Cotton farmers in western Africa have been badly affected by a global drop in prices. Photo: 10b travelling (flickr)

Falling cotton prices hurt African farmers far more than their American counterparts. And American subsidies may be to blame for the Africans' pain, according to a documentary on Dev.tv, a nonprofit media outlet.

American farmers profit by growing more cotton since the U.S. government has promised them a fixed price no matter how much they produce. But American subsidies cause the market to be flooded with cotton, according to an industry expert in Benin, Bernard Adikpeto. "Because the U.S. subsidizes its cotton production, its farmers put a surfeit of 1 million tonnes in the market in 2001, leading to a drop in cotton prices."

On the other hand, African farmers don't get any subsidies, so they are hit hard when cotton prices fall in the free market. Consequences are especially bad because this crop is a crucial source of income in countries of Central and West Africa. For example, the cotton industry in Burkina Faso employs more than 2 million people and generates 40 percent of the nation's export revenue. Nearly 40 percent of Chad's population is involved in producing cotton, and two-thirds of its total export comes from this crop. In all, more than 10 million African farmers have lost income since the price of cotton fell worldwide.

What's ironic is that African farmers are losing money while selling a product they produce more competitively than others. Central and West African countries produce cotton at half the cost of the U.S. and Europe. Yet, these African nations bear a loss of $1 billion in the cotton economy every year.

To learn more on this topic, you can watch the documentary below :

"We take buses, cars, motorcycles until the road stops, then we walk..." Photo: FullyFunctnlPhil (flickr)

In India, members of the Dalit caste, also known as untouchables, often work as cobblers, roadsweepers, janitors, or worse. They have been discriminated against for centuries and enjoy little to no rights. And all too often, the women are illiterate and have to ask their husbands or brothers for permission to work or go to school.

But, in the Northern state of Uttar Pradesh, a small newspaper is giving Dalit women a unique opportunity to voice their concerns. Recently, the LA Times profiled Khabar Lahariya, or News Waves, a newspaper run entirely by Dalit women. Every two weeks, they print 4,000 copies of a new issue, which is estimated to reach up to 40,000 people in and around Uttar Pradesh. The paper is supported by Nirantar, a New Delhi-based NGO that works with issues of gender, education, and development.

These women are remarkable. They're involved in every aspect of the paper — from writing articles and selling ad space, to delivering papers to remote villages. "We take buses, cars, motorcycles until the road stops, then we walk," said one staffer.

They've developed a knack for shining light on local injustices, the LA Times explains, and often get the scoop on what's happening in the community from other villagers.

The paper's recent stories included alleged bribery at health clinics, a bureaucrat reported to be siphoning off money meant for widows and a piece on the brother of a powerful politician who built a house, blocking water that had gone to Dalit farmers nearby and destroying their livelihood.

The paper has received a lot of positive feedback from the surrounding communities. Residents used to complain that Dalits' issues were underrepresented in mainstream media. One shop owner tells the LA Times how much he values Khabar Lahariya as a news source:

Other papers aren't printed in our language and don't write about local news we're most interested in... This really feels like our own. I just wish it were more than eight pages so I'd have more to read.

Cassandra Nelson helps to distribute high-energy biscuits to locals at a hospital in Port-au-Prince. Mercy Corps

Yesterday the banks reopened in Haiti for the first time since the earthquake rocked the small island on January 12th.

Mercy Corps' spokeswoman Cassandra Nelson, who is on the ground in Port-au-Prince, stressed the importance of the banks reopening in her latest post on the Mercy Corps blog. "This means a lot to the aid effort, because there are a lot of people in Port-au-Prince who have some money — maybe not a lot — but they were having to live on handouts simply because they couldn't access their money." Without cash on hand, even wealthier Haitians were forced to seek handouts while the banks were closed.

As cash became more readily available throughout the day, Nelson saw the street economy reinvigorate from the rubble of damaged store fronts. Hawkers selling bananas and mangoes are helping restart the flow of food and resources within the country, allowing aid agencies to focus on those who are most in need of help.

