Category: Humanitarian Aid

Polio has not yet been eradicated

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Polio is more than 99% eliminated worldwide, and there are fewer cases than ever before. However,  polio remains endemic in three countries: Nigeria, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

In 1988, 125 countries were fighting polio, and more than 350,000 children contracted the disease each year. Today, we have fewer than 200 cases.

This progress did not happen by accident. It happened because the global community launched an unprecedented effort called the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, a partnership that includes the World Health Organization, Rotary International, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, UNICEF and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

But the last percent is always the toughest, and if we don’t finish the job, polio could return with a vengeance. According to WHO, if we don’t end polio now, more than 10 million children under the age of 5 could be paralyzed by the disease in the next 40 years.

That’s why world leaders came together last month at the United Nations to reaffirm their commitment to ending polio and to issue an urgent call to fill a funding gap that threatens to undo the progress that has been made.

Samsung undertaking solar-powered Internet schools in Africa

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Old shipping containers repurposed into solar-powered classrooms are giving students in the most remote parts of Africa access to education and innovation.

Samsung’s Solar-Powered Internet Schools Initiative brings mobile classrooms filled with gadgets to rural towns. By outfitting a mobile shipping container with desks, a 50-inch electronic board, Internet-enabled solar-powered notebooks, Samsung Galaxy tablet computers and Wi-Fi cameras, children can receive a technology-rich education without traveling far.

“I have this motivation in me. It’s this need to just grow up and become something better in life and help others to become a success so that in South Africa, or in the whole continent of Africa, we can have a better life,” a Secondary School student named Lefa told us in a video by the Samsung Corporate Social Responsibility team.

For her, the computer lab presents an opportunity to “learn all the things” she’s ever wanted to learn.

Each 12-meter portable classroom has space for up to 21 students to learn how to use computers and how to surf the Internet, many for the first time. The pilot program will bring mobile classrooms to K-12 graders in five African countries including South Africa, Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal and Sudan. The project will expand in upcoming years. The technology giant hopes to reach 2.5 million students in Africa by 2015.

 

Music telethon raises $23 million for Hurricane Sandy relief

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Friday’s Hurricane Sandy telethon, presented by the Red Cross and NBC Universal, and featuring performances by Bruce Springsteen, Bon Jovi, Christina Aguilera and others, raised $23 million to support victims impacted by Hurricane Sandy.

“We are incredibly grateful and humbled by this outpouring of support for those who are suffering as a result of Superstorm Sandy,” American Red Cross Chief Marketing Officer Peggy Dyer said in a statement. “Our preliminary results of nearly $23 million raised are an extraordinary example of how the American people pull together in times of disaster. Their generous donations will go directly to those in need, and we urge the public to continue to give.”

Hosted by Today show anchor Matt Lauer, the telethon also featured performances by Billy Joel, Sting, Aerosmith and Mary J. Blige. Kevin Bacon, Jimmy Fallon, Tina Fey, Whoopi Goldberg, Jon Stewart, Brian Williams and Danny DeVito dropped by to lend support.

Gates Foundation, USAID Award African Women Scientists $19 Million

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African Women in Agricultural Research and Development has announced $19 million in joint funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), in support of a fellowship program for women scientists.

Grants of $14 million from the Gates Foundation and up to $5 million from USAID will support the second five-year phase of AWARD’s efforts to bolster the research and leadership skills of female agricultural scientists in eleven sub-Saharan African countries. Since 2008, more than two thousand women have applied for two hundred and fifty fellowships, and more than a thousand are competing for seventy places in the next round, which will be announced in December.

According to a 2008 benchmarking study by AWARD, while the majority of those who produce, process, and market food in Africa are women, only one in four agricultural researchers is a woman and only one in seven holds a leadership position in African agricultural research institutions.

“Cultivating a new generation of African leaders in food and agriculture is strategically important,” said AWARD director Vicki Wilde. “That leadership will be all the more effective when women are highly represented, especially by those technically competent and strategically positioned to generate and promote the innovations needed by rural women and other smallholder farmers.”

Millennials search for career opportunities to create social impact

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Social entrepreneurship is the new black. The idea of not choosing between profit and purpose seems to be gaining traction as America continues to cultivate a new sense of philanthropic virtue.

And the growing emphasis on social good is empowering millennials (ages 16-29) to balance their career goals with karma. One question keeps coming up. Will social entrepreneurship drive a paradigm shift in the hiring procedures of corporate America?

There is a growing trend in business school students searching for opportunities to create social impact. A recent study from the Stanford Graduate School of Business showed that ninety percent of MBAs were willing to sacrifice financial benefits to work for a company that demonstrates a strong commitment to social good (i.e. positive ethics, community reputation etc.)

From the corporate perspective, more potential employees sourced from top learning institutions ask specifically about volunteering and community service, indicating that it is one of the criteria for an “employer of choice.”

