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kmaherali
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Post by kmaherali »

July 3, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist
The Luckiest Girl
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

This year’s college graduates owe their success to many factors, from hectoring parents to cherished remedies for hangovers. But one of the most remarkable of the new graduates, Beatrice Biira, credits something utterly improbable: a goat.

“I am one of the luckiest girls in the world,” Beatrice declared at her graduation party after earning her bachelor’s degree from Connecticut College. Indeed, and it’s appropriate that the goat that changed her life was named Luck.

Beatrice’s story helps address two of the most commonly asked questions about foreign assistance: “Does aid work?” and “What can I do?”

The tale begins in the rolling hills of western Uganda, where Beatrice was born and raised. As a girl, she desperately yearned for an education, but it seemed hopeless: Her parents were peasants who couldn’t afford to send her to school.

The years passed and Beatrice stayed home to help with the chores. She was on track to become one more illiterate African woman, another of the continent’s squandered human resources.

In the meantime, in Niantic, Conn., the children of the Niantic Community Church wanted to donate money for a good cause. They decided to buy goats for African villagers through Heifer International, a venerable aid group based in Arkansas that helps impoverished farming families.

A dairy goat in Heifer’s online gift catalog costs $120; a flock of chicks or ducklings costs just $20.

One of the goats bought by the Niantic church went to Beatrice’s parents and soon produced twins. When the kid goats were weaned, the children drank the goat’s milk for a nutritional boost and sold the surplus milk for extra money.

The cash from the milk accumulated, and Beatrice’s parents decided that they could now afford to send their daughter to school. She was much older than the other first graders, but she was so overjoyed that she studied diligently and rose to be the best student in the school.

An American visiting the school was impressed and wrote a children’s book, “Beatrice’s Goat,” about how the gift of a goat had enabled a bright girl to go to school. The book was published in 2000 and became a children’s best seller — but there is now room for a more remarkable sequel.

Beatrice was such an outstanding student that she won a scholarship, not only to Uganda’s best girls’ high school, but also to a prep school in Massachusetts and then to Connecticut College. A group of 20 donors to Heifer International — coordinated by a retired staff member named Rosalee Sinn, who fell in love with Beatrice when she saw her at age 10 — financed the girl’s living expenses.

A few years ago, Beatrice spoke at a Heifer event attended by Jeffrey Sachs, the economist. Mr. Sachs was impressed and devised what he jokingly called the “Beatrice Theorem” of development economics: small inputs can lead to large outcomes.

Granted, foreign assistance doesn’t always work and is much harder than it looks. “I won’t lie to you. Corruption is high in Uganda,” Beatrice acknowledges.

A crooked local official might have distributed the goats by demanding that girls sleep with him in exchange. Or Beatrice’s goat might have died or been stolen. Or unpasteurized milk might have sickened or killed Beatrice.

In short, millions of things could go wrong. But when there’s a good model in place, they often go right. That’s why villagers in western Uganda recently held a special Mass and a feast to celebrate the first local person to earn a college degree in America.

Moreover, Africa will soon have a new asset: a well-trained professional to improve governance. Beatrice plans to earn a master’s degree at the Clinton School of Public Service in Arkansas and then return to Africa to work for an aid group.

Beatrice dreams of working on projects to help women earn and manage money more effectively, partly because she has seen in her own village how cash is always controlled by men. Sometimes they spent it partying with buddies at a bar, rather than educating their children. Changing that culture won’t be easy, Beatrice says, but it can be done.

When people ask how they can help in the fight against poverty, there are a thousand good answers, from sponsoring a child to supporting a grass-roots organization through globalgiving.com. (I’ve listed specific suggestions on my blog, nytimes.com/ontheground, and on facebook.com/kristof).

The challenges of global poverty are vast and complex, far beyond anyone’s power to resolve, and buying a farm animal for a poor family won’t solve them. But Beatrice’s giddy happiness these days is still a reminder that each of us does have the power to make a difference — to transform a girl’s life with something as simple and cheap as a little goat.

I invite you to comment on this column on my blog, www.nytimes.com/ontheground, and join me on Facebook at www.facebook.com/kristof.
kmaherali
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Post by kmaherali »

July 13, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist
It Takes a School, Not Missiles
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

Since 9/11, Westerners have tried two approaches to fight terrorism in Pakistan, President Bush’s and Greg Mortenson’s.

Mr. Bush has focused on military force and provided more than $10 billion — an extraordinary sum in the foreign-aid world — to the highly unpopular government of President Pervez Musharraf. This approach has failed: the backlash has radicalized Pakistan’s tribal areas so that they now nurture terrorists in ways that they never did before 9/11.

Mr. Mortenson, a frumpy, genial man from Montana, takes a diametrically opposite approach, and he has spent less than one-ten-thousandth as much as the Bush administration. He builds schools in isolated parts of Pakistan and Afghanistan, working closely with Muslim clerics and even praying with them at times.

The only thing that Mr. Mortenson blows up are boulders that fall onto remote roads and block access to his schools.

Mr. Mortenson has become a legend in the region, his picture sometimes dangling like a talisman from rearview mirrors, and his work has struck a chord in America as well. His superb book about his schools, “Three Cups of Tea,” came out in 2006 and initially wasn’t reviewed by most major newspapers. Yet propelled by word of mouth, the book became a publishing sensation: it has spent the last 74 weeks on the paperback best-seller list, regularly in the No. 1 spot.

Now Mr. Mortenson is fending off several dozen film offers. “My concern is that a movie might endanger the well-being of our students,” he explains.

Mr. Mortenson found his calling in 1993 after he failed in an attempt to climb K2, a Himalayan peak, and stumbled weakly into a poor Muslim village. The peasants nursed him back to health, and he promised to repay them by building the village a school.

Scrounging the money was a nightmare — his 580 fund-raising letters to prominent people generated one check, from Tom Brokaw — and Mr. Mortenson ended up selling his beloved climbing equipment and car. But when the school was built, he kept going. Now his aid group, the Central Asia Institute, has 74 schools in operation. His focus is educating girls.

To get a school, villagers must provide the land and the labor to assure a local “buy-in,” and so far the Taliban have not bothered his schools. One anti-American mob rampaged through Baharak, Afghanistan, attacking aid groups — but stopped at the school that local people had just built with Mr. Mortenson. “This is our school,” the mob leaders decided, and they left it intact.

Mr. Mortenson has had setbacks, including being kidnapped for eight days in Pakistan’s wild Waziristan region. It would be naïve to think that a few dozen schools will turn the tide in Afghanistan or Pakistan.

Still, he notes that the Taliban recruits the poor and illiterate, and he also argues that when women are educated they are more likely to restrain their sons. Five of his teachers are former Taliban, and he says it was their mothers who persuaded them to leave the Taliban; that is one reason he is passionate about educating girls.

So I have this fantasy: Suppose that the United States focused less on blowing things up in Pakistan’s tribal areas and more on working through local aid groups to build schools, simultaneously cutting tariffs on Pakistani and Afghan manufactured exports. There would be no immediate payback, but a better-educated and more economically vibrant Pakistan would probably be more resistant to extremism.

“Schools are a much more effective bang for the buck than missiles or chasing some Taliban around the country,” says Mr. Mortenson, who is an Army veteran.

Each Tomahawk missile that the United States fires in Afghanistan costs at least $500,000. That’s enough for local aid groups to build more than 20 schools, and in the long run those schools probably do more to destroy the Taliban.

The Pentagon, which has a much better appreciation for the limits of military power than the Bush administration as a whole, placed large orders for “Three Cups of Tea” and invited Mr. Mortenson to speak.

“I am convinced that the long-term solution to terrorism in general, and Afghanistan specifically, is education,” Lt. Col. Christopher Kolenda, who works on the Afghan front lines, said in an e-mail in which he raved about Mr. Mortenson’s work. “The conflict here will not be won with bombs but with books. ... The thirst for education here is palpable.”

Military force is essential in Afghanistan to combat the Taliban. But over time, in Pakistan and Afghanistan alike, the best tonic against militant fundamentalism will be education and economic opportunity.

So a lone Montanan staying at the cheapest guest houses has done more to advance U.S. interests in the region than the entire military and foreign policy apparatus of the Bush administration.

I invite you to comment on this column on my blog, www.nytimes.com/ontheground, and join me on Facebook at www.facebook.com/kristof.
kmaherali
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Post by kmaherali »

September 25, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist
A Heroine From the Brothels
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

World leaders are parading through New York this week for a United Nations General Assembly reviewing their (lack of) progress in fighting global poverty. That’s urgent and necessary, but what they aren’t talking enough about is one of the grimmest of all manifestations of poverty — sex trafficking.

This is widely acknowledged to be the 21st-century version of slavery, but governments accept it partly because it seems to defy solution. Prostitution is said to be the oldest profession. It exists in all countries, and if some teenage girls are imprisoned in brothels until they die of AIDS, that is seen as tragic but inevitable.

The perfect counterpoint to that fatalism is Somaly Mam, one of the bravest and boldest of those foreign visitors pouring into New York City this month. Somaly is a Cambodian who as a young teenager was sold to the brothels herself and now runs an organization that extricates girls from forced prostitution.

Now Somaly has published her inspiring memoir, “The Road of Lost Innocence,” in the United States, and it offers some lessons for tackling the broader problem.

In the past when I’ve seen Somaly and her team in Cambodia, I frankly didn’t figure that she would survive this long. Gangsters who run the brothels have held a gun to her head, and seeing that they could not intimidate Somaly with their threats, they found another way to hurt her: They kidnapped and brutalized her 14-year-old daughter.

Three years ago, I wrote from Cambodia about a raid Somaly organized on the Chai Hour II brothel where more than 200 girls had been imprisoned. Girls rescued from the brothel were taken to Somaly’s shelter, but the next day gangsters raided the shelter, kidnapped the girls and took them right back to the brothel.

Yet Somaly continued her fight, and, with the help of many others, she has registered real progress. Today, she says, the Chai Hour II brothel is shuttered. In large part, so is the Svay Pak brothel area where 12-year-old girls were openly for sale on my first visit.

“If you want to buy a virgin, it’s not easy now,” notes Somaly, speaking in English — her fifth language.

Somaly’s shelters — where the youngest girl rescued is 4 years old — provide an education and job skills. More important, Somaly applies public and international pressure to push the police to crack down on the worst brothels, and takes brothel owners to court. The idea is to undermine the sex-trafficking business model.

In her book, Somaly recounts how she grew up as an orphan and was “adopted” by a man who sold her to a brothel. Once when Somaly ran away, the police gang-raped her. Then her owner, on recovering his “property,” not only beat and humiliated her but tied her down naked and poured live maggots over her skin and in her mouth.

Yet even after that, Somaly occasionally defied him. Once two new girls, about 14 years old, were brought in to the brothel and left tied up. Somaly untied them and let them run away. For that, she was tortured with electric shocks.

As Cambodia opened up, Somaly began to get foreign clients, whom she vastly preferred because they didn’t beat her as well, and she began learning foreign languages. Eventually, a French aid worker named Pierre Legros and she got married, and together they started Afesip, a small organization to fight sex trafficking. They have since divorced, and Somaly works primarily through the Somaly Mam Foundation, set up by admiring Americans to finance her battle against trafficking in Cambodia. It’s a successful collaboration between American do-gooders with money and a Cambodian do-gooder with local street smarts.

The world’s worst trafficking is in Asia, but teenage runaways in the United States are also routinely brutalized by their pimps. If a white, middle-class blonde goes missing, the authorities issue an Amber Alert and cable TV goes berserk, but neither federal nor local authorities do nearly enough to go after pimps who savagely abuse troubled girls who don’t fit the “missing blonde” narrative. The system is broken.

A bill to strengthen federal anti-trafficking efforts within the U.S. was overwhelmingly passed by the House of Representatives, led by Carolyn Maloney, Democrat of New York. But crucial provisions to crack down on pimping are being blocked in the Senate in part by Senators Sam Brownback and Joe Biden, who consider the House provisions unnecessary and problematic. (Barack Obama gets it and says the right things about trafficking to the public, but apparently not to his running mate.)

With U.N. leaders this week focused on overcoming poverty, Somaly is a reminder that we needn’t acquiesce in the enslavement of girls, in this country or abroad. If we defeated slavery in the 19th century, we can beat it in the 21st century.

I invite you to visit my blog, www.nytimes.com/ontheground, and join me on Facebook at www.facebook.com/kristof.
kmaherali
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Broker turned monk offers home truths

Anna Mudeva
Reuters

Sunday, October 05, 2008

http://www.canada.com/components/print. ... 4&sponsor=
CREDIT: Stoyan Nenov, Reuters
Bulgarian monk Brother Nikanor, 32, walks in front of Tsurnogorski monastery, some 50 kilometres west of the capital Sofia.


CREDIT: Stoyan Nenov, Reuters
Five years ago, Hristo Mishkov quit the New York-based Nasdaq market for a dilapidated Bulgarian monastery that once served as a communist labour camp.

Brother Nikanor, a Nasdaq broker turned monk, advises former colleagues to put a jar with soil on their desks to remind them where we are all heading and what matters in life.

As western banks fold into each other like crumpled tickets and commentators portray the current crisis as the last gasp of modern capitalism, Hristo Mishkov, 32, shares the pain -- and offers home truths.

His story partly resembles that of Brother Ty, the monk-tycoon protagonist of the 1998 satire God Is My Broker by U.S. writers Christopher Buckley and John Tierney -- he failed on Wall Street and became a monk.

But 10 years later, the similarities are superficial: the Bulgarian had a successful brokering career, does not write self-help manuals and aims to get happy, not rich.

His interest in financial markets began under communism in the 1980s when he and other children created their own play stock exchange in their apartment block's basement in Sofia.

Five years ago, after failing to find happiness in the life he lived, the Christian Orthodox who hadn't practised as a child quit the New York-based market for a dilapidated Bulgarian monastery that once served as a communist labour camp.

Retaining one luxury -- a mobile phone, which connects him with both potential donors and former trading colleagues -- he has brought the rigour of his broking experience to his faith.

He has helped to raise hundreds of thousands of levs (dollars) to rebuild the monastery -- a hard task in a country where charity is not part of the mentality and building shopping malls and golf courses is a priority.

