Newsroom

"Well,our Constitution is a masterpiece. James Madison was a genius.The Declaration of Independence is ,for me,the single greatest piece of American writing.That's not the greatest country in the world ,Professor.That's my answer.
　　Fine.Sharon,the NEA is a loser.Yeah,it accounts for a penny out of our paycheck,but he gets to hit you with it any time he wants.That doesn't cost money,it costs votes.That costs airtime and column inches.You know why people don't like liberals?Because they lose.If liberals are so ****in'smat,how come they lose so goddamn always?And with a straight face you're gonna tell students that America is so star-spangled awesome that we're the only ones in the world who havefreedom?  
　　Canada has freedom.Janpan has freendom.The U.K.,France,Italy,Germany,Spain,Australia.Belgium has freedom!207 sovereign states in the world,like 180 of them have freedom. 
　　All right... - And, yeah, you, sorority girl. Just in case you accidentally wander into a voting booth one day,there are some things you should know,and one of them is there is absolutely no evidence to support the statement that we're the greatest country in the world. 
　　We're seventh in literacy, 27th in math,22nd in science, 49th in life expectancy,178th in infant mortality,third in median household income,number four in labor force, and number four in exports.We lead the world in only three categories:Number of incarcerated citizens per capita,number of adults who believe angels are real,and defense spending where we spend more than the next 26 countries combined,25 of whom are allies. 
　　Now, none of this is the fault of a 20-year-old college student,but you nonetheless are without a doubt a member of the worst period generation period ever period. 
　　So when you ask what makes us the greatest country in the world.I don't know what the **** you're talking about.Yosemite?  
　　We sure used to be. 
　　We stood up for what was right. 
　　We fought for moral reasons. 
　　We passed laws, struck down laws for moral reasons. 
　　We waged wars on poverty, not poor people. 
　　We sacrificed. We cared about our neighbors. 
　　We put our money where our mouths wereand we never beat our chest. 
　　We built great big things,made ungodly technological advances,explored the universe, cured diseases,and we cultivated the world's greatest artists and the world's greatest economy. 
　　We reached for the stars,acted like men. 　 
　 We aspired to intelligence. 　 
　 We didn't belittle it.That didn't make us feel inferior. 　 
　We didn't identify ourselves by who we voted for in the last election and we didn't... we didn't scare so easy. 
　　Ahem, we were able to be all these things and do all these things 
　　because we were informed. 
　　By great men, men who were revered. 
　　The first step in solving any problem is recognizing there is one. 
　　... ... 
　　America is not the greatest country in the world anymore. "
　　

Child Marriage

About Child Marriage:
Every year, an estimated 10 million girls aged under 18 are married worldwide with little or no say in the matter. That’s more than 25,000 girls every day, or 19 every minute. In the developing world, one in seven girls is married before her 15th birthday and some child brides are as young as eight or nine.

Neither physically nor emotionally ready to become wives and mothers, these girls are at far greater risk of experiencing dangerous complications in pregnancy and childbirth, becoming infected with HIV/AIDS and suffering domestic violence. With little access to education and economic opportunities, they and their families are more likely to live in poverty.

Why does child marriage happen?
Tradition: Child marriage is a traditional practice that in many places happens simply because it has happened for generations – and straying from tradition could mean exclusion from the community. But traditions are made by people – we can change them.
Gender Roles:girls are not valued as much as boys ,  change parents’ attitudes
Poverty:

bride price. Where poverty is acute, giving a daughter in marriage allows parents to reduce family expenses by ensuring they have one less person to feed, clothe and educate

Security:

Many parents marry off their daughters young because they feel it is in her best interest, often to ensure her safety in areas where girls are at high risk of physical or sexual assault.

How can we end child marriage?
Educating and empowering girls
Supporting young people to become activists for change
Mobilising and educating communities
Bringing men and traditional leaders on board
Enacting and enforcing laws that set a legal minimum age for marriage
Introducing incentives
Raising awareness in the media

More about Child Marriage, please visit http://www.girlsnotbrides.org/

The Use of Social Media

The term commonly refers to the use of the internet for collaboration and sharing of content through a variety of social networking tools, news sites and services. It can denote any Internet-based technology that facilitates rapid communication and collaboration through data networks.

It includes text, images, audio and video.

The rise of social media creates opportunities to embrace new ways of connecting and communicating with stakeholders.

Social media use web-based technologies to transform broadcast media monologues (one-to-many) into social media dialogue (many-to-many). It can transform people from content consumers to content producers.

