Rise Against Hunger: An Organization Striving to Create an Impact

With an alarming 805 million people in the world impacted by hunger, organizations such as Rise Against Hunger are striving to do their part in alleviating malnourished and hungry nations. Because poverty is largely caused by conflict and lack of resources, it is said to be the principal cause of hunger. Rise Against Hunger ignites the passion and drive to address this reality by doing its part in feeding millions and ending global hunger.

What Does Rise Against Hunger Do?

Established in 1998, Rise Against Hunger is an international hunger relief organization with aspirations to end hunger by 2030. Its daily task is to distribute food and aid to the world’s most vulnerable. The organization’s 2017 impact report shows that well over 1.4 million lives were impacted by this single organization in 36 different countries, sending out 76 million meals. A crucial factor in its success can be accredited to its four pillars toward ending world hunger:

1. Grow movement
2. Empower communities
3. Nourish lives
4. Emergency relief

An effective tool it uses for growing the movement is the volunteering events it hosts throughout different universities and other organizations. This allows people to come together as a community to take action with Rise Against Hunger by packaging meals for distribution to the world’s hungry.

The organization empowers communities by educating and advocating about topics such as sustainable agriculture and hosting clean water projects. Rise Against Hunger also nourishes lives by giving warm, sustainable meals to those who are in dire need by responding to disasters efficiently, therefore providing effective emergency relief with these prepackaged meals.

Who Does the Organization Help?

Tom Barbitta, the Rise Against Hunger Chief Marketing Director, emphasizes the importance of how education plays a vital role in global poverty and how this, as a result, affects the hunger scale of a nation. “A country has never been able to lift itself out of poverty without first hitting a 40 percent literacy rate,” he told The Borgen Project. “Because of this, around 40 percent of the meals distributed from Rise Against Hunger end up in school feeding programs.”

Children who are living in severe poverty have to spend their time begging for food, rather than receiving an education that will benefit them in the future. The organization keeps this in the forefront of its work and Baritta comments that “we hope to empower young minds to take control of their own community.”

Aspirations Become Reality

A 12-year-old child from Zambia, Aswali, who once did not have adequate access to food, now receives meals each day from Rise Against Hunger distributed by Family Legacy Missions. He is also able to provide food for his family while attending school, decreasing the global poverty rate.

Meals from Rise Against Hunger are also distributed to vocational training facilities. In places such as West Africa, when the people in these facilities have access to meals, they are able to focus on their skills which will, in turn, give them an income that allows them to allocate more food for their families and live life on their own terms.

Rise Against Hunger is an organization that makes valuable efforts toward putting an end to the widespread global hunger. Its impact remains prevalent, with thousands of volunteers joining each year creating an effective tool for growing the movement. Rise Against Hunger understands the importance of every individual being able to make a viable difference toward diminishing poverty.

– Angelina Gillispie

Photo: Flickr

Five Benefits of New Infrastructure in Cote d’Ivoire

In 2012, the Emergency Infrastructure Renewal Project was approved in Cote d’Ivoire. The project’s goal is to create easier access to infrastructure in Cote d’Ivoire in the rural and urban areas. The project is set to run until 2020 and will create new all-weather roads through many rural areas as well as other advancements to help further Cote d’Ivoire’s economy. The bulk of the project, around 30 percent, will focus on urban transport.

In the last five years since the Emergency Infrastructure Renewal Project began, many Ivoirians have already begun to reap the benefits of the project, especially those in the rural and impoverished areas. The following are five positive consequences that have directly resulted from the project.

1. Access to Electricity: By 2017, over 9,000 people in urban areas were granted access to electricity by household connections.
2. Potable Water: The project has helped bring healthy drinking water to more citizens of Cote d’Ivoire. In 2017, 3,735,000 people had access to improved drinking water, versus only three million in 2012.
3. Access to Primary Education: The new infrastructure in Cote d’Ivoire has also increased the access to primary education in the rural areas to over 18,000 people in 2017.
4. Better Health Care Centers: Thanks to the advancements made by the Emergency Infrastructure Renewal Project, 1,400,000 people now have access to adequate health care centers in the rural and impoverished urban areas.
5. Increased Employment: The new infrastructure in Cote d’Ivoire has increased employment opportunities across the country and lowered the unemployment rate to 9.32 percent in 2016.

