MDG 1: Eradicate Extreme Poverty and Hunger

Millennium Development Goal (MDG) #1 seeks to reduce extreme poverty and hunger by halving the proportion of people living on less than a dollar a day and halving the proportion of people who suffer from hunger. This issue of The Soul Beat explores information from the Soul Beat Africa network of ways in which communication tools and strategies are being utilised to address this goal.

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CONTEXT

1. What Children and Young People are Saying about Poverty in Tanzania

This report is a collection of children and young people's consultations done by non-governmental organisations and children's/youth groups in Tanzania during the review process of the Poverty Reduction Strategy (PRS) II. The report has been compiled by the Tanzania Movement for and with Children (TMC) Secretariat, putting together the views and opinions of children and young people including those who are marginalised. The consultations done mainly by organisations working on the implementation, monitoring, policy and advocacy of children's rights in Tanzania. The report an overview of issues of concern for children and young people in Tanzania.

2. Sowing Seeds of Hunger - Southern Africa

This half-hour documentary explores the relationship between HIV/AIDS, food security, and nutrition by illustrating the current crisis in southern Africa. It was produced by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations, in conjunction with the Television Trust for the Environment (TVE), a London-based independent film company. "Sowing Seeds of Hunger" aired on BBC World in May 2003. The film's central strategy is to provide concrete, personal examples of the way in which HIV/AIDS affects people. Since HIV/AIDS typically strikes during the most productive years (ages 15 to 49), many fields across southern Africa now lay fallow, resulting in the loss of not only food and cash crops but also resources like livestock and tools.

Contact Enrique Yeves enrique.yeves@fao.org OR Erwin Northoff erwin.northoff@fao.org

3. Divided City: Information Poverty in Nairobi's Slums

The internet, mobile phones and other new information technologies have offered more opportunities to those who have been able to harness and use the technology to improve their own livelihoods. Because of their ability to erase geographical, social, economic and cultural barriers, information and communication technologies (ICTs) have the potential of overcoming inequalities in society and becoming a catalyst for development. ICTs can also be a dividing factor in society. According to the author, in
many cities, the urban poor now have to deal with another form of social exclusion, the digital divide.

4. Child Malnutrition in Ethiopia: Can Maternal Knowledge Augment the Role of Income?

by L. Christiaensen & H. Alderman

This 22-page paper explores the complementary role of nutritional knowledge in reducing child malnutrition. The study focuses on Ethiopia, which registers as one of the highest child malnutrition rates in Sub-Saharan Africa, while the understanding of its causes remains limited. The paper provides a brief summary of the nutritional status of pre-school children in Ethiopia. It outlines the empirical approach and presents a descriptive overview of the data. This is followed by a discussion of the results and some policy simulations. Topics include: child malnutrition and its socio-economic determinants; role of education, income, and prices; maternal nutritional knowledge; child malnutrition in Ethiopia; and policy simulations. The paper concludes that, combined, income growth, increased female education and improved nutritional knowledge would diminish the prevalence of child stunting by 14 to 31 percent depending on the base distribution.

STRATEGIES: USING TECHNOLOGY

5. GeoNetwork's InterMap Viewer - Mozambique, Senegal, South Africa & Uganda

GeoNetwork's InterMap viewer is an internet-based global mapping system developed jointly by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Food Programme (WFP) to fight hunger in developing countries. InterMap viewer provides agricultural information to decision-makers, allowing them to access satellite imagery, interactive maps, and spatial databases from GeoNetwork, a group of various development institutions from around the world. Organisers aim to help developing countries - including Mozambique, Senegal, South Africa, and Uganda - improve their ability to manage spatial information and to harmonise and improve their access to FAO's spatial databases of agriculture, forestry, fisheries and food security.

