As a Hawaii ONE member, I talk a lot about the Aloha Spirit— the Hawaiian tradition of affection, love, peace, compassion and mercy. One of the interpretations of the word aloha is the recognition of the spirit of others, and the notion that we all share the responsibility to care for that spirit.
In a world where millions of people are without the basics— clean water, shelter, medicine and education, it is no wonder that hundreds of Hawaiians have called, written and visited our Senator, Daniel Inouye, asking him to leverage his power as Chairman of the Appropriations Committee, and exercise his aloha spirit to help fully fund US programs that help lift millions out of extreme poverty.
After multiple office visits in by fellow ONE members in Hawaii and a successful petition drive with more than 600 signatures, I decided it was time to take our message to Washington D.C.!
Yesterday afternoon, I visited Capitol Hill to meet with Sen. Inouye’s Foreign Policy aide, Mary Yoshioka. “Sen. Inouye must take the lead to make sure America keeps its promise in the spirit of Aloha to work with the world’s most vulnerable people to end extreme poverty and disease,” I appealed to Mary.
I explained why Hawaiians feel it is so crucial that Sen. Inouye uphold the President’s budget request by allocating $51.85 billion for the Foreign Operations Bill, which funds critical life-saving and development programs like PEPFAR, MCC and Child Survival.
As a Hawaii resident with family members in the Armed Services, I understand that it is not only in our country’s moral interest to help the world’s poorest people, but that it is also in our national security interest that the United States strengthen our efforts to fight global poverty, a belief publically shared by Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Mary Yoshioka said the Senator is a strong supporter of ONE’s issues and will “do his best” when it comes to the allocating President Obama’s full request for the International Affairs Budget and encouraged ONE members to reach out to other Senators and bring them together to support our agenda. She also mentioned the past visits from ONE members at Sen. Inouye’s Honolulu office and that she was impressed by the number of Hawaiians who signed the ONE petition.
Let’s export the Aloha spirit by helping the world’s poorest people to lift themselves out of poverty!
More than 1000 Los Angeles middle and high school students are expected to participate in the innovative Teach Africa™ Youth Forum on Saturday, May 30 at UCLA Royce Hall starting at 10:00 a.m.
Launched last June, Teach Africa™ is a multiphase program designed to provide educators with the background and tools needed to raise student interest in Africa through a multidisciplinary approach. To date, Teach Africa™ has been implemented in Washington D.C., San Francisco, Pittsburgh, Portland, Houston, Los Angeles and Atlanta, orienting more than 1,400 superintendants and principals, training more than 1,700 teachers and educating over 6,300 students.
The day-long Africa immersion program opens with a panel of ambassadors, scholars, and policy makers giving students a chance to learn about the histories, cultures, economies, art and cultures of the 54 nations comprising the continent of Africa.
Students will receive innovative learning materials and will also see the film Africa Today produced by the Discovery Channel Global Education Partnership in collaboration with The Africa Society and with funding from USAID. This compelling film which was directed by Africans in Africa, chronicles the eye-opening cultural and intellectual exchange between Ugandan and American teachers and students. It also shows Africa’s geography, diverse cultures and stories – seen from an African perspective.
The Swedish and Dutch governments announced today that they will suspend $33 million in aid to Zambia following reports about embezzlement in the Ministry of Health. Reports indicate the civil society was calling for the Ministry of Health to publish expenditures, but former President Mwanawasa cancelled the spending reports, which may have led some officials to siphon funds for their own use. In response to concerns that the lack of funding will affect the delivery of health services, the Minister of Finance Musokotwane stated that the Zambian government will develop a plan to fill the gap and investigate the corruption charges.
The transparent publication of spending by donors and governments is a critical component of ensuring money for development is used as effectively as possible. Like the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB, and Malaria, the Swedish and Dutch governments’ response to reports of embezzlement in the health sector suggests their support for the idea that well-governed programs are critical to successful development and that aid can help to encourage transparency and accountability.
Professor Wangari Maathai spoke on the Today Programme this morning on BBC Radio 4. She founded the Green Belt Movement and is the only African woman to have won the Nobel Peace Prize. Maathai argues that good governance is absolutely essential for development: “I’ve come to the conviction, unless we fix governance, the rest will not be fixed.”
For this to happen, it needs African leaders to show commitment. She goes on to say that the African Union has an important role to play in all this. She specifically mentions President Jakaya Kikwete of Tanzania, who is keen to make the African Union more democratic.
The IntraHealth Open Initiative is a collaborative endeavor bringing together global leaders in music, technology and public health to foster a new generation of African IT developers and health workers who participate and lead in creating solutions to the biggest health crises using open source technology.
To raise awareness for this work we recently released a special album titled “OPEN Remix” featuring Grammy winning African superstar Youssou N’Dour’s song “Wake Up, It’s Africa Calling” reinterpreted by some of the top names in music. Nas, Peter Buck of R.E.M., Duncan Sheik, Mopreme Shakur, Q-Burns Abstract Message, Beef Wellington, Gavin Hardkiss, Afrissippi and Toubab Krewe with DJ Equal and Umar Bin Hassan of The Last Poets are among those who have joined in.
The songs are being released free, by major distributors, and on our website in the spirit of open source, under a creative commons license, to mirror the philosophy and mission of the initiative; that through sharing and collaboration, in music, technology or health, we can all make a great difference in the world.
