Foreign aid 2

 (cont'd from yesterday's post)

Reports are coming that Millennium Challenge Corporation, an agency of the U.S. government, doesn't entirely "respect" the values of native peoples as much as they claim. 

MCC agreed last September to give Sierra Leone (image) $480 million so long as they comply with "rigorous standards for good governance, fighting corruption and respecting democratic rights." All these seem consistent with the agency's mission to reduce poverty.

 

But it's "common knowledge among nongovernmental organizations" in the country that MCC is now quietly threatening to withhold the money unless Sierra Leone . . loosens its abortion policy. What does abortion have to do with economic growth?

They deny it, of course, because that would go against its mission and stated "core values." But it would be consistent with the politics of the current administration. And it would be neo-colonialism.

from Life News

Activist Bono 1

Bono's career in music and charity activism has spanned decades. 

photo

The poverty and suffering of Africa's people touched his heart, especially compared to the standard of living in the West. Millions of dollars were raised with his concerts (which included the famous Live Aid in 1985).

What happened to the millions? Some of it went to suffering people. But "the vast majority of the food [resulting from Live Aid] rotted on docks beside the Red Sea or [was] used as payment for loyalist army units." 

Economist Dambisa Moyo published a book back in 2010 (Dead Aid) explaining how this kind of thing happens. As an African herself, her perspective is authentic and her message compelling: decades of "aid" to African countries is not doing the good that was intended. 

A review of it on Amazon reads, "Moyo demolishes all the most cherished myths about aid being a good thing.”

(cont'd tomorrow)

World prosperity 1

Last Friday's post included World Bank's chart of growing prosperity in the world's poorest countries. Global poverty has been shrinking for decades while the good metrics (education, nutrition, etc.) climb higher. 

Some might ask: is this just World Bank's self-serving interpretation? No, the global trend is widely reported. Just as an example, the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) is definitely on the other side of the political spectrum, but it reports the same global trend.

In 1992 the world's population was about 5.5 billion. Twenty-five years later it was about 7.5 billion. In spite of adding two billion additional people to the world, the number of extremely poor fell. How did that happen?

"The Industrial Revolution turned the once-impoverished western countries into abundant societies. The new age of globalization, which started around 1980, saw the developing world enter the global economy and resulted in the largest escape from poverty ever recorded."

Asean business networking

(cont'd tomorrow)

2020 vision 2

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

It's true. People of the world's poorest countries are not getting more destitute, but rather getting more prosperous. I've reported this a number of times in the past seven years, and there are always surprised and skeptical readers. Take a look at the World Bank's chart:

Poverty and child mortality in these poorest countries have been in decline for decades, while measures of education, clean water, etc. are growing. 

2020 vision 1

Joking about "2020 vision" is probably at an end now! But the need for real vision for the future never ends. There is good news and room for optimism in spite of all the scare headlines.

Are catastrophes around the world, whether related to climate or not, taking a bigger toll on people? Are more people of the world dying of disasters, or fewer people? 

image

Disasters claim more lives and more destruction in parts of the globe which are less developed. Hurricanes result in more deaths where the local economy doesn't allow for stronger residences and public structures. Stringent building codes only work where people can afford them. 

So growing economies and improved technology are making a global difference in people's lives.

(cont'd tomorrow)

Got banking 2

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

Tala is not a non-profit charity. It's a business that must make profit to stay in business, so its banking services are not free. Customers must buy their services and pay for them.

Amylene Dingle, one of their customers, paid interest and a small fee for her first ($20) and subsequent loans. Like all business owners, she took a risk when she bet that people would want her product and that she could generate a profit of her own.  She was right, it was well worth it, and her family is much better off.

image

In a "free enterprise" or "free market" economic system, people like Amylene are free to do as she did. She is entitled to use her own intelligence, to act on her idea - and she's entitled to the rewards of her own work.

In socialism's "control or command economy," somebody in the government decides if she should be allowed to pursue her goal. And her business will never actually belong to her. Private ownership is abolished, and the business will belong to the collective which of course is run by the government.

