Today George Osborne will rise and deliver one of the most anticipated Budgets in British history. It’s historic for a number of reasons, not least because of the economic challenges domestically, but he will also have the opportunity to fulfil a 43-year commitment – spending 0.7% of the UK’s income on international aid.
We’ve been arguing for this for so long that almost everyone assumes we already have it… we don’t. It’s taken hundreds of meetings, thousands of marchers, millions of petition signatures to carry through a 1970 UN resolution, and the UK will be the first G8 country to do so. Campaigning alongside the UK’s Enough Food for Everyone (IF) campaign and nearly 100 leading charities to demand an end to hunger– we know aid works.
As a result, we can now focus not on how much we spend but how the money is spent. At the Global Poverty Project, we want to use this opportunity as a springboard to eradicate one of the oldest and most tragic diseases – polio. We have a unique window of opportunity to end this disease, and alongside the UK, we’re asking countries globally to help fund a new plan that has been put together to ensure a polio-free world by 2018.
Increased aid has accelerated vaccination programmes and decreased the prevalence of polio. Polio has now been eradicated by 99.9% and remains endemic only in three countries – Afghanistan, Pakistan and Nigeria. The Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI), comprising of the World Health Organization, Rotary International, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and UNICEF, and supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, has long campaigned for funding that will see an end to polio – and they’ve almost succeeded. With the end of polio within reach, the GPEI has worked closely with the governments of polio-affected countries to put together the plan to finally wipe out this disease – the Polio Eradication and Endgame Strategic Plan 2013-2018.
The UK has a lot to be proud of; we’ve been a global leader committing around £100m to polio eradication efforts over the past five years. But this funding ends next month. Recommit this funding and the legacy of 0.7% could be the eradication of the second-ever human disease in history.
April’s Global Vaccine Summit in Abu Dhabi, hosted by the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and Bill Gates, is the chance for the British government to announce its new funding commitment. We’re campaigning for the Department for International Development to make another three-year commitment to help us rid the world of polio. The GPEI’s new Strategic Plan sets out a clear strategy to end this disease – secure the necessary support and say goodbye polio.
Today we hope George Osborne will confirm 0.7% of our income on international aid. This is our opportunity to prove what’s achievable through well-directed international aid. And by continuing to take the lead on this issue, we can help convince other countries to do the same. Together, we can end polio.
What makes people do the right thing? What motivates people to buy Fairtrade, volunteer their time or help the homeless person on the street? Much more research has been devoted to the psychology of what drives us to buy certain products, than a close look at the incentives and mindset of philanthropy, altruism and positive social engagement. The resulting deficit has left us with a widening gap between the increasingly sophisticated appeal of global brands and the hackneyed approaches from non-profit organizations who often still lead with the starving child crudely pasted to the rattling cup.
As Global Poverty Project rolls out its Global Citizen engagement platform, some in the development sector are suspicious of the idea of offering rewards for signing petitions and sharing YouTube clips with friends. They see the idea of T-shirts and concert tickets as the equivalent of offering children sweets for good behaviour. Critics see it as the latest brand of ‘clicktivsim’ or just feeding the rampant consumerism that underpins some of the global imbalance. Buying ethical products or telling friends about water issues in Nairobi should not need to be incentivized, so they say, as it’s the right thing to do. According to these naysayers, people should do the right thing, because it’s the right thing, end of story. Eat your broccoli and no complaints.
But to this soup of metaphors and old adages, allow me to add one more; the definition of insanity is to keep doing the same thing and expect a different result. The development sector has been showing us the image of the starving child for over 40 years. It’s been an effective motivator for a small percentage of the population as a prick to their conscience and a tug on their heartstrings to drop a few coins in the cup and assuage the guilt the image deliberately stirs.
We should all applaud the efforts of these organizations who have helped millions of people with limited funding in impossible circumstances. Through their tireless and underpaid efforts, they have fed, clothed, healed and educated generations of people around the world. Certainly there are signs of progress as the Millennium Development Goals encourage more targeted, better development, and the percentage of people living in extreme poverty has more than halved since 1983.
Despite this progress in the methods and strategies for poverty eradication in the developing world, the fundamental relationship between the average citizen in London or New York to the problems of the world remain frozen in the transactional and simplistic paradigm of “GIVE MONEY, SAVE KIDS”.
For a dramatic expansion of the efforts to end extreme poverty, what’s needed is a game-changing shift in this predictable dynamic. The critics of innovation or change to this status quo are afraid of rocking the boat for fear of diminishing the ‘anti-poverty brand’ by making it ‘rewards’ focused.
The efforts of these organizations are funded by the same percentage of bleeding hearts who continue to dig into their pockets when they see an appeal. What’s needed is not a new way of tapping those loyal supporters, but a dramatic and engaging way of expanding the number of supporters. Not only that, but the development sector needs a way to redefine the word ‘supporter’ from the person who writes a cheque, to the person who’s inspired by the stories of innovation and resilience and leads others to focus their unique skills to helping the world’s poor.
Global Citizen has the potential to be the innovation the sector desperately needs. It encourages people to learn more about the issues, creates a structure for discussing and sharing relevant content and takes people on a journey to better understand the policies, institutions and actions that will lead us to a more just and sustainable world.
As people get started on this journey, sometimes the first step is the hardest one to take. Global Citizen does dangle rewards as the ‘carrot’ to get started. The rewards platform plays to the human impulse that asks, “What’s in it for me?” but hopes that by going a mile or two down the road of global citizenry, the answers, definitions and even the questions themselves will change.