"Many people . . . in the world do not realize that they have not earned the food they eat, that they take without giving," said Mishkov. "But if someone consumes more than they have earned, it means someone else is starving.

"It is right to see people who consume more than they deserve shattered by a financial crisis from time to time, to suffer so that they can become more reasonable."

Being a trader has seldom been more traumatic: placing bets on political decisions about billion-dollar bank bailouts which, if they fail, could mean much more than a bad day for yourself or colleagues, but also jeopardize livelihoods.

Some have found solace in religion, others in humour, but a few fall. Surveys show traders reporting more stress and every news report of a trader suicide is accompanied by suggestions the pressure may have been too much.

"We always search for happiness in the outside world, in material things, which makes us constantly unsatisfied, angry with ourselves and the world," said Mishkov, who exudes a sense of tranquillity, intelligence and humour.

Greed and the marketization of our lives have reached the point where people have been turned into a commodity -- even their health can be traded like a stock, he said.

"We have so quickly lost our human appearance, we have become beasts. . . . There's no one to count on and say 'Hey neighbour come help me.' He will come but demand a payment."

His monastery, tucked among hills 50 kilometres west of Sofia, was founded in the 12th century. The communist regime which banned religion turned it into a labour camp, then a children's pioneer camp and a livestock farm.

Now Mishkov works hard every day milking buffalo cows and building stone walls. He says he is not against rich people but can only respect those who contribute to the good of society -- pointing to Microsoft founder Bill Gates as an example.

As a younger man working for more than two years for Karoll, one of Bulgaria's leading brokerages, Mishkov was good at his job, former colleagues say.

"He was a religious person and that annoyed me sometimes," said Alexander Nikolov, head of international capital markets at Karoll. "There were occasions when he would not show up at work because of some religious holiday."

His colleagues were stunned when he decided to become a monk, but Mishkov felt the time had come to look after people's souls.

"Everybody can be a good broker but this does not bring much benefit for the world," he said. Religion can help people cope in today's stressful times and find answers, Mishkov added.

Churches in New York's financial district reported last month increased attendance at lunchtime meetings, with many more people in business attire than usual, when some of the world's biggest investment banks collapsed.

Steven Bell, chief economist of London hedge fund GLC, said keeping a sense of reality is what traders needed.

"It is very important to just remind yourself that there is a real world out there. In any job but particularly in financial markets, you need to try and keep your feet on the ground," said Bell.

Mishkov says the crash should also help correct a dangerous global trend of an excessive outflow of labour to the service sectors, by people attracted by high pay and an easy life.

"Milk is not produced by computers, bread doesn't come from a good company PR. It is necessary to plow, sow and harvest before that," says the monk.

© The Calgary Herald 2008
kmaherali
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Small loans assist poorest of the poor
Group lobbies politicians to fight global poverty

Graeme Morton
Calgary Herald


Friday, October 17, 2008


An expert in providing modest loans to establish self-sustaining small businesses in the Third World can only shake his head at the scope of the financial meltdown in North America.

Alex Counts, president of the Washington-based Grameen Foundation, says the poor are often shunned by the global banking system.

"But what happened in the subprime crisis is that people were given incentives to loan to the poor irresponsibly," says Counts, who'll be in Calgary on Saturday to speak at a fundraiser for the Calgary chapter of Results Canada.

Results Canada is a national advocacy group that pushes for increased political will to support poverty-fighting options such as microfinancing, which consists of providing small loans, usually less than $200, to individuals to establish or expand a small, self-sustaining business.

"In microfinance, we've set up sophisticated ways to ensure the loan officers work for the benefit of the clients," says Counts. "If a woman in Bangladesh can manage with a $70 loan to start her small business, don't lend her $170. And in fact if you do, you'll be punished, not rewarded."

The Grameen Foundation works with a network of 55 local microfinance institutions in 24 countries, providing modest loans to some of the world's poorest people to start small businesses to support their families.

More than 90 per cent of their clients are women and Counts says the payback rate is impressive.

Counts says microfinance officers are in the villages of their clients on a weekly basis instead of hidden away in a Wall Street skyscraper.

"There's a close relationship between borrower and lender. If a woman uses a loan to buy two cows, but one dies and she isn't able to pay the loan on the original schedule, you work something out that's appropriate to that individual situation."

Counts says there's a spiritual, as well as economic, element to the foundation's work with the poorest of the poor.

"You see how a tiny loan of perhaps $80 can act as a catalyst to unlock their entrepreneurial potential and improve their social and economic lives, -- more than you or I will go through in our lifetime," says Counts.

Results Canada organizer Elizabeth Dove says Calgary has one of the most active chapters in the country.

"We believe there are enough resources in the world to end poverty everywhere," says Dove. "It just takes the political will. Our members lobby their MPs and write letters to the editor advocating for positive initiatives like microfinance."

The Results Canada breakfast is set for 9 a.m. Saturday at Stampede Park's Big Four Building. Call 403-399-7369 for tickets.

gmorton@theherald.canwest.com

© The Calgary Herald 2008
kmaherali
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Help eliminate poverty – invest in women
When a woman prospers, a family prospers. When families prosper, communities prosper.
By Christine Grumm
from the October 17, 2008 edition

San Francisco - Those familiar with the issue of poverty might know that although women perform two-thirds of the world's unpaid labor and grow more than half the world's food, they represent 70 percent of those living in poverty.

But what is just coming into focus is that women represent an underutilized resource in alleviating that poverty. When government and philanthropic dollars are invested in financially disadvantaged women, the potential impact is vast.

Research shows that investing in women's education and leadership in Africa can increase agricultural yields by more than 20 percent there. It is estimated that for every year beyond fourth grade that girls attend school, their wages rise 21 percent. And in 2001 the United Nations reported that eliminating gender inequality in Latin America would increase national output by 5 percent.

On top of that, evidence from micro-credit lending indicates that women have superior repayment rates, invest more productively, and are more risk-averse than men in similar situations.

Through programs administered by an international alliance of nongovernmental organizations known as the Women's Funding Network and by other international organizations including UNIFEM, experience illustrates the effectiveness of investing in women. These programs support training and better working conditions for women. They also build entrepreneurship and support asset-building and financial literacy for them.

A hallmark of this work – and key to its effectiveness – is empowering women living in poverty to help direct funding, and to take leadership in the programs it makes possible.

In Washington, programs funded by the Washington Area Women's Foundation have helped low-income women in and around the area collectively increase their assets by $17 million in 2-1/2 years.

Consider Christine Walker, a single mother and university student earning less than $35,000 annually. She watched her personal debt mount even as she pursued the degree that would lead to a better-paying job. Thanks to two programs funded by the foundation, Christine learned how to save $4,000 in just six months. This has made it possible for her to earn her degree in public policy without having to use her credit card to cover school expenses.

Another program supported by the Washington foundation enabled Sharan Mitchell, recently released from prison, to train in construction. Within three months she was helping to build Washington's new baseball stadium and earning a steady paycheck.

On the other side of the globe, a UNIFEM-supported program in Taiwan proved a lifeline for a domestic worker from the Philippines. The program was designed to educate domestic workers about savings. As part of the program, the participants formed a savings club. Eventually they pooled their $19,000 in collective savings and bought a rice mill. One of the participants managed the mill, which soon employed four full-time workers and another four part-time workers during harvest. This woman has risen from domestic worker to manager, benefiting her family and those around her through her new economic impact. And she and the women who invested with her in the rice mill are now owners of an asset that promises to grow in value.

Evidence, and examples from women like these around the world, is both convincing and compelling. When a woman prospers, a family prospers. When families prosper, communities prosper.

Friday is World Poverty Day. You can take a stand by signing a petition against poverty online at the UN-affiliated website standagainstpoverty.org. Those policymakers looking to make an impact and those who control philanthropic funds around the world should recognize that the financial empowerment of women around the world is, yes, a matter of women's rights. But it is also a powerful way to change whole societies. Investing in women is the way to a better world.

• Christine Grumm is president and CEO of the Women's Funding Network, a global alliance of grantmaking organizations directing social investments for women.

Find this article at:
http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/1017/p09s01-coop.html
kmaherali
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Little job from God sends doctor to Malawi
Dr. Chris Brooks treats poorest in African nation

Graeme Morton
Calgary Herald


Sunday, October 26, 2008


When you first hear Dr. Chris Brooks' story, it's easy to consider him a modern-day humanitarian hero.

A decade ago, Brooks gave up his successful medical practice and a comfortable life in Calgary to treat and heal countless throngs in Malawi, one of Africa's poorest countries.

But for Brooks, president and founder of Lifeline Malawi, it was all about keeping a promise he made years ago.

"When I was 15 and attending a Bible school back in England, I promised God that I would become a medical doctor in Africa," Brooks says.

"When I hit my mid-fifties, I came to this hard realization that I hadn't done what I promised God that I'd do."

After hearing a missionary speak about the plight of Malawi's millions at the church he attended, Brooks knew it was time to take his leap of faith.

"I decided that I'd do whatever I was called to do," recalls Brooks. "It was like God spoke to me and said, 'Chris, I've got a little job for you do to in Africa.' "

The family home and the vintage Mustang convertible were sold. Brooks says he couldn't have walked this path without the support of his wife Heather and daughter Chloe.

"Heather and I sat down and agreed we wanted to do something worthwhile for the Lord," says Brooks.

"Shakespeare was right when he said that our life, 'our time upon the stage,' is pretty short and it's up to us on how we spend it. You can play the fool, or you can do something useful."

Malawi is a narrow sliver of a nation with more than 13-million people, sandwiched between Zambia, Mozambique and Tanzania in southeastern Africa. Brooks says one of the compelling reasons Malawi called to his heart was its serious lack of medical infrastructure.

"Even today, there are perhaps 200 doctors in the entire nation. The medical needs are still pretty mind boggling and the government is appreciative of any help that you can offer," says Brooks.

Brooks first worked for a humanitarian orphanage association, absorbing the cultural sensitivity for Africa that he says is vital for any westerner to do.

That "little job" from God was launched in the humblest of circumstances. Brooks was determined to take his medical skills into Malawi's rural areas so each week, he headed for a remote acreage at Ngodzi, on the shores of Lake Malawi.

"I had a second-hand Toyota Hilux truck and a nurse. We set up a little desk with a few bottles of medicine under a tree and waited . . . and hundreds of people just started to show up," recalls Brooks.

That initial, four-wheeled adventure evolved into an eight-room medical clinic by 2001, which has been expanded through the years through donations, many from Calgary churches, faith and service organizations and individuals. One Calgary businessman is paying for a new maternity ward being built at the Ngodzi centre.

A second clinic at Kasese has been operating for two years, and true to Brooks' vision, staff continue to take their vehicles and medicines into the hinterlands on a weekly basis.

Dealing with steady streams of patients, malaria and HIV/AIDS on a sustained basis can take a personal toll.

"At the end of some long days, Heather and I would look at each other with tears in our eyes and say, 'how much longer can we do this,' " Brooks says. "But with faith, you find strength."

While Lifeline Malawi is unabashedly Christian in spirit, the only criteria for being a patient, Brooks notes, "is to be a human being."

Lifeline Malawi has been embraced by many Calgarians, whether they be small teams from city churches who stay for a couple of weeks to build a staff house or doctors who share their skills and compassion.

Brooks say they invariable return to our affluent city with changed priorities and a richer heart.

Dr. Ian Burgess, a retired pediatrician, spent three weeks lending a hand.

"There are no efforts to proselytize the patients; we're there to preserve peoples' lives," says Burgess.

"There are some major health issues, but you get the sense that progress is being made, that things are improving in Malawi."

Brooks will turn 70 next month and says his role with Lifeline Malawi is now more of an ambassador than a hands-on caregiver.

"As God said to Abraham, 'just walk with me and I will bless you.' To the best of my ability, I think I have walked with God," says Brooks.

While he regularly travels the world to meet with potential supporters and raise funds, Brooks' heart is clearly anchored in Malawi.

"When I get off the plane and see my wife, when I smell the dust and the belching smoke of the old vehicles, and when we get home and I hear the hippos snorting down in the lake -- I know this is where I am supposed to be," says Brooks.

Brooks will be the guest speaker at Lifeline Malawi's annual fall banquet and silent auction, set for Thurs. Nov. 6 at the Calgary Zoo's Safari Lounge.

Tickets are available by calling 403-214-7780.

gmorton@theherald.canwest.com

© The Calgary Herald 2008

****

AIDS exhibit 'life changing'

Cailynn Klingbeil
Calgary Herald

Sunday, October 26, 2008

http://www.canada.com/components/print. ... 6&sponsor=
CREDIT: Ted Jacob, Calgary Herald
Loreli Hornby and daughter Lexi, 7, discuss the plight of African families while visiting a World Vision display at the Calgary Woman's Show.

Terie Brown and her daughter Hannah were unsure what to expect when they stepped into an interactive African village at the Calgary Woman's Show on Saturday afternoon.

The 186-square-metre AIDS exhibit -- called One Life Experience -- uses an audio tour with vivid photography to show visitors the lives of four children affected by HIV and AIDS.

After being transported into the life of a seven-year-old orphan girl from Zambia, Terie and Hannah were clearly moved.

"I've seen stuff like this in movies, but to actually hear personal stories is life changing," said Hannah, 20.

"It's authentic and really takes you into that world," said Terie, 52. "I forgot I lived in Calgary while I was in the exhibit."

Putting a human face on the suffering in Africa is one of the exhibit's goals, said Celina Laforet, regional manager of Alberta for World Vision.

It's estimated that 22 million adults and children were living with HIV-AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa by the end of 2007.

More than 39,000 Canadians have visited the exhibit in 18 different locations since it was launched by World Vision in August 2007.

"We want people to understand that they have one life and we want them to make it matter," said Laforet.

Laforet said the exhibit, which takes about 15 to 20 minutes to walk through, also aims to empower people by letting them know how they can help.

"When we make a difference in developing countries, we make a difference in our country," she said.

As Terie and Hannah left the exhibit, they said they planned on talking with the rest of their family about sponsoring a child in Africa.

"I'm going to act on what I saw and volunteer or donate," said Hannah.

The One Life Experience exhibit continues today at the Calgary Woman's Show.

