Five Ways Global Communities Fight Poverty in Ghana

A non-profit organization called Global Communities works to end poverty in Ghana with a 5-point plan in conjunction with USAID’s Multi-Sectoral Nutrition Strategy.

The non-profit organization works in more than 20 countries around the world, with Ghana being a focus of the recent programs. Global Communities, created about 60 years ago, works with the private sector, governments and local communities to provide the “means and ability to live and prosper with dignity,” something it ensures under its organization’s vision.

The Maryland-based organization paired with USAID in support of the Multi-Sectoral Nutrition Strategy to be implemented over the years 2014-2025. The program’s goal seeks to reduce chronic malnutrition by 20 percent over those 11 years. Global Communities has put forth these five goals in hopes of accelerating the fight against malnutrition in Ghana.

1. Provide more opportunities for economic growth through microfinance

Individuals who do not have access to the capital provided by large financial services corporations can gain access to funds through various microfunding institutions. These smaller companies allow a more intimate relationship between the lender and the borrower. Global Communities works through Boafo Microfinance Services in order to provide low-income Ghanaians with the money for new businesses, education and homes.

2. Build a more “resilient” Ghana by improving the nutrition in local diets

In order to reach this goal, Global Communities has partnered with the USAID/Ghana Resiliency in Northern Ghana (RING) program to “reduce poverty and improve the nutritional status of vulnerable populations.” The introduction of the sweet potato in local Ghanaian farms was a successful implementation of the partnership. Both USAID and Global Communities hope to educate communities on the importance of good nutrition instead of just providing temporary relief.

3. Create pathways for urban youth to become financially independent

Global Communities has joined the Youth Inclusive Entrepreneurial Development Initiative For Employment in opening up the construction sector to Ghana’s youth. In five of the biggest cities in Ghana, the initiative hopes to “reach more than 23,000 youth” by teaching them the skills for employment. Because Africa’s youth makes up a majority of the population, targeting this demographic is the most effective way to reducing poverty in Ghana.

4. Improve access to clean water and sanitation

Working with both the public and private sector, Global Communities is working to enhance the current water and sanitation infrastructure. With focus on “slum communities” in three cities, the non-profit seeks to optimize every individual’s condition while constructing water and sanitation services that can be sustainable. These efforts are paired with USAID’s Water Access Sanitation and Hygiene for the Urban Poor (WASH-UP) and USAID’s WASH for Health (W4H). An important part of the relief is affecting a change in behavior which can help create a poverty-free society that operates without relief.

5. Upgrade local neighborhoods and reinforce political and social institutions

After the basic needs of food, water and shelter are met, a society can begin to upgrade its political, economic and social conditions. Global Communities, with the Bill & Melinda Gates SCALE-UP program, echoes this idea as it reinforces educational and financial institutions for residents in the low-income communities of Accra and Sekondi-Takoradi. The expansion of government services, such as female inclusivity and public transportation, in those regions is being implemented through the Our City, Our Say project.

Global Communities is just part of a larger non-profit coalition fighting against global poverty in Ghana. The process includes numerous programs with funding from various foreign governments, each generating results through their focus on different parts of the Ghanaian society. Readers can follow the various programs and outcomes on the Global Communities website.

– Jacob Hess

Sources: Global Communities 1, Global Communities 2, USAID 1, USAID 2
Photo: Borgen Project

Nutrition Strategy Counters Vitamin A Deficiency in Ghana

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

Improving Nutrition Boosts IQs in Developing World

To say poverty is a complex issue is an understatement. The conditions that lead to and perpetuate poverty occur across levels, making it different for individuals, organizations and governments to address. Targeting initiatives toward healthy individual development is imperative to reduce poverty in the long-term.

Poverty, at its core, is a stressor. An inability to gain access to proper nutrition, quality medical care and education greatly affects the well-being of individuals and families.

For children, the effects of extreme poverty are magnified, which has implications for brain development, psychological well-being and ability to handle conflict. Iodine deficiency, which is common in developing countries, can lead to neural tube defects during pregnancy, especially if the fetus is female.

Iodine deficiency is the most common preventable cause of mental retardation in children; the CDC estimates that 18 million children worldwide are born disabled as a result of the deficiency. Currently, two billion people are at risk for iodine deficiency.

Iodine, in addition to other micronutrients, is critical for healthy brain development and functioning. Initiatives to address micronutrient deficiency work to not only reduce world hunger but also ensure that children can have healthy brain development.

Ensuring healthy brain development is not just preventing deficiencies, it gives children increased potential to develop abstract thinking skills. As noted by James Flynn, a psychologist who researches global patterns of IQ scores, intelligence increases as societies modernize.

Through modernization, individuals are more likely to have access to education, have more cognitively demanding work and utilize logic more often in their daily lives. In turn, critical thinking becomes more necessary and there is a need for individuals to have strong working memory and abstract thinking skills.

Flynn has also documented the “Flynn Effect”: as societies develop, the average IQ score increases. This is happening rapidly in developing countries; Kenya, for example, has seen an eleven point increase in IQ scores over a fourteen-year period. In contrast, the U.S. has seen an eighteen point increase over a 55-year period.