It’s clear that in this day and age of blogging and information sharing, companies that don’t consider magnifying their community footprint will be held accountable by future potential employees. With volunteerism and social entrepreneurship becoming a bigger part of college applications, curriculums and media, it seems the trend is here to stay.

Microsoft has given $1 billion to 31,000 non-profits

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Microsoft is celebrating 30 years of giving, a huge milestone for the Redmond-based software company. And at a press conference, the company also announced that it has given $1 billion in donations to more than 31,000 non-profit groups during that time.

“We stood up in times of crisis and helped the people in Japan, in Pakistan, in Haiti,” said CEO Steve Ballmer.

Needless to say, Microsoft has given time and money that has had a huge impact around the world.

It’s a culture of generosity that was started by co-founder Bill Gates, who credits his parents for setting an example of philanthropy and encouraged him to start a giving program.

Grameen Bank taken over by Bangladesh government

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Mads Kjaer of MYC4 commenting on the Grameen Bank being taken over by the Bangladeshi government, and ousted Nobel laureate and micro finance pioneer Muhammed Yunus:

Microfinance of 20 years ago is completely different from what we have today. Actually, what Yunus started was micro-credit and now we have microfinance (that offers a whole range of other financial products & services). Microfinance has grown to such a level that it cannot go unnoticed by governments. And that’s why in the last decade, there has been a wave of regulation and licensing of MFIs and the industry has evolved from donor and government programs to commercial ventures primarily driven by the private sector.

Microfinance Institutions are currently holding a lot of financial resources in both credit and savings and if not properly managed and controlled, they can be cause a risk to the financial sector. Microfinance has therefore evolved as an industry and moving forward we should see professionalism  and proper ownership and governance structures in place.

The case of Yunus could have had a political angle to it but the fact the government could not give him exemption to remain a director being over-age, is a manifestation that microfinance has outgrown its “founding fathers” and emerging as a professional industry.

History often repeats itself; in our western culture we seem to forget that we also used to have thousands of small savings-credit and cooperative institutions/banks that over time were merged, acquired, and grew to large financial institutions of today like Chase.

The International Day of the Girl

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The International Day of the Girl (October 11th) is meant, according to the United Nations, “to help galvanize worldwide enthusiasm for goals to better girls’ lives, providing an opportunity for them to show leadership and reach their full potential.”

One of the biggest returns on investment for people and the planet is supporting the health of women and girls.

In short, progress in developing nations is directly linked to women’s empowerment in all forms.

 

Going green in Ghana with sewage power

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How might the world’s poorest continent go green? Kwabena Otu-Danquah’s job is to crack that riddle. The renewable energy czar for Ghana ranks among the handful of bureaucrats across Africa tasked with picking which forms of green energy might prove affordable on a continent where most people don’t pay for the electricity they sometimes receive.

Last year the Ghanaian parliament signed a pledge to derive 10 percent of the country’s electricity from alternative sources come 2020.

Sun? Forget it. Solar costs 40 cents to 50 cents a kilowatt hour, while Ghanaians pay just 5 cents to 10 cents for electricity from conventional sources. Wind? Too slow. Breeze ambles through this tropical doldrum at a leisurely average of five kilometers an hour (3.2 miles per hour).

That’s forced Ghana to consider a more imaginative set of choices. Among them, sewage. Flush with a $1.5 million grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, local Waste Enterprisers Ltd. is building Ghana’s first “fecal sludge-fed biodiesel plant.” That’s longhand for cooking human excrement into generator fuel, Chief Operating Officer Tim Wade explains. The transformation would serve a dual purpose. Open sewers sweep 1,000 tons of slurry each day into the ocean off Accra. Outside the upland city of Kumasi, roughly 100 trucks dump tens of thousands of liters of septic tank sewage daily into what used to be a small pond.If all goes according to plan, next month one truck a day from Kumasi will dump its payload into a warm and massive vat that will skim lipids – fat – off the top. “That’s your biodeisel,” he explains.

At $7 a gallon, he can sell the muck to local mining companies, who are keen to buy because they too have been required by parliament to power 10 percent of their private electric plants from green sources. Normal diesel does sells a few bucks cheaper, he admits, “But we’re still optimizing the process.” If he can get costs down, Mr. Wade intends to build four plants in Accra and lecture sub-divisions back home in Colorado on the folly of treating their waste.

The nonprofit charity: water

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Nonprofit charity: water recently launched its innovative, annual September Campaign, seeking to raise $1.7 million in order to bring clean, safe water to nearly 26,000 people in Rwanda.

Under the leadership of founder Scott Harrison, the organization is reinventing the nonprofit model by marketing itself like a tech company, guaranteeing 100 percent of donations to funding its water projects and taking full advantage of social media. For those and other reasons, it has become one of the hottest and most innovative nonprofits around.

Click below to learn more:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLTP7oKl8qFml6oqxcW801K8rcEWQ0-mxK&v=msm106Gnjug&feature=player_embedded#