Awareness
Absurdity of Focusing on Outputs- Does Aid Matter?
Injustice and oppression is at the heart of poverty. Ultimately, collective action and social activism is key to making a difference rather than billions of dollars of money.
This would be a summary that I would make from attending the City of Sydney event last night focusing on the Millennium Development Goals (MDG). Three excellent speakers presented thoughtful and engaging addresses followed by a short time of question and answer.
The speakers were:
- Prof. Stuart Rees, Director Sydney Peace Foundation
- Steve Killelea, Founder Global Peace Index
- Mark McPeak, Director Childfund Australia
There was a general consensus of the reality that the MDG won’t be met by 2015. These were aspirational goals from the outset in 2000. Nobody really expected success, and progress that has been achieved should be celebrated.
Good points were made:
- MDG have proved a good tool for cooperation and focus
- Success in the MDG is influenced by the bias in figures resulting in progress in India and China
One concern is the degree to which money that has been pledged hasn’t been received. Of the US$25 billion pledged to Africa from the G8 Countries, only 40% has been received. Who then do we blame for lack of progress in Africa, for the best of death that extended across sub-Saharan Africa? I don’t think it is as easy as to say: “It is the fault of the rich countries. They all should have given more.” Would that really have solved the problem?
The problem in this respect really is the grand statements that are made by political leaderships of such countries followed by no delivery of the money to back it up.
Consider this figure cited: that the fiscal stimulus over the last 18 months given to banks exceeds the total amount of aid given to Africa ever. Fair? Reasonable? Complex.
Mark McPeak raised an interesting point about the absurdity of focusing on outputs. Using the example of solving hunger, he argued that if on 1 January 2015 every food vender made sandwiches on that day and we then distributed them globally, we would have ‘solved’ hunger…. Yes, but for how long.
Hunger. There are other needs we all need than just the next meal. The next meal is important, but there is more needs to life than are measured by such outcomes.
Stuart Rees made a good point that when organisations had little money from grants and aid, people would cooperate like mad. Now with so much competition for funding, brand and messaging have become all important. Time to step back from the commodification of ‘doing good’.
The evening ended on a positive note. This is a contested space. It is up to us to fix it. There will be more problems and challenges to face in the future. Let’s start by developing a better understanding the ‘other’ which is an essential step of making the world a better place for all.
Please support this through sponsoring the 10 City Bridge Run for $24.
Sheryl WuDunn: Our century’s greatest injustice
Women and girls aren’t the problem. They are the solution.
A story about turning oppression into opportunity.
Take 18 minutes to watch this TED video from Sheryl WuDunn‘s talking about her book “Half the Sky” investigating the oppression of women globally. This is an unapologetic and shocking story.
Thanks to Tiffany for sharing this video.
Millennium Development Goals- Gap Too Wide for 2015?
Among the 64 countries with high child mortality rates (defined as 40 or more deaths per 1,000 live births), only 9 are on track to meet the MDG target on child survival. The highest rates of child mortality continue to be found in sub- Saharan Africa.
Over the last week I have reviewed the first six of the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDG). The news isn’t great- there is a consideration gap to be achieved before 2015, and in some areas it would seem like an impossibility.
This isn’t a case of just providing more aid, or political leaders reinforcing policy, or better management of process. In many cases, the environmental and circumstantial nature of the situation is so diabolical and complex it needs change across generations not years.
Tonight at the City of Sydney talk on the MDG I will be listening to hear what people have to say about this. I am more concerned about what happens in 2016 and beyond. I remain sceptical of the benefit that came from the high-level United Nations (UN) conference on the MDG last month. Why was so much money spent travelling there? Was everyone who attended needed in New York? Why did we hear nothing about a fall-back plan should the likely scenario of failure to meet these goals eventuate?
I dread to think that 2015 will be just like another UN conference held last year in Copenhagen. Dashed hopes and wasted opportunity.
Here is the shortfall noting the significant areas:
- Decline in employment since the global financial crisis.
- Hunger has worsened with the decline in employment.
- One in four children in the ‘developing world’ remain underweight. Twice as likely to be the case in rural areas.
- Hopes dim for universal education by 2015, especially among girls.
- Women continue to fall victim of ‘more vulnerable forms of employment’.
- Child deaths are falling but not quick enough to reach the target.
- Gains in measles at risk to insufficient fund to eradicate the disease.