You can keep up with the latest news about Mercy Corps' relief efforts in Haiti by clicking here.

One of J-PAL's studies tested the effectiveness of computer-assisted learning in certain Indian schools. Photo: niyam bhushan (flickr)

A research group thinks the best way to determine whether aid programs work is to evaluate them using the scientific method.

J-PAL, short for for the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab, is a group of researchers - loosely affiliated with MIT - who help design and publish academic-quality studies of existing poverty alleviation programs in an effort to find out exactly what works and what doesn't. These researchers partner with non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to evaluate their programs. They also offer courses for other researchers to share their methods. (Class materials are available here for free.)

As J-PAL's website explains, the key to their approach lies in randomization, which is an important part of a well-designed study:

Suppose we would like to see whether one thing (e.g. "schooling") really improves a life outcome (e.g. "health"). The natural instinct is to compare the health of those who have schooling to those who don't. But this would be like comparing apples and oranges: People who have been to school are different in so many ways from those who haven't. Perhaps they have more advantaged social backgrounds, greater access to government services and so better access to schools. And only a few of these factors can be measured and accounted for in a standard statistical analysis. So this simple comparison — those with schooling to those without — may tell us little about the effect of schooling: It may instead be the effect of any of these numerous other differences like social background. If policy are set on the basis of such apples and oranges comparisons, quite a bit of disappointment may result.

J-PAL uses this approach to evaluate existing programs. For example, J-PAL researchers cooperated with an NGO called Pratham to study how much weekly computer use could boost Indian students' academic achievement. They introduced computer-based learning only into randomly selected schools that Pratham was already serving. Students at these schools received basic computer skills training and two hours per week of independent computer time with educational software. After a year, J-PAL found that these students' math test scores had risen, but that their other skills hadn't changed significantly — and all for slightly more money than another effective Pratham program J-PAL had also evaluated.

What makes J-PAL's work innovative is that such randomized studies haven't typically been used in evaluating poverty-alleviation programs, or even in the wider field of economics.

Such data is designed to help aid organizations and governmental bodies decide the most effective way to allocate their funds. For the extra cost of designing an extra study now, J-PAL believes, more money can be directed toward the most effective programs for better poverty-alleviation strategies in the future.

Innovative practices in Indian health care are make surgeries more affordable. Photo: World Bank Photo Collection (flickr)

The numbers alone say a lot: A heart surgery that costs between $20,000 and $40,000 in the United States can cost only $2,000 in India.

The medical tourism industry has always taken advantage of lower health care costs in India and other developing countries. Some, however, are thinking beyond that. The Wall Street Journal recently profiled Dr. Devi Shetty, an Indian physician who has radically rethought the way heart surgery is managed and priced to make it more affordable than ever before.

Quite simply, Dr. Shetty is making heart surgery cheaper by doing more of it, says The Journal. The heart hospital he opened in India has 1,000 beds (the average U.S. hospital has 160 beds), and the sheer number of surgeries it performs gives it a lot of bargaining power for the equipment that it buys — carefully chosen for its cost. His physicians do more surgeries per day and repeat the same procedure more often than American doctors, giving them invaluable experience and expertise. Dr. Shetty plans to expand his private hospital complex significantly in the the next five years — a move that will give him even more leverage over suppliers.

Dr. Shetty's cost-cutting drive was propelled by a desire to make heart surgery affordable for Indians, after he understood the incompatibility of expensive health care and poverty. $2,000 for a life-saving surgery can be prohibitively expensive for some Indians, so many patients pay their medical bills through a special insurance plan developed by Dr. Shetty, in partnership with government officials from the state of Karnataka.

Dr. Shetty suspects that this kind of health care is likely to appeal to Westerners as well. He plans to open another hospital in the Cayman Islands specifically to serve Americans who want to lower their own health bills.

Iraqi women are caught in the crossfire between military troops and insurgents. Can dairy farming help bring peace to Fallujah? Photo: .ash (flickr)

Here's an innovative way to expand economic opportunity for Iraqi widows and reduce the threat of terrorism: give the women a dairy cow and teach them how to take care of it.

