ONE Communications Coordinator El Medhin recently had the chance to talk agriculture with Evelyn Nassuna, Ugandan county director for Lutheran World Relief.
In the video, Nassuna discusses her work with small, local farmers in Uganda. This has changed not only their lives, but the lives of families and communities as a whole. But she also talks about the challenges. “Nobody wants to invest in farmers,” she notes. “They are a very high-risk group.”
El notes, “Nassuna’s voice may be quiet, but her experience and stories speak volumes about how African poverty can end, and how we all can affect change!” Check out El’s interview and share your thoughts in the comment box below.
Maria Belenky of the Results for Development Institute discusses her organization’s newest program, Center for Health Market Innovations.
In South Africa, a text message reads: “Frequently sick, tired, losing weight and scared that you might be HIV positive? Please call AIDS Helpline 0800012322.”
A country where cell phone penetration has reached 90 percent, South Africa is harnessing mobile phone technology through Project Masiluleke, an initiative that catalyzes treatment for HIV/AIDS and TB through text messages that provide information on disease symptoms and locations of nearby counseling and testing centers.
By helping bring patients earlier into the health care system, the initiative is significantly improving the chances that they will live longer and healthier lives.
Project Masiluleke is an example of a health market innovation, a program that harnesses private sector health care resources in developing countries to deliver better health and financial protection for the poor. These initiatives have the potential to correct many of the inefficiencies and inequalities within the health system, but up until now, information about them has been sparse and scattered.
This Monday will be World Water Day – and we’re getting ready to celebrate the 200 million people who have access to clean water for the first time. So how can you join the celebration?
It couldn’t be simpler. Go to oneweekforwater.org and sign up to donate your Facebook and Twitter status for World Water Week. When you donate your online status, ONE and Water.org will post updates on your Facebook and/or Twitter pages, change your profile picture and even update your background to raise awareness about water and sanitation.
Don’t miss the chance join thousands in celebrating clean, safe water all next week. Head to oneweekforwater.org and sign up today!
Check out this partner post on the debt relief and the Jubilee Act from our friends at Jubilee USA Network.
Imagine that your family has barely enough money to scrape by. A school sits down the street, but fees make it too expensive for you and your siblings to attend—so you’ve never been able to go to school.
But then imagine that one day the government announces that it has cancelled those school fees. You can go to school. You finally have the chance to learn everything you wanted to know.
This is the reality in Tanzania. Thanks to debt relief savings in 2001, three million more children have enrolled in school, 2,500 new schools have been built and 28,000 new teachers have been recruited.
Today we have an opportunity to extend these benefits to millions more around the world.
After months of anticipation, the Jubilee Act for Responsible Lending and Expanded Debt Cancellation was introduced late yesterday by Representative Maxine Waters (D-CA), along with Finance Committee Chairman Barney Frank (D-VT), Ranking Member Spencer Bachus (R-AL), and seven more Republican and Democrat members of Congress. This encouraging bi-partisan effort by Congressional leaders was an important step in continuing the fight to end global poverty.
This bill would give much-needed debt cancellation to 22 additional impoverished countries left out of previous debt relief deals. It would also help put an end to harmful economic conditions and allow for an audit of past illegitimate debts.
Last year, while the Jubilee Act passed in the House of Representatives and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, it didn’t pass the full Senate in time. But today, passage of the Jubilee Act is more urgent than ever—this year, 100 million people were pushed back into poverty due to the economic crisis.
Let’s pass the Jubilee Act in 2010 and help millions more enjoy school for the very first time.
-Hayley Hathaway, Operations and Communications Coordinator, Jubilee USA Network
Check out this Copenhagen post from our friends at Manna Energy Limited. Manna Ltd. is installing several hundred water treatment systems, biogas generators, and high efficiency cook stoves across rural Rwanda, addressing the most critical public health and environmental challenges.
Mugonero sits atop a hill on the western border of Rwanda, accessible only by a red dirt road riddled with bumps and hairpin switchbacks. In a small chapel, on the grounds of a missionary hospital that overlooks the Congo and sparkling Lake Kivu, 3,000 people were massacred in 1994. The Mugonero community is still struggling with how to rebuild after these brutal acts.
Manna Energy Limited — a social enterprise founded to combine the carbon finance market with innovative technologies in an economically sustainable way — is committed to partnering with Mugonero and other communities across Rwanda to help implement sustainable, environmentally sound technologies for clean energy, clean water, and economic solutions that foster health, education and gender equality.
