This piece was originally published on our Africa Blog.
The 2011 ONE Africa Award finalists continue with the announcement of our third finalist, a model for social entrepreneurship in the agriculture sector. If you are already familiar with ONE’s recent activities then you will know that we recently launched our campaign to address the famine in the Horn of Africa. Hunger and malnutrition continue to be important issues on the continent and that’s why the work that our next finalist, Sylva Food Solutions (SFS), is doing is so important.
Sylvia Banda, the founder of SFS, is a very well known personality in Zambia and speaks regularly on the most popular private radio station in the country, Radio Phoenix, about the importance of using local foods, nutrition, and maintaining a healthy life style. With 10 employees, Sylvia started SFS in 2005 building on her successful catering business that had been around for about 25 years.
The Mo Ibrahim Foundation, established in 2006, encourages good governance and effective leadership in Africa. By providing a framework for governments and civil society to assess their own level of governance, it not only encourages debate on governance issues, but it promotes leadership development and capacity-building within the government. In addition, every year, they do a comprehensive examination of all African countries and rank them according to their governance quality.
Welcome Martha Wyatt to the ONE Blog! Martha is part of ONE’s Hunger and Agriculture Griot Course and is a winner in the Griot Blog Contest. This post won for the category, “Why are both international agricultural programs and emergency food assistance programs important to the U.S.?”
There are numerous and sundry causes and reasons for death in our world today — and there always have been throughout history. But there has never been a time in our history when it is right, expected, accepted or promoted for a child to die of hunger.
But it still happens and it continues to happen now, in Somalia, and in other parts of our world.
I am a native of a state with a rich agricultural history and a defining moment in its history when people fled the state to a better life. We know it as the Dust Bowl.
Welcome Kathleen Landrum to the ONE Blog! Kathleen is taking ONE’s Hunger & Agriculture Griot course and is a winner of the Griot Blog Contest. Her post won for the topic, “What have you learned so far in the Hunger and Agriculture Griot course?”
I recently called Maine Senator Olympia Snowe’s Washington office to ask her to support funding for critical international food and agriculture programs in the FY12 budget. Encouraged by her attentive staff, I requested a timely meeting with Senator Olympia Snowe’s local office for the following week. I was joined by fellow Maine Agriculture Griot Frank Wertheim.
We met with her representative Peter Morin in the district office and spoke about the crisis in the Horn of Africa and the importance of immediate food aid and investing in long-term agricultural development, as well as the successes of the United Nations World Food Program, Feed the Future, and the importance of congressional support for these programs. We asked Senator Snowe to work with the Senate Republican leadership to ensure that there are no cuts to international development programs in the State and Foreign Operations bill during the final negotiations on the FY12 budget. We concluded our meeting by thanking her for her time, and we look forward to following up with her and continuing to work together.
Welcome Tiffany Moy to the ONE blog! Tiffany is taking ONE’s Hunger & Agriculture Griot course and is a winner of the Griot Blog contest. Her post won for the topic, “Why should your readers call their Congresspersons in support of international agricultural programs?”
If it was my job, I would be a terrible telemarketer. I’m not a big fan of calling people I don’t know –- especially when the person on the other end is someone important or powerful. There’s something kind of intimidating about it, and I become afraid of mixing up my words and sounding unintelligent.
When you hear stories about increasing agricultural investment, what does this mean to you?
To me, it can mean one of many things. It could mean investing money in improving agricultural inputs such as giving farmers high-quality seeds or suitable fertilizers that will increase crop yield. It can refer to providing education on farming techniques for better irrigation or minimizing land degradation. Or it could even apply to findings ways to increase a farmer’s access to credit to purchase land.
Here are the answers to last week’s hunger quiz. It was a pretty hard one — the questions were taken from one of our Agriculture and Hunger Griots’ weekly quizzes. Thank you to the more than 50 people who participated in this action!
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.
