The theme of this years BAD is climate change, a phehnomenom we can’t afford to ignore any longer.

Climate change affects the developing world enormously, one of the most obvious examples of this is the other GFC. The Global Food Crisis affects 100,000,000 of the world’s poorest people guaranteeing that they go to bed hungry. Climate change has meant that water and arable land are scarce commodities and the average cost of food has risen by 83% forcing millions and millions worldwide to live in constant hunger.

Do something positive this year and contribute to Blog Action Day ’09, blog about Climate Change and influence your friends and readers into making a difference.

According to the World Health Organisations Guidelines for the Safe Use of Water and Excreta and Grey Water, sufficient achievement of the Millenium Development Goals 1 (Eliminate extreme poverty and hunger) and 7 (ensure environmental sustainability) require the use of water. It then goes on to stress that despite the desperate need, use of water should be done safely so as not to endanger human life.  

A farmer moulds his irrigation channels

This is why we like Pays’ video and thoughts posted on goolge.org – because they take in to account that in developing countries things we take for granted (such as money for capital works, infrastructure such as aqua-ducts and dams and organisational bodies to manage our water) often don’t exist.

Thus, we thought the following list may prove useful for you.

Key Information when thinking about Water and Sanitation

1. Water is required for agriculture and development of sustainable economies in developing countries.
2. Often, however, this water will be mixed with excreta, grey water and various other detrimental matter.
3. Roughly three quaters of the worlds countries only 10% of the population are connected to sewerage systems, making capital investment in creating an integrated system incredibly expensive and unrealistic for many communities.
4. However, with good community engagement and support, practices can be put into place to lower the amount of water born diseas present in agricultural water at low cost.
5. The leading cause of disease, despite the poor health of many communities water pipeline, is still born in the preparation of food.

It’s an extraordinary display of skill and context that not only makes us smile, but makes us realise the reality that is building & living in Bangladesh.

But it is these types of methods - ways that people are building and working without mechanical technology – that are common place throughout the developing World. I mean, Bamboo scaffolding is still commonplace in China despite having 1.3 billion people and having hosted the mega-huge Beijing Olympic Games earlier this year.

Whilst the above Bangladeshi chap has found a way to carry 20 bricks with no hands, another – shown below was featured on Ted.com in late 2006.

Iqbal Quadir’s story is amazing. He grew up as a poor kid in Bangladesh and became a New York banker before connecting 80 million people in Bangladesh using mobile phones. This experiences tells him that ‘connectivity is productivity’, it’s bottom-up development and pretty ingenious stuff.

Those Bangladeshis are doing some real thinking!

We here at World Vision were keen to join the conversation instigated by the great people at BAD08, and we hoped that by giving away our awesome prize we would be able to further engage in the day. We think we did and we’re pretty pleased to have met a whole lot of you. So pleased, in fact, that we have rethought closing the blog down and decided to keep it running!

So here, we close the chapter that is the birth of Learn About Poverty and begin the new chapter. The content that you will find posted here at Learn About Poverty from now on will be just that. Content to help you see what is really happening out there. Content that actually engages with what is happening in developing countries right now, as you read this. Content that is real, and not ‘marketing ready.’

So please, join in the journey. If you find ‘stuff’ out there in web land that you think is amazing and gets to the heart of the real world, comment, email or send it through. We look forward to continuing the conversation with you – see you out there!

-eds Steve, Nigel and Joely.

“It was the second attack on their village in the span of five months. The first raid by camel-riding armed Arab militia had robbed the village of 13 men and left tens injured. This second time, many were determined to survive.”

Obviously, pretty chilling. But in all the tragedy that has visited the region in recent years, there is hope.

“The conflict in Darfur has orphaned, widowed and wrought untold suffering to thousands of families. Now huddled in plastic dwellings across the camp, many are struggling to cope with their new, despondent life. Amidst the sea of gloom, children are proving to be islands of hope. Many are piecing together what was left of their lives with amazing fortitude”

I hope that through this site, we can bring you a few more of these photos and stories to help paint the picture about our work and the effect poverty has on half of this planets population. You can find more resources such as these in the Photo tab, under the displaced people link.

