Research & Rescue

Video: Aaron Huey: America's native prisoners of war

According to City-Data.com, the percentage of Pine Ridge residents living below the poverty line is more than 60%. For children, it's about 74%. The unemployment rate on Pine Ridge is somewhere around 85% (backpacksforpineridge.com)

From Aaron Huey's talk at TEDxDU:

"The suffering of the indigenous peoples is not an easy a simple issue to fix. It's not something everyone can get behind, the way they get behind helping Haiti or ending AIDS or fighting a famine. The fix, as it's called, may be much more difficult for the dominant society than, say a $50 check or a church trip to paint some graffiti-covered houses or a suburban family donating a box of clothes they don't even want anymore. So, where does that leave us? Shrugging our shoulders in the dark? The United States continues on a daily basis to violate the terms of the 1851 and 1868 Fort Laramie treaties with the Lakota. The call to action I offer today - my TED Wish - is this: Honor the treaties. Give back the Black Hills. It's not your business what they do with them."

If you want to help the Lakota Nation in some way, here are two resources that you can go through. Feel free to leave other reputable ones in the comments:

Grassroots Non-Profit Assistance Programs for the Lakota Siouxan Nations

Betty Tuininga on Twitter

Help out Bread for the World, please

I just signed the pledge to end hunger and a generous Bread for the World member donated $1 in my name to help fight hunger. For every person who signs the pledge, an additional $1 will be donated to Bread for the World. Will you join me? Your voice can make a difference in the lives of hungry kids.

Kiva Co-Founder on TED.com

Jessica Jackley, co-founder of kiva.org, talks about the roots of her organization. I think she really speaks to a fear many people have of trying to help the poor and falling into a quagmire of hopelessness. I have given to kiva in the past and it's wonderful to see her passion and determination. I hope it inspires others to get involved, as well.

Bread for the World Applauds President Obama’s New Policy on Global Development

Washington, DC, September 22, 2010

President Barack Obama today will announce a new directive on global development, according to senior administration officials.

The presidential policy directive will provide a rational and more coherent policy that will work to reduce global poverty and ensure economic growth in poor countries.

“President Obama’s new development policy is a well-thought-out directive that will help make foreign aid more effective and provide assistance to people who desperately need it,” said Rev. David Beckmann, president of Bread for the World. “This is a victory for Bread for the World members who have been working hard to reform U.S. foreign aid.”

Under the new policy, the U.S. government intends to elevate development as a priority and strengthen the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). 

The administration's strategy places stronger emphasis on support for inclusive, sustained economic growth; innovation and technology; more country selectivity; working with partners, including both corporations and nongovernmental organizations; and strong support for multilateral agencies like the United Nations. 

Related White House Resources:

• Remarks of President Barack Obama

• U.S. Global Development Policy

• Global Climate Change Initiative

• Global Food Security

• Global Health Initiative

Under the new directive, the State Department and USAID will work together, but each will have its own distinct functions and competencies. 

“Implementation of this directive will require a lot of change, and details of the relationship between the State Department and USAID still need to be worked out,” added Beckmann. “It’s also important that the administration works with Congress to pass legislation needed to give these reforms the force of law.”

President Obama will announce the new policy during a speech to the United Nations today.

Bread for the World is a collective Christian voice urging our nation’s decision makers to end hunger at home and abroad.

Media Contact:
Kristen Youngblood, 202.464.8123
Racine Tucker-Hamilton, 202.464.8196

via bread.org

Posted via email from thinking aloud

Child Poverty in the US worse than other developed nations

David Frum posted a blog entry about an Urban Institute report that said that...

American children experience poverty than we might suppose – and... their odds of escape over time are much lower than we might hope.

• More than 1 out of 3 American children will be poor at some point in their childhood.
• You might imagine this experience as a brief or temporary one: the child on food stamps as his mother seeks work after a divorce for example. In fact, even children who experience poverty only temporarily tend to experience it recurringly: they cycle in and out of poverty, bad years following good.
• Children born into poverty are much more likely to remain poor in adulthood than children who are not born into poverty.
• Race predicts poverty: black children are 2.5x more likely to experience poverty than white, 7x more likely to be persistently poor.

Such sad statements about a nation as wealthy as ours...

via www.frumforum.com

The Skinny on the Global Poverty Gap (Clue: It's Not Skinny)

In all the ruckus about the protesters at the G-20, the mainstream media has lost the real message. Watch this video recorded speech by Maude Barlow from Democracy Now. It's sad that the mainstream media concentrates so much on conflict and rhetoric instead of covering the real tragedy at hand. Glitz sells, I guess.

Maude Barlow: "The World Has Divided into Rich and Poor as at No Time in History"

Panera's Pay-What-You-Want Restaurant

I've heard of this concept before and wondered if it would work. Apparently, it does. Panera Bread gave customers suggested prices for its menu items and the majority of patrons paid in full. Moreover, Panera thinks it should be able to recover costs for doing this within just a few months.

I can see a couple of ugly caveats, given my musings on human nature lately. The first is the people who will say, "Well, Panera is clearly able to cut the price, so they should just cut the price on the menu and let me pay less." The second is the notion that every business will do this and , therefore, we can cut the social safety net.

Here's hoping, though, that the success of this experiment will spread across the restaurant industry in this difficult economic climate.

Read about it at www.good.is

The Girl That Changed the World

Everyone should watch this video of Severn Suzuki, speaking at the Rio Summit in 1992.

There are times when I am fed up with the banalities of the world. We lose focus on what's important. Much of the time we don't even spend the time figuring out what really does matter to us, so how could we focus on goals we haven't even discovered? It's easier just to get up in the morning, get our Starbucks, and get through our to do lists. When I saw this video, I had to pause it to stop crying. I wish her speech had changed the world but we don't learn. 2.5 MILLION GALLONS of oil every day into the Gulf and we aren't going to stop drilling. As Severn said, "If you don't know how to fix it, PLEASE stop breaking it!"

Thankfully, the idealism of her youth was not lost as she grew up and Severn Cullis-Suzuki is a renowned environmental activist still today. There's a nice page about her on squidoo where you can read more about her work: Severn Suzuki - a famous environmental video: where is she now?

Hat tip for video link: Nurul54

Esther Duflo on measuring the efficacy of poverty aid

Solar power for the poor

From The New Nation:

David J. Grimshaw and Sian Lewis

Increasing access to energy is critical to ensuring socioeconomic development in the world's poorest countries. An estimated 1.5 billion people in developing countries have no access to electricity, with more than 80 per cent of these living in sub-Saharan Africa or South Asia.

The problem is most acute in remote areas: 89 per cent of people in rural sub-Saharan Africa live without electricity, which is more than twice the proportion (46 per cent) in urban areas. For these people, even access to a small amount of electricity could lead to life-saving improvements in agricultural productivity, health, education, communications and access to clean water.

Options for expanding access to electricity in developing countries tend to focus on increasing centralised energy from fossil fuels such as oil, gas and coal, by expanding grid electricity. But this approach has little benefit for the rural poor. Grid extension in these areas is either impractical or too expensive.

Neither does this strategy help tackle climate change. Power already accounts for 26 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions and while most of this comes from the developed world, by 2030 developing countries are predicted to use 70 per cent more total annual energy than developed nations.

There is therefore a clear need for pro-poor, low-carbon ways to improve access to electricity in the developing world - solar power could be one such solution.

via nation.ittefaq.com