Join MGAC and the Stephen Lewis Foundation in the nationwide challenge, A Dare to Remember. Your support will go directly to African grandmothers, children, and women who are doing what was thought impossible: turning the tide of AIDS in their communities.

McGill students are being dared to create a Human Art Attack. On October 22, 2009 we will be using (hopefully many) of our bodies to create a gigantic image on the Lower Field. We’re going to be arranging ourselves into a shape- right now we are thinking an AIDS ribbon, but are open to suggestions!

We ask you to join us in our dare or do a dare of your own and to ask your family and friends to sponsor you. All proceeds will go to community-based organizations in Africa.

Check out the campaign website:
http://www.adaretoremember.com/index.cfm

And our TEAM PAGE:
http://stephenlewisfoundation.akaraisin.com/t/McGill.aspx

Please contact Toby or Samara if you are interested in taking an active role (beyond just participating in the dare and getting sponsorship)! We want to make this event as successful as possible and the more, the merrier.

Toby: toby.samson@mail.mcgill.ca or 514-770-2938
Samara: samara.laskin@mail.mcgill.ca

Source: The Associated Press
By DONNA GORDON BLANKINSHIP (AP)
21 Sept 2009

SEATTLE — The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is best known for its work combating malaria, AIDS and other diseases.

But the world’s richest charitable foundation has been quietly expanding into other problems of the developing world and this week announced an effort to bring banking, including savings accounts, to the poor.

It may be hard to understand how savings is even an issue for the people who live on less than $2 a day, said Bob Christen, who directs the Gates Foundation’s financial services initiative. However, access to a safe place to store money is a top priority of poor people around the world, he said.

This week, the foundation announced a $35 million grant to help facilitate agent banking services already being developed in Africa, Asia and South and Central America.

Christen said the Gates grant will provide assistance to numerous organizations through the Alliance for Financial Inclusion, whose efforts are historic in the world of banking, and will help people climb out of poverty, save for their children’s education, build their businesses and plan for the future.

The ideas for bringing savings accounts, insurance and other financial services to the poor include transferring money by way of mobile phones and setting up banking kiosks in markets and post offices.

The Gates Foundation has invested a total of $350 million so far in other financial services for the poor, including micro-credit, which involves small loans for poor entrepreneurs.

Christen says savings accounts are a more basic need of many people. An estimated 2.5 billion people — more than half the world’s adult population — do not have access to savings accounts and other financial services.

People are forced to buy and pawn jewelry or make other poor investments to keep their money safe.

Foundation research identified this as an area that is not getting investment dollars and turned its attention in this direction.

“It became very obvious that the single service that is least developed that most people need is savings,” Christen said. “People really want to be able to save in a safer place.”

The Gates Foundation is providing an infusion of cash to facilitate the sharing of ideas among the innovators and to make sure the new systems offer a wide range of financial services.

Alfred Hannig, executive director of the Alliance for Financial Inclusion, said banking innovation is happening in developing countries without the foundation’s help, but the money will help speed implementation.

The alliance has a goal of reaching 50 million of the world’s “unbanked” by 2012.
[...]
Read full article at The Associated Press

Source: The Independent
16 Sept. 2009

Human society faces a global health catastrophe if climate change is not effectively tackled at the UN conference in Copenhagen in December, leading doctors
from around the world warn today.

Calling on medical practitioners everywhere to put pressure on politicians in advance of the meeting, the doctors say that the world’s poorest people will be hit first by the health effects of global warming, but add that “no one will be spared”.

Their stark challenge to governments follows a report in May which said climate change would represent “the biggest global health threat of the 21st century”.
Related articles

Malaria, dengue fever and other tropical diseases would increase, the study predicted, spelling out how rising temperatures will cause health
crises in half a dozen areas: there will be increased problems with food supplies, clean water and sanitation, especially in developing countries. Meanwhile, the migration of peoples will combine with extreme weather events such as hurricanes and severe floods to make for disastrous conditions in human settlements.

The doctors make their appeal as momentum begins to build for the UN conference, which will be held in the Danish capital from 7-18 December, and which will see the world community attempt to draw up a comprehensive new climate treaty to replace the 1997 Kyoto protocol. Its crucial objective will be drastic worldwide cuts in the emissions of industrial gases such as carbon dioxide which are causing the atmosphere to warm.

On Tuesday, the UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon is convening a climate change summit of world leaders in New York, including Gordon Brown and President Obama, to try to give some impetus to the tortuous pre-conference negotiating process – the draft text of 200 pages already contains 2,000 “square brackets”: that is, points where the 190 countries taking part disagree.

