Global Bits - Issue 16 (24 Pages)
Global Education Centre
This Global Bits offers readers a chance to look inside the heads of our future leaders – and to understand the issues and passions that drive them. Open to all 12-18 year olds, 10 young people were picked for this programme for the first time in 2008. In this issue these creative and savvy new authors relate history to global politics. They unravel subjects such as international guidelines for human rights the difference between actual and relative poverty, and just how democracy works.
Watch this space for our new group in 2009!
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According to its website, PRODUCT(RED) is neither a charity nor a campaign, but an “economic initiative that acts to deliver a sustainable flow of private sector money to the Global Fund.” The key word here is sustainable. Rather than simply asking these corporations to donate a chunk of money to the Global Fund, a sustainable and longer lasting flow’ of money is created through giving a percentage of the profits from consumer purchases. Sounds good right? Before we can dig any deeper into this issue though, we need to know what exactly holds together the PRODUCT(RED) initiative.
If you went over to your local hospital with a group of friends and volunteered to clean and repaint the entire children’s ward, only to demand afterwards that you all be shown on the 6 o’clock news so that the entire country can see what great people you are, would this be considered socially acceptable? No, of course it wouldn’t be.
differences in the amount they actually contribute and the small proportion of the retail cost which actually finds its way to the fund. For instance, one percent of all spending on American Express’s (RED) card goes to the Global Fund as does fifty percent of the net profit from the sale of Gap (RED) items, and just $8.50 from the sale of a Motorola (RED) Motorazr. In effect, companies are contributing relatively little while being portrayed through PRODUCT(RED) marketing as giving generously to the cause.
Many critics have also ignored a crucial statistic which blows their argument into tiny fragments: the amount of money raised for the Global Fund is now over four times more than the amount the private sector had contributed prior to the establishment of PRODUCT(RED). An increase of over four times their original funds! Surely you can’t say that PRODUCT(RED) is just an attempt by companies to improve their corporate image if they’ve managed to quadruple the finances of the Global Fund within a two year period?
Whatever the motivation of PRODUCT(RED) companies, the initiative has undeniably made a real difference to the medical treatment of AIDS victims in Africa. Does it really matter that the companies are in it for themselves or that only a tiny proportion of the funds are actually going to the Global Fund? No. I don’t think that’s the important thing.
I recently spent a year working in a youth centre in Port Vila, Vanuatu for out of school youth. In Vanuatu most young people finish school before they reach secondary level as there is no government funding for public schools and the school fees push a huge number of them out of the formal education sector. This means throughout Vanuatu there is a generation of young people cheated of a formal education who are looking to fill the gap. Some are lucky and get to enroll in Rural Training Centres, where they learn things such as building or mechanics. Others get a job working on a copra boat. Some return to their villages and work in the family garden, maybe starting their own patch of kava, or yam for sale. But for those who have joined the urban drift, and are living in Port Vila, the choices are somewhat limited. As with most capital cities, the cost of living in Port Vila is high, food and transport are expensive, education and training courses have high fees and most young people are living within a large extended family with a vast list of chores.
her mind “This isn’t a workshop! I’m wasting my time!” Nevertheless she stayed, and despite not getting a certificate for spending two hours with a literacy teacher she feels like she learnt something important during that time. The question I was left asking myself was, are the youth centres putting emphasis on the wrong thing? What is more important, actual learning or a certificate that says you have learnt something?’ Is it worth providing so many lunches and bus fares, for young tutors to come and learn just a fraction of what is needed to become an effective teacher?
opportunities, in the disguise of workshops on lifeskills.
