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Shobha Vakade, who took a loan of rupees 18,000 ($400) from a microfinance company to start her own business, strings beads into necklaces outside her house in a slum in Mumbai, India. Microloan groups are expanding to include other services to clients, including savings accounts and health and education services. (Danish Siddiqui/Reuters/File)
Five microcredit programs innovate to break the cycle of poverty
One of the best ways to encourage economic growth in poor areas is to provide affordable small loans to farmers and small-business owners. Called microcredit or microloans, these programs can inject capital into communities that lack the collateral required by conventional banks.
Today, Nourishing the Planet introduces five innovative microcredit programs that are encouraging economic growth in poor communities.
1. Farmer-to-farmer programs: Microcredit programs tend to be most sustainable when they promote cooperation between residents of a community. Encouraging farmer-to-farmer support can be an effective technique because it allows participants to be less reliant on outside financing and guidance.
Farmer-to-farmer programs in action: When Africa’s Sustainable Development Council (ASUDEC) connects farmers with microcredit loans, the recipients have several expectations placed upon them. ASUDEC requires farmers to not only pay back the loans, but also to offer equally affordable loans to their neighbors. This policy generates a ripple effect, helping communities increase their incomes and fund their own progress, rather than relying on ASUDEC. As the trust and cooperation between farmers builds, it “helps the poor transition from subsistence to entrepreneurship,” says ASUDEC’S Director, Dr. Salibo Some.
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2. Integrated economic support: While gaining access to affordable lines of credit is an important step for poor farmers, it isn’t always enough to provide real financial stability. Some microcredit programs go beyond small loans and offer many services, such as connections to markets, supply regulation, and savings accounts.
Integrated economic support in action: BRAC, formerly Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee, started its microfinance program in 1974 in Bangladesh, and now provides asset- and referral-free microloans to impoverished people in 16 countries. The largest development organization in the world, BRAC’s aim is to “use microfinance groups as a social platform to deliver scaled-up services in health, education, business development, and livelihood support.” They provide specialized loans ($50 to $700) and training for young women, and larger loans ($700 to 7,000) to existing small enterprises. All of these loans come with access to a range of services, including savings, technical assistance, and marketing. Over 99 percent of BRAC’s 7 million borrowers pay back their loans on time.
3. Training centers: Without the necessary knowledge and training, many farmers who receive microloans would struggle to increase their production and pay back loans. Most microcredit programs, therefore, link their loans with training and education on up-to-date techniques and practices.
Training centers in action: Ecova Mali was started in 2007 in order to provide grass-roots development in Mali. The two main thrusts of its program are providing farmers with training in sustainable agriculture and offering microfinancing (loans and grants) to help farmers start environmentally and socially responsible enterprises. It has a permanent training facility in Mali, where local experts teach fellow Malians new techniques, such as using natural fertilizers, aquaculture, and biogas, and explain why they are preferable to traditional methods. Once they receive the education, the farmers may be offered loans or grants to get started on their own eco-friendly, profitable farms.
4. Health information programs: The history of microcredit programs is not spotless. Financiers have occasionally preyed upon the poor, profiting substantially from microloans. And sometimes loans have proven to be ineffective at delivering immediate relief and aid. One tactic employed by some programs is to link loans directly with health information and care.
Health information programs in action: The Microcredit Summit Campaign was originally launched in 1997 in Washington, DC, as an international effort to bring access to credit to millions of the world’s poorest people, especially women. One important facet of its mission is to work with a network of trainers to reach “over half-a-million microfinance clients in 18 countries with life-saving health education lessons.” This is crucial to combat insufficient knowledge of nutrition, sanitation, HIV/AIDS, and many other health-related issues. The campaign is specifically trying to establish self-sustaining education systems through microloans, which are independent of donor support.
5. Individual investors: Sometimes NGOs and governments fail to provide services where and when they are needed. Dedicated individuals, however, can contribute immeasurably to their communities by utilizing and encouraging microfinancing and partnerships that build trust and cooperation.
Individual investors in action: Dinnah Kapiza, an agrodealer in Malawi, lost her husband in 1999, and she responded by taking a training course in business that came with a microloan. She used that money to start a new agro-dealership, Tisaiwale Trading, which sells agricultural supplies, such as seeds and tools, to roughly 3,000 nearby farmers in Malawi. Her business is flourishing, providing affordable supplies and technical training on how to best use them, and she is working to connect women’s groups to their own microcredit.
To read more about each of these microcredit programs, follow these links: Farmer to farmer programs, Integrated economic support, Training centers, Health information programs, Individual investors.
• Isaac Hopkins is a research intern with Nourishing the Planet. This article originally appeared at Nourishing the Planet, a blog published by the Worldwatch Institute.
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The Connecticut River, as photographed from the French King Bridge in Gill, Mass. The river and its watershed have been named the first National Blueway, an effort to coordinate the work of nonprofit groups and governments to protect and wisely use the entire 410-mile river and its 7.2 million acre watershed. (John Nordell/The Christian Science Monitor/File)
Coalition helps the Connecticut River become the first National Blueway
Science writer Willy Ley once said: “Ideas, like large rivers, never have just one source.” The same can be said for the Connecticut River Watershed, the first National Blueway in the United States, as designated May 24 by the US Interior Department.
It took the cooperation of between 40 and 50 local and state, public and private, organizations from four states to make the designation possible. While it doesn't mean more federal funding, it does mean better coordination between these groups to promote best practices, information sharing, and stewardship.
