A Prisoner of Hope

by: Avi Smolen

Fri Sep 23, 2011 at 17:27:02 PM EDT

“I am not an optimist.  I am a prisoner of hope.”  I heard these words uttered by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, retired Anglican bishop and one of the most ardent opponents of South African apartheid, at the Social Good Summit this week.  The Summit is a gathering of global leaders who come together to discuss how the power of innovative thinking and technology can solve our greatest challenges.  Archbishop Tutu shared the stage with Mary Robinson, former President of Ireland and UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. 

After I got over the shock of being in the presence of such inspiring individuals who have done so much for the good of humanity, I was able to focus on their message.  Archbishop Tutu and President Robinson share the belief that we all have the tools individually, and communally as a society, to solve the challenges that confront us.  I believe that this is true; just looking around in the auditorium I could see over two hundred other social justice activists tweeting and typing on laptops, iPads, and smart phones.  With the advent of social media and the continuing evolution of technology, we learn more easily of the injustices occurring around the globe.  However we also have the tools to mobilize and do something about it—sharing news stories on our blogs, texting to donate to a natural disaster, and tweeting about a new innovation, like the ingenious “slavery footprint” website that raises awareness about forced labor.

The causes that compel us to act are many.  In addition to Archbishop Tutu and President Robinson, we heard from Richard Gere speaking about nonviolent movements for peace, Muhammad Yunus explaining the benefits of microfinance, Tony Bates demonstrating the ability of Skype to facilitate interfaith and interethnic connection, and Ami Dar showing how we can do more with the strengths that we have by working together through a new platform on idealist.org.  The speakers, though varied in age, experience, and ambition, shared a common vision—that we can meaningfully impact our communities and our world.  This optimism was palpable in the room at the 92 Y and I left with the affirmation that we can achieve incredible results with a smart goal, determination, and the necessary resources.

Though it is easy to lose this positive outlook when confronted with headlines of political gridlock and a faltering economy, it is important to remember that there are incredible challenges that confront us as a society and we have the power to make a difference.   The work that we do at Progressive Jewish Alliance & Jewish Funds for Justice—promoting interfaith organizing, encouraging service learning, and investing in low-income communities to name just a few—speaks to this ability.  We and our partners in the social justice community see challenges facing our community and we gather our resources to find solutions.  This attitude is both profoundly Jewish and universally applicable.  We can do something today to change the world.  Let’s get started.

This article is cross-posted with Pursue.

$50 million for innovation

by: Rachel Berger

Fri Jul 23, 2010 at 12:26:18 PM EDT

The Social Innovation Fund, a White House initiative launched last year to invest $50 million dollars in innovative solutions to social challenges, announced its first round of grants this week. Not surprisingly, given the state of unemployment in the US, the biggest grant recipients were organizations that tackled joblessness through job training and workforce development. Good news for New Yorkers: the Mayors Fund to Advance New York City got $5.7 million dollars.

Unfortunately for the SIF (and for the country), a fascinating and lengthy article in the NYTimes on Monday explored the impact that training programs have on joblessness and the results were pretty grim. Federally funded “workforce development” programs are mostly short term classes that teach the basics of spreadsheets, word processors, and resume development. The federal government invests over $4 billion dollars from different sources, including the stimulus package in workforce development. But, even before the Great Recession, a study conducted by the Labor Department concluded that this type of training had “small or nonexistent” impact. Kal v’homer (as they say in yeshiva) in our current economy.

Breeding Respect for Indigenous Seeds

by: borderjumpers

Wed Feb 03, 2010 at 12:32:37 PM EST

Jessica Milgroom isn't your typical graduate student. Rather than spending her days in the library of Wageningen University in the Netherlands, her research is done in the field-literally. Since 2006, Jessica has been working with farming communities living inside Limpopo National Park, in southern Mozambique.

When the park was established in 2001, it was essentially "parked on top of 27,000 people," says Jessica. Some 7,000 of the residents needed to be resettled to other areas, including within the park, which affected their access to food and farmland. Jessica's job is to see what can be done to improve resettlement food security.

But rather than simply recommending intensified agriculture in the park to make better use of less land, Jessica worked with the local community to collect and identify local seed varieties. One of the major problems in Mozambique, as well as other countries in sub-Saharan Africa, is the lack of seed. As a result, farmers are forced to buy low-quality seed because nothing else is available.

