America’s Hunger Problem

The British waste a third of their food supply, and are the fattest people in Europe, causing Prime Minister Gordon Brown to declare war food waste.  In America, we’re even fatter than the Brits, and yet we waste more food.  Hunger, food waste, and high food prices go hand-in-hand, but who’s waging America’s war on waste?  Watch the video and find out!

Guardian Angel of the Bridge of Death

“In a time of crisis, all people really need is one person willing to lend a hand. It could make the difference between life and death.”

So says Chen Si, a self-appointed lifeguard on the so-called Chinese bridge of death.  He’s spent every weekend for the last 5 years patrolling Nanjing Bridge looking for people about to commit suicide.  So far he’s saved 144 lives.

Read Chen’s inspiring, touching stories of some lives saved, and the difficulties and sacrifices that come from this kind of special volunteerism.  You’ll be grateful for the problems in your life, all so minor compared to what many people suffer.  You may even be inspired to make someone smile, and that just could make the difference between life and death.

The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.  -Mahatma Gandhi

(via LA Times)

Toilet Paper and Asthma

I always wondered why kids in the most polluted cities in Asia had asthma rates 10X lower than kids near, say diesel truck routes, in the United States.  And now I have an answer.  Fat Knowledge posts a Wired article about how a bacterial imbalance in the gut leads to asthma & related symptoms.

Blaser and NYU colleague Yu Chen analyzed the medical histories and stool samples of more than 7,400 people enrolled in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. After controlling for other variables, they found that the presence of H. pylori was associated with a 25 percent fall in asthma rates among people under 20 years old. The drop was even more significant in H. pylori-positive children aged 3 to 13: They were 59 percent less likely to develop asthma.

From Wikipedia:

Many researchers think that H. pylori is transmitted orally by means of fecal matter through the ingestion of waste tainted food or water. A clean and hygienic environment can help decrease the risk of H. pylori infection.

In addition to felling 423,900 trees to put 1 roll of toilet paper in every American household, it seems that toilet paper is indirectly responsible for part of America’s $14 billion dollar asthma bill.  (Is that reason enough for anyone to find an alternative?)  As disgusting as it sounds, lack of toilet paper is the biggest source of oro-fecal, and thus H. pylori, transmission in the developing world.

So it seems that the miracle Indian cure for asthma has less to do with fish & herbs than it does with your left hand.  Which begs the question of what people in other parts of the world used before toilet paper was invented.  The roughest is perhaps the frayed end of an old anchor cable was by sailing crews from Spain and Portugal!  More pre-toilet paper solutions here.

IndyMac Lines in Orange County & Other Banks that May Fail

In assisting a relative close an account at IndyMac bank, I learned information may be useful to others needing to pull out their money.

As of Friday, July 18th 2008 at 10:50am, it looks at though the Costa Mesa branch is the best place to withdraw your money while Huntington Beach branch has the longest lines.  Here’s what I found:

Line Status at IndyMac in Orange County

Other banks that may fail, based on their ‘Texas ratio’ (~debts divided by assets)

Downey Bank’s ‘Texas ratio’ is also over 100.  Tried researching Texas ratios at the FDIC’s site, but the site is confusing and information is tough to locate.

Anybody know a quick way to find ‘Texas ratios’ of different banks?

Itipini - A Slum Community in South Africa

Itipini is a squatter’s camp in one of the poorest parts of South Africa, but hope came in 1984 when Dr. Chris McConnachie & his wife Jenny McConnachie moved from the United States to devote their lives to serving that community. Their selfless service has inspired many to give back, including Karmacy at tonight’s Blazin Hope 2 concert.

Leanna Archer: A 12-Year-Old Entrepreneur with a Compassionate Spirit

At the age of 3, Leanna was enrolled in school.
At age 7, she took the training wheels off her bike.
And by age 10, Leanna Archer became the owner and CEO of her own company.

The young business-woman was recently featured in the March 2008 issue of Ebony magazine and the June 14th ABC feature ‘Above and Beyond.’

Not only is Leanna ahead of her years, she’s driven by a compassionate spirit. How is the CEO of a hair care company at her core a public servant? Only one way to find out …

Touring a Slaughterhouse Before Dinner?