Unfortunately, despite these advancements in infrastructure in Cote d’Ivoire, the country has still had many setbacks. In 2015, statistics showed that nearly 46 percent of Cote d’Ivoire’s population lived below the poverty line. Many of these people live in rural areas where the advancements from the project have not yet reached.

Ultimately, the infrastructure in Cote d’Ivoire is slowly helping advance the country’s economy. Most of the major benefits will take years to come into full effect. The maturity limit on the Emergency Infrastructure Renewal Project is set for about 40 years, giving Ivoirians plenty of time to help contribute to the project and start harvesting their benefits.

– Courtney Wallace

Photo: Flickr

10 Facts About Poverty in India

A young nation with a long history, India has the second largest population in the world. India is also a regional power with a stable democratic government and an economy that is growing quickly. Despite this, poverty in India is high. This is often portrayed throughout history as “growing pains”. To mitigate these pains, the government is working to diminish poverty in India.

Top 10 Facts about Poverty in India

1. In 1947, India gained independence from Great Britain. Its poverty rate at the time of British departure was at 70 percent.
2. India is the country with the highest population living below the poverty line. Today, the poverty rate in India is 21.1 percent, which is an improvement from the 31.1 percent in 2009. India’s estimated population in 2016 was 1.3 billion.
3. An underdeveloped infrastructure and medical sector hinders equal access to medical care. People living in developed urban areas have a higher chance of receiving medical attention and are at lower risk of becoming ill compared to people living in rural areas. Less than 20 percent of the rural population of India have access the clean water. Unsanitary water conditions increase the spread of both viral and bacterial infections.
4. According to the Asian Development Bank (ADB), a strong supporter of development in Asia, India’s economy grew by 7.1 percent in 2016. The Asian Development Bank began assisting the Indian government with infrastructure and economic development in 1986.
5. The following four facts highlight the 2016 successes from the joint projects undertaken by the ADB and India beginning in 2010. With the help of the Asian Development Bank, 344 million homes have either gained access or improved access to clean water thank to increased investment in irrigation, water treatment, and sanitation. In addition, 744,000 homes are no longer at risk due to flooding.
6. To boost economic growth, India and the ADB have constructed or improved 26,909km of roads though out the country, of which 20,064km are in rural areas, increasing the rural populations access to the economy and healthcare.
7. Thanks to funding from the ADP, the Indian government has been able to build 606,174 units of affordable housing since 2010.
8. To connect these new houses and improve older structures, 24,183km of power lines were hung or laid, while decreasing India’s carbon footprint by 992,573 tons of CO2.
9. Independent of the ADB, the Indian government is considering testing a universal basic income program. Each person would receive 7620 Indian Rupees ($113) from the government to spend, however they choose. A similar program is being tested by Finland. The aim is to fight poverty in India by relieving pressure on the poor. The cash handout would help to alleviate the pressure of any unforeseen expense. However, opponents fear that their banking systems would not be able to handle the sudden increase in cash flow and that food prices may drastically increase.
10. To combat black market corruption and increase tax compliance, the Indian government decided in 2016 to phase out the 500 Rupee and 1000 Rupee notes. All notes were to be deposited within the deadline, and remaining notes would not be considered legal tender.

Poverty in India is slowly but surely being diminished. Careful planning by the government will continue to benefit those stricken by poverty. Proof of this can be seen in the success of the government’s use of invested funds from the ADB. With a growing economy and responsible government, poverty in India will surely continue to decrease.

– Nick DeMarco

Photo: Flickr

Tackling Poverty Together: Canada’s Poverty Reduction Strategy

The government of Canada is showing its commitment to fighting poverty by developing and implementing Canada’s Poverty Reduction Strategy. Canada’s focus on a modern approach to the problem of poverty should be an example to many other countries.

Overview of Canada’s Poverty Reduction Strategy

Approximately five million Canadians currently live in poverty, and poverty costs Canada between $72 and $84 billion each year. Canada has an opportunity to improve the quality of life of its citizens and also stimulate its economy through the Poverty Reduction Strategy. Canada’s Poverty Reduction Strategy included three initial steps:

1. Consulting with Canadians in every area of the country on the issue of poverty
2. Creating a Ministerial Advisory Committee on Poverty that includes a combination of experts as well as people who have experienced poverty themselves.
3. Conducting the Tackling Poverty Together project— a research project that will look at six different communities across Canada.

