Welcome to the Sound Aid Hunger Blog! Here you will find up to date information about Hunger issues, the work being done to help cure it, and site updates too.
$4 Billion Restored to US International Affairs Budget
A good piece of news coming from the US:
Advocates of global development scored a win yesterday—restoring $4 billion to the 2009 International Affairs Budget. Initially, George W. Bush requested $39.8 billion for this budget that covers things like the Millennium Challenge Corporation and the Peace Corps–and the Senate considered decreasing it by $4 billion. Thanks to Senators Richard Durbin (D-IL) and Gordon Smith (R-OR)–who quickly responded by introducing an amendment to partially restore the funds–to the rest of the senators who voted "yes," and to the support of concerned citizens from the One Campaign, the full $4 billion was restored.
The topics of global warming, pollution, alternative energy sources, fuel-efficiency and more continue to show up in the news and media, so it’s important for college students to know how they can become involved in the green movement.
Who we are: Green Student U is a blog-style site that offers up-to-date information on four definitive topics that are related to the environment and the green movement. The topics we address are:
Living an eco-lifestyle means learning about the environment and how you can sustain its natural resources. It also takes a desire from you to change your old habits and attitudes and to try to be more eco-friendly.
Personal and organizational success stories occur every day on college campuses, and they have such a profound impact on surrounding communities that they are changing the way the world views the entire green movement. A single student or an entire campus CAN make a difference around the world.
Environmental reform is a worldwide social and political movement that takes the effort of everyone involved in it to make it a global success, and if you want to get involved you can start by staying up-to-date with what’s happening in the news and media.
Part of the process of living an eco-lifestyle includes helping your college build a sustainable green campus that educates both the administration and the students about environmental issues. If you spread the word, people WILL listen!
Take action! With a little effort and support from college students and environmentalists across the globe, our world can be a greener and happier place!
Drew Barrymore donation nourishes children’s ambitions in Kenya slum school
As much as I respect the rich, they never seem to give enough to charity in my book. $1,000,000 to them is not as much as you might think. So when I read stories when they do, I like to share them with you. Kudos to Drew Barrymore - I always liked her in Charlies Angels
Nairobi, - Part of a recent US$1 million donation from WFP Ambassador Against Hunger Drew Barrymore will go towards improving schools and the lives of schoolchildren in Kenya. WFP’s Marcus Prior talked to some of the children at Nairobi’s Stara school, one of the places where WFP provides daily school meals and which will benefit from Drew’s donation.
We are always looking for new ways to do things and have our listeners really make a difference to the hunger crisis. So we changed our Donate button to show which gift we are raising money for and will update our blog with information on how each animal will become a life changing experience for a family suffering from hunger. This way, you can get a better idea of how we aim to help cure hunger one song at a time! You can still view our total donations both on on our myspace and .org page. We would like to thank you again for helping us raise $2198 so far!
There are 2 ways you can help us reach our target. - Purchase our Best Of Sound Aid CD and have $10 donated (thats 100% of the CD profits). - For any other amounts make a General Donation. No amount is too small to help drastically change the lives of a family in need.
So how does a Water Bufallo change lives......?
A water buffalo can lead a hungry family out of poverty and give them a chance for a bright future filled with hope and free from hunger. In poor Filipino villages, water buffalo provide draft power for planting rice and potatoes, milk for protein and manure for fertilizer and fuel. A farmer can plant four times more rice with a buffalo than by hand.
Water buffalo haul heavy loads to the market, where the sale of extra produce brings in vital income for clothing, medicine and school. By renting their buffalo to neighbors, families can earn money for home improvements. Protein-rich milk, strength to till soil, manure to enrich the land ... so many benefits. And, in turn, water buffalo are happy just to graze on coarse grasses and other plants not suitable for harvesting.
BIRTHDAY WEEK! Sound Aid - The story so far.........(and treat!)
To celebrate our 2nd Birthday (15th March) we are going to go over the past 2 years at Sound Aid so far. We hope you enjoy learning about how things came to be. We will also update the playlist everyday with tunes relevant to the people we are mentioning at those periods and the songs we remember from that time!
Sound Aid - The Story So Far....