National Blueway is more than a label, says Andy Fisk, executive director of the Connecticut River Watershed Council.
“There are no turf wars here, but there are a lot of folks on the dance floor,” Mr. Fisk says. “It’s important to recognize that this is a new way in how you get things done. It’s not one entity that will get things done, it’s diversity.”
The 7.2 million acre Connecticut River watershed runs through four New England states: Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Vermont.
The idea for a National Blueways System comes from President Obama’s America’s Great Outdoors Initiative, which highlights grass-roots efforts in land and water conservation. National Blueways will coordinate federal, state, and local efforts by promoting best practices, sharing information and resources, and encouraging collaboration. Existing federal designations for rivers generally cover only a segment of a river and its corridor: A National Blueway will comprise the entire river, as well as its watershed.
Among the groups involved in the Connecticut River National Blueway are the Friends of the Silvio O. Conte Refuge, the Connecticut Watershed Council, the Connecticut River Museum, and the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Mass.
At 410 miles long, the Connecticut River is New England’s largest and longest. Starting in New Hampshire, the silt-rich river empties into the Long Island Sound at Old Saybrook and Old Lyme, Conn.
It is also one of the only major rivers in the world that remains largely undeveloped, says Jerry Roberts, executive director of the Connecticut River Museum in Essex, Conn. A sand bar at the river’s mouth prevented a large seaport city from developing there.
“I’m looking out my window and see nothing but trees; that’s unusual for a river this size,” Mr. Roberts says.
The National Blueway designation will encourage people to regard the Connecticut River as a source of recreation, as well as something to be conserved, Roberts says. That’s no easy task considering the 7.2 million acre watershed reaches into four states.
People can get involved in protecting the river in many ways, large and small, Fisk says. They can take water-quality samples or plant trees on the banks of the river. They can help maintain one of several paddling trails on the river or campgrounds on its banks.
“Whether you are living in rural Vermont or you are a school kid in a city like Hartford [Conn.] or Springfield [Mass.] you can get involved,” Fisk says.
American rivers can also provide a source for economic opportunity, so long as they are carefully managed, say both the US Department of the Interior and the US Department of Agriculture. The Connecticut River is an important economic source. About 1.4 million people enjoy the watershed yearly, and it contributes about $1 billion to local economies, according to the Trust for Public Land, a national, nonprofit land-conservation organization.
“Rivers are the canary in the coal mine when it comes to global warming,” Roberts says. “As sea levels rise, rivers rise, and property gets lost. The tidal area will start to extend further up. By monitoring these things now we can establish a baseline and see where we are in 20 years. The designation will help people realize the battle is not over.”
The National Blueway designation also offers a chance to better preserve the river’s history, Roberts says.
Historic covered bridges, known as kissing bridges or courting bridges, span the waterway in Vermont and New Hampshire. In Charleston, N.H., Fort No. 4 is the site of one of the first European settlements in the upper Connecticut River Valley. It wasn’t, however, the site of the first human settlement on the river. That dates back about 11,000 years when Paleo-Indians settled on its banks. Europeans arrived in 1614.
Over time the river valley has played an enormous role in the development of New England and the nation. It’s abundant wood and stone, and fertile valleys, made it an ideal place to settle. About 2.4 million people now live in the watershed area.
The river’s name comes from a French corruption of the Algonquian word “quinetucket,” which means “long tidal river.” That's an apt name considering the river stays tidal all the way to Windsor Locks, Conn., some 60 miles inland from its mouth.
Machine-tool factories have dotted the waterway from the Robbins and Lawrence Armory and Machine Shop in Windsor, Vt., to the Colt Factory in Hartford. The river rebounded starting in 1965 with passage of the federal Water Quality Act. The river's water quality has risen from Class D to Class B.
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Kirsten Guarini (l.) and Cesar Zamora are two of 230 students being mentored by First Graduate, a nonprofit program that helps prepare students for higher education who would be the first in their families to attend college. (Courtesy of First Graduate)
First Graduate helps students aim for higher education
Kirsten Guarini, a junior in high school, spent spring break traveling from her hometown of San Francisco to Los Angeles, visiting seven colleges on the way. If she enrolls in 2013, she will become the first person in her family to attend college in America, the goal of First Graduate, the group that organized the road trip for Ms. Guarini and 20 other students in the program.
“My parents would not have known how to schedule a tour,” says Ms. Guarini, whose parents immigrated from Denmark and Guatemala. “First Graduate planned it all out for us and said, 'Show up here ready to learn, with your walking shoes.’ ”
Founded in 2002, First Graduate prepares students academically for college and helps their families navigate the admissions and financial-aid process. The program currently works with 230 students, from the end of sixth grade to high school and into college.
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Four in five of the students who started in First Graduate have stuck with it through high school, and all those who completed senior year have gone on to college. As of this spring, 14 students in the program will have finished college.
The First Graduate program is intense. Students must participate in 300 annual hours of academic instruction and tutoring.
“Being first in your family to attend college is a huge challenge and a huge accomplishment,” says Thomas Ahn, head of the San Francisco group. “We look for kids who need our services but also have the capacity to take advantage of it and do the extra work.”
The extra academic work, along with family support and an early start, leads to success. Mr. Ahn, who, like half of the organization’s employees, was also the first in his family to attend college.
