Category: Humanitarian Aid

150 Million desirous of immigrating to the US

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According to a Gallup survey, there are about 150 million adults living
in countries around the world who would migrate to the United States if
they could. And that does not count any children these 150 million
would-be immigrants might want to bring with them.

To arrive at this figure, Gallup interviewed 452,199 people at least 15
years or older in 151 countries around the world from 2009 and 2011.
Gallup asked: “Ideally, if you had the opportunity, would you like to
move permanently to another country, or would you prefer to continue
living in this country? To which country would you like to move?”

The 150 million people whom Gallup estimated would like to come to the
United States includes 22 million Chinese, 15 million Nigerians, 10
million Indians, 8 million Bangladeshis, 7 million Brazilians, 5 million
Filipinos, 5 million Japanese, 5 million Mexicans, and 3 million each
from Vietnam, Kenya and the United Kingdom.

In Liberia, 37 percent of all adults want to leave their homeland and
move permanently to the United States of America. In Sierra Leone, it’s
30 percent. In Dominican Republic, it’s 26 percent. In Haiti, it’s 24
percent. And in Cambodia, it’s 22 percent.

So by far, according to Gallup’s survey, America is still the No. 1 land
of dreams for would be immigrants.

Bill Gates on the Colbert Report

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Bill Gates appeared on the Colbert Report this past Wednesday night to talk about The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s recent successes in global health. Not least of all, due to the critical role of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, since 1990 the number of childhood deaths has been reduced by 5 million.

“It’s good news that you wouldn’t hear,” the founder of Microsoft said of the information he shared in his annual missive. “I share what I’ve been able to see in my travels to Africa and Asia.”

But after Gates shared his good news, Colbert in typical fashion commented that Gates is just not as “cool” as Steve Jobs was.

“People say ‘what a cool guy’ … Steve Jobs was. You’re out there saving the world, yet you don’t have the ‘cool factor,’” Colbert jabbed. “Did you ever want to be the cool guy?”

Gates didn’t seemed phased, responding, “He was brilliant. He had his own style. He had his own approach. Mine is, I guess…a little geekier than his was.”

Why invest in women?

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Why do so many non-profit ventures focus on girls and women as the primary agents of change?   

  • Firstly, women and girls represent roughly half of the world’s population.
  • Secondly, women are the most marginalized, the most dominated and exploited, and without outside influence often doomed by cultural mores to remain subordinated. Those with no voice are often overlooked, and rarely given voice or power.
  • Girls across the globe do not enjoy basic human rights: freedom from violence, to education, to inherit or own land, to decide when and whether to marry or bear children, or, the right to self-determination.
  • One in three women around the globe will be beaten, raped, or otherwise abused in her lifetime. The daily threat of violence is both a cause and a consequence of a world greatly out of balance.
  • Many argue that the most undervalued and untapped forces on the planet are adolescent girls living in poverty.
  • And girls are the mothers of the next generation, and the quality of these girls’ lives will literally determine the course of their children’s lives and our collective future.

Addressing the complexities of treating disease in developing countries

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Non-pharma and pharmaceutical company employees alike have wondered: “Why don’t we just give away medicines and drugs that can save so many lives in the developing world?

Allan Pamba worked at a clinic in Kenya in the early years after HIV/AIDs was recognized and had become a big problem. He became frustrated that he was seeing patients (from teenager years through the elderly) who did not have antiretroviral drugs to help treat the HIV.

Pamba, now a director in GlaxoSmithKline’s Developing Countries Market Access Unit, relates, “Through the years, in conversations with health policy officials in countries, I learned that they have refused donations when they are not sure it’s going to last. They would say, ‘If you give this to me free today, do I have to buy it from someone else or at a higher price when your company has a bad year’.”

Pamba says problems sometimes can be solved by looking at them from a different angle or by providing information. For example, he referred to an arrangement GSK has with cell phone maker Vodafone: When women give birth at a clinic, they leave behind their phone number so they are sent text messages reminding them to get vaccines for their children.

