What is poverty?

Poverty is often seen as a lack of income for individuals or a lack of GDP for a country. Instead I think we have to look at what communities do have as opposed to what they don’t have which will include far more than economics. I recently came across this great quote from the Guardian weekly:

“Is per capita GDP the best overall measure of standard of living? I respectfully disagree. If a woman had eaten a healthy meal of home-grown vegetables, gone to bed, made love to her husband and then enjoyed a good night’s sleep she would have contributed precisely nothing to GDP. If, on the other hand, she had driven to a casino, got drunk, crashed her car on the way home and injured herself and some passing pedestrians, she would have increased her country’s GDP by thousands of dollars. The fuel, the liquor, the tow truck and the ambulance, the car repairs and the hospital bills: all contribute to GDP and hence, by most reasoning, to the standard of living.”

MP visits Mapalo

You may remember that prior to the recent general elections in Zambia the church leaders Jubilee Centre works with in Mapalo successfully engaged all the candidates standing for MP and Councillor in the needs of their community by creating a Memorandum of Understanding between the community and their elected leaders. Last Saturday saw this engagement reach a new high point – the MP visited Mapalo and met the leaders. The first time an MP has visited the community outside of election campaign time!

After the elections the church leaders wrote to their new MP asking him to keep the promises he had made to the community when he signed the memorandum – they also copied this letter to the Speaker in parliament asking him to release the MP to visit them! All responded favourably to the letter and last Saturday the leaders held a meeting with the MP and new Councillor to agree a way forward to meeting the needs in the memorandum. At the meeting the MP thanked the community for their support, telling them that he would, “never betray the trust [they] gave him.”

Obviously there is still a long way to go and much to be done to hold him and the Councillor to their promises – but a significant milestone has been reached. There is now open dialogue and the starting of a shared approach to transforming Mapalo between the community leaders and their elected representatives.

World AIDS day

It won’t have escaped you that today is World AIDS day. Today we mark the fact that across the world more than 40 million people are living with HIV – 25 million of which live in sub-Saharan Africa. Every single day 15,000 people are infected with HIV.

For the community I work in HIV/AIDS dominates the whole of life. The estimated national rate of HIV/AIDS in Zambia is 16%, in the town we are in it is at 26%, and in the compounds of that town it is estimated to be even higher. People are scared to go and get tested and only do so when it’s too late. ARV drugs are free, but the blood count tests and transport to hospitals creates too much of a barrier to going to hospital to get them. If people do get onto the drugs then they need a balanced diet to be able to withstand the strength of the drugs – this is next to impossible in a community where people only expect to have a meal every other day. You see couple after couple nurse a partner until they pass away, knowing they will follow but wondering where they will get the care from.

But even these are the lucky ones. Partners will often run away when they find out that their spouse is sick, even though they themselves will be sick. One woman I met, called Beauty, was infected by her husband. She found out she was HIV+ as she was pregnant and was encouraged to go for testing. When the husband found out the news he ran away leaving her with their two children and one unborn child. She was desperate so ‘married’ someone quickly to get a roof over their heads – so she ended up being married to a man who now beats her and the children, but she has no where else to go. She gave birth to her child who only lived for one year. HIV is trapping people into poverty more than ever and making a mockery of any other development work.

On the other hand I have met people who have been brought back from the brink of death by the ARV drugs and are so inspired by this experience that they spend time helping others in home based care programmes, counselling or prevention programmes. They are the best people to get alongside those who are struggling as they offer inspiration, hope and understanding that no one else can quite match.

Lets not give up hope in the face of this pandemic. Let’s stand with those who are suffering, support them in life and be with them as they approach death. Let’s listen to those who are suffering and give them a platform to talk to the world. Let’s get all these big Bill Gates/ Bill Clinton projects right to the grassroots by empowering local communities to be a bridge. Let’s not forget that this is a pandemic that could be wiped out and lets not forget that those living with HIV/AIDS are still living and are created in the image of God.

Last year world leaders made a promise – that by 2010, AIDS treatment would be available to all who need it. That was in 2005, at the G8 summit in Edinburgh. The is calling on the UK government to keep this promise. Take action online with Tearfund or Oxfam.

Fancy doing more? Giant drug company Novartis is currently challenging Indian Patent Law in the courts after being denied a patent for a cancer drug. If they win, this will limit India’s ability to produce and export cheaper generic drugs to other developing countries, including HIV medicines currently benefiting millions of poor people. You can lobby Novartis through this Oxfam action page.