First Graduate links each student with a staff member whose role is to be a college and career coach. The staff member helps the student choose classes, plan summer enrichment activities, and craft personal essays for applications. After the student has entered college, the coach remains involved by checking in each month. The group also gives each student an annual scholarship of $1,000.
While the only prerequisite is that students in the program would become the first in their families to attend college, 63 percent of participants are from immigrant families, and the average family income of participants is $26,000, says Mr. Ahn.
Foundations and individuals each provide 40 percent of the group’s $1.6-million budget; the rest comes from corporations and the city government.
The group hopes to expand to 1,000 students in San Francisco in the next five years. Interest is already high: Last year 150 middle-school students applied for 40 slots in next year’s program.
Ms. Guarini’s younger sister is among the applicants.
“I really hope she gets in,” Ms. Guarini says. “They have opened up so many opportunities for me.”
Here, she and Cesar Zamora, a fellow participant, signal what they hope will be their academic future.
* This article originally appeared at The Chronicle of Philanthropy.
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For Kashmir to heal and women to gain a greater role, Inshah Malik says, it’s crucial that Kashmiris never forget the women still searching for their loved ones or being brutalized by ongoing conflict. (Bridgette Auger)
Inshah Malik is trying to rebuild Kashmir with a different weapon – her pen
Inshah Malik may have a plan to share with the conflict-weary women of the Arab Spring. For most of her 27 years, she has lived through a brutal clash that ripped apart her homeland in Kashmir, on the border between India and Pakistan.
Now Ms. Malik, like a growing number of other young Kashmiris, is trying to rebuild her community with a different weapon – her pen.
For communities to heal and women to gain a greater role, she says, it’s crucial that her people never forget the collective memories of women searching for their loved ones and being brutalized by conflict. Though she’s just starting out, her work might offer examples for the women of Syria, Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, and Yemen. How can they start rebuilding their communities and making a space for themselves when the protests die down and the world stops paying attention?
Malik has written a collection of stories of women from villages in a recently published book, based on her graduate thesis “Muslim Women Under the Impact of Ongoing Conflict in Kashmir.” She writes of women such as Dilfroz, who was raped in front of her family during an army search, thus bringing attention to stories that usually go unheard. She hopes to have the book reprinted in Kashmir at a reduced cost so that it can be used in the course curriculum in universities.
“In Kashmir, for the entire conflict, women have always been out there fighting,” Malik says, looking out the window of her home in Srinagar, the summer capital.
In 2010 she frantically posted Facebook updates as Indian security forces smashed these windows during massive protests. “The conflict has actually proven to be more brutal for women because ... [that] violence [was] intended to demean the community, to demean the enemy, to demean the people who are fighting the authorities,” she says.
Kashmir is one of the most militarized place in the world, with some 600,000 Indian soldiers policing the region near the Himalayas where India, Pakistan, and China converge. The military presence picked up in 1989 when Pakistani-trained militants began crossing the border into Indian-controlled Kashmir, leading to an armed movement for independence from India.
In the years that followed, Amnesty International reports, more than 70,000 people were killed, thousands of women were widowed, and thousands more were raped. By the late 1990s, the armed movement was quashed by Indian forces.
The conflict goes back to 1947, when most of Muslim-majority Kashmir was grabbed by India during the partition of India and Pakistan. Kashmiris were promised a plebiscite on their political future by the United Nations, but that vote was never allowed to happen.
In the last two decades, the movement has shifted from an armed struggle to stone-throwing protests. Now, young Kashmiris, like Malik, are turning to social media and other nonviolent tools.
Growing up in the midst of the strife in the 1990s, Malik remembers her father, uncles, brother, and other men in the neighborhood being dragged out of their houses at gunpoint during crackdowns by Indian soldiers. She recalls that the women left in their homes were terrified of being raped or molested.
Having lived through these horrifying moments, she wanted to reach out to the women in her community. She spent weeks listening to the stories of dozens of women who were raped in a single night in 1991 in Kunan Poshpora, a remote village in Kashmir.
Caught in the middle, women were raped by both soldiers and militants. But the abuse did not stop with the original attack. They were then often blamed by their families and shunned by society for what had happened to them.
Even in those bleak times, Malik writes, it was women like Raja, who was brutalized in Kunan Poshpora but spoke out against the army while helping the women raped in her village, who held society together.
“I want to give Kashmiri women a tongue to tell what they have faced,” says Malik, who is pursuing a Ph.D. on women and the Kashmiri conflict at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi.
Though protests are still important, she says it’s time that Kashmiris find other ways to advance their cause.
The women of Syria, Libya, and Egypt, who are now facing similar challenges, should pen narratives too, Malik suggests. She hopes to draw attention to crimes of sexual violence and to lobby for greater acceptance of rape victims within their communities.
While her stories are only a beginning, she’s already pushing for increased understanding of subjects long thought taboo.
Kashmiri activist Anjum Zamarud Habib, the only Kashmiri woman to be jailed under a draconian terrorist law know as the 2003 Prevention of Terrorism Act, spent five disconsolate years behind bars on terrorism charges that were later overturned. She wrote about the injustices she faced in her book “Prisoner No. 100.”
Malik has given a voice to young women – and men – who grew up during the conflict, Ms. Habib says.
“The children of conflict are more educated and more experienced” than her previous generation, she says. “My wish is that more women come forward. The movement has already been transferred to the next generation, whether they like it or not.”