Contact Teresa Buerkle teresamarie.buerkle@fao.org

6. FAO's Experience in the Area of Rural Radio Including Information and Communication Technologies

This paper will illustrate FAO's philosophy and intervention methodologies in relation to the use of interactive communication and social investigation tools, within the framework of a participatory approach. It also considers some subjects that are of vital importance to rural communities, including the question of food safety, an important subject in a world where hunger and malnutrition afflict hundreds of millions of human beings, while our planet now produces enough food to feed all of its inhabitants. Do our rural radios provide the answers to this? Agrometeorological information that is indispensable to food safety, and agriculture in general; and the most recent analyses and information with regard to the food situation in different countries that are offered by FAO's Global Information and Early Warning System (GIEWS), on the procurement and requirements of grain imports and food assistance to these countries.

STRATEGIES: LOCAL RESPONSES TO FOOD INSECURITY

7. WARMTH - South Africa

A community-based nutrition project that operates in the underprivileged areas around Cape Town, South Africa. The organisation aims to relieve hunger, malnutrition and chronic diseases by providing low-cost nutritious food to disadvantaged communities in the Western Cape, through a network of community kitchens and healthcare workshops. The project organisers hope to ensure that children in South Africa do not go to bed hungry. In weekly workshops, groups of women, usually single, unemployed mothers with infants, learn about issues such as breast-feeding, the six food groups, oral rehydration therapy, HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, worms and other primary health care issues.

Contact Linda Brand linda@warmth.org.za OR Jocelyn Freed warmthpr@iafrica.com

8. Full Food Basket for Africa by 2020: A 2020 Vision for Food, Agriculture, and the Environment
This booklet contains a selection of poems, stories, and essays of teenage Africans expressing their insights, hopes, and dreams. The young writers presented here "are clearly eager about taking action and overcoming the challenges that face Africa." This contest encouraged young students to give a voice to their vision of Africa's food and nutrition situation in the year 2020 and what can be done to make tomorrow's reality better than today's. Over 200 youth from more than two dozen countries, from Morocco to South Africa, from Senegal to Ethiopia, expressed both confidence that hunger in Africa can be overcome and a strong desire for action.

9. Women's Health, Child Health and Nutrition Clinic - South Africa

Initiated by the South African NGO Zanempilo Trust, this programme focuses on women attending the nutrition clinics in South Africa with their children, providing them with education while they are waiting for their food supplements. Community health workers (CHWs), who are trained, salaried workers elected by and answerable to their communities, speak with mothers in Brown's Farm or Samora Machel who are waiting to be admitted to nutrition clinics in an effort to make them aware of resources available within their community. At the same time, mothers provide the CHWs with information. The nutrition clinic is run every fortnight by three CHWs, one coordinator, and a primary health care sister.

Contact info@zanempilo.org.za

10. Health and Agriculture Community Radio Network - Kenya

he participants were organised into six radio listening groups, and were trained in the use of audio and video recording equipment to enable them to exchange information on farming techniques and to raise public awareness about HIV/AIDS. The groups were also trained in photography and the use of drama and traditional oral storytelling as tools for learning, education and development. A radio cassette player and a mobile phone was distributed to each of the groups, and the participants were encouraged to communicate with national FM radio stations to respond to programmes, obtain information and share their experiences with a wider audience. Each group prepared and recorded a presentation on tape that included a song, poem, role-play or story on a relevant topic of their choice. One women's group performed a play about farming and the preparation of nutritious food for people living with HIV/AIDS, while another group sang traditional songs on planting, harvesting and the preparation of sweet potatoes.

Contact James Onyango kaippg@africaonline.co.ke OR Janet Feldman kaippg@earthlink.net

11. Carrefour des Organisations des Producteurs Agricoles pour le Développement Local (COPADEL) - Benin

Established in 2001 by Centre Africain d'Echange Culturel (CAFEC), COPADEL is a coalition of several farming organisations in four districts in Benin. At the time of posting the entry, the network had 2500 members (1386 women and 1114 men) working to ensure the survival, protection, and development of children in their respective localities. Reducing poverty among rural households and supporting the participation of women in all aspects (economic, social, and cultural) of community life are goals that support COPADEL's central aim, ensuring the economic sustenance of rural communities in Benin.

