Developments 50

O N E WO R L D A M I L L I O N S TO R I E S

Is hope in sight?

Five years to meet the Millennium Development Goals and defeat poverty

Exclusive: Andrew Mitchell Interview African feel-good movie hits the big screen Top ten best reads from world writers The kids who live on Mumbai’s building sites www.developments.org.uk

ISSUE 50 | 2010

EDUCATION IN THE CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC

www.dfid.gov.uk Public Enquiry Point: 0845 300 4100 (UK only) or +44 1355 84 3132 (from outside the UK) enquiry@dfid.gov.uk Developments magazine and website are produced by the Department for International Development to raise awareness of development issues.

The views expressed do not necessarily reflect official policies.

D C : LD G A 9 6 B > A A > D C H ID G > : H

Is hope in sight?

Five years to meet the Millennium Development Goals and defeat poverty

Exclusive: Andrew Mitchell Interview African feel-good movie hits the big screen Top ten best reads from world writers The kids who live on Mumbai’s building sites lll#YZkZadebZcih#dg\#j`

>HHJ: *% q '%&%

Woman and child: central Province, Zambia. © Kieran Dodds/Panos

editors Martin Wroe Malcolm Doney DESIGNER Brian Cumming contributors Rhidian Brook Andrew Chambers James Hole Lindsey Moore Keith Nuthall Kavitha Rao

2 | DEVELOPMENTS 46

Women’s rights, empowerment and choice. © ALAFA/Franco Esposito

Warm words, or history in the making?

Good news doesn’t always make headlines. Especially when progress is steady, gradual and undramatic. But there’s no better news than when lives are saved, children allowed to fulfil their potential and people begin to escape the trap of poverty... Because it means the world got better.

Could September’s New York Summit on the Millennium Development Goals be one such news event? Even if mainstream media don’t notice its significance, might its promises make hidden headlines for millions of the poorest people in the years ahead?

There has never been a plan to fight poverty like the Millennium Development Goals. Never before this kind of global support to ”free all men, women, and children from the abject and dehumanising conditions of extreme poverty,” as the original Millennium Declaration puts it. For 10 years countries have been working to deliver eight goals designed to destroy extreme poverty and its root causes.

In New York, the UK government – led by Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg and Secretary of State for International Development Andrew Mitchell – will make health a priority. As Andrew Mitchell puts it (see pg 35): “We need to push for collective international action to reduce the number of mothers and babies dying around the world, and to prevent the spread of diseases such as malaria.”

Delivering on health will accelerate the achievement of other goals because these targets are as connected as the multiple causes underlying extreme poverty. As this issue of Developments shows, progress is being made on the MDGs but it must accelerate in the next five years. Right now, as Nick Clegg says (see pg 36), “the time for warm words is over”. If the world can achieve these goals by 2015, history is guaranteed a headline story like no other.

Martin Wroe and Malcolm Doney

Contents Special focus on the Millennium Development Goals

4

ll for one and one for all A If we’re to achieve the 2015 target, we can’t cherry pick the goals we want to reach

12 Goal 1 – Ending poverty

8

10 Goal 3 – Promoting gender equality, empowering women

12 Goal 4 – Cutting child deaths

Goal 2 – Getting children into school

14 Goal 5 – Saving mother’s lives

16 Goal 6 – Fighting killer diseases

18 Goal 7 – Creating environmental sustainability

20 Goal 8 – Creating a global development partnership

22 Global News 29 Ten best reads

Ten great novels by writers from developing countries.

32 The right glasses

A finalist in the Guardian International Development Journalism Competition on programmes to improve vision.

34 An honour and a responsibility

Feature interview with the UK’s new head of international development, Andrew Mitchell.

37 Out of the rubble

Providing care and an education for the vulnerable children of Mumbai’s construction workers.

42 African road movie

Five African children set off on foot from Rwanda for South Africa’s World Cup – the scriptwriter tells the ‘making of the movie’ story.

DEVELOPMENTS 49 | 3

All for one & one for all In the year 2000, 189 countries came together to agree eight Millennium Development Goals, with the aim of ridding the world of unnecessary poverty, inequality, disease and death. The target date set is 2015. We have five years left to go. And if the goals are to be achieved, they cannot be picked off one by one. they need to be taken as a whole.

E

nding poverty. Delivering education. Saving the lives of mothers and children. Fighting killer diseases. Protecting the environment. Achieving these visionary Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) would stamp 2015 as an unprecedented milestone in the centuries-long struggle against global poverty. But if progress on each goal is mixed, 10 years in, one lesson has never been clearer: the quickest way to achieve any of the goals is to achieve all of the goals. Success at any one inexorably speeds the delivery of others.

Getting children into primary school (Goal 2), for example, is not simply about education. A child born to a mother who can read – let’s call her Adiola – is 50% more likely to survive beyond the age of five. Infant mortality (Goal 4) is reduced.

Education also reduces the chances of the mother being infected with HIV and

4 | DEVELOPMENTS 50

AIDS. (Goal 6 comes closer). And just a year of school increases her earnings.

So her own family are better off (Goal 1 comes into focus).

As Adiola’s education also means her own children are more likely to go to school, she joins a virtuous developmental circle. But the opposite is also true: poverty and lack of education mean women have children earlier, jeopardising both their own health and those of their children… if they survive. That’s the vicious circle, of everdeepening poverty.

Or take Goal 3, empowering women.

This too is about far more than gender equality. It is about Adiola’s daughters no longer being discriminated against for school places (Goal 2) and Adiola and her sisters no longer facing barriers to health care (Goals 5 and 6), or to economic activity (Goal 1). If Adiola is a farmer –

Millennium Development Goals

most of the world’s farmers are women infected mosquitos – which means – in a culture where sexual equality is she and her partner can work to raise understood, she can now gain access to: their living standards, and their children land, which means she can grow more; can go to school, and the virtuous circle training, which helps her work become can continue. more productive; and markets which We need to work globally – in the helps her become more competitive developed world and in developing and raise her income (Goal 1). That’s the countries – to make sure the crops of virtuous circle. Outside of it, though, families like Adiola’s have a market the poorest communities remain trapped overseas (Goal 8), and ensure that the in a vicious circle. Gender inequality is a way they grow them is low carbon, good key reason explaining the high mortality for the environment and the community rate of new mothers (Goal 7), otherwise – violence against any achievement What are the Millennium

Development Goals? women, forced early will wither.

Eradicate extreme poverty marriage, or daughters This September and hunger being sent to fetch a UN summit will Achieve universal primary water while sons are examine progress education sent to school. on the Millennium Promote gender equality Or look at Goal 6, Development Goals. and empower women fighting killer diseases The UK government Reduce child mortality like malaria, HIV and will be calling on Improve maternal health AIDS or TB. Protecting leaders to agree a Combat HIV and AIDS, malaria people from catching global action plan to and other diseases disease or treating meet the promise to Ensure environmental them so they recover, halve global poverty sustainability transforms child once and for all.

Develop a global partnership for development mortality rates (Goal 4).

As the pages that More than 90% follow illustrate, the of the 2.1 million children living with world is making progress on some of HIV were infected while in the womb, the MDGs but is struggling to deliver on around the time of birth or through others. The key to success by 2015 likes in breastfeeding. But when Adiola was a concerted effort to deliver on all fronts. expecting, she was treated with All for one and one for all. That might antiretroviral therapy, so her daughter, be the motto of the eight Millennium like hundreds of thousands of others, Development Goals. will not be infected. And because Adiola Find out more and her family sleep under anti-malarial www.dfid.gov.uk/makingadifference bed nets, they are safe from the bite of

DEVELOPMENTS 50 | 5

GOAL 1

ENDING POVERTY

Halving the proportion of people who earn less than $1 a day, and who suffer from hunger; and achieving decent employment for all.

AGRICULTURE THE PRIORITY Growth in agriculture is twice as effective at reducing poverty as growth in other sectors, such as industry or technology, says the World Bank. It helps the poorest people earn their way out of poverty, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, where agriculture employs nearly two-thirds of the population.

As well as boosting economic growth, investment in agriculture means the poorest countries are able to feed their people and are more resilient to shocks caused by changing global food prices.

Farmer subsidies working Since 2005/2006, the Malawian government has subsidised smallholder farmers, supported by DFID. Farmers were given vouchers to purchase fertiliser and seeds that enable them to produce robust crops. Like many African countries,

Malawi has been prone to food shortages due to droughts and under-investment in agriculture.

As recently as 2005, almost five million of Malawi’s 13 million people needed emergency food aid. But the subsidy has boosted food security.

Maize surplus and extra benefits In tandem with good rains and sound economic policies, it’s enabled Malawi to produce a surplus of maize since 2007. In that year Malawi even donated maize to the World Food Programme, and also sold some of its surplus in the region. There are also indications that the subsidy could be fuelling other successes in Malawi including a decrease in the number of under-fives who are severely underweight, and an increase in the number of meals per day people are eating.

Malawi achieved a 53% food surplus in 2007, from a 43% national food deficit in 2005.

Nicaragua reduced its hunger rate by more than half, from 52% in 1991 to 21% between 2004 and 2006.

In North east Brazil, stunted growth among children, a symptom of malnutrition, decreased from 22.2% to 5.9% between 1996 and 2006-07.

A women prepares a large vat of porridge in Malawi. © Abbie Trayler-Smith/Panos

6 | DEVELOPMENTS 50

Between 1991 and 2004, the number of people who suffer from undernourishment in Ghana fell by 34%, to 9% of the population.

Millennium Development Goals

As well as boosting economic growth, investment in agriculture enables the poorest countries to feed their people.

South africa: JOBS ATTACK POVERTY It’s a busy lunchtime in the crèche at the Tshaba Dimaketse community project.

But nursery worker Gladys Ngoma, pictured, has one of the quieter children in her arms, free for a few moments from the bustling feeding ritual going on around her.

Gladys lives in one of the most marginalised, rural and poverty stricken regions in South Africa. Unemployment is rife and trying to make ends meet is a constant challenge. Although South Africa has made remarkable progress in addressing the legacy of apartheid, it remains a highly unequal society and 26% of the population lives on less than $1.25 a day.

But for Gladys, the Community Works Programme (CWP) has brought her hope.

She now has a job that she loves and the chance to steer herself and her family out of poverty. “I am passionate about caring for these children and the money I earn in the crèche means I can feed my family too.

No one else is earning in my family and before the Community Work Programme life was very hard. Now I can buy my own four children some of the things they need and get them into school.”

UKaid, from the Department for International Development, supported the initial phase of the programme. Four

CWP sites were set up on a pilot basis in South Africa’s poorest districts, offering sustainable work to local people.

At the Tshaba Dimaketse community project, where Gladys works, close to 1,000 men and women build drainage channels, improve the roads, cultivate community gardens and, like Gladys, look after children in the crèche. So far, CWP has generated steady work for more than 55,000 people, many of whom are women. All the activities supported

by CWP are managed by the local communities themselves.

“The aim for the CWP sites is to leave dependency behind,” says CWP regional manager George Moulala. “With just a little help these people have taken ownership of their futures and want to build a self-sustaining community.”

The success of the CWP pilots has led to its inclusion in the South African government’s Expanded Public Works Programme and the project has already been extended to a further 41 sites. The sustainable nature of the programme means that communities are able to pull themselves out of poverty and stay there, which has wider implications for the African nation as a whole. South Africa’s emerging economy plays a pivotal role in the development of the region and improvements in the South African economy are quickly felt by surrounding African countries.

