Last Thursday, I promised to briefly describe all the effective anti-poverty programs that Ms. Rosenberg lists in her Nov 16, New York Times, op-ed “How to Fight Poverty: 8 Programs That Work.”
Here are the first two:
1.) Ms. Rosenberg’s states that universal vaccination is “cost-effective foreign aid at its best:”
“A full course of immunization, including everything in the supply chain, costs only $30. In the last 20 years this campaign has saved 20 million lives. It has given hundreds of millions of children a better start.”
2.) The op-ed also describes programs that help people obtain titles for their land, homes and businesses. These titles become assets, with which people living in poverty can borrow and invest.
From the piece:
“Most people…see only poverty. But Hernando de Soto saw something else – untapped wealth. Mr. De Soto, a Peruvian economist, realized that the world’s poor own trillions of dollars’ worth of assets. But their houses, plots of land and businesses lacked formal title – and so could not be used to do all the things that people in wealthy countries do to turn a little money into a lot of money.”
We’ve received more updates from Mali. Below, read Tayloe’s message and watch video of an Africare irrigation project in Goundam, Mali.
“As the sun rises east of Timbuktu we are making our final preparations and loading up the vehicles for the all day ride toward the Mauritania border. The runners now have covered hundreds of miles since leaving Senegal last month and will be getting into Mali tomorrow.
We understand from base camp that the runners are in good spirits and we are looking forward to our rendezvous with them and witnessing this incredible feat as they put down some 50 miles a day in their 4,000 mile odyssey across the Sahara Desert.
There is only a small dirt road that runs west of Timbuktu toward Mauritania, following the snaking bends of the Niger River. Sand washed adobe huts dot the landscape and herds of goats, cows and the occasional camel watch us roll past. Yesterday we made this same trek an hour outside of Timbuktu to the village of Goundam.
In Goundam we stopped and visited with an Africare irrigation project that, with the help of a pump provided by USAID, is turning once fallow fields into rows of green stalked rice and corn and providing food to more than 30,000 local villagers who need it. It’s an amazing transformation and no one happier than the 150 men women and children who tend the fields and harvest the bounty. The money from excess food they sell is used to put their children into school.
It’s an incredible example of how a little assistance (read: water pump) can transform an entire village and create hope for a better future. We pieced together a video clip of the project to show you firsthand and you can watch it below. Stay tuned for more video casts in the next week.
I read a whole lot of mail in the ONE inbox. Messages like the one below remind me that our generation is different; we are ready and energetic to respond to the global crises of our time.
Best of luck from the ONE Team, Rebecca!
- Laura, Field Team Intern, the ONE Campaign
>>>
Dear ONE Team,
My name is Rebecca, I am 19 years old and am a freshman in college. I am going to create a group on campus dedicated to the ONE Campaign and their efforts. In spreading the word, I hope to eventually make our campus a Campus of ONE. This is the first time for me heading a club or organization, so I am pretty nervous. But I feel like I need to help spread the word, and thought this would be a great way to do it. If you have any advice or anything that would make this progress a little easier, it would be greatly appreciated. I meet with the leader of student organizations tomorrow where I will present my idea, and hopefully watch it get off the ground. All of you have inspired me so much. I just wanted to say thank you for giving me the courage to do this and informing so many people about issues that need to be addressed. Wish me luck! Have a great night.
Tayloe Emery of DATA continues to send us updates on his travels in Timbuktu during the taping of Running The Sahara.
“It’s 2am here in Timbuktu and I can’t sleep. I’ve just walked out a ways from our camp into the sand of the Sahara. The stars above are magnificent and radiate throughout the valley, shooting across the sky and seemingly falling into the big muddy Niger River not 10 km away.
Mali may be the 3rd poorest country in the world but it is the wealthiest too. Its treasure are its people and they are bound to you through a mutual fascination of cultures. A fabric of ancient mysticism clothes and warms its masses. I think about Omar and Mohammed my new friends here in Timbuktu and the nomadic lives they lead wandering through the desert with their families stopping from time to time in this city to conduct trade and seek out fresh water for their animals.
Could my new friends have any concept of my life in the United States? Probably not. Though film and TV are occasionally watched here it only takes a second to realize that the concept of make-believe is a stretch to most people here. I was asked repeatedly today if I knew Jack Bauer (24), and if he was as good a man as he appears to be on the TV, and did I think he was America’s greatest hero.