But rebuilding a society fractured by war, especially for women, will not be easy. Malik, along with the young women of the Arab Spring, are now reaching for a role in society beyond what has ever existed for them before.
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Ali Asghar, a flood victim, tunes his radio to listen for news while taking refuge on an embankment with his family in Sujawal, about 93 miles from Karachi in Pakistan's Sindh province August 29, 2010. Community radio stations broadcasting in local dialects are helping Bangladeshis cope with coastal flooding. (Akhtar Soomro/Reuters/File)
Community radio cuts disaster risk in flood-prone Bangladesh
New local-dialect community radio stations in Bangladesh’s coastal districts are warning residents about cyclones and helping farmers cope with erratic weather patterns.
The new radio stations are part of an initiative to reduce loss of life and damage to livelihoods from natural disasters and unpredictable weather.
“The radio [stations], run with the active participation of local people, have already gained popularity and are telling people how to adapt to climate change impacts,” said A.H.M. Bazlur Rahman, chief executive officer of the Bangladesh NGOs Network for Radio and Communication.
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Approval was given for 14 community radio stations in coastal and inland areas in April 2010, and six are now broadcasting from coastal districts. A further 22 applications have been filed with the government. The stations are mostly funded by nongovernment organizations and individuals.
The radio programs focus primarily on disaster risk reduction and climate variability, Rahman said. He attributes their growing popularity in part to programs being broadcast in local dialects.
“People in the countryside, most of whom are illiterate, can easily understand weather bulletins and other instructions” when they are provided in local languages, he said.
During a tsunami watch in early April, in countries bordering the Indian Ocean, including Bangladesh, the new radio stations transmitted national weather forecasts in local dialects, said Manir Hossain, station manager of Lokobetar community radio, based in Barguna district in the south of the country.
“Through our programs we advised people what they needed to do for their safety during the emergency,” Hossain said.
Although no tsunami took place, heavy rainstorms have struck Bangladesh as the rainy summer season commences, claiming at least 20 lives in April in different parts of the country.
Eunus Ali Hawlader, a Lokobetar listener who makes his living fishing at sea, said, “The station suggests carrying a radio set with us so that we can hear weather bulletins and start returning in time to avoid any danger.”
Lokobetar also broadcasts plays, songs, and talk shows to raise awareness about climate change impacts and issues such as education and health services, said Hossain, who strives to ensure that programming is relevant and approachable.
“We have also included community people, the fishermen, boatmen, farmers, and other locals in our programs,” he added.
In Khulna district in the country’s southwest, Sundarban community radio warns people to send women and children to elevated storm shelters immediately when cyclones approach, and to keep adequate stocks of dry food.
Tarun Kumar, head of Sundarban community radio, said the station plans to provide a free solar-powered radio to each cyclone shelter so people can receive government instructions during disasters.
Kumar is also concerned that climate change is causing rivers in the area to dry up, threatening the livelihoods of fishing communities.
“Through our programs we advise fishermen [on how] to find alternative livelihoods, and draw the attention of policymakers to take steps so that fishing communities do not remain unfed,” he said.
Sharif Iqbal, station manager of Barguna’s Krishi radio, said his station’s main goal is to help people with disaster preparedness and risk reduction, but that offering agricultural advice is also important because of the difficulty of farming on land vulnerable to flooding from the sea.
“For the farmers we broadcast expert opinions on what steps they need to take, and when, to get a better yield,” he said. “We suggest to them what types of seeds they should choose and which one will be suitable for saline-affected lands.”
Real-time information is vital for farmers, according to Iqbal, because land in the area only allows for a single harvest each year.
“If they lose the crop, they will starve,” he said.
Amal Babu, a farmer and listener of Krishi radio, has no illusions about the difficulty of making a living and believes the broadcasts could help.
“This area is prone to disaster. The crop yield is comparatively good here but salinity, drought, flooding, and cyclones destroy [it],” he said. “If the farmers can get advance information on calamity and advice about farming tools they will be able to get a good yield.”
Babu has already taken the advice of a program broadcast on Krishi Radio about a salt-tolerant variety of rice paddy that can survive more than three weeks under water.
“Farmers have started to cultivate the variety and are now less worried about losing crops,” said Babu.
The convener of Bangladesh’s national climate change negotiation team, Quazi Khaliquzzaman Ahmed, agreed that community radio can play a significant role in explaining how to adapt to the effects of climate change and helping people improve their preparedness for disasters.
“In Bangladesh there are 45,000 volunteers ready to act when disaster hits. The community radios can inform them as well as [other] people ... what to do before and after the disaster strikes,” he said.
• Syful Islam is a journalist with the Financial Express newspaper in Bangladesh. He can be reached at: youths1990@yahoo.com. This story is part of a series supported by the Climate and Development Knowledge Network.
• This article originally appeared at AlertNet, the Thomson Reuters Foundation humanitarian news service.
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Students from the Agahozo-Shalom Youth Village in Rwanda speak in front of a high school history class in Woburn, Mass. (Courtesy of the Cummings Foundation)
Agahozo-Shalom Youth Village helps young Rwandans heal
It was 2005, and South African-born Anne Heyman and her husband Seth Merrin had just listened to a native Rwandan speak about the genocide that occurred in the country in 1994.
It was the first time Ms. Heyman had met someone from Rwanda. After the talk, Mr. Merrin asked the speaker the biggest problem that Rwanda was facing. The speaker’s response, Heyman says, was the problem of caring for the orphans who had lost parents and other family members in the genocide and now found themselves on their own.