DEVELOPMENTS 50 | 7

GOAL 2

GETTING CHILDREN INTO PRIMARY SCHOOL Making sure that all boys and girls complete a full course of primary schooling.

Education defeats poverty Education is the most effective way to help people improve their lives and climb from poverty, particularly women and girls. It gives children the skills they need to get better jobs and improve their standard of living. Educated children are more able to make informed choices. They are healthier, better off, and so are their children, especially if they are girls.

Slowly getting there…

Slowly the world is edging closer to universal primary education. In the developing world as a whole, 87% of children of primary school age were enrolled in primary education in 2007, up from 82% in 2000. In sub-Saharan Africa

enrolment increased by 50% between 2000 and 2007. In Latin America and the Caribbean, 93% of children are in primary school, with 92% in central Asia. Since 2003 India has put an additional 60 million children into school, and provided 1m new classrooms.

…but still some way off

In Ethiopia, the enrolment rate for primary school in 2007 was 88% higher than in 2000.

But, worldwide, that still leaves 72 million children not in school – almost half of them in sub-Saharan Africa. In Pakistan more than a third of children are out of school.

In Tanzania, the abolition of school fees has meant primary school enrolment almost doubled in seven years.

At present progress is too slow to meet the 2015 target.

In Bolivia, the introduction of bilingual education, covering three of the most widely used indigenous languages, is helping expand access to education among indigenous children in remote areas.

Educated children are healthier and better off – and their own children will be too.

8 | DEVELOPMENTS 50

By eliminating fees, Kenya quickly got 2 million more pupils into primary school.

Mongolia has been providing over 100 innovative mobile (‘tent’) schools in 21 provinces to cater to rural children who may otherwise not have regular access to educational services.

Millennium Development Goals

Bangladesh: Working kids go back to school

© GMB Akash

In Bangladesh, family poverty and poor quality state education forces millions of children out of primary school. Girls in particular lose out as they are often the first to be called on to get a job or help their parents at home.

At dawn every morning, in a slum area of Sheorapara, Dhaka City, Jannatul Akter (pictured) sets up a fruit stall on the main road. Only then does she go to the Child Learning Centre, where she learns to read and write in Bangla and English, to study maths and take part in reciting poetry and singing and dancing. After school, she returns to the stall, where she works until 9pm.

Jannatul’s family need her to work. Her mother is a widow. and there are five other children to feed. But thanks to negotiations by her tutor with her mother and the stall holder, Jannutal can go to school as well. It’s a compromise, and she has to work twice as hard as most children – but Jannatul

doesn’t want to miss out on an education. “I like everything about school,” she says, “the dancing, poetry, singing. Madam [the tutor] also teaches us how to stay clean and comb our hair.”

One day, she hopes to land a highly prized office job but she must stay at the fruit stall for as long as her family expects it.

“Before, the stall owner did not let me go to school,” she says, smiling, “but then Madam came and talked to him and even Ma told him, you cannot stop her from going.”

Part-time attendance at flexible centres like this, funded by the EU and UKaid, gives 320,000 children in approximately 10,000 schools, a fighting chance of staying in school. Professor Rezina Sultana, former principal of a teacher training college in Dhaka, says the scheme is likely to provide new opportunities for girls.

“Families still have high hopes for their boys, but don’t expect so much for their daughters, so if they see something is more flexible they are willing to give their girls a chance”.

DEVELOPMENTS 50 | 9

WOMEN KEY TO DEFEATING POVERTY In developing countries, girls have lower enrolment rates than boys. Women are less literate than men, and they are outnumbered by men in paid employment.

As the primary carers of the family and producers of food, they not only till the land, but grind the grain, carry the water and do the cooking. In Kenya, for example, women can burn up to 85% of their daily calorie intake just fetching water. Yet three-quarters of the women in the world cannot get a bank loan, because they have unpaid or insecure jobs and are not entitled to property ownership. This helps explain why women – more than 50% of the world’s population – own only 1% of the world’s wealth.

Seriously disadvantaged Women in poor countries are also vulnerable to poverty through conflict and violence. Between 40% and 60% of women surveyed in Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Peru, Samoa, Thailand and Tanzania said that they had been physically and/or sexually abused by their intimate partners.

Sound Economic sense Achieving gender equality is more than a matter of justice; it is also economic good sense – it empowers women which fuels thriving economies, boosting productivity

and growth. When women have equal access to education, and go on to participate in business and economic decision-making, they become a driving force against poverty. Put simply, they are healthier, and their families are smaller and better off, and this continues down the generations.

The gap is closing Gender parity in educational enrolment is getting closer. In 2008, there were 96 girls for every 100 boys enrolled in primary school, and 95 girls for every 100 boys in secondary school (in 1999, ratios were 91:100 and 88:100 respectively), but big gaps remain in west Asia, Oceania and sub-Saharan Africa, particularly in rural areas. Also, there are now more women MPs in south Asia, and in Rwanda women outnumber men among MPs – giving women a voice in developing national policy.

Announcing UN Women In July, the United Nations announced the arrival of a new agency to promote women and gender issues. UN Women is designed to eliminate duplication and waste and spend donor money more efficiently by bringing all the UN’s gender work together. It will work with governments and NGOs in developing countries to change systems that discriminate against the poorest women.

exico’s ‘Oportunidades’ M programme led to 20% more girls enrolling in secondary schools in rural areas where the programme operated. tarting from a very low S gender parity in the ‘EIGHTIES, Bangladesh closed the gender gap in primary and secondary education within a decade.

I n Tanzania, Land legislation Secured women’s right to acquire title and registration of land. he number of marriages T of girls aged 10 to 14 in Ethiopia’s Amhara Province has significantly reduced, following promotion of literacy, life skills, reproductive health education and opportunities for savings for girls.

GOAL 3

PROMOTING GENDER EQUALITY, EMPOWERING WOMEN Rebalancing the ratio of girls to boys in education; increasing the share of women in paid employment (outside agriculture); and increasing the proportion of women parliamentarians.

10 | DEVELOPMENTS 50

Millennium Development Goals

Achieving gender equality is more than a matter of justice – it also makes sound economic sense.

India: A WOMAN makes her mark Kaushalya, a 40-year-old mother of five children, lives in the village of Padhariya Rajadhar, in the state of Madhya Pradesh in central India. Born into a poor tribal family, unschooled, illiterate, and married off at 15, she earned a living chasing monkeys from the fields of rich farmers.

But Kaushalya (pictured), was determined that her children’s lives would be different, so she insisted they went to the village primary school. Here Kaushalya was first nominated to join the school’s parent teacher association (PTA), and then found herself elected president.

The school was in a sorry state – teachers were often absent, many village children weren’t enrolled, or failed to turn up. There was no drinking water, clean toilets or decent lunches. And Kaushalya was disappointed to discover that, at meetings, she was expected to listen while others spoke.

But then Kaushalya was invited to attend training (under an Indian government programme supported

by UKaid from DFID). Reluctant at first, she discovered during the course how, in her capacity as PTA president, she could actually improve things. She grew determined to transform her moribund school into one of the best in the region. Kaushalya began with a recruitment drive, using a theatre group which spread the message: “Let’s go to school!” This was followed by a door-to-door enrolment campaign. In just three years, the number of girls in school more than doubled. Kaushalya then established regular checks to make sure teachers attended school as well.

She then lobbied the village council to provide clean drinking water, and embarked on a school health programme. Soon, school lunches became more nutritious, with Kaushalya randomly tasting the food to make sure it was up to standard.

Eventually she even managed to convince government officials to upgrade her school to secondary status (the nearest secondary school was 40km away). Her success has broken many social barriers. Eating food from her kitchen or shaking hands with her is no longer the taboo it once was because of her tribal status. The villagers readily listen to her, and the local government authorities consider her a force to be reckoned with.

The programme which trained Kaushalya has trained 21,259 grassroots government workers so far. Based on the success of this programme, the government of India has made a commitment to train another 8 million workers across the country.

DEVELOPMENTS 50 | 11

GOAL 4

CUTTING

Nigeria: WORKING TOGETHER TO SAVE LIVES In 2004, in the north-western state of Kebbi, in Nigeria, only 1.7% of children were protected against tetanus, polio, tuberculosis and measles – any of which could kill or disable their young victims. Four years later, according to Europe Aid/EC figures, Kebbi State recorded a 77% immunisation level, the highest success rate in the country.

It is not expensive to immunise children, but in places like Kebbi it required a great deal of groundwork. EU PRIME (Partnership to Reinforce Immunisation Efficiency), funded by the European Commission and UKaid, worked with the Nigerian government to invest in a sustainable infrastructure to make sure these cheap vaccines reached vulnerable mothers and children.

Hospitals, cold stores and health centres were built or refurbished, staff and technicians were trained, and the vital cold chain (a continuous system of refrigeration that gets the vaccines from the central depot to the solar-powered fridges in remote rural villages) was established.

But EU PRIME understood from the start

12 | DEVELOPMENTS 50

that to simply make the vaccines available was not enough. As Hajiya Saudat Abdullah, Kebbi’s director for immunisation, put it: “If the communities are not friendly with the facilities or the services we are providing, then sustainability goes back to square one”. And in this overwhelmingly Islamic region, there was a deeply held suspicion that immunisation was a government conspiracy to reduce fertility amongst Muslims.

So political and village leaders were involved in decision-making, and parents of immunised children influenced those in their communities who were more cautious. Also women were involved at every level. And, vitally, Islamic leaders came on board. Imam, Mallam Haruna Abubakar Gwandu (pictured), says: “We took an oath that we’re going to see that each and every child is being immunised.”

As a result Memuna Abubakar can now be much more confident of her children’s health. Before the vaccination programme her children were frequently ill and she lost a daughter during an outbreak of measles. She says: “As soon as I deliver my babies I take them to the hospital for [free] immunisation to protect them from any childhood diseases.”

By the time the EU PRIME project ended in June 2009, Kebbi State’s investment had outmatched that of the EU, and the state then took over full responsibility for funding and administration of primary health care.

Millennium Development Goals

CHILD DEATHS

Reducing the mortality rate of under-fives by two-thirds.

TOO MANY DEATHS It’s among the most shocking of all statistics. An estimated 8.8 million children under five will die this year, almost all in the developing world.

And yet it could be worse. Just a few years ago the figure was 12.5 million – a 28% reduction, according to 2008 figures. It means that 10,000 fewer children are dying every day. But progress is still short of reaching this MDG.

Six major causes According to UNICEF more than three-quarters of these child deaths are attributable to six causes: diarrhoea; malaria; neonatal infection; pneumonia; preterm delivery; lack of oxygen at birth. An Ethiopian child is 30 times more likely to die by his or her fifth birthday than a child in western Europe.

Mostly preventable Most of these deaths are preventable. Some occur directly from measles, malaria or tetanus, others indirectly from conflict or HIV and AIDS. Malnutrition and the lack of safe water and sanitation contribute to at least half these deaths. The continuing decline in mortality rates is down to increased use of key interventions –

immunisations like measles vaccinations, use of insecticide-treated bed nets to prevent malaria, and the provision of vitamin A supplements.

Progress in Malawi Progess is possible. Take Malawi, for example.

One of 10 countries with high child death rates, it is now on track to meet the MDG target of a two-thirds reduction. In 2000, only 3% of young children slept under a mosquito net, but by 2006 this had risen to 25%. Malawi focused limited resources on improvements in health and health systems and the use of the most effective interventions – saving the lives of significant numbers of children.