In addition to identifying and collecting seeds, Jessica is working with a farmer's association on seed trials, testing varieties to see what people like best. In addition, farmers are learning how to purify and store seeds (see Innovation of the Week: Investing in Better Food Storage in Africa).

Weevils, the farmers tell Jessica, are worse than ever, destroying both the seed and crops they store in traditional open-air, granaries. But the farmers are now building newer granaries that are more tightly sealed and help prevent not only weevils but also mold and aflatoxins from damaging crops.

Today, farmers and breeders alike have a greater respect for Mozambique's indigenous seed varieties. According to Jessica, one of the biggest accomplishments of the project has been getting breeders and farmers to talk to each other. "It's been interesting for both groups," says Jessica, "and it needs to be a regular discussion" between them.

Building a Methane-Fueled Fire: Innovation of the Week

by: borderjumpers

Thu Jan 28, 2010 at 12:31:31 PM EST

For half the world's population, every meal depends on an open fire that is fueled by wood, coal, dung, and other smoke-producing combustibles. These indoor cookfires consume large amounts of fuel and emit carbon dioxide and other dangerous toxins into the air, blackening the insides of homes and leading to respiratory diseases, especially among women and children.

Biogas, however, takes advantage of what is typically considered waste, providing a cleaner and safer source of energy. Biogas units use methane from manure to produce electricity, heat, and fertilizer while emitting significantly less smoke and carbon monoxide than other sources of fuel. Access to an efficient, clean-burning stove not only saves lives-smoke inhalation-related illnesses result in 1.5 million deaths per year-it also reduces the amount of time that women spend gathering firewood, which the U.N. Development Programme (UNDP) estimates is 10 hours per week for the average household in some rural areas.

The IFAD-funded Gash Barka Livestock and Agricultural Development Project (GBLADP) helped one farmer in Eritrea, Tekie Mekerka, make the most of the manure his 30 cows produce by helping to install a biogas unit on his farm (similar to the unit that Danielle saw in Rwanda with Heifer International). Now, says Mekerka, "we no longer have to go out to collect wood for cooking, the kitchen is now smoke-free, and the children can study at night because we have electricity."Additionally, Mekerka is using the organic residue left by the biogas process as fertilizer for his family's new vegetable garden.

In Rwanda, the government is making biogas stove units more accessible by subsidizing installation costs, and it hopes to have 15,000 households nationwide using biogas by 2012.  While visiting with Heifer Rwanda, Danielle met Madame Helen Bahikwe, who, after receiving government help to purchase her biogas unit, is now more easily cooking for her 10-person family and improving hygiene on the farm with hot water for cleaning.

In China, IFAD found that biogas saved farmers so much time collecting firewood that farm production increased. In Tanzania, the Foundation for Sustainable Rural Development (SURUDE), with funding from UNDP, found that each biogas unit used in their study reduced deforestation by 37 hectares per year. And in Nigeria, on a much larger scale, methane and carbon dioxide produced by a water purifying plant is now being used to provide more affordable gas to 5,400 families a month, thanks to one of the largest biogas installations in Africa.

To read more about how waste can be turned into a source of fuel, energy, and nutrition see: Making Fuel Out of Waste, Growing Food in Urban "Trash," ECHOing a Need for Innovation in Agriculture, Keeping Weeds for Nutrition and Taste, and Vertical Farms: Finding Creative Ways to Grow Food in Kibera.

If you know of other ways people are making the most of their waste and would like to share it with us, we encourage you to leave a comment or fill out our agriculture innovation survey here.

More of Your Responses Are In

by: borderjumpers

Fri Jan 22, 2010 at 10:34:05 AM EST

For the past few months, we've been collecting information about agricultural innovations from all over the world (survey in English and French). We shared the initial responses in September and even more responses in November, but continue to receive interesting information and recommendations from farmers, NGOs, research groups, and policymakers in a multitude of countries. Below are a few tidbits we'd like to share.

The following projects, already featured on the Nourishing the Planet blog, have recently provided information for our survey, further describing their agricultural innovations and helping us as we seek to define innovations that best nourish people as well as the world in our upcoming report, State of the World 2011.

From our friends at the Developing Innovations in School Cultivation project in the Mukono District, Uganda: Describing the innovation as spreading a "passion for producing local foods to the next generation," Edward Mukiibi helped flesh out the details of his project by filling out the survey after Danielle's visit. You can read more here: Cultivating a Passion for Agriculture,  Conversations with Farmers: Discussing the School Garden with a DISC Project Student, and How to Keep Kids "Down on the Farm."

