Muhammad Yunus shares his insights on a world without poverty | NEED Video Interview

Nobel Peace Prize winner, Muhammad Yunus, shares his insights on a world without poverty with Stephanie Kinnunen, NEED CEO and Co-Founder. photo | Thomas Lee

Muhammad Yunus, along with the Grameen Bank, was awarded the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to further social and economic development. “Muhammad Yunus has shown himself to be a leader who has managed to translate visions into practical action for the benefit of millions of people, not only in Bangladesh, but also in many other countries. Loans to poor people without any financial security had appeared to be an impossible idea,” states the Norwegian Nobel Committee prize announcement. “From modest beginnings three decades ago, Yunus has, first and foremost through Grameen Bank, developed microcredit into an ever more important instrument in the struggle against poverty.”

---

MUHAMMAD YUNUS INTERVIEW

Question 1: What was the initial start to Grameen Bank, and how many people are now empowered by the expansion of the Grameen programs?

Download link

>> click to watch the rest of the interview 

for more on the Grameen Foundation visit: www.grameenfoundation.org

Who is Feeding America?

A family receives donated food at Grace Evangelical Free Church. Feeding America estimates that 35.5 million Americans live in food insecure households, including over 12 million children. photo | Steve Floyd

In the largest and most efficient food producing country in the world, who would imagine that anyone would go without food? The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that the United States produces about $100 billion worth in crops and another $100 billion in livestock every year. Knowing this, it may be surprising to learn that, this year, Feeding America will feed over 25 million people who would otherwise go hungry in the United States. Feeding America is a network of over 200 food banks across the county that collects and distributes donated food and grocery products to those with low food security: whose ability to acquire acceptable foods is limited or uncertain.

Feeding America utilizes a network of over 63,000 local charitable organizations to make donation of food possible for local businesses. Without these local organizations, transportation of donated goods would too expensive for most businesses and billions of pounds of food would just be thrown away. Also, local organizations help to make distribution into communities possible by setting up soup kitchens, pantries, and distribution sites. I recently attended a food distribution at Grace Evangelical Free Church in Fridley, Minnesota.

Biking, Hiking, and Building Homes

Adventure junkies who like to volunteer in their free time love Play it Forward Adventure Travels (PIF). This organization combines the thrills of the outdoors with the fulfillment of giving back.

I spoke by phone with PIF’s President, Jodi Nelson, at a café in Guatemala. She told me about the 10-day tour she and 12 others had just completed. Their trip was filled with all-day bike rides, breathtaking views of Lake Atitlan, hiking the City of Stairs, kayaking to Santa Catarina and yoga by the water.

Child Labor Through David Parker’s Lens

Approximately 218 million children around the world between the ages of five and 17 are involved in child labor, according to The International Labour Organization. Their jobs range from textile work to gold mining and sex work to rag picking. Often their working conditions endanger their health and general wellbeing. I met with David Parker, a photographer and doctor who has worked to bring awareness to this issue for over 16 years. His work is proof that one person’s efforts can help alleviate our world’s problems.







Parker explains, “[I have] always been oriented in a direction of basic human rights, and liberties, and issues of social justice. … What gives me that orientation? … Growing up Jewish during WWII.” When he learned about the conditions that many child laborers face, Parker recognized this injustice as a human rights and a health issue and became passionate about addressing it. He has taken a unique approach to raising awareness about child labor by combining his strengths and interests.

Making an imprint

Posted by Anthony Wald in Volunteers Edit

Carol Olson was sitting with three friends eating lunch, when the conversation turned to wanting to give back. The three friends knew they wanted to do something, but what was a question that needed some evaluation. Each decided to go home, do some research, and meet again to discuss their findings.

At their next meeting one of the women brought information on Global Volunteers. Global Volunteers is described on their website as, “A private, non-profit, non-sectarian, non-governmental organization engaging short-term volunteers on micro-economic and human development programs in close partnership with local people worldwide.” “I was in awe of what they had to offer” Carol explained. “Global Volunteers is invited into each country they provide service for which was important to me” she continued. With the organization set, they just needed to decide on where to go, or where they felt they could make the biggest impact. After several discussions the women honed in on a program in Romania.

Boxing up Relief

Posted by Katy Petershack in Interviews, Organizations Edit


Balochistan Earthquake 2008 | photos courtesy of ShelterBox/Mark Pearson

When disasters strike, thousands of people may be left without shelter. In 2001 Tom Henderson, a former Royal Navy search-and-rescue diver, founded the organization ShelterBox to combat this problem. He created a compact kit that holds enough supplies to help families stay alive and healthy. ShelterBox has several branches in different countries including one in the USA. I spoke with Casey Chadwick, the Public Relations and Marketing Director for the USA branch.

