| LIFE-NET NEWS |
| by Ret Z. |
| Covering Poverty Widely in a Net of Many Voices |
| June 20, 2007 | No Profit; No Proceeds |
| Volume 11 Number 4 | All-Volunteer |
| "Give a family a fish, and they'll eat a meal; give them a Net, and they'll have fish for Life." |
| More Grads Serve Poor While Orgs Compete For Volunteers |
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Recent college graduates are seeking community service jobs where they can learn marketable skills while doing work they find meaningful. For many, it offers a chance to test out a career before settling into one. But as interest in service grows, some organizations are getting selective;
others are feeling the squeeze of a competitive market for idealistic young adults.
"What we have to do to become attractive (to recent graduates) takes more work" than it did two years ago, says Robyn Roett, director of recruiting for Eckerd Youth Alternatives. Their positions require special people, so Eckerd no longer advertises in mass media but instead recruits at targeted events such as "Life After AmeriCorps." The Jesuit Volunteer Corps touts an expedited timetable for acting on applications as a drawing card for college seniors eager to firm up their post-commencement plans, says Maggie Conley, project manager for national activities. Offering a decision in just two or three months helps the group attract a few hundred applicants to a program year filled with steep demands, such as communal living with other volunteers and poverty-level stipends while working among the poor. "There is an increase in interest (in community service), but there's also an increase in the number of places where they can go to do this kind of work." In this competitive atmosphere, career-minded graduates are finding they can sometimes gain practical skills without surrendering to "regular" jobs in their 20s. "I'm young. I don't feel like I particularly need to jump into the real world right now by getting a real job," says Greg Arte, who graduated in May from the University of Portland (OR). "I see my friends trying to get jobs, and it's very stressful. People can have no money and still be happy just by surrounding themselves with a community." Community service workers also may enjoy a level of responsibility that prepares them for positions of authority down the line. Teach for America members, for instance, oversee a classroom after just five weeks of intensive training. Maureen Quigley of Americorps has discovered she likes working with students on a riverbank far better than doing environmental consulting, which was lucrative but "way too dry and not engaging." She lights up as kids who have found algae-covered mussels pepper her with questions: "Are they alive? How do they breathe? How do they eat? Could we eat them?" For Krista Cole, a 2006 graduate of Prescott College in Arizona, the work helps focus her plans for graduate school. "Perhaps at the end of the year, I won't want to work with kids that much anymore. I don't see that happening, but I need to find out now." Source: USA Today |
| Bono and Friends Open '08 Anti-Poverty Campaign |
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Irish rocker Bono on June 11 launched a $30 million bid to turn global poverty into a 2008 campaign theme, enlisting help from the rich and famous and a small army of
Washington insiders. Dubbed One Vote '08, the group held its kickoff event at a Capitol Hill church with a crowded agenda. Co-chairmen Thomas Daschle (D-SD) and Bill Frist (R-TN), both former Senate majority leaders, delivered speeches. Other headliners included ministers, a Zambian nurse, and the African children's choir that appeared on American Idol in April. The standing-room-only crowd of mostly young volunteers watched video testimonials from actors Matt Damon and Don Cheadle, New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady, and the U2 frontman. Actor Ben Affleck later spoke to 18,000 One members by conference call.