We recognize the rapidly growing use of social media for fundraising, awareness raising, advocacy, communications and knowledge sharing.

A strong brand is critical to the success of online goals, including institutional reputation, trust and recognition.  A strong organizational online identity is vital to the public recognition- it helps build and sustain loyalty.

The Big Push to Defeat AIDS, TB and Malaria

Written by Executive Director, Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria

Harness the funds needed, we can essentially take these diseases off the table.

Timing is critical. the disease finds new forms that are far more complex and expensive to defeat

Those of us who work in global health know that there is no greater investment in the world than in prevention and treatment for these terrible diseases. We need to make a big push, to secure the funding we need.

One, we must make our money count. 'Value for money' -- Investing in health is actually better value for money than almost any investment imaginable.

keep an AIDS carrier alive on drugs that cost $125 a year, compared with $10,000 a year just one decade ago

prevent the spread of malaria, and save the lives of millions of young mothers and children with mosquito nets that cost a few dollars.

This money is put to excellent use.

Two, we need to focus on impact.

Three, we have to combine every evidence-based approach that works to prevent the spread of disease. 

Four, we must be accountable and transparent. 

There must be no question that money invested in global health projects are reaching their intended targets, and that the spending path is full traceable.

Five, we have to work together. It takes more than a village to raise healthy children around the world - it takes all of us, working together.

Six, we must always be learning.  an innovative approach to development

We know from experience that by working together, with shared responsibility, with clear mission focus, and with passion and compassion as global health citizens, these three diseases can be completely controlled and -- with further scientific advancements -- can actually be eliminated.

How Coca can help Development and NGOs?

For MDG, in the last 10 years, we made progress more than any other periods combined.
I am shocked by all things that they don't have, but they all have one thing. Coca-cola.

Coca is everywhere. How is it that they can get coca to this far front places? If they can do that, NGOs can do the same thing. Then we can speed up the process and go faster in the MDG. How coca can be Ubiquitous. Save lives.

1. Real-time data.
Learn from the data and put it into the process. In development, the evaluation comes at the very end of the project.
If local people can have the data, they can save lives.
In India, more than 1 billion population, more than 35,000 doctors and a huge data system. BGMF went from one case of pyrolysis to a targeted vaccination program of 2 million. A huge mop-up campaign. Only one child got polio.
That's how you keep a huge outbreak from spreading.

2. Entrepreneur talent.
How to sell products in the remote places in Africa? NGOs need to tab into local entrepreneur as they know how to reach those very hard to serve places.
e.g. In Ethiopia, the government started a program and trained 5,000 health-extension workers to deliver pills directly to the people. And it unlocked people's potential.

3. Marketing.
Ultimately, Coca successes depends on one crucial fact-- people want it. It is aspirational. They associated happiness with local people. The appeal of celebration and unity. NGOs made a fundamental mistake. We think that people need something, and we don't have to make them want that. " Use the condom, you don't get AIDS.
You take the toilet and position it as a modern trendy convenience. Innovative marketing campaign.
Circumcise reduces the HIV infection by 65%.
If we can start to understand what people really want, we will change the development.

For polio, we have marketing problem among the donors. G8 nations don't want to fund polio any more. I If we can focus on how far we have come and how amazing we have been to eradicate this disease. We can put polio behind us. It will be the second disease ever wipe off the face of the earth.

We are so close.

Polio: Lessons from India

Written By ASHOK MAHAJAN, NYT 

India is observing a significant public health milestone: two full years without a new case of poliomyelitis.

Today, the wild polio virus circulates in only three countries: Afghanistan, Nigeria, and Pakistan, where the polio eradication campaign has been in the news lately, but, unfortunately, not because of the impressive 65 percent reduction in cases Pakistan has achieved since 2011. Sadly, the news out of Pakistan has focused on a recent spate of violence targeting polio vaccinators, the dedicated army of health workers and volunteers who go door-to-door to reach the most at-risk children with the oral polio vaccine. Their dedication and hard work are largely responsible for the tremendous progress in the war against polio, with only 218 cases reported worldwide so far in 2012,  a record low, down from 350,000 cases a year in the 1980s.
The media have linked the violence to lingering suspicions within some segments of the Muslim community that polio eradication is some sort of Western conspiracy to sicken or sterilize Muslim children.

Cultural misconceptions are one of many challenges we face as we close in on our goal of global eradication, along with poverty, illiteracy, malnutrition, poor sanitation, extreme population densities, inadequate infrastructure, geographical isolation — the list goes on.