Off Target Seven of 67 high mortality countries (those with under-five death rates of more than 40 per thousand live births) have consistently achieved annual rates of reduction of child deaths of 4.5% or higher. But sub-Saharan Africa and much of Asia are not on track to reach their target – 40% of the world’s under-five deaths occur in just three countries: India, Nigeria, and the Democratic Republic of Congo – they may be the key to achieving MDG 4.

Rwanda is very likely to meet the MDG targets for child and maternal mortality, partly due to the government’s successful health insurance programme.

The under-five child mortality rate has fallen by 40% or more since 1990 in Ethiopia, Malawi, Mozambique and Niger.

In Malawi, the under-five child mortality rate fell 56% between 1990 and 2008.

Since 1990, China has cut child deaths by 61%.

Interventions like measles vaccinations, insecticidetreated bed nets, and the provision of vitamin A supplements are saving children’s lives.

Cambodia increased exclusive breastfeeding from 13% to 60% from 2000 to 2005, strengthening children and reducing their vulnerability to illnesses.

Between 1990 and 2007, child deaths have decreased in Western Asia from 67 to 34 per 1,000 live births, and in Eastern Asia from 45 to 22 per 1,000 live births.

Between 2000 and 2007, child deaths from measles declined by 74% globally, and by 89% in Africa.

DEVELOPMENTS 50 | 13

GOAL 5

SAVing MOTHERS’ Reducing by three-quarters the rate of maternal mortality and providing universal access to reproductive health.

GIVING BIRTH IS A RISKY BUSINESS More than one third of a million women die in pregnancy and childbirth every year – 40 deaths an hour. Few statistics capture so starkly the disparities in our world: the chances of dying in pregnancy and childbirth in Africa is 22-1. In Asia it is 1 in 120. In rich countries it is 7,300-1.

Hard goal to reach The goal of reducing deaths in motherhood is proving hard to reach even though the vast majority of causes are avoidable. The solution lies in quality reproductive health services and well-timed interventions – and there are many positive signs. Eastern Asia, northern

Africa, and south-eastern Asia showed declines of 30% between 1990 and 2005, with a drop of more than 20% in southern Asia. And, overall, the proportion of births attended by skilled health workers in developing regions increased from 53% in 1990 to 61% in 2007. Half these deaths are in sub-Saharan Africa and a third in southern Asia. Together, these two regions account for 85% of all maternal deaths.

Gap between rich and poor But while more rural women are now receiving skilled assistance during delivery, serious disparities remain between the wealthiest and

the poorest households in developing countries.

Women in the richest households are three times as likely as their poorest counterparts to receive professional care during childbirth. In southern Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, more than half of all births still take place without the assistance of trained personnel.

Education makes a difference We can reach the goal quicker, if we also improve progress on the other MDGs. Take education for example – the birth rate among girls with no education is over four times higher than those who went to secondary school.

Reducing deaths in motherhood means providing quality reproductive health care before and during birth.

Mina Joshi in the final hours of her fourth pregnancy at Baglung District Hospital, Nepal. “I know I will be safe here,” she says. © DFID

14 | DEVELOPMENTS 50

Millennium Development Goals

© Chandra Shekhar Karki

LIVES

In Malawi and Rwanda, removal of user fees has significantly increased the use of family Planning services.

In Rwanda, the use of contraceptives among married women aged 15-49 jumped from 9% in 2005 to 26% in 2008.

Nepal: Why more women give birth in hospital At Baglung District Hospital, roughly 50 miles from Kathmandu, in Nepal, Sarasitu Bhatta, 26, has become the proud mother of twin boys (pictured). Her children, and the other new mums in the maternity ward around her, have been delivered safely and well.

Sarasitu had to make a long walk from her home in the hills to reach the hospital, but it was worth it. “If I had had these twins at home I don’t think I would have survived,” she says. “The doctor had already told me I would be taking a big risk but I wasn’t going to take any chances and I was right – when I was giving birth I had confidence in the team.”

Every day in Nepal 12 women die during pregnancy or childbirth but now, the Nepali government, helped by UKaid, is transforming life for women thanks to the National Safe Motherhood Programme – improving health facilities, training doctors and nurses and educating people about giving birth safely. One simple innovation has been a small payment – about 1,000 rupees (£7.50) – to mothers who come to a hospital to have their child. It

The use of contraceptives among married women aged 15-49 in Malawi more than doubled between 1992 and 2004.

dramatically reduces the risk of mother or child dying at birth.

More and more women in Nepal are choosing to get professional medical advice during their pregnancy and then – when it comes time to give birth – to make the journey to hospital. It is a cultural sea-change which has gathered pace in the last decade and helps explain the dramatically declining rate of maternal mortality in the country.

Nepal has seen an extraordinary fall in the numbers of women dying in childbirth – a recent review suggests a decline in maternal mortality of at least 20%.

Many factors have contributed to this fall, including the increased use of doctors, nurses and auxiliary nurse midwives in attending deliveries.

Emergency obstetric care has improved considerably, while far more women now benefit from legal and safe abortion services. Beyond the health sector, there have been improvements in water and sanitation, transport and communication. But perhaps most importantly, female education levels have significantly increased.

Baglung’s Dr Rajbhandari confirms this: “The consciousness of the people has changed, people now want quality of service and they know that they will get that if they come here.”

Help us shape the UK government’s policy on reproductive, maternal and newborn health in the developing world: www.dfid.gov.uk/choiceforwomen

In Rwanda, the presence of skilled attendants at birth rate increased from 39% to 52% in the three years to 2008.

in the three years to 2008, Maternal deaths in Tamil Nadu, India, fell from 450 to 90 per 100,000 live births between 1980 and 2006.

DEVELOPMENTS 50 | 15

GOAL 6

FIGHTING Reversing the spread of Malaria, HIV and AIDS, TB and other major diseases.

New HIV infections and AIDSrelated deaths have declined significantly in sub-Saharan Africa, thanks to education programmes, prevention policies and the wider availability of antiretroviral medicines.

GETTING BETTER SLOWLY

TB declining

Progress on achieving this goal has been speeding up, with the number of people newly infected with HIV now in decline, and almost 4 million people receiving antiretroviral treatment (ARVs) by 2008.

But there are still 33 million people living with HIV, and less than half of those who need ARVs have access to them.

The incidence of TB is also on a downward slope, but while 2.3 million people were cured of TB in 2008, millions more were unable to access suitable diagnosis and care, and 1·8 million people died from this curable disease.

Mosquito nets effective

If countries are to meet this goal, they will need integrated and operational health systems with well-trained staff.

Increased funding and the distribution of mosquito bed nets has also seen progress in the fight against malaria, but it’s a disease which still kills 1 million people a year – most of them children under five in Africa. On average a child in Africa dies every 30 seconds from a malaria infection caused by the bite of a mosquito.

Better health systems needed

Help us shape the UK government’s policy for tackling malaria in the developing world: www.dfid.gov.uk/malaria-2010

The number of reported malaria cases and deaths fell by more than 50% in Eritrea, Rwanda, Sao Tome & Principe, and Zambia & Zanzibar.

In Peru, improved TB case detection and treatment saved around 91,000 lives between 1991 and 2000. TB incidence declined at a rate of 5% per year over 2006-2008.

Between 1991 and 2000, China reduced TB prevalence by over a third.

Cambodia has managed to halt and reverse the spread of HIV. The number of new HIV infections among children has declined five-fold in Botswana.

16 | DEVELOPMENTS 50

Mosquito nets play a vital role in protecting people – children in particular – from malaria. © William Daniels/Panos

Millennium Development Goals

Winning the battle against killer diseases needs integrated health systems and well-trained staff.

KILLER DISEASES

Zimbabwe: LIVE-SAVING CONVERSATION Like most hairdressers, Dorothy (pictured) talks to her customers about their love lives, but this is no idle gossip. In the Eagle salon in Chitungwiza, the densely populated suburb of Harare, Zimbabwe’s capital, she discusses the intimate details of their sex lives with the aim of saving lives. Supported by UKaid from the Department of International Development, she’s been trained as a peer educator to promote safe sex and help tackle Zimbabwe’s huge HIV and AIDS problem.

In a male-dominated society like Zimbabwe’s, it is important for women to take control of their sexual health. Dorothy is one of 1,500 hairdressers who’ve been trained to explain to their customers about using the female condom – all part of a collaborative project between DFID and Population Services International.

“My customers are young women, some are working, others are students, and some sex workers. They like to look beautiful,” she says, “but they need to protect themselves.”

And Dorothy is ideally placed to tell them how. “Because I’m a woman it’s very simple for me to approach them.”

With 60,000 deaths a year, leaving over a million AIDS orphans, HIV and AIDS has been rampant in Zimbabwe. So it’s vital that people change their behaviour. And hairdressers like Dorothy are having a tangible effect. They have sold over 3m condoms in the last six years, and there are encouraging signs of a fall in HIV prevalence – which has reduced by nearly half.

And, slowly, men are beginning to see the value of the female condom. Obit – married to Barbra, one of Dorothy’s customers – has been using the condom for four years and finds it “very nice”.

So, in order to protect himself and his wife – not to mention ensuring they’re both around for their daughter Chantelle – he concludes, “We have to continue using this.” And on the streets, barbers like Sylvester Nzaras are changing the traditional definition of ‘something for the weekend’ when they talk to the men who visit their backyard shops for a trim. “HIV is killing people here,” he says. “Men are interested when I tell them about the female condom. The good thing is that it feels natural.”

DEVELOPMENTS 50 | 17

Water’s multiple benefits

DEVELOPMENT WITH A LONG VIEW

Water ahead of sanitation

And providing clean and accessible water doesn’t only mean reducing unnecessary illness and death, it also means young children don’t spend hours every morning traipsing miles to carry water back to the family home. They can go to school instead.

If a school has no separate sanitation facilities, the chances are that girls will stay at home. If a school does and a girl attends, not only will she receive an education but she will take her education home – and tell her mother that if they wash their hands and boil their water, they won’t get so sick.

The world, except sub-Saharan Africa, is on track to meet the MDG target on water, but not the sanitation target. While 87% of the global population now uses an improved source of drinking water (77% in 1990) still 884 million people do not. While more than 2.6 billion people remain without decent sanitation – almost 1.8 billion of them in Asia.

CLIMATE CHANGE NOW A FACTOR Climate change has the potential to undermine, or worse still, reverse progress towards the MDGs. Climate change and poverty need to be tackled together – they are inextricably linked. If we are to halve global poverty by 2015 developing countries will need help to ensure they adopt green development pathways and that they adapt to deal with the impacts of climate change.

SIERRA LEONE: SCHOOLKIDS COMBAT CLIMATE CHANGE A group of teenage boys sit in a classroom having a lively, informed conversation about climate change – how local weather patterns are shifting, disrupting the planting and gathering of crops, and all that this means for their community.

The boys, like several thousand other children in Sierra Leone, are taking part in an innovative educational programme funded by DFID and delivered by Plan UK. The programme aims to prepare young people for climate change and give them practical skills and small amounts of funding to combat it Unlike much of Africa, Sierra Leone’s climate change risks are mainly man-made. It suffers from accelerating deforestation, from 30 years of logging, mining and land conversion (such as for cattle grazing), plus the damage from the civil war of the 1990s.

sustainable management The Millennium Development Goals recognise that environmental sustainability is a vital part of global economic and social well-being – that we have to find ways to live sustainably and healthily on our planet. This means managing more carefully forests, land, water and fisheries – for example supporting poor communities to steward forested land over generations and not be forced to raze it in a single generation.

