If we could easily save the life of a child, we would. For example, if we saw a child in danger of drowning in a shallow pond, and all we had to do to save the child was wade into the pond, and pull him out, we would do so. The fact that we would get wet, or ruin a good pair of shoes, doesn’t really count when it comes to saving a child’s life.
UNICEF, the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund, estimates that about 24,000 children die every day from preventable, poverty-related causes. Yet at the same time almost a billion people live very comfortable lives, with money to spare for many things that are not at all necessary. (You are not sure if you are in that category? When did you last spend money on something to drink, when drinkable water was available for nothing? If the answer is “within the past week” then you are spending money on luxuries while children die from malnutrition or diseases that we know how to prevent or cure.)
The Life You Can Save seeks to change this. If everyone who can afford to contribute to reducing extreme poverty were to give a modest proportion of their income to effective organizations fighting extreme poverty, the problem could be solved. It wouldn’t take a huge sacrifice.
But first we need to change the culture of giving – to make giving to help the needy something that any normal decent person would do. To help bring about this change, we need to be upfront about our giving. Will you take the pledge, and thereby encourage others to do the same?
For more details, and sources for the claims made here, please see the book The Life You Can Save: Acting Now to End World Poverty.
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.
Initially in Aotearoa New Zealand, te reo was widely spoken by the Europeans, particularly in interaction with Māori, and by both Maori and European children. By the mid 1860’s, the Crown introduced legislation which began to enforce the growing assimilation attitude, with the Colonisers wanting Māori to be absorbed into the new colonial culture, and so the wearing away of the Māori people began. Māori land was removed, stolen, and its use restricted by the Crown. Schooling was enforced, first in te reo for Māori, but by 1910, in English only. Māori populations dwindled due to introduced diseases, war, and substandard living conditions. Urbanisation and the development of New Zealand’s independent economy after World War Two led to Māori leaving their rural homes, marae and whānau to work in cities. All of these factors greatly contributed to the decline of the Māori language.
Māori language surveys, carried out by Te Puni Kōkiri (Ministry of Māori Development) and Statistics New Zealand, seem to show that language levels are currently being retained, although this level is still less than ideal. Unfortunately though, there are few proficient speakers, with most of them aged over 50. Currently the focus is on the education sector but the use of language outside of school grounds is not controlled, and the Act cannot contribute to the production of fluent speakers, only regulate the level and quality of language (like how we learn grammar in English schools, to increase the diversity and skills of language we have).
While I sit at a desk and swivel on an office chair, a little known phenomena has begun on the other side of the world where night is falling and children should be getting ready for bed. Instead, tens of thousands of Ugandan children begin what has now become termed as a “night commute”. Every night, children who live in dangerous rural areas where a militant rebel group have stronghold, walk up to 20km just to be able to sleep in the safety of the city. Fear of being abducted by rebels in their sleep, and being kept as soldiers or sex slaves, easily justifies a nightly marathon. And as thousands of eyes close to go to sleep, dreaming is not likely in a world where nightmares are a reality in more ways than one.
The premier item on the G20’s agenda at it’s next meeting in Melbourne, in November 2006, is the reform of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF). The Fifty Years is Enough Network describe them as two US-controlled institutions that for the last fifty years have been,
The trade behind cocaine (or coca, as the plant of origin is known) and heroin (which comes from opium poppies) is a global issue. An estimated four million people depend on income derived from the cultivation of illicit drug crops. In the year 2000, the global drug trade was estimated at a value of US$400 billion. It’s an issue worth more than the price of feeding the planet over the same period of time.
Everyone in the world desires good health, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights gives everyone in the world the right to have access to medical care that allows them to have adequate health and wellbeing. Pharmaceutical drugs are often able to help provide this, and help people live longer lives. However, not everyone is able to afford the drugs that they need to take in order to live.
The drug companies do not actually discover the new drugs; chemists who are based in universities and other training institutions do. Drug companies merely buy the compounds off these developers. Some of these compounds are existent in nature, but residents of the areas where they have been found do not usually benefit from them.