- In sub-Saharan Africa, diarrhoea, malaria and pneumonia cause more than half of under-five deaths (these are all preventable diseases)
- More than 350,000 women die annually from complications during pregnancy or childbirth, almost all of them — 99 per cent — in developing countries.
- The maternal mortality rate is declining only slowly, even though the vast majority of deaths are avoidable.
- In sub-Saharan Africa, a woman’s maternal mortality risk is 1 in 30, compared to 1 in 5,600 in developed regions.
- Every year, more than 1 million children are left motherless. Children who have lost their mothers are up to 10 times more likely to die prematurely than those who have not.
- Adolescent birth rates remain unacceptably high.
- Poor education about contraception remains at a troubling level.
- HIV remains the leading cause of death among reproductive-age women worldwide.
- An estimated 33.4 million people were living with HIV in 2008, two thirds of them in sub-Saharan Africa.
- Malaria kills a child in the world every 45 seconds. Close to 90 per cent of malaria deaths occur in Africa, where it accounts for a fifth of childhood mortality.
Is this a gap too wide to cross before 2015? Is this the wrong question to ask, and should it be framed in a different light?
I’ll review this tomorrow after attending the City of Sydney talk.
Out of Reach? City of Sydney talks MDG
I am still working through the irony of hundred of people flying to New York to spend great sums of money on accommodation and the life’s littles luxuries like coffee to talk about poverty… Was anything achieved other than a gee-up from world leaders to say we have to do better? Could it have been better achieved with a couple of emails? I don’t know, and I wasn’t there either.
But before anyone set foot onto Manhattan, what the world did know was that it is not working. Back to the lead question: “Is the seemingly impossible possible?”
Want to know more? Find out at the City of Sydney presentation tomorrow night at the Surry Hills library. Click here to find out more.
I hope to see you there!
The Only Limits Are Those of Vision
My friend Fay spoke at a recent breakfast about a friend attempting the impossible: climbing to the Everest Base Camp, with the added challenge of blindness.
Here is what she wrote as an update- a good news story!
For those who might recall my response to what impossible thing we were going to tackle today (at a recent breakfast) when I nominated a colleague’s efforts to reach Everest Base Camp, I’m pleased to report that he reached it – good work for any 47 year-old father of two, but simply amazing for a man who lost his sight in an accident at age seven. Anyone who has trekked in the Himalayas knows the effort involved – unimaginable to do it blind. But he imagined it, and did it.
While I was trekking the Routeburn, in New Zealand, I met an 82 year-old woman who had trekked thousands of kilometres, and she didn’t start until she retired at 60. When I asked her secret, she said ‘You just put one foot in front of the other’. Indeed.
In this fast-forward, instant-gratification society we can lose sight of the power of putting one foot in front of the other and the imagination to challenge yourself to do things which seem impossible because they will require huge amounts of effort and trust and assistance.
We all need to get over ourselves and our fears of failure and just attempt more – sometimes we succeed. And if we don’t, so what, in the scheme of things we are not important and most people are too focussed on their own inadequacies to take much notice of their neighbour’s.
Thanks Fay.
So what are you going to tackle today that is impossible?
Walking at last
Walking to the gym tonight for a session of stretching I passed a family of five or so idly standing across the footpath. A little toddler, eyes fixed ahead, started unsteadily walking toward his father from his sister across the path I was to pass.
I tried to sidestep the child, but instead seemed to be like a magnet and for a few seconds it was as though we were doing some strange dance together. I stood and watched, the child reached his father, then staggered off in the direction of more adventure.
The father and I exchanged a few remarks. It turns out this child had been walking only less than a week. Everything was before him now. The family encouraging his every move- doting in wonder.
How remarkable a young child is, and how wrong that so many children particularly in Sub-Sarahan Africa never reach the age to take their first steps. This should be a sobering reflection for us all.
What if it were you instead?
Six Bridges of Separation: Kyle Sandilands
Kyle, Kyle, Kyle! When will you realise there is more to this world than yourself!
Now I don’t know Kyle- I only know what I read in the media. I think he is a likeable fellow. Good humour, or at least well-intentioned. Always ready with a smile and few gags.
Sometimes I feel sorry for Kyle. He has been through a rough patch recently. Many of us have been down the same road ourselves, so I can empathise.
I saw a report today in Sydney’s The Daily Telegraph that Kyle “vows to take down Clover Moore” over increased regulation of opening hours for licensed venues. Living in Kings Cross myself, I know what a loss to the city cutting back drinking hours would bring. For a start, the zoo that visits Kings Cross from about 11 pm toward the end of the week would disappear. That would be a loss.