Unafraid of change

We recently wrote a case study for a new book from Lonely Planet – the International Volunteering Handbook, which is due to be published around July 2007 – and CMS have just covered it on the news section of their website – Unafraid of change article. So if you can’t wait for the publication of the book you can now read it there! Or if you want a soundbite…

“CMS has over one hundred years of experience in building links with churches around the world — but we were probably attracted more by the fact that it is an organisation not afraid of change, open to experimenting with the new and drawing on the past.

We are supporting a national organisation in Zambia to fight poverty… [and] that is really important for us — we are not entering a country and just doing our own thing; we are working for a Zambian organisation, run and governed by Zambians, in which we can offer support and help but which exists without us or a foreign organisation telling it what to do.”

Jubilee Centre HIV/AIDS workshops

We are now in Ndola, enjoying settling into life at the Jubilee Centre. JC is involved in leading leadership capacity building and advocacy workshops around HIV/AIDS in each constituency in Zambia, as part of the parliamentary reform programme sponsored by PACT-Zambia and USAID. These workshops bring together civic, church and traditional leaders and help draw up an action plan around HIV/AIDS for their constituency. Recently JC ran one in the Keembe constituency, which was reported on in the Zambian national Daily Times newspaper – you can read the article here.

A useful and relevant gift

I’m aware that we’ve blogged about ‘acne cream and pre-shave scrub’ and seem to have lots of examples displaying paternalistic attitudes towards Africa, like sending inappropriate gifts – that seem to be ‘exporting the empire’ – in ways that don’t empower the recipient communities. Yet I know that lots of people want to help appropriately and effectively, and so far our blog posts may have only added to the confusion, leading to more cries of ‘but what can we do’? I know that talk of lifestyle changes and campaigning for changes to the structures and relationships between Africa and ‘the West’ often only partly satisfy those wanting to compassionately respond – and so I wanted to mention something that you might have that can be a useful gift…. a mobile phone….

In Zambia, as elsewhere in Africa, the mobile revolution has taken place. With access to cheap mobile phone networks the landline hurdle has been jumped, and the masses are reaping the ‘benefits’ of instant communication. The mobile phone can offer many benefits: setting up a ‘public mobile phone’ in a community can generate an income; emergency medical advice can be given to rural hospitals; money can even be transferred to family members in remote places. So if you have a mobile phone (that has a removable sim card) doing nothing, it might just be a relevant and useful gift to someone here (contact us for the best way to send it).

The parable of the Jiko

A few weeks ago I visited an auction house in Lusaka to look for a second-hand fridge – I didn’t manage to find a fridge, but I did find a lesson in the importance of local community participation in development programmes.

On route to the auction house I had mentioned to my colleague that we needed to get a jiko (charcoal stove) for home; so when we arrived and immediately saw a mountain of jiko’s we laughed – there were literally hundreds piled on top of one another! So why did the auction house have so many jiko’s I asked the manager? The answer… a large well known international relief agency had brought them to help cooking in a refugee camp in Zambia. But it seems that the local refugee community hadn’t been fully involved in the process, as when presented with their jiko’s the refugees explained they cooked using fire wood and refused to use the jiko’s! Great for me, as I got a fuel efficient jiko for home, but not so good for the refugees or the relief agency in question, who was having to sell-off the jiko’s, presumably having not been able to convince the refugees of their worth.

A Generous community

Thought you might like to know about the Generous project – which I first came across at the Greenbelt festival. It is a growing community of people who commit to making small changes in our everyday lives to look after our planet and its people. You can sign up as a household – and share wisdom and learn from others mistakes. At the beginning of each month new actions are highlighted, which you can then sign-up to doing.

Debt relief for Zambia

In April the government of Zambia announced it is to introduce free health care for people living in rural areas, scrapping fees which for years has made health care inaccessible for many people. The move was made possible using money from debt cancellation and aid increases agreed at the G8 in Gleneagles last July, when Zambia received $4 billion of debt relief; money that it can now invest in health and education.

This is an example of debt relief making a real difference to peoples’ lives – and an example of how campaigns like Make Poverty History and Jubilee Debt Campaign, and advocacy work in general, can help bring about change.

User fees for health care were introduced in Zambia under IMF and World Bank pressure in the early 1990s – and the removal of such fees will cause a surge in patients accessing health clinics across the country. This will add increased pressure on the already chronic shortage of health workers in Zambia – with currently only one doctor per 14,000 people (compared to one doctor per 600 in the UK) – and there is also the problem that most people in Zambia live in the urban areas (where the fees have not been scrapped!), but none the less it is a positive step for the people of Zambia.

G8 Debt Deal

Having blogged about debt relief in Zambia I received a briefing on last years G8 debt deal with the latest on how it is being implemented from Jubilee Debt Campaign.