Got banking 1

Just a few years ago, Amylene Dingle and her family lived in an impoverished part of Manila, the Phillippines. Her life changed when she saw an ad on Facebook for "Tala," and she responded to it.

image

Amylene was granted a small ($20) business loan from Tala. She used it to buy cold cuts/hamburgers/hot dogs and then re-sold them. Her business grew, and today she's making about $70 per week in profit. They now live in a cleaner, quieter neighborhood.

Tala was founded in 2011 by Shivani Siroya, a former Wall Street analyst who was raised in New York by Indian immigrant parents. After working at the United Nations, she started Tala specifically to provide banking services (like loans) to people in parts of the world where banking is not accessible to them.

from Forbes

(cont'd tomorrow)

Empower 2

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

Godolfredo learned that God gave him his abilities and talents to use for the improvement of the lives of others, and for his own blessing. He was empowered to come up with creative ideas. 

"[He] realized he could be the solution to many of the problems in his community. These included the environmental strain they had been under as well as the constant challenge of poverty. He learned that his work as a farmer was extremely valuable- he could be a caretaker of creation."

He rejected the "futility myth," bravely tried new things, and worked to improve his community.

"Plant With Purpose helps farmers like Godolfredo discover their purpose and their role to play in God’s plan to redeem all creation."

In Godolfredo's own words, "People say that the poor are condemned to be poor, and that’s not the case.”

Empower 1

“People say that the poor are condemned to be poor . . " That's what Godolfo of Oaxaca, Mexico, heard. 

photo

He had a choice. He could have resigned himself to poverty, to keep believing that the poor are condemned to stay poor. That's the "futility myth" from last week's post - resistance (against poverty) is futile.

But he heard a different message from "Plant with Purpose." They shared an empowering message with him and his neighbors. He started employing his abilities for his own and his community's common good.

"One of the biggest things that determines what we can accomplish is the story we tell ourselves about ourselves. A big part of Plant With Purpose’s program is to replace false narratives that our participants have come to believe with the reality of how God sees them."

(cont'd tomorrow, a changed life)

Fed up

People of Rwanda in central Africa have been pulling the country together since the 1994 catastrophe to create better lives for everyone. Background stories are here.

Thriving businesses of all kinds, creating value and creating jobs, are essential to prosperity. Rwanda's new clothing industry is very small - and it is undercut by shiploads of used clothing coming in from the West. "African governments have become increasingly fed up."

To protect the young clothing industry, Rwandan President Kagame has placed bigger tariffs on those containers full of used clothing.

(Oddly, the clothes that Americans donate for free wind up being sold (cheaply) to poorer countries . . and it's a billion-dollar industry. Kind of hard to believe.)

(cont'd tomorrow)

Mungubariki

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

Mungubariki says his farm used to look quite different from how it looks today. There were no trees, nothing to hang on to the soil when it rained. Up on Mt. Kilimanjaro the glacier was melting partly due to de-forestation in this region.

"Without knowledge of the importance of trees. people just think of today but not tomorrow. "Plant with Purpose" is changing that. What farming families do today is for future generations."


As environmental restoration is embraced, lives and land are changing in Tanzania. Birds are returning to habitats, streams are flowing again, and people have a better understanding of their role as stewards of God's creation.

"God cares about the environment, and we have a responsibility to protect it."

Rural poverty

American farmers have their challenges, but American society has resources to work with that not every nation has. "Plant with Purpose" works to provide tools and resources that the rural poor around the world can use to lift themselves out of poverty.



Productive land and accessible water are essential. When the environment becomes degraded (example: loss of trees, land becoming desert, rain run-off), the land may stop creating a living and families may have to separate to find work.

"Plant with Purpose" links sustainable farming with environmental restoration for long-term results. Their partnering farmers heal the land, grow more food, and earn income.

(cont'd tomorrow)

Who knew

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

Who knew that global poverty has been declining for decades? Hardly any one, as you will see in the video below. By now you have seen the documentation if you've followed the links in this series. But you may be wondering why so few know something so significant.

This article says that most of us have picked up strong perceptions to the contrary.

Hans Rosling, everybody's favorite Swedish statistics guy, addresses the misconceptions in this TED Talk he gave two years ago:

More prosperity

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

Global poverty has dropped like a rock and prosperity is growing (especially in Asia). Yesterday's post was taken from an article published in 2011 and, as the article predicted, global poverty has continued to decline.

photo: http://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/health/brief/poverty-health

"Almost unnoticed, the world has reduced poverty, increased incomes, and improved health more than at any time in history. " When economic growth takes a society out of dire poverty, more children live to become adults and those children are more likely to get an education according to the Organization for Economic Co-operation & Development (OECD). 