“There are half a billion handsets in Africa,” Pamba said of the spread of cell phone use. “Some people don’t have enough food, but they have a cell phone.”

Non-cash currency aids community revitalization

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What do palm trees, chestnuts, and kisses have in common? They’re all denominations of bank-issued alternative currencies that are a key community development tool in some of Brazil’s toughest neighborhoods.

Throughout the U.S., there are also community development-oriented “social currencies.” Examples of this alternative form of legal tender include “Ithaca Dollars” in Upstate New York and “Berkshares” in Western Massachusetts, alternative, non-cash currencies facilitating the exchange of local goods and services and are often connected with “buy local” campaigns and barter systems.

A network of community development banks in the United States has been quietly working to reinvest capital in poor communities in Brazil through microfinance, real estate projects and individual asset development. Community banking emerged in Brazil just fifteen years ago with the establishment of the Fortaleza-based Banco Palmas. Today, there are approximately 100 such banks in the country. Through coordinated micro-financing, technical assistance for small businesses, community facility investment and social currency systems, Brazil’s community banks are assisting some of the nation’s most notoriously dangerous and economically impoverished communities.

For example, Banco Verde Vida (Green Life Bank) of Vila Velha accepts wheelbarrows of recyclable rubbish twice a week from neighborhood residents. It pays these vendors with “moeda verde,” an alternative currency that can be spent at local businesses or, for food and cleaning materials, at a bank-owned store. The initiative has led to cleaner neighborhood streets, new small business development and improved incomes for residents.

In the nearby San Benedito neighborhood of Vitoria, a former bricklayer borrowed money twice from his local Banco Bem, first to build and then to enlarge his business. As was once the norm for U.S banks, Banco Bem’s small business lending is often character-based. According to bank manager Leonora Mol, “The neighbors decide who should get the loans. We ask them a very simple question: if this money were yours, would you lend it to this person?” Now, many of the bricklayer’s customers pay for his products with “bems,” an alternative currency also issued by the bank.

The “developed” world has already successfully borrowed key community development concepts, such as microfinance and appropriate technology, from the dynamic “developing” world. Now, with cash an increasingly scarce resource here in the U.S., it makes sense to look beyond our borders to see how cash and non-cash tools are integrated to make the impacts more than the sum of their parts.

Source: BBC News

International giving on the rise

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One of the most notable trends in philanthropy, according to the 2012 Giving USA Study of charitable giving, is that international giving has steadily grown despite a tumultuous economy.  For the past two years, 2009-2011, international giving has experienced a 15.2 percent growth, the largest increase across all of the subsectors the Study tracks and reports.

The growth in international giving can be attributed to many things: increasing digital access to global information, a growing number of international giving networks, and a heightened awareness of the interrelationships of global communities.

The Hudson Institute’s 2012 Index of Global  Philanthropy and Remittances shows that despite the recession, U.S. giving to developing countries actually increased to $37.5 billion in 2009, outpacing official U.S. government aid by almost $9 million.

[Excerpted from WealthManagement article, by Betsy Brill and Michael Donovan]

Making an impact even with a little

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You don’t need a fortune to be a philanthropist. For example, you can:

Start a charitable fund. A number of community foundations let you funnel as little as $1,000 a year into donor-advised funds, and let you choose the recipient. You contribute cash, stocks or other property — and take a tax deduction for your contribution each year — until you reach a certain threshold, typically $5,000 or $10,000.

Give to a classroom. What better way to spend your charitable dollars than to help teachers help kids? At DonorsChoose.org, you get your pick of teacher-proposed projects. DonorsChoose makes the purchase and sends it to the teacher.

Volunteer on vacation. Use your next vacation to give something back.

Or you can be an angel for as little as $100: Upstart allows you to give money to entrepreneurial college graduates. You can invest in $100 increments in one “upstart” or as many as you choose. You’ll receive a modest portion of the company’s income — up to an annual rate of return of 14.99 percent — for 10 years.  You can also contribute to projects through Kickstarter, which focuses more on creative individuals who want to raise money to produce films, music and art.

