“Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail”
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
The Global Poverty Project will begin its 1.4 Billion Reasons 2012 tour across the United States in February. We’re traversing the country in 18 weeks across 25 states with 66 presentations booked and counting. There are four of us on the trip and the office is bubbling with excitement as anticipation mounts for when we shotgun out of New York state and zip down to the US south for our first cluster of presentations.
We can hear Meg, our main speaker and former Peace Corp volunteer in Malawi, practicing the text of the presentation in the office next-door. As she rehearses, interjecting anecdotes about Malawi and her experience as a local teacher, we all can’t help but get distracted from our work as we listen. Living 14 hours outside the capital city of Lilongwe, she taught Secondary School in a country where over 40 per cent of the population lives on less that $2 a day.
Sometimes her stories are funny: Malawi fashion revolves around castoff T-shirts with inappropriate or erroneous messaging, including one announcing “Indianapolis Colts, 2010 Super Bowl Champions” (the New Orleans Saints were the real winners). But other times they are heartbreaking: she remembers girls being harassed as they attempted to go to school, corruption diverting critical school funds, and an impoverished security guard being fired for failing to protect a female student.
Dan, our logistics coordinator, sits in the corner desk of the office. He’s in charge of booking presentations and is the resident scheduling expert. Balancing 66 presentations, some in unfamiliar or isolated locations, he’s managed to create a cohesive route winding across highways and back country roads. A former Washington, DC resident, he’s developed USAID agricultural programs in East Africa and South Asia. He’s also an expert at finding engaging ways for us to present, including a spot at the SXSW Music Festival in Austin, Texas.
Tyler, our videographer, is busy ordering equipment and planning his camera shots. He’s organizing fascinating videos and interviews, focusing on organizations like Heifer International, whose innovative microfinance model includes donating animals to developing countries. Their headquarters are at a sprawling ranch in Arkansas, where we will be visiting for a few days. Tyler has documented everything from development in Africa to hiking in Montana, and he’ll be making videos following every leg of the tour.
As we traverse from one state to the next, we’ll be sharing the mission of the Global Poverty Project: to end extreme poverty within a generation, specifically focusing on preventable child deaths. It’s an ambitious goal for a pressing issue: about 21,000 children under the age of five –15 each minute – die every day. These deaths are preventable with access to vaccines, adequate sanitation, and maternal health care.
From February to May, we’ll present engaging personal stories and debunk myths about foreign aid which have co-opted U.S. dialogue on issues like preventable child deaths. In innumerable polls, Americans overwhelmingly believe that the U.S. government spends a larger portion of the total federal budget on foreign aid than defense spending, Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, or infrastructure. The truth? The U.S. spends less than 1% of the federal budget on foreign aid.
Additionally, many believe that increased foreign aid is a cause championed by Democrat Presidents and representatives. Yet the U.S. presidents that have historically appropriated the largest amounts of aid are Dwight D. Eisenhower, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, and George W. Bush, who in 2003 gave the largest amount in foreign aid in three decades. All of the largest spenders were Republican.
We’ll be visiting states with vastly different political and social conceptions. We imagine that presentations in Butte, Montana will bring a different assortment of questions than those garnered from Washington, DC or New York City, NY. Or maybe they’ll be the same. Either way, we hope to build a movement where issues of poverty, and especially child mortality, can be discussed in any community.
The study estimates over 1.2 million lives were lost to malaria in 2010, almost twice the estimates used by the World Health Organisation (WHO) in its most recent malaria report. Whilst both approaches maintain that the majority of lives lost to malaria are in Africa – which bears 91% of all deaths – and amongst young children. The difference in the IHME’s data is the assumption that higher numbers of older children and adults in heavy-burden malaria areas are dying from the disease.
Whilst the total numbers may be different, “however you look at it, far too many people are dying from malaria,” Professor David Schellenberg, of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine told the BBC.
But there is good news, as Annemarie Meyer, Programme and Policy Manager at Malaria No More UK explains: “the main trends reported by both the IHME and WHO reports highlight that international efforts to fight malaria are working with a consistent and significant reduction in malaria deaths since 2004. This progress is thanks to investments in efforts to prevent, diagnose and treat malaria, we need to continue to press for more resources to sustain these gains and save more lives.”
Malaria No More UK spoke to a number of experts ahead of the publication of the study. Many of our own policy advisors have also been involved in reviewing and responding to the study data. It is important to note that global malaria data relies on estimates, as Lancet editor Richard Horton pointed out to the BBC this morning, “Right now we don’t actually have any reliable primary numbers for malaria deaths in some of the most malarious regions of the world, so what numbers we have come from estimates.”
Better disease diagnosis and surveillance is needed, ultimately, to remove the reliance on data modeling like these. As Professor David Schellenberg also told the BBC “The introduction of rapid diagnostic tests for malaria, recommended by the WHO in 2010 and increasingly available in endemic countries, affords an unprecedented opportunity to take the guesswork out of malaria diagnosis and to improve the reliability of information.”
