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Bush Says Now Is the Time to Give Aid to Poor Nations

LibertySugar — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 03:00:25 -0700

During the White House Summit on International Development, which focuses on increasing good governance, fighting disease, and enhancing economic growth in developing countries, President George W. Bush said prosperous nations must help less fortunate countries now more than ever.

Yesterday, Bush said:

During times of economic crisis, some may be tempted to turn inward — focusing on our problems here at home while ignoring our interests around the world. This would be a serious mistake. America is committed and must stay committed to international development for reasons that remain true regardless of the ebb and flow of the markets.

Bush took the time to take a trip-down his administration's memory lane, touting its aid accomplishments. In part thanks to the Millennium Challenge Account — which helps nations that embrace democracy and free markets build schools, treat those with AIDS, and feed their people — the US has given more foreign aid in the last eight years than during any other president's tenure of the last 50 years.

Do relatively rich countries have a duty to continue their commitments to the poor in other nations during tough times? Perhaps contributing to stability in friendly developing nations means that there's some self-interest in caring for the world's poor.

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Politician's Idea: Paying Poor Women $1,000 to Get Tubes Tied

CitizenSugar — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 07:51:16 -0700

One Louisiana politician's brainstorm for stopping generational welfare — welfare recipients having children who also end up on assistance — is giving birth to huge controversy. The idea? Offering $1,000 to poor women to get their tubes tied. State Rep. John LaBruzzo has a host of other controversial plans including paying poor men to get vasectomies and giving tax incentives to college-educated, wealthy couples for having children — and the plan is causing some medical professionals to point to its similarities to eugenics programs.

LaBruzzo says he's since modified his plan to include temporary forms of birth control, not just sterilization and argues criticism like this, "I don't know how it's eugenics if it's voluntary, and how can it be racist if the majority of people on welfare are white?"

Of the genesis of the idea, the crushing cycle of poverty, LaBruzzo says:

After this recent storm, we had some issues where these people were going into shelters and taking their cigarettes and welfare but didn't have diapers or insulin for diabetic kids, and they felt they were entitled to say, 'Give me, give me.' None of them didn't want to set up cots or do anything.

To see how incentive programs have worked,

Vogue India Has Poor Model Luxury: Tasteless or Beautiful?

LibertySugar — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 09:00:46 -0700

Vogue India decorated poor women dressed in worn clothing with luxury status items. In one editorial photo spread a baby dons a Fendi bib, and in another a toothless woman holds a Burberry umbrella. Considering that 456 million live on $1.25 a day in India, there aren't too many families that can dress their babies in $100 bibs.Critics say the spread makes light of nightmarish poverty in India— for example, thousands of Indian farmers have killed themselves over the last decade because of debt. But the editor of Vogue India told the New York Times that critics need to "lighten up," and that the editorial expressed the fact that: [F]ashion is no longer a rich man's privilege. Anyone can carry it off and make it look beautiful. You have to remember with fashion, you can’t take it that seriously. We weren’t trying to make a political statement or save the world.

While some may say the photo shoot brings fashion to the people, I can see how others could argue that it glamorizes serious human suffering.

Vogue India Has Poor Model Luxury: Tasteless or Beautiful?

Tasteless! It's disturbing to peddle status while the majority struggles for survival.

Beautiful! Poor people should not be excluded from fashion.

Not art, but what do you expect? Brands want to create awareness among a rising class.

Other. I'll tell you in the comments.

Ben Affleck Says Successes in Africa Inspire Him to Do More

LibertySugar — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:00:00 -0700

I checked out a panel on combating global poverty this week, filled with a diverse set of people ready to talk about their experiences surrounding the issue. I was super excited to see panel members like ex-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, and the bearded and articulate Ben Affleck.

A humble Ben noted that he felt a bit out of place, but then shared what he's learned from his time in Africa. Ben thinks poverty activists need to re-package their message so it's not so doom and gloom. He argued that it's "more effective to talk about what people are doing successfully. [The successes] gave me added urgency to get involved."

