A lack of local raw materials makes it expensive to build and your community is isolated due to poor road infrastructure. Now imagine you are one of a growing number of OVC – Orphans & Vulnerable Children – what chance do you stand?

Geo-POD, a Leicester based organisation, thinks it may have the solution – a low cost, flat packed style modular building called a ‘POD’. Three versions – medi-POD, edu-POD and trade-POD are grouped together to form a Geo-POD facility.

Partnership working has seen students from De Montfort University studying the challenge of designing practical items for use in developing countries. Katherine Mackie, a 3^rd year design student said, “I chose Geo-POD as my final year project as it involves solving real world problems and provides the opportunity to test my prototype in Africa later this year”.

After 3 years of planning the pilot site has been located in Ghana. Elvis Morris Donkoh, Executive Director of the Alliance for Youth Development, a NGO registered in Ghana said “I’m very happy to be working in partnership with Geo-POD and being able to provide the land for the pilot, means the people of my district will benefit.

The aim of the organization is helping the underprivileged to bridge the Developmental gap that exists between the more endowed communities to the less ones to meet the ever-growing challenges of this world.

Geo-POD founder John Coster added, “I’m pleased the pilot site will be at the orphanage run by Elvis as it provides the chance to prove the model. We have received support from Motorola with their innovative mobile phone base station powered by wind and solar panels as communications are vital for success.”

John said, “The buildings will be made locally and create much needed employment in the district. Leicester residents have been volunteering on the project and plan to visit the site to help its construction”.

Dowa District Hospital matron Rosemary Bilesi told The Guardian that six weeks ago police brought a newly born baby suspected to have been delivered in a maize field from an unknown mother.

“After examining the baby we established that she was only a day old and gone through a very cold night before a passerby discovered it and immediately alerted the police,” said Bilesi. “We quickly treated the baby to clear any infections it might have been taken the long hours she spent in open air.”

Bilesi said the hospital contacted Hallima Daudi for her to assist identifying an orphanage in Lilongwe where the baby could be kept as police carried out their investigations, but upon arrival at Lumbadzi Daudi and her children decided to take the baby into their home.

“My husband was away when the baby was brought in an ambulance, but when I and my children saw the beautiful baby we agreed to take it as a member of the family,” said Daudi. “I have three boys and one girl, but now my daughter has a sister.

She said her husband was also attracted to the baby that he accepted that the family adopts it, saying it was God’s arrangement that of all people in the district the hospital officials chose Daudi’s wife to identify a suitable home for the little one.

“Sometimes we can not understand God’s plans,” said Charlie Daudi.  “Why did the matron pick on my wife? I am happy to look after the baby as part of the family.”

Dowa police spokesperson Kondwani Kandiado confirmed that the baby was discovered by herd boys wrapped in a plastic bag at Mvera on 6 August, 2008 who took it to the nearby police station.

Kandiado said the police had not made any arrests, but were still investigating and asking for tips from the general public.

“This is not common in Dowa,” said Kandiado. “I think mostly we deal with cases of child labour whereby boys brought from other districts to work in farms find themselves stranded and need assistance to go back to their homes.”

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The second phase of the project consists of offering free school and feeding to HIV orphans and other orphans and vulnerable children of the district so that they can attend school.

The third phase of the project will consist of offering free year-round boarding school to HIV orphans and other orphans from the Central Region on a continuous basis.

Click for further reading http://www.aydghana.org

Lack of basic living facilities like shelter and clothing and balanced diet for a child can contribute significantly to disorders in a child’s development.

Children whose love and belonging needs are replaced with feeling of hatred, rejection and isolation have difficulty developing as normal children without mental disorders.

It is absolutely imperative to shelter these OVCs and give them an opportunity of growing up as normal children do.

For this reason the organisation has established an orphanage at Asebu in the Abura Asebu Kwamankese District Central Region which is know as “Children’s Home of Hope” to care for these orphans and vulnerable Children.

It is this facility which will act as the focal point for the Geo-POD pilot.

The aim of the organization is helping underprivileged to bridge the Developmental gap that exists between the more endowed communities to the less ones to meet the ever-growing challenges of this world.

Please click below to visit the website for the Alliance for Youth Development.

http://www.aydghana.org/

Still, Zambia is diverging from the rest of mankind. Its tax system has until last month been so lenient that most of the new copper profit have gone to the foreign companies that now own the mines. And the political and economic collapse of neighbouring Zimbabwe has meant a loss of trade.