Rotary Club: reach out to the local and regional religious leaders and scholars to inform them about polio eradication and why reaching every child with the vaccine is so important.

What we did in India shows that by working hand-in-glove with the true faith leaders of the communities at risk — by gaining their trust and support through sincere dialogue and by keeping the focus always on the well-being of the child – polio eradication is achievable even under the most challenging conditions.

Mass Poverty: We Have the Power to Change the Rules

By JOE BREWER , MARTIN KIRK , ADRIANA VALDEZ YOUNG

“Sadly, more than 7 million children die every year before they reach their 5^th birthday due to preventable and treatable causes” 
mass poverty is not a natural part of universal moral order...
active force
The rules have created a social and economic system that clearly does not work for the majority of the world’s people. The world’s 1,226 billionaires have more combined wealth than 3.5 billion people – half the entire planet’s population. 
The richest 10 per cent of the world’s population takes 90 per cent of the world’s income.

The Rules (a new platform launched in Nov 2012): to help promote accurate narratives around poverty; to challenge and change the rules– the most basic drivers of inequality and poverty; to organise with people and grassroots movements;to communicate with one another and act collectively...

Human-made rules express and entrench much of the injustice in our world today. 

Anthony Lake, ED of UNICEF, on the Best Buy in Global Health

Anthony Lake discussed the urgent need to create a commodities market of life-saving medicines in the developing world, arguing that healthy children are good for business.

Urgency.  
Every day thousands of children are dying of unnecessary causes.
In the 1980s, 36,000 children under five died each day from largely preventable causes.  In 2011, it was 19,000. This dramatic drop came about through a combination of vaccination programs, nutrition programs, and better water and sanitation.
It should anger us that most of these 19,000 children die daily from causes we know how to prevent.  We have the products and the potential to save these lives. 

Commodities
By increasing access to thirteen overlooked life-saving medicines and health supplies, care-givers — including health workers — will have a better chance to reach the women and children in greatest need.  This isn’t just the right thing to do; it’s the smart thing to do.  The Commission estimated that an ambitious scaling up of these 13 commodities over five years would cost less than US$2.6 billion and would save over 6 million lives.  That is one of the ‘best buys’ in global health today.
Commodities that make pregnancy, childbirth and early childhood safe and healthy; commodities that make a difference but get relatively little attention.
Too often, markets are not shaped for the poor or for vulnerable children and women. Returns on investments can be too low for manufacturers to enter the market or sustain sufficient levels of production. 

Fewer cases of malaria mean that adults are more healthy and productive; more children stay in school and keep learning.  In turn, this is good news for nations’ economies.

Innovations
Innovations in technology, delivery systems and creating demand are critical to accelerating our progress cost-effectively and efficiently.

This was originally published on Skoll World Forum. 

End Child Marriage

Why NGOs are against child marriage?
Child marriage is a human rights abuse. It constitutes a grave threat to young girl's lives, health and future prospects. It can lead to complications related to pregnancy and childbirth, and in developing countries these are the main causes of death among 15-19 year-old girls. It makes girls being exposed to sexually transmitted infections. Marriage can mean the end of education, can set aside her chances of a vocation or career, and can steal from her foundational life choices.

The extend and geographic distribution of child marriage

• In 41 countries, the prevalence of child marriage is 30 per cent or more. 
• Despite gains in selected countries (Ethiopia, Nepal, Bolivia and etc.), little progress has been made in preventing CM.

Disparities and Inequalities

• Girls who are poor, have little or no education and live in rural areas are most likely to marry or enter into union before age 18. 
• Adolescents 15-19 years of age not only have lower use of contraception but also high levels of demand not satisfied for contraception. 

WHAT TO EXPECT IF CURRENT TRENDS CONTINUE?

• worldwide, 142 million girls will be married in the next decade
• by 2030, the number of child bribes marrying each year will have grown from 14.2 in 2010 to 15.1 million, that is over 14 per cent if current trends continue

Reading note: ON THE ROAD

"So in America when the sun goes down and I sit on the old broken-down river pier watching the long, long skies over New Jersey and sense all that raw land that rolls in one unbelievable huge bulge over to the West Coast, and all that road going, all the people dreaming in the immensity of it, and in Iowa I know by now the children must be crying in the land where they let the children cry, and tonight the stars'll be out, and don't you know that God is Pooh Bear? the evening star must be drooping and shedding her sparkler dims on the prairie, which is just before the coming of complete night that blesses the earth, darkens all rivers, cups the peaks and folds the final shore in and nobody, nobody knows what's going to happen to anybody even think of Old Dean Moriarty the father we never found, I think of Dean Moriarty. "

-- Excerpt from ON THE ROAD, last chapter.