Annemarie Meyer adds, “the WHO already recommends that essential malaria prevention, diagnosis and treatment should be made available to both adults and children: we all agree that efforts need be increased to reach everyone at risk.”
It is critically important to sustaining and increasing efforts to combat this deadly disease. The IHME study’s authors emphasised the importance of sustaining and increasing efforts to combat malaria, and recognised the contribution of The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria in achieving success so far. With international financing for malaria, and particularly funding for the Global Fund facing significant shortfalls in meeting the need, it is more important than ever to increase our efforts to sustain international support.
Malaria No More UK, along with the Global Poverty Project and a host of other organisations focussed on tackling HIV/AIDS, TB and malaria have been calling for increased funding for The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB
and Malaria. We have been asking people to lend their voice to this campaign: to sign a petition and write to their MP to help persuade the British government to announce an increase in financial support for the Fund.
Join our campaign with the Global Poverty Project to help ‘Fund The Fund’ by adding your name to the petition on the right or sending a letter to your MP
Following on from our recent series of posts about food security, hunger and waste, this is a guest post from Martin Bowman, founder of Bexley/Lewisham/Dartford Food Not Bombs, on how food waste in developed countries is contributing to global food insecurity.
‘Over half of the food produced today is lost, wasted or discarded as a result of inefficiency in the human-managed food chain.’
- Achim Steiner, Executive director of UNEP (United Nations Environmental Programme)
The world is over-crowded – this is the message that resounds through the media. This was especially so in 2011, the year the world’s population passed 7 billion, which caused a worldwide panic – there is not enough to go round! One UN report cried that farmers must produce 70% more food by 2050 to feed our swelling population, which is tipped to hit 9 billion by that point.
Many solutions have been proposed, most notably from the GM lobby, trying to present their patented, privatized food as the cure for the world’s ills, although this is highly questionable. Moreover, the World Food Programme budget for 2009 was US$6.7 billion. That year, the number of hungry people globally reached a record 1 billion, and the WFP argued that it needed an extra $3 billion to counter a downward trend in food aid and growing need. Evidence is also mounting for the link between hunger, violence and conflict.
In short, we are bombarded with images of scarcity. But this is wrong. For we live in a world of unparalleled abundance.
Here is a list of facts which are the antidote to “scarcity thinking”:
• All the world's nearly one billion hungry people could be lifted out of malnourishment on less than a quarter of the food that is wasted in the US, UK and Europe.
• The irrigation water used globally to grow food that is wasted would be enough for the domestic needs (at 200 litres per person per day) of 9 billion people - the number expected on the planet by 2050.
• If we planted trees on land currently used to grow unnecessary surplus and wasted food, this would offset a theoretical maximum of 100% of man-made greenhouse gas emissions. 10% of rich countries' greenhouse gas emissions come from growing food that is never eaten.
Tristram Stuart is one of a growing vanguard of food waste campaigners who have emerged in the past few years, which now includes Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, This Is Rubbish, and Friends of the Earth. Their message is simple: throwing way food is damaging to people and the planet. That food (and the resources used to produce it) could be put to better use.
Food prices are also at record highs, which have pushed millions into malnutrition over the past few years. What is the cause of this which is constantly referred to in the press? Scarcity. Hence, the frequent explanation: that crops failures in countries such as Australia contributed to the various price rises, pushing up food prices globally. Other reasons for the record highs are the demand for biofuels and commodity speculation by investment banks and hedge funds. Food wastage is rarely mentioned, and yet throwing 30-50% of the world’s food away puts massive strain on the global food supply, driving prices up.
What is the solution? Food waste needs its own “reduce, reuse, recycle”. This is represented in the simple food waste flow chart – reduce (wasting less will relax the strain on the global food supply), feed to people in need (providing a much needed safety net, especially in the context the financial crisis and austerity programmes), feed to livestock (pigswill can help reduce the West’s reliance on soy, much of which comes from deforested land in Brazil), compost (reduces the need for energy intensive fertilizer), and finally, as a last resort, disposal. For an inspiring list of companies dealing with these different levels of food waste, click here:
If you feel inspired to join the growing food waste movement, here are some great campaigns to get involved with:
• Feeding the 5,000 Pledge: Pledge to reduce your food waste, and call on businesses to do the same.
• Hugh’s Fish Fight: Call for reforms to EU fishery policy, to stop half of the fish caught in the North Sea being discarded.
• Friends of the Earth’s “Feed farm animals, not incinerators” campaign: Call for food waste and pigswill to replace imported animal feeds, often soy grown on deforested land.
• WDM’s Food Speculation campaign: Call for banks to stop betting on food prices, which makes them more volatile and drives them up.
You can also find out more about Food Not Bombs from their facebook page here.