Zambians remain in the “bottom billon” of the earth’s poorest people- those whom Ban Ki Moon, the secretary general of the United Nations, declared would be the focus of development efforts for 2008. If the United Nations, whose general assembly convenes on Monday, really rises to this challenge, how can it help the countries in the bottom billion? Presumably by more vigorous pursuit of its Millennium Development Goals, whose shaky progress toward ending poverty by 2015 is now subject to mid-term review.

The Millennium Development Goals have been a major improvement on the unfocused agenda for poverty that preceded them, but the world has changed radically since they were announced on which they are based need to be rethought.

The World Bank has just raised the bean count of global poverty to 1.4 billion people, from just under a billion. It had previously overestimated the level of Chinese and Indian per capita incomes, so the count now shows that the number of poor Chinese and Indians far exceeds the number of poor Africans. The big difference between a poor Asian household and an equally poor African one is hope, not necessarily for the present generation of adults but for their children.

Hope makes a difference in people’s ability to tolerate poverty; parents are willing to sacrifice as long as their children have a future. Our top priority should be providing credible hope where it has been lacking. The African countries in the bottom billion have missed out on the prolonged period of global growth that the rest of the world has experienced.

The UN’s goal should not be to help the poor in fast-growing and middle-income countries; it should do its utmost to help the bottom billion to catch up. Anti-poverty efforts should be focused on the 60 or so countries – most of them in Africa- that are both poor and persistently slow-growing.

A future weakness with the Millennium Development Goals is that they are devoid of strategy; their only remedy is more aid. I am not hostile to aid. I think we should increase it, though given the looming recession in Europe and North America, I doubt we will. But other policies on governance, agriculture, security and trade could be used to potent effect.

The American bio-fuel scam – the ethanol subsidies that have diverted 30 percent of American corn away from the food supply – and the European ban on genetically modified seeds, imitated by Africa, have both contributed to Africa’s worsening food shortage. Where is the United Nations pressure for an end to these follies? Why, also, did the United Nations not intervene militarily when the democratic government of Mauritania, another country in the bottom billion, was overthrown by a coup last month?

Where is an alternative initiative to open international trade to poor countries now that the Doha round talks have collapsed? Above all, with a five-year-old commodities boom transferring wealth to some of the countries of the bottom billion, where are the international guidelines on taxation and investment that might help these countries convert earning from exports of depleting minerals into productive assets like roads and schools?

I applaud Ban Ki Moon. Like Robert Zoellick, the World Bank President, Ban is offering more thoughtful leadership on development strategy that has been provided for decades. But he has been stymied by the powerful countries’ failure to rally to his call to focus on the poorest countries. No nation, not even the United States, is now sufficiently dominant for its actions to be decisive. International coordination is needed more than ever. For all its manifest limitations, the United Nations must work.

International coordination has been, indeed, the great achievement of the Millennium Development Goals; all the major donor countries have bought into them. But they should now be revised so as to focus on the challenge of helping the bottom billion to converge with the rest of mankind- and on a more realistic time scale. We need not just a year of the bottom billion, but several decades. This session of the United Nations is an appropriate moment to get started.

Paul Collier, a professor at Oxford, is the author of “The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries Are Failing and What Can Be Done About it.”

Article from International Herald Tribune www.iht.com

How will history remember this generation? Its likely to be the “War on Terror” and “Global warming”.

We have the ability and resources to solve most, if not all of the world’s problems, and hunger, along with poverty is definately one of them. We live in a world of surplus, yet we seem unable to redistribute this surplus to those that would benefit most.

It’s the generation who bought into the whole ‘Live Aid’ phenomenon, believing they could do something to help. Then with the ‘Live 8′ concerts and G8 summit in the summer of 2005, this generation again felt that after twenty years, we would enter the final chapter of the global fight againest injustice and finally make “Poverty History”. We had entered a new Millennium and we were making progress with this clearly defined purpose.

The politicians have only delivered the minimum to keep us all quiet and disappointed with the outcome. They got us all to buy the ‘white’ rubber bands to show our support, that millions of people did, only to find out it was a hollow gesture.