Aid and Poverty

In this crazy busy world, where most people have time and space for at best one underpinning logic to understand global poverty, thinking it is about relatively small transfers of money from rich to poor leaves no room for more vital truths, the most important being that mass poverty is persistent and widespread because of how we organize power and resources that create and perpetuate it. 
 If what you are interested in is getting other people to do things – which is what campaigning and lobbying all about - the story you wrap and cast them in is all-important. The story sets the tone, the parameters, indeed the very logic that is used to respond. Bob, Bono and the ONE crew know this, which is how they managed to get right-wingers like Jesse Helms and president Bush on board. 

The real challenge now is to move aid out of the role as primary protagonist in the bigger development story and find ways to capture the public’s imagination around the root causes of poverty and inequality.

There are some broader lessons to be learnt about how communication works, and how we can best engage the public everywhere to support global development.

--Excerpt from Totems and Stories: Lessons from "Give Us the Money", written by the Global Campaigns Director of BMGF

Reading note: "How do we fall in love?"

"How do we fall in love?" 

You don't fall in love like you fall in a hole. You fall like falling through space. It’s like you jump off your own private planet to visit someone else’s planet. And when you get there it all looks different: the flowers, the animals, the colours people wear. It is a big surprise falling in love because you thought you had everything just right on your own planet, and that was true, in a way, but then somebody signalled to you across space and the only way you could visit was to take a giant jump. Away you go, falling into someone else’s orbit and after a while you might decide to pull your two planets together and call it home. And you can bring your dog. Or your cat. Your goldfish, hamster, collection of stones, all your odd socks. (The ones you lost, including the holes, are on the new planet you found.)

And you can bring your friends to visit. And read your favourite stories to each other. And the falling was really the big jump that you had to make to be with someone you don’t want to be without. That’s it.

PS You have to be brave." 

--excerpt from Big Questions from Little People: and Simple Answers from Great Minds

Alleviating Poverty

Written by Bill Gates

Development aid doesn't just benefit people in poor countries. It benefits us all. Just think about the economic miracles that have occurred over the last couple of decades in countries like China, Brazil, India, Indonesia, Korea, Mexico, and Turkey. The people in those countries are largely responsible for the incredible progress that has occurred, and economic aid from wealthier countries played a key supporting role.

And now, these countries—having recently figured out how to reduce poverty and increase their technical capabilities—are in a unique position to work alongside other better-off nations to help the world’s poorest 2 billion people. Over time, this positive cycle of strategic aid will reduce the amount of economic assistance that will be required of wealthier countries.

On the other hand, if wealthier countries cut their contributions to development, people in poor countries will continue to suffer and their economies won’t grow. The world hardly needs more suffering.

The U.S. spends about 1 percent of its total budget on development aid—about the same as many other wealthier countries. As I will say in my report to the G20, that amount of money isn’t causing the fiscal problems in the U.S. or Europe.

The fact is; development aid is a small investment that generates huge returns. In the past 50 years, it has played an important role in agricultural advances that have saved a billion people from starvation. Innovations in the development and distribution of vaccines, and health advances, has reduced the number of children under the age of 5 who die each year—from 20 million to fewer than 8 million. This is even more amazing when you consider that the world population has more than doubled in that time.

Through A Death A Nation Awakens

Gender-based violence thrives on a culture of silence, acceptance and apathy.
On the death of the 23-year-old student savagely violated in New Delhi on 16 December ...
This incident lays bare an ugly truth that is relevant not only in India but in every country, every day: the rights and potential of every young girl are at risk from GBV (gender-based violence).
Women have the same rights as men, and this means they are entitled to be safe at home, on the street or in the workplace.
In 2011, there were more than 75,000 cases of rape, molestation and sexual harassment in India. 
Resolutions: 

• In India as elsewhere, legislative and criminal justice systems have a role to play in stopping gender-based violence. 
• But other institutions—such as public transportation and schools and universities—must also do their part. 
• Health care systems must be equipped to recognize and respond to gender based violence, immediately, with sensitivity, respect and privacy. 
• Protocols must be in place so that a survivor of violence receives the physical and psychological care which is her due and that health facilities have staff who are trained and equipped to gather forensic information.
• Gender equality need to be inculcated in families and in schools.
• Men and boys must become more central to processes of promoting and protecting the human rights of women.