Consulting Canadians on Poverty

The first step in Canada’s Poverty Reduction Strategy was to consult people from all areas of the country and all walks of life. This phase included a combination of meetings with local governments as well as online forums and town halls so that all Canadian citizens were given an opportunity to be heard. The use of online tools to engage more people in the conversation is a great example of leveraging modern technology to help find solutions for complex problems like poverty.

Establishing an Advisory Committee

Canada’s Poverty Reduction Strategy includes an advisory board of 17 leaders from academia, business and beyond. The advisory group also includes members that have experienced poverty themselves. This is an important reminder that any decision-making body should include those who have lived experience with the topic being considered. The advisory board will discuss issues pertaining to poverty and give advice to the Canadian government.

Conducting Research

The Canadian government has also conducted a case-study in six different communities across Canada to look at what can be done to lift people out of poverty. The final report made key conclusions about what Canada’s Poverty Reduction Strategy needs to focus on moving forward. Many other countries can learn from Canada’s findings. The conclusions were as follows:

1. There is a strong and ongoing need for federal government support to help Canadians get out of poverty.
2. The Canada Child Benefit and Guaranteed Income Supplement are making a big difference.
3. The federal government offers other important programs that could be helping, but very few people are aware of them.
4. Many people cannot access the support they need because of how some programs are designed and delivered.
5. Canadians were unanimous that there is a need for more support in different areas, and by different levels of government, to help people overcome poverty.

An Innovative Way Forward In the Fight Against Poverty

Canada’s Poverty Reduction Strategy should be an example to the world on how to create a cohesive, modern and organized strategy for fighting poverty. However, poverty is a complex issue and there is no one-size-fits-all solution.

Powerful governments like that of the United States and organizations like the United Nations have the opportunity to aid the reduction of global poverty. One way they can do this is by making sure developing countries have the resources they need to implement their own poverty reduction strategies.

– Aaron Childree

Photo: Flickr

Poverty and Hunger in Finland

In America, Finland (along with its fellow Scandinavian nations) is often portrayed as a utopia bereft of human suffering and a model for the rest of the world. The simple truth, however, is that economic troubles in Finland are real, and the nation has had its own set of struggles in the wake of the Great Recession.

The Finnish labor market has experienced three recessions since the 2007-2008 financial crisis. Business Insider reports that Finland suffered the worst economic contraction of any Eurozone nation during that same crisis. The country’s public debt doubled to more than 60 percent of its GDP by 2015.

According to Eurostat, as of August 2017, Finland’s unemployment rate stood at 8.7 percent. That number is not bad, but could be better. Today, 35 percent of Finland’s unemployed are long-term unemployed, representing a significant challenge for the nation as a whole.

However, the potential for these issues to cause poverty and hunger in Finland has been mitigated by the nation’s public welfare system. No one in Finland lives below the international poverty line due to a wide net of benefits covering both the young and the old. According to OECD data, the poverty rate ratio is only 0.04. Social spending at 30.8 percent of GDP and a well-funded, efficient public schooling system undoubtedly contribute to these successes. And there are other innovative ideas as well.

Those who pay close attention to American politics will know that 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton recently revealed that she considered running on a platform of universal basic income, a plan she scrapped because she could not make the numbers work. Earlier this year, the Finnish government started a test run for that very same idea.

Finland’s idea was to give 2,000 Finns ages 25 to 28 who had been unemployed for a year or more, or had less than six months of work experience, a monthly subsidy of €560 for two years, regardless of whether they found work.

However, after a government pushing austerity came to power, the trial size was cut to one-fifth of the original plan, making it too small to be scientifically useful, and regular social programs were scaled back, making it even more difficult to measure the program’s effects. The program may or may not help alleviate poverty and encourage economic growth, but it will be hard to know given the small sample size and lack of controls. Still, the presence of ideas like this show a healthy willingness to experiment by trial and error.

Earlier this year, the Finnish central bank affirmed that Finland finally seems to be emerging from the Great Recession. The bank forecasts that this year will see exports recover and GDP growth reach 1.3 percent, in part due to the Competitiveness Pact signed last year. Strong social programs, powered by economic activity inherent in free and open markets, will hopefully keep poverty and hunger in Finland at a historic low.

– Chuck Hasenauer

Photo: Flickr