Knock-on effect

Front of mind for these boys is their school’s vulnerability to the heavy storms which buffet it each rainy season. ”Every year, we were afraid that our school was under serious threat of losing its roof,” says Lansana Saffa, a pupil at the Ahmadiyya Secondary School in Kailahun, in the east of the country. “We used the $1,000 [from Plan UK] to nurse acacia trees and later planted them around our school, so that, when they grew, they trapped the wind and the roof could no longer be blown off.”

In other parts of the country, the programme has backed the planting of trees for shade (to protect water sources and vegetation), and has trained children to build energy-saving stoves in their kitchens, to help reduce consumption of firewood previously plundered from forests.

Around 32 children’s groups and 51 schools in Sierra Leone have benefitted from the programme, which is part of a wider Plan UK project including the Philippines, El Salvador, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Ecuador and Cambodia. It is based on the belief that young people should be actively involved in reducing the risk of climate-related disasters – a role that should be recognised internationally.

“My involvement in this tree planting exercise has helped me to develop an interest in protecting my environment,” says Lansana Saffa. “I see that we can solve problems of disaster in our communities ourselves.”

Costa Rica prevented the loss of 720 sq km of forests in biodiversity priority areas and avoided the emission of 11m tons of carbon, in six years.

Increasing access to water and sanitation underpins success on many of the other Millennium Development Goals, in particular on improving health and access to education.

Sustainable all round All development initiatives, from agriculture to manufacturing, need to be sustainable – low on carbon emissions, and good for human and animal welfare, and environmentally sound.

By 2006, 80% of the rural population in Ghana had access to an improved drinking water source, an increase of 43% on 1990 levels.

In Mali, the percentage of the population with access to improved sanitation rose from 35% in 1990 to 45% in 2006.

Guatemala has increased its investment in water and sanitation resources since 1990. access to improved drinking water had risen from 79% to 96% in 2006 and Access to improved sanitation from 70% to 84%.

The proportion of people living in Senegal’s cities with access to improved water reached 93% in 2006.

GOAL 7

CREATING Halving the proportion of people with no safe drinking water and sanitation; reducing biodiversity loss; protecting the environment.

18 | DEVELOPMENTS 50

Millennium Development Goals

All development initiatives – from agriculture to manufacturing – need to be sustainable.

ENVIRONMENTAL SUSTAINABILITY DEVELOPMENTS 50 | 19

GOAL 8

CREATING A GLOBAL DEVELOPMENT PARTNERSHIP Making a fair global trading system built on good governance and focused on least developed nations with improved debt-relief and development assistance.

20 | DEVELOPMENTS 50

Š Aubrey Wade/Panos

Poor countries will escape poverty if they achieve economic growth. Trading up and out means producing what people want to buy, and getting access to customers.

Millennium Development Goals

GROWING TOGETHER Taken together the eight Millennium Goals represent a global partnership to fight poverty and boost development. This final goal underlines this partnership by emphasising: 1. T he responsibility of poor countries to work towards achieving them – ensuring greater accountability to citizens and efficient use of resources.

2. The onus on rich countries to deliver too – with more effective aid, debt relief and fairer trade rules.

Global challenges Some challenges have to be faced globally and this goal focuses on aid, trade and debt as well as creating access to life-saving drugs and new communication technologies at affordable prices. As when China, India, Iran and Uzbekistan succeeded in halving private sector prices for generic medicines.

Aid While aid continues to rise, only five countries had achieved the UN target of 0.7% of Gross National Income by 2009 – Denmark, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden.

Access to markets Poor countries will escape poverty if they achieve economic growth. Trading up and out means producing what people want to buy and getting access to customers. Developing countries and least developed countries (LDCs) are gradually getting more access to the markets of developed countries. But for the LDCs, the increase was marginal. A global trade deal is vital to accelerate this process.

Dealing with debt

Kenya: Milking the benefits In Kenya, milk is big business. Dairy products are the largest item of household expenditure, and annual milk consumption is five times higher than other east African countries. But the milk chain is dominated by independent, ‘informal’ producers and retailers, with almost 86% of the market share. ‘Raw’, unpasteurised milk is produced by smallscale farmers and sold door-to-door or in milk bars. The price is lower than factory produced milk which is good news for poor customers, and farmers generally get higher prices than from large-scale dairies.

But under the old colonial dairy policy, informal vendors couldn’t get licenced and were frequently harassed as powerful dairy market players sought to protect their interests. The Smallholder Dairy Project (SDP), supported by DFID, provided evidence of the economic value of the informal sector and highlighted the potential to ensure quality. Its research found that smallholder dairy farming in Kenya supports 800,000 farmers – including many female-headed households – and generates an additional 35,000 full-time jobs in milk collection, transportation, processing, and sales.

Their evidence, along with the advocacy of organisations which gave a voice to poor, small-scale milk vendors (SSMVs), persuaded the government to shift its policy. SSMVs can now be licenced and, importantly, trained in milk handling, processing and marketing. All of which improves milk quality.

Around 4,000 SSMVs, employing 10,000 people, have now been trained and certified by

the Kenya Dairy Board, while field regulators ensure that licenced outlets and premises meet hygiene standards, testing requirements and sanitation.

“Things have changed a lot,” says Virginia Wamaitha of the Katito milk traders group.

“Before we were enemies of all the regulatory bodies, the police, the Kenya Dairy Board, the public health inspectors. But now we have come together, we have been trained… [and] there has been a drastic reduction in milk rejected by customers. We feel proud of the milk we are delivering to the consumers.”

“When I started I never knew how to handle milk,” says Gabriel Karanja (pictured), who sells milk door-to-door by bicycle. “But after training I don’t get losses now. The milk business has improved a lot… Although we pay the Dairy Board permit, transport permit… I trade more milk now.”

Licensing and certifying milk vendors has benefited the Kenyan economy by around $33.5m a year and there are plans to pursue similar regulations in Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda.

A country’s external debt burden affects its creditworthiness and vulnerability to economic shocks. Better debt management, the expansion of trade and – for the poorest countries – substantial debt relief have reduced the debt burden.

Information is power Information and communications technology (ICT) continues to expand. Growth is strongest of all in the developing world, where, by the end of last year penetration had passed 50%.

The mobile phone offers new communications opportunities to regions that used to be without access to ICT. In sub-Saharan Africa, for example, while only 1% of the population has a landline, 30% have a mobile. Mobile technology is also now being used for a plethora of applications, including text messaging, m-banking and disaster management.

Over $117bn of unpayable debt has been written off through the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Initiative and Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative (MDRI).

Money devoted to reducing poverty in countries that receive assistance from the HIPC Initiative rose from $5,952bn in 1999 to $26,697bn in 2008.

Twenty-six of these indebted countries have received 100% debt cancellation at the World Bank, IMF and African Development Bank through the MDRI. Debt relief brings tangible benefits: In Benin, rural primary health care and HIV programmes have been improved; in Tanzania, primary school fees were abolished; in Mozambique children were offered free immunisation; in Uganda 2.2 million people gained access to clean water.

DEVELOPMENTS 50 | 21

DEVELOPMENTS 50 GLOBAL NEWS

Anti-malaria anthem for bed net campaign Senegal-born singer Youssou Ndour is raising his highly recognisable voice to amplify the fight against malaria in his home country. His song Xeex Sibbiru – “fight malaria” – a collaboration with Malaria No More, raises awareness about malaria prevention and treatment in Senegal as part of a mass distribution of mosquito nets.

T

he Youssou Ndour Foundation and Malaria No More recently launched Surround Sound: Senegal, a campaign to activate key sectors of society – entertainment, sport, faith, local business and government – to encourage people to use mosquito nets and seek treatment. The singer is not only the most popular artist in west Africa, but also one of Senegal’s

I wrote Xeex Sibbiru because I am tired of seeing my country suffer needlessly from this preventable and treatable disease.

biggest media owners, besides being a board member of Malaria No More, and an ambassador for the Roll Back Malaria Partnership. Ndour is focused on engaging families across the country in a common effort against malaria, which can be defeated with simple tools like mosquito nets and effective medicines.

“Malaria has plagued Senegal for too long,” said Ndour, “I wrote Xeex Sibbiru because I am tired of seeing my country suffer needlessly from this preventable and treatable disease. It’s up to each of us to do our part. I am honoured to use my music to help families in Senegal learn how to protect themselves from malaria and make a happier and healthier future for their children.”

Surround Sound: Senegal was launched as Senegal’s Ministry of Health and National Malaria Control Programme (PNLP), with international partners, prepared to distribute two million long-lasting insecticide-treated mosquito nets to cover every child under five in Senegal by the end of 2010.

Yousso Ndour collaborated with fellow Senegalese artists to write Xeex Sibbiru, telling the story of a young man who gets malaria and misses out on life and encouraging him and all Senegalese to sleep under a mosquito net. This song, along with radio messages from Ndour himself, has been airing across national radio stations and from 1,300 health huts and net distribution points throughout the country.

“In order to reach our goal of ending malaria deaths in Africa by 2015, we need to make sure that every family is equipped with the tools and the knowledge of how to protect themselves,” said Scott Case, CEO of Malaria No More.

Download Xeex Sibbiru at www.malarianomore.org /surroundsound

22 | DEVELOPMENTS 50

ECO-DISASTER ISLAND BECOMES PARK The once blighted Samar Island in the Philippines has been transformed by the creation of a natural park. In the late 1980s much of the landscape of this island was blighted through deforestation and mining of large bauxite deposits.

Because of this promoted soil erosion and flooding, the national government imposed a logging moratorium in 1989, indefinitely extended by then president Corazon Aquino. The island was then declared a forest reserve. But islanders still needed to make a living, so the UN Global Environment Fund (GEF) and the Philippines government created a Samar Island biodiversity project, focusing on the sustainable management of natural resources and providing alternative livelihoods, such as eco-tourism.

This has been promoted by the creation of a 450,000 hectare Samar Island Natural Park, home to 38 mammal species, 215 bird species, 51 reptile species, 26 amphibian species, and more than 1,000 species of plants.

SOLAR POWER SPOTLIGHTS HOMEWORK Dutch electronics corporation Philips is working with the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) to bring sustainable energy to African villages, where an estimated 560 million people are left in darkness after nightfall. As part of World Environment Day 2010, Philips Lighting Africa donated 250 home solar systems to rural Rwandan villages without electricity, with the aim of helping schoolchildren finish their homework and improve their education.

“Philips is committed to making affordable, high-quality, energy efficient lighting available to areas where it is most needed,” said Philips Lighting Africa CEO Mr DP Smedema. “Solar-powered lighting solutions can make a true difference for the people in Rwanda.”

Another 50 systems will be given to the Rubaya village, Gichumbi district, a pilot community village where UNEP and the Rwandan government are trying to combine poverty reduction and environmental improvement measures.

TEA GROWERS URGED TO ‘DRINK UP’ The UN Food & Agriculture Organisation (FAO) is advising tea-exporting countries to stimulate demand in their domestic markets, because major growing sales are unlikely in traditional importers of black tea, such as Britain and Russia. “In countries where tea is produced per capita consumption is much lower [than foreign markets] and so there is a lot more market potential,” said Kaison Chang, secretary of FAO’s inter-governmental group on tea.

