Article Link: ESA Irrevelant–and Deadly–Cuts in Foreign Assistance

As I was visiting hospitals and health huts in Senegal, I was also receiving e-mailed updates on House GOP budget cuts. The Global Fund, down 40 percent. Child survival programs, which include anti-malaria efforts, down 10 percent. AIDS relief, down 8 percent. Development assistance, down 30 percent.These reductions were intended to be symbolic, but what do they symbolize? Fiscal responsibility? Hardly. No one can reasonably claim that the budget crisis exists because America spends too much on bed nets and AIDS drugs. … Claiming courage or credit for irrelevant cuts in foreign assistance is a net subtraction from public seriousness on the deficit. So, do these cuts symbolize the Republican rejection of fuzzy-headed liberalism? Actually, the main initiatives on malaria and AIDS were created under Republican leadership.

via The Sider Center at Eastern University.

Holistic Communiity Revitalization

Holistic revitalization differs from most community development work in that it strives to address the array of issues and challenges that trap families in intergenerational poverty.

via What Is It?.

article Link: Why We Do Micro-Savings: Micro-savings vs. Micro-finance

This is a very interesting article that presents a different take on micro-finance and a solution to some of the problems associated with it.

The article is from a blog at Food For the Hungry.

Microfinance is an idea that’s been around for some years. Basically, you lend poor people, who would normally be unable to get credit, small amounts of money, in the hope that they start businesses with them and thereby lift themselves out of poverty. The amounts are small and people don’t need traditional security (savings, property, regular income) to prove they can pay it back.

But the unpleasant truth is that credit still needs to be repaid, otherwise none of the institutions which offer it would still be in business – when in fact, they’re amongst the biggest organisations in Bangladesh. Microfinance is an enormous business – nowhere more so than in Bangladesh, where it was born in the 70′s.

via Why We Do Micro-Savings.

Urgent Action Call Congress!

The Senate is voting soon on an amendment to restore full funding to the International Affairs Budget. Four Billion dollars has been cut from this budget. Senators Kerry and Lugar have offerred an amendment to restore the funding.

For more info go here Results or here ONE.Org

It is hard to believe we can find billions for the rich that caused the problem and we want to take 4 billion from those most in need.

Fantastic Article from Global Future.

I posted as a page an article by Ms. Ann Pettifor from issue Number 1 of 2009 of Global Future by World Vision. I think she really hits the nail on the head and says much better than I ever could how to both view and address the international economic crisis. To read the article go here.

Slumdog Millionaire’s 8 Oscars should translate into action for children in India

World Vision India has a campaign tied into the issues raised by the movie Slumdog Millionaire. Slumdog Millionaire’s 8 Oscars should translate into action for children in India

Here is the US campaign page.

Article by Jeffrey Sachs: Recession Watch: Boost the developing world

This article from Nature magazine Recession Watch: Boost the developing world points out that “Directing finance into sustainable infrastructure in the poorest countries helps the whole world, says Jeffrey Sachs.”

BBC: Clean Water: Zimbabwe

From the BBC: Where clean water is a pipedream

If you want a graphic demonstration of the health impacts of poor drinking water, look no further than Zimbabwe.

Three thousand people dead, at least 60,000 ill – all from a disease that is almost completely preventable.

In general, with very few exceptions, people simply do not get cholera when the water supply works. It is almost unknown in the west for that single, simple reason.

New UNICEF State of the World’s Children 2009

The new UNICEF Sate of the World’s Children 2009 is out and available here.

Modernizing US Foreign Assistance

The folks at Bread for the World and other humanitarian agencies are calling for an overhaul of US Foreign assistance and policy.

Bread for the World Hunger Report 2009

Hunger Report Companion Study Guide

Bread for the World: Hunger Report: Reforming Aid: Key Points

Global development and global poverty reduction must be elevated as specific goals in U.S. foreign policy, distinguished from political, military and security goals, with distinct and secure funding.
Poverty reduction should be the primary focus of U.S. development assistance, with substantially more poverty-focused funding provided to meet commitments related to the Millennium Development Goals.

Development assistance should be provided in partnership with recipient countries to meet their long-term development goals.

Civilian leadership in development assistance must be maintained and strengthened, with the Department of Defense limited to its operational strengths in logistics and stabilization.

An effective, streamlined agency is required to direct all U.S. development assistance, consolidating the plethora of development assistance programs currently spread across 12 cabinet departments and numerous agencies.

Other U.S. policies (e.g. trade, investment, migration) should be aligned with development assistance goals and objectives to maximize the impact of U.S. development programs.

U.S. development assistance should be more closely coordinated with other international donors to reduce the burdens on recipient governments as well as the costly duplication of programs.

Modernizing Foreign Assistance Network

MFAN is a reform coalition composed of international development and foreign policy practitioners, policy advocates and experts, concerned citizens and private sector organizations.

MFAN’s goal is to help build a safer, more prosperous world by strengthening the United States’ ability to alleviate extreme poverty, create opportunities for growth, and secure human dignity in developing countries.