The doctors’ challenge to politicians to sort this out comes in a letter published simultaneously in Britain’s two principal health journals, the British Medical Journal and The Lancet.

In the letter, Professor Ian Gilmore, the president of the Royal College of Physicians, joins 17 other national doctors’ leaders from the US to Australia in saying: “There is a real danger that politicians [at Copenhagen] will be indecisive, especially in such turbulent economic times as these. Should their response be weak, the results for international health could be catastrophic.”

They go on: “Doctors are still seen as respected and independent, largely trusted by their patients and the societies in which they practise … As leaders of physicians across many countries, we call on doctors to demand that their politicians listen to the clear facts that have been identified in relation to climate change and act now to implement strategies that will benefit the health of communities worldwide.”

The letter follows the report on the health effects of global warming which was launched jointly last May by The Lancet and University College London (UCL), and which squarely labelled climate change as the 21st century’s biggest global health threat.
[...]

Read full article at The Independent

Source: Time
18 Sept 2009

Starting next January, whenever you buy an airline ticket at a travel agency or online, there’ll be a new question to answer before you hand over your credit card: Would you be willing to donate $2 to help fight HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis in Africa?

It sounds like a small step, and many airline travelers, already irritated by compulsory surcharges for fuel, baggage and wider seats, may simply ignore it. But behind this call for a voluntary contribution is an unprecedented worldwide effort to make up a shortfall in official government aid to poor countries — a shortfall exacerbated by the world financial crisis. (See pictures of the global financial crisis.)

The scheme, the idea of a small U.N. agency, is backed by the travel industry and heavyweights of international aid such as the William J. Clinton Foundation and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. It will be formally announced in New York City on Sept. 23 on the fringes of the U.N. General Assembly, and accompanied by a marketing blitz. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and the head of the World Bank, Robert Zoellick, are expected to participate in the launch, as well as the chief executives of the three companies that have made it technically possible: Amadeus, Sabre and Travelport/Galileo, who run the reservation and ticketing systems for most of the world’s airlines. Barring any last-minute technical or legal hitches, the scheme will roll out in late January in the U.S. and several European countries, including Britain, Germany, Spain and Switzerland. (See pictures of Africa’s AIDS crisis.)

The initiative is the brainchild of Philippe Douste-Blazy, a former French Foreign Ninister who is now a U.N. Under Secretary charged with finding innovative ways to finance projects. He runs an agency called UNITAID that is attached to the World Health Organization and already channels funds to fight disease in poor countries. UNITAID was founded in 2006. Its $400 million annual budget is funded by Britain, France, Norway, Brazil and Chile. Douste-Blazy is now trying to turbo-charge those efforts by bringing in private donations. He’s set up a foundation linked to UNITAID that will collect the voluntary airline-ticket levy and distribute it to key players in the field of medical assistance in Africa and elsewhere. Recipients will include the U.N. children’s agency UNICEF and the Clinton foundation. As well as targeting HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, the money will also be spent on improving maternal health and reducing child mortality.

If the plan works, it’ll help the U.N. out of a dilemma of its own making. Back in 2000, the U.N. agreed on a set of lofty targets known as the Millennium Development Goals that aimed to lift African nations and other poor countries out of their cycles of poverty, illiteracy and disease by 2015. But of the $150 billion development assistance pledged by governments, just $104 billion has been provided. Douste-Blazy believes that only individual philanthropy will be able to make up the shortfall. “The architecture of development is changing,” Douste-Blazy tells TIME. (Read “U.N. War Crimes Allegation Won’t Change Israel’s Calculations.”)

The world financial crisis has made such change a necessity, says Bjorn Skogno, a senior official in the Norwegian Foreign Ministry, who is a board member of the Millennium Foundation, the entity set up by UNITAID to collect and distribute the private donations. Overseas development aid “is likely to go down because of the crisis, so there’s a need to be innovative to find new sources of funds,” Skogno says.

Consulting firm McKinsey & Co estimates that the levy could raise as much as $1 billion a year, although Douste-Blazy cautions that it will take several years to reach that goal. He promises that administrative expenses will remain extremely light, especially by U.N. standards — less than 5% of the money raised.

Crucially, he has managed to win over key players in the travel industry. Airlines and others have long been skeptical about attempts by France and some others to levy compulsory taxes on airline tickets to pay for development aid. But the reception to this initiative has been friendly, because the donations are voluntary. “Travel is already taxed pretty highly,” says Gordon Wilson, the CEO of Travelport GDS, which runs two big reservation systems, Galileo and Worldspan. But asking people if they are willing to donate is a different issue: “The overall response is that it makes people feel good about travel but also embraces responsibility,” Wilson says.
[...]
Read full article at Time