Heyman immediately thought of the similar problem encountered by Israel after World War II, when many children had lost parents in the Holocaust, and of the small enclaves built by that country for orphaned youths. The idea led her to create the Agahozo-Shalom Youth Village, a community in Rwanda where young adults who were affected by the genocide can attend school and, Heyman hopes, become emotionally well-developed individuals.
The village’s name is a combination of the Kinyarwanda and Hebrew languages, meaning “a place to dry one’s tears in peace.”
“They tend to be so meek, worried,” Heyman says of the students who arrive at the village. “A lot of our kids have a lot of emotional baggage, to say the least.”
Heyman and those who helped her create the village have based it on the Yemin-Orde Youth Village in Israel, a community founded in 1953 that functions as a school and home to children and young adults from all over the world who have had their lives disrupted. When initially going through the process of securing finances for the Rwandan village, Heyman did so under the umbrella of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, an organization that works to help those of the Jewish faith in need around the world.
Today the village is funded by a combination of donations from individuals, corporations, and foundations.
Agahozo-Shalom welcomed its first group of students, 125 in total, in December 2008 and currently has 375 students from ages 15 to 21. Its first class is graduating this year. Students come from each of the 30 districts of the country. Sixty percent of the student body is female.
Leaders in each of Rwanda's 30 districts gives Agahozo-Shalom a list of the young adults there who are most in need of attending the school. After cutting the list down to 200, the organization then visits the students to determine if the village would be a good fit.
When they enter the school, students go through an enrichment year in which they study a variety of basic subjects such as math, geography, and history. All classes are taught in English, per Rwandan law, and many of the students must learn English at the same time as they take the classes.
After their enrichment year, each student selects three subjects to study. Combinations include biology-chemistry-math, history-chemistry-geography, and math-economics-computers.
The students at the Agahozo-Shalom Youth Village live in cottages, which each house 16 young adults and are each named after a hero selected by the students who live there. Names chosen include Abraham Lincoln and Socrates.
One of the biggest challenges Heyman faces is helping students after graduation, she says. Part of the mission statement of the organization is to “provid[e] [students] with a safe and secure living environment, health care, education, and necessary life skills,” she says.
“There's nothing on there about them going to college or getting rich,” she says. “Do I want that for them? Yes.”
She is most happy about the success the village has had with helping young adults recover emotionally from the trauma they’ve faced. “I do know that these kids are so much better off when they arrived,” Heyman says.
Recently, Heyman and five students from the village traveled to the United States to speak with those who have supported the organization and meet students at American high schools. The group stayed in the US from May 13 to May 22.
On May 15, Heyman and three of the students – Liliane Umuhoza, Pascasie Nyirantwari, and Claude Irankunda – visited Woburn High School in Woburn, Mass., a Boston suburb, to talk with members of a sophomore honors US history class. The group also spoke at high schools in New York City, including one in Harlem, and performed at a fundraiser for the Agahozo-Shalom Youth Village.
The Woburn class was selected through a recommendation from Brendan Doherty, their teacher, who is also the head of the history department. Cummings Properties, a Massachusetts-based real estate development, property management, and construction firm, one of the Agahozo-Shalom Youth Village’s donors, contacted Mr. Doherty about having the Rwandan students come to the school.
To prepare for the visit, the American students watched the film “Hotel Rwanda,” which takes place during the genocide.
This was the first time in his memory students from another country have come to speak with Woburn students, Doherty says, adding that he considers it an extremely valuable experience for American students.
“One of the faults of American education is a lack of introduction to other cultures,” Doherty says. “That's as important as anything they learn in math and history.”
The Woburn students formed a circle with their desks in the classroom, and when Ms. Umuhoza, Ms. Nyirantwari and Mr. Irankunda arrived, they sat at desks inside the circle. Heyman accompanied them, but both Heyman and Doherty let the Rwandan and American students mostly lead the discussion,
The Rwandans began by speaking of their experiences at Agahozo-Shalom. “It's our home,” Umuhoza said of the village. “It is a wonderful home.”
Rwanda, a small landlocked country in central Africa, has been irrevocably changed by the 1994 genocide. “Always, our generation is affected by what happened because we lost our parents,” Umuhoza said. “But we say that God sent angels to help us like Anne Heyman, our lovely mother…. What they do for us when we first come is they heal our hearts.”
Nyirantwari spoke of how she and her siblings were left with no one to care for them after the genocide. “When we came to Agahozo-Shalom, we got many people that can help us like [a] mom, sisters,” she said.
Irankunda said the Agahozo-Shalom Youth Village gives its students a semblance of normalcy in their lives. “Agahozo-Shalom is a nice home for us,” he said. “We get the chance to be in the family like other kids.”
All three spoke positively of the period designated “family time” before bed in which the inhabitants of each cottage in the village sit and spend time with each other.
“We talk about how was our day,” Umuhoza said. “Before, we had no idea how sweet it was to sit as a family ... we joke, we sing, we do whatever we want.”
At the end of the session, the three Rwandan students sang and danced for the Americans, and the group took several photos together.
Woburn sophomore Christopher Power enjoyed the visit. “It was really cool,” he said. “It was fun to see how they lived.”
One of the Woburn students, Irene Kamikazi, moved to the US from Rwanda three years ago. “It was really great because there aren't a lot of Rwandan kids here,” she said.