Tea-producing country consumers drink 10% of the tea drunk in mature import markets. China is the world’s largest tea exporter, followed by Kenya, Sri Lanka and India.

WHEAT DISEASE UNDER SURVEILLANCE A ‘rust spore’ website has been launched by the UN Food & Agriculture Organisation (FAO) to track Ug99, a devastating strain of wheat stem rust disease, carried by wind – and on people’s clothes. Scientists fear it is spreading across Africa and could infect south Asia. “Emergence of the Ug99 races in east Africa [discovered in Uganda in 1999] transformed stem rust from a disease largely under control into a significant global threat,” said David Hodson of the FAO. “This year millions of dollars in crop losses are likely because of yellow rust outbreaks in the Middle East, central Asia, the Caucasus and north Africa.” The ‘Rust Spore’ site will deliver information on the disease’s status, monitor new strains and offer reliable data on a global scale.

More information http://www.fao.org/ agriculture/crops/rust/stem/en/

TRADITIONAL WEAVERS MEET HIGH FASHION Bangladesh-born Bibi Russell, the international model, has been working with tribal women in Assam, India, to commercialise their traditional woven garments, and provide them with financial independence. Teaming up with the UNDP, she has been helping Bodo women blend traditional weaving techniques with high fashion design, production and marketing. The programme is being coordinated by local clothing business Weaving Destination, which preserves traditional Bodo motifs and weaving. The company’s staff of more than 40 women include HIV sufferers, human trafficking survivors and female migrant returnees who are, says UNDP, “highly vulnerable to re-trafficking, social exclusion, and impoverishment.” The company also operates a vocational training centre for Bodo communities.

“Women need support to develop skills that will help them to be economically independent and socially confident,” said Bibi Russell. “What they need is self esteem, human dignity and empowerment for better livelihoods and sustainable income.”

DEVELOPMENTS 50 | 23

DEVELOPMENTS 50 GLOBAL NEWS

‘Green medals’ illuminate global innovation The 2010 Ashden Awards for sustainable energy took place earlier in the summer, with £140,000 going to groups who have saved thousands of tonnes of CO2 through the sustainable energy technologies.

“These award-winners are champions at delivering practical ways of protecting our planet and its precious biodiversity through the use of sustainable energy,” said TV broadcaster Sir David Attenborough at the awards ceremony. “They are reducing carbon emissions and protecting local ecosystems, while improving the lives of the people they touch.

They greatly deserve to be celebrated for their important role in tackling both climate change and poverty.”

Green light goes gold The overall Golden Award went to D.light Design, India for its innovative solar lamp.

Each year 1.6 million women and children die as a result of indoor air pollution, much of it from kerosene lamps. But for the 1.6 billion people across the world without electricity there has been little alternative. D.Light has provided a solution with a cheap, reliable solar lamp. Over 220,000 units have already been sold in over 30 countries via a network of rural entrepreneurs. As one of these entrepreneurs says, ”this will do to kerosene what mobile phones did to letters”.

www.ashdenawards.org/winners/ Dlight10

24 | DEVELOPMENTS 50

TREES FOR PAPER FIGHT POVERTY India’s largest pulp and paper company wants to fight poverty and improve the environment by ensuring its supply chain includes poor small farmers in Orissa and Andhra Pradesh. Ballarpur Industries is providing smallholders with access to finance to purchase seeds for pulpwood trees, whose wood they can sell to the company through a guaranteed buy-back programme. It is also offering guidance on growing pulpwood and a rain-fed tree variety that does not require additional irrigation. Ballarpur Industries is also supplying training in livestock husbandry so that growers can make more of their plots. They predict that by 2015, participating farmers will earn six times more per acre of degraded land than other farmers.

Electricity you can rely on In Brazil, energy cooperative CRELUZ has built six micro hydro plants which supply electricity to an area of 12,000 sq km, benefiting over 80,000 people. Reliable electricity is critical to the sustainability of rural communities – offering greater opportunity for income generation and less migration to cities. It also reduces deforestation as locals are no longer stripping the local forests for fuel. Indeed, in its commitment to sustainability, CRELUZ has begun a complementary programme of reforestation.

www.ashdenawards.org/winners /CRELUZ10

PAKISTANI WOMEN LEARN VET SKILLS A Pakistan university has been working with the UNDP to spread veterinary skills among rural women, especially in the Punjab, where women traditionally care for livestock. The goal of the month-long training programme operated by Lahore’s University of Veterinary & Animal Sciences (UVAS) is to enable women to earn a living caring for village livestock, generating wealth and animal health simultaneously.

“Engaging and training women as livestock managers not only empowers women but enables the government to extend livestock services to the most remote areas,” said Faiza Effendi, chief of the poverty reduction unit at UNDP Pakistan. “This is a key lynchpin to the livestock development policy in Pakistan.” More than 850 ‘Lady Livestock Workers’, as they are called, have now qualified, with 60% earning a living from the work, earning on average 3,000 Pakistan rupees a month ($34), a reasonable income in the Punjabi countryside. They are now providing veterinary services in 280 villages. The project has been backed by Nestlé Pakistan, Engro Food Pakistan and UKaid from DFID. DEVELOPMENTS 50 | 25

DEVELOPMENTS 50 GLOBAL NEWS

Here comes the sun “I like to see the excitement on people’s faces when they can turn on a light. I feel I am making people happy,” says a TECNOSOL installer of solar systems in rural Nicaragua.

Here, the company has developed a range of solar-driven systems that are providing critical power for schools, health centres, and businesses, not to mention the 40,000 systems sold to homes across the country.

With 17 branches across Nicaragua, TECNOSOL is now spreading its message and products across the continent.

www.ashdenawards.org/winners /TECNOSOL10

Waste not, want not Deforestation is ravaging rural Kenya as people strip forests for vital cooking fuel. Yet biogas, produced from animal and human waste, is a viable alternative – if only there was the training and awareness to make it happen. Sky Link provides both through a network of local entrepreneurs. Two hundred domestic biogas plants and six large-scale ones in schools and a prison have been sold, benefiting at least 5,200 people. As a result, wood use has been cut by 800 tonnes a year, reducing carbon emissions by around 1,100 tonnes a year.

www.ashdenawards.org/winners/Skylink10

26 | DEVELOPMENTS 50

Africa lights up More than 70% of sub-Saharan Africa has no access to electricity. In rural areas this rises above 95%. The Rural Energy Foundation (REF) has met this need by turning local communities on to solar. Recognising that the products are nothing without the local enthusiasm to promote and install them, REF has trained local networks of budding entrepreneurs.

As a result, in only three years 300,000 people in nine countries have gained access to solar energy. Better quality light gives opportunities for study, income-generation and leisure activities as well as vital access to radio and mobile phones.

www.ashdenawards.org/winners/TECNOSOL10

DEVELOPMENTS 50 | 27

DEVELOPMENTS 50 GLOBAL NEWS

When problems become opportunities The Vietnamese Ministry of Agriculture and the Dutch aid agency SNV faced the twin problems of dangerous cooking practices and huge amounts of untreated animal waste. Turning the problem into an opportunity, they worked out how to convert the waste to energy using biogas digesters, which produced clean, reliable energy for cooking and heating. At the same time, they reduced the health and environmental problems associated with wood fuels, not to mention the animal waste. Over 78,000 systems have been installed, benefiting more than 390,000 people, and saving around 167,000 tonnes of CO2 a year.

www.ashdenawards.org/winners/MARD10

SAMOANS TRACK CLIMATE CHANGE ON FILM Samoans are embracing video as an increasingly effective way to highlight concerns about climate change. Eight community groups from within the Pacific archipelago have participated in film-making workshops sponsored by the UNDP’s Global Environment Facility initiative. They interviewed fellow residents to demonstrate the impact climate change is having on their lives: how climate change-related phenomena such as extreme weather and rising sea levels have swallowed villages and changed food-gathering habits.

A woman remembered how she used to dry coconuts on a beach that no longer exists. A fisherman said: “Severe cyclones force the fish out deep into the ocean. It’s hard for people to find fish for their daily meals.” These ‘participatory videos’ are made by the people they aim to benefit. “Participatory videos and photo stories with narrations have become a powerful tool for development, particularly in remote rural villages and indigenous communities,” said Terence Hay-Edie, a biodiversity expert working with the programme. Samoans, he said, were also keen on “capturing their traditional, oral culture in the participatory video, which overcomes language or literacy barriers.”

Ashden calls for 2011 entries The Ashden Awards for Sustainable Energy are seeking entries from inspirational and innovative local sustainable energy programmes from Asia, Africa and Latin America. Entry is free, and up to six winners will receive £20,000 each in prize money for programme development, with one winner receiving a gold award of £40,000. The awards will be presented at a VIP ceremony in London in June 2011.

For 2011 they are particularly interested in applications from Latin America and China, and are keen to hear from organisations who are working to reduce deforestation.

They look for schemes that are technically rigorous, have an element of innovation and – most importantly – make a genuine difference to local peoples’ lives, both socially and economically.

For information and an application form: http://www.ashdenawards.org/int_awards

28 | DEVELOPMENTS 50

ZIMBABWE/RHODESIA

Nervous Conditions Tsitsi Dangarembga The Women’s Press, 1988; Ayebia Clarke Publishing, 2004.

The opening of Dangarembga’s contemporary classic – “I was not sorry when my brother died” – defiantly announces the birth of southern Africa’s most memorable female protagonist.

Nervous Conditions is the coming-of-age story of farm girl, Tambu, and her English-educated cousin, Nyasha, against a backdrop of traditional and colonial pressures and restrictions. The setting is late 1960s Rhodesia but the focus is on individual minds and bodies rather than the popular uprising of that period. In the longawaited sequel, The Book of Not (2006), national independence provides no easy solutions.

NIGERIA

EGYPT

Half of a Yellow Sun

The Yacoubian Building

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Alaa Al Aswany,

Fourth Estate, 2006; Harper Perennial 2007.

Translated by Humphrey Davies.

In her debut novel, Purple Hibiscus, Nigerianborn Adichie paid her dues to compatriot Chinua Achebe and to fellow African Tsitsi Dangarembga: “Things started to fall apart at home when my brother, Jaja, did not go to communion and Papa flung his heavy missal across the room”. In ‘Half of a Yellow Sun’, she moves into relatively uncharted territory. Set amidst the temporary establishment of Biafra and ensuing inter-ethnic bloodbath, the novel follows houseboy Ugwu, his employer Olanna, and an Englishman, Richard, in love with Olanna’s sister. This compelling novel sets itself against divisive grand narratives of ethnicity, gender and class and has a telling twist in its tail.

Harper Perennial, 2007.

First published in Arabic, 2002.

A bestseller in the Arab world, spawning a box-office hit movie and a ‘cleaned up’ television series, Al Aswany’s dark comedy is also an indictment of corruption and its effects in post-Nasserite Egypt. In the business spaces, splendidly dilapidated apartments and rooftop shacks of the (real art deco) Yacoubian Building on Suleiman Basha street, we encounter a closeted homosexual, a wealthy businessmanturned-politician, an opportunistic sister, an aspiring young woman, a Christian tailor, an ageing playboy and a budding Islamic militant. Something will have to give.

The legacy of Egypt’s literary giant, Naguib Mahfouz, resonates through this vivisection of contemporary Cairo life.

TEN BEST READS Too often in popular media, developing countries are stereotyped as poor and struggling, while the work of their world-class artists, performers, musicians and writers is overlooked. Lindsey Moore offers a taster menu of the cream of contemporary world literature.

