Monthly Archives: June 2012

Innovative Family Planning

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With a soaring population of more than 84 million people, Ethiopia is one of the most populous countries in Africa.  In the Southern Nations, Nationalities, and  People’s Region in South-East Ethiopia, more than half of the population lives below the poverty line.  56 percent of the people are unable to meet minimum livelihood requirements and more than half of the 130 districts in the region are food insecure.

Amidst these challenges, IIRR developed the Learning Our Way Out (LOWO) program in an effort to address the link between population and environmental degradation, poverty, and other related problems .  Through the LOWO program, communities use informal discussions to explore the root causes of poverty and begin to come to their own conclusions about how family size can directly affect their own quality of life.

The LOWO approach uses inclusive interaction, allowing social learning to occur and power relations to shift. Both men and women are involved in the process, and the LOWO program promotes critical thinking to generate a self-willed demand for family planning services as essential components of economic well-being.

The main goal for the LOWO project is to promote the links between economic, social, and environmental well-being and population, and to develop sustainable commitments individually and community-wide to take action to address the root causes of poverty.

Building on the successes and sustainability that has been shown since the initial introduction of the approach nearly a decade ago, IIRR has recently decided to integrate this innovative approach into all of our programs. Stay tuned for more details!

Rio+20: The Future We Wanted?

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Last week Rio+20 was making headlines as world leaders tried to develop comprehensive agreements on how to solve the world’s toughest environmental and development challenges.

So did they live up to the challenge?

Not entirely.

While there were some positive outcomes, Rio+20 mostly fell short of global expectations. But instead of dwelling on the disappointment, I think it’s time for local communities and those of us who work with them to take the environment and development into their own hands instead of waiting for Rio+40.

Need some ideas to get inspired?  Here’s what we are doing to reduce poverty and ensure that people can live lives of quality and dignity in harmony with the environment:

  1. Education for marginalized communities – removing the barriers to education and helping communities that still do not have access to quality, basic education (watch the video)
  2. Bio-intensive gardening – planting school gardens and using them to teach students, parents, and the local community about nutrition, growing food in environmentally sustainable ways, and decreasing micro-nutrient deficiencies for school-age children (watch the video)
  3. Value chain development – helping people develop businesses that can continue to grow and flourish, connected to the wider market(s), leading to asset building and wealth generation
  4. Earn and Learn programs encouraging students to stay in or return to school while gaining business skills and micro-credit
  5. Empowerment of women and girls through education and asset-building, gender mainstreaming, and targeted recruitment in all of our programs
  6. Learning Our Way Out – an innovative program that puts communities in charge of their family planning
  7. Community Managed Disaster Risk Reduction – allowing communities to lead their own risk assessment, action plan development, and risk mitigation/prevention
  8. Climate change adaptation – helping communities around the world respond and adjust to changing environmental conditions
  9. Learning Alliances – partnering with other development organizations to share best practices and teach each other from experience and on-the-ground results
  10. Water and watershed management – putting communities in the driver’s seat of their own resource management, creating access where there was none, and making sure people have their basic needs met
  11. Pastoralist and Farmer Field Schools – group and peer teaching to quickly establish food security and to create a network of trainers who can innovate and adapt the lessons for others
IIRR is stepping up and putting sustainable development at the forefront of our programs.  Are you ready to join us?

What’s at Stake for Rio+20?

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This week, world leaders will converge in Rio for what is gearing up to be the most important discussion on the environment and sustainable development in our lifetimes.  Marking the 20th anniversary of the first Rio meeting, these leaders will come together to shape plans for how poverty can be reduced, how to advance social equality, and how to ensure environmental protection as the global population grows.

This conference will focus on a green economy in the context of sustainable development and poverty eradication as well as the institutional framework of sustainable development.

But what’s at stake?

With so much hype surrounding the talks, it is important to understand the context of these talks, and how global leaders will hold up their end of the bargain.

Coming to an attainable decision at Rio+20 is not only important to ensure the sustainability of the earth and its resources, but also to ensure that those who will be most affected by climate change and sustainable development, the rural poor, have a fighting chance to develop their economies and their livelihoods, while still maintaining a healthy planet.

When we think about climate change, for example, it is easy to focus just on the environmental aspect.  It is important to keep the earth healthy so future generations can enjoy clean oceans, abundant forests, and stunning plains, but climate change involves so much more that.

