November 10th, Bloggers Unite for Refugees

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I received the following e-mail from the folks at blogcatalog.

This Nov. 10, all eyes will be on BlogCatalog members and bloggers who participate in Bloggers Unite For Refugees. Will you be one of them?

Ever since we started helping bloggers unite for different causes, we've proven that a little good can go a long way in making the world a better place.

This time, because of our work to increase human rights awareness, many members chose to go one step further to raise awareness for refugees — people who are impacted by these issues. So, on Nov. 10, thousands of bloggers will write about the various challenges faced by the 11 million people who have no country to call home and the 40 million more who have been displaced because of war and natural disasters.

*YOU CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE*

By writing just one post for this cause, you can help raise awareness about refugees and help our partner, Refugees United, connect with local non-government organizations (NGOs) to help refugees in their search for lost loved ones. Their goal is to reunite children with parents, husbands with wives, and family members with friends.

Participating is easy and you can learn more about this event at http://unite.blogcatalog.com. There, you will find action badges, source material for blog posts, and more information about these people who have no country to call home.

With you help, I know we can encourage thousands of more bloggers to get involved and make Bloggers Unite For Refugees as successful as our last event with Amnesty International. It's one of those events that even if we reunite just one family, then we have made an immeasurable impact on the world. Thanks so much for your continued support! We really look forward to reading your posts and the posts of your friends on Nov. 10!

Thanks,
The BlogCatalog Team

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P.S. We are launching a whole new Bloggers Unite in the coming weeks, make sure to stop by http://www.bloggersunite.org/ and sign up to be notified when it launches!

The site also offers some good resources.

• Learn more about this global problem

  Below are some great links and resouces to help get you started blogging.

  UK Refugee Services
  

  Lutheran Refugee Services
  

  Aotearoa-New Zealand Refugee Services
  

  United States Committee for Refugees and Immigrant Children
  

  Church World Service Immigrant & Refugee Program
  

  Women's Commission for Refugee Women & Children
  

  Additional Links/Resources
  http://www.unhcr.org/cgi-bin/texis/vtx/protect?id=3b8265c7a
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refugees
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statelessness
  http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/static/in_depth/world/2001/road_to_refuge/default.stm

• On November 10th get the word out and blog about Refugees.

• Spread the love, share your post in the Bloggers Unite Group.

Financial Fears * Global Challenges * Some Potential Answers

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The Center for Global Development on 10/19/08 wrote about an interview of CGD president Nancy Birdsall by National Public Radio regarding the financial crisis' impact on foreign assistance to poor countries - Experts Fear Financial Crisis Will Hurt World's Poor (National Public Radio).

'When a country is hit by a crisis, there will be a decline in aid in the subsequent couple of years," says Nancy Birdsall, who runs the center, which promotes policies to fight poverty. "There has been a return to trend in the past: Sweden's aid flows declined after its banking crisis in the early '90s, and Japan's aid flows declined when it had its problems in the '90s, but they have come back.'

One of the members of End POVERTY / Fim POBREZA, SpongeBob (likely not his real name) introduced me to this report from the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). A "laundry" list of what the IFPRI is calling for covers a number of the Millennium Development Goals. The report and information on the IFPRI itself is provided below. The challenges raised by the IFPRI are only made greater by the outlook from the Center For Global Development. Even obtaining the most hopeful of outcomes in the American elections could still potentially mean a diminishing of the United State's future role, at least for a time, though it will likely be greater than what exists currently.

• The Challenge of Hunger 2008

  diigo tags: hunger, mdgs, mdg, GHI

  Combating the food crisis will require
  
  1. More food aid for poor people;
  2. Much greater investments in agriculture - especially the small farm sector;
  3. More investment in social protection programs and social sectors - education & health;
  4. Reforms to create a fair world trading system;
  5. Changes to biofuel policies;
  6. Measures to calm global food markets;
  7. Better data collection and improved monitoring of the food and nutrition situation;
  8. More support for nongovernmental organizations that work on behalf of poor people in developing countries.

• The 2008 Global Hunger Index (GHI) shows that the world has made slow progress in reducing food insecurity since 1990, with dramatic differences among regions and countries. In the nearly two decades since 1990, some regions — South and Southeast Asia, the Near East and North Africa, and Latin America and the Caribbean — have made significant headway in improving food security. Nevertheless, the GHI remains high in South Asia. The GHI is similarly high in Sub-Saharan Africa, where progress has been marginal since 1990.

• About the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI)

  tags: ifpri, hunger, mdg, mdgs

  • IFPRI's Mission: To Provide Policy Solutions That Reduce Poverty and End Hunger and Malnutrition

    This mission flows from the CGIAR mission: "To achieve sustainable food security and reduce poverty in developing countries through scientific research and research-related activities in the fields of agriculture, livestock, forestry, fisheries, policy, and natural resources management."

  • Two key premises underlie IFPRI's mission:

    1. Sound and appropriate local, national, and international public policies are essential to achieving sustainable food security and nutritional improvement.
    
    
    2. Research and the dissemination of its results are critical inputs into the process of raising the quality of food policy debate and formulating sound and appropriate policies.

SciDev.Net , found below under Global News Sources, on 10/16/08 provided three essays, published by the same International Food Policy Research Institute, offering if not final answers to the food crisis then insightful perspectives on the global food crisis and how to deal with it.

Joachim von Braun, director-general of IFPRI, discusses high priority policy responses including: expanding emergency responses and humanitarian aid; freezing biofuel production; eradicating export bans and investing in rural infrastructure and agricultural research.

Josette Sheeran, executive director of the World Food Programme (WFP), discusses WFP activities, including their food-for-assets programme used to train local populations, school feeding for around 20 million children and disaster-preparedness activities including canal-building and river bed restoration. Sheeran calls for more agricultural research and higher investment across the value chain.

Namanga Ngongi, president of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, discusses the policy implications of high food prices for Africa. Policies are needed, he says, to create sustainable food production driven by advances in productivity rather than by expansion of cultivated area.

Change Initiative to Empower Adolescent Girls Investing in the Girl Effect

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The Business & Human Rights Resource Centre featured an article back on 10/21/08 on the World Bank Launches Private-Public Initiative to Empower Adolescent Girls

The World Bank joined governments and the private sector today to launch the Adolescent Girls Initiative (AGI) to promote the economic empowerment of adolescent girls in poor and post-conflict countries...The AGI is being piloted in Liberia through a partnership between the Bank, the Nike Foundation...It will be expanded in the coming year to include Afghanistan, Nepal, Rwanda, South Sudan......Every global company should invest in the girl effect. Economists have demonstrated that it is the best possible return on investment, said Mark Parker, President and CEO of Nike...

Somebody else who was impressed with this campaign was Nathaniel Whittemore. He discusses the power of good design in social ventures and Social Entrepreneurship at Change.org and he was surprised by the video's upbeat tone:

1. How refreshing that the viral nonprofit video of the last few years doesn't have a single picture of war, poverty, disease and death, and its message fundamentally comes down to "the solution may not be simple, but the start of the solution is."

The approach has not, however, been without controversy.