© The Calgary Herald 2008
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Post by kmaherali »

Developing world needs more help

Bob Hawkesworth
For The Calgary Herald


Monday, October 27, 2008


As Canada and the world head into economic uncertainty, there's a lot of talk of tightening our belts. Yet even amid market turmoil, Canadians cannot forget people in developing countries who are already bearing the brunt of soaring fuel prices and a global food crisis. As our prime minister acknowledged last Sunday, "countries in the South are certainly not responsible, and not the source of this crisis, in any way, shape or form." Developed countries must help poorer countries to deal with the fall out. For Canada that means we need to uphold our international aid commitments.

For many Canadians, global disparity prompts a personal response. They believe that every person on this planet should have the same rights, the same opportunities and the same basic necessities of life regardless of where they happen to be born. They also want to help do something about it. This principle is what motivated me to volunteer overseas with Canadian Crossroads International 37 years ago.

In the summer of 1971, Canadian Crossroads International placed me as a volunteer at the YMCA in Bridgetown, Barbados. I was charged with running a summer camp program for children. One day I visited a hospital ward for youngsters with physical and mental disabilities that also housed orphans and abandoned children. It was heart-breaking to see kids simply being warehoused without any emotional supports or programs. With the assistance of local sponsors, my project was quickly transformed to implement similar programs in that Bridgetown hospital. Thus, Canadian Crossroads International enabled me to reach out and help some very special children. It was a profound experience and ultimately led me to a lifetime commitment of volunteering in my own community.

This year, Canadian Crossroads International is 50 years old. Long before Canada had the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), an enthusiastic group of Crossroads volunteers were meeting in a basement trying to figure out how they could create a more just and sustainable world. Since that time, more than 8,000 people have volunteered overseas with this remarkable organization.

Today, with the government's support and the support of thousands of volunteers and donors Canadian Crossroads International continues to mobilize individuals in communities across the country. Canadians of all ages and from all walks of life have taken up the challenge to volunteer abroad, working on the front lines in the global fight against poverty, women's inequality and HIV and AIDS.

Many of us who have volunteered abroad have seen our own lives changed forever. From afar, in the abstract, it is difficult to grasp the incredible extent of poverty throughout the world and the impact it has on every aspect of people's lives. But this reality becomes crystal clear when you live and work alongside people who lack safe drinking water, nutritious food or access to services such as basic health care.

Prior to leaving for the Bridgetown YMCA I had no idea what to expect. But that relatively brief encounter made me realize how poverty, a lack of community capacity, and the absence of supportive social services can limit and stunt human potential. It was an experience that taught important life lessons and values I have brought to my work in Canada.

Today, the needs in developing countries have changed. Increasingly volunteers are using their expertise and resources to help increase the self sufficiency of local organizations to foster local economic development, increase women's rights and support people affected by HIV and AIDS.

At the Sommet de la Francophonie the prime minster called on developed countries to help developing countries deal with the effects of the financial crisis. The Canadian government also pledged $100-million in assistance to those countries that are especially vulnerable to the adverse effects of climate change. This support is commendable.

But now, more than ever, we cannot lose sight of Canada's promise to invest 0.7 per cent of our national income assisting the world's poorest citizens; to work globally to cancel debt owed by the poorest countries; and work for fair global trade rules.

It's time to act. Get involved with organizations such as Canadian Crossroads International and volunteer for an experience that will change your life forever -- and those who you help. Together we can reach beyond our own communities and country and bring positive change to our fellow global citizens.

Calgary's Ward 4 Alderman Bob Hawkesworth is a former volunteer with Canadian Crossroads International, which is celebrating 50 years of international volunteer co-operation with events across the country.

© The Calgary Herald 2008
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Post by kmaherali »

November 3, 2008
Aid Group Says Zimbabwe Misused $7.3 Million
By CELIA W. DUGGER

JOHANNESBURG — The government of Zimbabwe, led by President Robert Mugabe, spent $7.3 million donated by an international organization to fight killer diseases on other things and has failed to honor requests to return the money, according to the organization’s inspector general.

The actions by Zimbabwe have deprived the organization, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, of resources it needs and damaged efforts to expand life-saving treatment, said the inspector general, John Parsons. Zimbabwe’s actions also jeopardize a more ambitious $188 million Global Fund grant to Zimbabwe, due for consideration by the fund’s board on Friday, Mr. Parsons said.

The Global Fund has continued to demand that Zimbabwe return the money, and Global Fund officials say Zimbabwean financial officials have promised to do so by Thursday. But Mr. Parsons said Zimbabwean officials also said they had not repaid the money because they did not have enough foreign currency.

The breakdown of trust between the Global Fund and Zimbabwe’s government comes at a time of widening humanitarian crisis and casts further doubt on the willingness of Western donors to invest heavily in rebuilding the economically broken nation as long as Mr. Mugabe is in charge, even if a deadlock over a power-sharing government is resolved.

Mr. Parsons said in an interview on Sunday that last year the Global Fund deposited $12.3 million in foreign currency into Zimbabwe’s Reserve Bank. He declined to speculate on how the $7.3 million it was seeking to be returned had been spent, except to say it was not on the intended purpose. Civic groups and opposition officials maintain that the Reserve Bank helps finance Mr. Mugabe’s patronage machine.

More....
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/03/world ... ?th&emc=th
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From poor to rich
Backlash against global adoption sparks complex ethical debate

Robin Summerfield
Calgary Herald


Saturday, November 08, 2008
http://www.canada.com/components/print. ... 6&sponsor=

CREDIT: Pascal Guyot, AFP-Getty Images
Eric Breteau, left, head of French charity Zoe's Ark, and two of his five charity workers charged with kidnapping 103 children in Chad arrive at the courthouse in N'Djamena last December. The group was convicted and sentenced to eight years of hard labour, but later pardoned by Chad's President Idriss Deby and returned to France.

It was billed as a humanitarian rescue of orphaned Sudanese children fleeing the war in Darfur.

The 103 children would be evacuated from neighbouring Chad to France, where new families, who had each paid thousands of euros, would care for them.

The problem? They weren't orphans. And they weren't Sudanese, either.

They were Chadian youngsters who had reportedly been lured into custody with candy and cookies.

Chad's President Idriss Deby was enraged when the Zoe's Ark scandal erupted in October 2007, and suggested the children may have been sold into a pedophile ring or used to supply human organs.

Then he took a swipe at rich countries using poorer ones as a source for children.

"These people treat us like animals. So this is the image of the saviour Europe, which gives lessons to our countries. This is the image of Europe which helps Africa," Deby told reporters a year ago.

The Zoe's Ark incident sparked global controversy about international adoption, its regulation, and in the much broader picture, the ethics of First World people adopting developing world children.

Questions of child trafficking, organ harvesting and unscrupulous deals have also fueled resentment, and in some cases, led to complete border shutdowns.

The backlash against international adoption -- including violence against adoptive parents, agencies and their workers in foreign countries such as Guatemala and Chad -- also speaks to strong nationalist sensibilities that erupt when abuses are revealed.

Indeed, international adoptions spark many complex ethical questions from opponents and proponents of the practice.

At the heart of the issue is a thorny question: Is it right or wrong for westerners to adopt children from poorer nations?

According to critics, people from rich countries are pillaging poor countries' richest resource -- their children -- much to the anger and resentment of nationals in the countries of origin.

At the other end, advocates of international adoptions contend an impoverished child is rescued from a miserable life by an act of humanity and charity.

Even those who've adopted children from foreign countries are divided.

"It is an extremely good option for children. It is very likely the best option for children who don't have homes, don't have families, don't have food, don't have anyone to care for them," says international adoption expert Elizabeth Bartholet, a faculty director of the Child Advocacy Program at Harvard Law School in Boston.

But Karen Dubinsky, a history professor at Queen's University in Kingston, Ont., and international adoption expert, believes it isn't cut and dried.

"Everybody is really encouraged to think of international adoption only as a good thing," says Dubinsky. "It can dazzle us, blind us to what's really going on," she says of the rescue explanation.

An adoptive mother herself of an eight-year-old Guatemalan boy, the Ontario university professor says these polemic views lead to dead-end discussions.

Conflicted about her child's adoption and others' reactions to it led Dubinsky to research the subject.

"It's harder and way more complicated to think about what are the sources of poverty that are creating the need for adoption," says Dubinsky, who is writing a book about these issues called Babies without Borders.

An estimated 40,000 children around the globe are adopted internationally every year and millions more -- the world's most impoverished children -- are left behind.

Trends in international adoptions are "at a crisis moment now," a consortium of adoption advocates, including the American Bar Association, declared in August.

In a position paper, the group lashed out at "powerful political forces" that would make regulations more restrictive. The group argues this leads to more border shutdowns, ultimately hurting the world's poorest orphans.

The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), however, points to serious abuses surrounding international adoption, saying its growing popularity has led to "lack of regulation and oversight," particularly within countries of origin, which in turn has led to many abuses, including abduction, coercion of birth parents and bribery.

The practice "has spurred the growth of an industry around adoption where profit, rather than the best interests of the children, takes centre stage," UNICEF says.

Before inter-country adoption is considered, families should get support to raise their own children, and if they can't, "an appropriate alternative family environment" within their country of origin should be found, the organization believes.

But UNICEF's stance is a "powerfully hostile position" and unrealistic, as all the world's poorest children can't be properly cared for at home, counters Bartholet.

"We increase the chances of those (abuses) happening when we make international adoption illegal or almost impossible," says Bartholet, an adoptive mother of two Peruvian children and author of several books on the subject.

She challenges the policy-makers who restrict international adoption to weigh out the evils of an impoverished birth mother being compensated for a child she puts up for adoption versus a child who spends years being raised in institutional care.

"It's a small problem compared to the death and destruction of these kids."

However, Dominic Nutt with Save the Children, U.K., argues that demand for adoptees is fed by orphanages that make money from "selling children."

That commodification of children

creates conditions for abduction or simply puts pressure on birth parents, who, hoping to give their children a better life, relinquish them to local orphanages, he says. In that way, the system creates

"orphans," even if one or both parents are still alive.

In the case of Cochrane couple

Anjanette and Robin Bailey, their new three-year-old Ethiopian son's birth mother is still alive and living in the

impoverished east African country of

83 million.

The couple adopted the boy in April and met his mother before bringing the youngster home to Canada.

"There are so many children who have no family, but do I think it's probably best for them if they stay in their own country? Yes, but it's such an overwhelming issue," Anjanette says, pointing to the systemic poverty.

The answers aren't easy, she says.

"It isn't a black and white issue."

rsummerfield@theherald.canwest.com

© The Calgary Herald 2008
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Post by kmaherali »

Campaign opens tap to safe water for villages

Graeme Morton
Calgary Herald


Sunday, November 16, 2008


Turn on the Tap, an ambitious three-year initiative by the Calgary-based Christian relief organization Samaritan's Purse, has hit the midway mark.

Launched in April, 2007, the fundraising campaign has brought in more than $3.5-million of its $6.5-million target. A successful conclusion will see at least 65,000 new BioSand water filters built and installed in homes and villages in dozens of Third World countries.

Those filters are designed to supply safe, healthy water for eight to 10 people for years to come -- all for the cost of about $100.

John Clayton, director of projects for Samaritan's Purse, says more that 100,000 filters have already been distributed in 28 countries.

He says Turn on the Tap is grounded in the philosophy of "trying to help those on the fringes of global society.

"We want to work together with people to take responsibility for their own health," Clayton adds.

Part of the cost of a water filter installation includes instruction for recipients in hygiene and sanitation basics as well as maintenance tips to keep the filters at peak performance.

Clayton says long-term tracking of existing BioSand units shows a commendable endurance record for properly-maintained filters.

He adds that while Samaritan's Purse is proudly an evangelical Christian organization, there are no strings placed on those receiving a water filter.

"Absolutely, our help is never conditional on the recipient believing in God," says Clayton. "But, yes, when we have a chance, we tell people about Jesus. As an evangelical organization, we feel called to talk to people about a God in whose image they are created."

A number of local Christians have made journeys to developing countries to help build and install BioSand filters, whose technology was developed by Calgarian Dr. David Manz.

Brian Mackie, a local high-tech management consultant, spent 10 days in Cambodia and Vietnam and came home with a spiritual booster shot.

"I went over there to help these people, but I got so much more in return," says Mackie.

"You always hear the old cliche that it's more blessed to give than to receive. I came away blessed by these loving, thankful people."

Mackie notes those receiving a BioSand filter are expected to either pay a nominal amount toward the cost or contribute labour to the construction of the filters.

"That produces a sense of ownership for the filters. It's very grassroots stuff, working with local partner organizations and using local materials to build them," says Mackie.

He recalls meeting a father of seven in Cambodia who was seeing dramatic, positive developments in his family simply by having a dependable supply of clean water.

"The dad was able to hold down steady work and his children were able to attend school on a much more regular basis because they weren't battling diarrhea-related diseases all the time," says Mackie.

Country music star Paul Brandt, a Samaritan's Purse supporter, raised more than $300,000 for Turn on the Tap during a recent tour for his new album Risk. Participants paid $100, the cost of one filter, to meet Brandt backstage and get a photo taken.

"With all the success I've enjoyed in my career, there came a point where making music was good, but it wasn't really challenging people," says Brandt.

"I wanted to point people toward Jesus. It's good to do good things for people, but you have to speak to their souls too."

Brandt spent time in Ethiopia delivering BioSand filters.

"I remember the two little girls in one family who were getting a filter. They put on their best dresses because they knew their lives were about to change for the better," says Brandt.

He calls the transformation of murky, polluted water drawn from stagnant ponds and local streams into clear, healthy water after running through the BioSand filter "almost unreal.

"When I see the changed lives, when kids are not dying of diarrhea, I know I'm getting an incredible return of this investment of my gifts," says Brandt.

More information on the project is available at www.turnonthetap.ca

gmorton@theherald.canwest.com

© The Calgary Herald 2008

****
Crisis chance to aid poor: laureate

Gabriel Madway
Calgary Herald


Sunday, November 16, 2008


The global financial crisis can become an opportunity to help the world's worst off, says the Nobel Peace Prize laureate known as the "banker to the poor."

World leaders could encourage new types of lending that would let the poor take themselves out of poverty without the risks of the traditional system that has just failed, said Prof. Muhammad Yunus.

Yunus was awarded the Nobel in 2006 along with "micro-credit" bank Grameen Bank, which he founded in his native Bangladesh in 1983.