The effort bills itself as a bipartisan campaign to restore the US's "fading global image" by rallying the 2.4 million members of One, Bono's humanitarian group, whose causes include African debt relief and disease eradication. Most of the $30 million budget will come from Microsoft founder Bill Gates. If the group's goals sound far-reaching, its stated practical objectives -- to "educate and mobilize" voters and candidates on Third World poverty issues -- remain a little vague. In the fall, there will be a celebrity bus tour through early primary states. Source: Washington Post |
| Cosby's Message |
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As part of a rally against violence, Bill Cosby gave a speech at the Bible Way Baptist Church. The June 9 rally was sponsored by Men United for a Better Philadelphia. The
rally, Cosby's words, and searing statistics recently released suggest that much work remains for this city, on several levels:
Individual: The killers are wrong. Many may be teenagers, on drugs, or poor. They may have suffered disrespect, violence, or crime. They may belong to an oppressed class or race, trapped in a hopeless system in which every roll of the dice is a loser. No matter: If they kill, they're wrong. They are always wrong. Young Men: Stand up and accept yourselves as responsible agents. Step away from the annihilations of backward rage. Accept that murder makes you less of a man. Family: Be closer to your children, Cosby said. Parents should "love and hug" -- create a home environment of acceptance and closeness, to counter the fear and brutality outside. And fathers can't teach if they don't stick around. "We've got to teach our children to think of other ways to settle ill feelings." Community: As Penn professor Elijah Anderson has shown, the "code of the street" has undermined older codes of right and wrong in the black community. Individuals can help change such malignant codes -- but scuttling them will take the effort of many villages. Better, more watchful neighbors. Friends being better friends. People unafraid to say, "That's wrong." "Stop waiting for Christ to come," Cosby told the crowds. The future rests with us and our work. This can become the city of brotherly and sisterly correction if the neighborhoods will shoulder the task. More marches. More speaking out. More teamwork. More work. "The kingdom of God is among you." (Luke 17:21) City: Mayor Street and mayor-presumptive Michael Nutter should build consensus now for a citywide antiviolence program. This isn't politics; it's survival, for hundreds of citizens a year, and for the city itself. More policemen on the streets? Tougher gun-buying rules? More support for groups such as Men United? Decide now and make it happen. Nation: This country's inner cities suffer some of the same problems they've had since the 1960s. If anyone thinks the federal government is doing enough for America's inner cities ... the writing is on the wall, in blood. Big gov can't do everything. But could George W Bush leave a better domestic legacy than a bipartisan program that backs the efforts of states and cities? The Hardest Work: Accept. This goes back to the individual. To accept is to care, and to care is to act. Denial and waiting don't make a revolution. "The revolution is in your neighborhood ... in your streets ... in your apartment ... in your mind." Source: Philadelphia Inquirer |
| US Confronts Own Allies on Human Trafficking |
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Key Muslim allies were among countries lambasted on June 11 by the Bush administration for complicity in the global trade in sex slaves and forced labor. Algeria, Bahrain, Kuwait, Malaysia, Oman and Qatar -- all considered valuable allies in the so-called global war on terror -- were added to the category deemed the worst offenders in "modern-day slavery" in the annual US State Department report on human trafficking.
Labelled as "Tier 3" offenders, all six of those countries could face sanctions, although the President won't make that decision until a three-month grace period expires. The Arab countries added to the list this year join another key US ally, Saudi Arabia, among the 16 countries considered most culpable in trafficking and tolerating slavery. The threat of sanctions does not seem to have much impact: Saudi Arabia has been on the worst tier for three years straight. There "is an endemic problem of the way foreign workers are treated in the Persian Gulf, in Middle Eastern states. There is a recruitment pattern of people, unsuspecting people who are offered jobs as secretaries, as maids; they end up being sex slaves or put into domestic servitude in an involuntary way," Lagon said. "It seems to be an increasingly acute problem." The other countries condemned for failing to curb human trafficking include, Cuba, Equatorial Guinea, Iran, Myanmar, North Korea, Sudan, Syria, Uzbekistan, and Venezuela. All are variously hostile to the US. The 240-page report documents nightmarish accounts of children being sold into