A great article today in the New York Times about charitable giving. It talks about George Soros $50 million gift to the Millennium Project. Some quotes are taken from Soros about his gift to the charity. The article also provides some guidance to would be givers on how to choose a charity. Explaining that some research is needed much like you would research an investment. It reminded us that we should have one of these charity oversight groups on our "get Involved Links" so we will add Charity Navigator later today. Our snippet from the Times article includes Soros explanation on why he thought the Millennium villages was a worthy charity.Mr. Soros’s gift was for Millennium Villages, a project of Millennium Promise affecting a half-million people in Africa, where more than 80 villages...
Every year Jeffrey Sachs presents an annual lecture for the student body of Columbia University. Sachs is a professor at Columbia and directs the University's Earth Institute and it's Millennium Villages project. The villages are a sort of test lab for how to pull people out of poverty.Jeffrey Sachs used this years student lecture to lament the fact that the rich nations are not hearing the cries of the poor, and the millions of people who stand up for them. He especially singled out the Bush administration.The Columbia Spectator's Maureen Stimola reports that Sachs says that people in the Villages cannot escape poverty without aid. Sachs stressed the need for more outside intervention. A major difficulty, he said, is the “poverty trap,” a phenomenon brought on by extended periods of...
from The Morung Express by Ernest HarschStanding in the midst of a freshly planted maize field, Bright Osei Kwaku recalls that last year he more than doubled his output with the help of improved seeds, fertilizer, and advice on farming techniques. Altogether, his two to three acres yielded about 15 100-kilogram bags of maize, compared with just six bags the year before, when he had no such support.Many other young Ghanaians have either left agriculture or dream of doing so. But Kwaku, now 25 years old, thinks he can stay on the land. “I will continue to farm,” he told Africa Renewal. “I got income and food. I got enough from the farm.”With world food prices rising, it is a good time to push for higher production, argues Isaac Kankam-Boadu, the agriculture and environment...
from Voice of America An update on the experimental Millennium villages Project. While this profiles Malawi there also such villages in Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Mali, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, Tanzania and Uganda. - Kale By Lameck MasinaIn Malawi, two villages with about 40,000 people have begun reaping the fruits of the United Nations initiative known as the Millennium Villages project. The goal is to reverse the poverty, hunger and disease affecting millions of rural people in sub-Saharan Africa. Voice of America English to Africa Service's Lameck Masina in Blantyre reports that there are two Millennium Villages in Malawi – one in the southern district of Zomba, the other in the central district of Mchinji.UN specialists have been helping the villagers improve education, health care...
from Joy OnlineA GNA feature by Hannah AsomaningImagine a world where there is no poverty, there is basic education for everybody, respect for human rights, equal rights and opportunities for men and women and all the goodies one can wish for.There would be no crime, pain, hunger and anguish as seen in some parts of the world today. It would really be a pleasant place to live in.The United Nations perhaps imagined these when it came up with the Millennium Development Goals to be achieved by 2015.The Millennium Development Goals for 2015 were designed in 2000 by the United Nations and signed by 189 countries and all other member states of the European Union.Almost half-way through the timeframe, we are unfortunately nowhere near the envisioned results: halving extreme poverty and hunger;...
from NasdaqThe top U.N. advisor pressing for countries to meet U.N. targets for poverty reduction by 2015 said Wednesday there was reason for optimism that the world was inching closer to meeting them.Jeffery Sachs, director of the U.N. Millennium Project, reported "notable progress" in introducing programs needed to end poverty and hunger.But he was not prepared to predict whether the goals will be met."We'll know it when we don't make it, or we'll know it when we do make it," he told a news conference.Looking back on the goals adopted by world leaders in September 2000 to promote development and health care in the world's poorest countries, Sachs said that despite slow progress, the year could be ended on a note of optimism."There has been notable progress, in my view, in thinking about...