The U.S. Marine Corps is actually trying this in Fallujah, says the LA Times. They enlisted the help of Lockie Gary, a dairy-farming expert for Land O' Lakes. Gary is working with a group of 50 women — many are widows of insurgents — teaching them how to care for their cow. The women can earn a small income from selling products made from the cow's milk. But according to Gary, an added benefit is that in the long-term, this program might reduce the number of terrorist attacks in the area. He explains why in Farmer and Rancher Magazine:

If the cow could be made to produce enough milk beyond the family’s needs, then cheese and yogurt could be produced as well and the widow might be able to hope for a brighter future. The intent of the program is not entirely altruistic, however. With a source of income and a glimmer of hope, widows may be less inclined to be recruited as suicide bombers and that could save lives.

The program is still fairly new, and the women can't earn enough to support their families by selling the milk and cheese from a single dairy cow yet. But according to Gary, their high-quality milk and cheese should fetch better prices over time.

A Mercy Corps small business loan helped Najeeba expand her successful baby cradle business in Kabul, Afghanistan. Photo: Cassandra Nelson/Mercy Corps

Over the past decade, Mercy Corps’ microfinance services have lent more than $1.5 billion, reaching more than one million people. Twelve Microfinance Institutions (MFIs) founded and supported by Mercy Corps operate all over the world, with 270,000 active clients — 65 percent of them are women. To better serve those excluded from formal financial services, Mercy Corps is working with these MFIs to develop and offer savings, remittances, and micro-insurance services as well.

I recently sat down with Zhanna Zhakupova and Jim Anderson who were in town for a microfinance conference hosted by Mercy Corps, to find out more about Mercy Corps microfinance programs and how the global economic crisis is impacting microfinance loans. Zhanna is the Executive Director of the Asian Credit Fund (ACF), headquartered in Almaty, Kazakhstan. Jim is Mercy Corps’ Financial Services Manager and works from UlaanBaatar, the capital city of Mongolia. Together, they have experience working in countries as diverse as Uzbekistan, Vietnam, Japan, Bosnia, Poland and Afghanistan.

Haley Dillan: Jim, tell me a little bit about Mercy Corps’ use of Microfinance.

Jim Anderson: Microfinance is an integral part of what we’re [Mercy Corps] doing as an agency. Mercy Corps works with a group of well-established MFIs to complement other programming. All these MFIs provide loans to individuals and small businesses, and in Mongolia and Indonesia our MFI affiliates also offer deposits. Many support agriculture and offer consumer loans for purposes like tuition payments and health care costs. A micro-loan can range from $65 to a Guatemalan woman raising chickens or piglets, to $7,000 for a Kazakh businessperson.

Microfinance is a great tool because, when managed correctly, it is sustainable. Projects can be established and continue on a sustainable basis: they don’t require ongoing injections of donor money. As the NGO, you create the legacy, and then it often continues independantly.

Haley: Why are the majority of loans extended to women?

Jim: Typically, women are the more common borrowers. From a broad source of statistics, women are more reliable borrowers. They invest their business profits to support the family — educating, feeding, housing, and providing health care for their children. As of this June, Kompanion in Kyrgyzstan had over 91,000 clients, of whom 98 percent were women. What’s the percentage for Asian Credit Fund, Zhanna?

Zhanna Zhakupova: About 93 percent of ACF loans are to women.

Jim: Yes, and the XacBank in Mongolia has over 63,000 clients, and women comprise about 55 percent of that. However, in certain countries, it’s not always clear that just because the borrower is a woman, she’s the one in charge of the money. In Afghanistan, for example, a female borrower may just give the loan money to her husband, and it’s hard to track that.

Zhanna: Also, men are less interested in small loans. When they think about business, they think about “big.” And after the global economic crisis, group lending has grown significantly, and women dominate group lending. Men are more reluctant to join groups.

