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Grant opportunity for humanitarian reporting!
 
Global Citizen has partnered with the Development and Aid World News Service (DAWNS) a global news aggregation service to provide two (2) $1,000 humanitarian reporting and storytelling grants. 
 
Global Citizen and DAWNS are committed to telling stories about issues related to global poverty. We will lean on the Global Citizen and DAWNS communities to support reporters, bloggers,photographers film makers or anyone with a compelling humanitarian story to tell.

Our grants are open to anyone, anywhere in the word. Our ideal grantees have excellent story ideas or projects underway, but need a small modicum of financial support to help them in some tangible way. (Here is a list of previous grantees.) If you need a new camera lens; some help to pay for a translator; some financial assistance to pay for travel related to your project, then you should apply. Your project should already be off the ground, or close to it. You need to demonstrate to us how $1000 can be put to productive use.
 
Applications close on January 25, with finalists announced on February 5. We will sort through all the applications and narrow them down to what we think are the best proposals. This is where you come in. We will open up the applications on Global Citizen for you to read over and VOTE on which stories you want to be told. 
 
You can visit the DAWNS website for details about the grant, and apply HERE.  Forward far and wide to reporters, photographers, bloggers or anyone who has a compelling humanitarian story to tell. 
 
What is DAWNS? 
 
If you are a global news obsessive, we highly recommend you sign up for the DAWNS service. The Development and Aid World News Service is a media platform for people interested in global news. Their flagship product is the DAWNS Digest, a hand-curated subscription-based daily news clipping service and mobile app that delivers an easy to read snapshot of the day’s global humanitarian news. They aim to firmly establish DAWNS as a platform to support journalism for the humanitarian community. With revenue generated through subscriptions to DAWNS Digest, they have started a micro-grant program to support reporting and storytelling on global humanitarian issues. Learn more at http://dawnsdigest.com 
Posted by Philip Corden - GPP in Education for column Perspectives on Poverty on Jan 19th, 03:29
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So you want to volunteer overseas? Read this.
 

Guest Blogger Lyrian Fleming asks why so many of us want to volunteer - and why we should think about it first. To see the original article by Lyrian, click here.
 

It sounds great, doesn’t it? Give up all your wealthy trimmings, put on your sensible outdoorsy clothes and become one with ‘the locals’ in an exotic location like Cambodia, Papua New Guinea or Uganda.

You want to give back, right? Atone for the accident of your birth which saw you born into a wealthy, democratic country like Australia, the Lucky Country no less. You’re probably young, not too tied down by mortgages and kids, the timing is just right to drop it all and become a volunteer in a developing country.

BUT WAIT..
 

What happens when you work for free?

What do most developing countries have in common? Unemployment issues. And what do a lot of short term volunteering programs offer well-meaning, rich country volunteers? The chance to work for free on a project which will ‘help’ a poor community.

Build a house in Guatemala! Build a school in Ghana! Help maintain a rainforest in the Amazon! But think about it – if you’re willing to go and do it for free, and in most cases actually pay for the privilege of offering your hardworking self to work in poor communities, what happens to the local population in their fight for jobs?

And this is before we even touch on more complex issues like cultural appropriateness of buildings, maintenance and upkeep, land titles and whether or not the building is actually what the community itself wants or needs.

     GPP intern Luke helped build a community centre in Ramchey, Nepal.

 

What happens when you leave?

Sub Saharan Africa has experienced horrendous loss of life, destruction of communities, lost inter-generational knowledge and so much more due to the AIDS epidemic. Millions of children have been left without parents and orphanages are common. They’re common, too, in South and South East Asia, and a lot of them are run by foreign charity groups.

Orphanages often seek the help of volunteers to look after the children, for some this is the only way they stay in business. In exchange for room and board, volunteers work in the orphanage day and night, sometimes for two weeks, sometimes for two years.

Can you imagine what this is like for the children?

A constant stream of new faces. Constant uncertainty. Detachment. Short term relationships and the knowledge that everyone leaves eventually. And we haven’t even touched on the quality of education, child protection, and the destruction of local social bonds orphanages foster.

The reality is that families and communities are generally great at stepping in and looking after their own, albeit with outside support of services where necessary. And many children in orphanages aren’t even orphans. Of course there are cases where there really is no one to look after a child, but these cases are rare, and orphanages disempower communities and often do more harm than good to the very children they are trying to protect.
 