I drank tea at sunset with my new Tuareg friends and thought about my new baby son at home with his mother in North Carolina preparing to celebrate Thanksgiving. A turkey from Food Lion seems like the last thing I want right now. Instead, I wish my wife and son were here to witness this great culture, this enticing land and to feel like I do – a stranger in a strange land surrounded by new friends and experiences.
Africa is probably not what most Americans will think about this Thanksgiving as they heap on the mashed potatoes and yams, but maybe someone out there will read this and think about me out here in the Sahara Desert: happy, sad, alone and engrossed by a civilization that has changed very little in thousands of years and continues to shine like the bright Tuareg star that leads north to the salt mines and then home again. Home. What a concept.
As promised in Matt Damon’s email to ONE members last week, ONE and DATA have sent a small team to Mali to catch up with three incredible men who are running the entire length of the Sahara desert to raise awareness for clean water.
Below is our first update (provided by Tayloe Emery of DATA via a series of text messages.)
“We arrived in Timbuktu today by plane after spending the night in Bamako. It’s a beautiful city full of Tuareg tribesmen and centuries old mosques, I love it here already.
The runners are still in Mauritania but heading toward the Mali border. Everywhere they go people ask them about the white bands they are wearing and they proudly tell them that they are supporters of ONE. You can see some new photos of them with the white bands at the runningthesahara.com website.
After the runners enter Mali they will head toward Timbuktu and we will tour an Africare’s water irrigation project that is providing food and water to more than 30k people!
The sun is setting and in the distance I can see a caravan of camels returning from the salt mines from the north following the same tracks they have cut in the sand for thousands of years. Timbuktu is a city of wonder and mystery. I’m glad I’m here and wish everyone could experience the joy I’m feeling.”
The DC-based indie band Army of Me is showing its support for ONE and the fight to end extreme poverty by donating their song, “Rise” to ONE members this week.
“We are honored and humbled to be involved in this campaign. I grew up in the United States, where I have always had the food, shelter, and medicine that I needed. I have been fortunate; I’m like a man who is
born into a wealthy family and living in a great castle. But there’s another man, just like me, and he’s living right outside my gate. This man is extremely poor and he is dying. He’s dying because he is sick and has no medicine. He’s dying because he’s thirsty and has no clean water. He’s dying because he’s hungry and has no food, and no way of obtaining it. This man is my neighbor.
Through the ONE Campaign, I have the ability and the means to TAKE ACTION, to leave my comfortable castle and go down to the street and to LOVE my neighbor. Love requires action, and the biggest obstacle to love is my own inertia. Let us all RISE to this occasion, to this wonderful opportunity to be involved in ending extreme poverty in Africa.”
Last week I traveled through Kentucky with Jubilee USA’s 2006 Global Connections Tour and learned how, one year after the 2005 G8 Summit, debt cancellation is helping fight poverty around the world.
On the tour, Charity Musamba (National Coordinator for the Debt Cancellation and Trade Justice Project of Jubilee Zambia) told us that Zambia has been able to spend money that used to go to debt on education and healthcare. Now Zambia has hired 4,500 new teachers and abolished rural health care fees.
For me this is an exciting update! I was one of a million people who attended the LIVE 8 concert in Philadelphia in July 2005 where we sent President Bush to the G8 Summit on a wave of support to do more to fight AIDS and extreme poverty.
At the Summit, the G8 leaders reached an unprecedented agreement:
$50 billion more in effective international assistance per year by 2010, half of which goes to Africa;
Near universal access to AIDS drugs to all those who need it, and care for AIDS orphans;
Primary schools for ALL children by 2015;
A commitment to reduce the impact of malaria by 85% and help save the lives of 600,000 children every year;
And 100% debt cancellation for the world’s poorest countries.
These promises are a historic opportunity to fight global AIDS and extreme poverty and save millions of lives. If kept, the G8 promises are life-saving, powerful enough to save at least 4 million lives a year. While we still have much work to do to ensure that the 2005 G8 Summit agreements are kept, it is exciting to hear how the debt cancellation deal is being used to help fight poverty in Zambia right now.
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.
Have a great night.