December 2005 It seems a long time ago already, but the idea for Sound Aid came about 4 months before the site actually went live. What a lot of people don’t know is that it was actually put together by 3 musicians from the artist community at Soundclick. Myself, Beth and Rob were all wanting to do something with our music for a good cause. Rob asked the folks at Soundclick.com (where our music was hosted) if they would consider having a proportion of sales going to charity, and when it was obvious it wasn’t going to happen (for whatever reasons) we decided to put our own site together instead. The idea, name and logo all came about very quickly, and it was one of those things that seemed to happen without much thought. All we needed was a charity.......
Around the same time while in America, my girlfriend at the time had given me a Heifer gift for Christmas - A flock of chicks if I remember correctly. I hadn’t heard about Heifer and did some research into them and they struck me as a charity that could really make a difference long term in curing hunger. Their idea of using livestock to pass on a gift had outstanding results and I really wanted them to be the charity for Sound Aid. So it was complete. We were all set to put together the .org site that was to be launched on March 15th with 20 bands.
March 2006 When the site first started off, it looked very different to how it is today. There was no blog or music players, and initially we wanted people to donate to hear the EPs. After a while it was clear that we were not doing enough with our music so we changed our philoposy with new music players that would stream all the music. We also made all the music free for download. The first 20 artists were: Michael Dickson, HellBus, Sponge, Blue Hound, Jeff McIntyre, Watsonica, Will Carroll, Blue Menagerie, NorthWest, Mizerable Steve, The Wots, Brucie, Lawrence Bullock, Red River, Chosen Sound, Country Rose, Fred E. Jam, The Funge and Woodstock Taylor. They are all still Sound Aid Artists today .
Now that the website was up and running we put our out first promo CD (now very rare!). This was all due to Rob’s hard work. It was mixed by Jim Mason and was available for download online. We also started using myspace as our marketing mechanism and making lots of nice friends too.
We soon hit our first target of $1000 and was able to purchase livestock for Heifer such as a Llama and Water Buffalo! Its amazing to think that music has enabled families around the world to look after themselves thanks to the animals we have provided thanks to YOUR donations. By now I hope that the animals have reproduced and their offsping passed on to other familes as is the Heifer way....
March 2007 If we fast forward on a year, over this time we hit 100 artists on Sound Aid and got a writeup in the Heifer Newsletter entitled Moo-sic on the Web. It was a busy time since we were experimenting with new ideas. The website got a revamp, the myspace presense was growing and there was lots of work putting together playlists and new artists for all the genres. We introduced videos, a jukebox and interviews. The site was just about the way we wanted it. Beth started spending a lot of her time working on putting the next CD together.
Its probably a good point with which to thank the following people for making Sound Aid happen. Without them we wouldn’t be here:
ALL the Sound Aid artists, Anthony Vilgiate, Jim Mason, Woodstock Taylor, Rob Wot, Yesca, Kathy Reynolds, Marise Nazzaro, Pete Hamilton, Crystal Gauger, Fred E. Jam, Gem Watsonica, Amber Estrada, Joe Debono, Derek Sivers, Bill Jacobs and Diane Kelly.
July 2007 There was a very important event in the history of Sound Aid on July 14th 2007 and that was our CD launch party at Madison Avenue Urban Outlet, Oregan. To celebrate the launch we had 4 artists play live: Amber Rose, Far Cry, Mark Seymour and The Darren Johnson Effort.
Soon after we reached our 2nd milestone of $2000 raised. We then started to take a new direction on Myspace by introducing our Hunger Blog which you are probably reading now! Its only been online a few months but we get 100s of readers every week tune in to the latest hunger news.
In terms of the future of Sound Aid we definitely want to move forward with more concerts and benefit gigs. Its an excellent way to celebrate music, spread the word, and raise donations all over the world. There are a few things in the pipeline so we hope to see you at a show soon! And keep your eyes peeled for our next CD coming 2009! So for now, we are very happy to have kept things going for 2 years. We’d like to thank you all for tuning in and hope you continue to enjoy our music and help cure the hunger crisis.
Peace Mike Azzopardi
PS. The songs below are a little birthday treat from us since they were on our first rare CD and have never been available in our flash player format before! ..
Something we don't usually do here, but since this is related to our cause we thought we would take a few moments to talk about a film that received high acclaim at many of the film festivals around the world, and is out on DVD next month (15th April in US). While many great films have been about Africa (Blood Diamond, Toosti, Shooting Dogs, Hotel Rwanda to name a few), many are based on real events or are politically orientated so you are never quite sure of the director/writers motivations. The other thing is that no matter how good the acting is we know as viewers that they are actors and didn't really experience the events there. With War Dance however, the people in it are REAL, and the story is their story. At no point during the documentary did I think "Its just a film - They are actors". They were people living their lives telling their story and it was very touching ineed - No wonder it won so many awards.
