The Drum Beat 336: MDG #1 - Addressing Poverty and Hunger

Millennium Development Goal (MDG) #1 is an effort to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger by halving, prior to 2015, the proportion of the world's population who live on less than one dollar a day and who are malnourished. How can communication initiatives and strategies contribute to the achievement of this Goal? This issue of The Drum Beat seeks to explore that question by sharing a small sampling of the ideas, experiences, and impact evidence contributed by members of The Communication Initiative network who are working to achieve MDG #1 in myriad ways around the world.

For background on MDG #1 and the other goals, click here.

Next month we will focus on MDG #2: Achieving Universal Primary Education. Please send your projects, articles, events, etc. to Deborah Heimann dheimann@comminit.com

 

CONTEXT

1. Poverty: Department for International Development Factsheet (Sept. 2005) [PDF]
"Provided economic growth remains on track, it is anticipated that global poverty will fall to 10% of the population by 2015, achieving the target. However, worldwide figures mask the true picture. Asia is making good progress, driven by growth in China and India; but there is little movement elsewhere and many countries in sub-Saharan Africa have gone backwards, seeing an increase in the proportion of people in extreme poverty. During the 1990s, millions more people fell into extreme poverty in Sub Saharan Africa."

2. Latin America Continues to Struggle with Economic Inequality
Statistics indicate that 16% of Latin Americans lived on a dollar or less a day, compared to 7% in the Middle East and Northern Africa and 5% in Eastern Europe and Central Asia.

3. UN Report Finds Arab Development Moving Slowly (Part 2 of 3)
The Arab tradition of aid for the poor, whether expressed politically or religiously, has led to less severe poverty in Arab countries than in some comparable regions. Despite this, per capita income has seen the lowest growth rate in the world apart from sub-Saharan Africa, and 1 in 5 Arabs lives on less than $2 per day.

4. Agriculture and Achieving the Millennium Development Goals
According to the World Bank, about 70% of those being addressed by the MDGs live in rural areas. This report highlights the importance of agriculture to achievement of the MDGs; for example, if Ethiopia stays on a business-as-usual growth path, poverty will increase by another 10 million people, and food security will be compromised even further. However, accelerated growth in stable crops, the livestock sector, and the nontraditional export sector would help cut the poverty rate by 16 percentage points to 27% by 2015.

5. Halving Hunger
The proportion of the hungry people has declined from 20% to 16% and absolute numbers have fallen slightly. But 852 million people are chronically or acutely malnourished; most live in Asia. Sub-Saharan Africa has 204 million hungry and is the only region where both general undernourishment and children's underweight status are increasing. Each year, hunger-related losses in labour productivity result in 6% to 10% in forgone GDP.

6. Is it Time to Change from Outside Horizontal to Indoor Vertical Farming?
Using today's vertical indoor farming technologies, 300 square feet of intensively farmed indoor space supports a single person. A single building 30 stories high with a city block footprint could feed 10,000 people.

7. Child Malnutrition in Ethiopia: Can Maternal Knowledge Augment The Role of Income?
by L. Christiaensen & H. Alderman
This paper explores the role of nutritional knowledge in reducing child malnutrition. It concludes that, if combined, income growth, increased female education, and improved nutritional knowledge would diminish the prevalence of child stunting by 14% to 31%.

8. Food and Agriculture Trends to 2030
The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) predicts that the number of hungry people in 2030 will be 440 million (world target for 2015 is 407 million).

COMMUNITY & YOUTH INVOLVEMENT TO RESOLVE POVERTY

9. Make Poverty History Teaching Resources - United Kingdom
Oxfam is providing free teaching resources and activity/curriculum ideas as part of a strategy for building the capacity of teachers to introduce their students to the issues behind the Make Poverty History campaign, and to mobilise them to get involved. In addition to printed teaching packs and posters, a website offers tools to help teachers plan their lessons in concert with major poverty-related events such as White Band Day; the goal is to "bring those events to life" by simulating them in the classroom.
Contact Anna Luise Laycock alaycock@oxfam.org.uk

10. Poverty Reduction Strategy Processes (PRSP) in Malawi and Zambia
This report argues that PRSP processes in Malawi and Zambia moved policy-making in a democratic direction, in part due to considerable participation, especially on the part of civil society. The new aid regime represents a break with the past, as economic policy-making is no longer seen as the preserve of a few government ministers and the international finance institutions. However, the absence of parliamentary involvement and the exclusion of political parties is a source of concern...

11. Enhancing Community Over the Airwaves: Community Radio in a Ghanaian Fishing Village
by Blythe McKay
This study explores the role that a community radio station, Radio Ada, plays in fishers' livelihoods and lives in Anyakpor, a fishing village in southeast Ghana. The researcher conducted interviews, participatory rural appraisal (PRA) activities, participant observation, and document analysis, which revealed that Radio Ada is enabling fishers to learn about their livelihoods from each other. This medium provides them with useful information for their work; promotes culture, identity, and community; providing access to news; creates opportunities for voice/dialogue; and establishes a level of trust.

