The Urgent Need to Help Poor Countries

According to a New York Times editorial, the only thing worse than the economic situation in the U.S. and Europe is the economic situation in developing countries. Unfortunately, many people do not realize this as major news networks around the world are highlighting the financial crises in the wealthy nations. Although everybody around the globe is being affected, it is the poor countries that do not have the resources to bail out their failing economies. They need outside help, and developed countries should waste no time providing it.
Source: NY Times

Microfinance Helps Individuals

The December 2004 tsunami in Banda Aceh, Indonesia, destroyed thousands of lives and left many people without a home or a job. Yuli's family was one of the few who lived through the ordeal, but were left with nearly nothing. After the tsunami, Yuli opened up a small kiosk to sell baked goods made by other local women, while her husband struggled to earn money as a driver. When she heard about the Grameen Foundation, she took out a loan for $100 with which she was able to buy more goods to sell, and thus increase her daily profit. She is now quickly on her way to repaying the loan, with plans to take out a bigger one later to build a bigger shop. With the help of the loan, she was able to improve her family's situation, keep her children in school, and start saving up money for a house.
Source: Grameen Foundation

Saving Children's Lives in South Africa

South Africa is set to become the first country in Africa to provide its children with a life-saving vaccine that experts say could prevent the deaths of an estimated 5.4 million children globally in the next two decades. The pneumococcal vaccine, which should be available in April, will prevent diseases such as meningitis and pneumonia which often leave the few survivors with mental impairment, hearing loss, or a legacy of seizures. South Africa would also be the first country in the developing world to self-finance introduction of the vaccine, despite its hefty price tag.

Source: IRINNews

Secretary Clinton Committed to Fighting TB

March 24, 2009 was World Tuberculosis Day, a global campaign to build awareness about TB and the severe reality that it takes the lives of 5,000 people each day. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke out against the disease yesterday. Specifically, she talked about the role that the United States should play in combating TB:

"I strongly believe the State Department should continue and expand its commitment to reducing the global burden of TB, and I look forward to working to improve the global response to this and other leading causes of death for the world's poorest communities."

Source: US Dept. of State

Children Participate in Literacy Campaign

Send My Friend to School is a campaign throughout schools in the UK that aims to hold its government accountable for the millennium promise to send every child to school. 75 million children around the world do not have access to education, and while this is a big improvement from the 100 million in 2005, the number is still too high. This year, the campaign is focusing on The Big Read, an event involving young people from 100 different countries. Students are encouraged to write stories and poems underlining the importance of improving literacy for every child in the world, sending those stories to their prime minister.
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Saving Lives Does Not Require Great Sacrifices

In an inspiring article, Peter Singer describes the psychology behind giving money to help children living in poverty. His argument is that nobody would stand by and watch a helpless child drown in a pool. At the same time, many people do nothing as children around the world are dying from diseases such as diarrhea, something that is easily preventable. Psychologists label this the bystander effect: a person is more likely to help when they are the only one around able to do so, and people are less likely to help when they see others around them not helping. According to Singer, people's unwillingness to help these children is mostly due to the fact that they believe they won't really have an impact, when this is in fact untrue.

Singer suggests levels of donation that Americans could give without having to make any drastic sacrifices: "They begin at 1% of income for 90% of American taxpayers, rising to 5% for those earning above $105,000 a year, and gradually increasing until they peak at 33.3% for those earning more than $10 million a year. That would raise more than $500 billion a year—more than double a U.N. estimate of what it would take to cut world poverty in half."

Source: Newsweek

Crocodile Mile - Dirty Water

How Mobiles have Changed the World

More than half the global population now pays to use a mobile phone, according to a new UN report. With this surge in users has come a huge expansion in the mobile services available, from instant money transfers to public health advice to internet access. The fastest growth has been in Africa, in places like the Congo where the country has only about 20,000 land lines after the system collapsed under a ruinous dictatorship. Now, traders shipping imports to distant towns, farmers sending produce to the main cities, and those involved in the thriving gold and diamond smuggling trade use their phones to check prices, text quotes and arrange deliveries. Says Deograsias Mukeba of the Democratic Republic of Congo: "Everyone but the very poor has a cell phone, even the guy who only makes a few dollars a day picking up passengers on his bike. Even the woman selling things by the roadside. Almost everyone finds the money."

Source: The Guardian

World Water Day

Today, March 22, is World Water Day, a UN project aimed at bringing attention to the lack of access to clean water worldwide. In observance, the US Agency for International Development (USAID) is teaming up with Rotary International to bring clean water and basic sanitation to communities in selected developing countries. Dominican Republic, Ghana, and the Philippines will be receiving an estimated $2 million for the efforts. The results of the projects in these three countries will determine whether other developing nations will receive similar aid.
Source: USAID

The Blue Sweater

Earlier this month the Acumen Fund announced the release of The Blue Sweater: Bridging the Gap Between Rich and Poor in an Interconnected World, by Acumen's CEO and founder, Jacqueline Novogratz. On a trip to Rwanda, Novgoratz came across a young boy wearing a pullover, with her name still on the tag, eleven years after she donated it to a Goodwill in Virginia, an incident which inspired her to write this memoir. The goal of the book is, in the words of the author, "to inspire more people to become engaged in working to solve the problems of global poverty."

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