How to build resilience in the Sahel

from Guardian
When there are successive droughts, as we have seen in the Sahel, recovery is even more difficult. More households will be caught in the trap of trading short-term survival for long-term development. This is what building resilience can change, with better targeting of vulnerable households and interventions that make a difference for them.

What kind of interventions make a difference? Improvements in agricultural productivity and water management are important. Investment in agriculture was scaled back over the past two decades across the Sahel. However, we are now seeing recognition among governments and donors that this needs to be reversed. Increased production is a necessary step for achieving food security. However, production is not enough. Most of those gains will be for medium to large-scale farmers. The 18 million affected by last year's drought will benefit the least. They are in danger of remaining food insecure without the means to buy what they cannot produce.
This is why social safety nets, particularly those that provide cash transfers to hungry households, are a necessary complement to increasing agricultural production. The World Bank, with the World Food Programme and Unicef, is working on how to expand safety nets in the Sahel.
Policy decisions such as building regional grain reserves or regional economic integration that facilitates trade can help. But ultimately, with the population doubling every generation, the Sahel cannot survive on subsistence agriculture. A long-term approach based on universal education that permits a transformation in livelihoods will be essential to support the nearly 250 million people who will be living in the region 25 years from now.
Last year's response cost $1.6bn and considerable suffering. Despite a good response, not every child was saved, and not every household spared the hard decisions required to survive. Without investment, there will be another crisis in a few years and we will ask ourselves why nothing was done to avoid it. If we don't start to seriously address 

Reading excerpt: ON LIBERTY

By John Mill
IV Of the limits of the authority of society over the individual
What is the rightful limit to the sovereignty of the individual over himself? Where does the authority of society begin?
Living in society renders it indispensable that each should be bound to observe a certain line of conduct towards the rest.
As a supplement to the unavoidable imperfections of law, ought not opinion at least to organize a powerful police against these vices, and visit rigidly with social penalties those who are known to practise them? There must be some length of time and amount of experience, after which a moral or prudential truth may be regarded as established.
Bring its weaker members up to its ordinary standard of ra tional conduct.
Public opinion means, at the best, SOME people's opinion of what is good or bad for other people; while very often it does not even mean that; the public, passing over the pleasure or convenience of those whose conduct they censure, and considering only their OWN preference.

Enormity, standard of judgement, extravagance, intemperance

Paul Collier on the Bottom BILLION

View the video at http://www.ted.com/talks/paul_collier_shares_4_ways_to_help_the_bottom_billion.html

The alliance of compassion and enlightened self-interest change the world.
compassion: a billion people have not been given credit hope. human tragedy.

Provide hope for the bottom billion
What is the last time the rich world got serious about developing another region of the world? Late 1940s.
Marshall aid.
But...US opened markets, reversed the trade policy and security policy by put troops to Europe, tore up 11 commencements-national sovereignty, found the UN and OECD, IMF.
US supported systems for mutual government support.

Now, it is not reversing the Europe, but reversing the divergence for the bottom billion.
GOVERNANCE, enormously important
optimism about the BB, commodity booms.
But the revenue flow dwarfs aid. the flow of resources are without precedent.
Transformational development.
Export!
SR: hunky dory
LR: humpty dumpty, ended up worse, growth of increased price
The level of governance is critical.
spread of democracy-- it made a mass of resource boom.
They need strong checks and balances. We can help them by some international standards, that gov. report their revenue. wrong eg. selling the rights of resource exaction.

They are struggling with change. We can help them to change.
Why on earth they are not there?  Until we have a critical mass of informed citizens in our own societies, politicians will get away with gestures. Build an informed citizenry.
the process of communication, a culture of self-effacement.
We need a critical mass of informed citizenry.
PLEASE BECOME AMBASSADORS.

"Collier is not charismatic, but his argument is compelling. "

World News??

World News?
In a world filled with sound bites and paparazzi-snapped photos, there are still storytellers determined to create media with meaning. 

How many of today's headlines will matter in 100 years? 1000? 

Last week, the case that Pistorius was prosecuted of killing his girlfriend before V's day became the top news for consecutively 7 days in BBC world news. Sarcastic. 

Sure, the web connects the globe, but most of us end up hearing mainly from people just like ourselves.
The Internet is a great invention of human. The information is easily accessible. We can find information quickly – needs only to open a browser, to feed data into a string and to click “find”. 

The Internet does not reduce the distance between different points. 
Facebook, Twitter are popular websites in the world, Vkontakte, Odnoklassniki are popular in Russia. There are they communicate, to discuss hot news, to find new friends, to listen music, to play games, to buy goods, to appoint the meeting… I believe social networks are a good place for freedom of speech, because social networks do not have a strict censorship and everybody can write that he thinks.   