The bank has lent more than $7 billion US, in tiny increments of a few dollars to a few thousand, to millions of poor borrowers-- almost all women --to run small businesses. Seamstresses would be lent money to buy a sewing machine or cloth, for example.

"This is the disaster of a lifetime, and disasters are very painful, but it's also an opportunity," Yunus said. "There's lots of things you don't do in a normal period, you keep on piling up problems. Now you can address it fundamentally."

The crisis, he said, was created by a handful of people driven by "extreme greed," but "it's the poor people, the bottom half, three billion people, who'll be hit the hardest through no fault of their own."

Although an eager capitalist, Yunus has long warned about the excesses of globalization and free markets unchecked by regulation. The recent meltdown of markets around the globe has only reinforced his belief that the world needs a regulatory structure, like a world central bank, to referee a financial system that is inextricably linked.

He also argues for new accounting and legal standards that would allow for a second, separate industry, so-called "social businesses" such as Yunus's own Grameen Bank, to emerge.

Yunus said U. S. president-elect Barack Obama is in a unique position to "create his own history" and rebuild the financial system in such a way that an entirely new class of companies, driven by both profit motive and a desire to improve society, can be launched.

Yunus was in Silicon Valley to receive the James C. Morgan Global Humanitarian Award as part of the Tech Awards. The award's past recipients include Microsoft Corp. co-founder Bill Gates and Intel Corp. co-founder Gordon Moore.

© The Calgary Herald 2008
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November 27, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist
Giving Thanks to Heroes
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
MEERWALA, Pakistan

This is a column to give thanks to you, the reader. You don’t know it, but some of you are keeping women like Sajida Bibi alive here in this remote Pakistani village. And that is a far grander reason to celebrate Thanksgiving than even the plumpest turkey.

Sajida is a 29-year-old college-educated woman from a Christian family here (and a reminder that oppressive values in Pakistan are not rooted just in Islam). She scandalized her family by marrying a man she chose herself — and then becoming pregnant.

The next step was brutal: Several women held Sajida down as a midwife conducted an abortion, while she struggled and wept.

Then her brothers weighed what to do next. Sajida’s eldest brother wanted to sell her to a trafficker who offered $1,200, presumably intending to imprison her inside a brothel. Two other brothers just wanted to kill her.

The brothers fought for days over this question. So Sajida ground up sleeping tablets and baked the powder into chapati bread that she fed her brothers for dinner — and then sneaked out as they slept.

Sajida made her way to Mukhtar Mai, one of my heroes, and that is why this is a Thanksgiving column. For years, I’ve written about Mukhtar, an illiterate woman who used compensation money after being gang-raped to build a small school in which she herself enrolled.

Readers responded to the columns by flooding Mukhtar, who then used a variant of her name, Mukhtaran Bibi, with more than $290,000 in donations, funneled through Mercy Corps, an international aid group based in the U.S.

With that financial support, Mukhtar now runs four schools with 900 students. She also operates an ambulance service, a school bus, a women’s shelter, a legal clinic, and a telephone hot line and women’s crisis center — all in this remote village in the southern Punjab. (For information about how to help, go to my blog.

Sajida is now safe in Mukhtar’s shelter, while hoping to rescue her 14-year-old sister, Shafaq. Her brothers have forced Shafaq to drop out of school and may now be trying to sell her to a trafficker. When Sajida and I managed to contact Shafaq, she balked at fleeing — fearing that if her brothers caught her, they would kill her.

These women in Mukhtar’s shelter are extraordinary, partly because in a culture where women are supposed to be weak, they are indomitable. These aren’t victims. These are superheroes.

Another of those whom Mukhtar is helping is Shahnaz Bibi (Bibi is a second name used by many young Pakistani women; none of these women are related). Shahnaz is short, frail and wears a traditional full veil on the street — and is as courageous a person as I’ve ever met.

Shahnaz was kidnapped when she was taking her 10th-grade examinations, then gang-raped for two months by her kidnappers (including a policeman and a cousin) and, eventually, sold for $2,500 to be the third wife of a 65-year-old businessman. After being locked up for two years in a windowless room, Shahnaz was finally rescued by her family.

Her father begged her to drop the matter, for otherwise word would spread that she was not a virgin — utterly dishonoring her entire family. Yet Shahnaz insisted on prosecuting her kidnappers.

The police refused to act, so Shahnaz sought out Mukhtar, who paid for a good lawyer. The case is now proceeding. As a result, the kidnapping ring is using its police connections to try to force Shahnaz to withdraw charges, according to Mukhtar and Shahnaz.

The mayor himself has threatened Shahnaz and ordered her to drop the case, she says. The police chief called in Shahnaz and her family, slapped her and threatened to throw the entire family in prison for life unless she signed a paper withdrawing the charges. Then the police tortured Shahnaz’s father and brother in front of her until they gushed blood, demanding that she sign the document, according to her account and her brother’s.

The brother pleaded with her to sign. She refused.

“After what I endured for two years, I refuse to give up,” she said. Shahnaz keeps getting death threats, but she keeps pushing ahead. “I strongly believe in God and the power of truth,” she said.

(Note to President Asif Ali Zardari: The mayor is from your political party, so expel him before he discredits you. And, to the mayor and police chief, a Thanksgiving pledge: If anything happens to Shahnaz, I’m coming after you, armed with my notebook.)

So how about a Thanksgiving toast: Let’s give thanks for the courage of these magnificent women, and to those readers who had the faith to send checks to an illiterate rape victim in a remote Pakistani village.

I invite you to comment on this column on my blog www.nytimes.com/ontheground, and join me on Facebook at www.facebook.com/kristof.
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Post by kmaherali »

There is a related video linked at:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/04/opini ... ?th&emc=th

December 4, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist
Raising the World’s I.Q.
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
RAWALPINDI, Pakistan

Travelers to Africa and Asia all have their favorite forms of foreign aid to “make a difference.” One of mine is a miracle substance that is cheap and actually makes people smarter.

Unfortunately, it has one appalling side effect. No, it doesn’t make you sterile, but it is just about the least sexy substance in the world. Indeed, because it’s so numbingly boring, few people pay attention to it or invest in it. (Or dare write about it!)

It’s iodized salt.

Almost one-third of the world’s people don’t get enough iodine from food and water. The result in extreme cases is large goiters that swell their necks, or other obvious impairments such as dwarfism or cretinism. But far more common is mental slowness.

When a pregnant woman doesn’t have enough iodine in her body, her child may suffer irreversible brain damage and could have an I.Q. that is 10 to 15 points lower than it would otherwise be. An educated guess is that iodine deficiency results in a needless loss of more than 1 billion I.Q. points around the world.

Development geeks rave about the benefits of adding iodine and other micronutrients (such as vitamin A, iron, zinc and folic acid) to diets. The Copenhagen Consensus, which brings together a panel of top global economists to find the most cost-effective solutions to the world’s problems, puts micronutrients at the top of the list of foreign aid spending priorities.

“Probably no other technology,” the World Bank said of micronutrients, “offers as large an opportunity to improve lives ... at such low cost and in such a short time.”

Yet the strategy hasn’t been fully put in place, partly because micronutrients have zero glamour. There are no starlets embracing iodine. And guess which country has taken the lead in this area by sponsoring the Micronutrient Initiative? Hint: It’s earnest and dull, just like micronutrients themselves.

Ta-da — Canada!

(Years ago, New Republic magazine held a contest for the most boring headline ever. The benchmark was from a Times Op-Ed column — not mine — that read “Worthwhile Canadian Initiative.” Alas, that’s salt iodization!)

Pakistan is typical of the challenges. Until recently, 6 in 10 Pakistani schoolchildren were iodine-deficient. Iodine just wasn’t on anyone’s mind.

“I had never heard of iodized salt,” said Haji Sajjawal Khan, a 65-year-old owner of a small salt factory here, near the capital of Islamabad. Officials from the Micronutrient Initiative and other aid agencies reached out to factory owners like Mr. Khan and encouraged them to iodize salt, in part to help make Pakistanis healthier and more intelligent.

“It will prevent people’s necks from being swollen and will make people smarter,” Mr. Khan said. So he agreed to add an iodine drip into his salt grinder.

One of the obstacles is the rumor that iodized salt is actually a contraceptive, a dastardly plot by outsiders to keep Muslims from having babies. That conspiracy theory spread partly because the same do-good advertising agency that marketed iodized salt also marketed condoms.

Yet progress is evident. One of the attractions is that a campaign to iodize salt costs only 2 cents to 3 cents per person reached per year.

“We are spending very little, but the benefit is enormous,” said Dr. Khawaja Masuood Ahmed, an official of the Micronutrient Initiative here. “We’re preventing people from becoming mentally retarded.”

Indeed, The Lancet, the British medical journal, reported last month that “Iodine deficiency is the most common cause of preventable mental impairment worldwide.”

Occasionally in my travels I’ve been unnerved by coming across entire villages, in western China and elsewhere, eerily full of people with mental and physical handicaps, staggering about, unable to speak coherently.

I now realize that the cause in some cases was probably iodine deficiency.

Indeed, the problem used to be widespread in the Alps. The word “cretin” is believed to come from a mountain dialect of French, apparently because iodine deficiency in the Alps produced so many cretins. The problem ended when food was brought in from elsewhere and salt was iodized.

There is talk that President-elect Barack Obama may reorganize the American aid apparatus, perhaps turning it into a cabinet department. There are many competing good causes — I’m a huge believer in spending more on education and maternal health, in particular — but there may be no investment that gets more bang for the buck than micronutrients.

So, yes, salt iodization is boring. But if we can add 1 billion points to the global I.Q., then let’s lend strong American support — to a worthwhile Canadian initiative.

I invite you to visit my blog www.nytimes.com/ontheground, and join me on Facebook at www.facebook.com/kristof.
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December 9, 2008, 4:16 pm
Business Defeating Poverty
By Nicholas Kristof

I was at a conference over the weekend in the Bahamas to explore issues relating to global poverty — a bit incongruous a setting, to be sure. Maybe we should have done it in Haiti. The conference was sponsored by Templeton Foundation and was focused on using business rather than foreign aid to whittle away at poverty.

The conference was off the record, but one of the participants, Kim Tan, said it was fine to quote him. He runs a venture capital company in London, SpringHill Management, that invests in the developing world, and he argues strongly that foreign aid isn’t going to rescue poor countries but that foreign direct investment just might be able to: “FDI is the key. I’m from Asia, and that’s how Asia has developed, bringing in capital, technology and inspiring young entrepreneurs who build businesses.”

I’m also a believer in aid, particularly health and education interventions. But I also believe that business can raise living standards on a scale that aid never can, and that we need to focus more on building manufacturing in poor countries. The need to bring more of a business-sensibility to development has been growing in recent years and is also a theme in two recent books. One is Philanthrocapitalism: How the Rich Can Save the World, by Matthew Bishop and Michael Green, which I’m in the middle of reading right now. Another is The Blue Sweater, forthcoming from Jacqueline Novogratz, head of the Acumen Fund, which is next on my reading list.

It’s something that I probably haven’t written enough about, and I’ll try to pursue the issue some more in the next year.

http://kristof.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/1 ... 8ty&emc=ty
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December 14, 2008
Editorial
The Glaxo-Gates Malaria Vaccine

Researchers have been trying for more than 70 years to develop a vaccine against the elusive malaria parasite without notable success. Two studies conducted in East Africa suggest that they are finally closing in on their goal.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation deserves huge credit for enabling this research to go forward when the drug manufacturer was unwilling, on its own, to take the financial risk to try to develop a vaccine.

The new studies showed that the most advanced candidate vaccine — made by GlaxoSmithKline — cut illnesses in infants and young children by more than half and could safely be given with other childhood vaccines that are already routinely administered throughout Africa. The results were published in The New England Journal of Medicine, along with an editorial that called the vaccine’s performance a “hopeful beginning” toward prevention of the disease.

There is no guarantee of success. The studies were carried out in areas with relatively low transmission of malaria; no one knows if the vaccine will work as well where malaria is more rampant. And the vaccine must still undergo much larger trials next year.

Even a vaccine that is partially effective could save hundreds of thousands of lives a year. It would bolster the gains already being made by insecticide-treated bed nets that prevent mosquitoes from spreading the parasite and by malaria pills to treat sick patients.

That the candidate vaccine has gotten this far is a tribute to the power of charitable contributions to generate and sustain industrial interest.

Glaxo had been funding development of a vaccine aimed at military personnel and travelers but was unwilling to undertake pediatric studies unless a financial partner could be found. That’s when the Gates Foundation came to the rescue. It has pumped in $107.6 million so far. Glaxo says it has spent about $300 million and expects to invest $50 million to $100 million more to complete the project. If all goes well, the vaccine could be submitted for regulatory approval in 2011.
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Strategies on wise giving at Christmas, and all year

By Naheed NenshiDecember 18, 2008

Canadians are a generous people. About 85 per cent of us give to charity each year, with an average gift of about $400. This money helps fund a significant part of the economy--the non-profit sector employs about two million people in Canada, and accounts for about six times as much of the economy as auto manufacturing.

Much of our giving occurs at this time of year, both as a Christmas tradition for many people and as a year-end tax savings strategy.

Whatever your motivation, once you've decided to give, it makes sense to think about how best to give. After all, if you want to make change in the community, you should find the most effective ways of doing so.

I believe that there are two general rules to giving well: give mostly cash, and treat your giving as you would your financial portfolio.

The first rule is pretty straightforward. It can feel good to give something tangible, like a shoebox filled with trinkets, or a goat to a family in the developing world. Such gifts do have their place--the shoebox, for example, can start children on a lifetime habit of giving. However, such gifts rarely produce lasting impact.

For that to happen, organizations need some unrestricted cash. Sometimes this is used on non-sexy items--a new roof for the office, a better computer system--that nonetheless allow the organization to function and be more effective.

This is also why you should not be too worried about that scary term, "administration costs."While there certainly are some charities who squander money on office expenses, my experience is these are few and far between. Sometimes organizations with slightly higher administrative costs are the most effective, precisely because they are spending money on bookkeepers who carefully track where the money goes, or specialists who continuously track whether programs are having any impact, or even on meetings so people working in different parts of the world can share best practices.

The second rule is to think about how to maximize your social return. One helpful framework is to think about your giving as a portfolio, much as you think about your financial investments. I suggest using three buckets to organize this portfolio.