War Dance
War Dance is a documentary about the lives of three children in war torn Uganda - Rose, a 13-year-old choir singer; Nancy, a 14-year-old dancer; and Dominic, a 14-year-old xylophone player. They are members of the Acholi tribe, living in the remote northern Uganda refugee camp of Patongo, which is under military protection from the Lord's Resistance Army, a terrorist group that has been rebelling against the government for the past two decades. In 2005, the camp's primary school won its regional music competition and headed to Kampala to participate in the annual National Music Competition.
There are many great cinematic moments in this film. I will always remember the conversation that Dominic had with a captured rebel leader about his brother that went missing in the war. The other thing that took my breath away was the skill with which the children played the instruments, and the smiles on their faces despite mostly being orphans or losing relatives in the fighting.
George Bush finished his six day tour of Africa on Wednesday (20th). The White House spin doctors told the media how his tour was aimed at combating malaria and HIV/AIDS. But behind the moralistic posturing about AIDS (he will only fund abstinence groups and refuses to help anyone trying to help sex workers), comes the usual array of economic bribery as the US attempts to carve out African markets for its own businesses ends regardless of the consequences for local people.
The tour came with the announcement of millions of dollars of economic assistance from the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) and the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC). But the reality is that the economic aid is flowing in the direction of a small number of US companies rather than the countries on Bush's glossy itinerary. Almost 90% of all OPIC aid goes to ten US-based recipient firms including Caterpillar, Citibank and the Bechtel corporation. Before the lid was blown on corruption at the firm, Enron was one of the biggest recipients of this corporate welfare handout.
Peru - Mention potatoes in the United States and most people immediately think of Idaho, where more than a quarter of the country's crop is produced. In Europe, Ireland and its famine or Poland and its vodkas come to mind. But nowhere is prouder of its potatoes than Peru, where they were domesticated more than 7,000 years ago. The country is home to up to 3,500 different varieties of edible tubers, according to the International Potato Centre, whose headquarters are near Lima.
The United Nations has designated 2008 as the "International Year of the Potato" and not surprisingly Peru hopes to use this to draw attention to itself and its crop. Alan García, the president, has ordered that a government-sponsored programme of free breakfasts for poor families should serve bread made from a mixture of potato flour with (expensive and mainly imported) wheat. He also wants barracks, hospitals and prisons to start serving chuño, a naturally freeze-dried potato that is traditionally eaten by Andean Indians. Boiled chuño and cheese are said to have replaced sandwiches at cabinet meetings.
After last weeks headline making news that food prices are soaring its good to read the following success stories from The World Food Programme:
WFP provides food to Chadian refugees in Cameroon as they are moved to new camp
Dakar - The United Nations World Food Programme is providing a new round of food assistance to 20,000 Chadian refugees in northern Cameroon as they are transferred by the UN refugee agency from a transit site near the border to a camp.
So far, a 10-day ration of High Energy Biscuits, pulses, cereals and vegetable oil have been given to more than 2,400 refugees on arrival at Maltan camp, 32 kilometres from Madana transit site in Kousseri. WFP's partner the Cameroon Red Cross distributes the food to new arrivals daily.
More than 37,000 Chadian refugees, who fled into Cameroon from the Chadian capital of Ndjamena because of fighting, received food rations for a week from WFP on 9 February at Madana transit site in Kousseri, just across the river from Ndjamena.
WFP to feed 200,000 vulnerable people affected by food emergency in Tajikistan
Dushanbe - The United Nations World Food Programme said today it was appealing for an extra US$8.3 million to help feed hundreds of thousands of people in Tajikistan suffering from food shortages amid soaring food and fuel prices, in the coldest winter the country has seen for three decades and an unprecedented energy crisis.
The UN food agency's request is part of a wider UN joint appeal for US$25 million to help Tajikistan cope with a harsh cold spell that has prompted the government to ration electricity, water and gas supplies in a country where nearly two thirds of the population are classified as poor.
WFP said it would use the funds to purchase and distribute three months worth of emergency food rations for 200,000 of the most vulnerable people, the majority of whom live in rural areas. WFP's NGO partners will assist an additional 60,000 of the affected people.
