This guest post is by journalist Abby Higgins, in partnership with The Seattle Globalist. It’s the second in a four part series which reveals the economically complex and culturally rich life of urban slums, and challenges our perceptions of what life is like for the 1 billion people around the world that live in them.

This week, the presidents of the world’s leading emerging economies – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (known collectively as the BRICS) – are meeting in Durban for the annual BRICS summit. The “Africanized Agenda” for this year’s summit, where the BRICS’ cooperation with Africa is under the spotlight, means that investment in extractive industries is a high priority on the agenda. And extraction of Africa’s oil, minerals and gas is where the national interests of each of the BRICS nations and those of African governments converge.

“As the United States continues its vital investments in global health, there is also an opportunity for additional investment in the kind of economic statecraft that will facilitate a transition from aid to trade, guaranteeing a higher return on investment for the American taxpayer and better enabling a sustained US government investment.” – Senator Chris

Yesterday, 210 ONE members stormed Capitol Hill for Lobby Day, attending nearly 175 meetings with members of Congress to urge them to protect our life-saving programs for the world’s poorest people. Lobby Day is the crown jewel of the the 2013 ONE Power Summit. After three days of learning about ONE’s issues, sharing best practices

Action: 68. Time: 10 min. Difficulty: Medium.  Our friends at Zidisha Microfinance, a web-based crowdfunding platform that allows entrepreneurs in the developing world to get funding from web users worldwide, just came out with “Venture: A Collection of True Microfinance,” an Kindle e-book featuring success stories from their borrowers. Authored by Zidisha staff and volunteers, the book

The provision of a $2 vaccine to save a child’s life for many is an important and obvious thing to support. But sometimes what is less obvious in saving that child’s life is how important the road is that was used to deliver the vaccine, or the electricity that powered the fridge to store the

Small idea, big impact is a weekly blog series on simple products that are helping reduce poverty in the world’s poorest places. A true social entrepreneur is someone who recognizes a social problem and applies business principles to fix the issue. Bethlehem Tilahun Alemu of Ethiopia is an excellent example of just that. Seeing that

Last week, we sent out an email to ONE members asking you to call your senators and urge them to co-sponsor a critical trade bill which could save hundreds of thousands of African jobs. S.3326 is a no-cost, bipartisan bill to amend the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA). And you responded big. Nearly 1,000

As part of a cultural exchange initiative launched by the US State Department, the African Women Entrepreneurs Program (AWEP) brought 46 African women entrepreneurs to the US for three weeks of education, outreach and engagement. In this piece, Jeannine Harvey profiles a mango business owner from Zambia. For generations, Zambian families have planted a tree

Tom Wallace of ONE’s Global Policy Team in London kicks off our new blog series on energy poverty with comments from the European Union Sustainable Energy for All Summit. On Monday the European Union (EU) became the first developed country group to make clear commitments to the United Nations Sustainable Energy for All Initiative to

For Valentine’s Day, a lot of nonprofits have products available that benefit people in the developing world. While there are many socially conscious products out there, here are some of our favorites: 1. Last week, we decried the 220 tons of food waste that pile up in the world’s richest countries every year. Check out

At the G20 in Cannes, a high level panel of investment and infrastructure experts –- including ONE board member Mo Ibrahim –- submitted its report on increasing infrastructure financing in developing countries. The G20 has made infrastructure one of its priorities this year, for good reasons: Recent estimates by the African Development Bank (AfDB) put

Africa suffers from an infrastructure deficit that greatly limits growth and poverty reduction on the continent. Seventy percent of the population do not have access to electricity, and many rural communities lack road to access to markets or health facilities. In some areas, a lack of infrastructure reduces economic output by as much as 40

Every Halloween, I try to make conscious choices about my candy purchases. I know many like-minded people are the same and want to be sure that their purchases aren’t contributing to the extreme poverty that we all work to eradicate on a daily basis. But it’s hard –- where do you start? How do you

In Liberia’s capital of Monrovia, I had the pleasure of meeting Chid Liberty, the energetic co- founder of the Liberian Women’s Sewing Project. Chid’s family owns Vamoma House, located on one of Monrovia’s biggest boulevards, an imposing multi-story building painted in faded light blue and cream. During the Civil War, Vamoma House was occupied and