Center for Global Development

Global Development Matters

New Day, New Way: U.S. Foreign Assistance for the 21st Century

New Day, New Way: U.S. Foreign Assistance for the 21st Century calls on the next American president, Congress, policymakers and the American people to overhaul how the U.S. helps poor people in developing countries. Among the recommended steps: a new national foreign assistance strategy and a new Foreign Assistance Act to replace the outdated framework that President Kennedy signed nearly 50 years ago. CGD senior fellow Steve Radelet is a co-chair of the authoring group, the Modernizing Foreign Assistance Network.

The White House and the World: A Global Development Agenda for the Next U.S. President

Commitment to Development Index

The Commitment to Development Index 2007 Report

Each year since 2003, the Commitment to Development Index (CDI) has ranked 21 rich countries on their dedication (or not!) to policies that benefit the five billion people living in poor countries. The CDI moves beyond simple comparisons of aid funding and in so doing embodies the mission of CGD, which addresses all government policies that affect poorer countries.

U.S. Foreign Assistance for the 21st Century: Q&A with Steve Radelet

What’s Behind the Recent Declines in U.S. Foreign Assistance?

Why Global Development Matters for the U.S

Healthy Foreign Policy: Bringing Coherence to the Global Health Agenda

Power and Roads for Africa: What the United States Can Do (White House and the World Policy Brief)

Why Global Development Matters and What the Next U.S. President Should Do About It (White House and the World Policy Brief)

Human Development Index DRC

Accroding to the Human Development Index the DR Congo ranks 177th of 179 countries.  Only Central African Republic and Sierra Leone fair worse.

Human Development Report Main Index

Human Development Index country rankings

DRC 2008 Statistical Update

Human Development Comparison Map

More Links on Poverty and Development

Here are a few more links on articles related to this blog’s interest in poverty and development.

How to Help the Poor Without Hurting Them…and Ourselves

Justice and Poverty

The Goal of Christian Mission

Different Views of the Poor

The Poor and Oppressed in the Psalms and Wisdom Literature

Turmoil in markets: not an excuse to pull back on aid promises to the poor

Deuteronomy, Psalms, and Wisdom

The Multi-Dimensional Causes of Poverty

Deep Justice

Just Worship

Best of Deep Justice

Lausanne Documents

Here are links to some Lausanne Documents on subjects relevant to this blog.

I have found the Lausanne documents to be very helpful in filling in some of the weakness I find in the Reformed Theology I believe. I think the Westminster Confession of Faith and the other classic documents of the reformed faith very well cover the basics of the faith but where I find them weak is in the area of missions, cultural engagemant, and social justice. To be fair these issues were not core issues in their day. So to fill in the gaps I have found great insight in the Lausanne documents. (I am just a lay person and have no formal theological training-I just find these helpful to me and my understanding)

Christian Witness to People of African Traditional Religions

Evangelism and Social Responsibility: An Evangelical Commitment

Christian Witness to the Urban Poor

An Evangelical Commitment to Simple Life-style

Some Articles on Poverty From Around the Web Part 1

These are various articles on poverty and development issues. All of these in Part 1 are from the Integral Mission Blog. I have spent a good part of today enjoying these posts immensely and apprediating their insights.

What is Poverty?

Change vs. Transformation

The Gospel and Social Involvement (8): Good News to the Rich

The Gospel and Social Involvement (9): Welcoming the Excluded

The Gospel and Social Involvement (12): Can We Make a Difference?

The Gospel and Social Involvement (2): The Case

The Gospel and Social Involvement (3): More than Private

The Gospel and Social Involvement (4): Evangelizing the Poor

The Gospel and Social Involvement (5): Proclamation and Demonstration

The Gospel and Social Involvement (6): The Kingdom of God

The Gospel and Social Involvement (7): Good News to the Poor

The Gospel and Social Involvement (10): Strengthening the Powerless

Integral Mission and Social Consciousness

Integral Mission and Political Action

Integral Mission and Social Justice

A Partnership between the Powerful and the Powerless

Rich Christians: God and the Poor

Rich Christians: Renewed Economic Relationships

Rich Christians: Property and Possessions

Quote on Poverty by Jayakumar Christian

I came across this quote by Jayakumar Christian while reading my Bible this morning. I was using the Faith in Action Study Bible by World Vision. Emphasis are mine.

Poverty has more to do with relationships than resources, with power than possessions. The fall resulted in alienation from God and distorted relationships, out of which arise oppression, conflict, apathy, isolation, prejudice, moral confusion, and the deprivations and hardships we call poverty. Poverty occurs in three dimensions—relationship with God (spiritual), humanity (social), and the environment (physical).

Here is a link to a paraphrase of the whole article The Thirteen Shackles of the Poor, as a Word document.

The Silent Tsunami

Aid agencies are calling the deepening world hunger situation the “Silent Tsunami”. A number of factors have combined to reverse the trend that had seen more and more people no longer suffering hunger each year. Now hunger is increasing.