Haley: What other impacts has the global economic crisis had on microfinance? Have you changed your lending criteria? Has it affected the ability for applicants to repay their loans?

Zhanna: As I mentioned, our portfolio has shifted towards group lending since 2008. So, yes, the global economic crisis definitely caused a shift in our lending. In Kazakhstan, the crisis has been quite severe. The GDP growth was averaging about 8 percent annually since 2000, from oil and mineral resources. A pretty strong middle class had emerged, especially in the two largest cities Almaty and Astana. The economic crisis really affected this middle class; the crisis led to a sharp decline in real estate and that hit a lot of people. It seemed like everyone had loans that were secured by real estate… and when the real estate bubble burst, MFI loans were under water.

The banks stopped lending, because real estate was the key piece of collateral for most people, and it has continued to fall in value. No one had sufficient assets to meet tougher bank requirements, and so couldn’t qualify for loans after the global economic crisis. Lenders accumulated loan repayments, but refused to relend that money, sitting on it instead of pumping it back into the economy. No liquidity — no lending — no economic development — falling living standards.

In the rural areas, lending was completely frozen. When I recently visited rural areas served by ACF, every village asked us to open a branch. Small loans were in big demand but no one was lending. Now, Asian Credit Fund has about $1 million dollars in group loans, with the average loan size at around $500 per person.

Haley: What's the difference between non-profit and for-profit microlending? Does Mercy Corps work with for-profit lenders?

Jim: Actually, microlending is for-profit in most areas of the world, particularly Latin America and Central Asia. Non-profit lenders are more often located in places like India and Bangladesh. So most of Mercy Corps' microfinance work is with for-profit MFIs, many of which source funding from for-profit socially responsible investors (SRIs).

If these SRI lenders were to calculate the true risk of the loans they’re extending to MFIs, the interest rate would be so unmanageably high — possibly 60 or 70 percent in places like Tajikistan or Afghanistan. But the individuals who invest with SRIs are willing to forgo a certain amount of return because they want to encourage social improvements by lending to developing countries. As a result, SRIs can lend to MFIs at affordable interest rates.

In order to help MFIs attract capital to expand and serve more clients, Mercy Corps utilizes various sources of investment, including equity and debt, typically with SRIs.

Haley: Is there an idea or sentiment that you are taking away from the conference?

Jim: At the conference participants included a diverse group of organizations, culturally, geographically and in terms of business models, yet we all face similar challenges and issues, and it’s great that we have an opportunity to come together and talk about that.

Zhanna: Yes, everyone was talking about development, and long-term goals.

A street dentist in India. Photo: Christian Luna (flickr)

Would you want an unlicensed dentist working on your teeth?

You might if, like many of India’s poor, you lacked the money to see a professional. By your willingness to pay for these services, you’d also be creating a kind of employment for someone who could never find work in a traditional medical office.

Workers like these amateur dentists are part of India's informal sector, made up of the small-business employees like cleaners, agricultural workers, and hawkers of street goods who work for cash without a contract or benefits. Although India is best-known for its high-tech economy, the Indian government estimates that more than 93 percent of Indian workers are informally employed.

The informal sector didn't benefit much from India's tech boom, but its extra-stretchy quality actually makes India's economy stronger, says businessman Semil Shah. Why? For starters, he explains, the informal economy "provides markets for goods and services that may not have been otherwise traded." Others also see the the informal economy as a safety net for workers, since it gives more work possibilities to those who've lost jobs in the formal sector. Because of this, the informal sector may help sustain India through the global economic crisis, reports CNN.

However, maintaining a large informal economy isn't the long-term answer for India's poor, many researchers say. Life in the informal sector is harsh, since employment is often uncertain and poorly-paid. Moreover, working conditions aren't always good and competition can be stiff, especially when workers from the formal sector flood back in. Without a safety net of their own, informal workers hit the ground hard when they fall.

Despite all the drawbacks, many out-of-work Indians would probably agree that the uncertainty of informal work trumps the certainty of no work at all.

