VSO Blog: Changing Times » development

Links we Love: The future is bright

Vanessa Furey — Fri, 13 Jul 2012 15:46:16 +0000

Last night we bid farewell to my colleague Martin McCluskey in true VSO style – Karaoke! However a couple of volunteers, who are far more talented, have gone a step further and started their own band. The Leaky Buckets who met whilst out on placement in Tanzania in 1967 have fulfilled their lifelong ambition over 40 years later and are giving Fleetwood Mac a run for their money.

Meanwhile, back in the office this morning the realisation that I am not Britain’s answer to Stevie Nicks is slowly sinking in.

Also this morning I notice an interesting story in the Guardian. You wouldn’t normally expect someone whose exhibitions have filled the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern to have designed an ingenious product to help people in developing countries. Rising fuel prices are having the greatest impact on the world’s poorest people. However artist Olafur Eliasson's has teamed up Frederik Ottesen to create their ‘Little Sun lamps’, and partnered with Plan International to distribute them in developing countries. Currently 1.6 billion people around the world have no access to mains electricity. Solar powered, these lamps not only give out 10 times more light but they do it at a tenth of the cost of a normal Kerosene lamp. The batteries last 3 years and are replicable meaning at $10 it’s not just a pretty looking piece of design, it’s a valuable investment.

Finally, for those of you who have been following our campaign for legislation which would require all future governments to spend 0.7% of national income on international aid, Friday 13^th could have been our lucky day. This morning we have had our eyes firmly glued to BBC Parliament where the 2^nd readings of Private Members Bills have been getting under way. Third up was Labour Backbencher Mark Hendricks MP with his Bill on international aid spending. However, despite the government backing that Bill’s progression on to committee stage unfortunately time ran out before this could be voted for.

We’ll now be looking over the Bill in during parliament’s summer recess and preparing for its return on the 7^th September. Again it looks likely to be third on the agenda so time will be tight but given the cross party support displayed today fingers crossed we are getting a step closer to legislation on 0.7%.

UK aid is in the news. Take action.

Will Tucker — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 12:05:54 +0000

In Sierra Leone, fourteen women die every day in childbirth. Fourteen women. Fourteen daughters. Those fourteen women represent one out of every eight pregnancies in Sierra Leone. Think about the women you know. 1 Anna, 2 Emily, 3 Jennifer, 4 Sarah ,5 Beth, 6 Judith, 7 Katie, 8 dead.

Every woman has the right to expect better odds than this. VSO is working in Sierra Leone to change things. VSO volunteers like Alice Waterman are training midwives in techniques that are saving lives. Like most UK charities working in international development, we receive money from Government to fund a portion of our work. (Although we can always do more with more money so if you want to donate please click here) The more UK aid available, the more we can all contribute to changing the odds in favour of ordinary people. People who have ordinary needs and ordinary dreams, but who face extraordinary challenges in life. Over the next three years the gvernment plans to increase aid spending from 0.56% to 0.7% of Gross National Income. You can read my comment about the budget from last week.

Today the House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee (a group of twelve Lords and a Baroness) have released a report, arguing that the UK government should focus on quality rather than on increasing the aid budget. Their press release, which has led to significant coverage in today’s media, was entitled ‘Government should abandon 0.7% target’.

The central policy proposal identified in the press release is that the target of increasing aid spending to a level of 0.7% should be dropped. They argue the government will “Wrongly prioritise the amount spent rather than results achieved.” and “Make the achievement of the target more important than the overall effectiveness of the programme.”

Their assertion seems to me completely baseless. Since coming to government, the coalition has reviewed all UK aid programmes and set out a new vision for our aid (welcomed by the committee), it has set up a new Independent Commission for Aid Impact and in Andrew Mitchell’s response to the Economic Affairs Committee report, he makes it clear that aid spending is about results: “11 million children into school, vaccinate 55 million children against preventable diseases and stop 250,000 newborn babies dying needlessly.” The Secretary of State and Government have made results the primary focus at DFID. It is ridiculous for the Lords Committee to assert that focus will divert onto getting the money out of the door for the sake of it.