DEVELOPMENTS 50 | 29

PALESTINIAN TERRITORIES

I Saw Ramallah Mourid Barghouti, Translated by Ahdaf Soueif.

Introduction by Edward Said.

American University in Cairo Press, 2000; Bloomsbury, 2005.

First published in Arabic, 1997.

From a magisterial opening scene that has the author crossing back into occupied Palestine, this fragmented yet intense memoir demonstrates that “the displaced person becomes a stranger to his memories and so he tries to cling to them”. As Said suggests, a “life-affirming poetic texture” gives the stamp of authenticity to a narrative of (ultimately impossible) return. Barghouti keeps nostalgia at bay, aware that the Israeli occupation “did not deprive us of the clay ovens of yesterday, but of the mystery of what we would invent tomorrow”. This is a vital contribution to Palestinian literature by one of its most accomplished diaspora poets.

INDIA

VIETNAM

The God of Small Things

Paradise of the Blind

Arundhati Roy

Duong Thu Huong

Flamingo, 1997; Harper Perennial, 2004.

Translated by Phan Huy Duong and Nina McPherson.

“She sensed that a pact had been forged between her Dream and the World. And that the midwives of that pact were, or would be, her sawdust coated two-egg twins.” This international bestseller and cause célèbre in Kerala, India, where it is set, is the only novel by activist Roy, and it is as stylistically exuberant as Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children. Rebellious Ammu’s liaison with the ‘untouchable’ Velutha is pulled into the vortex of regional tensions. But the novel insists upon the “small things”: the unpredictability of desire, and two children’s unwitting complicity in the beautiful, destructive fate of the two adults they love.

Harper Perennial, 2002.

First published in Vietnamese, 1988.

Hang, a Vietnamese “exported worker” recalls her life over the course of a train journey across Russia. Her story of a lost father, his powerful sister, a mother worn down by family duty and her corrupt, parasitic brother powerfully evokes the experience of two generations struggling under communism. Memory as “the purest balm and the most overpowering poison” is beautifully rendered in this fine translation, in which melancholy is leavened by the sensual texture of rural Vietnam and the gastronomic wonders of the Hanoi slums. The novel was banned in Vietnam and its author, formerly a Party member, briefly imprisoned.

AFGHANISTAN

The Wasted Vigil Nadeem Aslam Faber & Faber, 2008.

Pakistani-born Aslam surpasses expectations with his stunning third novel. Set in contemporary Afghanistan, The Wasted Vigil reflects the potential for wonder even in times of terror. On interlocking quests or in search of refuge, a white British Muslim widower, a Russian, an American secret agent, a local and an Islamist gather in an old perfume factory by a lake. “On the wide ceiling are hundreds of books, each held in place by an iron nail hammered through it.” Recalling Ondaatje’s The English Patient, this is an elegy to the casualties of a multilayered history that has all but eviscerated a nation.

9

Melancholy is leavened by the sensual texture of rural Vietnam and the gastronomic wonders of the Hanoi slums.

8

30 | DEVELOPMENTS 50

10

SAMOA

They Who Do Not Grieve Sia Figiel Chatto & Windus, 2000; Vintage, 2001.

Sia Figiel’s second novel is a vivid portrait of the artist as a young outsider for whom the alphabet “spilled, running wild through the spaces between my fingers”. The narrative interleaves two matrilineal Samoan family stories ruptured by silences, moving between reality, dream and myth, and deferring closure until the final pages. As young Malu learns to transcend her legacy as a “fallen” woman and an “exotic Islander”, the novel moves towards a “line drawn beyond the green horizon, connecting the past, the present, the future, that she alone saw”. Ben Okri’s The Famished Road makes a not incidental appearance.

HAITI

GUYANA

Heading South

Disappearance

Dany Laferrière

David Dabydeen

Translated by Wayne Grady.

Grasset, 2006; Douglas & McIntyre, 2010.

An enfant terrible of the Francophone literary scene, Laferrière interlaces individual and collective struggles to survive in Haiti, under the infamous ‘Baby Doc’ Duvalier regime of the 1970s. The lens widens from the ambivalent power relations that underpin the procuring of young black bodies by white female sexual tourists – the focus of Laurent Cantet’s 2005 film version of the novel (Vers le sud) – to the experience of artists, musicians, ideologues and hustlers on Haiti’s backstreets. This is a compelling, disturbing exploration, by a consistently edgy writer, of the trade-offs involved in upward mobility and sexual and artistic emancipation.

Martin Secker & Warburg Ltd, 1993; Peepal Tree Press, 2005.

Guyanese novelist and poet Dabydeen undermines notions of fixed and enduring identity, emphasising cultures as multi-layered, and humanity as essentially fragile. When a “West-Indian of African ancestry, trained in the science and technology of Great Britain” comes to construct a sea wall on the Kent coast, his encounters with Englishness disinter personal memories of Guyana, and a longer ‘Black Atlantic’ history. Individual and national identities are revealed as masks; stories and monuments as fragments shored up against an inevitable transience. An intelligent debunking of imperial nostalgia, Disappearance also portrays the irreducible complexity of Caribbean identity.

4 5 3 7

2 6 1

DEVELOPMENTS 50 | 31

© beeceedee.co.uk

32 | DEVELOPMENTS 50

Guardian International Development Journalism competition

THE RIGHT GLASSES Andrew Chambers – a finalist in the 2010 Guardian International Development Journalism competition – examines the visible impact of the global initiative Vision 2020, which is transforming lives for visually impaired people across the developing world.

“I

’m very happy,” says John with a broad grin, “because many things I couldn’t see I can now.” Perched on his nose is a new pair of thick oval lenses. Costing only a few dollars they have completely transformed this Malawian teenager’s life. Unable to see the board, he had struggled at school and had been kept down a year. “I was very interested in school but when I had my eye problems it was difficult for me to improve,” he explains. Following an outreach programme

by Sightsavers and ICEE, many children in his school in Limbe have now been fitted with glasses. It’s a simple intervention, but one which will make a massive difference to these children’s education and to their future.

Distributing glasses through the developing world is just one of the strategies employed by Vision 2020. Over a 20-year period, this global initiative has a target of eliminating avoidable blindness and limiting the number of people affected by visual impairments. The project, launched in 1999, is a collaborative effort between the World Health Organisation and the International Agency for Preventable Blindness.

But with so many charities competing for attention, with so many challenges facing the developing world, should vision problems be an aid priority?

There are more than 250 million people with visual impairments in the developing world, whilst blindness affects 45 million people.

These conditions have a massive impact on the individual, on the economy and on carers. This manifests itself in terms of lost income, reduced educational opportunities, a reduced quality of life and premature death. Yet remarkably the vast majority of these cases could be avoided.

With an aging population it is estimated that visual impairments will double between 1990 and 2020. Therefore this is a growing problem for developing countries.

Vision problems receive only a tiny fraction of the attention and funding directed towards other health needs, and yet there is strong evidence of their importance in international development. A cost-benefit analysis by Professor Cook looked at the annual costs for vision treatment programmes relative to the annual economic loss of vision impairment.

The research demonstrated that this was an exceptionally cost-effective way of providing aid. In Botswana for example a $3.6m program would effectively save the country $41m.

Such programmes require collaborative working between different NGOs, national health ministries and local professionals.

As such they can also provide a catalyst for health reform in developing countries and leave a long-term legacy of improved health care.

One such scheme run by ORBIS uses a specially fitted plane called the Flying Eye Hospital – which contains both an operating room and a 48-seat classroom. The plane flies to different locations in the developing world, and is used both as an educational tool and as a desperately needed provider of eye surgery. Local healthcare professionals gather for lectures and can even watch live broadcasts of surgery in progress.

Through this emphasis on education and local partnership, good practice can continue long after the visit.

Lasoi’s story is testament to the benefits of vision treatment. The 40-year-old mother of seven is from Koora village, South Kenya. She is a splash of colour amidst the dusty desert plains, wrapped in a polka dot blue shawl and orange skirt. Brightly coloured beads hang from her ears, jangling when she moves her head.

She has just made the nine-mile trek from her village to Kachori market where she will sell her homemade beads. She was one of an estimated

About the Guardian International Development Journalism competition The competition aims to highlight crucial issues facing the developing world which are overlooked or underrepresented by the media.

The intention is to discover enthusiastic writers who want to demonstrate their journalistic abilities by examining these issues.

The competition is run in partnership with a number of organisations – principally Marie Stopes International, GlaxoSmithKline and the Department for International Development.

The challenge was to write a feature of 650 to 1,000 words, between 6 March and 30 April 2010, on an aspect of global poverty that deserves greater media exposure. The 16 best writers (eight amateur, eight professional) were selected from a longlist of around 40 entrants, all of whom have had their articles published online at guardian.co.uk. Andrew Chambers was one of the finalists in the professional category.

The eight shortlisted contestants are sent on an assignment to Africa and Asia in September and October to write a final piece. The winner is announced in November 2010.

More information www.guardian.co.uk/ journalismcompetition

10.6 million people suffering with in-turned eyelashes. “I knew that I would eventually go blind if I had not had an operation,” she says.

Trachoma is a horrible infectious disease, which causes the eyelashes to turn in on themselves, causing ever greater irritation and eventual blindness. It is the most prevalent infectious cause of blindness – 6 million people have irreparable vision damage as a result of trachoma. All of these cases could have been avoided with earlier intervention. Women are disproportionately affected due to their carer responsibilities, which leave them more vulnerable to infection.

“I had so much pain in my eyes,” Lasoi says. “I used to get a friend to pull my eye-lashes out.”

Her suffering was so great that she had to stop making beads to sell at the local market and her children dropped out of school to help look after her. “I could no longer afford to buy food for my family,” she adds. However, following a Sightsavers operation she is pain free, and no longer at risk of going blind. “I am now able to get back to my life,” she says. Her children have returned to school and she is able to sell her beads again. “Life is better now,” she concludes.

The World Bank uses a concept of ‘disability adjusted life years’ (DALYs) to measure the time lived with a disability and its effect on premature mortality. This then allows an objective comparison between different health treatments based on the cost per DALY saved.

Using this metric, both surgical and nonsurgical trachoma treatments are described in the Vision 2020 action plan as “amongst the most cost-effective measures for controlling blindness.” Meanwhile cataract surgery ranks as one of the most cost-effective of all health interventions. Such treatments offer the potential for massive improvements in quality of life for a relatively low cost.

Lasoi’s case demonstrates how there needs to be a greater emphasis on vision problems in order to meet the Millennium Development Goals on poverty reduction. Vision impairment creates a poverty trap of fewer educational opportunities and lower productivity. There is therefore an overwhelming cost benefit of providing relatively cheap treatment programmes that both improve national economic productivity and significantly improve people’s quality of life. Back in Malawi, John has shown a massive improvement at school since receiving his pair of glasses. He is now able to attend the local secondary school and hopes to become an engineer. “My life has changed,” he says. “In class I have improved because now I can see.”

DEVELOPMENTS 50 | 33

AN HONOUR AND A RESPONSIBILITY

34 | DEVELOPMENTS 50

Andrew Mitchell, the new Secretary of State for International Development in the UK’s coalition government, speaks frankly about his passion for eliminating extreme poverty, and his determination to spend aid effectively.

Is there a particular moment when you really became aware of the poverty in the developing world?

I spent eight years working on the international side of Lazard, the investment bank and during this time I did business in East Asia and Africa.