The first bucket is causes that you are personally close to. If the Cancer Society was there for you when you needed them, or if Scouts changed your life as a kid, or if you, like me, love nothing more than going to the theatre, this is where you support those organizations.

The second bucket is further away. As citizens of the world, we all have issues that we are concerned with that may not impact us directly. This might include global poverty, human rights or environmental degradation. Giving to organizations that deal with the most pressing problems in the world is also a good idea. Sometimes it takes a bit of research--who does the best job on anti-malarial bed-nets, for example, or which is the best community economic development organization? Going with reputable names like the Aga Khan Foundation or CARE or the Stephen Lewis Foundation can be a good bet here. For those who like a little more tangibility, kiva.org provides a chance to loan--not donate--money directly to micro-entrepreneurs around the world, allowing them to invest in their own businesses.

The third bucket deals with issues you may not even know exist in your own community. Much as you may rely on your financial adviser to keep an eye on opportunities in new industries, this is where you might rely on an intermediary to help you--organizations like the United Way or the Calgary Foundation are very close to the issues here in Calgary, and a donation to them helps funnel your money to the most effective agencies working on the most important problems.

One of the best examples of this is the Calgary Herald Christmas Fund. Each year, the Herald chooses agencies focused on issues of poverty and need in this city. The 12 agencies chosen this year are among the very best in our city, and you can be comfortable that a donation to the Fund will be well-used.

And for those (OK, me) who are a bit last minute, there's always a gift card. Canadahelps.org sells one that can be used to donate to any charity in Canada. This can be used as a gift or for your own giving: if you don't have time to choose before Dec. 31, but want the 2008 tax receipt, buy a gift card in your own name, and choose the charities you want to support at your leisure.

Happy holidays and happy giving!

Naheed Nenshi Teaches Non-profit Management At Mount Royal College's Bissett School Of Business.

© Copyright (c) The Calgary Herald
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December 21, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist
Bleeding Heart Tightwads
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

This holiday season is a time to examine who’s been naughty and who’s been nice, but I’m unhappy with my findings. The problem is this: We liberals are personally stingy.

Liberals show tremendous compassion in pushing for generous government spending to help the neediest people at home and abroad. Yet when it comes to individual contributions to charitable causes, liberals are cheapskates.

Arthur Brooks, the author of a book on donors to charity, “Who Really Cares,” cites data that households headed by conservatives give 30 percent more to charity than households headed by liberals. A study by Google found an even greater disproportion: average annual contributions reported by conservatives were almost double those of liberals.

Other research has reached similar conclusions. The “generosity index” from the Catalogue for Philanthropy typically finds that red states are the most likely to give to nonprofits, while Northeastern states are least likely to do so.

The upshot is that Democrats, who speak passionately about the hungry and homeless, personally fork over less money to charity than Republicans — the ones who try to cut health insurance for children.

“When I started doing research on charity,” Mr. Brooks wrote, “I expected to find that political liberals — who, I believed, genuinely cared more about others than conservatives did — would turn out to be the most privately charitable people. So when my early findings led me to the opposite conclusion, I assumed I had made some sort of technical error. I re-ran analyses. I got new data. Nothing worked. In the end, I had no option but to change my views.”

Something similar is true internationally. European countries seem to show more compassion than America in providing safety nets for the poor, and they give far more humanitarian foreign aid per capita than the United States does. But as individuals, Europeans are far less charitable than Americans.

Americans give sums to charity equivalent to 1.67 percent of G.N.P., according to a terrific new book, “Philanthrocapitalism,” by Matthew Bishop and Michael Green. The British are second, with 0.73 percent, while the stingiest people on the list are the French, at 0.14 percent.

(Looking away from politics, there’s evidence that one of the most generous groups in America is gays. Researchers believe that is because they are less likely to have rapacious heirs pushing to keep wealth in the family.)

When liberals see the data on giving, they tend to protest that conservatives look good only because they shower dollars on churches — that a fair amount of that money isn’t helping the poor, but simply constructing lavish spires.

It’s true that religion is the essential reason conservatives give more, and religious liberals are as generous as religious conservatives. Among the stingiest of the stingy are secular conservatives.

According to Google’s figures, if donations to all religious organizations are excluded, liberals give slightly more to charity than conservatives do. But Mr. Brooks says that if measuring by the percentage of income given, conservatives are more generous than liberals even to secular causes.

In any case, if conservative donations often end up building extravagant churches, liberal donations frequently sustain art museums, symphonies, schools and universities that cater to the well-off. (It’s great to support the arts and education, but they’re not the same as charity for the needy. And some research suggests that donations to education actually increase inequality because they go mostly to elite institutions attended by the wealthy.)

Conservatives also appear to be more generous than liberals in nonfinancial ways. People in red states are considerably more likely to volunteer for good causes, and conservatives give blood more often. If liberals and moderates gave blood as often as conservatives, Mr. Brooks said, the American blood supply would increase by 45 percent.

So, you’ve guessed it! This column is a transparent attempt this holiday season to shame liberals into being more charitable. Since I often scold Republicans for being callous in their policies toward the needy, it seems only fair to reproach Democrats for being cheap in their private donations. What I want for Christmas is a healthy competition between left and right to see who actually does more for the neediest.

Of course, given the economic pinch these days, charity isn’t on the top of anyone’s agenda. Yet the financial ability to contribute to charity, and the willingness to do so, are strikingly unrelated. Amazingly, the working poor, who have the least resources, somehow manage to be more generous as a percentage of income than the middle class.

So, even in tough times, there are ways to help. Come on liberals, redeem yourselves, and put your wallets where your hearts are.

I invite you to comment on this column on my blog, On the Ground. Please also join me on Facebook, watch my YouTube videos and follow me on Twitter.
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December 25, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist
The Sin in Doing Good Deeds
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

Here’s a question for the holiday season: If a businessman rakes in a hefty profit while doing good works, is that charity or greed? Do we applaud or hiss?

A new book, “Uncharitable,” seethes with indignation at public expectations that charities be prudent, nonprofit and saintly. The author, Dan Pallotta, argues that those expectations make them less effective, and he has a point.

Mr. Pallotta’s frustration is intertwined with his own history as the inventor of fund-raisers like AIDSRides and Breast Cancer 3-Days — events that, he says, netted $305 million over nine years for unrestricted use by charities. In the aid world, that’s a breathtaking sum.

But Mr. Pallotta’s company wasn’t a charity, but rather a for-profit company that created charitable events. Critics railed at his $394,500 salary — low for a corporate chief executive, but stratospheric in the aid world — and at the millions of dollars spent on advertising and marketing and other expenses.

“Shame on Pallotta,” declared one critic at the time, accusing him of “greed and unabashed profiteering.” In the aftermath of a wave of criticism, his company collapsed.

One breast cancer charity that parted ways with Mr. Pallotta began producing its own fund-raising walks, but the net sum raised by those walks for breast cancer research plummeted from $71 million to $11 million, he says.

Mr. Pallotta argues powerfully that the aid world is stunted because groups are discouraged from using such standard business tools as advertising, risk-taking, competitive salaries and profits to lure capital.

“We allow people to make huge profits doing any number of things that will hurt the poor, but we want to crucify anyone who wants to make money helping them,” Mr. Pallotta says. “Want to make a million selling violent video games to kids? Go for it. Want to make a million helping cure kids of cancer? You’re labeled a parasite.”

I confess to ambivalence. I deeply admire the other kind of aid workers, those whose passion for their work is evident by the fact that they’ve gone broke doing it. I’m filled with awe when I go to a place like Darfur and see unpaid or underpaid aid workers in groups like Doctors Without Borders, risking their lives to patch up the victims of genocide.

I also worry that if aid groups paid executives as lavishly as Citigroup, they would be managed as badly as Citigroup.

Yet there’s a broad recognition in much of the aid community that a major rethink is necessary, that groups would be more effective if they borrowed more tools from the business world, and that there is too much “gotcha” scrutiny on overhead rather than on what they actually accomplish. It’s notable that leaders of Oxfam and Save the Children have publicly endorsed the book, and it’s certainly becoming more socially acceptable to note that businesses can also play a powerful role in fighting poverty.

“Howard Schultz has done more for coffee-growing regions of Africa than anybody I can think of,” Michael Fairbanks, a development expert, said of the chief executive of Starbucks. By helping countries improve their coffee-growing practices and brand their coffees, Starbucks has probably helped impoverished African coffee farmers more than any aid group has.

Mr. Fairbanks himself demonstrates that a businessman can do good even as he does well. Rwanda’s president, Paul Kagame, hired Mr. Fairbanks’s consulting company and paid it millions of dollars between 2000 and 2007.

In turn, Mr. Fairbanks helped Rwanda market its coffee, tea and gorillas. Rwandan coffee now retails for up to $55 a pound in Manhattan, wages in the Rwandan coffee sector have soared up to eight-fold, and zillionaires stumble through the Rwandan jungle to admire the wildlife. President Kagame thanked Mr. Fairbanks by granting him Rwandan citizenship.

There are lots of saintly aid workers in Rwanda, including the heroic Dr. Paul Farmer of Partners in Health, and they do extraordinary work. But sometimes, so do the suits. Isaac Durojaiye, a Nigerian businessman, is an example of the way the line is beginning to blur between businesses and charities. He runs a for-profit franchise business that provides fee-for-use public toilets in Nigeria. When he started, there was one public toilet in Nigeria for every 200,000 people, but by charging, he has been able to provide basic sanitation to far more people than any aid group.

In the war on poverty, there is room for all kinds of organizations. Mr. Pallotta may be right that by frowning on aid groups that pay high salaries, advertise extensively and even turn a profit, we end up hurting the world’s neediest.

“People continue to die as a result,” he says bluntly. “This we call morality.”

I invite you to comment on this column on my blog, On the Ground. Please also join me on Facebook, watch my YouTube videos and follow me on Twitter.

Gail Collins is off today.
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http://www.business24-7.ae/articles/200 ... 1bca2.aspx

Region next growth area for micro finance

Jack Lowe President of BlueOrchard, USA (SUPPLIED)

By

Shveta Pathak on Tuesday, December 30, 2008

At a time when investor confidence across the globe has hit an all-time low and most asset categories having lost attractiveness, institutions expect the micro finance industry emerging as the strongest asset category.

Jack Lowe, President of BlueOrchard, USA, a Swiss micro finance company, says stable returns and low volatility offered by micro finance would make it a preferred asset class.

And this is "because micro finance is closely linked to real economy, the society and has the advantage of managing the current situation better," he said.

Typically, micro finance institutions (MFIs) provide loans and other services to organisations that further offer financial services to those in low-income category. Investors in MFIs, hence, gain returns from the income earned by such institutions, and, at the same time, manage to attain their social responsibility by contributing towards poverty alleviation — the main goal of micro financing. With the UAE Ministry of Economy having been assigned the task of launching a federal strategy to develop a programme to support and finance small start-ups in the UAE, MFIs are hopeful of tapping the market which largely remains untapped, Lowe told Emirates Business in an exclusive interview. Excerpts from the interview:

The global crisis has shaken investor confidence in most asset categories. In such a situation how do you view micro financing?

In such a crisis, it is important to have stable returns. In micro finance, volatility is low and the returns are stable, which is very useful. There has been no depreciation in assets. Micro finance will become an interesting asset class to understand today. The only problem today is that of liquidity. Many institutions have liquidity but they are not investing. They are saving in case there is a disaster. When this mentality goes away we would see a huge amount of funds coming. We too, hence, are working with focus on medium term.

What business sense does micro finance make to an investor?

To an investor, micro finance brings in a lot of qualities. One is lack of volatility in the returns, also very wide geographic diversification that allows reducing risks through diversification. Thirdly, it brings a certain lack of correlation with events. What micro finance debt investments cannot provide is higher than average returns. It only gives average returns. But we also say it gives you a social returns as well. A double benefit in the aspect that many investors, corporations, or pension funds or insurance companies can also say to their investment committees, look we are getting a very decent return and we are also getting an impact on the social side which is our contribution to the world economy and to helping alleviate poverty. Many institutions look at us first because they have that social investment philosophy. That's a form of return as well.

How does an investor make money?

If they want to invest in our mutual fund, a micro finance credit fund, they make a subscription and put in say half a million dollars; interest gets accumulated, a profit is given every quarter, and calculation is so they make decent return at the end of the year. In atypical cases they make whatever a six-month Libor is plus two per cent. That is included in the net asset value. If they want to realise their investment, they sell back to the fund at their net asset value. Besides, there is no fee to go in, fee to come out – it's a net calculation.

Considering the potential that it holds, why the penetration is still low in many countries? Even in the Middle East, figures point out that more than 90 per cent potential is yet to be tapped.

In several countries, the penetration has been low due to regulatory controls. For micro finance institutions to grow more licences have to be given easily. Syria is a big break through where they have just approved the first micro finance non-banking institution, promoted by the Agha Khan Foundation in Geneva. Cultural differences, different mentalities also make it slow. Unawareness is also an issue. Lots of people told me this morning they did not know much about micro finance. There is a lot of teaching element to go through to be able to know what it is, how it works, how you invest, what you can expect as return, and what are the risks.

Is it because countries are getting more relaxed in their regulations pertaining to micro financing?

Yes. We think in several countries within 12 months change in regulations would make it easier for micro finance institutions to start base. We have received some assurances on that front.

What kind of a potential do you see in the Middle East?

It's huge. Micro finance has penetrated only five per cent of the market here, 95 per cent is still to come, as per studies by third parties. This region has more potential it terms of growth than any other region in the world. We have seen very fast growth in Central Asia, Latin America, now it's time for this area to grow very quickly. As Arab investors get to tap into micro finance, it would result in more MFIs in this region reach out to small borrowers and help in building wealth and alleviating poverty.

In which countries are you expecting speedy growth now?

So far Central Asia has seen enormous growth. Now, we are hoping for a fast growth in the Gulf region.


PROFILE: Jack Lowe President of BlueOrchard, USA

Lowe has more than three decades of experience in business and finance. He started his career as a crude oil salesman covering the Far East area.