We can all get started right away. Right now on the Daily Mail’s website dozens of people are commenting on the Economic Affairs Committee Aid Report.. Comments include “This is our taxes that you [UK Government] are squandering on your self serving world stage image not yours!! If YOU and your CRONIES want to [g]ive money to these overseas countries use YOUR OWN MONEY and use OUR taxes for the benefit of OUR people!!!” If they are left unchallenged then the Daily Mail will continue to set an editorial policy which is anti-development. We need to make sure that readers of the Daily Mail know that a lot of aid money is well spent and makes an enormous difference to people’s lives.

So get onto their website and get commenting. Write down your own stories of change, tell them about and link to the VSO stories and make your own case for our aid spending.

Hope for the future in northern Uganda, despite Kony

Wolf Ellis — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 19:33:23 +0000

Since its release on 5^th March, ‘Kony 2012’ (a campaign film produced by the American NGO Invisible Children) has spread across social media to a seemingly unprecedented extent; it currently has over 76 million views on YouTube. The film promotes efforts to capture Lord’s Resistance Army leader Joseph Kony and ‘bring him to justice’ for the LRA’s brutal crimes, which include murder, rape, mutilation, kidnapping, sexual slavery and the use of child soldiers. The incredible reach of the film has stimulated fervent debates about advocacy, awareness-raising, disempowering messages and military solutions.

Whatever your thoughts about these issues, it’s disappointing that ‘Kony 2012’ presents a misleading picture of the current situation in Uganda. Kony and the LRA are still active in other countries in the region (South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Central African Republic), but the war is over in Uganda – and has been for years. Conflict has left a horrific legacy in northern Uganda, but people are working hard to rebuild their lives.

Public service delivery was severely disrupted during the war. For example, health systems were weakened by years of conflict. VSO nurses and doctors train local volunteers to educate rural communities about health, teaching people how to prevent and treat diseases. Education was particularly disrupted by the years of conflict. Coupled with the slowing of northern Uganda’s business and agriculture sectors during the war, this is making it difficult for people to find decent jobs to support themselves.

Richard Otika, a 22-year-old local youth coordinator in Gulu, grew up in camps for internally displaced people and had his education cut short. Richard explains:

“The insurgency discontinued me from school. I started running when there was this exchange of bullets. If I look at northern Uganda here as a young person I don’t think there are any happy youths because many of them did not go to school. They are illiterate. If they are literate, then they are lowly educated – there’s no jobs for them. For the lucky ones who went to school, it’s not easy for them to get jobs because the jobs here in Uganda are for the older people”.

Jolly Acen, a VSO partner from the Lira District local government, indicates the scale of the problem: “Youth unemployment is the biggest problem we have. 70% of our youth did not have access to formal education, and that’s why they are unemployed. We have 65% of youth unemployed”. Many war-affected young people lack the skills and opportunities to earn a decent living. The majority are subsistence farmers who grow barely enough food to feed themselves, or earn very basic incomes through low-skilled casual labour.

VSO is helping the local government to address its youth unemployment problems and improve the lives of war-affected young people, placing volunteers in local government district offices where they can help to mobilise vulnerable youths and support them with business skills training.

Volunteer Sally Thomson is working with the local government in Lira to help young people to start tailoring, baking, beekeeping and agribusiness enterprises. After receiving training and small start-up investments to help them get these businesses up and running, more than 250 young people will soon be generating their own independent incomes and hopefully also providing jobs for other people. Sally comments that “the youth themselves can now start teaching each other. And if we support these strong leaders, these leaders will carry the programme on themselves”.

‘Kony 2012’ has brought global attention to northern Uganda. But what young people need now is the opportunity to build their own futures.

We’d welcome your view on our blogs. If you’d like to hear more about the positive work that VSO is doing in developing countries around the world, you can follow us on Twitter and Facebook, or check out our website.