Ms. Chadwick told me, “As soon as I started learning more about [ShelterBox] I became very interested. … [This is] a sound program for humanitarian aid relief.” The boxes typically contain a ten-person tent, thermal blankets and insulated ground sheets, waterproof ponchos and bin bags, a multi-fuel stove, cooking supplies, collapsible water containers, water purification tablets, a basic tool kit and a small children’s pack with drawing books. This kit can help a family of 10 survive for six months.

CONSTRUCTING A CHILDHOOD FROM THE GROUND UP

Posted by Rhea Datta in Organizations Edit



Mumbai is a vast and vibrant city, whose destitute underbelly was made famous by Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire. The plight of Mumbai’s slum children is not a celluloid myth. As the need for development in a city of 22 million increases, so does the demand for migrant workers and construction laborers. As people pour into the city for such transient work, makeshift dwellings emerge around construction sites, only to be torn down and rebuilt elsewhere after the work ends. The children of these workers have a fairly rootless existence, using rubble-strewn construction sites as their homes and playgrounds. They are invisible to the local government and have little access to healthcare and education.

In 1969 Meera Mahadevan founded Mobile Crèches in Delhi with the belief that every child has rights to a secure environment, education and health services. Three decades later, the organization has reached out to half a million children on construction sites in Mumbai alone. The NGO has three separate faces: Mobile Crèches (Delhi), Mumbai Mobile Crèches (MMC) and Tara Mobile Crèches (Pune), each of which has multiple centers for early childhood development.

Devika Mahadevan is the current CEO of the organization. She is continuing her grandmother’s efforts in Mumbai, where Mobile Crèches has 22 MMC centers and 120 teachers. It relies on support from builders and developers, and petitions the local government to include the children in their mandate. “While we have grown in strength and numbers, the root problem hasn’t changed. Government policies have not changed. Maharashtra [the state where MMC is based] only ratified the Construction Worker Act of 1996 [providing health insurance to workers] last year- which is yet to be implemented. It is ironic – the people constructing the future of our cities have no future to speak of,” Mahadevan says.

BREAKING THE POVERTY CYCLE IN MEXICO

Posted by Trevor Snapp



One decade ago, a third of Mexicans’ earnings were poverty line. Most of the poor lived in rural villages surviving on seasonal work and small crops of corn and beans. They received little help from the state, and had few opportunities to change their lot. Hardships pushed many to make the dangerous trip north to the US. Corruption, illiteracy and a lack of rural infrastructure threatened to keep these people poor forever.





But Mexico is a country where anything is possible, from horrific violence to beatific acts of generosity. On Monday the apocalypse looms large, by Wednesday revolution is imminent, and Friday is fiesta.

In this context the world's most spectacularly successful anti-poverty program was born. Oportunidades, originally named PROGRESA, was launched in 1996 as a quiet experiment by then Finance Ministry undersecretary Santiago Levy in the state of Compeche. The program’s premise is simple: pay poor mothers to keep their children in school and take their families to the health clinic.

Its results were astounding. In a slowly growing economy poverty dropped by 17%, and school attendance shot up 85%. Money went directly from the federal government to the families, thus skirting corrupt local officials. Today 25% of the country’s population is enrolled in the $3.8 billion program. It is still too soon to say how the program has affected a generation of poor students. In the next few months results of a decade-long survey on the program’s effects will be finished.

Yet to countries struggling to escape the same cycle of poverty that trapped generations of Mexicans, Oportunidades offers an example. The program is being adapted throughout the world. New York City has launched a similar program Opportunity NYC. Other countries that have instituted similar conditional cash transfer programs include Nicaragua, Brazil, Honduras, Jamaica, Chile, Malawi and Zambia. And organizations like the World Bank are promoting the project around the world. The idea’s expansion is as exciting as the success of the program itself.





More of Trevor Snapp’s
writing and photography

Children Thrive Once Again

Posted by Kate Lucas on May 26th 2009 in Organizations, Reader Involvement, Volunteers Edit



For Diane, it was Emma. For Elizabeth, it was Leaceline. For Tamera, Andrea. Each volunteer had a dear one by the time her two weeks were up.

Emma, Leaceline and Andrea were children living in an orphanage in Tutova, Romania, one of the poorest areas of Eastern Europe. Diane, Elizabeth and Tamera were among a group who spent two weeks caring for the children through Global Volunteers.

Called Failure to Thrive after the medical condition, the orphanage and clinic serve children who are underweight or disabled at birth because poverty prevented their mothers from getting adequate nutrition. Many children were sent to the clinic by a governmental child protection agency. Others were dropped off by their parents, particularly the migratory Roma, who knew they couldn’t provide sufficiently for their kids.