While it is difficult to untangle all of the factors contributing to developing countries’ increasing IQ scores, access to education and better nutrition are most likely strong influences on this gain. These countries are developing and modernizing simultaneously, which accelerates the increase in intelligence scores.

Flynn also argues that, in developed countries, the trend towards smaller families have exposed children to more adult speech, which further improves a child’s intelligence. Perhaps it is arguable, too, that as impoverished communities gain access to medical care and family planning and the birth rate reduces, these children reap similar benefits.

As organizations continue to implement programs fighting world hunger and reducing micronutrient deficiencies, this gain in IQ scores for developing countries is an important reminder that at its core, development work is an investment.

Investing in nutrition for individuals in poverty can bring better brain health, which leads to improved academic performance and increased resiliency, thus empowering people both now and in the future.

– Priscilla McCelvey

Sources: CDC, Vintage Books, Scientific American, UNICEF
Photo: Flickr

UN Promotes Breastfeeding

On August 1, 2014, the United Nations kicked off World Breastfeeding Week in the hopes of launching a worldwide initiative to educate and encourage more mothers to breastfeed. World Breastfeeding Week is celebrated in 170 countries around the world from August 1 to August 7.

This year’s particular celebration is focused on promoting the link between breastfeeding and the Millennium Development Goals, especially MDG 4: decreasing child mortality.

Among the United Nations officials launching the start of this week was Executive Director of the U.N. Children’s Fund, Anthony Lake. In a statement marking the importance of World Breastfeeding Week, Lake stressed, “Immediate breastfeeding within the first hour of birth could prevent one in five unnecessary deaths…that’s more than 500,000 children every year, more than 1,500 children every day.”

Breastfeeding not only supplies good nutrition for infants, but also reduces the risk of malnourishment and the risk of obesity later in life. “By supporting nutrition and strengthening the bond between mother and child,” said Lake, “breastfeeding also supports healthy brain development.” Breastfeeding also helps prevent growth stunting, a tragedy that affects millions of children every year both physically and cognitively.

Although breastfeeding is the most cost-effective and healthy way to support young babies, fewer than half of the world’s newborns are breastfed regularly.

In order to change this, UNICEF is working with governments and local communities to end false marketing and the use of breast milk substitutes, in order to make it easier for women to breastfeed their infants.

Dr. Noel Zagre, the UNICEF Regional Nutrition Advisor for Equatorial and Southern Africa, explained that too often people talk about breastfeeding in general terms. However, the important thing is to teach mothers how to breastfeed effectively, meaning putting the child on breast milk no more than an hour after birth and continuing to exclusively breastfeed for the first six months of life.

Although the number of children under the age of five that die each year has declined in recent decades, there are still nearly seven million that die every year. Forty percent of these children are newborns.

Dr. Zagre noted evidence that “many countries are not yet doing very well even though we know that we have also observed a lot of progress in other countries…some countries are still having very low exclusive breastfeeding rates like five percent while others are…reaching 89 to 95 percent.”

The United Nations is determined to institute plans to promote breastfeeding and educate communities and governments around the world about infant health and the importance of breastfeeding effectively. Although progress has been slow, Dr. Zagre noted the importance of bridging the gap between these startling statistics.

– Cambria Arvizo

Sources: UN 1, UN 2, All Africa
Photo: Tribune

What Do We Really Know About Our Food?

The average person makes approximately 200 food-related decision per day. This statistic makes it seem as though food is one of the few things over which we have control. Or do we? While the choice is entirely up to each individual, do we always have all the knowledge necessary to make an informed decision?

Socially learning which foods are poisonous and which are nutritious was a crucial evolutionary step. But in the era of the grocery store, information about food is abundant and often confusing. What is more, food information provided by labels, the media or even so-called independent reviewers usually comes with ulterior motives.

According to Public Health Perspectives blogger, Beth Skwarecki, the concept of nutrition can be manipulated for marketing purposes or to even create a fear fad. Take, for example, the controversial topic of genetically modified organisms. There is so much information both against and for it that most of the information is more confusing than informative to consumers.

As a teacher of nutrition at a community college, Skwarecki says that it is important for people to develop their “baloney detectors.” Once you understand the science behind each topic, it is much easier to make an informed decision.

This method might work in developed countries, but what about people in poor countries? Residents of the industrialized world have better access to information, so that if someone takes the time to research the issue, he or she can make better food choices. But what about people in developing nations that depend on foreign aid to cover their most basic nutritional needs?

Low income and food insecure people are the most vulnerable to lack of nutrition. According to the International Food Policy Research Institute, while substantial progress has been made over the last decade in agricultural practices, progress in nutrition and health of poor farmers and consumers in developing countries is still slow.

One of the strategies proposed is to increase access to nutritional food. However, this also means implementing educational programs that would allow people to understand where their food comes from, and where to find the most added-value nutrition.

So whether it is for people in advanced nations or in the developing world, one of the most important elements to nutrition is having access to correct information. In the end, this comes back to the most basic notion of having a say in what we eat, and how we allow the content of our food to impact our lives.

-Sahar Abi Hassan

Sources: Public Health Perspectives, International Food Policy Research Institute
Photo: The World Bank