Heyman would love to make a similar trip in the future with other Agahoza-Shalom students, she says.
“I think it's so important for the [Rwandans] to meet the [American high school students] and the kids to meet them,” she says. “For them to go really see [the world], experience it, touch it, and bring it home to their brothers and sisters, is an invaluable experience.”
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Children eat in front of a huge pile of bananas in La Paz, Bolivia. A school-feeding program run by Samaritan's Purse delivers food to 72 rural schools with 28,000 children while helping Bolivian farmers grow crops. (Gaston Brito/Reuters/File)
Samaritan's Purse helps feed those in need worldwide
In the mountainous rural communities of Bolivia, thousands of children receive food through a school-feeding program implemented by Samaritan's Purse.
Samaritan's Purse is a faith-based organization that has been working since 1970 to support communities impacted by natural disaster, war, disease, and famine. Through food-security programs, Samaritan's Purse works to bring nutritious food to impoverished communities while helping them develop economically sustainable agricultural practices.
In Bolivia, where 23 percent of the population is undernourished, the school-feeding program delivers food to 72 rural schools while helping farmers who struggle to grow crops. Many children, up to 30 percent in the Chucananqu region, do not have access to milk, eggs, or meat. Through the school-feeding program, which purchases food from local businesses, 28,000 children under the age of 14 receive food that is high in protein, fiber, and essential vitamins.
Two of the businesses that supply food for the program were set up by Samaritan's Purse. The Andean Grains Processing Center processes local crops that are brought in by local families and then purchased for the feeding program. Samaritan's Purse also built a meat-processing center that helps local herders sell their food. The Samaritan's Purse also trains parents to prepare healthy meals for their children. Through this initiative they created a cookbook with recipes using local food. Samaritan's Purse also helps parents track their children’s nutritional health by training more than 580 local volunteers to record the children’s height and weight every month.
Farmers in North Korea, like those in Bolivia, have also worked with Samaritan's Purse to reduce the impact of food shortages. In May, Samaritan's Purse was one of five aid organizations allowed in the country for the purposes of evaluating North Korea’s food shortage.
“About 6 million people are going to be affected with this food shortage,” explained Franklin Graham, a delegate from Samaritan's Purse. “They had a terrible winter. The food stocks have dwindled to where they don’t even have enough to get to the next growing season. There is going to be starvation, malnutrition, there will be death,” according to Graham.
To help farmers in North Korea, Samaritan's Purse supplied emergency aid, including more than 2,000 rolls of the agricultural plastic sheeting used for seedbeds.
Similarly, Samaritan's Purse helped communities in Niger alleviate hunger during last year’s drought that left millions without food. There, they helped implement a food-for-work program to help families who had run out of food as a result of low crop yields. The program provided food to men who dug holes that helped collect rainwater, stop topsoil erosion, and promote plant growth. Women also received food for planting grass seeds for pastureland that is used by herders.
In addition to its agricultural work, Samaritan's Purse works to increase access to clean water through its “turn on the tap” program. The program helps to bring clean water to some of the world’s poorest regions in efforts to fight diseases including dysentery, cholera, typhoid, and meningitis.
In the Congo, for example, Samaritan's Purse helps build wells to provide clean water to 20,000 people living in villages in the northeast. Each well it digs is estimated to provide clean water for at least 250 people. Similar efforts are under way in Sudan, China, Bolivia, Cambodia, Vietnam, and Iraq.
• Graham Salinger is a research intern for the Nourishing the Planet project. This article originally appeared at Nourishing the Planet, a blog published by the Worldwatch Institute.
• To purchase "State of the World 2011: Innovations that Nourish the Planet," please click HERE. And to watch the one-minute book trailer, click HERE.
• Sign up to receive a weekly selection of practical and inspiring Change Agent articles by clicking here.
A technician examines a broken Koga Miyata bicycle in the Dutch town of Heerenveen. A 'repair cafe' movement, in which people gather together to fix (and learn how to fix) everyday items from bicycles to lamps, is spreading from The Netherlands to the US and elsewhere. (Jerry Lampen/Reuters/File)
'Repair Cafes' reject a 'toss it out' culture
All too many of us are ever-eager to upgrade to the latest and greatest whatever. Whether they be computers, washing machines, or clothes, if something goes wrong or next next arrives, we're on to the next purchase.
Part of it, too, is that we don't actually know how to repair our stuff. And our world is set up so it's dramatically easier to cut and run than sit and fix. And so our landfills overflow with slightly damaged goods ... a less-than-convenient truth that threatens our economic and environmental health.
This may be changing. In The Netherlands, mom and former journalist Martine Postma stumbled onto an idea that tacks the word "repair" onto the familiar green mantra, "reduce, re-use, recycle." The result is community-based Repair Cafes where folks come together to fix their broken items. What started as a few neighbors in Amsterdam helping each other out has, two years later, become a much bigger deal, with 30 groups springing up around the country.
To support the regular gatherings, the Repair Cafe Foundation was established and has raised around $525,000 from the Dutch government, foundations, and individual donors. That sum covers the foundation's staffing, marketing, and a mobile Repair Cafe. As Ms. Postma surmised, “Sustainability discussions are often about ideals, about what could be. After a certain number of workshops on how to grow your own mushrooms, people get tired. This is very hands on, very concrete. It’s about doing something together, in the here and now.”
