April 2010 - Global Health - The Network of Care

Loan Sharks Cash In on Microfinance's Magic

It's hard to imagine an aid intervention more perfectly calibrated to tap into the American psyche than microfinance. The idea — give developing world entrepreneurs tiny loans, watch their businesses grow — has all the old Horatio Algers charm and...

Published Wed, Apr 14 2010 9:49 AM by Change.org's Global Poverty Blog

Culture Can't Be Left Out of Haiti's Recovery

No one doubts that rebuilding Haiti will come at a great cost. It's estimated that piecing the Caribbean nation together will take approximately 10 years and $11 billion. In recent months, we've heard plenty of talk about the need to improve the...

Published Wed, Apr 14 2010 12:30 PM by Change.org's Global Poverty Blog

To Fight Climate Change, Turn on the TV

What did you think of An Inconvenient Truth ? Not surprisingly, if you pose this question in most parts of the world, you'll get a quizzical look. But it turns out that watching more movies might actually help farmers in the developing world cope...

Published Wed, Apr 14 2010 2:21 PM by Change.org's Global Poverty Blog

Will This Attempt to Eradicate Afghanistan's Poppies Be Any Different?

Poppy farmers in Afghanistan have always had it rough. Economic instability, scarce land and the general absence of rule of law in the Afghan countryside have made poppy cultivation far from a stable line of work. Yet national and international campaigns...

Published Thu, Apr 15 2010 7:22 AM by Change.org's Global Poverty Blog

The Poor Have More Resources Than We Think

What if you knew that there was $9.3 trillion available to the developing world, but that such resources remained virtually untapped? And we're not talking about oil reserves or diamond veins, either. We're talking about the assets of the poor...

Published Thu, Apr 15 2010 8:54 AM by Change.org's Global Poverty Blog

Meet South Africa's Fog Harvesters

Picture a fine web of threads strung between two poles, angled to catch the wind. The mesh is light and beaded with droplets of water that make transparent columns, which pool into collections on the ground. It's a fog-catching device: an evocative...

Published Thu, Apr 15 2010 11:06 AM by Change.org's Global Poverty Blog

The Global Phones-to-Toilets Ratio

Right now, India has more cell phones than toilets. That's the headline buzzing over the wires today, thanks to the latest phones-to-toilets ratio released by the United Nations. It's certainly a dramatic factoid. But it's not just true of...

Published Thu, Apr 15 2010 1:27 PM by Change.org's Global Poverty Blog

The Nuclear Issue is a Poverty One, Too

Newspapers around the world heralded this week’s nuclear summit in Washington, DC as a huge step for the world, and evidence that President Obama is finding his groove on foreign policy. Left out of the conversation, though? The fact that nuclear proliferation's...

Published Fri, Apr 16 2010 6:51 AM by Change.org's Global Poverty Blog

UN Sex Abuses Get Their Own Regular Press Releases

As victories for public transparency go, this is a pretty depressing one. Sex abuses among UN troops have gotten prominent enough that the UN has officially started scheduling quarterly press releases to offer updated statistics on reports of such crimes...

Published Fri, Apr 16 2010 8:24 AM by Change.org's Global Poverty Blog

Why the "Quiet Corruption" Label Hurts the Poor

A silent flood of resources being siphoned from aid agencies and governments — and channeled into the pockets of health workers and teachers. That's the way a World Bank portrays a new concept they're calling "quiet corruption," in a...

Published Fri, Apr 16 2010 9:36 AM by Change.org's Global Poverty Blog

Fast Food: An All-American Epidemic? Not Anymore

Coke is an all-American drink, isn’t it? Not anymore. As of 2006, fully 73% of Coke’s volume sales were done outside of North America. MacDonalds now has franchises in 121 countries. Even the former Soviet Union is home to 79 MacDonald's franchises...

Published Sat, Apr 17 2010 9:21 AM by Change.org's Global Poverty Blog

When Displaced People Don't Want to Go Home

The issue of internally displaced people is nothing new. As long as there's been conflict, people have fled their homes and become displaced within their own countries. But what happens when such IDPs don't want to return home? That's precisely...

Published Mon, Apr 19 2010 6:21 AM by Change.org's Global Poverty Blog

In the Bid to Own African Land, Where Are the Women?

On the short end of the stick, in most cases. Even as countries across the continent are trying to formalize land ownership, women risk getting left behind. After colonialism, Africa ended up with two systems of ownership. One looks familiar to Westerners...

Published Mon, Apr 19 2010 7:57 AM by Change.org's Global Poverty Blog

What the West Can Learn From China in Africa

There's very little that China manages to accomplish on the world stage without being shadowboxed into the realm of suspicion. Its engagement with Africa is no exception. Does the Great Dragon (to echo one tiresome metaphor) swooping over the continent...

Published Mon, Apr 19 2010 10:05 AM by Change.org's Global Poverty Blog

Bono Stumbles Upon a Good Point on Microfinance

I’m not a big fan of Bono’s new gig as a contributing columnist over at the Times (mostly because I find him to be a much better singer than writer), though I will give credit to anyone who can use “doppelganger” and “Mike Tyson” in the same sentence...

Published Mon, Apr 19 2010 9:30 AM by Change.org's Global Poverty Blog

April 2010 - Global Health

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