slavery, women lured across borders and forced into prostitution with false job offers, laborers snared into perpetual servitude by debt and threats, forcible drafting of child soldiers, and a grim pattern of treating foreigners as devoid of rights. "This is the crux of the human-trafficking problem," said Lagon. "When someone -- a woman, a child, someone from another ethnic group or caste -- is seen as not worthy of concern -- they're only a foreign worker, they're only a woman -- that's a horrifying situation." Afghanistan gets low marks. "Afghan children are trafficked internally and to Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Oman, and Zimbabwe," said the report, "for commercial sexual exploitation, forced marriage to settle debts or disputes, forced begging, debt bondage, service as child soldiers, or other forms of involuntary servitude." Source: Toronto Globe and Mail |
| Wal-Mart's Public Policy Dilemma |
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Adapted from a column by Tom Borelli:
An estimated 15,000 employees, vendors, and shareholders packed the Bud Walton arena on the University of Arkansas campus on June 1 for Wal-Mart's annual shareholder meeting extravaganza. At the meeting, an unusual thing occurred: The liberal monopoly of shareholder activism was challenged from the Right. While it's common for Left wing groups to use shareholder standing to push its agenda on corporations, Wal-Mart also heard from free market shareholders who challenged Wal-Mart's liberal policy bent. For years, the Left has effectively launched its stealth attack on corporate America -- its age-old carrot and stick strategy cloaked in a progressive name: Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). CSR sets the moral basis that expands public expectations of a corporation from profit to an agent for social change. Activist groups enforce this doctrine by threatening businesses with protests, boycotts, and shareholder activism against companies that dare to deviate from the new cultural norm. Through this tag-team approach, the Left is winning the hearts and minds of corporate executives and significantly changing business culture. Wal-Mart, like many other leading corporations, is on the front line in the cultural battle over the role of business in society. The problem for Wal-Mart is that its business model -- keeping its costs low so it can pass those savings to consumers -- fails the CSR test. CSR supporters want the company to increase its overhead by paying higher wages, providing health care for all its workers, and guaranteeing workers rights by letting its employees unionize. Liberal shareholder proposals presented at the annual meeting pressed Wal-Mart to close the pay disparity between hourly workers and executives, to deal with the healthcare issue, and to provide workers rights. While Wal-Mart has not yielded to these demands, the company is not immune from the social and political pressure. To seek relief and improve its image, Wal-Mart is appeasing the Left by meeting with Al Gore on global warming, pressing green mandates on its suppliers, and joining the Service Employees International Union in a press conference calling for universal health care. Source: TownHall |
| Methadone Maintenance to be Introduced in Ukraine |
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Ukraine's Minister of Health Yuri Gaydayev signed an order on June 4 to define procedures for introducing methadone, a
medication used to treat opiate addiction. The order marks the next step in Ukraine's progress toward greater access to substitution treatment for those who inject opiates.
The order follows up on the May 15 order signed by the Deputy Prime Minister for Humanitarian Issues Dmitro Tabachnik authorizing the Ministry of Health to meet all the 6th-round grant requirements of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria, including a scale-up of methadone treatment. The two orders fulfill the April decision made by Ukraine's National Coordination Council on HIV/AIDS to implement the Global Fund conditions. The distribution of methadone will help Ukraine meet the targets set by the Round 6 Proposal to provide substitution treatment for up to 11,000 IDUs by 2011. Although buprenorphine has been available in Ukraine since 2004, use of the less expensive methadone tablets and solution will allow expanded reach for substitution treatment. Plans call for pilot methadone programs that will be serving 3,500 patients by the end of 2007. The first methadone is due to arrive in Ukraine by the end of summer, and service providers hope that the medication will reach patients soon thereafter. Ukraine has the highest rate of HIV infection in Europe. The Ukrainian National AIDS Center has said that IDUs make up 65% of all HIV cases in the country. Source: European AIDS Treatment Group |
| What Makes an Activist? |
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Activists choose to take up causes for a wide variety of reasons, some not as straightforward as they might seem.
