Friday 26 May 2017

Equal Times - Period pains: Menstrual Hygiene Day to raise global awareness on how traditions impact education and employment


When 15-year-old Roshani Tiruwa lay down to sleep close to an open fire in a small mud hut last December, she was unaware that the smoke from the fire would suffocate her. Why was such a young girl sleeping alone just metres from her family home? Because Roshani was on her period.

Her death on 16 December was the second within a month in Nepal’s western Achram district caused by women being banished from their family homes because of cultural beliefs surrounding menstruation. Dambara Upadhyay, 21, was found dead in a hut on 19 November under similar circumstances, according to various news reports.

The ancient Hindu practice of chaupadi considers menstruating women to be impure. Those who uphold the practice forbid women and girls from touching men or even entering their own homes, and prohibit them from eating certain foods. Disastrous consequences are believed to follow transgression, such as crop failure…

Read the full story on Equal Times.

Thursday 11 May 2017

Former DfID political adviser on UK aid direction and his new role at Plan International UK

Before our interview, Simon Bishop — recently appointed director of policy and programs at Plan International U.K. — insists that the topic of his previous employer is off-limits.

As a special political adviser to the United Kingdom’s former Secretary of State for International Development Justine Greening, Bishop spent two and a half years providing political, policy and media advice that shaped the direction of the government’s development strategy.

Although some of the controversial policies announced by the Department for International Development since Greening and Bishop left in July last year may have been gestating while he was in the post, Bishop refuses to comment on them. “Mischievous journalists can turn that into nice headlines,” he told Devex. “I've got to be careful”…

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Read the full story on Devex.com.

Monday 24 April 2017

Could unemployed youth solve the health care worker crisis?

According to the World Health Organization40 million new health and social care jobs must be created globally by 2030 to meet Sustainable Development Goal 3 of universal health coverage. At the same time, global youth unemployment reached 71 million in 2016, according to International Labour Organization data. Could the two problems be used to solve each other?

Director of the Health Workforce Department at the WHO Jim Campbell believes they could. He says it’s time to “join the dots” between the shortage of health care workers and young unemployed people. Campbell told Devex that development practitioners need to approach the solution in a non-traditional way, and create new training models for the next cohort of skilled health professionals.


It is already happening in some countries, he says. Afghanistan and Ethiopia have both created accelerated training programs to help get more young people into health care. And while there may not be specific pots of money available for health training for youth, he points out that many international funding organizations have marked out job creation or health and education as priorities…

Read the full story on Devex.

Tuesday 14 March 2017

3 global development organizations 'bringing charity home'



In January, the International Rescue Committee launched its first-ever emergency fundraising appeal to support refugees exclusively in the U.S. In the charity’s 84-year history, funds have paid for the organization’s work as a whole, in the U.S. and abroad. But following President Donald Trump’s executive order banning refugees for 120 days — and Syrian refugees indefinitely — the IRC said it anticipated funding gaps to provide immediate aid for refugees on arrival and beyond, including housing, cultural orientation, health care, education, employment and immigration services.

The case is one of a number in which recent international events have prompted global development and humanitarian organizations to begin delivering aid on home-turf, or fundraising specifically for domestic projects, for the first time.

Faced with a migrant crisis, increasingly isolationist policies and the impact of globalization across borders, many development organizations headquartered in Europe and the U.S. are looking inward…

Read the full story on Devex.com