Zurich Patch

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Raise the Minimum Wage, Inflation is Real!

Raise the Minimum Wage, Inflation is Real!In his State of the Union address, President Obama has called for a national increase in the minimum wage standard of the country. The President has proposed to raise the minimum wage to $9 from its current $7.25. The newly proposed amount would also have safeguards to account for inflation, which the current standard does not.

This demand comes at a time when the National Center for Law and Economic Justice supports that one in seven Americans lives in poverty, with one in sixteen Americans living in deep poverty. Poverty, of course, exacerbates tension and has been linked to decreased social mobility, increased rates of violence, and increased likelihood of being a young parent.

Addressing poverty, both at home and abroad, is a key, central way to better the standard of living for millions as the better able families are to support themselves, the more efficient the employee, the better the consumer, and the more stable the economy.

CNNMoney, however, has debunked the myth that raising the minimum wage in America is the only element necessary to raise a family out of poverty. For a family of four making at least $9/hr, and while taking advantage of several key tax breaks, Tami Luhby of CNNMoney writes that the new rate would be barely enough to lift the family above the poverty line, and hardly enough to raise their standard of living by much in light of the U.S.’s dependence on a tax code that has been decried as “broken” by many.

While raising the minimum wage would be a step in the right direction towards addressing poverty in the United States, advocates for economic justice argue that helping people find higher-paying jobs is another, more effective, means of fighting poverty.

– Nina Narang

Sources: NCLEJ, CNNMoney
Photo: Occupy

Charity Helps Fight Poverty and the Taliban – with Weddings

Afghan_wedding
In war-torn Afghanistan, the country’s youth believe that there is something much stronger than a life of poverty and the Taliban regime’s oppressive rule: love.

Although banned by the regime, Valentine’s Day is becoming a popular, albeit secret, celebration among Afghanistan’s romantic young couples. In a country where most marriages are arranged, Suliman and Farzana Sharifi’s marriage is unique, as the 23-year-olds met and married for love and consider Valentine’s Day a special celebration of their relationship, and hopefully even a way to reduce hate and violence in their country. Farzana said, “when love comes even the Taliban can’t stop anybody.”

An American charity operating in the region had the same outlook and has been using weddings as a tool to fight against rampant poverty and against Taliban recruitment throughout Afghanistan. The act of marriage can be prohibitively expensive in the country, where the average annual income is a mere $500, and a dowry to the bride’s family for marriage can reach up to $10,000, making a wedding financially impossible.

Comfort Aid International recognized this conundrum and organized the weddings of 38 couples last year alone, which local representative Sayeed Saleh Qasimi says is a vitally important way to keep young men away from Taliban recruitment: “We did this to prevent our youth from joining the Taliban side. They often join the Taliban because they are single and poor.”

Comfort Aid International has collaborated with local NGOs to negotiate dowry prices down to make it much easier for young couples to marry, and so far has coordinated weddings for more than 1,000 couples in Afghanistan. One beneficiary of the charity, Sayeed Hussaini, is young and unemployed but maintains that he would not have been able to marry without the charity’s help. He also points out that young men do not have many choices financially, saying “a lot of people are doing bad things for money like joining the Taliban.”

The Taliban have been known to target regions where severe poverty is rampant, using poor and uneducated youth who have minimal opportunities for survival other than to join the extremist cause that promises food and shelter.

Hussaini goes on to state that he is still very poor, but will not join the Taliban and risk his life, because of his new wife.

– Christina Mattos Kindlon

Source: NBC News

Bangladesh Poverty Reduction Story Wins UNDP Award

Shyamola Begum And Her Two Daughters
A story of poverty reduction in Bangladesh has come in second place in an annual U.N. Development Programme Competition. The purpose of the competition was to capture the result of transformative development in a story. “These stories highlight UNDP’s critical work on poverty reduction, democratic governance, crisis prevention and recovery and the environment and sustainable development,” said UNDP chief Helen Clark.

The story involves Shyamola Begum of Dhaka and how she managed to support herself and her two children after her husband left her. Shyamola’s situation is not uncommon in Dhaka. Every year, tens of thousands of women are left by their husbands who have given up hope in the face of poverty and lack of employment opportunities. However, after receiving an entrepreneur grant of roughly $30 from the UK’s Urban Partnerships for Poverty Reduction fund, Shyamola was able to open a tea stall. In just a few months, she had more than doubled her investment.

“Until I became destitute, I had never imagined I could run a business, that I could do accounts, that I could be successful,” said Shyamola.

Her success is also not uncommon. Over the past five years, 55,000 families like Shyamola’s all across Bangladesh have received similar assistance from UPPR, the largest urban poverty reduction initiative in Bangladesh. Over the past decade, Bangladesh’s poverty has decreased by half, 90 percent of young girls are enrolled in schools and child mortality has gone down by 60 percent.