Climate change can play a drastic role in agriculture, food security, health, and education. If certain regions experience long-term drought, as many parts of Africa are starting to, agriculture slows, having a direct effect on any local agriculture markets and food production.  Excessive flooding, on the other hand, can damage infrastructure like homes and schools and can also lead to health issues when drinking water becomes contaminated or malaria-spreading mosquitoes breed in the standing water.

Plus, climate change is much more likely to adversely affect those who live in rural, poor communities.

To ensure that we don’t send the earth into a harmful cycle of climate change, development must be centered around sustainability to ensure long-lasting solution to poverty.

Those who are attending Rio+20 have a lot of weight on their shoulders, as everyone’s future is dependent on their decisions and commitment to follow through with action. Secretary General Ban Ki Moon has said that the summit is too important to fail. Hopefully this is the time when global leaders can come together to make important strides towards sustainability in economic, social, and environmental development.

To keep global leaders honest, let them know you are paying attention with the top reasons to come to an agreement at Rio+20 (as adapted from Oxfam America). Here’s what you can do:

Tweet #tweetG20: Tonight, 1 in 7 people will go to bed hungry. #G20 must act now to fix the broken food system.

Tweet #tweetG20: Brazil lowered #hunger rates by one-third from 2000 to 2007; #G20 countries can & should make ending hunger a priority.

Tweet #tweetG20: In 14 of 18 #G20 countries, inequality is on the rise.

Tweet #tweetG20: More than half of the 1.3 billion people who live on less than $1.25/day are in #G20 countries.

Tweet #tweetG20: #G20 must invest in farmers: agriculture generates 15% of exports and employs 70% of West African workers. #Sahel2012

That’s what’s so exciting about Rio+20. There is the potential to find a solution that maximizes global and individual economic growth that also incorporates the environment and a sustainable future, and we can let global leaders know that we are watching and eager for change.

IIRR Staff Wins Business in Development Challenge!

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Sheila Vergara of IIRR Philippines won the 5th Annual Philippine Business for Social Progress BiD Challenge.  This annual business plan competition aims to generate new and innovative business ideas that work to eliminate poverty while still making a profit.  Winners of the competition are matched with potential investors, and also represent the Philippines at the International BiD Challenge in the Netherlands. Sheila’s Pineapple Fiber Production plan, along with Shoes that Care, were selected as the winners out of a pool of more than 260 business plans.BiD 2

The same business plan was also awarded the “Skills to Succeed” Award from Accenture with a cash prize of P75,000. This award is given to the business plan rendered as the most inspiring enterprise story of financial viability and building skills of the marginalized sector at the core of its business plan.

The 20 qualified entries were invited to set up a display to demonstrate their products and services to prospect investors on May 30, 2012 at the One Esplanade in SM Central Business Park, Bay Boulevard, Manila. The Awards were announced in the evening of the same day.

Aid & International Development Forum

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I spent last Wednesday and Thursday of last week at the Aid and International Development forum listening to speakers on various topics and learning about  a variety of tools that are useful in international development. There was a lot to see and do at the Forum, and I was able to take away a lot from the great speakers I got to listen too.

First up on Wednesday was keynote speaker Patrick Fine who is VP of the Department of Compact Operations at the Millennium Challenge Corporation. An engaging speaker, he offered some words of advice to development workers saying, “helping developing countries implement their own development systems with their own priorities; that’s what’s important.” I thought that resonated with what we do at IIRR because our ways of development are mostly different from how many larger organizations operate their programs. I think the field is slowly shifting in this direction, but it is interesting that it is still unconventional enough that it has to be mentioned.

I also attended a few panel discussions on Wednesday. The first panel discussed global partnerships for development, and included senior staff from UN OCHA, InterAction, and USAID. While all of the panelists were interesting, I thought a few panelists really hit the nail on the head in terms of successful partnerships in development:

  • Rosa Malango from UN OCHA said that “You need to have an open mind and understand cultures to respond to situations.”
  • Sam Worthington of InterAction said that development is ultimately owned by the local communities making decisions about their own lives.

I think both of these statements highlight what development is supported to be about: partnering with local communities to understand their needs and help them make the best decisions for their communities.

Next up was a panel discussion on food security and sustainable growth which included senior staff from NGOs, but also included the Chief Development Officer from an international fertilizer corporation and the Executive Director of a for-profit company that makes low-cost, low-water hydroponic gardening systems (cool, right?). Highlights include:

  • Robert Nooter of the International Fertilizer Development Center said that, “Just because farmers grow more food does not equal food security. They must also have access to the marketplace to sell and trade goods.”
  • Nooter also reminded us that there needs to be training and skill building programs in conjunction with food security initiatives because “development projects won’t be there forever.”