WFP begins delivering food to thousands of people hit by cyclone Ivan in Madagascar
Antanarivo - The World Food Programme (WFP) has begun providing emergency food assistance to tens of thousands of people affected by the cyclone Ivan, which devastated large parts of Madagascar last week.
In the capital, Antananarivo, WFP has already distributed three-day rations of High Energy Biscuits (HEB) to 2,000 people living in tents after their homes were destroyed by the cyclone. The distribution focussed on the most vulnerable people, including children under 5 and pregnant and nursing women.
We thought we would do a new thing on our profile and list all the gigs the Sound Aid Artists are playing around the world! We will put them up one month at a time (so as not to fill the page) and will put up the following months gigs a week before the end of the current month.
In March there are 25 shows being played by Denise Vasquez, Justin Goodrich, Bermuda Road, Emma Wallace, Irena A And the Bad Grades, The Smokering, Flatley's Crutch and The Easton Brothers!
We will be bringing you a live page on the .org site with photos/videos from some of the shows so you can see these talented folks doing what they love to do!
So what are you waiting for? Go see if a Sound Aid Artist is playing in your town!
(If you are an artist and want your gig advertised, all you need to do is sign-up on Sound Aid and donate 3 songs to the cause and let us know of your dates.)
There have been a lot of articles this week on the hunger crisis which have not made pleasent reading. Prices of wheat and corn have nearly doubled in the past year which has had a massive negative effect on the poorest countries (as if it wasn't bad enough). I've put together a few articles into this post to hopefully outline why this is happening so we have a better understanding.
The BBC asks the question "Why are wheat prices rising?" and has come up with the following factors:
EXPORT CURBS The main reason behind Monday's sudden rise in wheat prices (25% in one day) was a decision by Kazakhstan to impose export tariffs to curb sales. Kazakhstan, a big exporter of wheat, said the curbs would help it battle an inflation rate of nearly 20%. The move follows similar restrictions imposed by Russia and Argentina.
"Politically, it's difficult for these countries to continue to export if prices are high domestically," said Sudakshina Unnikrishnan, agricultural analyst at Barclays Bank. Last year, tens of thousands of Mexicans marched in a protest against the rising price of tortillas after the price of the flat corn bread soared by over 400%.
DROUGHT World wheat stocks are expected to hit a 30-year low this year, partly driven by the worst drought in Australia in 100 years, which halved the winter wheat crop to 12 million tonnes in 2007. Reports of drought and water shortages in north-west China, where most of the country's wheat is grown, have also spurred buying in recent days. Unusually cold weather last year in places such as Ukraine also hurt production.
LAND FOR BIOFUELS Demand for alternative energy sources has led farmers to sow less wheat and convert land to crops such as corn, sugarcane and rapeseed, that can be turned into biofuels. Ethanol, diesel and other liquid fuels can be made from processing plant material. But this means there is less land for growing food crops. Wheat prices may come down as high prices convince farmers to devote more land to the crop, but this takes time.
GROWING DEMAND In addition to the supply problems pushing up prices, there has also been growing demand. Increasing wealth in China and India, for example, has led to consumers eating more meat, which means more grain is needed to feed farm animals. The US Department of Agriculture forecasts that Chinese imports of pork will double over the next 10 years.
SPECULATION BY INVESTORS Wheat prices have also soared as commodities have found favour among investors struggling with poor returns in other markets. Stock markets have lost ground as the world economy slows and the fallout from the sub-prime crisis continues.
"There are a lot of non-commercial positions in the market but it's predominantly driven by fundamentals," said Ms Unnikrishnan. "For three years production has been outstripped by consumption and grain stocks are tight."
The World Food Programme comes up with the following as being the reasons behind soaring prices:
1) A rise in oil and energy prices is affecting the entire value chain of food production, from fertiliser to harvesting to storage and delivering.
2) Flourishing economies in nations such as India and China have created increased demand for food.
4) Biofuels - farmers start to grow biofuels crops leading to a reduction in the production of food.
Countries where price rises are expected to have a direct impact include Zimbabwe, Eritrea, Haiti, Djibouti, the Gambia, Tajikistan, Togo, Chad, Benin, Myanmar, Cameroon, Niger, Senegal, Yemen and Cuba.
What is more disturbing is reading some of the real life stories, for instance from Central America:
"Of course I am happy when I eat. When I'm hungry, my stomach hurts, I don't feel like playing, I don't feel like doing anything," eight-year-old Jorge Luis Hernandez explained to a visitor as he sat outside his dilapidated hut in the highlands of El Salvador.