Contact Schombe Baudoin sam_bj2000@yahoo.fr

12. Reproductive Health and HIV/AIDS Prevention Campaign: Utilizing Creative Dramatized Traditional Taita Dance & Music to Increase Public Awareness About HIV/AIDS in Wongonyi Community

This report offers a theoretical understanding of the rhetorical power of Taita (African) dance. "The Taita dance called Njala, visually articulates a previous hunger situation and provides tips on how to cope and survive in the future. The dancers in their songs and motions try to vividly capture and project to the audience the struggles; pains, fears, joys etc. experienced during the hunger period and in the process provide "solutions" in case it occurs in future. Such articulation not only helps capture a difficult experience but it also suggests helpful motives for the people to embrace in confronting their trials. Similarly the dance naturally invites participation in its rhythms thus enabling the people to intelligibly process the situation and make the necessary adjustments (Brummet, 1999). Therefore Njala dance, by posing a problem such as hunger to the community through powerful rhetoric, discourse activates or addresses their "appetites" or concerns."

13. Feed SA

A non-profit organisation that funds existing feeding programmes in South Africa and sponsors collaborative events for hunger-relief campaigns and events. Collecting funds in the form of donations, pledges and a raffle online, Feed SA sources a variety of fund raising and awareness-building activities

14. We are the Drums - Africa

We are the Drums is a song composed by 18 top African musicians in response to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)’s appeal to combat poverty and promote a HIV/AIDS-free generation. The musicians joined forces to create and perform the song to spark action against poverty and HIV/AIDS in their region as part of the Africa 2015 initiative to accelerate the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The lyrics of the song invite people to stop being "victims of war, victims of poverty, victims of hunger", and to take individual responsibility to stop the spread of HIV/AIDS, aiming to achieve that the disease will not affect the 2015-generation.

Contact Nicholas Gouede cassandra.waldon@undp.org

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International Day for the Eradication of Poverty

Did you know that October 17 is the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty? This day was declared by the UN General Assembly and has been observed since 1993. For more information Click here

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MEASURING SUCCESS

15. Thin on the Ground: Questioning the evidence behind World Bank-funded community nutrition projects in Bangladesh, Ethiopia and Uganda

In this report, Save the Children UK claims that World Bank efforts to curb childhood malnutrition in Bangladesh, Uganda, and Ethiopia have had no impact. The charity claims resources may be being wasted on these large-scale community nutrition projects. It "found no difference in the rates of malnutrition" in Bangladesh after six years of project implementation. "Growth monitoring charts were poorly understood by mothers and supplementary feeding had limited effectiveness especially for very young children". The report claims that the projects are based on a "widely discredited" approach, which assumes "that the child is malnourished because the mother isn't doing something right". The report is also critical of what Save the Children UK sees as inadequate monitoring and/or insufficiently transparent communication of evaluation results.

16. Successful Community Nutrition Programming: Lessons from Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda

by Lora Iannotti and Stuart Gillespie

This report brings together the main findings of a series of assessments of successful community nutrition programming carried out in Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda between 1999 and 2000. The overall aim of the assessments was to identify key lessons, or the main driving forces behind the successful processes and outcomes in these programmes. Such elements of success fundamentally have to do with both what was done and how it was done. Experience with community-based nutrition programming, as documented in various syntheses and reviews during the 1990s, does show that malnutrition can be effectively addressed on a large scale, at reasonable cost, through appropriate programmes and strategies, and backed up by sustained political support.

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This issue was written by Seipati Fountain

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The Soul Beat seeks to cover the full range of communication for development activities. Inclusion of an item does not imply endorsement or support by The Partners.

Please send material for The Soul Beat to the Editor - Anja Venth aventh@comminit.com