Teenagers might just watch a few films about extreme poverty to earn concert tickets. No one expects that to change the world, but it does plant seeds that may grow to great things. For some of those teenagers, the films might be the start of a lifelong commitment to social justice. For others it might be the inspiration that goes on to spark unimagined innovation. Global Citizen might awaken the Nelson Mandelas and Martin Luther King Jr.s of the future. In addition to reporting the world as it is, Global Citizen implicitly invites us all to imagine the world as it should be.
Each year, two million children die before their fifth birthday from preventable diseases like diarrhoea and pneumonia.
Handwashing with soap is one of the most effective and low cost ways to prevent such diseases, and so in the last 10 years, Lifebuoy has taken its handwashing behaviour change programmes to millions of people around the world. It is now aiming to change the handwashing behaviour of a whole village in central India- Thesgora.
The programmes, directed at school children, new mothers, neo-natal nurses and community groups, aim to have a significant impact on the health of the community and consequently the futures of the children in the village.
This new film highlights the significant milestone of a child reaching their 5th birthday.
The Development and Aid World News Service (DAWNS) and the advocacy platform GlobalCitizen.org, today announced the winners of the Humanitarian Reporting Grant Competition. The Competition honored independent projects that focused on telling stories related to humanitarian issues.
Over the course of three weeks, nearly 700 voters cast their ballots for 12 finalists to receive one of two $1,000 grants funded by GlobalCitizen.org and subscription sales to the DAWNS Digest global news curation service.
The two winners of the Humanitarian Reporting Grant Competition are:
Regina's project, ‘know herStory,’ will narrate 15 personal and unique stories of grassroots women leaders involved in community mobilization, HIV/AIDS, peace building, social justice, and human rights advocacy in Cameroon. Shanoor will document the lives of sexworkers in Mumbai, India, to tell the stories of their lives with a particular focus on the relationships these women have with their children.
“Our goal is to create a community of news consumers who will support compelling storytelling on critical global issues that do not often make headlines,” said DAWNS co-founder Mark Leon Goldberg.
"We hope these stories inspire Global Citizens to discover the diversity of skills and passions that are needed to end extreme poverty,” said Jordan Hewson, editor of GlobalCitizen.org. “We each can find a role to play in this movement, and these candidates have done exactly that."
The finalists included journalists, photographers, and documentary filmmakers from around the world who wanted to tell a range of stories, from gender discrimination in Gambia, to the problem of female foeticide and abandonment in India.
“It is becoming increasingly hard for reporters to bring stories to wide audiences as the journalism industry faces further and further cuts,” said Tom Murphy, co-Founder of DAWNS. “We have to find ways to report more, not less, on the global issues of poverty, violence and disease. These grants seek to support journalists and storytellers so that these important stories can be told.”
More information about the Humanitarian Reporting Grant Competition can be found at www.GlobalCitizen.org.
For further information please contact Jane Atkinson, GPP Global Director of Communications: jane.atkinson@globalpovertyproject.com or for media inquiries: Gingold@sunshinesachs.com
Social taboos are always difficult to address, but talking about them is something NGOs, and society as a whole, is getting much better at. Take the issue of sanitation – once a taboo – now a widely addressed issue with a day marking it.
A couple of weeks ago, I went to an event on the International Day against Female Genital Cutting (FGC), something which I knew very little about.
The World Health Organisation defines this practice as 'procedures that intentionally alter or cause injury to the female genital organs for non-medical reasons.'
There are many emotional, and mental effects of FGC. In a recent study, nearly half of girls who have undergone FGC met criteria indicating some from of mental disorder. The vast majority of girls describe feelings of 'intense fear, helplessness, horror, and severe pain.'
And it doesn't stop there. Stories such as the one below are only too common.
'I lost seven of my nine children in childbirth. Because of the scarring I sustained I was not elastic enough. All seven of them suffocated inside my womb.'
For a long time, FGC has been regarded as a cultural issue. It has been considered that we in the West must not 'impose our values' upon those who carry out practices like FGC in the developing world.
But that's simply not true. The movement to end this abhorrent practice is starting within Africa- not the West - community groups are rallying together and starting discussions on this issue, key to ending it. And slowly but surely, Africa citizens are putting down the preconceptions, that, for example, FGC is an issue dictated by religion, and engaging with Human Rights based educational programmes.
So we were delighted to hear that the Department for International Development announced this week a new programme to support the ending of FGC, worth up to £35 million. It expects to reduce the practice by nearly a third in at least ten selected countries over the next five years by working directly within local communities. It also aims to get laws in place in these countries and fund research into the most cost-effective approaches to end FGC, to maximise impact.
So, change is being made- starting in communities who carry out the practice and being supported by the West. But, with all problems, the solution has not been reached. We need to do more to get this discussion started in more communities that practice FGC. Organisations such as the Orchid Project's courageous advocacy work raises this issue in important arenas, such as at this recent event in the House of Lords.
At this point, cynics would still argue that we in the West shouldn't be involved in African moral issues. But you'd be mistaken in thinking this is just an African issue- 66,000 people are estimated to be living with FGC in the UK alone, with a further 20,000 at risk of being subjected to the practice.
So it's important that we take action here too, and we're so glad the government is taking action.
Let's continue to raise awareness of this issue, and end the matter within a generation. Find out more at the Orchid Project.