Cradle-to-cradle architect William McDonough, whose work also inspired Postma, observed, “What happened with planned obsolescence is that it became mindless – just throw it away and don’t think about it. The value of the Repair Cafe is that people are going back into a relationship with the material things around them.”
That very tangible satisfaction of repairing a broken item is only one part of what the Repair Cafes offer, though. Of course, there's the environmental benefits accumulated by keeping goods in circulation. But there's also a notable community-building component to the cafes.
The DOEN Foundation contributed more than $260,000 to the Repair Cafe project as part of its social cohesion program. Director Nina Tellegen explained why: “What’s interesting for us is that it creates new places for people to meet, not just live next to each other like strangers. That it’s linked to sustainability makes it even more interesting.”
Singling out the benefits to elders, Tellegen noted, “They have skills that have been lost. We used to have a lot of people who worked with their hands, but our whole society has developed into something service-based.”
Similar endeavors have begun to crop up in the United States, as well. Sidling up alongside tool-lending libraries in a nice way, groups like the West Seattle Fixers Collective and the Missoula Urban Demonstration Project host do-it-yourself fix-it events and classes to help community members make needed repairs on broken items.
Back at the Repair Cafe Foundation, Postma has received information requests from folks in France, Belgium, Germany, Poland, Ukraine, South Africa, and Australia on how they, too, can join the fixer movement.
• This article was originally published at Shareable.net, a nonprofit online magazine that tells the story of how sharing can promote the common good.
• Sign up to receive a weekly selection of practical and inspiring Change Agent articles by clicking here.
A Brazilian fisherman searches for crabs among mangrove roots on the coast of Para State. Vietnam is actively building up its mangrove forests, both as a source of sea food and as a protection against increasingly destructive coastal storms. (Paulo Santos/Reuters/File)
Mangroves reduce disaster risk, boost incomes in Vietnam
Memories of the devastation wrought by Typhoon Damrey, which struck coastal areas of northern and eastern Vietnam in 2005, are still fresh in Pham Thi Tuyen’s mind.
“The cyclone was [the most] powerful, dreadful, and cataclysmic event I had ever witnessed in my life,” recalls the 37-year-old rice paddy farmer.
But Tuyen and other residents of rural Thanh Hoa province feel more confident about withstanding future storms, thanks to a project that takes advantage of the coastal protection offered by mangrove forests.
QUIZ: Hurricane prep: Are you smarter than a storm tracker? Take our quiz
In the hours before Typhoon Damrey hit in September 2005, with winds of 100 km per hour (60 m.p.h.), nearly 300,000 people were evacuated from the coastal areas of Thanh Hoa and Nam Dinh provinces.
“We had no choice but to flee for our lives to higher ground, leaving behind everything, including our cattle,” recalled Pham, who lives in the remote coastal community of Da Loc, in eastern Thanh Hoa province, about 175 km (110 miles) south of Hanoi, the capital.
A storm surge ripped apart 3.7 km (2.3 miles) of dykes in front of her village and inundated most of the district’s coastal communities, including agricultural fields, fruit orchards, and cattle farms.
But in Da Loc community, one protective dyke, 1.7 km (1 mile) in length, survived the cyclone because it was buffered by thick mangrove forest.
“This was when we realized how stubbornly the mangroves can withstand tropical cyclones like Damrey,” said Vu Xuan Ngoc, a 33-year old fish farmer. “This was a key lesson nature taught us.”
Following Typhoon Damrey, and an increasing number of cyclones that have affected Vietnam in the last five years, a number of international non-governmental organizations have begun working in disaster-prone coastal areas of Vietnam, building on evidence that mangroves can play a crucial role in reducing the destruction from cyclones.
A wave’s energy can be reduced by 75 percent if it passes through 200 meters (650 feet) of mangrove forest, according to the United Nations Environmental Programme.
CARE International, a non-governmental organization working in Vietnam, has launched a project to help Da Loc and other adjoining communes re-establish mangrove forests as “living storm barriers”, said Nguyen Viet Nghi, a senior official at the organization’s Vietnam project office.
Quoting from a project report, Nguyen said that in Hau Loc district, where Da Loc is situated, the area of coastal land that has mangrove coverage has increased from 15 hectares (37 acres) to more than 250 hectares (620 acres).
The mangrove strip is now nearly 3 km (2 miles) long and 700 meters (0.4 miles) wide, with more than 2,000 plants per hectare. More than 6,000 people in the six project areas of Thanh Hoa province, along with a further 2,300 people in adjoining project areas, are now better protected against the effects of flooding as a result of the mangroves.
Da Loc is one of six coastal communities of Thanh Hoa province considered highly vulnerable to frequent storm surges, sea-level rise, intrusion of salt water, and drought, all of which are expected to become more serious threats as a result of changes in the climate and an increase in extreme weather events.
According to the Southern Institute for Water Resources Research in Vietnam, Vietnam has witnessed a 0.5 to 0.7 degrees Celsius (0.9 to 1.3 F.) rise in temperature over the past 50 years.
The institute says that rainfall has become more erratic and has increased by 10 percent in the northern part of the country, and that the sea level has risen by 20 cm (8 inches) over the same 50-year period, with an anticipated increase of a further 100 cm (39 inches) by 2100.
According to Nguyen, the rapid establishment of the mangrove plantations is due to the active participation of local communities. Members of the six communes in Hau Loc district collectively run mangrove nurseries, selecting and sourcing seeds recommended for the area’s varied local conditions, which can include muddy soils or sandy seabed.