This is people’s lives we’re talkin’ about here

Would you let your children be educated by the lovely teenager down the street rather than go to school? Do you want your house built by someone with a degree in global economics, or nursing, or communications, in two weeks? My guess is no – and neither do people in poor communities.
 

What am I saying in this post?

That short term volunteerism often does more harm than good, and it is CRUCIAL you do your research before volunteering your time and money in a developing country, because not all ‘voluntourism’ is bad, but enough of it is to warrant THE SOUNDING OF ALARM BELLS.

Here are two resources to get you started:

No matter how good your intentions are, good intentions are simply not enough. To read more about 'Voluntourism' you can read our previous posts.

 

Lyrian Fleming is a writer focussing on development issues. She has worked for CARE Australia, The Wilderness society and others as well as writing for Oxfam, trespass magazine and blogs on journalism, twitter and women's empowerment.

Posted by Lyrian Fleming in Poverty, Aid for column Issue Analysis on Jan 18th, 03:07
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Changing the Pace of Girl Development
 

Guest Blog by the Girl Effect. The girl effect is a movement. It's about leveraging the unique potential of adolescent girls to end poverty for themselves, their families, their communities, their countries and the world. It's about making girls visible and changing their social and economic dynamics by providing them with specific, powerful and relevant resources.

A conversation with DfID permanent secretary Mark Lowcock about Girl Hub and the potential of partnerships in development programming.

In 2010 the permanent secretary at the Department for International Development (DfID), Mark Lowcock, dove into uncharted waters when he formed a first-of-its-kind strategic collaboration with Nike Foundation. The result? A new initiative aimed at establishing a new way of delivering development programming at scale for girls. Girl Hub opened its first office in DfID's London basement, but quickly opened offices in Rwanda, Ethiopia and Nigeria to drive work on the ground.
 
 
Q: How did Girl Hub happen?
 
A: Girl Hub began when Maria Eitel, the president of the Nike Foundation, and I met four or five years ago in the margins of a meeting for the World Bank Gender Advisory Council. After years of working in the sector, I had a Damascene moment. The evidence was there to suggest that if you change the prospects of an adolescent girl on a big enough scale, you will transform societies.
 
Q: Why DfID? Why Nike Foundation?
 
A: DfID uses its core capabilities, resources, expertise and a global network to really test ourselves and change for the better. It is an organisation that is not afraid to challenge itself to look at things in a different way and for that reason, the Nike Foundation partnership offered us a tangible way to think and work differently with girls.
 
Partly due to the marketing capabilities and partly due to the sense of fun and energy we had in the early Girl Hub conversations the potential of the partnership was clear to me. I thought we could get into something that was a brand new approach to changing girls' prospects at scale.
 
Q: You've been quick to point out that this is a strategic collaboration and not a sponsorship. What is the difference?
 
A: It was very important to both the Nike Foundation and DfID that we appreciated where we were each coming from culturally. We all understood that we were trying to create a partnership, which is quite different to the way that DfID interacts with other organisations. The power of the Girl Hub collaboration has been to make it something completely different. I think the impact of the work as a result of this way the partnership was set up speaks for itself.
 
Q: What are your biggest accomplishments so far?
 
A: In December 2011 Girl Hub Rwanda launched Ni Nyampinga - the first teen brand in the country. And in just seven months, Ni Nyampinga magazine has become Rwanda's largest media publication.
 
In Ethiopia, Girl Hub was the catalyst for DfID Ethiopia's investment in the £10m End Child Marriage programme, which is on track to reach 200,000 girls in the Amhara region by 2015. And this past May, Girl Hub Nigeria supported a 13-week radio show called Carbin Kwai that was designed to reposition girls in the public discourse and provide a platform for community dialogue.
 
But we've only just skimmed the surface of what's possible.
 
Q: How can others use your model to take scope to scale?
 
A: It is a problem for official development agencies that we can be stuck in our ways of doing things. You can only replicate what we're trying with Girl Hub if you can find a partner who shares your vision and if you are clear about what each party is bringing to the table. But look at the nutrition space - where there is a lot of work going on at the moment. If we could get to the point where there are different sorts of partnerships working to get to grips with that, there is a big prize to be won.