We have also interviewed our CEO, Rev Tim Costello specifically for Blog Action Day. Here, Tim discusses communications technologies and how they relate to poverty and the battle against it.

Anthea Spinks, who is one of the many staff members who provides her view of the Global Food Crisis, speaks here about the effect the emergency is having on World Vision Programming.

As always, we encourage you to check out the resources by using the tabs above to navigate your way around.

The US$ 700 Billion that has been provided by the US to those financial institutions would make a huge impact on the Millennium Development Goals and the continued efforts to reduce the number of people living on less than a dollar a day. It would be nice to see such swift and massive action take place when ANY person or community were found to be struggling and facing uncertain futures. Especially, it seems, in light of the recent ‘massive’ advances achieved through a tiny-by-comparison US$ 16 Billion pledged towards the Millennium Development Goals.

We’ve now updated the Photo’s section of our site further, to include shots taken about the environment, gender issues, health and food – such as the amazing shot above. It seems that, economic problems or not, people still need to eat. And whilst ‘economics’ consume ever more of the arable land the world has to produce such food, it’s interesting to reflect on what you see above and remind yourself that it’s all relevant and that there are millions upon millions of people in the world that are just getting by. Just, it seems, not as we know it.

1) Health Map. This fantastic little resource is not ours, but we thought we would mention it anyway as it offers a lot of really relevant information, in a very clever way. The site is Health Map, found here at http://www.healthmap.org/en.

The site tracks the latest news reports about illnesses and disease from various parties around the world, including the World Health Organisation,  Google News and The International Society for Infectious Diseases. It then mashes them up with google maps to present a snap-shot of infectious disease and illness updates from around the world. This is quite important, when you consider that many of the worlds poor are facing a numerous number of health issues, many of which are curable in the western world.

From the UNDP MDG site

2) The Millenium Development Goals, a set of objectives for the world to aim for to aid the alleviation of Global Poverty, outline just how important the cure of illness and disease is. 3 of the 7 goals are focused on health – Goal 4,5 and 6. (Reduce Child Mortality, Improve Maternal Health and Combat HIV/AIDS, Malaria and Other Diseases.) You can track different countries progress towards the MDG’s here, at the MDG Monitor. This is another great map tool, which you can use to cut data to see the progress of every country in the world towards achieving the Millennium Development Goals.

3) HIV/AIDS is a massive problem in the developing world. Check out this video above, from our Stir YouTube channel, which better tells the story of two young girls living with the disease. You can also find it in our video section. If you’re interested in posting about HIV/AIDS in your post on the 15th, why not investigate some of the links above and see how you can speak out about it.

Also, if you would like your blog to be included amongst our ‘friends’ section in our blogroll please just leave a comment here – the more, the merrier! People like Chris Brogan, Fred Wilson and Jeremiah Owyangare incredibly communal in linking back and forth between conversations in the blogosphere, and we admire them for doing so. Chris, especially, provides great advice when it comes to being a good blogging citizen, and we recommend you check out his advice on sharing here. We especially love this sentence from the post.

“I want you to share. I want you to take my posts and use them as part of your other work, to build on, to add to, to remix in other useful ways. “

In the same way, we want you to share what goes on here, on the www.blogactionday.org website and on any blog that you like that participates on the big day. By doing so, you can truly create a conversation around poverty. Help spread the word about poverty, and link to others on your own blog.

Cheers and thanks again for your support – amazing!

Steve

And so, we present to you Learn About Poverty. You’ll find on this site plenty of photos, videos, interviews and stories from around the World Vision International partnership. Some of the great content in the site, such as our interviews with World Vision staffers about the current Global Food Crisis, provides a real insight into how we go about our work as both an organisation, and individuals. Further in, you’ll find some amazing photos (which even we didn’t know we had) from some of our in-country photographers, showing for the first time images captured from some of the most desperate places on earth.

So look, enjoy, and then harvest. Everything you see here if for sharing and linking. In the name of blogging, we would appreciate it if you could link back to us when you use any of our resources, to help spread the message about both Blog Action Day, and our organisation. If you’re still unsure, Our Creative Commons license should help answer any questions about how to treat any of the content you find here.

Good luck for Blog Action Day and spreading the message,

Steve and Joely

WV Staffers and Blog Action Day fans.