Community members also prepare and plant the mangroves in the new areas. For example, where CARE has provided training, the community has taken responsibility for sustaining the mangrove plantations.
“Experiences in Vietnam’s coastal communes show the value and advantages of [communities] sharing control over key decisions and resources,” said Rolf Herno, CARE International’s coordinator for adaptation learning projects in Africa.
“This enables communities to be powerful actors in the fight against poverty and adaptation to climate change,” he added.
Farming is the major source of income for coastal communities such as Da Loc. Nevertheless, the mangrove forests are offering communities an opportunity to diversify their livelihoods and increase the number of ways they are able to earn an income.
The project has incorporated plans to help residents diversify their income sources, in recognition of the fact that people in coastal areas need different livelihood options to help them build up long-term resilience to the impacts of climate change.
Giving local people additional possibilities for income generation was also important to help reduce their reliance on the mangroves as a source of wood for fuel or sale, Nguyen said.
Bui Thi Din, chairwoman of Yen Loc village women’s union in Da Loc, said that due to the increasing mangrove coverage, coastal communities’ living standards had improved significantly, as they were now able to earn additional income by catching and selling crabs and shrimp that live among the mangrove roots.
Pham Thi Tuyen said that the project has helped her appreciate the different ways in which mangroves can protect and support her. Previously, “I just knew it was simply a [mangrove] forest and had no idea what was in the forest,” she said.
“But now I know better how to find clam shells, small crabs, mussels, oysters, and shrimps to generate additional income for my family from these forests,” she said.
Chief executive of the Climate and Development Knowledge Network, Sam Bickersteth, said lessons learned from community-based adaptation interventions in Vietnam can be replicated in other parts of the world.
“There is a strong need to carry forward these proven experiences to other coastal areas of Asia-Pacific countries, Africa, and other parts of the world where denudation of mangrove forests has exposed the countries of these regions to tropical cyclones and other climate change-induced risks,” he said.
• Saleem Shaikh and Sughra Tunio are climate change and development reporters based in Karachi, Pakistan. This story is part of a series supported by the Climate and Development Knowledge Network.
• This article originally appeared at AlertNet, the Thomson Reuters Foundation humanitarian news service.
• Sign up to receive a weekly selection of practical and inspiring Change Agent articles by clicking here.
An overweight woman sits on a chair in Times Square in New York. The startup 'Halfsies' aims to cut obesity and increase food aid to the hungry by serving diners half a portion and donating the cost of the rest of the meal to charity. (Lucas Jackson/Reuters)
Diners go 'Halfsies' to fight hunger and obesity
How many times have you gone to a restaurant and not been able to finish your whole meal? Or worse, taken home the leftovers only to throw them out after several days of them sitting untouched in the refrigerator?
Thankfully, there is a new social initiative offering a choice to restaurant-goers that provides two benefits: healthier meal portions, while simultaneously reducing food waste to support the fight against hunger.
While the United States is plagued with both obesity and hunger, Halfsies will now provide a new option of ordering half of a normal portion with the remaining value of the dish being put to better use.
IN PICTURES: Baltimore's food czar addresses hunger and obesity
About 40 percent of the food produced in the United States is thrown away. And the national food-waste habit is growing: As a nation, we waste 50 percent more food today that we did in 1974. At the same time, portion sizes have grown considerably. In the 1970s, about 47 percent of Americans were overweight or obese; now 66 percent are considered overweight. At the same time, more than 50 million Americans are hungry.
With a tag line of “Eat Less, Give More,” Halfsies aims to not only fight world hunger, but also educate consumers on portion sizes, a problem that contributes to America’s growing obesity epidemic. The vision of this nonprofit is to educate right where people live, eat, and work. By offering a half-portion option in participating restaurants, customers are empowered to make a real difference, both in their own lives and in the lives of people in need.
When a consumer chooses to "go halfsies" at a participating restaurant, he or she receives a half-portion of their meal while still paying full price. What restaurants don’t put on the table will be donated to both local (60 percent) and international nonprofits (30 percent) to tackle hunger. Halfsies will take 5 to 10 percent of the donations to cover overhead costs, and any remaining funds will be used for special projects that align with Halfsies’ mission and values, such as emergency disaster relief, sustainable agriculture, and women’s rights.
Halfsies turns the simple act of going out to eat into a charitable-giving opportunity. Started by four friends from Austin, Texas, Halfsies plans to kick off pilot programs in its hometown this spring and move into NYC later this year. It is planning for a national launch in 2013. Halfsies is still working through the details with the restaurants, such as the software to be used for easy ordering and tracking, and how different meals will be treated.
Through local and global initiatives, Halfies aims to see food waste in American cut in half, local poverty levels drop, and a significant impact made in the lives of people living with hunger and poverty, both in the United States and around the world. By creating a simple process, Halfsies gives restaurant-goers the opportunity to make an easy choice that benefits themselves, their community, and their world.
For more details visit www.gohalfsies.com
• This article originally appeared at Nourishing the Planet. Holly Tassi is a research intern with the Nourishing the Planet project, a blog published by the Worldwatch Institute. To purchase "State of the World 2011: Innovations that Nourish the Planet," please click HERE. And to watch the one-minute book trailer, click HERE.
• Sign up to receive a weekly selection of practical and inspiring Change Agent articles by clicking here.
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