Social media campaign_some characters

The essence of a social media campaign, the campaign is able to create discussions year-round through engaging Facebook photos and status updates anchored around one big idea.
Reserved only for those with the finest of social involvement, the Society of Good Taste was born.

1. Targeted

2. Focused
Ensure that your campaign is of the direct response variety and focused on a specific issue, customer pain point or a competitor.

3. Measurable
That means your campaign may end up having completely different outcomes from the ones you’re expecting. For example, you may not have as many micro-conversions (email opt-ins, Twitter followers, Facebook fans and RSS subscribers) as you’d hoped for but the engagement levels for those you do have may be much higher or you may find that you’re seeing an increase in off-line sales.

4. Great Content
The cornerstone of any effective social media campaign is great content presented in an interesting and engaging way.
If you've done your homework on your audience, if you know what they are passionate about, their pain points, the type of content they readily share and what they respond to you’ll have pretty good idea of what is going to get them excited. Finding a different and intriguing way to deliver your content is then your secret sauce.

5. Simple
As social media campaigns become ever more complex it’s worth reflecting on whether this what users really want.
Creativity is a wonderful thing, but if you ask too much of your audience they will quickly get bored and move on. Instead, keep it simple and immediate and offer something your users are going to value as a reward for their engagement. This doesn't have to be anything expensive or even anything tangible, so long as your campaign is relevant, fun and engaging. Think Evian’s Roller Babies, the most watched online ad ever which generated over 60 million views and 54,000 comments or Johnson’s Facebook baby photo contest which generated more than 1 million visits, half a million votes and tripled the company’s fan base.

6. The Right Medium For The Message
Having a great message is one of the things that makes great campaigns stand out from the rest.
But just having a great message isn't enough – you also have to communicate it via the right channels. It can be tempting to just focus your efforts on the big 3 – Facebook, Twitter and Youtube – but if that’s not where your target audience hangs out it isn't going to do you much good.
It also pays to remember that people tend to behave differently on different networks so think about the actions you want your users to take and match the medium to the message.
Example: if you want an immediate response you’d probably want to use Twitter, whereas Facebook is more suited to opinion sharing.
Finally, make sure that your social media campaign is fully integrated with all your other marketing, advertising and PR activities, both online and offline.
This will not only increase your campaign’s impact but also ensure that you aren’t putting out contradictory messages that will confuse your audience.

7. Memorable
The most successful social media campaigns forge an emotional connection between the brand and the audience by providing not just great content but an experience.
Make your campaign memorable by telling stories that have an emotional resonance for your audience and they can immediately identify with.
Engage your users in an ongoing conversation, make it personal and show that you care about them and their custom and you will engender a powerful sense of belonging that will translate into long term loyalty.

8. Profitable
For any small business, a positive return on investment is going to be a key campaign success measure.
There are plenty of siren voices that will say you can’t put a price on customer engagement. Ignore them.
If you’re a small business and you can’t demonstrate that your social media campaign is directly contributing to your bottom line it’s time to go back to the drawing board.
Of course measuring the long term impact of social media campaigns is an art not a science, but that doesn't mean that you won’t need a plan for monetizing all that additional traffic and engagement and converting it to cold hard cash.

1 in 3 Women Living With Fear for Want of a Toilet

This article originally appeared in the Huffington Post.
Across the world, 1 in 3 women risk shame, disease and even attack because they have nowhere safe to go to the toilet. That's 1.25 billion women.

provide the world's poorest people with safe toilets and clean water.
Diarrhea
Poor sanitation and dirty water can have a detrimental effect on health. Every year, around 2,000 mothers go through the pain of losing a child to diarrhea brought about through a lack of access to safe toilets and clean water. In fact, diarrhea kills more children every year than AIDS, malaria and measles combined.

Having nowhere safe to go to the toilet also means an increased risk of shame, harassment and even violence for women and girls when they are forced to go out in search of a private place to go to the toilet.

A survey commissioned by WaterAid of women living across some of the slums of Lagos, Nigeria, highlighted this shocking problem. One in five women interviewed had first or second hand experience of verbal harassment and intimidation, or had been threatened or physically assaulted, in the past year alone when going to the toilet.

Finding a place to go to the toilet can take women away from productive activities for long periods of time. In fact, women and girls living in developing countries without toilet facilities spend 97 billion hours each year finding a place to go in the open. This is double the total number of hours worked every year by the entire labour force in the UK.

