Water is the best 'silver bullet' to end poverty and improve quality of life. Water improves education, health, and development.
Water is the best 'silver bullet' to end poverty and improve quality of life. Water improves education, health, and development.
Every time I hear POLIO, I think of these two young boys that I saw recently in a Congolese village. They are the only two children not standing erect. They were stricken and crippled by polio. Also, they were too poor and did not have access to braces. So they crawl around in the dirt and dust. BUT, they were lucky! They were alive!!
Health officials said "There is a serious outbreak of polio in the Republic of Congo:120 cases of acute flaccid paralysis (a syndrome related to polio) and eight deaths." I heard the story last week at a Rotary District 6560 meeting. Our Polio contact just mentioned southern Congo was the site. I thought it was about my Congo (the Democratic Republic of the Congo) instead of the other Congo (the smaller and northern neighbor, the Republic of Congo).
IRIN Africa | CONGO: Eight killed by epidemic akin to polio | Congo | Health & Nutrition.
An epidemic akin to polio, which has raged for nearly two weeks in the main commercial city in southern Congo, Pointe-Noire, has already killed eight, and several dozen cases have been reported, say health officials.
"Patients admitted to hospitals have flu-like symptoms. They are also presenting with paralysis starting in the lower limbs which spreads to the upper limbs, "said Director-General of Health Alexis Elira Dockekias.
"This epidemic is related to the recent polio outbreak. The only difference is that this time the disease affects adolescents and adults, unlike polio which affects mainly the young and children," he said, adding that those affected by the epidemic are aged 15-45.
He called on the public "not to panic but to observe strict hygiene measures: boiling drinking water; washing vegetables properly; and cooking cassava [the staple food] thoroughly."
Yes, Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) is essential to achieve universal education and to end extreme poverty.
Here's a Press Release from John Sauer, Water Advocates.
Why only train women and not men?! Roy Bunker, founder of Barefoot College, trains poor rural women to solve problems in their communities and villages. He answer the question below.
BUNKER ROY « map magazine's street editors#more-9205#more-9205.
Why did you specifically choose grandmothers for that project?
Because we feel that men are just untrainable! They are restless, ambitious and compulsively mobile and all want a certificate. The moment you give anyone a certificate in a village anywhere in the world, they’ll use it to get a job in the city.
If you go to any remote village in the world you’ll find very young people and very old people. So we thought the best investment for us would be to work with a grandmother because she’s been there for years and doesn’t want to leave, plus she’s not ambitious and doesn’t want a certificate and would be a marvellous engineer.
When you train women, they like to train other women. But if you train a man, he doesn’t want to train another person because his job is threatened. None of the grandmothers have ever let me down – they’ve all stayed and become role models and change agents.
So what if they’re illiterate? Where is it written that if you can’t read and write you can’t be an engineer or an architect or dentist or designer?
That’s what the Barefoot College has tried to prove over a long period – that you shouldn’t be penalised for being illiterate. The sky is the limit and anything is possible.
I agree with Roy Bunker about training men. I have seen it happen in Bulape, Congo. It contributes to village drain. We have to train women.
It's a fact the internet has changed your life. That's whether you believe it or not, or whether you think it has or not, or whether you wanted it or didn't. It did!
The mobile (cell) phone will change the lives of billions of poor people in the world. It will change the world.
Millions of people are starting to use the mobile phone for banking and commerce.
Jan Chipchase Goes to Washington | Blog | design mind.
"In a world of 8.6 billion people, there are approximately 5 billion active cellular subscriptions, and roughly 1.2 billion products sold, they're thinking about a phone like this (hold up Nokia 1110) that costs about $30, can survive the rigors of everyday life — knocks, heat, sweat, dust — can make calls, send text messages, access SIM card, an alarm clock, services and it has what is probably the world's most played game — snake. If it breaks, there's typically someone in the neighborhood who can fix it, often cannibalizing other devices.
"It is important to recognize that almost every adult on the planet, as well as lot of children, aspires to sole mobile phone ownership (sometimes of more than one) and that they will overcome considerable obstacles to owning one. The key differentiator of personal ownership of a mobile phone over alternatives such as the neighborhood phone kiosk, or sharing a phone amongst a number of people is convenience (not needing to go through another person, being able to communicate when you want) and privacy.
It's called the paradox of plenty. African countries rich in natural resources such as oil, gas, diamonds, gold, and forests but the people live in extreme poverty.
Letter From Europe - Trying to Spread Africa's Wealth - NYTimes.com.
In years past, Africa was always the outsiders’ cornucopia, the font of gold and diamonds, slaves and minerals, cotton and rubber and, more latterly, oil.
These days, the continent’s riches draw a new cast of prospectors and predators, but the question is the same: who benefits — the people, or a coterie of political and military elites that has sunk deep roots in Africa’s postcolonial loam, fed and watered by foreign powers and investors?