For example, in 2007 at the Mugonero Orphanage in Rwanda, Manna Ltd. and Engineers Without Borders – USA installed a treatment system that is now providing water for 100 AIDS and genocide orphans. As Victor Monroy, the Guatemalan director of the orphanage told us, “The Children’s Village did not have clean water available on-site for the past six years. The only available option to drink pure water was to boil it. Due to the long and relatively complicated process of boiling water, quite often the children decided not to boil the water and suffered from digestive and intestinal problems. Now there is plenty of pure water available to cover all the needs of the orphanage. We are convinced that the health of all our kids will improve considerably through the precious and abundant supply of pure drinking water.”
Manna Ltd. is working to expand these programs through the benefits of the United Nations Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) by generating Carbon Emission Reductions (CERs) from the offset of firewood used to provide basic water and energy needs. We hope that the Copenhagen conference will further enable small-scale projects like these in Least Developed Countries (LDCs)—something that is especially important in LDCs that adopt a policy to offset the use of firewood by replacing it with renewable energy technologies. We also hope that the US will take a leading role in supporting these activities and similar US-based efforts.
With the magnitude of the destruction that occurred in Mugonero and the rest of Rwanda, the challenge of rebuilding the country is immense. Community leaders are working everyday towards improving the quality of life for everyone. But where you might expect a feeling of helplessness, there is instead a common determination to rebuild. Manna is committed to being a part of this effort. We hope those at Copenhagen are, too.
Check out the video below to learn more about Manna Energy Limited and all that we do.
-Evan Thomas, Executive Vice President, Manna Energy Limited
Rotary International is teaming up with violin virtuoso and polio survivor Itzhak Perlman and the world-renowned New York Philharmonic to present the Concert to End Polio, a benefit performance supporting the global effort to eradicate this disabling and sometimes fatal childhood disease.
Polio eradication resonates strongly with Mr. Perlman, who contracted the disease at age four and overcame serious physical challenges to become one of the world’s most celebrated musicians. Mr. Perlman is a winner of 15 Grammy Awards, including a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2008. In this historic, one-night-only performance Perlman will help Rotary in its effort to raise $200 million to match a $355 million challenge grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. All of the money raised will fund critical eradication activities in countries where polio still threatens children.
Rotary International, the World Health Organization, UNICEF, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention launched an initiative to make polio only the second disease to be eradicated. At the time (1988), there were 350,000 polio cases a year. Last year, there were less than 2,000. Worldwide, the number of polio cases has been slashed by 99 percent, preventing five million cases of childhood paralysis and 250,000 deaths. However, the final one percent of cases is the most difficult and expensive to prevent.
The one-night-only performance will be held on 2 December at 7:30 p.m. in New York City.
Learn how you can help at rotary.org/endpolio or purchase tickets for this historic event at nyphil.org/perlman.
Check out this post from Children’s HeartLink, an organization now in its 40th year that sends volunteer medical teams and individual consultants to train, teach and perform life-saving heart procedures for children. They partner with hospitals in South Africa, Kenya, India, China, Ukraine, Vietnam, Malaysia and Brazil.
Greetings from Children’s HeartLink, an international medical NGO working to build sustainable programs to prevent, treat and cure heart disease among needy children in underserved regions of the world. We have a team in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam right now, working alongside a pediatric cardiac team from Singapore and a local team at Nhi Dong 1 (Children’s Hospital 1) to provide training, mentoring and patient treatment.
I wanted to share one small story about our work by introducing you to Le, one of several children receiving lifesaving treatment this week. Le, an only child, had a heart operation Monday, November 9 (his first birthday). When Le was only two weeks old, he developed pneumonia, and his parents took him to the provincial hospital near their home in Angiang Province. A doctor there discovered Le had a congenital heart defect—a ventricular septal defect, or “hole in the heart.” Since then, his family has been making the long trip to Ho Chi Minh City once every month so cardiologists can track his condition. While Le’s treatment expense is covered by the government, his family has had to borrow money to pay for the trips to Ho Chi Minh City, which is five hours by bus from their home. The family’s income is very limited, so this has been a struggle for them.
Now that Le has had his operation, his parents are hopeful he will recover rapidly and that their financial burdens will be lighter. Treating Le’s heart defect has given the family great hope of a better life for both their son and themselves.
Having worked as a volunteer with Children’s HeartLink for years now, I’ve seen this hope firsthand. Nothing brings more joy than a child’s beating heart, and this week in Vietnam is no exception. With 40 years of experience and partners in nine countries, Children’s HeartLink has extended access to high-quality pediatric cardiac care in places where it’s needed most.
-Dr. Joseph A. Dearani, Medical Director, Children’s HeartLink, Mayo Clinic, Division of Cardiac Surgery
Right now, some of the world's biggest oil companies are fighting to keep some of their deals with foreign governments secret. Let's tell big oil we won't be bullied.
Cuts to poverty-fighting programs won't balance the budget, but they will set back progress on Canada's development priorities and risk jeopardizing existing investments.
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.
