Give More and Receive More

Over $500 billion (U.S.) has been sent to African nations in the form of direct aid to fight poverty. In 2007 the World Bank lent more than $5 billion to Africa alone. Still between 1981 and 2001 the percent of total people in Africa living on less than $1 a day increased 93%, from 164 million to 316 million.

At times, foreign aid has even worsened the plight of the poor, by sustaining the corrupt or otherwise inefficient governments that caused their misery in the first place. Large sums of money that are in Africa are often used to develop mega-projects when the need is for smaller scale projects.

Sources:
The Wall Street Journal
Global Issues
Wikipedia

The greatest mortality in Africa arises from preventable water-borne diseases, which affects infants and young children greater than any other group. The principal cause of these diseases is the regional water crisis, or lack of safe drinking water primarily stemming from admixing sewage and drinking water supplies.

More than one billion people in the developing world have no safe drinking water, or water for washing their food, hands and utensils before eating. 2.6 billion also have no adequate sanitation. This leads to:

• water-borne diseases
  (e.g. cholera, typhoid)
• water-related diseases
  (e.g. malaria, yellow fever, river blindness, sleeping sickness)
• water-based diseases
  (e.g. guinea worm and bilharzia)
• water-scarce diseases
  (trachoma and scabies)
• diarrhoea – a leading killer of children in Africa

The crisis is worst in Africa, where 2 in 5 people lack safe water. A baby here is almost 520 times more likely to die from diarrhoea than one born in Europe.

Improving access to clean water and sanitation would dramatically reduce illness and death in poor countries: a clean water supply reduces diarrhoea-related death by up to 25%, while improved sanitation reduces it by 32%.

Sources:
AMREF (African Medical and Research Foundation)
WHO (World Health Organization)

Forests provide a range of ecological, economic, and social services to humans, including protection of water and soil resources. Forests also act as store-houses of carbon, much of which is released into the atmosphere when they are cleared, contributing to the buildup of greenhouse gases. In addition, forests are the main reservoir of terrestrial biological diversity and are a vital resource for millions of local communities. Forest products also provide the foundation of many local and national economies.

• In West Africa, nearly 90 percent of the original moist forest is gone, and what remains is heavily fragmented and degraded.
• In Africa, for every 28 trees cut down, only one tree is replanted.
• It is estimated that between 1990 and 2005, forest cover diminished at a rate of 1.2 million hectares per year in West Africa.

Sources:
afrol News
Atlas on Regional Integration

Africa is the only region in the world where poverty and hunger are on the increase. The number of undernourished Africans increased by one million a year from 2000 to 2002. If poverty in Africa is to be reduced, aid to agriculture must be increased substantially and made to work more effectively.

Practical Action research indicates that African farmers themselves call for:

• Greater aid focus on the needs of marginal farmers and pastoralists (livestock raising)
• Support for long-term food security instead of food aid
• Improved access to land, credit, water and appropriate seeds and breeds
• A bigger voice in decisions regarding the allocation of resources to agriculture.

Sources:
Practical Action (Technology challenging poverty)

Investing in children's education globally delivers huge returns for economic growth, political participation, improved health, smaller and more sustainable families, and disease prevention, concludes a new report from the Council’s Center for Universal Education (2004).

There is a powerful correlation between low enrollment at schools, poor retention and unsatisfactory learning outcomes and the incidence of poverty. Retention may be caused by poor children who have to stop school to assist their parents in their quest for food for the family. If the students were assured continuous feeding at school, more children would be willing to remain in school.

Sources:
Council on Foreign Relations
UNESCO

It is not an overstatement to say that most of the aid and loans to reduce poverty in Africa have failed. In our opinion there are two main reasons for this:

1. The money from aid and loans are not spent on activities that create businesses or sustainable welfare for its people.
2. Charity is based on people's will to give, instead of profitable ways that can increase the interest to help.

1. Creating a Sustainable Future
There is no easy way to change the infrastructure, people's mentalities and way of doing things over night in Africa. It will take generations and have to start with the younger ones. Education is a key to start learning how to make a living in better ways than they have been doing for generations. People in poor countries in Africa need help to cover their basic needs and start their own small businesses that can provide enough money to increase their living standards.

Better Globe has put together a very interesting donation package which in a way revolutionizes the effectiveness of charity as we know today.

Our unique donation package

2. Charity with Interest
It is not possible to reduce poverty, hinder desertification and improve the welfare of poor people if there is no will and obligation by well-situated people to contribute towards the elimination of the abasing poverty. If charity was based on profitable and sustainable business ventures, which could give back profit to the donors as a sort of return on investment (ROI), the charity itself would quickly become sustainable.

Better Globe is doing something which has never been done before. We want to engage millions of people take part in our initiative to fight poverty in Africa.

There isn't much we can do on our own to prevent poverty and debasement. What we need is an international movement involving millions of people who:

• Want to help
• Think charity should be sustainable
• Are not afraid to think of new ways of helping
• Want to take part in something great

In order to get many people involved, these activities are based on business and profit and not charity alone. We want to support the poorest people in Africa by business principles based on the more you give, the more you receive:

• The poor will learn how to make money
• We who are helping will make money

Look deeper into our donation program here, our profitable saving program or see how you as an Ambassador can start selling our products.

Go to any village in Africa, and you will find dozens of little children playing with one another in the dust. Looking over them in the shade will be the grandmothers or other elders, ready to intervene when things get out of hand. If a child is hurt in the squabbles that inevitably arise, they run to soothing arms of their grandmothers. But war, AIDS, famine have brought to Africa an entirely new concept, children with no family members, no blood relatives, no extended family members. No elders to care for them, they are lost and bereft in a cruel world, and no one seems to care.

• Every day 30,000 children die from a combination of disease- infested water and malnutrition. Water-borne diseases are claiming one child every three seconds. These diseases are the major killers of small children in Africa.
• Only 57 percent of African children are enrolled in primary education, and one in three of those does not complete school.
• More than 90 percent of all orphans in Africa are cared for by their extended families.

Sources:
Countdown to 2015
COZAY - Through Their Eyes
UNICEF
Missionaries of Africa