It was early afternoon, and all Jorge Luis had eaten was a small portion of rice that morning, before going to pick coffee in the nearby plantation to support his family
A similar story is played out in neighbouring Nicaragua where the poor are also desperately trying to cope with the reality of less food:
"We're all eating less," says 30-year-old Rosario Ochoa, a mother of four, who shares her small mud and thatched-roof home with her husband and seven other relatives. The adults are coffee pickers, and when they are lucky enough to find seasonal work, they earn about one dollar-a-day.
In Rosario's case, the reduced food intake has meant her body produces less milk to feed her young child.
"We can't afford beans or meat and powdered milk has become too expensive," she says adding that corn, the most basic staple, has gone up 25 percent in the past six months.
So it seems we have our work cut out and a duty to the people of our planet to do even more to help cure the hunger crisis. We know it is going to cost more, but what is money when it comes to everyone's right to be able to afford to eat?
Even given the soaring prices, there is still enough to go around, so lets make it happen.....
(Taken from latest Heifer International newsletter)
Heifer got into the business of sustainable development early. In 1944, Dan West realized the practical impact of one cow or goat in the lives of suffering families. Through the practice of "Passing on the Gift," countless gift recipients, in turn, pass on livestock and training, eventually changing entire communities. This model has helped over 45 million people worldwide become self-reliant.
More great news from around the world, this time Vietnam. I find the piece in Red to be truly amazing. Other countries take note!
The World Bank (WB)'s Country Director for Vietnam Ajay Chhibber has praised Vietnam's efforts in reducing poverty in the country over the past year.
In his article which run in February edition of the 'Banker' magazine , Ajay wrote that the declining poverty rate in Vietnam is due to the country's policy of inclusive development.
Over the past 15 years, Vietnam has achieved one of the world's fastest declines in poverty. The country's poverty rate – measured as the percentage of people who live below US $1 a day – has declined from about 58 percent in 1993 to 16 percent in 2006, and 34 million people have come out of poverty.
"Steady and rapid growth in income, of about 7 percent to 8 percent a year, have been a key factor in this reduction," Ajay said.
The WB official stressed that what marks Vietnam out from other-fast growing economies is the combination of spectacular growth with limited increase in inequality. The Gini coefficient, a measure of income inequality, has increased from 0.34 in 1993 to 0.36 in 2006, lower than in other emerging economies, which helps explain the dramatic poverty reduction.
However, according to Ajay, in order to sustain the inclusive development pattern so far as the country races toward an average income of US $1,000 and middle-income status by 2009, Vietnam must help its citizens access higher education, ensure that rural productivity is lifted as it industrialises further, and that its ethnic minorities are provided opportunities to develop so they are not left behind.
He added that Vietnam must also build modern social safety nets for those who could be left behind and ensure that its growth does not come at the cost of its environment.
"But as it meets these challenges, Vietnam has left behind a record of inclusive development which others can learn from," Ajay concluded in his article.
I wanted to post this article, as often we post from sources in the UK and US. What is important however, is to read the news from sources all around the world and this one in particular is from the Philippines. We can only really understand what is happening around the planet by doing this, since every country is going to have a point of view.
WHAT EXACTLY IS THE NATURE OF OUR POVERTY PROBLEM? WHAT DO we know and don't know about effective strategies and measures to win this protracted war against poverty? Given that the world has become increasingly globalized and competitive, what policy levers can be expected to generate high returns in terms of poverty reduction? Can the country's governance deliver highly pro-poor development agenda? What are facts? What are fancies?
These were some of the questions that three economists attempted to answer at the University of the Philippines (UP) Centennial Lecture Series on Jan. 31 at UP Diliman.
The topics of global warming, pollution, alternative energy sources, fuel-efficiency and more continue to show up in the news and media, so it’s important for college students to know how they can become involved in the green movement.
.jpg)
Now that the website was up and running we put our out first promo CD (now very rare!). This was all due to Rob’s hard work. It was mixed by Jim Mason and was available for download online. We also started using myspace as our marketing mechanism and making lots of nice friends too.
There was a very important event in the history of Sound Aid on July 14th 2007 and that was our CD launch party at Madison Avenue Urban Outlet, Oregan. To celebrate the launch we had 4 artists play live: Amber Rose, Far Cry, Mark Seymour and The Darren Johnson Effort.