Some people have called it the paradox of plenty: across the globe, around 3.5 billion people live in countries rich in oil, gas and minerals, according to an advocacy group called the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, or E.I.T.I. Those people should all benefit, the group said, but “when governance is weak, it may result in poverty, corruption and conflict.”
Fair trade arrangements are part of the solution. Is it the silver bullet? A hail of bullets is needed to end poverty. The bullets needed are agriculture, health, education, infrastructure, water and sanitation, and fairer trade arrangements.
Rethinking Jeffrey Sachs: New Proposals for the End of Poverty - STWR - Share The World's Resources.
Take the Democratic Republic of Congo. Canadian negotiators recently convinced the DRC government to barter away mineral concessions worth some $120 billion to China in exchange for a paltry $6 billion of infrastructural development. Why are the Congolese people so desperately poor when they're literally sitting on a goldmine? Because -- as in the days of old European colonialism -- their mineral profits are being siphoned by first-world corporations that can get away without paying them the real price of the commodities they extract or the labor that digs them up. Africans don't need aid, they need fairer trade arrangements.
Nicholas D. Kristof, a Pulitzer Prize winning author of the New York Times and co-author of best-selling book Half the Sky, wrote about the ugly secret of GLOBALLY poverty. That is, the poor spend a higher portion of their meager income on alcohol, tobacco, and others. Also, they spend less on their children education, health, and others.
Duh! Mathematically when you make less income, the choices that the poor make or MAGNIFIED.
It is fact and true. And it's universal and does not just apply to the poor in Africa, the Republic of Congo (Nick traveled in the other Congo), my Congo, or the inner city or rural areas of the US.
I think the one of the root causes of this errant spending is lack of a vision of the future. Frankly, I have NOT seen it in rural Congo. But I am sure it happens everyday throughout the world where the poor do not see a chance of breaking the cycle of poverty. They can not see beyond today.
In many situations, the Congolese poor bank and invest in their children's prosperity. It is their living retirement plan or long term health care insurance.
I agree with Nick that women or mothers spending (or savings) habits are better than their men and husbands. Also, I agree that most microfinance plans help the poor (especially women) focus on savings. It forces them to think about the future and develop a vision of the future.
My vision of the future is that the poor develop a vision of a brighter future for themselves, their families, and their communities, and their countries.
Op-Ed Columnist - Moonshine or the Kids? - NYTimes.com.
There’s an ugly secret of global poverty, one rarely acknowledged by aid groups or U.N. reports. It’s a blunt truth that is politically incorrect, heartbreaking, frustrating and ubiquitous:
It’s that if the poorest families spent as much money educating their children as they do on wine, cigarettes and prostitutes, their children’s prospects would be transformed. Much suffering is caused not only by low incomes, but also by shortsighted private spending decisions by heads of households.
That probably sounds sanctimonious, haughty and callous, but it’s been on my mind while traveling through central Africa with a college student on my annual win-a-trip journey. Here in this Congolese village of Mont-Belo, we met a bright fourth grader, Jovali Obamza, who is about to be expelled from school because his family is three months behind in paying fees. (In theory, public school is free in the Congo Republic. In fact, every single school we visited charges fees.)
In the world, there will be 5 billions mobile (cell) phones. But 4 billion will be in the hands of the poor. There are more phones in the developing (poor) world than the developed (rich) world. Here's an example of what could be done with these 4 billions phones. These phones are cheap, less than $12 each. These phones are simple, just 12-keys. They are not just for talking. They can provide access to information for agriculture, health, and education.
Sub-Saharan Africa is the epic center of the developing world. The Grameen Foundation (and there local partners) is partnering with Google and MTN, a local mobile service provider in Uganda. The video is about this amazing project.
There many boat anchors located at thousands of hospitals and clinics in Africa. Two things are wrong. There are no boats and bodies of water nearby. The boat anchors look like non-functioning medical equipment. But sometimes, they look like just plain old pieces of non-medical electronic equipment. The common thread is lack of repair, service and maintenance capabilities by its African owners.
Engineering World Health and Billy Teninty are out to prevent more boat anchors from accumulating.
What good is access without sustainability? This question couldn’t be more appropriate for biomedical equipment technicians in Rwanda. Eleven hospitals throughout Rwanda received substantial medical equipment donations from GE. These donations provided unprecedented access to modern medical care, yet the donations and access alone were not enough to build a sustainable in-country system for equipment maintenance and repair. The EWH Biomedical Equipment Technician training program is actively engaged in a capacity building project encouraging healthcare technology maintenance programmatic sustainability.
Seize life! Eat bread with gusto, Drink wine with a robust heart. Oh yes -- God takes pleasure in your pleasure! Ec. 9:7 (MSG)
Recent Comments