 
Posted by The Girl Effect in Poverty, Enterprise & Trade, Women & Gender, Education for column Action Stories on Jan 16th, 02:19
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Parental Wisdom for the Spring Tour 2013
 


I learned how to change a tyre when I was nine years old. Under the supervision and breezy guidance of my father, I enthusiastically located the extra tire in the back of our Mark II van, pushing aside velveteen curtains and smoke-stained seat covers with abandon. I lugged the hulking mass of rubber – approximately half the size of my body – to its destination, fervently rotated the handle of the jack until the van was appropriately elevated (“You should probably stop there, baby doll.”), and loosened nuts with a single-mindedness unrivaled by most adolescents. This effort was all the result of one of my dad’s casual references to what anyone worthwhile should know:

“Anyone worth her salt knows how to change a tire!”

“If you don’t know how to sort laundry, you haven’t lived!”

“All my favorite people love to make fresh squeezed orange juice!”

It is perhaps the most brilliant parenting technique known to humankind. Convinced it was my own fine idea, I successfully furnished the Mark II with a new tire – all by myself! - and felt my entire existence immediately validated. I gave it a sturdy kick, the crowning gesture which seemed most appropriate for my newfound status as a fully-realized human. My dad employed this method repeatedly throughout my childhood, suavely convincing me that whatever he wanted me to learn was actually something I had dreamed up myself. How to check oil. How to make a fire. Lessons were varied and endlessly useful.

 


 


After years of his educational sleight-of-hand, I was convinced that I could take on almost anything. Most of all, I dreamed of a road trip – one with lots of auto failures and campouts, especially. I yearned to show my dad that even though I couldn’t emulate his hippie-haired Woodstock glory days, I could create my own Kerouacian adventures and survive with just as many good stories to tell. Here, the day has finally and fortuitously come! And with a mission that would make any parent proud: To build a movement towards the end of extreme poverty.

In February, I’ll be taking off on the road trip of my dreams with three other Global Poverty Project “Road Scholars,” and I’m ready for whatever the road has to throw at me. For three months and two weeks, I’ll be using the base of those concrete lessons to share some big ideas. We will be touring the nation – 100 stops – and talking to a lot of people – 20,000 of them. We’ll spend most of our time in a van, this one sorely lacking in velveteen curtains, but emblazoned with some pretty amazing GPP regalia.

At each stop, we’ll be sharing GPP’s 1.4 Billion Reasons presentation, which demonstrates that ending extreme poverty is a matter of justice, a most necessary gesture of humanity that our generation needs to make. The presentation gives viewers a solid understanding of why 1.4 billion people in the world are living in extreme poverty, what barriers prevent its eradication, and what we can all do to make things a little better for the world’s worst-off. I’m thrilled by the thought that I’ll have a chance to share this message with so many others; it’s telling these stories and discussing these ideas that makes change in the world, one person at a time.

Best of all, the 2013 Spring Tour will be live-mapped, blogged, youtubed, tweeted, and posted about on our Global Citizen platform, so our dads and everyone else can follow our progress. Check out our Spring Tour page to learn more about hosting and look at this map to see if we'll be coming to your area  – and if we’re not, it’s not too late to book a presentation! Get in touch by emailing gpp_usa@globalpovertyproject.com. We would love to add your city to the road trip of a lifetime and share 1.4 Billion Reasons with your community.

 

 
Posted by Melissa Riepe in What Can I Do? for column GPP - United States on Jan 11th, 04:50
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It Takes a Village to Build a Village
 

An important pre-note to this post: the example I will share with you here is just the latest of many projects from the Rotary Pakistan PolioPlus Committee which has been gathering momentum over the last few years, working closely with the Government of Pakistan and its partners (WHO & UNICEF) to end polio in the country.

Let me describe the scene for you: dense ramshackle shelters, no sanitation infrastructure, no access to clean water, a scarcity of food (or only available to those who can afford it), and a distinct lack of schools, clinics, medicine, doctors and, seemingly, paid employment. It’s not that everyone is sitting around doing nothing – quite the reverse in fact. Everyone is productive, but the way their dirty kamis (common long shirt to the knees) hang off their wiry bodies, you know they are not being paid much, or anything, for their labour. This is the reality of Site Town, Karachi, where I spent a few hours. This is one of the most disadvantaged areas of Karachi which heaves with 22 million people, and who knows what proportion of those live with adequate access and opportunities.