Ben also highlighted how he and other Western folk are received in Africa. He said:

The countries that hold us in the highest esteem are in Africa. We don't carry colonial baggage. . . . [But] Western folks come in with a sense that "this is how it works." Imposing paradigm is much less effective than imposing solutions into social grooves. You hear people say, "If you teach a man to fish . . ." These people know how to fish, they need a pond to fish in.

Does Ben's insight impress you as much as it impressed me?

Laptops & Role Playing: Is Technology the Answer to Poverty?

CitizenSugar — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 08:00:39 -0700

Though Dungeons and Dragons has weirdly wormed its way into the campaign, technology is popping up worldwide as not an escape from the drudgery of every day, but as an escape from poverty. Laptops and role-playing games are a double click of cure.

One Laptop Per Child, a program designed to bring technology and opportunity to kids in developing nations has completely fulfilled that mission in the tiny South Pacific island of Niue. Every single kid, 100 percent of them, now has access to the Internet on the inexpensive, rugged, waterproof (and pretty cute!) laptops. Though Niue is a developing nation, they've been ahead of the technology curve — in 2003 they were the first territory to offer free wireless to all residents.

Once you've mastered the web, can gaming be a golden ticket? Oh yes. To find out how,

Ad-Rageous: Matt Damon Channels Michelle & Cindy for ONE

CitizenSugar — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 09:02:14 -0700

This new ad from ONE just hit this morning, and it stars Matt Damon's face uttering a slew of famous voices. Damon opens the spot saying, "thanks to everyday Americans who chose to make a difference, millions of lives have been saved in the world's poorest countries." Then words from Michael Bloomberg, Michelle Obama, Cindy McCain and more are heard. The organization ONE is spending $1.8 million on the campaign aimed at encouraging the next president to address world poverty.

The ONE campaign is a nonpartisan group dedicated to help erase global AIDS and poverty. According to their mission, there's only one side to be on in the fight, and 2.4 million people from all 50 states have joined in. They're:

Working on the ground in communities, colleges and churches across the United States, ONE members both educate and ask America's leaders to increase efforts to fight global AIDS and extreme poverty, from the US budget and presidential elections to specific legislation on debt cancellation, increasing effective international assistance, making trade fair, and fighting corruption. Everyone can join the fight. The goal of ending poverty may seem lofty, but it is within our reach if we take action together as one.

To see how Liberty and I will get the inside scoop on the ONE campaign,

Dirt Cakes & Ding-Dongs: Haiti & US Face Unique Food Crises

CitizenSugar — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 08:00:58 -0700

With my appetite sufficiently dampened by the up-to-the minute reports of McCain's facial growth, this story erased it completely, and the picture reduced me to tears. These children live in the Haitian, Port-au-Prince slum of Cite Soleil. Some kids make mud pies for play — but the children in the picture survive on dirt cakes. They eat them.

Like in the pictures below, the cakes are molded of mud and fat and allowed to dry in the sun, the only form of sustenance many Haitians can afford after rice and bean prices have risen 100 percent. One woman who makes the dirt cakes says, "it stops the hunger. You eat them when you have to."

The Director of the aid agency Christian Aid says, "food is available but people cannot afford to buy it. If the situation gets worse we could have starvation in the next six to 12 months." Food aid has been delayed.

While more than 50 percent of Haitians are undernourished, a new study about the state of the future of the US waistline is even harder to stomach. To see it and a clever way you can help feed the hungry,

Free Healthcare Comes to Appalachia on Wheels

LibertySugar — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 03:00:00 -0700

Each year the Remote Area Medical clinic provides free healthcare services to residents of Appalachia's coal mining counties, but people from as far as Indiana travel there for care. This region of the Eastern US is one of the nation's most impoverished, and this clinic-on-wheels wants to help the under- and uninsured.

