World poverty is shrinking rapidly, new index reveals, By Tracy McVeigh, March 16, 2013, The Guardian: “Some of the poorest people in the world are becoming significantly less poor, according to a groundbreaking academic study which has taken a new approach to measuring deprivation. The report, by Oxford University’s poverty and human development initiative, predicts that countries among the most impoverished in the world could see acute poverty eradicated within 20 years if they continue at present rates…”
Tag: Foreign aid
Poverty and Nutrition
The nutrition puzzle, February 18, 2012, The Economist: “In Eldorado, one of São Paulo’s poorest and most misleadingly named favelas, some eight-year-old boys are playing football on a patch of ground once better known for drug gangs and hunger. Although they look the picture of health, they are not. After the match they gather around a sack of bananas beside the pitch. ‘At school, the kids get a full meal every day,’ explains Jonathan Hannay, the secretary-general of Children at Risk Foundation, a local charity. ‘But in the holidays they come to us without breakfast or lunch so we give them bananas. They are filling, cheap, and they stimulate the brain.’ Malnutrition used to be pervasive and invisible in Eldorado. Now there is less of it and, equally important, it is no longer hidden. ‘It has become more visible-so people are doing something about it…'”
International Food Aid for Children
WHO to recommend improving food aid for malnourished children under 5, Associated Press, October 13, 2011, Washington Post: “The World Health Organization said Thursday it plans to recommend tighter nutritional standards in food aid for young children, a move activists say is necessary to improve donations from countries such as the United States. The new guidelines are likely to make food aid more expensive in the short term, but the improved formulas will be more effective at reducing moderate malnutrition in children under the age of 5, the head of WHO’s nutrition department told The Associated Press…”