We also launched a Global Remix Contest with Indaba Music inviting everyone to join in and remix the song using the same tracks made available to celebrity artists. Over 500 remixes were submitted from 21 countries. The general public and the Indaba community selected the top remixes over the last few weeks and the final selections were made by Youssou N’Dour, David Bither of Nonesuch Records and Toubab Krewe.
We decided to announce the winner at the 36th annual Global Health Council Conference in Washington DC taking place this week. This year’s focus is new technologies for health and global health leaders from around the world are gathering to discuss the implications of growing connectivity, technological innovation and mobile phone use in the developing world. We held the inaugural meeting of our OPEN Council, a team of luminaries in public health, entertainment and technology (including a representative from the ONE Campaign) concurrent with the Global Health Council to address key issues in open source collaborative approaches to solving global health challenges.
Afrissippi, Toubab Krewe, DJ Equal, Umar Bin Hassan and Indaba Music joined us for a special celebration and award ceremony at the conference and announced Studio Mali as the winner of the Global Remix Contest. You can listen to their version here. We congratulate Studio Mali and thank all of the people who shared their time and artistry to support this work.
Supporting African technology professionals, eHealth workers, and national leaders who understand, use, and support open technologies to improve health is essential. When there is a critical mass of connectivity the benefits of a network grow larger than its costs. Capacity increases as people share and expand their knowledge and their collective experience, and open source allows for that kind of large scale collaboration. We have chosen to put significant resources into open source technology for years because of it’s great and inclusive potential for creativity and increased local leadership and innovation.
For us it’s not about technology alone, it’s about people, communities, and the processes that are going to lead to efficient and sustainable global health results.
-Pape Gaye, President and CEO IntraHealth International
On the Financial Times blog, Steve Radelet offers a response to the question “Is aid working?” Radelet takes to task Dambisa Moyo’s “extreme views” by suggesting the more important question is “Under what circumstances does aid work, and what can be done to make it more effective?”
Ms. Moyo argues that “Millions in Africa are poorer today because of aid; misery and poverty have not ended but have increased.” But this storyline is at least a decade out of date. Since 1996 – twelve years now – economic growth across sub-Saharan Africa has averaged 2.3 per person per year. And it is not just due to oil. There are 18 strongly performing countries, none of them oil exporters, that together have achieved per capita growth averaging 3.1 per cent, meaning that average incomes have increased nearly 50 percent in twelve years. Most of these 18 countries are now democracies, including Mozambique, Tanzania, Ghana, Lesotho, Namibia, Mali, South Africa and others, and the majority are measurably improving governance. Across Africa literacy rates are up, infant mortality rates are down, and 34m more children are in school since 2000. And according to analyses by the World Bank, poverty rates (at $1.25/day poverty line) peaked at 59 per cent in 1996 and dropped to 51 per cent by 2005, a remarkable drop in nine years. Poverty in Africa has been falling, not rising.
What happened? The turnaround is primarily due to stronger leadership in Africa, much better economic policies, lower debt burdens, new cell phone and internet technologies, and an emerging and vibrant business class. What about aid? Aid has been neither panacea nor demon. Much has been wasted on sordid dictators, projects that didn’t fit local needs, and bureaucracies that ensure only a fraction of funding gets to those that need it. But much has helped support success.
In the Financial Times, Mo Ibrahim argues that while investment and good governance will ultimately solve Africa’s problems, “effective aid has an important role to play in the quest for sustainable economic growth and poverty reduction.” Ibrahim offers this assessment in light of the recent debate about aid in the wake of Dambisa Moyo’s book Dead Aid. Ibrahim argues for a “holistic approach to development in Africa that is centred on good governance.”
The critical argument should not be about aid or no aid – no one can question the necessity of pure humanitarian aid as long as it satisfies basic good governance criteria. The argument should be about where to focus aid to achieve the best returns for donor taxpayers and aid recipients. I propose two areas to focus aid: the hardware of Africa, infrastructure and regional integration; and human software, in the form of education and health.
The reality is that most African countries are sub-scale and fundamentally unable to compete in a global market. If economies the size of the UK, Germany and France find regional integration necessary to ensure growth, then 53 un-integrated African states have a competitive disadvantage. This fragmentation is evident in Africa’s transportation infrastructure, geared towards trade outside rather than within the continent. Africa needs to integrate its economies and open their borders to each other. Development aid can help these efforts and facilitate intra-African trade. This capital investment cannot succeed without investment in education and health.
Finally, while debate on development aid is of great importance, more of this energy should be spent on climate justice. Africans have emitted the least carbon per capita but will have to face the greatest consequences of its emission. A worthier use of the time of these great African and other economists is to devise a solution that allows the continent to meet the adaptation and mitigation costs of climate change.
ONE is campaigning to ensure that the Congressional budget does not cut foreign assistance programs like Feed the Future that help people break the cycle of poverty and hunger.
The Horn of Africa is experiencing its worst drought in 60 years. More than 11 million people, mostly nomadic pastoralists and farmers in south-central Somalia, north-eastern Kenya, and south-eastern Ethiopia, are severely lacking access to food.
2011 marks 30 years since the first cases of AIDS were documented. Take a closer look at the specific, achievable goals we must hit by 2015 to make this year the beginning of the end of AIDS.
As aid agencies warn more than 9 million people could be affected by a food crisis in East Africa, world leaders are failing to keep their 2009 promises to tackle the causes of chronic hunger and support farmers in the world's poorest countries.
More than 1000 Los Angeles middle and high school students are expected to participate in the innovative 
