Poverty Alleviation Through Business: New Monitor Group Report
Great review of the current wave of creative business models emerging as a response to poverty and environmental challenges worldwide. This report highlights seven successful business models that have been tried and tested in various low-income, rural areas as poverty alleviation initatives. Interesting read on a rapidly evolving market: “Emerging Markets, Emerging Models“.
African Rural University preps Ugandan Women as Innovative Landowners
The first class of Ugandan women are soon to graduate ARU, an agricultural training university in Western Uganda specializing in systems-thinking and visionary business ideas to eradicate local poverty. The Uganda Rural Development and Training Programme (URDT) hopes to export this field-based university model for local adaption across Western Africa. More information at MediaGlobal.
Poverty Permanently Damages Early Childhood Development
Recent studies show that poverty has permanent damaging effects on children, affecting their social and physiological health for the rest of their life. Most notable damage is language and memory, attributed to excessive levels of stress hormones in the body. This does not even take into account damaging effects of inadequate nutrition or environmental toxins attributed to low socio-economic status.
Jack Shonkoff, director of Harvard University’s centre on the developing child, said policymakers had to take note of the research because “the foundation of all social problems later in life takes place in the early years.”The earlier you intervene [to counteract the impact of poverty], the better the outcome in the end, because the brain loses its plasticity [adaptability] as the child becomes older,” he said.
Article published by the Financial Times.
Green For All
What comes first on the agenda: Poverty or environmental issues?
Why not both?
Green For All has a simple but ambitious mission: to help build a green economy strong enough to lift people out of poverty. By advocating for a national commitment to job training, employment and entrepreneurial opportunities in the emerging green economy- especially for people from disadvantaged communities. Green for All will fight both poverty and pollution at the same time. GFA is committed to creating “green pathways out of poverty” for hundreds of thousands of people in the United States, by greatly expanding federal government and private sector commitments to “green-collar” jobs.
Green For All is led by Van Jones, founder of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights in Oakland, CA. It launched at the Clinton Global Initiative this fall in New York. Partnerships include the Apollo Alliance, Color for Change, and regional initiatives such as Sustainable South Bronx.
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January 24, 2008, 7:46 am
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“Here’s to the trouble-makers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules, and have no respect for the status-quo. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.”