From Never Ending Food in Lilongwe, Malawi: The Nordins are educating others about permaculture and growing indigenous crops to increase income and improve food security. You can read about Danielle's visit to their home and farm here: Malawi's Real "Miracle" and Sweeping Change.

Please continue to share your agriculture innovations with us. We look forward to featuring your success stories on our blog and in Nourishing the Planet. Stay tuned for more updates from the survey-maybe next time it will be your innovation we highlight!

Innovation of the Week: Winrock International and Sylva Professional Catering Services Limited

by: borderjumpers

Thu Jan 14, 2010 at 10:02:25 AM EST

Sylvia Banda started Sylva Professional Catering Services Limited in 1986, even though just 30 years ago women weren't allowed to own businesses-or even eligible for loans-in Zambia. She began her business by serving people food she cooked and brought from home on what she calls, a "standing buffet," because she didn't have enough money for tables and chairs.

Not having furniture didn't stop Sylvia's business from taking off; she made almost a hundred dollars after a few days. And with her husband listed as the proprietor of her business because land rights are limited if not inaccessible to women in Zambia, Sylvia was able to grow her small "standing buffet" into three subsidiary businesses.

Sylva Professional Catering Services Limited is dedicated to creating, selling and serving nutritious foods, made from indigenous and traditional products that are purchased from local farmers and merchants. Sylvia provides work for 73 people and has developed partnerships with local development organizations, using her financial and popular success to become a proponent of farmer and employee training. She calls it "economic emancipation."  

Sylvia's success has benefited not just her own family, but the wider community as well. And Winrock International, an organization that collects examples of projects focused on sustainable food, improving livelihoods and preserving local food traditions, hopes to extend her positive impact even further still by making her case study available as a resource and model for potential entrepreneurs-and for policy makers and NGOs who support potential entrepreneurs-around the world.

For more information about Sylvia's work and other projects that are focusing on sustainable food, improving livelihoods and preserving local food traditions, see Winrock International's site on Community Food Enterprises.

Innovation of the Week: Land Grabs

by: borderjumpers

Wed Jan 06, 2010 at 12:35:03 PM EST

Cross posted from Nourishing the Planet. 

Over the last few years, China, India, and the Middle East have invested heavily in African land, spurred on by the global food and economic crises—as well as the threats of climate change, population growth, and water scarcity. By controlling agricultural land in Kenya, Ethiopia, and elsewhere on the continent, these nations hope to secure future food supplies for their populations, even as sub-Saharan Africa faces increasing hunger. At least 23 million people are currently at risk for starvation in the Horn of Africa. And this increasing foreign investment in African land has largely remained under the global radar. In addition, the push for alternative energy sources is driving investors to purchase land for energy crops, like corn and sugar cane, which can be used to produce biofuels instead of food.

Some experts argue that “land grabbing” or the investment in foreign soil is progress for agriculture, by bringing development and big agriculture to impoverished countries through the introduction of new technologies and jobs. But, as the article, The Great Land Grab, co-authored by Nourishing the Planet Advisory Group member Anuradha Mittal, explains, “corporate agribusiness has been known to establish itself in developing countries with the effect of either driving independent farmers off their land or metabolizing farm operation so that farmers become a class of workers within the plantation.”

Land grabs can come at a great cost to local farmers and communities. In Pakistan, for example, the United Arab Emirates purchased 324,000 hectares of land in the Punjab province. According to a local farmer’s movement, this purchase will displace an estimated 25,000 villagers in the province, where 94 percent of the people are subsistence farmers only utilizing about 2 hectares of land each. Because of these “land grabs,”not only are farmers removed from land, but the local economy also suffers.  Many hunger-stricken countries, such as Sudan and Kenya, will have to import foods that were once grown locally.

Community Investment as antidote to Enron-esqe financial wizardry

by: KenRosso

Thu Sep 25, 2008 at 14:01:50 PM EDT

Hannah,

 Thanks so much for bringing up the global financial crisis.  Global capitalism's enormous effect on billions of people stands in stark contrast to the small amount of information available to regular folks.  And, as my years of knocking on doors at PIRG demonstrated, many Americans believe that the winners in the financial system and the government have it mostly under control.  

 I have two key points for readers:

• One drives home an important radical (meaning, "at the source") critique of the financial mess
• The other point I'll make offers hope for both activists and believers in the benefical aspects of markets in general