Paul Bugala, Senior Sustainability Analyst for Extractive Industries at Calvert Investments, explains why Wall Street and the developing world need mandatory oil and mining payment transparency. This piece is part of a larger blog series on transparency in the extractives industry. Stay tuned for more updates on this topic.
Imagine you had to make one decision that could change your community and livelihood dramatically. Wouldn’t you want to be 100 percent sure your decision created the best opportunities possible for you and your family?
On the flip side, what if that decision involved an investment of millions of dollars? You would want all the information you could find about the possible outcomes and risks of your decision, wouldn’t you?
Today, across the globe, citizens of resource-rich yet poor countries and investors in oil, gas and mining companies have a problem just like this. These odd couples both need to make very important decisions about natural resource projects and the companies that undertake them, but they don’t have enough information to make sure their choices are right.
Action: 28. Time: 30 minutes. Level of difficulty: Difficult. For the results of last week’s action, click here.
In honor of International Women’s Day on March 8, Women Deliver is calling on international development advocates (like you!) to submit nominations for their Women Deliver 50 List, a collection of the top 50 inspiring ideas and solutions that deliver for girls and women.
According to their guidelines, “these advancements could have been made by an individual, governments, the private sector, or civil society, but they must have helped to improve the condition of girls and women around the world, in one or more of the following 5 categories:
Technologies and Innovations
Educational Initiatives
Health Modernization
Advocacy and Awareness Campaigns
Leadership and Empowerment Programs
Nominations must be submitted by February 10. The winners will be announced on International Women’s Day and at the Women Deliver 2013 conference in Kuala Lumpur.
David Kyne, campaign manager of United Against Malaria, explains how the football (soccer) community is leveraging the popularity of sport to save lives. ONE is a founding partner of United Against Malaria.
United Against Malaria represents a diverse group of partners – national football teams, African corporations, policymakers, NGOs -– all committed to reaching the malaria community’s No. 1 goal: reducing malaria deaths to near zero by 2015.
During Africa’s premier football championship, Africa Cup of Nations, hosted this year by Equatorial Guinea and Gabon, several of the continent’s most popular football stars are doing more than showcasing their moves on the pitch … they are partnering with United Against Malaria to deliver life-saving messages about malaria prevention and treatment, helping protect fans and save lives.
Joseph Terranova, co-founder of Tukula, shares his company’s model for women’s empowerment.
In the East African country of Uganda, a staggering 276,000 young people cannot find jobs each year. Even though many of these youth are university or trade school educated, there is simply not enough infrastructure to accommodate them in the job market. And without jobs, many of these youth will relapse into the cyclical poverty endemic in much of their country.
Photo credit: Bobby Neptune/Tukula
Young women are particularly vulnerable to unemployment. Many find themselves caught in premature marriages, struggling to support their children with little hope of saving for the future of their families.
But in the heart of Jinja, Uganda’s second largest city, five young women work diligently to create beautiful handmade bags and other accessories for Tukula (meaning “we grow” in Luganda), a for-profit social enterprise based out of Lancaster, Pa. The women, who range in age from 16 to 33, have different life stories.
All of them have completed some amount of tailoring school, and two are continuing their education using the money they earn at Tukula. The women hail from different tribes and ascribe to different religions. But what brings them together is their desire to better the future of themselves and their families.
One of these women, Ayakaka Sally, talks about the impact that Tukula has had on her life. “I used to depend on people,” she says. “But Tukula has made me to be on my own. Now I can afford my food. I can pay my rent. It’s good for me.”
Tukula works with its artisans to create budgets and savings programs aimed at preparing each woman to attain her future goals. By creating and selling beautiful, high-quality products, the company hopes to impact more women in the future.
Tukula is working to eliminate abject poverty in Uganda before it begins, one woman at a time. To learn more visit tukula.org.
Check out this great news on rotavirus, courtesy of Candace Rosen at PATH (from PATH’s RotaFlash newsletter), which you all helped to support with your advocacy for GAVI last spring!
Diarrhea is the third biggest killer of children under five years of age in Zambia (40 per day; 15,000 each year), and rotavirus, the most common cause of severe and fatal diarrhea in young children, is responsible for nearly one-third of those deaths. As in many countries in sub-Saharan Africa, the region with the highest rates of rotavirus mortality worldwide, rotavirus contributes heavily to the tremendous drain on the health and economic resources in Zambia:
Approximately 41 percent of young children hospitalized for severe diarrhea are infected with rotavirus.
An estimated 4,506children under age five die from rotavirus diarrhea annually.
Vaccines are the best way to protect children in Zambia and the rest of the world from severe rotavirus diarrhea and the deadly dehydrating diarrhea that it causes.
Ben Skoda from Venture Expeditions, talks about his organization’s efforts to fight poverty through adventure.
When it comes to addressing HIV/AIDS and water crises in Africa, most of us do not lack heart. Unfortunately, many of us have a desire to act, but are deterred by the lack of a platform or the resources to contribute.
Senior ONE Adviser Michael Gerson is on the ground in the Democratic Republic of Congo. In this blog post, he writes about the benefits of cocoa crops on the country’s economy.
A farmer from the Greenhouse project in Beni separates raw cacao beans from an opened cacao pod to be washed, fermented, dried, and shipped.
We traveled down dirt roads near the town of Beni, in eastern Congo, close to the Ugandan border. Militias are active in the region, so our group was protected by an armed escort. Interactions at checkpoints along the road are unpredictable. In the town of Beni itself, a curfew is imposed each night at sunset.
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.