Some of the 2,500 patients spend the night in their cars, hoping to see one of the 1,400 volunteer medical personnel. The free two-and-a-half day clinic is the largest of its kind in the US, and mostly provides vision and dental services.

The Remote Area Medical clinic sets up in Wise, VA. About 20 percent of Wise County's population are families living below the poverty level, making less than $21,200 per year. What more can be be done to provide regular care for the nation's disadvantaged so they don't have to wait overnight and sleep in their cars?

Source

Thirsty? 1.1 Billion People Lack Safe Clean Water

LibertySugar — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 14:30:50 -0700

You've heard about the oil and food crises, but did you know that every day 1.1 billion people — equivalent to the combined population of North America and Europe — have to drink dirty water and wash with it? WordVision's latest public service announcement wants to get that message out.

If you want to know more about the water crisis hitting both rich and developing nations, the documentary For Love of Water reveals how global water profiteering drives the healthcare crisis that kills more people than AIDS or malaria. Polluted water is the world's biggest killer of children under five.

The charity Just a Drop explains that in Africa and Asia women walk an average of 6 kilometers a day to get their families water. But, it also says that about $20 will supply a person in the developing world safe water for life. If you want information on more ways you can help,

Cancer Survival Rates Differ Based on Country's Wealth

LibertySugar — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 00:00:29 -0700

Wealthy countries where patients have access to diagnostic equipment have higher cancer survival rates than their poorer counterparts. Using data from over two million cancer patients worldwide (from the 1990s), the first major study to compare global cancer survival rates found that the US, Australia, Canada, France, and Japan had the highest five-year survival rate. Algeria had the worst. The UK did not report well compared to other Western European countries although its survival rate has risen this decade.

The US had the highest five-year survival rate for breast cancer (89 percent) and prostate cancer (91.9 percent), compared to the UK 69.7 percent and 51.1 percent respectively. The UK had regional disparity, evidence that access to services matters. To find out what's behind the phenomenon,

Got a Stop Watch? It Only Takes 10 Hours to Buy a Child Slave

LibertySugar — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 11:00:13 -0700

It takes just 10 hours for someone in New York City to travel to Haiti and buy a child. ABC News reporter Dan Harris found that out when he set out to test the ease of securing a child slave. For as little as $150 one trafficker guaranteed Harris a "trained" 11-year-old. Another child salesman asked $10,000 for a pretty 11-year-old, for which Harris could do whatever he wanted with the girl.

Still hidden in a cloak of charity, this modern travesty began less tragically. Traditionally, poor rural families gave their children to wealthy city dwellers. The child did domestic work for an education. But now, these young innocents face a nightmare of hard labor, beatings, and sexual abuse without even a glimmer of hope for an education. Harris explains that a happy ending for Haitian children of poverty seems to be leaving their families to live in an orphanage where they are safe and educated, a much better fate than that of Haiti's 300,000 child slaves.

Sadly Haiti, a country founded on an 1804 slave revolt, has little means to stop this abuse. Check out these suggestions of how you can help put an end to modern slavery.

Source

Expert: Worms and Parasites Can Perpetuate US Poverty

LibertySugar — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 10:00:53 -0700

Disease caused by worms and parasites, which negatively impact child development and contribute to heart disease, disproportionately infect America's poor.

Dr. Peter Hotez, who works for George Washington University and the Sabin Vaccine Institute, studied nine parasitic diseases affecting 10 million Americans. His research found that the diseases occur predominately in "people of color living in the Mississippi Delta and elsewhere in the American South, in disadvantaged areas, and in the US-Mexico borderlands, as well as in certain immigrant populations and disadvantaged white populations living in Appalachia."

Hotez concludes that like malaria did last century, these diseases could produce a generation of weak unproductive adults, furthering the cycle of poverty. In addition, climate change could lead to a wider spread of diseases like dengue fever, more common to the developing world.

What should the US do to decrease the health gap between rich and the poor? Should health considerations be treated like equality efforts in other areas, like education?

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