Today we launch the 2012 Live Below the Line campaign. Braving the freezing conditions, over 40 Live Below the Line supporters took to Piccadilly Circus and joined Harry Potter star Bonnie Wright at a special dinner party with a difference. Sat ready for an elegant dinner, volunteers were instead treated to a single raw vegetable to highlight the lack of choice available to the 1.4 billion people living off less than £1 per day around the world.
The 2012 campaign is being led by six very influential UK charity partners, including UNICEF, Salvation Army, Christian Aid, RESULTS UK, Restless Development and Malaria No More UK. Over the next six months, Live Below the Line will be challenging thousands of participants who for 5 days will have £5 for all their food and drink, raising £500,000 for anti-poverty initiatives around the globe.
You can pre-register your interest using the form below or find out more here.
From water bottles to chocolate, athletic equipment to office supplies, over the past decade many companies have developed fair trade and ethically sourced products. Companies that did not originally incorporate these practices into their business models are increasingly changing their operating principles. A large part of this trend is due to the purchasing power of consumers, who are concerned with the environmental, social, and legal impact of their spending.
Fair trade (as defined by the Fair Trade Foundation) is about providing reasonable prices, decent working conditions, local sustainability, and equitable terms of trade for farmers and workers in the developing world. It is about improving the position of producers within the poorest countries so that they are able to sell their goods on a global market and build a stronger, more vital economy.
Fair trade is overseen globally by the Fair Trade Labelling Organization (FLO) with sub-groups for countries and regions. However, in September 2011, Fair Trade USA (FTUSA) announced that it unilaterally decided to resign from its membership in the FLO. They also intend to make changes to some of the criteria for determining which products are certified as fair trade.
The main point of contention that caused the split was a difference of opinion regarding the definition of hired labor, particularly within the coffee industry. Traditionally, fair trade coffee certification only included products from smallholder farms, usually from families who own a plot of land within a cooperative and farm it themselves. FTUSA is currently looking to extend fair trade certification to estate and plantation coffee farmers and has a pilot project in Brazil. Various American organizations, including United Students for Fair Trade, have strongly opposed these changes.
FTUSA has also announced a new ‘Multiple Ingredients Product Policy’ whereby products that are at least 20% fair trade will carry a new type of fair tradelogo (right). This change is contentious, as many view this measure as one that “waters down” international fair tradestandards.
Regardless of the controversy, fair trade certification is still a useful way for consumers to guarantee that companies are meeting fair trade guidelines. Currently, there are three fair trade logos, including the “multiple ingredients” logo. When shopping in the United States, look for the logo on the left, which is located on the label or packaging of the product. If outside the United States, look for the logo on the right.
To find a listing of fair trade products, check out Fair trade USA. They have products sorted by type, from apparel and sports equipment to honey, coffee, and spirits. Fair Trade USA also has an interactive map which includes the countries that are helped by fair trade practices and a section with detailed impact reports on various industries.
The Fair trade Resourcing Network (FTRN) recently launched an interactive map of the United States called I Spot Fair Trade. This map allows users to zoom into the location of the stores, making it easy to find fair trade dealers in your community. FTRN also has many resources on their main website, including event listing, reading and film recommendations, and how to become further involved in the movement.
Additionally, there are several products and stores that retail across the country. Ten Thousand Villages is a national chain where fair trade home goods, soaps, and artwork is sold. Divine Chocolate and Honest Tea are both fair trade brands that widely sell in grocery and convenience stores. You can order fair trade coffee at groundsforchange.com.
Other resources that are not fair trade specific, but useful for determining corporate responsibility are Free2Work, a free Android or iPhone application, and B Corporation, a non-profit that certifies businesses as socially and environmentally responsible. Free2Work allows users to scan product barcodes and provides ratings of brands and their trafficking and labour policies. B Corporation has a listing of certified companies here, which are required to meet rigorous standards and many of which are fair trade.
To some extent, what you buy is a reflection of who you are; your preferences and tastes. Use these fair trade and ethical consumerism resources to reflect your beliefs.
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Today we launch the 2012 Live Below the Line campaign. Braving the freezing conditions, over 40 Live Below the Line supporters took to Piccadilly Circus and joined Harry Potter star Bonnie Wright at a special dinner party with a difference. Sat ready for an elegant dinner, volunteers were instead treated to a single raw vegetable to highlight the lack of choice available to the 1.4 billion people living off less than £1 per day around the world.
From water bottles to chocolate, athletic equipment to office supplies, over the past decade many companies have developed fair trade and ethically sourced products. Companies that did not originally incorporate these practices into their business models are increasingly changing their operating principles. A large part of this trend is due to the purchasing power of consumers, who are concerned with the environmental, social, and legal impact of their spending.
smallholder farms, usually from families who own a plot of land within a cooperative and farm it themselves. FTUSA is currently looking to extend fair trade certification to estate and plantation coffee farmers and has a pilot project in Brazil. Various American organizations, including 