I was driven from another part of Karachi, the Defence area, where the houses make Australian houses look small. But there is a man and a community organisation that is doing their best to share their wealth, experience and expertise with others in their huge city.

In the middle of Site Town I visited the Site Town Rotary Polio Resource Centre. This is a shining beacon for that community and others in the area. It is primarily a school, and the only one in the area, but built into the practises of this school are toilets, clean water, a food program and, most impressively, a vaccine housing and distribution centre.

The man I referred to earlier is Aziz Memon and the organisation, Rotary. Aziz seems to be a very busy and successful business man, but he has brought together the right people and right resources to make the Resource Centre a reality. Those around Aziz are just as impressive in their commitment and expertise.

Over the years I have been able to see a lot of aid and development projects and let me just list some of the great features of this particular model:

It is from the community for the community - this is not a white man telling the local people what to do - it has come from the people of Karachi in consultation with education professionals, community leaders and local government, with the support of those they service.

Much more than a single purpose - it was set up as a polio vaccine distribution centre to service some of the hardest-to-reach children in an area where the population moves a lot and the refusal rate for vaccination is high. However their mandate isn’t to force the community to take vaccines, but rather to show they are there to support in all ways. People can choose to come to them for vaccines, or accept vaccines when they do a house visit, knowing that they are also providing education, clean water, food, etc to their child.

Very impressive outreach - while the school has limited capacity, their outreach is impressive. Clean water and toilets is accessible to all, the food program does as best it can to provide food to as many as possible. They also have 25 other hubs in four districts that provide polio vaccines on a regular and ongoing basis to 100,000 children in addition to the 4-5 annual national immunisation days.

A sustainable funding model - thanks to some local Rotary Clubs, Government and other reliable sources of income, the centre has the funds to not only build this centre but continue its service.

The model is scalable - thanks to all the features I mentioned above, this is a model that could be adopted by other disadvantage communities throughout Karachi and around the country. The most polio-affected areas in Pakistan are obviously the poorest or most remote, but a community resource centre is something that could be integrated anywhere.

The purpose is polio but really it is poverty - eradicating polio is a global mandate we must achieve. Now that numbers are reduced to record lows we are able to incorporate broader services in health, education, sanitation, food security etc. Not that these things weren’t happening before, but now that almost every last child has been exposed to polio vaccine, the foundation is set for the leap forward addressing the bigger topics and issues of health and extreme poverty.

I am brimming with excitement once again writing down these points as I was when I visited in person a week ago.

As a part of my visit I was able to hand over a few posters of support from people outside of Karachi and Pakistan. The core team at the resource centre who saw this were amazed that famous cricketers, actresses, the people of Canada (with the ‘Purple Pinkie’ photos) and others who have attended concerts, sign petitions, written stories or cared in some way for the people working on the ground in Pakistan. The poster now proudly sits on their wall and will be showed to the children that we are all global citizens and can support each other and the things that work for them from their needs.

A massive thank you to Waheed and the team at the Resource Centre for having me visit; Mr Aziz Memon and his team for his vision, drive and support to establish the centre and facilitate my visit; and Rotary - the incredible group who took on the beast of polio but do so much more than that and this includes the Rotary Clubs of Canada, Pakistan and all over the world committed to making a polio-free world.

The biggest appreciation I have are for those who are there day to day living, working and surviving in these areas with such resilience and resourcefulness without expectations but instead with unbelievable humility and gratitude for any little access or opportunity they are afforded.

I usually don’t plug donations, as I prefer people to donate their time to campaigns, writing to government and other advocacy. But seeing the effectiveness of this program and knowing that all donations to the Rotary PolioPlus Fund are so effective, I have to promote this:

This is the link to give to the Rotary International PolioPlus Fund.

And for all those Canadians out there, hear this! If you give to the Rotary PolioPlus Fund in Canada your donation will be tripled, being matched by Canadian International Development Agency from the Canadian Government and then again by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. In other words, your $50 will become $150 and, for a project like the Resource Centre, that is a lot of food for their program, filters to clean their water, vaccines to end polio and so much more – follow the link above and choose Canada for your donation.

--
d'Arcy is a member of The End of Polio team at the Global Poverty Project, find him on Twitter:@darcylunn. This post originally appeared in his personal blog.
Posted by dâ??Arcy Lunn â?? GPP in for column 1.4 Billion Reasons on Jan 11th, 00:27
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