As an example, research in India has shown that "a 10 per cent increase in GDP is associated with a reduction in infant mortality of between five and seven per cent."

"Historically nothing has worked better than economic growth in enabling societies to improve the life chances of their members, including those at the very bottom"  (Dani Rodrik, Harvard University).

(cont'd tomorrow)

Poverty reduced

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

"We are in the midst of the fastest period of poverty reduction the world has ever seen. The global poverty rate, which stood at 25 percent in 2005, is ticking downwards at one to two percentage points a year, lifting around 70 million people . . out of destitution annually. Advances in human progress on such a scale are unprecedented, yet remain almost universally unacknowledged."

Western governments for decades pursued more aid and debt relief, but economic growth was lackluster. "Global poverty [came] to be seen as a constant . . [but t]hankfully for the world’s poor, this logic turned out to be flawed."

What seems to have been vital to new prosperity for billions of people is the global spread of capitalism - yes, capitalism.

photo: prosperity.com

"We’re on the cusp of an age of mass development, which will see the world transformed from being mostly poor to mostly middle class . . fundamentally it’s a story about billions of people around the world finally having the chance to build better lives for themselves and their children. 

"We should consider ourselves fortunate to be alive at such a remarkable moment."

(cont'd tomorrow)

Poverty down

Good news deserves repeating, so it's appearing on this blog for the second time (at least).

"Absolute" poverty around the world has declined so far in the last few decades that it afflicts just a small percentage of the number of people that used to live that way. 

"In absolute terms, the total amount of people living in extreme poverty peaked in 1970 when 2.2 billion of the world’s 3.7 billion people lived on less than $1.25 per day. Today, in an astonishing reversal, only 0.7 billion of 7.3 billion people are below this poverty-line worldwide."

image: humanprogress.org

That is, about two-thirds of the world lived in absolute poverty in 1970, but today it's less than one-tenth. Free enterprise, technology and innovation, free economies have produced economic growth. And, "For every 1% increase in GDP per head, poverty is reduced by 1.7%."

(from http://www.businessinsider.com/end-of-global-extreme-poverty-chart-2016-11)

(cont'd tomorrow)

She dug deep

Sarah (yesterday's post) went to Africa to bring prosperity, well-being, a better life. But she gained humility, and a respect for the dignity and creativity that native Africans already have.

Eva Muraya is a native African living in Kenya. When she lost her husband, she pulled on her own creativity to start a business. She managed to support her family and, in the process, to become a community leader.

Plucky

(Note: today is election day in America. No, I'm not addressing it.)

Sarah decided to go live in Uganda for four months. She was 20 years old and determined to change the world in a good way.

But, "All my plucky self-assurance quickly deflated when I saw that poverty was far more complex than I had imagined from the air-conditioned safety of my American home." She came home burdened and discouraged because her work didn't change the community in Uganda.

On her next trip to Africa, she tried a different approach. Instead of assuming that she had all the answers, she spent a lot of time listening to the Congolese and discovered people who were changing their communities from the inside with their good ideas.

Looking back on her Uganda effort, she went with good intentions "But in putting myself in the role of hero, I missed out on the dignity and worth of the very people I was trying to serve."

(from http://www.povertycure.org/missed-trying-play-poverty-hero-sarah-ann-schultz/)

Property law

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

When there's no rule of law, there's rule of the jungle.

Watch (African) Herman Chinery in this video saying (at 1:13) that the lack of property rights under the law is a "terrible, terrible problem." He asks us to imagine the plight of farmers who lack law-protected rights to the land that they farm. He says that farmers in Ghana have to buy their land four or five times.

Rule of law

Two-thirds of the world's countries operate under the "rule of man," which means that men and women with power can reward their friends, punish their enemies, and ignore the insignificant. They are largely free to govern as they like.

One-third of the world's countries operate under "rule of law," which means there are stable, reasonable laws that apply to everyone.

It should be obvious which system enables more people to live and create.



(cont'd tomorrow)