As the women described it, the poverty was vivid in the community and difficult to witness. Tamera remembers Roma children running along the road, covered in dust and dirt, stuffing handfuls of something bright red into their pockets. The red pieces spilled out of their pockets to the ground but the children kept running. They were sugar packets. The kids had stolen them from tables at an outdoor restaurant. They weren’t getting enough nutrients at home, and this was the best they could find.

The Failure to Thrive clinic presently houses 41 children under the age of four. Needless to say, the staff has their hands full running the clinic and providing for the children’s basic needs. Volunteers at the clinic provide the vital support role of giving individual or small-group nurturing and attention. “I think about how even adults like to be held,” said Diane. “It’s a pretty basic need, and if we’re not here to do it, they don’t get held.”

Education for Liberation

Jorge Chojolán founder of the Miguel Angel Asturias Academy in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala. photo | John Abernathy

Empowering students to understand and transform society is the mission of the Miguel Angel Asturias Academy in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala. The Academy and its founder Jorge Chojolán were profiled in Issue 4. Chojolán visited the US to present a workshop about his vision of education at the international Pedagogy and Theatre of the Oppressed Conference “Mad as Hell? Now Move (or Draw, or Act…): Organizing for Social Justice” this weekend in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Chojolán modeled his workshop on the Academy’s teacher training about Paolo Freire’s theory that education can be a tool for liberation. Conference participants discussed the limits of the traditional teaching style that conceives of children as blank slates that the teacher imposes knowledge on. Students at the Academy are instead treated as active learners supported by teachers. Chojolán describes an incident when the Academy’s radical approach enabled students to stand up for their community: “We visited City Hall and the kids got a chance to ask the mayor questions like, ‘Why is there trash all over? Why isn’t this a priority of the municipality?’ Teachers from other schools asked why I did not quiet the students, but I think it’s important that their questions be heard.”

Director of development Steve Mullaney (right) and founder Jorge Chojolán (left) challenge preconceptions about teaching and learning at the PTO Conference.

In contrast with traditional education, experiences outside the classroom are acknowledged as learning opportunities. Schoolwork at the Academy is framed in the context of students’ lives and used to solve real problems. Chojolán gave the example that in math class, students don’t work with abstract numbers; they add and subtract how many of their classmates have experienced violence, or how much food their families have.

The Academy endeavors to eliminate prejudices through education. The indigenous 65 percent of the student population encounters racism on a daily basis. They are often treated as second-class citizens when they wear Mayan clothing or speak the k’iche language. Sexism is equally problematic in Guatemala, where women are discouraged from taking on roles outside the home. After a class discussion about women and housework, Chojolán says, “a student went home and saw his father watching television and his mother washing dishes. He said, ‘Why don’t you help out and I’ll help too.’” Students apply their learning by challenging the status quo in their homes, community and society.

photo | John Abernathy

Chojolán is committed to extending educational opportunities to the wider community as well as students. The Academy’s library will be open to everyone when construction is completed. “We would like the library to give birth to a love of reading both in students and in community members,” Chojolán says. In Guatemala, the high tax imposed on books make them prohibitively expensive, costing as much as two week’s wages for an average book. The two university libraries in Quezaltenango are only open to students, and the local government-run library isn’t much more accessible. Visitors can only request books whose titles they already know since browsing the stacks is not permitted.

Prejudice, poverty and limited education make it difficult for Guatemalans to envision a better future. At the Miguel Angel Asturias Academy, students and teachers are overcoming those obstacles to transform their community. Once the library is built, Chojolán hopes to expand this educational model to other locations in Guatemala with the Academy as the prototype.

Miguel Angel Asturias Academy
Pedagogy and Theatre of the Oppressed Conference

Yarn and a Hook: Crocheting for Community

Krochet Kids International (KK) is proof that you do not need to be a surgeon or a millionaire to help those in need. Co-founder Kohl Crecelius reminded me that helping out is about realizing what skills you already have and using them to make change. For Crecelius, Travis Hartanov and Stewart Ramsey, this skill happened to be crocheting.

After learning how to crochet from an older brother, Crecelius, Hartanov and Ramsey started a small crocheting business in high school. “We’re all from the Northwest, all skiers and snowboarders, so we appreciate a good beanie. … We were on this little regimen where we were crocheting beanies everyday of the week and taking orders from people,” says Crecelius. Soon the three of them were dubbed the “crochet kids.”

During their first years of college the three friends traveled for different volunteer opportunities. Crecelius spent a summer in the Dominican Republic, and Hartanov and Ramsey went to Bali to volunteer in orphanages. Crecelius says, “We all came back from those experiences and, separately from each other, had a desire to help.”The crochet kids thought over the next year about what they could do to help. “We came back to this skill that we had that was crocheting. As silly as it was, it just takes yarn and a hook and you can create awesome things. … We were like, ‘Okay, crocheting is something we know how to do and can sell here. … We’re going to teach people to crochet,’” explains Crecelius.