Tikaro.com: John Young’s Blog: “Young man! Do you want to learn electrical engineering the seven passwords of the Gnomon?” …well, you know the obligatory ingredients of a supervillian’s lair? * Underground * Big, heavy, inscrutable machinery * Some kind of platform or catwalk * LCD monitors bolted to the walls * Some kind of big blackboard with lots of math on it. The damp, flyblown, and utterly terrifying unimproved basement space two stories underground had ALL OF THAT, including twelve classroom chairs jammed next to a big blue boiler, facing a six-foot concrete platform, in back of which was mounted…

…of the simple fact that most schools don’t have girls-only latrines, water to wash with, or privacy. Once puberty arrives, many girls simply stay home. Another School Barrier for African Girls: No Toilet The article notes that if girls and women had access to all the normal goods and services their societies offered, such as a basic education, farming supplies and subsidies, and a supply of sanitary goods, life for everyone would be better. Why? According to the World Bank: The issue, advocates for children say, is not merely fairness. The World Bank contends that if women in sub-Saharan Africa…

BBC NEWS | UK | Education | Illiteracy ‘hinders world’s poor’ The regions found to have the lowest levels of literacy are sub-Saharan Africa, south and west Asia and the Arab states, where only 60% of the population are able to read and write. Women remain more at risk of illiteracy, with only 88 women worldwide considered literate for every 100 men. In Bangladesh and Pakistan, these figures are even less, at 62 and 57 respectively for every 100 men. The Global Campaign for Education (GCE) welcomed the publication and its focus on adult literacy, saying illiteracy was a violation…

Evangelicals working to break stereotypes – The Clarion-Ledger Evangelicals have been pushing President Bush, an evangelical himself, to lead the charge on reducing foreign debt owed by Third World nations and to fight poverty and AIDS in Africa. The debt-relief effort has been driven by the Rev. Rick Warren, author of the enormously popular book, The Purpose-Driven Life. Warren, pastor of the Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Calif., has been mobilizing evangelicals to work on the debt issue. Warren and others are pushing “The ONE Campaign (www.one.org),” which seeks “to make poverty history” by allowing countries with heavy debts to…

BBC NEWS | Health | Women’s health fuelling poverty For every woman who dies, roughly 20 more suffer serious injury or disability – between 8 million and 20 million a year. Experts agree that the majority of maternal deaths are preventable through family planning to reduce unintended pregnancies, skilled attendance at all deliveries and timely emergency obstetric care in all cases where complications arise. And our own government’s moralizing policies are a big part of this problem. We refuse to give aid to countries and charities without strings attached. Which is morally indefensible, if you ask me (but they won’t).

Obama: White House blind to poverty in U.S. WASHINGTON — Sen. Barack Obama on Wednesday night again criticized the Bush administration’s response to Hurricane Katrina and urged a black policymaking conference to make sure the poor are not left behind again. “The incompetence was colorblind,” said Obama (D-Ill.). “What wasn’t colorblind was the indifference. Human efforts will always pale in comparison to nature’s forces. But [the Bush administration] is a set of folks who simply don’t recognize what’s happening in large parts of the country.” MSNBC: The Other America “I hope we realize that the people of New Orleans weren’t…

Bush breaks HIV funding promise The Replenishment Meeting was widely billed as the first significant test of the promises made by world leaders at the recent G8 meeting, during worldwide MakePovertyHistory protests. The 3.7bn US dollars pledged by donors will be just enough to sustain current programmes. However there is no funding for new prevention, treatment or care programmes for 2006 and 2007. It is suggested that 7 billion US dollars was needed to adequately address funding needs. The US contribution is just 0.6 billion dollars for the next two years. For the first time since the establishment of the…

Nearly 1,600 children under the age of six have died in India’s Maharashtra state, many from malnutrition, in the past four months, officials say. Let’s see: that’s approximately 400 children a month, 13 children a day, or 1 child every two hours, in just one state of one country battling poverty. It’s time I gave somebody a piece of my mind. God knows, he could use one.