Ponying with Hollywood to teach about Disaster Giving

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Mike Rea, founder of Give2Asia, calls the 2004 Asian tsunami the “first global disaster of our time.” When he learned that Hollywood was producing its own retrospective (of sorts) on the tsunamis, he realized it was an opportunity for educating people about responding effectively in the wake of natural emergencies.

So Mr. Rea fast-tracked his plans for his “Tsunami Plus 10″ Project to coincide with last month’s release of The Impossible, a film starring Ewan McGregor and Naomi Watts.

His goal is to help inform disaster philanthropy. Mr. Rea’s takeaways, in broad strokes, are relatively simple:

* Make gifts not only to the Oxfams of the world but also to community groups.

* Give “when emotions are high,” he suggests, but also later—six months or a year after the disaster, when it becomes clearer which nonprofits are doing an effective job and still need cash.

* Write checks; don’t send used clothes.

The IShack betters conditions in slum settlements

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As you approach the simple dwelling, a rooftop solar panel, an outdoor security light and a roof overhang make Nosango Plaatjie’s shack stand out amid the sprawling cluster of makeshift wooden structures and rusty corrugated iron dwellings where her neighbors live.

Welcome to the iShack, or improved shack, an innovative approach to housing that’s being tested in the windswept slum of Enkanini, just outside Stellenbosch, South Africa. The dwelling, developed by researchers at the University of Stellenbosch, is intended to raise the living standards of slum residents while improving their access to electricity and protecting them from extreme temperatures in an environmentally friendly way.

The iShack prototype is occupied by Plaatje and her three young children. It is fully equipped with a photovoltaic panel capable of producing enough electricity to power three lights, a mobile phone charger and an outdoor motion detector spotlight. Its windows are strategically placed to achieve better air circulation and sunlight heating, while the roof is sloped so that rainwater can be harvested during the winter months.

Plaatjie, a domestic worker employed once a week, says her family’s life has improved a great deal after relocating to the ecologically designed iShack. Their previous home was a cold, damp shack hastily put together from disused pallets and corroded zinc sheets.

62% of the urban population in Sub-Saharan Africa lives in slums, typically characterized by deplorable living conditions, a feeling of insecurity and inadequate infrastructure for basic energy, sanitation and water services.

Excluding the solar power system, the iShack costs about 5,600 rand ($660). And thanks to a grant by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the iShack project will be trialled over the next year.

 

The Business of Giving

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With the explosion of private enterprise in many parts of the world, there are more wealthy people looking for ways to give back to their communities. Business leaders in areas like Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union, and China are exploring ways to contribute to society.

Some may wonder where business and philanthropy intersect. I believe that a healthy public sector is absolutely essential to a capitalist economy. When more money is invested in areas such as education and public welfare, it generally strengthens the environment in which businesses operate. This can result in a virtuous cycle where a better business environment leads to better profits that can lead to increased philanthropy.

What really excites me is how business has informed the philanthropic sector. Historically, corporate philanthropy was little more than a one-time gift of money that met an immediate need, often totally unrelated to a company’s mission. Today, however, there is a new area—strategic philanthropy—involving corporations that find ways to link their philanthropy to their business strategy. Companies increasingly are finding synergies between these two areas so that both profit and philanthropic efforts are under the same strategic umbrella.

Many large corporations have embraced strategic philanthropy. Networking technology giant Cisco offers free technology courses and certifications that are taught using Cisco equipment. American Express provides travel agent training online, free of charge. Dannon sells its Danone Dahi, a nutrient-enriched yogurt tailored to the health needs of many of India’s impoverished children, at a low cost.

These philanthropic efforts help society, but they also result in profit for the company. By creating a financial return to the company they can then reinvest these funds to create a sustainable philanthropic effort.  There is an old Chinese proverb that says: “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” Strategic philanthropy is the modern equivalent of teaching someone to fish. 

–Excerpts of an article by Philip L. Cochran, associate dean Indiana University Kelley School of Business