May 18, 2013

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Dear Mr. President…

January 17, 2009 by

As Obama takes office next week, I hope his administration does not turn back on its commitment to leadership in global health and development. The official Change.gov website claims: "Obama and Biden will embrace the Millennium Development Goal of cutting extreme poverty and hunger around the world in half by 2015, and they will double our foreign assistance to achieve that goal." The non-partisan Brookings Institute's Colin Bradford and Noam Unger wrote a brief memo to the President-elect, entitled "Redefine America's Global Development Cooperation," … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Blog, Hunger Tagged With: , ,

Making the Internet Work (for East Africa)

January 5, 2009 by

I have no real clue how the internet really works. I just know a bunch of tricks to try when my wireless system decides not to cooperate. Given easy frustration with the last steps of the connection, it is easy to overlook the fact that the global internet system relies on actual cables. Until, of course, they get cut. Evidently three of the cables providing service to countries in the Middle East and Asia are "thought to have been damaged by a ship" off the coast of Sicily earlier this month. While the affected countries have been able to re-route much … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Blog, Hunger

Access to Information Begets Innovation

December 23, 2008 by

At 14 years old ,William Kamkwamba, a young man in northern Malawi, taught himself how to build windmills for power generation.  Drawing inspiration from a book he took from a local library, he constructed several windmills out of available materials, and used them to power lights, and a radio. You can learn about his work in an excellent YouTube video called Moving Windmills. His work on windmills earned him press attention in 2006 and he was a guest speaker at the 2007 TED conference, an organization focused on bringing together innovators in … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Blog, Climate Change, Hunger Tagged With:

Could Carbon Trade Secure Livelihoods for Small Farmers?

December 6, 2008 by

Hi all, My name is Matt Podolin. I'm a senior at Wesleyan University, majoring in government, history, and economics. I have spent time in East Africa studying health and development and am excited to start sharing these ideas through the AID blog. The UN Climate Change Conference kicked off in Poland on Dec 1st. This may seem like something for AID’s environment folks, but climate change can have a huge impact on development issues. The effects of climate change are felt quite severely by those who can least afford it: farmers with small plots of … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Blog, Climate Change, Hunger Tagged With: , , ,