The documentary being made is about the generation that was wound up like a rubber band until it eventually snapped. We no longer believe a word these politicans tell us and the G8 has been exposed for what it really is - a rather exclusive club that ensures nothing gets done that is important to the global population, apart from their own agenda that includes protecting their own country’s exports and agricultural industries.

With its effect on global warming and major diseases like HIV/Aids, this generation once again finds itself centre stage in shaping the way the world will look in twenty years. The time for pop concerts, rubber bands, coloured credit cards etc. has come to an end. We must find a way to galvanise the general populations genuine interest in helping those less fortunate than themselves, into a clarion call to action for our elected leaders.

The evidence points to us destroying this planet slowly and perhaps it will be our very own desire to save ourselves from global catastrophere that will finally benefit those who have been forgotten. They have been forgotten up to this point because they are not on our doorstep and don’t have a daily impact on our busy lives.

They do make an impact on us everyday but we sometimes find it hard to see how. How do we shape the way our world develops and take charge of the reporting mechanisms that daily distort the truth about what is happening in the Least Developed Countries.

We need to seek out and report the positive news stories that will encourage people to get on a plane and come and see for themselves how vibrant and diverse Africa really is.

Hosted by the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and the President of the General Assembly, the UN High Level Event on the MDGs was part of a week of action in New York during which over 40 partnership events took place involving an unprecedented range of stakeholders. Everyone from Bill Gates to President Kikwete. From the PM of Qatar to the Archbishop of York. From the head of Coca Cola to Mohammed Yunus was in New York to renew efforts to deliver the MDGs.

The Pope, Bono, Bob Geldof, Queen Rania, Archbishop Desmond Tutu alongside celebrities from every continent including Rahul Bose, Will.I.Am, Angelique Kidjo, Wyclef Jean, Annie Lennox, Kristin Davis and Elle Macpherson were also involved in lending their support.

Commitments

The closing plenary of the High Level Event the Secretary-General announced over $16 billion of new commitments including $4.5 billion for education and $3 billion for malaria. To keep track of progress, the Secretary-General and the President of the UN General Assembly called for an MDG Review Summit in 2010.

In the UK Government’s priority areas of malaria, education, health and food new commitments of $11.5 billion were made.

To reverse the spread of malaria:

• The Malaria Action Plan launched to point the way towards universal coverage of bed-nets by 2010, and achieving near zero malaria deaths by 2015.
• The UK is providing 20 million more bed nets by 2010, increasing funding for vaccine research of up to £5 million by 2010, and committing £40 million to make sure the poorest have access to the latest and best anti-malarial drugs.

To ensure that by 2010, 4 million more children’s lives are saved and 33 million more births are attended by skilled health workers, commitments included:

• £450 million from the UK over the next three years to support national health plans, including funding for more nurses, midwives and doctors in eight of the poorest countries.
• A new taskforce on Innovative Financing for Health, launched by the UK, Norway, the World Bank and others, will help towards funding over 1 million health workers, saving 10 million lives by 2015, and will report to the G8 next year.

To get 25 million children into school by 2010 as a milestone towards universal primary education by 2015, a Class of 2015 partnership was launched, alongside $4.5 billion of new pledges including:

• £50 million from the UK for the Education Fast-Track Initiative, as part of the UK’s commitment to give £8.5 billion over ten years up to 2015 towards education.
• Comic Relief and the UK Government will announce a new £10 million partnership through which school children in the UK will raise money for schools in Africa, and UK and African children will work together on how the money should be spent.
• Pledges from FIFA that the enduring legacy of the 2010 FIFA World Cup will be every African child in school and that they will mobilise support for education from 30 million fans watching the 2010 South African World Cup.

To halve the number of people going hungry by 2015, and to tackle the immediate food crisis reverberating around the world and especially the Horn of Africa commitments included:

• Emergency food aid worth $1.75 billion to stop starvation in the Horn of Africa, and for the rapid distribution of support, including seeds and fertilizers, to 30 priority countries in time for the next planting season, taking forward a Global Partnership on agriculture and food.

Next steps

The UK’s three main objectives following the event will be:

• Tracking the implementation of all the actions announced during the week
• Encouraging the UN to produce better analysis of where the MDGs remain off-track and what needs to be done to get them back on track
• Maintaining a high-level, political focus on accelerating progress on the MDGs and supporting the proposal for an MDG Review Summit in 2010.

UK Government’s DFID