Sandilands has a personal interest in fighting the proposed changes to the legislation, having bought into the Kings Cross nightclubs Piano Room and Trademark alongside his business manager Andrew Hawkins just two months ago.
I would like to challenge Kyle on this issue. I think he could better spend his time talking about the needs of those in extreme poverty. But here’s the rub: I don’t know him, and I am only in town until Friday. I would need to speak to him this week, and on air.
So please help out. Build the bridge to Kyle Sandilands (can we prove that we really are all connected by six bridges of separation?), and lets make not only Sydney but the world a better place.
Irony in Fighting Poverty: Welcome to the consumerist age
My friend Armen made an interesting reflection the other day during a conversation. Like much of what he says, I needed to give it a day or two to think it over.
Hear me out, but I think there might be something in this.
I was walking past Town Hall Station yesterday and within the space of 100 metres passed three different groups of charity groups looking for people to ‘sign up’ for their cause. Each one had something to do with children and poverty. Each one had a different coloured t-shirt. All of them had slick looking sales materials and a well-rehearsed delivery just waiting for their next customer. Walking down the street I was conscious of them sizing me up and wondering whether I should be their next conversation.
These were people selling a solution to a need you didn’t know you had yet. You could buy your very own monthly subscription to ‘doing good’.
Armen was suggesting that much of the material presented by these groups related to the immediate physical needs of those in poverty. Maybe that is fair enough, given the lack of everything in which they live. And it also makes the message easier to communicate. Poster children for poverty. We look at the photographs and immediately assume so much. Nothing is really said about a spiritual or psychological need. Do these needs matter when someone is dying from physical want?
Over dinner tonight I spoke about this with my friend Bernie. Had we become consumers of ‘doing good’? Were we more influenced by brand and messaging than by actual need?
Bernie has some good experience in this area with the arts so it was interesting to hear what she had to say. Ethical issues of what is important and how we as individuals and society decide this. She also raised the important point that money is necessary to run an organisation.
What do we lose by becoming more consumer orientated?
I Dare You
The most powerful force of change on the planet is a girl. (Thanks to the input from my friends Judith, Anne and Billy who challenged this statement. I would reword it replacing ‘force of change’ with ‘force for change’. What do you think? Does it make a difference?)
Six Bridges To Kevin Bacon
Here is something you might not know about the 10 City Bridge Run. It is an initiative about participation. Not through running, but bridge building.
It relies wholly on sponsorship. Starting with nothing but an idea, the premise was to see what change might be possible working only through the participation of others. And we are off to a good start, but still need more support to complete the journey successfully.
Sponsorship is recognised through the book “Above the Line” which will feature 1,000 of the 24,000 photographs collected of people making bridges between themselves and others during the next 30 days from when the running commences. The 24,000 photographs will be presented to the G20 Summit leadership (President of Korea) as a ‘pictorial petition’ for better design of the global economy through the consideration of the needs of those in extreme poverty.
It presents a new business model described as a social business. It is not a not-for-profit. It is not a movement. It is about the collective ‘we’ showing our interest or care to make a difference. It is ‘for-purpose’, in this case to raise awareness of an individual’s capacity to influence extreme poverty.
Granted, most people are giving a lot already in their own ways, and engaged in a lot of great work supporting their communities and causes. But please note that here, sponsorship is very small. As little as $24, and as only as much as $240.
It is not a spectator sport. Please join me on the journey. Please consider becoming a sponsor yourself.
Right now I am wondering whether it is possible to connect Six Bridges To Kevin Bacon. Anyone can play this game! All you have to do is forward this blog post to someone you know…the hard part will be working out how many steps it took to reach Kevin. (I am going to start by forwarding it to six of my friends on Facebook).
So what happens once Kevin is reading this? This is what I would like to ask Kevin personally, but I need others to build the bridge to get the message to him:
Hi Kevin, would you please support me on the 10 City Bridge Run by becoming a Span Sponsor for $240? Thanks for your consideration. I hope you will join me on this journey.
To everyone reading this- Thanks for taking part. This is more than a game. We have the potential to create a big difference. Drop me an email or become a sponsor and then I can let you know when we hear back from Kevin.
Kevin- you are already a legend, and you would be a top bloke in my book if you would be a mate and support this initiative.
Building Bridges 