After coming to Switzerland in 1974, he started several franchising businesses, including McDonald's in Switzerland and Midas in France. In 1986, upon the sale of these businesses, he became a partner of Montgomery Securities and managed their new global investment and brokerage activities. In 1997, post the sale of Montgomery to Bank of America, he acquired several medium-size businesses he now controls, some of which are outside Europe in emerging markets.

Lowe joined BlueOrchard in late 2004. He is Swiss and holds an MBA in finance from Stanford University, USA.
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December 29, 2008, 4:31 am
We start a school in Cambodia
By Nicholas Kristof

There was a special reason for the timing of this trip to Cambodia, one you won’t read about in my columns: My family has built a junior high school in Cambodia, and we just had the opening ceremony. We timed it for the Christmas vacation, so our three kids — aged 11 through 16 — could see it. Oh, yes, and so that they could see kids who are desperately eager to get an education.

I’ve been visiting Cambodia for the last dozen years and have been particularly moved by the horrific sex trafficking here. One of the antidotes to prevent trafficking is education, and Cambodia is desperately short of schools. A couple of years ago I wrote about a school in Seattle that had funded a school in Cambodia through American Assistance for Cambodia. I was impressed with the organization and the way it gets extra bang for the buck through matching funds from the Asian Development Bank and the World Bank. Moreover, in some countries, you build a school and have a nice new building, but the teachers never show up. That’s much less of a problem in Cambodia, where one of the bottlenecks truly is school buildings.

So my wife, Sheryl, and I talked it over and decided to start our own school. We had just received an advance for a book about women in the developing world — “Half the Sky,” coming out this fall! — and it seemed only appropriate to use the money to support girls in a poor country. And we also wanted to show our kids a glimpse of need abroad and the way education can transform people’s lives.

Our school is a middle school a couple of hours east of Phnom Penh, and it was finally finished this month. So Sheryl and I and the kids came here as a family trip, all five of us, and participated in the school-opening ceremony. It was quite an event: Buddhist monks opened it, the deputy governor spoke, and each member of our family spoke briefly. There were about 1,000 people attending, mostly students and their parents, and they got a real kick out of seeing my kids speak.

American Assistance for Cambodia is the brainchild of Bernie Krisher, a former news magazine correspondent who in 1993 started it as an aid group to support Cambodia. He has built 400 schools around the country, as well as health programs and projects to fight sex trafficking. He also publishes the Cambodia Daily, an English-language paper, and even persuaded J.K. Rowling to donate Khmer-language rights to “Harry Potter,” so that cheap Harry Potter books could encourage Cambodian children to start reading. Bernie is truly an extraordinary figure who is having a far-reaching impact on the people of Cambodia, and I’m just proud to know him.

If anyone out there wants to volunteer to teach English in the Cambodian countryside, the principal of our school said he would welcome an American teacher. He said the village would put the teacher up either at the Buddhist pagoda or in a local person’s home. If you’re interested, contact American Assistance for Cambodia to be put in touch with the principal.

Of course, there are lots of other ways to help Cambodia. I met a woman volunteering at teaching English to children at the garbage dump in Phnom Penh; she loves it and finds new meaning in the project. The organization is A New Day Cambodia, run by a Chicago couple and getting rave reviews all around. (There are fewer children at the dump now than when I last visited in 2004, and one reason is the New Day school.) And I had lunch with Alan Lightman, an MIT professor who on the side runs Harpswell Foundation, which provides a free dormitory and leadership training for young Cambodian women who otherwise would not be able to attend university.

In my speech to the new school, I told the kids that I sometimes wondered why America was so rich and Cambodia was so poor. It’s not because Americans are smarter or more industrious than Cambodians, because Cambodians are sharp as a whistle and incredibly hard-working. One of the factors, I believe, is the educational gap, and we’re just so pleased to do our part to reduce that gap.

****
Photo at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/01/opini ... ?th&emc=th

January 1, 2009
Op-Ed Columnist
The Evil Behind the Smiles
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia

Western men who visit red-light districts in poor countries often find themselves surrounded by coquettish teenage girls laughingly tugging them toward the brothels. The men assume that the girls are there voluntarily, and in some cases they are right.

But anyone inclined to take the girls’ smiles at face value should talk to Sina Vann, who was once one of those smiling girls.

Sina is Vietnamese but was kidnapped at the age of 13 and taken to Cambodia, where she was drugged. She said she woke up naked and bloody on a bed with a white man — she doesn’t know his nationality — who had purchased her virginity.

After that, she was locked on the upper floors of a nice hotel and offered to Western men and wealthy Cambodians. She said she was beaten ferociously to force her to smile and act seductive.

“My first phrase in Khmer,” the Cambodian language, “was, ‘I want to sleep with you,’ ” she said. “My first phrase in English was” — well, it’s unprintable.

Sina mostly followed instructions and smiled alluringly at men because she would have been beaten if men didn’t choose her. But sometimes she was in such pain that she resisted, and then she said she would be dragged down to a torture chamber in the basement.

“Many of the brothels have these torture chambers,” she said. “They are underground because then the girls’ screams are muffled.”

As in many brothels, the torture of choice was electric shocks. Sina would be tied down, doused in water and then prodded with wires running from the 220-volt wall outlet. The jolt causes intense pain, sometimes evacuation of the bladder and bowel — and even unconsciousness.

Shocks fit well into the brothel business model because they cause agonizing pain and terrify the girls without damaging their looks or undermining their market value.

After the beatings and shocks, Sina said she would be locked naked in a wooden coffin full of biting ants. The coffin was dark, suffocating and so tight that she could not move her hands up to her face to brush off the ants. Her tears washed the ants out of her eyes.

She was locked in the coffin for a day or two at a time, and she said this happened many, many times.

Finally, Sina was freed in a police raid, and found herself blinded by the first daylight she had seen in years. The raid was organized by Somaly Mam, a Cambodian woman who herself had been sold into the brothels but managed to escape, educate herself and now heads a foundation fighting forced prostitution.

After being freed, Sina began studying and eventually became one of Somaly’s trusted lieutenants. They now work together, in defiance of death threats from brothel owners, to free other girls. To get at Somaly, the brothel owners kidnapped and brutalized her 14-year-old daughter. And six months ago, the daughter of another anti-trafficking activist (my interpreter when I interviewed Sina) went missing.

I had heard about torture chambers under the brothels but had never seen one, so a few days ago Sina took me to the red-light district here where she once was imprisoned. A brothel had been torn down, revealing a warren of dungeons underneath.

“I was in a room just like those,” she said, pointing. “There must be many girls who died in those rooms.” She grew distressed and added: “I’m cold and afraid. Tonight I won’t sleep.”

“Photograph quickly,” she added, and pointed to brothels lining the street. “It’s not safe to stay here long.”

Sina and Somaly sustain themselves with a wicked sense of humor. They tease each other mercilessly, with Sina, who is single, mock-scolding Somaly: “At least I had plenty of men until you had to come along and rescue me!”

Sex trafficking is truly the 21st century’s version of slavery. One of the differences from 19th-century slavery is that many of these modern slaves will die of AIDS by their late 20s.

Whenever I report on sex trafficking, I come away less depressed by the atrocities than inspired by the courage of modern abolitionists like Somaly and Sina. They are risking their lives to help others still locked up in the brothels, and they have the credibility and experience to lead this fight. In my next column, I’ll introduce a girl that Sina is now helping to recover from mind-boggling torture in a brothel — and Sina’s own story gives hope to the girl in a way that an army of psychologists couldn’t.

I hope that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton will recognize slavery as unfinished business on the foreign policy agenda. The abolitionist cause simply hasn’t been completed as long as 14-year-old girls are being jolted with electric shocks — right now, as you read this — to make them smile before oblivious tourists.
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Post by kmaherali »

There is a related video linked at:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/15/opini ... ?th&emc=th

January 15, 2009
Op-Ed Columnist
Where Sweatshops Are a Dream
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia

Before Barack Obama and his team act on their talk about “labor standards,” I’d like to offer them a tour of the vast garbage dump here in Phnom Penh.

This is a Dante-like vision of hell. It’s a mountain of festering refuse, a half-hour hike across, emitting clouds of smoke from subterranean fires.

The miasma of toxic stink leaves you gasping, breezes batter you with filth, and even the rats look forlorn. Then the smoke parts and you come across a child ambling barefoot, searching for old plastic cups that recyclers will buy for five cents a pound. Many families actually live in shacks on this smoking garbage.

Mr. Obama and the Democrats who favor labor standards in trade agreements mean well, for they intend to fight back at oppressive sweatshops abroad. But while it shocks Americans to hear it, the central challenge in the poorest countries is not that sweatshops exploit too many people, but that they don’t exploit enough.

Talk to these families in the dump, and a job in a sweatshop is a cherished dream, an escalator out of poverty, the kind of gauzy if probably unrealistic ambition that parents everywhere often have for their children.

“I’d love to get a job in a factory,” said Pim Srey Rath, a 19-year-old woman scavenging for plastic. “At least that work is in the shade. Here is where it’s hot.”

Another woman, Vath Sam Oeun, hopes her 10-year-old boy, scavenging beside her, grows up to get a factory job, partly because she has seen other children run over by garbage trucks. Her boy has never been to a doctor or a dentist, and last bathed when he was 2, so a sweatshop job by comparison would be far more pleasant and less dangerous.

I’m glad that many Americans are repulsed by the idea of importing products made by barely paid, barely legal workers in dangerous factories. Yet sweatshops are only a symptom of poverty, not a cause, and banning them closes off one route out of poverty. At a time of tremendous economic distress and protectionist pressures, there’s a special danger that tighter labor standards will be used as an excuse to curb trade.

When I defend sweatshops, people always ask me: But would you want to work in a sweatshop? No, of course not. But I would want even less to pull a rickshaw. In the hierarchy of jobs in poor countries, sweltering at a sewing machine isn’t the bottom.

My views on sweatshops are shaped by years living in East Asia, watching as living standards soared — including those in my wife’s ancestral village in southern China — because of sweatshop jobs.

Manufacturing is one sector that can provide millions of jobs. Yet sweatshops usually go not to the poorest nations but to better-off countries with more reliable electricity and ports.

I often hear the argument: Labor standards can improve wages and working conditions, without greatly affecting the eventual retail cost of goods. That’s true. But labor standards and “living wages” have a larger impact on production costs that companies are always trying to pare. The result is to push companies to operate more capital-intensive factories in better-off nations like Malaysia, rather than labor-intensive factories in poorer countries like Ghana or Cambodia.

Cambodia has, in fact, pursued an interesting experiment by working with factories to establish decent labor standards and wages. It’s a worthwhile idea, but one result of paying above-market wages is that those in charge of hiring often demand bribes — sometimes a month’s salary — in exchange for a job. In addition, these standards add to production costs, so some factories have closed because of the global economic crisis and the difficulty of competing internationally.

The best way to help people in the poorest countries isn’t to campaign against sweatshops but to promote manufacturing there. One of the best things America could do for Africa would be to strengthen our program to encourage African imports, called AGOA, and nudge Europe to match it.

Among people who work in development, many strongly believe (but few dare say very loudly) that one of the best hopes for the poorest countries would be to build their manufacturing industries. But global campaigns against sweatshops make that less likely.

Look, I know that Americans have a hard time accepting that sweatshops can help people. But take it from 13-year-old Neuo Chanthou, who earns a bit less than $1 a day scavenging in the dump. She’s wearing a “Playboy” shirt and hat that she found amid the filth, and she worries about her sister, who lost part of her hand when a garbage truck ran over her.

“It’s dirty, hot and smelly here,” she said wistfully. “A factory is better.”



I invite you to visit my blog, On the Ground. Please also join me on Facebook, watch my YouTube videos and follow me on Twitter.
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Post by kmaherali »

There are a very interesting and striking related video, multimedia and links to other articles at:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/18/opini ... ?th&emc=th

January 18, 2009
Op-Ed Columnist
Win a Trip You Won’t Forget
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

A few years ago, soon after I returned disconsolate and shellshocked from a trip to Darfur, I found New Yorkers burning with moral outrage.

The spark wasn’t genocide, war or poverty, but rather homelessness — of a red-tailed hawk nicknamed Pale Male. Managers of a Fifth Avenue apartment building had dismantled his nest.

Fury! Television cameras! And public pressure that led to a solution for rebuilding the nest.

I wondered how some of that compassion for a hawk could be rechanneled to help human beings like those I had just seen dying in Darfur. The potential is vast: just imagine if we felt the same sympathy for the 25,000 children who will die today of poverty as we do for, say, a lost and terrified puppy on the street. But it’s very difficult to generate activism for distant people whom we can’t visualize.

So I concocted a contest to take a university student with me on a reporting trip to Africa. I figured that the student’s journey might help connect American students to truly desperate needs abroad.

We’ve held two of these student trips so far, and today I’m delighted to announce the third.

If you apply, you should know that within The Times, my colleagues say that first prize is one trip with Kristof. Second prize is two trips.

But they’re just jealous. The trip may not be comfortable, but if you don’t obsess about rats under the beds, bats in the outhouses or drunken soldiers at checkpoints, then the trip will be memorable and perhaps even life-changing.

If you win, you won’t be practicing tourism but journalism. You’ll blog for nytimes.com and file videos for The Times and for YouTube.

I’m doing this for two reasons. First, I want to engage young people about global issues that I’m passionate about. Second, it’s good journalism, for you’ll bring a tool to reporting from Africa that I no longer have: a fresh eye.

The contest is open to undergraduate or graduate students at American universities. Details for applying are on my blog, www.nytimes.com/ontheground. You can apply by essay or by video on YouTube, or both. The International Committee of the Red Cross will help me winnow the applicant pool, and I’ll pick the winner.

For my first win-a-trip journey, I chose a Mississippi student, Casey Parks, who had never been out of the country. In rural Cameroon, we came across Prudence Lemokouno, a mother of three who was dying in childbirth. We gave money and donated blood in hopes of saving Prudence. We failed, and we watched Prudence’s life ebb away.

Casey and I visited the Central African Republic and played basketball in a forest clearing — against Pygmies. Then we traveled to insecure areas to understand the human toll of banditry. Our reporting went well: we were held up at gunpoint. Twice.

The second trip, with Leana Wen, a medical student, and Will Okun, a Chicago teacher, started with a tour of booming Rwanda. Then in Congo we dined with a warlord in the jungle — and interviewed villagers raped by his troops.