Women are often hesitant to talk about this issue, but with these experiences of fear, disease, indignity and violence being common wherever women lack access to safe sanitation, the world must take note.

Investing in sanitation and water works. For every £1 invested in water and sanitation, an average of £4 is returned in increased productivity. Since 1990, around 900 million women and girls have gained access to safe sanitation facilities, while over a billion have gained access to clean drinking water. This is great progress, but our efforts cannot stop here.

the Global Poverty Project

Our vision is much like yours: to live in a world without extreme poverty.  
1.4 billion people still live with the equivalent of just US$1.25 a day for all their needs.
 face a lack of opportunity and choice that traps them in a cycle of extreme poverty.

What we want

Our work focuses on five key change goals:

• Better Aid: We want to ensure that foreign aid is targeted towards the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals.

• More Aid: We believe every nation we operate in should work towards investing 0.7% Gross National Income in foreign aid.

• Better Trade: We believe fair and balanced trade relations are important to tackling poverty, and want to see improvements in the multilateral trading position of developing countries.

• More Ethical Trade: We’re working to dramatically increase the market share of ethical traded consumer goods to provide fair wage access to millions.

• Enabling environment: We want to see investment in education, infrastructure and governance because we know this provides an enabling environment for developing countries to work their way out of poverty. 

FGM Is About Culture, Not Religion

Marzieh Goudarzi interviews UNFPA Executive Director DR. BABATUNDE OSOTIMEHIN

According to data from the World Health Organisation, FGM/C-affected communities exist in northern, northeastern, and western Africa and in some Middle Eastern and Asian countries. FGM/C is also practiced in immigrant communities from these countries living in other parts of the world. Are there common elements among these communities that allow FGM/C to continue?

it is more cultural than anything else.

What UNFPA has done with UNICEF, is to engage communities across those regions that you mentioned and persuade them that FGM/C has no medical benefits at all and that, for a fact, it causes damage to women and girls physically, psychologically, and emotionally.

UNFPA/UNICEF’s strategy in approaching a sensitive issue like FGM/C

Understand communities. 

initiates community dialogue with interlocutors that have integrity within the community

explain to them that these are things we believe we have to let go because of their consequences, and demonstrate 

Recent data shows that since the establishment of the UNFPA-UNICEF Joint Programme in 2008, nearly 10,000 communities in 15 countries, representing about eight million people, have renounced FGM/C. 

5 Easy Ways to Improve the World

#BillsLetter
How important measurement is to improving the human condition for those living in the poorest parts of the world?
We rely on thousands of partners who do this work, on the ground, daily. We need everyone’s help, in fact.
It’s a call out to all of us: what are we doing to improve the health and lives of those who live in the poorest regions of the world? 

Here are five actions you can take right now help. Choose one or choose them all--and then share this with others to keep the momentum going.
1. Shop. Help fight for an AIDS-free generation.
2. Like. UNICEF helps build a world where the rights of all children are realized. It’s as simple as that.
3. Recycle. When you donate your used mobile phone to IntraHealth, you’re helping health workers save lives.
4. Donate. For only $15, you can protect 25 children from polio and help eradicate this disease worldwide.
5.Amplify. Join ONE and you’ll join over three million people in the global fight to end extreme poverty.

"Philanthrocapitalism"

Expert from Philanthrocapitalism
A world full of big problems must be put right. We can save the lives of millions of children who die each year in poor countries from poverty or diseases that have been eradicated in the rich world.
As the time when a growing number of big for-profit businesses are catching the philanthrocapitalism bug and getting into giving- or at least trying to do good. ...
In poor countries, governments are struggling to meet the challenges of accelerating economic development and of public health.

The problem of our age is the proper administration of wealth. The inequality was the inevitable result of the laws of accumulation and distribution. These rewarded a "talent for organization and management" rare among men with more revenue than can be judiciously expended upon themselves.
much better this great irregularity than universal squalor.
the rich should regard their surplus wealth as the property of the many.
The acceleration of globalization since the WW 2, as trade barriers have been gradually dismantled, has affected most industries, enabling more efficient companies to increase their growth rate. The gap between the super-rich and average people has certainly widened.

In 2007, India's prime minister, Manmohan Singn, gave a speech urging business leaders to adopt a ten-point "social charter" to ensure that economic growth is more equitable and empowers the most deprived of our citizens. The electronic media, said Singh, carries the lifestyles of the rich and famous into every village and every slum. Media often highlights the vulgar display of their wealth. An era of great concern is the level of ostentatious expenditure on weddings and other family. It is socially wastefully and it plants seeds of resentment in the minds of the have-nots.