I saw some dreadful errors that were made by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) – with its doctrinaire approach and smart young men getting off planes from Washington delivering a one-sizefits-all prescription that did not work and did great damage.

Those days in Africa had a big impact on me, and influenced how strongly I feel about the huge discrepancies of opportunity and wellbeing which exist between children in Africa and our own.

When did you become involved in international development?

Being appointed International Development Secretary is such an honour and responsibility. But I have had the good fortune of having shadowed the Department for International Development for five years in opposition, giving me plenty of time to learn and think about the challenges and policy.

During this time I visited nearly 40 countries to try to deepen my understanding. I visit Rwanda every year, where I spend a fortnight teaching primary school teachers of English as part of a major political Social Action Project. It was hard work and my respect for the teaching profession – already high – is now stratospheric.

But my interest in international development is not limited to my political career. Between school and university I had the extraordinary experience of serving in Cyprus as a UN peacekeeper and, alas, taking part in the de facto partition of that beautiful island. My experiences in Africa in my previous career were key moments in igniting my passion.

What are some of your main priorities as the new Secretary of State for International Development?

The UK’s aid programme is one that is well respected and recognised the world over, and so I couldn’t talk about the future without acknowledging the work done by my predecessors and in particular Clare Short who was a brilliant

I agree that charity begins at home, but it must not end there. Well-spent aid works. It has helped rid the world of smallpox and brought polio to the brink of eradication, saving millions of lives. development minister and really advanced the cause of development.

But, in these difficult financial times there are many changes to be made. Previously the metric has been inputs – putting large sums of money on the table. But we need to start focusing much more on the output.

By ‘output’ I mean how many schools you build, how many teachers you train. And even more important than that is outcomes – how many kids get a quality education.

Malaria remains a primary priority, because it is outrageous that so many children are dying needlessly from this.

We will also be concentrating on embedding a greater choice for women over whether and when they have children. It is incomprehensible that only 23% of women in sub-Saharan Africa have access to contraception.

Giving women choice about when and whether they have children is incredibly important in development terms as well as women’s rights terms, and we will champion it everywhere we possibly can.

When you were appointed SoS you stated that, “Tackling deprivation around the world is a moral imperative and firmly in Britain’s national interest.” Can you expand on this?

The moral case to help those in

need is clear. The global economic crisis is in danger of pushing over 50 million people into extreme poverty, joining the billion people across the world struggling for survival on less than £1 a day.

Many of these people will die because they simply do not have enough food, water or basic medicine. A third of a million women die needlessly during childbirth or pregnancy because they cannot afford to see a nurse.

To turn a blind eye to this suffering would be an affront to the values that we hold dear as a country.

And helping the world’s poorest people is in our national interest.

In places like Afghanistan, development supports the work of our Armed Forces; helping nations in Africa to build their economies creates new markets in which British businesses can bloom; fighting deadly diseases in the developing world stops them from reaching these shores.

You have made a commitment to efficiency at DFID and said, “it is our duty to spend every penny of aid effectively.” A lot of people still feel that aid is a waste of money and “charity begins at home” – how can you challenge this view?

I completely agree that charity begins at home, but it must not end there. Well-spent aid works. It has helped rid the world of smallpox and brought polio to the brink of

eradication, saving millions of lives. Last year alone the UK brought food to 13 million people on the brink of famine, vaccinated 4 million children against measles and provided clean water to 2.5 million people.

Well-spent aid is also good value.

The UK helps 5 million of the world’s poorest children get an education each year for just 2.5% of the cost of putting a child in the UK through primary school.

The UK has a hard-won reputation for being a world leader when it comes to delivering effective international aid, pulling three million people out of poverty every year. Everyone in Britain can be proud of these amazing achievements.

It’s now only five years until the Millennium Development Goals deadline. What does the international community need to do to transform the possibilities of achieving these goals by 2015?

The UN MDG summit in September is a critical event. The international community needs to come together and show that it is serious about keeping its promises to the poor.

The UK will be making health a priority at the summit: we need to push for collective international action to reduce the number of mothers and babies dying around the world and to fight to prevent the spread of diseases such as malaria.

The summit should set out clearly the actions needed to meet the goals by 2015 by both donor and recipient countries, as well as civil society and private sector partners.

The summit shouldn’t be making empty promises – built into any agreement should be a means by which we hold each other to account for the commitments made.

Why is international development so important for you?

People will look back at the early part of the 21st Century and wonder how we allowed such poverty to exist in so many countries for so long? Future generations will look back at the fact that 25,000 children die every day from easily preventable diseases in the same way as we look back at the slave trade today – with a mixture of incomprehension and amazement.

DEVELOPMENTS 50 | 35

“THE TIME FOR WARM WORDS IS OVER.” Ahead of September’s UN summit on the Millennium Development Goals, Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg says we need a plan of action to make the goals a reality.

“This would be the worst possible moment for the international community to retreat from our promise to help developing nations.

The global economy has undergone a major trauma and the worlds poorest are being hit extremely hard.

The UN Summit in New York presents a huge opportunity to put in place a concrete plan for achieving the Millennium Development Goals. With the 2015 deadline now around the corner, the time for warm words is over.

National leaders have a duty to come ready and commit to action to realize the goal set out at the Millennium to halve global poverty. The UK will be focusing its efforts on lowering the high death tolls from malaria, malnutrition and that of mothers, children and babies that are blight on developing nations.”

Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg will be representing the UK at the Millennium Development Goals Summit at the United Nations in September 2010.

36 | DEVELOPMENTS 50

Migrant labourers in Mumbai

OUT OF THE RUBBLE “My favourite job was working in the labour ward, delivering Mumbai’s soaringbabies.” tower blocks hide the plight of the children of the migrant labourers who construct them. Kavitha Rao reports on the crèches which provide a safe haven for the children who live on these building sites, and the role of the British Asian community in supporting them.

I

n booming Mumbai, luxury apartments are mushrooming, as newly prosperous Indians look for bigger and better homes.

“Tallest building in India,” says one billboard.

“Luxury clubhouse!” promises another. But these opulent high rises— many selling for over Rs 20,000 (£286) per square foot— mask the horrific working conditions of those behind Mumbai’s iconic skyline. Children scamper over construction rubble, babies wail in cradles suspended from girders, and entire families squat in makeshift shanties on building sites.

Most construction workers are destitute farm labourers who migrate to Mumbai in search of work, and have no extended family to look after their children. They may work for as little as Rs 120 (£1.70) a day for the men, and less than half that for the women. With no childcare facilities, children have to fend for themselves.

“This city was built on their backs, but we have forgotten them,” says Vrlshali Pispati, chief executive of Mumbai Mobile Crèches (MMC), Mumbai’s only charity helping the children of construction workers. With 24 crèches across Mumbai, MMC has supported over a 100,000 children since it was set up in 1972.

In one of its crèches in Southern Mumbai’s busy Agripada, children ranging from a few months old to 14 years play in three modest but cheerful rooms. The children attend the crèche

It is not uncommon for children to accompany their mothers on Mumbai’s building sites.

“I never imagined I could stand on my own feet.”

Shaheen Sheikh, 20, has been teaching at MMC for two years. The daughter of construction workers, she herself went to a MMC crèche, before going on to a municipal school. But Shaheen had to stop her education in the seventh grade because of the death of her father. “After I dropped out of school, I thought my dreams of getting a job were over,” says Shaheen. “But the MMC workers convinced me to enter the teacher training course.” Until Shaheen joined the MMC programme, she rarely left her neighbourhood. Now she travels over an hour-and-a-half every day to get to work. In her Muslim community, most women stay close to home. “I had never travelled on my own before, so it was a real challenge for me to travel by train. But once I did, it felt great,” she smiles. “MMC has helped me stand on my own feet. I never thought that would happen.”

DEVELOPMENTS 50 | 37

Makeshift cots are suspended from scaffolding.

38 | DEVELOPMENTS 50

from 8.45am to 4.30pm. They are provided with two nutritious meals a day plus a snack, and given weekly medical checkups. The younger children learn through play, while the older children are given non-formal education aimed at helping them to enter school.

But these are no ordinary children. MMC’s job is made supremely difficult by the highly migratory nature of the construction industry.

“The average time that a child spends in the centre is three months,” says Pispati. “Most children will drift with their parents from site to site, depending on where they get jobs, making it very difficult to track their progress. Many are migrants from other states, so do not speak Hindi, the main language of instruction. Others are seriously malnourished and have health problems.”

MMC’s ultimate goal is to get the children accepted in mainstream schools, but this isn’t easy either, explains Pispati. “Schools will refuse to accept children who move at the wrong time of year, or those who do not speak Hindi or Marathi (the local language). Once a child drops out of the educational system, it is very difficult to get back in. Many children, especially girls, will be pulled out of school to care for their siblings.

Construction sites are usually on the outskirts of the city, so parents are often reluctant to send their children to schools far away.”

Hebarunissa Khan, the wife of a construction worker, whose family are migrants from the northern state of Bihar, says, “When we arrived here, the schools refused to take us because we came in the middle of the year.” But MMC was able to intervene. “MMC spoke to the schools and got us places.” Her three children go to a crèche in the morning and the local school in the afternoon.

MMC crèches are all located right in the middle of construction sites, close to the worker’s homes. But establishing one requires the cooperation of builders. “The sites are private land, so we can’t set up a crèche without the consent of the builder,” Pispati points out.

Créche children using teaching aids.

“When the boss says move, we move”.

Hebarunissa Khan and her son – she is delighted with his progress.

Hebarunissa Khan, 35, and her family of five took four days to travel from her small village in the northern state of Bihar to Mumbai. Her husband is a construction worker. “We have been here for two years, but now we will be moving again much further away because work on this site is over. When the boss says move, we move.”

Khan worries about the future of her children, “I only got my children into school with the help of MMC, but I don’t know if I will be able to get them into the next school once we move. I don’t even know if there are any schools or crèches there.” She is delighted with the change she has seen in her children since they have spent time at MMC “Earlier they were shy village children, now they have big dreams.” “I love to draw,” says her 10-year-old son who recently won an interschool prize for drawing. “When I first came here, I could not draw at all, but I learnt quickly. I want to be a computer engineer when I grow up.”

DEVELOPMENTS 50 | 39

“We try to convince builders that a crèche increases productivity and means less absenteeism by women workers. Some builders contribute to our funds, but most don’t. On an average, it costs us about Rs 500 (about £7.00) per child per month to run our crèches. About 40% of our budget is now contributed by builders, which is an improvement, but there are so many new sites now that it’s impossible to keep pace.”

Manoj Kothari, project manager of Raheja Vivarea, a luxury skyscraper which serves as the location for the Agripada crèche, says, “Builders need to change their attitudes and look after their employees better.” The Raheja group is one of India’s biggest builders and supports several MMC crèches. “The MMC crèches benefit everyone: the children, their parents, and us employers.”

India has legislation which makes it mandatory for any builder who runs a site with more than 50 women workers to build a crèche for children. But this is rarely enforced.

“The government can’t be bothered to enforce the law,” says Pispati, “So it’s up to us to coax builders to support our crèches. We support 5,000 children a year, but there are at least 50,000 children out there who need our help.”

The colourful Agripada crèche contrasts visibly with the squalor of the workers’ homes outside – a cluster of ramshackle tin shanties exposed to the pelting monsoon rain. Inside these huts, as many as eight people may live in a tiny space only a few feet across, with no regular water, electricity or sanitation. “Migrant labourers are the most invisible community in

India,” says Pispati. “They do not have voting cards, ration cards or other identity proof, so they are completely overlooked.”