12. Women and ICTs: Mediating Social Change [video]
This 15-minute video describes the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Learning Centre for Women in Seelampur, India, a poverty-stricken area in New Delhi, and the ways that new ICT models and approaches can be used to help meet economic development goals.

13. Using Communication for Social Change to Build Social Capital for Bangladeshis Who Are Ultrapoor
This article details the BRAC Advocacy and Human Rights Unit's communication for social change programme in Bangladesh. The programme draws on video and audio performances to supplement a popular theatre production in which community members are engaged as active audience participants in order to stimulate their own decision making and action to address abject poverty and other issues. The authors found that 60% of performances result in formation of a permanent jogajog (communication forum).

14. Rough Guide to a Better World Campaign - United Kingdom
The Department for International Development (DFID) is urging British individuals to use their power as consumers to help help meet MDG #1 and the other MDGs. A free printed guide to ethical consumerism and an interactive website feature people from developing countries telling their own stories. Volunteerism is one of the focus points of the guide; to support and stimulate that means of taking action, all the people involved in developing and promoting the campaign (many of them celebrities) have donated their services. While stressing how much work is yet to be done, the book strives to encourage further action by highlighting progress that has already been made - and by urging media to attend to more subtle tales of increasing prosperity among people in economically poorer parts of the world.
Contact enquiry@dfid.gov.uk

15. Growing Up in Asia: Plan's Strategic Framework for Fighting Child Poverty in Asia 2005 - 2015
by Amer Jabry
The report outlines Plan International's child centred community development (CCCD) approach, which is rights-based and involves children, families and communities as active participants in their own development. Plan will use the CCCD approach to tackle different aspects of children's poverty by:

• encouraging children to take part in decisions that affect them
• enabling community members to develop their skills
• collaborating with groups who share the same goals
• extending successful solutions to reach as many communities as possible
• working to change people's attitudes and behaviour
• persuading governments to apply more child-friendly policies

INFORMATION & COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGIES VS. HUNGER

16. Bridging the Rural Digital Divide (BRDD) - Global
Implemented by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), governments, and other international agencies, BRDD uses interactive information and communication technologies (ICTs) to highlight innovative approaches to reducing poverty and hunger. Launched at the first phase of the World Summit on the Information Society, BRDD centres around online knowledge exchanges that are designed to establish networks and communities of practice among rural communities and households, rural service providers, and policy-makers and their advisers. Stakeholders are actively encouraged to submit examples of their own experiences in using ICT successfully to address hunger and support rural livelihoods.
Contact Charlotte A. Masiello-Riome Charlotte.Masiello@fao.org OR digital-divide@fao.org

17. Food Force - Global
According to the World Food Programme, 852 million people are chronically hungry, a number that is rising by 10 million a year; of these, some 25,000 die each day of hunger and related ailments, which kills more than TB, malaria and AIDS combined. This humanitarian video game is designed to help children understand the nature and extent of this problem by simulating the challenges of aid workers reaching people with food in times of crisis. Available as a free download, the game is enhanced by an interactive website that features information about hunger, as well as ideas for how to effect change at school or at home. There have been over 3 million Food Force downloads since April 2005.
Contact Jennifer Parmelee Jennifer.Parmelee@wfp.org OR Trevor Rowe rowe@un.org OR Maggie Carrington carringtonm@un.org OR info@food-force.com

18. Feeding Minds, Fighting Hunger - Global
Launched on World Food Day 2000, this global education initiative for schools and youth groups is designed to enable and encourage teachers and young people to become actively involved in creating a world free from malnutrition. The interactive web-based project is designed to stimulate interactive discussions through online modules in 13 languages. The website provides a forum to foster exchange of ideas and experiences; a Youth Window provides information, resources and activities in an effort to interest and motivate teens inside or outside the classroom to join in global efforts to end hunger.
Contact Valeria Menza fmfh@fao.org

19. Rice Knowledge Bank - Global
This portal is meant to address hunger by providing online access to the latest rice farming and production information. One of International Rice Research Institute (IRRI)'s aims is to facilitate local training courses through a feature that allows materials to be uploaded to the website, thereby collecting and transforming tacit knowledge into explicit knowledge. IRRI opted not to provide direct assistance to poor rice farmers, who often have no access to even the most basic infrastructure, but, rather, to try to reach those who could help them (members of non-governmental organisations, government extension officers, scientists) through this website, which attracted over 2.5 million hits in 2004, and use continues to grow.
Contact David Shires d.shires@cgiar.org