Here are a few articles:

The Silent Tsunami

A SILENT tsunami of hunger is engulfing the world, afflicting nearly a billion people in 60 countries and killing 25,000 men, women and children every day. The global food crisis, triggered by high prices, shortages and bad weather, is deepening as the world’s economy moves into recession. Millions more people are now facing poverty, starvation, disease and death.

Countries struggling to slow increase in child hunger

Hunger is now the biggest threat to child development across the world, with global progress on eradicating malnutrition slowing, stalling, or sliding into reverse in some countries. But a new international index from Save the Children also reveals that some poor countries are making greater progress in reducing child deprivation.

Child malnutrition in Zimbabwe increasing as emergency aid pipeline falters

Acute child malnutrition in parts of Zimbabwe has increased by almost two thirds compared with last year, according to Save the Children.

Alertnet Food and Hunger Topic Index

Enough food is produced globally to feed the planet but even so roughly 923 million people go to bed hungry every night. Hunger is a leading cause of death, killing an estimated 9 million people every year – more than AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria combined

Hunger’s Global Hotspots: 24 December 2008

The Challenge of Hunger 2008 Global Hunger Index

World Food Programme

WFP Food Reaches War-torn Corner of Eastern Congo

Famine Early Warning Systems Network

Alertnet FACTSHEET: Hunger, the world’s silent killer

LONDON (AlertNet)- While acute food emergencies such as those in Niger in 2005 and Ethiopia in 1984 grab headlines, galvanising the public and donors to respond, most people who die of hunger worldwide do so out of the media spotlight.

At the end of the above article is a very telling quote: “If reporters from Mars visited earth don’t you think that their lead story would be: ‘One in six humans go hungry’? And yet that never makes headline news.” British news presenter Jon Snow

Alertnet FAMINE RESOURCE FILE: The reality of hunger

QUIZ: Five myths about famine and hunger

Life-cycle of a Famine

TALKING POINT: The global food aid controversy

Many aid professionals think food aid should be a last resort, arguing in favour of giving cash or vouchers to hungry people instead. They say food aid can disrupt local markets and make it harder for people to recover from a crisis.

People who subscribe to this view say hunger rarely exists because there’s no food in the area – it’s just that the food is too expensive for people to buy during a crisis.

Meanwhile, aid workers often argue that the current food aid system puts the interests of donor countries above the needs of hungry people.

African hunger

More than 210 million people do not have enough to eat in Africa. The reasons for this are varied and complex. The causes of malnutrition in one country might be quite different in the next. Even regions within individual countries can be subject to variations in politics, climate, society or economy that can affect the prevalence of hunger in quite different ways.

Decades of progress wiped out’ as hunger spreads

The food and financial crises have wiped out nearly 30 years of progress on reducing hunger, warns ActionAid, reacting to new figures from the Food and Agriculture Organization, which show that the number of hungry rose to 963 million in 2008.

Nicholas Kristof: Raising the World’s IQ

New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof has an excellent op-ed piece about how to raise the world’s IQ– Iodized salt. Read his column here.

Resource:Center for Global Development

The Center for Global Development has issued two interesting reports.

What’s Behind the Recent Declines in U.S. Foreign Assistance?

In this CGD Note, senior fellow Steve Radelet and research assistants Paolo Abarcar and Rebecca Schutte offer a close look at the decline in the latest U.S. foreign assistance numbers. Bottom line: while America’s aid has increased by more than 80 percent in real terms since 2000 (with new money going mostly to Iraq, Afghanistan, and HIV/AIDS funding through bilateral channels), total U.S. development assistance has fallen 22 percent since 2005 from $27.9 billion to $21.8 billion in 2007. In real terms, this was the smallest amount since 2002, excluding assistance to Iraq, Afghanistan, and HIV/AIDS programs.

U.S. Ranks Poorly on 2008 Commitment to Development Index

As President-elect Barack Obama seeks ways to restore the United States’ international reputation in the midst of a global financial crisis with roots in New York and Washington, an annual assessment of rich countries’ policies to build prosperity around the world finds that the United States ranks 17th out of 22 high-income countries.

Quote from WEA General Assembly on Poverty

The WEA World Evangelical Alliance recently concluded it’s general assembly in Pattaya Thailand recently. There they issued 6 major resolutions.  The resolution on the Millenium Development Goals includes these statements:

“In coping with the financial crisis of 2008, governments and international institutions have shown how quickly and effectively they can move to mobilise massive resources in the face of serious threats to our global, common economic well being.

“Yet one child dying of preventable causes every three seconds and 2.7 billion people barely sustained on an income of less than two dollars per day has yet to evoke a similar level of urgent response.

“We believe this to be an affront to God, a shame to governments and civil society, and a massive challenge to the witness and mission of the followers of Christ.”

AMEN!

Medicines Sans Frontieres: Top Ten Humanitarian Crises of 2008

This website was highlighted by an excellent segment on the News Hour with Jim Lehrer

The Medecines Sans Frontieres: Top Ten Humanitarian Crises of 2008

The DR Congo, TB and HIV, and Childhood Malnutrition all made the list.

As usual the MSF website is excellent.