Dear Mr. President:

The U.S. Global Leadership Campaign (USGLC) recently sent a letter to President Barack Obama urging him to shift America's focus from military spending to diplomatic programs as the main approach to addressing foreign policy and national security issues.
"In times of humanitarian crisis, our military power can provide the logistics and organization to get help fast to those in need, but the military cannot build sustainable societies. Investments in our civilian international affairs programs are critical to bolstering our national security by addressing transnational threats such as terrorism, infectious diseases and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and stabilizing weak and fragile states. The military can only help create the conditions necessary for our diplomatic, development and humanitarian programs to effectively address these issues."
The letter emphasizes the effectiveness of using non-military tools, calling for an increase to the currently underfunded foreign affairs budget which represents 1.2 percent of all federal spending.
Source: USGLC

Less on Weapons, More on Poverty

India is home to one-third of the world's poor. At the same time, the country has a huge fascination with arms and aviation. 14% of their total budget was spent on defense last year, 45% of which was on weapons alone. Last month, they hosted 25 other countries in the 7th Biennial Aerospace Exhibition. This fascination with military power has brought forth a lot of criticism from different local civil society and advocacy groups. In response to the exhibition, these groups held a parallel event emphasizing the need for India to spend less on defense and focus more on solving their domestic crises of starvation and deprivation.
Source: ModernGhana.com

Donate Without Reaching for Your Wallet

Igive.com is a great website that allows you to raise money for your favorite cause simply by using its online search engine. Every time you use it, $.02 is added to your selected cause. The total donation gets mailed to the organization every month. You can also raise money by doing your online shopping on 700+ selected sites such as Amazon, Barnes& Noble, Cheap Tickets, eBay, Hallmark, and much more.

Making donations has never been easier, and it costs you nothing- simply log in to iGive, find the cause you want to donate to (The Borgen Project, of course), and watch the donations add up as you surf the web or do your shopping!

$5 Million Grant to Six Major Humanitarian Agencies

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation recently donated $5 million to CARE, Catholic Relief Services, Mercy Corps, Oxfam, Save the Children and World Vision. With support from the foundation, these humanitarian agencies have launched the Emergency Capacity Building Project (ECB) in 2005. The project aims to change the way disaster relief is currently being done, where emergency help is often inconsistent. Over the next few years, ECB plans to implement innovative new methods for disaster relief operations including online data-sharing systems and guides for field staff. With this new funding, they will be able to make significant improvements towards more effective emergency relief.
Source: CARE.org

Millennium Campaign Director Discusses Failing Economy

In January, BBC Hardtalk interviewed Salil Shetty, the director of the UN Millennium Campaign. The director discussed the current economic situation and its effects on impoverished countries, challenging rich countries to take responsibility for the crisis:
"I think even if one person is hungry in the world today that should be unacceptable, given the prosperity we have … We need to disaggregate analysis when we talk about issues. The fact is that only seven countries in the world account for two-thirds of the hungry people in the world: India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, China, Indonesia, [the Democratic Republic of the Congo] and Ethiopia. We actually today have as many obese people in the world as we have hungry people. So there’s no shortage of food. It’s just a question of distribution… Inequality is a big, big cause of hunger today.... We've spent $1,300 billion last year on arms … So if we can spend that kind of money on wars, why can’t we spend $35 billion to help achieve the … Millennium Development Goals? … It’s not a matter of not having the resources, it’s a matter of having the political will."
Read the interview here.

A Powerful Noise

Don't forget! On Thursday, March 5, in celebration of International Women's Day, A POWERFUL NOISE Live will appear in 450 movie theaters across the United States. Buy your tickets!

More about the film

Find a participating theater near you

Organic Food Production Option for Improvement in Africa

According to a research note from UNCTAD, even as demand for most products is dropping fast in this current economic crisis, demand for organic products continues to grow, creating an opportunity for farmers in poor countries. "Studies from Africa, Asia, and Latin America indicate that organic farmers earn more than their conventional counterparts," the note said, estimating that organic foods carry price premiums for farmers ranging from 30 to 200 percent. Drawing on a study of 331 Ugandan farmers, it concluded that "conversion to organic was fairly easy, involved little risk and required few, if any, fixed investments. The organic households became more food-secure due to higher incomes." In Africa, where agriculture accounts for 57 percent of employment but just 11 percent of export earnings, UNCTAD said ecological farming techniques could have an especially large impact.

Success in Ngreco Gives Hope to the Rest of Indonesia

Like most remote villages in Indonesia, Ngreco suffers from a high incidence of malaria. The village’s remote location means residents are inaccessible to district health workers, and have little access to health care services. In eastern Indonesia, where malaria is endemic, malaria rates are usually 20-30 percent, but at one point in Ngreco it reached 80 percent. In 2006, a grant from the local government allowed the village to build a much-needed concrete bridge. While the grant alone was not sufficient, the villagers contributed their time and resources to make up the difference, receiving 50-70 percent of their normal wages. The construction of the bridge created cheaper prices for the goods they purchase, higher selling prices for their produce, easier access to schools and hospitals, and a drastically reduced malaria incidence of just 20 percent. Ngreco's experience shows that the government's goal of eliminating the mosquito-borne disease by 2030 is not impossible.

Source: IRINNews

Nothing but Nets Makes a Slam Dunk

The United Nations Foundation’s Nothing But Nets campaign announced a few weeks ago that its supporters have successfully raised more than $1.2 million to provide long-lasting insecticide-treated nets to more than 273,000 refugees in four camps in Kenya before the summer’s rainy season. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) will distribute the 128,000 nets over the next few weeks. Says Adrianna Logalbo, Director of Nothing But Nets, “As I help distribute nets here in Dadaab camp, I am thankful to the thousands of individuals who have donated as little as $10 to send these life-saving bed nets. The refugees I’ve met with have survived displacement, discrimination and sometimes war - they should not then die of a malaria infection caused by a mosquito bite."

Source: United Nations Foundation