Beginning this year, MMC will be supported by the British Asian Trust, which was founded by a group of British Asian business leaders at the suggestion of the Prince of Wales. It serves as a ‘social fund’ to support charities within

I tell the children: “If I can do it, you can do it too.”

Ramachandra Rao, 42, came to Mumbai when he was five, the son of impoverished migrant labourers from southern India. His parents helped build the Jolly Maker Towers, one of Mumbai’s first skyscrapers, and also the site of MMC’s first crèche.

Today he is one of MMC’s longest serving schoolteachers, having worked for them for 22 years.

“My father did not want to send me to MMC,” says Rao. “He only studied up to the second grade himself. But MMC convinced him to send me to the local school. I managed to study as far as the 12th grade, though my father passed away when I was young. My whole family supported me in becoming a teacher.” Rao always wanted to be a teacher. “These children are my blessing.

I want to give back to them, especially those who have migrated from distant villages.

I tell them: if I can do it, you can do it too.”

the areas of education, enterprise and health in Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and the UK. “The Trust supports charities that transform the lives of very needy beneficiaries in an area of critical, unmet need,” says Rabia Nusrat, a manager at the Trust. “Mumbai Mobile Crèches is the only NGO in Mumbai that focuses on providing essential services to a vast, yet almost entirely forgotten population: the children of migrant workers.”

Pispati believes in helping the workers to help them. “Our proudest achievement is our teacher training programme,” she says. “Three years ago we started training our construction workers to become teachers. Now nearly 35% of our teachers are former construction workers.

Children educated at our crèches have gone on to be lawyers, naval officers, and BPO [Business Process Outsourcing] employees.” The children at the crèche talk eagerly about their favourite subjects and their hopes for the future. “I want to be a police officer,” says Rahmatullah, a nineyear-old boy who has been coming to MMC for three years. “Then I can catch terrorists.” Asked what he likes best about the crèche, he laughs, “Having a bath!”

“With children who move around so much, progress is often hard to measure,” Pispati adds.

“But when you see tiny babies playing safely, rather than in rubble, it’s so worth it. Every day counts for them.”

More information www.mumbaimobilecreches.org www.britishasiantrust.org

Children from the sites find themselves in a safe, colourful and stimulating environment.

40 | DEVELOPMENTS 50

Construction sites become a dangerous playground for workers’ children.

INDIA Population 1.17 billion Average life expectancy 65 years Average per capita income $1,170

Home to a world-beating information technology industry and a multitude of cultures and languages, India is the world’s largest democracy.

The country has accomplished a great deal since independence in 1947, making slow but steady progress. However, despite its strong economic growth, the scale of its need is huge. Only one quarter of Indians earn more than $2 a day. Over 40% of children are malnourished. Half of Indian women cannot read. And only half of urban households have access to proper sanitation and piped water.

The UK government’s priority in India is supporting work to reduce malnutrition, child and maternal deaths, and to promote education, and water and sanitation.

Find out more www.dfid.gov.uk/india

DEVELOPMENTS 50 | 41

Scriptwriter Rhidian Brook relives the journey it took to bring to the screen Africa United – the story of five African children who set off on foot from Rwanda with the goal of reaching South Africa in time for the World Cup.

AFRICAN ROAD MOVIE

42 | DEVELOPMENTS 50

Fabrice chased by feral children.

DEVELOPMENTS 50 | 43

The children cross into Zimbabwe on their epic journey.

T

he odds are heavily stacked against a movie getting made. So many things have to happen, in the right order and at the right time, that it’s a kind of miracle any film reaches the screen, let alone one set in Africa with five unknown children in the lead roles and, initially, no major backers. The story of how Africa United came to be made is an against-the-odds story, which is apt for a film that’s about a group of children who journey 3,000 miles from the middle of Africa to try and get to the opening ceremony of the World Cup. I entered the story 18 months ago. The producers Mark Blaney and Jackie Sheppard wanted to talk about film ideas and get me to meet a young director called Debs GardnerPaterson. Mark and Jackie had been developing a short film of Debs’ set in Rwanda into a feature – length film. During the process they were sent the idea of a film based around the impending World Cup, being developed by Rwandan producer Eric Kabera. It was this idea the four of us ended up discussing as we sat round my dining room table in January 2009.

At first I wasn’t sure about it. In this version of the story the hero was a young man called Dudu who played for the Rwandan national football team that had just qualified for the World Cup. After a drug-test mix up Dudu doesn’t get selected and ends up trying to get to South Africa under his own steam. His journey

44 | DEVELOPMENTS 50

A group of children walk 3,000 miles from Rwanda to the opening of the World Cup ceremony EQUATORIAL GUINEA GABON

UGANDA KENYA

CONGO

RWANDA DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO

BURUNDI TANZANIA

ANGOLA ZAMBIA

MALAWI

ZIMBABWE

MOZAMBIQUE

NAMIBIA

MADAGASCAR BOTSWANA

Soccer City Johannesburg LESOTHO

SOUTH AFRICA

SWAZILAND

becomes a media event, with the Rwandan people and then most of Africa willing him to get there. It was a comic idea that focused on the fame and football more than the journey (which was, for me, the thing that made it interesting).

As a Rwandan who’d lived through the genocide, Eric was keen for someone to make a different kind of film about Africa – one that reached beyond the standard fare of catastrophe or safari – but this idea seemed to be missing something.

We started to interrogate the premise. What if we made it about a group of children trying to get to the World Cup? Football might be the spur, but other issues could then come into play. It would be an adventure – a road movie – about these characters having to learn to work together while overcoming obstacles. It would be an entertaining and refreshing African story that didn’t shirk the issues that children in Africa face. Eventually we landed on our oneline premise: ‘a group of children walk 3,000 miles from Rwanda to the opening of the World Cup ceremony.’ It was an effective enough pitch to raise some seed funding. Two months later, I was on a plane to Rwanda with Debs and her husband Bernie to research the story.

I had been to Africa four years before with my wife and two children. Working with the Salvation Army we had lived in communities affected by HIV and AIDS in Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe for nine

Dudu and his sister Beatrice.

Penalty shoot-out victory.

“Many of the things we experienced on that road trip ended up in the film – like this football made from condoms.”

DEVELOPMENTS 50 | 45

The children enter Zambia.

Lost in the Congo ‌

46 | DEVELOPMENTS 50

Celeste – her royal blood was no protection against poverty and risk.

months. I’d done some BBC World Service broadcasts and written a book about it, but had always wondered whether there was more – a novel, a TV drama, maybe even a film – to come out of that experience. This was a different kind of commission, but it was soon clear that the things I’d witnessed four years before would play a significant part in the movie. Debs also had deep familial connections in Africa with parents and grandparents who had worked in Rwanda. And her husband Bernie had already travelled to Liberia, Zambia and Kenya recording children and making music with them. These previous experiences were to serve us well in forming the story.

The road trip was key. Accompanied by Ayuub Kasasa Mago – one of the Rwandan-based producers and another significant person in the development of the idea – we drove a jeep out from Rwanda to Tanzania, via Congo and Burundi. Without the encounters, colour, texture and on-road banter thrown up on this trip, the script would not have come so easily, or maybe felt as authentic as it did.

Long hours on the road gave us time to discuss the characters and the various things that they’d have to encounter on the journey. Many of the things we experienced on that road trip actually ended up in the final cut of the film: a Toyota car pulled by cows; the Congo crossing bureaucracy; a road block made out of string and underpants; footballs made from condoms; Caribbean-like beaches in Burundi. This was the kind of stuff you had to be there to see. When I got back to London I had a clear mental map of what the kids’ journey looked like – now it just needed the characters to come to life.

If there was one thing we felt clear about, it was that Africa United was going to give voice to the amazing children of this continent. Dudu was the first and clearest of these – a mash-up of a Huckleberry Finn adventurer and a Walter

Mitty fantasist – with a bit of Mrs Malaprop thrown in. I’d met a hundred kids who had at least one aspect of this football obsessive, blagging, cheerleading, super-optimistic, storytelling boy who had been orphaned by HIV and Aids. Once I had his voice in my head, the script flowed and the other characters took shape: his sister Beatrice who wanted to be a doctor, offering a nice balance to her brother’s crazy optimism; Fabrice, the middle-class kid who wanted to play football rather than study geography; the child soldier Foreman George looking to escape his past; and Celeste who, through circumstances beyond her control, had ended up in the wrong kind of work. It was these five that were to become Africa United.

The script was written in six weeks. Pathé

were at the top of our hit list of production partners. These makers of Slumdog Millionaire had shown that a movie set in a developing nation with kids in lead roles could find a mainstream audience. In July they read the script and said they wanted to make it. The prospects of this film reaching the screen went from wild stab to real contender. In August we did a second road trip with the same crew, plus my son Gabriel – this time journeying from Lusaka, Zambia to South Africa’s Soccer City via Zimbabwe, in an effort to follow in the kids’ footsteps all the way. On this occasion we travelled with a real sense of momentum, a feeling that the thing was actually going to happen, and that one day people might actually watch a film called Africa United in cinemas.

The project gathered further support from the Film Council, BBC Film and the Rwandan government and their fledgling Film Commission. By September we were beginning using words like ‘casting,’ ‘locations’ and ‘principal photography’ with confidence. The shoot was set for January 2010 – almost one year on from the day we sat around my dining room table to produce a one-line idea. I will leave others to tell the next part of the making of Africa United – the fact that this film had got this far this quickly was wonderful enough. That it was then shot with five unknown children by a rookie director in three countries in over 100 locations in Africa deserves its own telling.

Africa United will be in cinemas this October.

It’s a family film like no other, with its own unique charm, rhythm and feel, and my hope is audiences young and old will laugh, cry and fall in love with the characters at the story’s heart. Debs and the team have made a film that entertains and therefore engages people with issues usually reserved for news bulletins or aid agency pamphlets. And – who knows – maybe the audience will, as a result, be encouraged to take their own road trips and so meet the amazing children of this incredible continent for real.

Africa United is due for UK release on 22 October 2010.

For more information www.africaunitedmovie.com

Africa United’s director, Debs Gardner-Patterson.

DEVELOPMENTS 50 | 47

Join our next scheduled courses in Cape Town this October!

Working with Logframes (3 days) Build your confidence to design and use logical frameworks — the core technique used by most development organisations to plan, track and evaluate projects.

Monitoring & Evaluation (10 days) Covers all the steps you need to create or manage a successful M&E system for your projects, to deliver maximum value to your organisation and its stakeholders. Ensure your organisation and stakeholders build on the results of your M&E system.

Project Management (10 days) Gives you the skills to design and manage every stage of the project cycle from identification to close. You’ll also be better equipped to address management issues and manage your team and tasks more effectively, helping your staff deliver the desired results.

See full course fact sheets and apply online at

www.imainternational.com

Our worldwide courses cover project skills and people skills, equipping you with the tools and knowledge you need to deliver successful projects and programmes. Since 1983 we have trained over 10,000 people from 136 countries.

Our recent clients and partners include:

IMA International Ltd, Drummond House, High Street, Hurstpierpoint, West Sussex, BN6

Drummond House, Tel : +44 (0)1273 833030 9RE, UK 89 High Street, Hurstpierpoint, +44 (0)1273 Tel +44 (0)1273 Fax: 833030 Fax +44833230 (0)1273 833230 West Sussex, BN6 9RE, UK post@imainternational.com