Regarding the UNDP stories, Clark said, “They remind us that people are and always will be the center of UNDP’s work.”

– Rafael Panlilio

Source: The Daily Star, UNDP

 

 

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Top 7 Celebrities Helping the World’s Poor

brad-pitt-angelina-joli-charity-poverty

Sometimes we just want to know who is doing what to help those less fortunate, especially what celebrities are doing. Those special individuals who have tremendous wealth and are compelled to give some away in recognition of their good fortune, and in stark contrast to those who have so very little.

The site Look to the Stars lists celebrities and all their philanthropic contributions. The top 7 celebrities who are helping the world’s poor are Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie who together give to 27 charities and in 2006 alone gave away $8 million. Bono is next on the list, not only contributing to 14 specifically humanitarian groups but actively creating organizations, concerts, programs, strategies and even clothing to reduce poverty. Then, Bill Clinton follows with contributions to 13 organizations, but primarily focuses on the foundation he created in his name to help with humanitarian causes. Rock legend and well-known philanthropist Annie Lennox donates to 11 related charities, principally Amnesty International and Greenpeace. George Clooney not only contributes to 10 poverty groups but also created his own campaign specifically to help those suffering in Darfur – Not On Our Watch. The seventh leading celebrity actively addressing poverty issues is musician John Legend, supporting 7 related campaigns and starting his own with partner Jeffrey Sachs – the Poverty Action Tour, trying to educate and inspire U.S. university students to get involved in the cause.

Top charities being supported by celebrities to assist the world’s poor are UNICEF, Save the Children, Oxfam, Entertainment Industry Foundation, Comic Relief, Soles4Souls, Artists for Peace and Justice, ONE Campaign, Sport Relief, (RED).

Interestingly, Bono was compelled to start his charitable work after seeing The Secret Policeman’s Ball in 1979, and John Legend immediately took action after reading The End of Poverty by Earth Institute, director Dr. Jeffrey Sachs.

– Mary Purcell

Source: Look To The Stars
Photo: Hollywoodnose

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Obama’s State of the Union and Global Poverty

obama global poverty

President Obama’s State of the Union speech for 2013 is a grand vision of America, mapping out the ambitious future he sees for it. He spoke of fellow citizens who put their neighbors and civil “obligations” before their own needs, as examples of the American identity. He said, “America must remain a beacon to all who seek freedom.” And he affirmed the necessity to eradicate extreme poverty around the world, as a matter of principle and self-interest.

“We also know that progress in the most impoverished parts of our world enriches us all. Not only because it creates new markets, more stable order in certain regions of the world, but also because it’s the right thing to do.”

Obama went on to say that the United States would join with their international allies in a mission to end “extreme poverty in the next two decades.” A proclamation of concerted effort to connect more people to the global economy, to elevate women’s social status, encourage Americans to serve communities in need – to help them help themselves, save children from preventable death, and work towards eliminating AIDS.

Obama talked of Americans living in poverty, asking Congress to raise the minimum wage to $9.00 so that no one working full time would still have to suffer from lack of adequate pay. Additionally, he stressed how fare and free international trade would “support millions of American jobs,” thus helping to increase income for everyone.

In the President’s eloquent fashion, he connected the strength and honor of American citizens to citizens all over the world fighting for human rights and integrity. In the end, he asked citizens to be “the authors of the next great chapter in our American story.”

– Mary Purcell

Source: You Tube

Chinese General Secretary Visit To Fuping County

Chinese General Secretary Visit To Fuping CountyXi Jinping who is a General Secretary of the Communist Party of China visit the Fuping County late last December. Fuping County is regarded as one of the most impoverished localities in China with an annual net income per capita that is less than half the set poverty line of 2300 yuan, or $390 USD.

Xi Jinping visited two villages’ homes, clinics, and businesses and spoke with each community concerning income, food, education and medical care. Xi’s visit was broadcast on national television to showcase the rural poor of China. Fuping County resident Tang Zongxiu imparted, “The General Secretary knows life here is difficult and he visited us to ask about our situation. He won’t let us suffer.”

Following his visit to Fuping County, government and private sponsors donated money, food, and other household items. Government work crews and researchers were dispersed and also aided the county. Xi stated, “The most arduous and heavy task facing China in completing the building of a moderately prosperous society is in rural areas, especially poverty-stricken regions.”

The General Secretary emphasizes a renewed focus on policies that support agriculture, rural areas, farmers, and poverty alleviation. Xi Jinping also condemns the embezzlement of poverty-reduction funds. Xi commented on Fuping County remarking, “I want to know how rural life is here. I want to see real life.” Xi Jinping is next in line to become president of China following incumbent President Hu Jintao.

– Rafael Panlilio

Source: CCTV, NY Times, Shanghaiist