A documentary of that second trip, “Reporter,” premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on Friday and will be shown on HBO later this year.

In this brutal economic environment, it’s especially difficult to sustain compassion for people out of our line of sight. But the contest winner can help put a face on global poverty — the child who contracts malaria for want of a $5 bed net.

Grass-roots reporting encourages not only compassion but also a tough-minded appreciation for the messiness of life and the complexity of solutions. In many cases, the family is too poor to buy a bed net not just because of poverty but also because Dad spends the family money on his priority, which is banana beer.

One of the failures of the American education system is that it rarely exposes students to life around the world. As Bill Gates put it in his 2007 Harvard commencement address, “I left Harvard with no real awareness of the awful inequities in the world.”

Let’s hope that Barack Obama’s presidency makes public service more appealing. But if you want to save the world, you first must understand it.

So, embed yourself deep within a developing country for a summer or a year. I wish colleges would offer credit for such gritty experiences — and extra credit for getting intestinal worms.

I’ve posted some overseas volunteer possibilities, from helping at a maternity hospital in Somaliland to teaching English to brothel children in India, on my blog. Even if you don’t win my trip, you can still win your own.

I invite you to comment on this column on my blog, On the Ground. Please also join me on Facebook, watch my YouTube videos and follow me on Twitter.
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Much to lose if non-profits fail


By Roger Gibbins, For the Calgary HeraldJanuary 18, 2009

To this point, public discussions of the economic meltdown have focused largely on how to fix a broken financial system and stimulate a business environment sliding into recession. However, there is another consequence of the meltdown that may strike closer to home as it will hit basic social services, recreational activities, and arts and cultural programs, all of which are delivered in large part by 161,000 charitable and non-profit organizations across the country.

Some parts of this sector, including universities, colleges and hospitals, can speak effectively on their own behalf. However, there are thousands upon thousands of smaller organizations that deliver critically important social, cultural and recreational services, and which are in a very precarious state as we move into 2009.

Many of these organizations rely on charitable donations from individuals and corporations, and these are beginning to fall precipitously as the general economy worsens. For most of us, charitable donations are discretionary spending, and discretionary spending tends to get cut as economic insecurity grows and belts are tightened.

Charities fortunate enough to have endowment funds have seen their investments and thus their revenues slashed, just as seniors have seen their RRSPs and incomes eroded. Charities without endowments often receive an important proportion of their funding from philanthropic organizations such as the Calgary, Vancouver and Winnipeg Foundations, all of whom are facing shrinkage in their own endowments, leaving them with less capacity to help other organizations.

All of this gets even worse when we realize that most charities operate without significant financial reserves, government grants are precarious at best, and demand for their services is likely to grow when economic times get tough. Although not all charities and non-profits serve vulnerable populations such as low-income Canadians, the newly unemployed, new immigrants, and seniors on fixed incomes, those who do serve such populations will soon be asked to do more with less.

This impending crisis was brought into focus for me by a recent Imagine Canada round table in Toronto. Imagine Canada is the peak organization representing Canada's charitable and non-profit sector, and the purpose of the gathering was to address how the federal government's upcoming stimulus package might help the sector. Unfortunately, good answers were tough to find.

Part of the problem is that the sector is both huge and terribly diverse, ranging from tiny recreational associations to employment services, counselling programs and immigrant settlement agencies to complex, multi-faceted organizations like the United Ways, YMCAs and Salvation Army.

It is much easier to create channels of support for a handful of big firms, such as the automakers, than it is to 160,000 very diverse nonprofit organizations. Nonetheless, all face a common challenge in finding a way to sustain charitable giving as the economy goes pear-shaped.

One way to keep the taps open is to provide greater tax support for charitable giving, and thereby to complement private charity with public charity. We do this already with charitable tax receipts, but we could do more. Hopefully this will be part of the federal government's stimulus package, although even a dramatic increase in tax credits for charitable donations may have little impact on individuals who are deeply concerned about their own financial well-being.

A second strategy is to use some of the stimulus package to increase direct government support for charities, and particularly for those delivering social services to highly vulnerable Canadians. This strategy would not reach very far into the thousands and thousands of small charities, but its effect on the big players and the hundreds of thousands of Canadians they serve would be significant.

A third strategy is to direct some of the inevitable increase in infrastructure funding to the charitable sector, thereby strengthening the capacity of organizations. Given that charities generally work with limited capital support, the impact could again be significant.

At the same time, no single strategy will be sufficient, and even investments across all three will not prevent what will be a very tough year for the charitable sector.

In closing I should note a personal interest in all of this, as the Canada West Foundation itself is a charitable organization navigating very troubled financial seas. However, we are but a very small player in a vast network of charities that enrich the lives of all Canadians in so many ways, and it is this vast and complex network that is at risk. I can only hope that its vulnerability is recognized as Finance Minister Jim Flaherty adds the final touches to his stimulus package. If the charitable sector is ignored, Canadians have a lot to lose.

Roger Gibbins is president and CEO of the Canada west foundation, a public policy research group based in Calgary.

© Copyright (c) The Calgary Herald
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There is a related video linked at:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/25/opini ... &th&emc=th

January 25, 2009
Op-Ed Columnist
Bill Gates’s Next Big Thing
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
SEATTLE

Here’s a paradox: In these brutal economic times, one of the leading advocates for the world’s poorest people is one of the richest.

Bill Gates will publish his first “annual letter” on Monday outlining his work on his twin passions — health and development in the poorest nations and education in America — and calling for the United States to do more even during this economic crisis. I came here to Seattle for an advance peek at the letter and to ask how he is adjusting to his transition from tycoon to philanthropist.

Mr. Gates ended his full-time presence at Microsoft last July and since then has thrown himself into work at his foundation. He is now trying to do to malaria, AIDS, polio and lethal childhood diarrhea what he did to Netscape, and he just may succeed.

He does seem to be going through withdrawal, for software engineering was his passion. “I miss that,” he said, but added that he is becoming equally maniacal (that’s his word) about poverty and education.

Mr. Gates and his wife, Melinda, are already having an effect on the developing world that is simply transformative. Just one of their investments, the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunizations, has saved more than three million lives since 2000.

That’s a down payment.

In 1960, almost 20 million children died annually before age 5, Mr. Gates notes. There are more children today, yet the death toll has been halved to under 10 million annually. Now his goal is to see it halved again, saving an additional five million children’s lives annually.

“We’re on the verge of some big advances,” Mr. Gates said. In particular, a promising malaria vaccine will enter its final phase of human trials this year, with others behind it. Mr. Gates said he is “absolutely confident” that a successful malaria vaccine will be achieved, probably within a half dozen years, and an AIDS vaccine 10 or more years from now.

Look, I’m a cynical journalist, and I don’t want to sound too infatuated. I think the Gates Foundation has missed the chance to leverage the revolution in social entrepreneurship, hasn’t been as effective in advocacy as it has been in research, and has missed an opportunity to ignite a broad social movement behind its issues.

But if Mr. Gates manages to accomplish as much in the world of vaccines, health and food production as he thinks he can, then the consequences will be staggering. Squared. In that case, the first few paragraphs of Mr. Gates’s obituary will be all about overcoming diseases and poverty, barely mentioning his earlier career in the software industry.

Mr. Gates said he got the idea for an annual letter from Warren Buffett, who writes such a letter ruminating about investments and the business world. (You can sign up to get Mr. Gates’s letter, or read it beginning Monday, at www.gatesfoundation.org.)

In the letter, Mr. Gates goes out of his way to acknowledge setbacks. For example, the Gates Foundation made a major push for smaller high schools in the United States, often helping to pay for the creation of small schools within larger buildings.

“Many of the small schools that we invested in did not improve students’ achievement in any significant way,” he acknowledges. Small schools succeeded when the principal was able to change teachers, curriculum and culture, but smaller size by itself proved disappointing. “In most cases,” he says, “we fell short.”

Mr. Gates comes across as a strong education reformer, focusing on supporting charter schools and improving teacher quality. He suggested that when he has nailed down the evidence more firmly, he will wade into the education debates.

“It is amazing how big a difference a great teacher makes versus an ineffective one,” Mr. Gates writes in his letter. “Research shows that there is only half as much variation in student achievement between schools as there is among classrooms in the same school. If you want your child to get the best education possible, it is actually more important to get him assigned to a great teacher than to a great school.”

Mr. Gates told me he was optimistic that President Obama would make progress on these issues, notwithstanding the economic crisis, and he noted that the downturn had only added to the need for foreign assistance and education spending. “The poorer you are, the worse the impact is,” he said.

I asked Mr. Gates what advice he had for ordinary readers who might want to engage in micro-philanthropy.

“The key thing is to pick a cause, whether its crops or diseases or great high schools,” he said. “Pick one and get some more in-depth knowledge.” If possible, travel to see the problems firsthand, then pick an organization to support with donations or volunteer time.

So try it. The only difference between you and Mr. Gates is scale.

I invite you to comment on this column on my blog, On the Ground. Please also join me on Facebook, watch my YouTube videos and follow me on Twitter.
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HH the Begum Aga Khan joins the Davos Debates

HH the Begum Aga Khan - President of the Princess Inaara Foundation - advocates microfinance as a way to life the poorest out of extreme poverty and speaks of her foundation's recent success s...

http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=8wQhzezNcUY
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Post by kmaherali »

Local doc gives hope to world's poorest

Calgary donors 'have such big hearts'

By Valerie Fortney, Calgary HeraldFebruary 20, 2009 11:01 AM

He's the first to say he can't move mountains, that the work he does is a mere drop in the bucket in a world in crisis.

But last month, Dr. Chris Brooks moved a mountain of bureaucracy enough to let his truck laden with 40 tons of medical supplies slip into Zimbabwe, the southeast African country plagued with corruption, poverty and a cholera epidemic.

"There was nothing heroic about it at all," says the former Calgarian, anticipating the inevitable response to his adventurous tale. "I just had to stand my ground, and play a political game of cat and mouse."

The youthful 70-year-old, who practised medicine in Banff and Calgary from 1968 to 1998, made the solo trip at the end of January from nearby Malawi, his home for the past decade, and made it into Zimbabwe thanks to sponsorship from its national pharmacy association.



"I tried all the conventional methods-- the embassy, the Red Cross, the World Health Organization--with no luck," says the British expat. "Then I got in through the back door."

Once in Zimbabwe, he managed to convince high-ranking officials to let him, not them, determine where the medicine would be dispensed.

"I wanted it to go to the people who needed it most, not to who voted the politically correct way," says Brooks of the country where President Robert Mugabe has kept an iron, and often brutal, rein on power for more than 30 years.

Over a 10-day period, he worked with local medical personnel in three of the country's mission hospitals, providing emergency medicine to some of the more than 73,000 Zimbabweans (according to the United Nations) stricken by the disease.

"Only three short years ago, Zimbabwe was a beautiful country with well-tended farms as far as the eye could see," says Brooks on Thursday while on a post-mission visit to Calgary. "Now, they're all gone, and all you see are people standing or sitting on the side of the road, their hands stretched out, looking like they've lost all hope."

I met Brooks at his spartan office in Calgary's southeast industrial district, a place he makes sure to visit at least four times a year. It's the headquarters for Lifeline Malawi ( www.lifelinemalawi.com),the organization he formed three years after he moved from Calgary to Malawi with wife Heather and daughter Chloe to work as a doctor at a Swiss-run orphanage. With the strong support of a local donor base that includes several churches, Samaritan's Purse and the Rotary Club, over the past decade Brooks has overseen the creation and running of two clinics in Malawi, fighting to stem the high incidence of diseases such as HIV/ AIDS. Over the years, westerners from all walks of life have travelled to his clinics on humanitarian missions, helping the doctor in his quest to care for the health of the most vulnerable in one of the world's poorest countries.

But woe to the journalist who wants to know too much about the man himself. He doesn't think he's an interesting story in the least, and has no qualms letting me know this; the fact he gave up the good life in Calgary, complete with vintage Mustang and country club membership, is long behind him.

Ask him about the people he helps and those who help him, though, and any coolness quickly evaporates. When he tells of seeing a 10-year-old girl pushing her cholera-stricken grandmother in a wheelbarrow, his eyes mist over as he describes the scene as "heart-rending."

His eyes once again brighten when asked about the support he's received from Calgary, the former home that he says will always have a special place in his heart.

"The Zimbabwe trip cost $15,000, and almost all of that came from people right here," he says, adding that his two clinics in Malawi, which today employ 100 people, "could not survive without the generosity of Calgarians. Our donors have such big hearts."

As clearly does the otherwise pragmatic Brooks, an already-busy humanitarian who is characteristically modest about the reasons for his Zimbabwe mission.

"I just felt a conviction that I was able to do something," he says matter-of-factly of Zimbabwe, a country with a fatality rate from cholera between five per cent and 20 per cent, a number that should be closer to one per cent.

"If anyone could get into Zimbabwe, it would be me," he adds, noting he was able to quell suspicions by greeting people in Chichewa, Malawi's dominant language.

He does admit with a chuckle that at 70, he "might be getting a little too old for this." But when asked if he'd do it again, he doesn't miss a beat.

"If somebody said to me, 'Chris, I'm going to give you funds to go back to Zimbabwe,' I'd do it."

Then the doctor pauses, looks straight into my eyes, and with a "What can I say?" expression on his kind face, offers up just what you'd expect from a man who regularly moves mountains to give hope to the world's poorest beings.

"It satisfies my soul."

vfortney@theherald.canwest.com

© Copyright (c) The Calgary Herald
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Post by kmaherali »

There is a related video linked at:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/22/opini ... ?th&emc=th

February 22, 2009
Op-Ed Columnist
Sisters, Victims, Heroes
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
GOZ BEIDA, Chad

So I’m bunking with George Clooney in a little room in a guest house here in eastern Chad, near Darfur in Sudan. We each have a mattress on the floor, the “shower” is a rubber hose that doesn’t actually produce any water, and George’s side of the room has a big splotch of something that sure looks like blood.

He’s using me to learn more about Darfur, and I’m using him to ease you into a column about genocide. Manipulation all around — and, luckily, neither of us snores. (But stay tuned to this series for salacious gossip if he talks in his sleep.)

The slaughter in Darfur has continued for six years largely because world leaders have been complacent and preoccupied. In the coming weeks, the International Criminal Court is expected to issue an arrest warrant for Sudan’s president, Omar Hassan al-Bashir, for orchestrating the killings — and that will give the world a new opportunity to end the slaughter.

