Blog Moderator's blog

A recent cover of The Economist featured a compelling story about how nearly 1 billion people have lifted themselves out of extreme poverty in the past 20 years, and also called on the world to make an even greater effort to lift another 1 billion people out of extreme poverty by 2030.

I’m excited to announce that we have started taking applications for the 2013 ONE Africa Award, a $100,000 USD prize that ONE annually gives to an Africa-based, Africa-founded organisation campaigning for progress toward meeting the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

The number of children and youths who work – whether they’re paid or unpaid – is notoriously hard to pin down. Many countries have laws against employing children, but industries still continue to use child laborers despite legal and social consequences.

What number would you guess is accurate? A million? Six million? Ten?

Not even close.

Over the course of my career I’ve spent more than 30 years working in various developing countries trying to better understand and fight infectious diseases. One of the things that alarmed me most was that in many places, parents and caretakers didn’t even have a word for diarrhea. Sadly, this wasn’t because diarrhea was rare. On the contrary, diarrhea was so common that it was seen as a normal part of early childhood, and thus didn’t need a name.  

Let’s hope it’s not too good to be true, but it looks like Congress, both Republicans and Democrats, the White House, and USAID might agree on something—that U.S. foreign aid needs to be more transparent.

On Wednesday “Judge” Ted Poe (R-TX), joined by Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-VA) in the House, and Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Senator Ben Cardin (D-MD) in the Senate, introduced the Foreign Aid Transparency and Accountability Act of 2013 (H.R. 2638 and S. 1271).

"Young people in development are both a project of reform and agents of change. This population is not static. They engage on multiple levels.” – Dr .Loubna Skalli-Hanna, Author, Editor and Professor at American University, School of International Service

What would you take if you had to flee? In Rakhine state, western Myanmar, everyone I asked said the same thing: Family. Many saw their homes burnt down in the communal riots of June and October 2012. They were so surprised by the attacks that they herded everyone out without stopping to take a single thing.

Winnie the Pooh was on to something. Anyone who has squeezed a chunk of fresh honeycomb and tasted the golden sugary ooze would agree that getting one’s head stuck inside a pot is well worth the risk.

But keeping bees, and enjoying the sweet profit of their labor, requires special skills and equipment, something many producers in Ethiopia lack.

Many still rely on physically demanding and less productive methods, like setting empty logs in trees and climbing up to get the honey out.