To start, take a look at Mom and Dad. Parental modeling can play a significant role in shaping future activists, according to Lauren Duncan PhD, an assistant professor of psychology at Smith College who has studied activism. She found that students with a parent who fought in Vietnam were much more likely to protest against the 1991 Gulf War than those whose parents were not war veterans. "Parents teach their kids [what they believe are] appropriate ways to respond to particular situations." Personality also helps prime protesters. Those who find personal meaning in current events are inclined to speak out for a cause, according to Duncan. She is currently researching why some people feel emotionally drained after a newscast while others can turn off the TV set without qualms. Individuals are more likely to feel a personal connection if they see themselves as part of the community affected by an issue, says Debra Mashek PhD, a research fellow at George Mason University, who specializes in "moral" emotions. Millions of women embraced this sense of collective identity during the women's rights movement, for example. Some psychologists say that most acts of altruism -- defined as devotion to the interests of others -- actually spring from a desire to help oneself. Jeffrey Kottler PhD, chair of the department of counseling at California State University at Fullerton, states that altruism can be reciprocal: Humans act benevolently for conscious or unconscious gain. "Theorists talk about it in terms of cost-benefit analysis, as if it's a rational thing," he says. "We don't do anything selflessly; we do it because it'll come back to us later -- someone will owe us something down the line or it will increase our status in the community." "If I am an anti-war protester, then by standing up for what I think is right I'm helping the world, because the world is my community, and in so doing, I help myself." We would all be better off today if we could broaden our sense of community, according to Kottler. "In America, our kin live all over the place and this leads to a lack of responsibility for taking care of other people." Kottler subscribes to a theory of empathic arousal, which explains good acts as motivated by the intrinsic psychological and physiological rewards they provide the doer. "There's a helper's high: When you extend yourself to someone else, it produces an altered state of consciousness. You feel aroused, you feel wonderful, you float on air." "The more you can get out of yourself and reach out to others, the more meaningful and satisfying life can be." Source: Psychology Today |
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| Wealthy Universities Recruit Low-Income Students |
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A growing number of elite American colleges are trying to open their doors to talented low-income students. Universities around the world are grappling with an elitism in their applicant pools and admissions policies that seems increasingly out of date.
Concerned that the barriers to elite institutions are being increasingly drawn along class lines, and wanting to maintain some role as engines of social mobility, about two dozen US universities -- Amherst, Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, the University of Virginia, Williams, and the University of North Carolina among them -- have pushed in the past few years to diversify economically. They are trying tactics like replacing loans with grants and curtailing early admission, which favors the well-to-do and savvy. But most important, Amherst, for instance, is doing more than giving money to low-income students; it is recruiting them and taking their socioeconomic background -- defined by family income, parents' education, and occupation level -- into account when making admissions decisions. Amherst's president, Anthony Marx, turns to stark numbers in a 2004 study by the Century Foundation, a policy institute in New York, to explain the effort: Three-quarters of students at top US universities come from the top socioeconomic quartile, with only one-tenth from the poorer half and 3% from the bottom quartile. "Universities have prided themselves on making strides in racial diversity," said Richard Kahlenberg, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation, "but for the most part they have avoided the larger issue of class inequality." "We want talent from across all divides, wherever we can find it," Marx said. Amherst covers the full cost of targeted students' education. Amherst also provides its low-income students important support, from $400 "startup grants" for winter coats and sheets and blankets for their dorm rooms, to summer science and math tutoring. At the same time, low-income students are expected to put in at least seven hours a week at $8-an-hour work-study jobs. But they get to use $200 a month in their work-study earnings as spending money to get a haircut, for instance, or go out for pizza with classmates so they do not feel excluded. Source: International Herald Tribune |
| Earth Loses Major CO2 Sink |
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The earth's ability to soak up the gases causing global warming is beginning to fail because of rising temperatures, in a long-feared sign of "positive feedback," new research revealed last month. Climate change itself is weakening one of the principal "sinks" absorbing carbon dioxide -- the Southern Ocean around Antarctica -- a new study has found.
As a result, atmospheric CO2 levels may rise faster and bring about rising temperatures more quickly than previously anticipated. Stabilizing the CO2 level, which must be done to bring the warming under control, is likely to become much more difficult, even if the world community agrees to do it. "The shift that has been detected in a four-year study by researchers from the University of East Anglia, the British Antarctic Survey and the Max-Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry, published in the journal Science, is one of the most ominous in the development of climate change. It implies a breach in the planet's own defences against global warming. Human society has hugely benefited from the earth's natural carbon absorption facility, which means oceans and forests take up roughly half of the CO2 pumped into the atmosphere, in the so-called carbon cycle. What is left in the atmosphere is known as the "airborne fraction". If sinks weakened, the airborne fraction would be likely to get bigger. Although supercomputer models of the climate have for some time predicted the weakening of the ocean and terrestrial sinks, no example of it happening has actually been detected until now: The research team has found the vast Southern Ocean, which is the earth's biggest carbon sink, accounting for about 15% of the total absorption potential, has become effectively CO2-saturated. Source: The Independent UK |
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