But to seize that opportunity, world leaders will have to summon some of the same moral courage that Darfuris show all the time.

Take Suad Ahmed, who is in the pantheon of my personal heroes. I introduced her to George in her little thatch hut.

Suad, 27, fled from Darfur to a refugee camp in Chad five years ago with her husband and beloved younger sister, Halima, who is now 12 — if she is still alive.

Then Sudan dispatched its janjaweed militias into Chad to slaughter members of black African tribes — applying to eastern Chad the same genocidal policies that had already gutted Darfur.

Shortly before I met Suad two years ago, she was out gathering firewood with Halima. A group of janjaweed fired into the air and yelled at them to stop.

Suad, who was married with two children and another on the way, ordered Halima to run back to camp. Then Suad made a decoy of herself and ran loudly in the opposite direction, making sure that the janjaweed saw her.

That night, after the janjaweed had left, the men from the camp found Suad semiconscious in the bush, brutally beaten and raped.

Suad refused medical treatment, for fear that word would get out that she had been raped, and she didn’t even tell her husband, instead saying that she had been robbed and beaten. Yet she revealed the full story to me and allowed me to use her name.

I grilled her to make absolutely sure she understood the dangers of publicity — from stigma and revenge — and finally asked her why she was willing to assume the risks. She replied simply, “This is the only way I have to fight genocide.”

Ever since, in a world that has proved so craven in the face of Sudan’s genocide, Suad’s courage has haunted me. Thus on this trip I tracked her down and introduced her to George and to Ann Curry of NBC News, who for years has borne powerful witness to the madness of Darfur.

Alas, Suad’s latest news isn’t good. Her back, injured in the beating, still pains her. She doesn’t dare go outside the camp to get firewood, so she must buy wood, which leaves the family poor and short of food. Her baby, Abdel Malik, whom she was carrying at the time of the rape, is one and a half years old and was just hospitalized for malnutrition.

The most heartbreaking news concerns Halima. Ten months ago, Halima decided to go back to Darfur to the camp where her parents were living. They had sent messages that they were sick, and that there were too many soldiers around for them to escape to Chad.

So Halima, at age 11, resolved to walk back through janjaweed lines into Darfur to rescue her parents and bring them to safety.

The girl disappeared into the desert.

“I haven’t heard from her since,” Suad said grimly. “I don’t know if she got there, or if she was killed on route.” Suad has spent a fair amount of money trying to call people in the camp to find out news of her sister and parents, but she has found out nothing. We tried with our satellite phones and couldn’t get through either.

This is my 10th trip to Darfur and the area around it, and people always ask how reporters and aid workers keep their sanity among such horrors. Yet the truth is that genocide spotlights not only the worst of humanity, but also the best — the courage and altruism of people like Suad and Halima.

So the most indelible memories I will take back from the region aren’t from my famous roommate on the mattress beside me, but from uncommon heroes like Suad and Halima. We can learn so much from them.

I invite you to comment on this column on my blog, On the Ground. Please also join me on Facebook, watch my YouTube videos and follow me on Twitter.
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Engineering a better world for the poor


Calgary HeraldMarch 1, 2009

The fog of jet lag from the long return flight from Uganda was still evident in Kevin Wiens' face.

But the project leader for Engineering Ministries International Canada (EMI) was crystal clear when asked why he does what he does.

"It's a life-altering experience. It changes you emotionally forever," said Wiens of the work of the organization, which takes Christian design professionals-- engineers, architects, surveyors and the like --to Third World locales to use their talents in a unique, practical ministry.

EMI was launched 27 years ago in the U. S. and now has six offices around the world. The Canadian branch opened in January, 2003, and is based out of a modest, second-storey office which overlooks Calgary's Bowness Road.

The organization assembles teams of six to 10 cross-denominational Christians from the design professions and matches them with missionary groups and faith-based organizations who want to build facilities in developing countries. The professionals pay their own airfare and often use vacation time to volunteer for EMI missions.

In northern Uganda, Wiens' team prepared a topographical survey and produced conceptual drawings for a vocational centre planned by a group called Connect Africa. The complex will train leaders from nearby refugee camps in sustainable technologies for agriculture, locally produced water filters and improved sanitation. Other EMI projects have included designing schools, clinics, orphanages and churches.

Teams spend eight or nine days overseas, working at a breakneck pace around intense rain squalls to get the crucial groundwork in. Back in Canada, they help create the detailed working drawings, often suggesting a phased development as funds become available, which are supplied to the faith-based organizations when they're ready to break ground.

And it's all done free of charge.

Steve Ulrich, director of EMI's Canadian operations and the staff architect, estimates the work the teams accomplish in a week would be valued in the $60,000 range for a similar project in Canada.

"Our mandate is to go where we're asked and serve the poorest of the poor," says Ulrich. "We've all come from the secular professional world and been attracted by this chance to use our skills to serve a different master."

Ulrich says EMI takes pains to ensure their teams are in as safe an environment as possible, given that they are sent to some of the world's most dangerous countries.

When on site, EMI teams are housed in modest hotels or even in tents. They worship with the locals on Sundays, hold daily devotionals and get the chance to interact with the people the buildings they are designing will eventually serve.

David Marquardt, a project manager for Calgary's Midwest Surveys, has volunteered for four EMI Canada projects.

"As a Christian, I was searching for a way to use my professional talents for the benefit of my fellow man," says Marquardt. He experienced his personal spiritual epiphany in Haiti while surveying for an orphanage in one of the world's poorest nations.

"When you get to meet these kids, when you hold some of these tiny little orphaned babies in your arms, it really tears at your heart," says Marquardt. "It makes you realize how lucky we are to live in Canada and how the vast majority of our complaints are so trivial."

Michael Fryer, a mechanical engineering student at the University of Victoria, joined Wiens' team in Uganda last month. He'll help prepare the working drawings in the coming weeks as part of his internship with EMI.

"I was the rodman for the surveyor after they had 'de-snake-ified' the area, if that's a word," Fryer recalls with a laugh. "As a student, it was a great opportunity to work with a multi-disciplinary team on a real project."

For Wiens, a civil engineer by trade, part of EMI's attraction is the chance to work with Christians from many denominations.

"I'm from a Mennonite background, but in a team of six or eight you can get people from just as many churches," says Wiens. "When you're working side-by-side in the jungle, there are no denominational lines."

Since 1981, the international EMI movement has worked on an estimated 800 projects in 27 countries. Ulrich says the Canadian office hopes to continue to co-ordinate six to eight trips a year, despite the global economic recession.

"There's just so much need out there that can't wait," he says.

More information on the organization is available at www.emicanada.org.

gmorton@tHeHerald.Canwest.Com

Graeme Morton

© Copyright (c) The Calgary Herald
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Post by kmaherali »

About Celebsforkids


When Karim Chandani first found out that his eight-year-old daughter has lupus, he cried.

Then he took action.
Since Chandani’s daughter, Jalisa, was diagnosed with the disease last year, the North Vancouver businessman has put the rest of his life on hold to realize his dream of raising more than $4.2 million to open the first Canadian research centre for children and teens suffering from chronic autoimmune diseases such as lupus and rheumatoid arthritis. To date, his foundation, Celebs for Kids, has raised more than $2.2 million.

As soon as Chandani, 44, learned there was no research centre in Canada focused on childhood autoimmune diseases, he took it upon himself to raise funds to establish the Ross Petty Research Chair in Pediatric Rheumatology at Children’s Hospital.

“We have good friends from the NHL that I could call on,” says Chandani, explaining why he immediately thought of harnessing the power of celebrity to raise funds. Seven years earlier, he had struck up a friendship with Todd Bertuzzi after the then Canucks player stopped by one of the two Esso stations that Chandani operates.

“We became friends, he introduced me to a couple of other players and I developed lasting friendships with guys like Brad May, Brendan Morrison and others. As time went on, I met more and more players and was invited to many games and events.”

The idea gained further momentum after family friend Shelagh Boyd, who works as a waitress at the Shark Club, joined the cause. “Shelagh told me she knows stars who regularly came into the Shark Club and so she started recruiting... Everyone pitched in and all of a sudden we had over 40 celebrities on board, such as actor Gregory Harrison, Boston Bruins’ Milan Lucic and the Canucks’ Brendan Morrison.”

Celebs for Kids was born.
Brad May says he didn’t hesitate to get involved. “I’m great friends with Karim and our families are close friends,” says May. “I got involved with the charity because of Jalisa and because of the Chandanis’ desire to help not only their daughter but all afflicted with various arthritis diseases. Karim is a beacon of light for all to follow! His leadership and his execution make him an unbelievable friend and leader.”

The sentiment is echoed by Thomas McClary, founding member of the band The Commodores. “When you meet people like Karim, who has given so much to others, how can you not want to do whatever you can to help Celebs for Kids make a difference?” says McClary. “I support his vision.”

NHL Hall of Fame goaltender Grant Fuhr hosted this year’s inaugural Celebs For Kids fundraisers, which took place in August at the Sutton Place Hotel and the River Rock Casino Resort.

For almost a year, Chandani’s days have been a whirlwind of meetings with potential sponsors and celebrities. Life is hectic, but Chandani is tireless in his efforts.

“Here’s the beauty of this: Celebs for Kids started for my daughter, but three weeks into it, I realized if I’m lucky, if I start today, my daughter’s kids will benefit from this research, too.”

He credits his wife, Shala, for keeping his spirits strong. “She constantly reminds me that I have a goal and a task and I must complete it,” he says. “She has put up with me not being around for seven or eight months while I was trying to launch the foundation and she never complained . . . she’s amazing. She’s also had to pick up the slack at work and at home.”

His life-altering journey began just after Jalisa turned eight and her parents noticed a bump on her face that wouldn’t go away. “We assumed it was a bug bite, but it grew and grew,” recalls Chandani. “My wife took her to a walk-in clinic.”

Doctors didn’t know what was wrong and ordered tests, but the family didn’t suspect anything serious. In the meantime, Chandani was invited to watch the Stanley Cup finals in L.A. “My friend Brad May, who had played for the Canucks and was now playing for the Anaheim Ducks, invited me down for the big playoff game,” says Chandani.

He was drinking from the Stanley Cup in the Ducks’ changing room when he heard that his daughter had been rushed to B.C. Children’s Hospital for further testing. “I couldn’t get a flight out (of Los Angeles), and not knowing what she had and not being able to do anything about it was killing me. I got there the next day, but doctors still didn’t know... The diagnosis of lupus didn’t come for a month or so after that initial hospital stay.”
After Jalisa was diagnosed with systemic lupus erythematosus, one of the most serious forms of the disease, the Chandanis made it their priority to learn everything they could about the condition.

“I was shocked to learn how many children and teens were affected by lupus,” he says, citing the statistic that 5,000 children in B.C. are living with lupus and arthritis. “I also learned that people from the South Asian community are three times more likely to get lupus or arthritis than a Caucasian.

“Often, we take our children and life for granted,” reflects Chandani. “A friend of mine, Dean Duke, really taught me that. At the end of the day, he became my biggest sponsor. He and his staff brought in more than $200,000 for the foundation . . . . So many angels have just came out of nowhere.”

Today, nine-year-old Jalisa is trying to be a regular kid again despite the effects of the disease and the side-effects of the medication she must take.

“She has put on roughly 30 pounds because of the steroids and medication to keep her lupus and arthritis under control,” says Chandani. “It’s tough on her, kids tease her, but my daughter is so strong and has a great attitude.”

Chandani sees his fundraising and other efforts in the fight against lupus as a lifetime commitment.
“I have to do it for all children. I can’t stop,” he says. “I need to do this.”


For information on how you can help children and teens suffering from lupus or rheumatoid arthritis, go to www.celebsforkids.ca. Donations to Celebs for Kids can be sent to the foundation’s office located at 3136 Duchess Avenue, North Vancouver, V7K 3B6
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Calgary Catholic teachers drop AIDS charity

Bishop at odds with relief project

By Sarah McGinnis, Calgary HeraldMarch 27, 2009 7:04 AM

Calgary Catholic teachers have cancelled a fundraiser for AIDS relief in Africa after Bishop Fred Henry spoke out against a prominent Canadian and his foundation's AIDS prevention programs, which include promoting condoms.

But with the Stephen Lewis Foundation donating hundreds of thousands of dollars annually to several church-run AIDS programs in Africa, Lewis said Henry's efforts to "excommunicate" the charity are only going to hurt Catholics there.

"The bishop didn't stop to think, when you say to teachers you can't raise money for a foundation that is directly supporting Catholic projects in Africa, then you are discriminating against those projects. You are harming your own people," Lewis said.

Teachers at the Calgary Catholic School District have been passing the hat among themselves during Lent for the past five years to raise money for the Stephen Lewis Foundation's AIDS work in sub-Saharan Africa.

Last year, teachers raised $45,000 through personal and matching donations, said Calgary Catholic Teachers' Association president David Cracknell.

But in December, a parishioner approached Henry with questions about teachers raising funds for an organization that uses condoms in its AIDS prevention programs, he said.

Henry met Cracknell to discuss the issue, then sent a letter to the teachers' association encouraging members to focus their fundraising efforts on other organizations in Africa that share Catholic values.

"For me, it's been a difficult issue," said Cracknell.

"I understand the commitment our teachers have toward helping people in Africa with AIDS. I understand the fact Stephen Lewis is a very prominent Canadian, and people are very committed to his charity. But I also understand the bishop is our moral guide."

In a letter to the editor, Henry said the Christian virtues of chastity, abstinence and fidelity are "the most effective means of primary HIV prevention," and should not be pushed aside as valid prevention options in favour of passing out condoms.

When asked about his opposition to the Stephen Lewis Foundation, Henry said teachers do have other options in supporting AIDS charity efforts in Africa.

"If you have two businesses or organizations, one that doesn't support your values and mission statement and an-other that does, which one are you going to support? I think that the answer is obvious," Henry told the Herald in an e-mail.

"In this case, the African Jesuit Aids Network better reflects who we are and what we are about."

The Calgary Catholic Teachers' Association is evaluating whether it will organize fund-raisers for Lewis's foundation in future.

smcginnis@theherald.canwest.com

© Copyright (c) The Calgary Herald
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