I think the take-away from this panel was that food security is a tough task, but with innovation and creativity, the global community can help more communities become food secure.

The last panel of the day was on empowering women as a development tool, and of course, the panel was stacked with powerful and inspiring women from health and development organizations.

  • Dr. Lucien van Mens presented her organization’s female condom which is a slightly unusual, albeit powerful, way to empower the sexual and reproductive freedom of women in developing countries helping women safely and effectively take charge of their reproductive health.
  • Elizabeth Arend provided a sarcastic and cynical look at how the World Bank claims to promote programs concerning reproductive health, but what they actually work on is projects focused on maternal Heath and babies. While these topics are clearly pressing and important in the developing world, Arend points out, there are so many more facets of reproductive health that the World Bank should focus their money on as well. She highlighted that while the World Bank does spend a lot of money on maternal health initiatives, it is a sadly low percentage of their annual budget, and more should be spent on reproductive health initiatives.
  • Browyn Irwin pointed out that achieving gender equality is not just about women and girls, but achieving equality in partnership with men and the global community. She also pointed out that value-chain efforts should include both men and women because both genders are equally important in the value-chain.

On Thursday, the most interesting panel came at the end of the day on how best to address climate change without a global deal.  I feel like climate change in a development setting can be a lot of charts and economics jargon, but these panelists painted an occasionally gloomy, but also hopeful, look at the relationship between poverty and climate change.

  • Dr. Andrew Steer, Special Envoy for Climate Change at the World Bank and President-to-be at The World Resources Institute, gave a powerful talk stating simply, “Climate Change is REAL.” I know it, science knows it, but it sill takes experts like Dr. Steer to drive this point home before it’s too late.
  • Dr. Steer also pointed out that the global community can’t have a serious discussion about eradicating global poverty without a discussion about climate change.  The world’s poorest people live in the areas that will surely see the greatest impact of climate change, so as Dr. Steer said, “Act  now, don’t wait.”

Overall, the Forum had a lot of great speakers that provided us with the ideas to get the dialogue going within our organizations and on a more global stage.

And forum bonus: I got to watch a screening of an official 2012 TriBeCa Film Festival selection film called “Baseball in the Time of Cholera” about the parallel story of the first little-league baseball program in Haiti and the Cholera outbreak post-earthquake.  It was a great film, and I highly suggest watching it.

A “Box-full” of Ideas

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It’s pretty safe to assume that being a teacher is one of the hardest jobs out there.

Now imagine being a teacher in rural Africa where there are limited resources in terms of electricity, water, classroom supplies, and books.

That’s exactly what teachers face in our Pastoralist Education Programs in Marsabit, Isiolo, and Samburu counties in Kenya.

In March, an assessment was done of local learning centers and it was found that teachers were largely ignoring pre-reading and pre-writing activities in their lessons. Not only are these types of lessons important in teaching children how to read and write, but it also helps them develop spatial perception and left-right orientation skills. What the assessment also found was that these activities were ignored not because of ineffectiveness in lesson delivery, but because the teachers had only had limited exposure to locally available materials.

These local materials would help teachers utilize the most basic lesson style: play.

It’s no secret that children learn the best when given the opportunity to play with their peers, so in May, 18 teachers of the Pastoralist Program were given a lesson in “play time”.  They learned how to incorporate language and numbers into games and activities that can be used in the classroom with brand new toys that were donated by UNICEF.

Except there was one problem.

These toys included things like puzzles, sponge balls, dominoes, puppets, construction blocks, and modeling clay.  To many kids, this is a pretty awesome box of toys, but to these teachers, it was a mostly “foreign” box of toys that they themselves didn’t understand how to play with.

So it was back to the drawing board for these teachers, and they learned how to use these toys in their lessons to ultimately improve reading and writing skills in their students.

What’s the best part of all of this? Of course the improvement in reading and writing skills is the most exciting part of new teaching methods, but these teachers got even more creative when they became inspired to make toys and learning tools out of things that were more common in their rural setting.  Things like sand, pebbles, twigs, and leaves took center stage as new learning tools, and the students AND teachers could relate to these types of toys because the materials are more recognizable in a Pastoralist lifestyle.

That’s what’s important in development; not only making things accessible to rural teachers, but making them accessible in a way that they can understand.  It doesn’t help to hand someone the fanciest, zombie-fighting, electronic, learning toy if they can’t understand the context of the zombies or even have the electricity to power it.  But handing them a locally inspired toy to help learning in a more familiar way?

That works.