20. Information and Communication Technologies for Sharing of Agriculture Information in Rural India - India
This research-centred project assesses farmers' information needs relevant to the internet and builds an information and communication technology (ICT) system to disseminate agricultural knowledge for problem solving. Aiming to empower farmers, the project will be implemented at village level, with a focus on fostering community involvement in ICT use through the two participating local organisations (one of which is geared toward women, the Society for Women Education and Environmental Training). ICTs are meant to be a tool for connecting rural dwellers to relevant institutions that can enable more effective interventions based on use of local knowledge and skills.
Contact Dr (Mrs). Sandhya Shenoy nss@naarm.ernet.in

21. Ichi Chalo (This World in Which We Live) - Zambia
The World Food Programme (WFP) is using radio to highlight risks to food security in Zambia, where a food crisis in 2002 threatened 2.9 million people. The strategy involves using entertainment - in the form of a soap opera that is "approachable and fun for people to listen to" - alongside serious discussion of development issues as part of an effort to disseminate information and motivate changes in behaviour. By translating and adapting the original show from English into Zambia's 7 main indigenous languages, the WFP hopes the programme will reach over 6 million people - more than 50% of the population.
Contact Richard Ragan wfpinfo@wfp.org

22. Knowledge and Information for Food Security in Africa: From Traditional Media to the Internet
by Loy Van Crowder, William Lindley, Wendy Truelove, Jean Pierre Ilboudo & Riccardo Del Castello
This publication draws on a range of experiences dealing with communication technologies in Africa - from rural radio and traditional media to the internet - in order to examine the role of knowledge and information for food security.

EVALUATING PROGRESS TO REDUCE POVERTY

23. Are Universal Poverty Measures Useful? (Part 2 of 2)
Most poverty indicators are based on household surveys that assume that all members of a household share income and resources equally; this results in underestimating the number of women and children living in poverty. The Social Summit Programme of Action defines absolute poverty as "a condition characterized by severe deprivation of basic human needs [that] depends not only on income but also on access to social services." Economist Amartya Sen believes that "poverty must be seen as the deprivation of basic capabilities rather than merely as lowness of incomes." Based on either of these definitions the number of people living in absolute poverty grows by about 500 million.

24. Evaluating Anti-Poverty Programs
by Martin Ravallion
Martin Ravallion explores experimental and non-experimental methods for evaluating anti-poverty programmes, stressing that "we need a richer set of impact parameters than has been traditional in evaluation practice." Information and communication technologies (ICTs) are key to one of the methodologies Ravallion endorses: "the idea of combining spending maps with poverty maps for rapid assessments of the targeting performance of a decentralized anti-poverty program is a promising illustration of how, at modest cost, standard monitoring data can be made more useful for providing information on how the program is working and in a way that provides sufficiently rapid feedback to a project to allow corrections along the way..."

25. Advocacy Impact Assessment Guidelines
by Megan Lloyd Laney
The Department for International Development (DFID) indicates that it is difficult to find concrete evidence of the contributions that advocacy makes towards poverty eradication. This resource provides guidelines for an approach that many non-governmental organisations (NGOs) take to assess advocacy impacts: changes in policies and their implementation, private sector change, strengthening civil society, aiding democracy and improving the material situation of individuals.

26. Up-Scaling Pro-poor ICT-Policies and Practices: A Review of Experience with Emphasis on Low Income Countries in Asia and Africa
by Richard Gerster & Sonja Zimmermann
The authors believe that the implementation of poverty reduction strategies (PRS) can play an important role in achieving the MDGs and empowering people who live in poverty. They point to a number of strategies for scaling up poverty reduction through ICTs, stressing that advocacy at the national level is "key". They contend that global declarations are useful based on the extent to which they are heard by governments, civil society and the private sector - regionally, nationally and locally. They also urge global coalitions to advance opportunities and security for people in poverty, focusing on gender equality, education, health, and democracy. Further, they suggest that South-South networking and dialogue be pursued intensively.

27. Do More Transparent Governments Govern Better?
by Roumeen Islam
Using two kinds of indicators, Roumeen Islam finds that "information gives power to monitor and make good choices"; thus, "a significant and positive correlation between transparency and improved governance gives us pause to think: just giving better data to people can help countries do better." Islam's analysis also shows that "better decision-making in economic and political markets boosts growth", which suggests that "advising countries on the importance of...making this data widely available is policy advice that can boost economic growth."

28. Grameen Telecom's Village Phone Programme: A Multi-Media Case Study
by Dr. Don Richardson, Ricardo Ramirez & Moinul Haq
This evaluation examines the extent to which a private sector development programme in the telecom sector can make a contribution to poverty reduction and rural social and economic development. GrameenPhone developed a pilot programme which involves providing micro-credit cellular phone service to women operators and users at large. The project currently involves 950 operators providing telephone access to more than 65,000 people; the income they derive is about 24% of the household income on average (in some cases it was as high as 40%).

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This issue was written by Kier Olsen DeVries.

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The Drum Beat seeks to cover the full range of communication for development activities. Inclusion of an item does not imply endorsement or support by The Partners.

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