Knowing the slaughterhouse is there is one thing — seeing what happens inside is another. “No, that might be too much,” said Mr. Barber, who confessed that the first time he visited a slaughterhouse, he experienced the same visceral revulsion that non-foodies often do.

So say the founders of a New York restaurant and farm that have decided to put their slaughterhouse on site to cater to growing ‘locavore’ tendencies and rising fuel prices.

They are looking for ways to open up even the slaughterhouse to their patrons, albeit cautiously.

The slaughterhouse, he said, is just as much a part of the farm’s reality as the baby lambs that were born last week. “It’s about life and death and disease, and that’s part of what it means to live in an agricultural community,” he said. “We’re not Disneyland.”

I’d be willing to bet that many people would cross-over from ‘locavore’ to ‘herbivore’ after witnessing their meat getting killed!

via NY Times

Fighting Malaria $10 at a Time & Better Foreign Aid

Started by Sports Illustrated writer Rick Reilly, Nothing But Nets is another brilliant case study in the power of social fundraising. Fueled by small donations of $10 where 100% goes towards the cost of a net (along with distribution & education on how to use it), thousands of volunteers have raised millions of dollars to ‘cover a continent’ and prevent 3,000 malaria deaths a day.

Check out their PSA:

For more, see a recent NY Times article.

Making charity cool, and getting youth to spend on compassionate causes is a positive development, but aid alone often amplifies the problems it seeks to eradicate. Foreign donors spend millions of dollars a year to buy free nets for poor rural Africans, so much so that the donated nets usually outnumber the ones produced by the local market. While flooding the market makes it more likely that rural poor have access to nets, it eventually crushes local producers and makes the countries permanently dependent on outside aid. Even in the face of a flooded market, the best free nets donated by foreigners are often smuggled to urban areas and sold for a profit by small time street-smart entrepreneurs.

Rather than directly providing free nets, a better use of foreign aid would be to partner with local net producers to 1.) build & support BOP marketing mechanisms that drive up demand for nets (like Lok Darshan) 2.) improve local net manufacturing technology to increase quality while reducing cost 3.) repeat 1 & 2 for legitimate malaria medications (as opposed to the counterfeits all over Africa) 4.) educate the population on how to eradicate mosquito breeding grounds on a mass scale.

Such an approach requires working with compassionately engaged partners on the ground, and usually getting your hands dirty by spending significant time doing work yourself to local build capacities that previously did not exist. Effectively addressing the problem requires an alignment of the head, heart, and hands. While spreading awareness in the west and raising millions is two-thirds of the battle, without the less glamorous work of shifting consciousness by sweating it out in Africa, any solution falls short by simply displacing the problem.

Fund-raising organizations usually become self-justifying and continue to raise money for their cause regardless of the efficacy. Such an unwise approach ultimately destroys them through a combination of donor fatigue and donor enlightenment about nothing truly changing. Further, they do a disservice to every other organization that is fund-raising for a good cause by competing for the same dollars while pushing donors back towards the quicker thrills of self-indulgent consumerism when their efforts miss the mark.

Children Build the World’s Largest Peace Crane!

In 1999, peace activist Michiko Pumpian got children from around the world to create a crane 120 feet tall and 215 feet wide. All over it were handwritten messages of peace. It was displayed in Seattle’s Kingdome and holds a spot in the Guinness Book of Records.

“When people sit down to make something with their hands, when they work together and think about peace together, they can’t help but become friends,” said Pumpian, who immigrated to Los Angeles in 1981 and later moved to this small town east of Seattle with her husband and three children.

While antiwar demonstrators block intersections a few miles from her home and make speeches on nearby university campuses, Pumpian represents another side of the movement — one that predates the Iraq war and takes a longer-term and understated approach.

Check out another pro-peace campaign powered by kids.

Barefoot College Transforming Lives

Started in 1972 in Rajasthan, India by Bunker Roy, Barefoot College trains uneducated women to become highly qualified solar engineers. Lacking both a basic education and common language, today women from around the world receive instruction over six months to enable them to free villages in their home countries from the pollution of kerosene or wood. That’s a big deal when the WHO says that indoor air pollutants are the number one killer of women & children in the world, at 1.6 million people a year or one every 20 seconds!