What will the growth of the Mongolian mining industry mean for the country's nomadic herders? Photo: Thatcher Cook for Mercy Corps

Mongolia could soon be home to the largest copper mine in the world.

After years of negotiations, Western mining companies Rio Tinto and Ivanhoe are close to reaching an agreement with the Mongolian parliament to develop significantly the Oyu Tolgoi mine. Mineweb reports that the untapped deposit contains 78 billion pounds of copper and 45 million ounces of gold. If all goes to plan, the massive investment would double the size of Mongolia's economy and create thousands of jobs, according to NPR.

The economic crisis has hit Mongolia harder than most countries in East Asia. One in four people are out of work, NPR reports. The country’s nomadic herders – 40 percent of the population – are struggling after the price of cashmere dramatically declined earlier this year (see Manasi Sharma’s Downturn in the Gobi). Now, some are hailing Oyu Tolgoi as an immediate economic fix.

But there are several obvious challenges. First, Mongolia is highly corrupt. It is ranked 102 out of 180 countries in the latest Transparency International index, an annual rating of perceived levels of corruption (defined as the abuse of public office for private gain). Additionally, the editorial in Mineweb suggests that Russia and China may have inordinate influence over Mongolia’s mining industry. Given these two factors, how much will the average Mongolian gain?

Lastly, there are the social implications of this investment to consider. For many nomadic herders, shifting to industrial mining jobs is far from ideal, but there isn’t much else to turn to. People are desperate now that raw cashmere and other materials do not provide a reliable way to feed and clothe families. "They are losing their land, their animals, and even their culture," reported NPR’s Louisa Lim, "for a few specks of gold."

Not a lot is known about North Korea. Westerners are rarely granted permission to enter the country. And we almost never get to see images other than those from state-coordinated photo ops.

But in May, Foreign Policy magazine published seven photos of North Korea taken by documentary photographer Tomas van Houtryve. Pretending to be a businessman looking to open a chocolate factory, van Houtryve toured Pyongyang under the watchful eye of his state-assigned guides. Despite his escorts, van Houtryve covertly snapped photos of life in and around Pyongyang.

The resulting photo essay, "The Land of No Smiles," shows empty streets, somber faces and dimly lit subways. They also offer a glimpse of what van Houtryve calls “emergency capitalism” — factories set up in special economic zones along the North-South border that allow South Korean companies to hire cheap North Korean labor.

Click here to see the photos — and don't forget to read the captions, which are nearly as fascinating as the images they describe.

Afghanistan is facing a dangerous new threat, but it does not involve suicide bombers or roadside explosives.

As the Washington Post reports, government corruption is threatening to topple Afghanistan’s fledgling democracy in the wake of a presidential election plagued by delayed vote tallies and reports of voter intimidation. The Wall Street Journal explains that corruption in Afghanistan is so pervasive that the United States and its allies are reconsidering their strategy in dealing with President Hamid Karzai. Allegations of misconduct are so prevalent that the U.S. has begun to view Karzai not as an ally, but as a liability in their effort to reconstruct the war-torn nation.

USAID recently released a report that said roughly two-thirds of Afghans had been victimized by a corrupt government official — the highest level ever recorded. In a country where the average person makes $700 a year, it takes a $400 bribe to be connected to the electrical grid.

If it's allowed to continue unchecked, the report says, corruption will make it impossible for Afghanistan to develop an economy capable of attracting foreign investment and aid.

Despite the obstacles to eliminating corruption, one organization has begun to make headway. The Christian Science Monitor reports how a multinational relief effort called the Aga Khan Development Network has begun to train Afghan villagers in basic accounting techniques. The villagers — who are now able to audit their community’s financial records — are better able to prevent embezzlement and theft. While the organization's efforts have so far met with success, they're only one soldier in the fight against a serious problem.

Women in SHGs spoke about bright futures for their daughters and want to work towards increasing the educational opportunities that are available to them in their village of Karauli. Photo: Carmina Rinker

I recently returned from a study and service-leaning trip in India. While was there I traveled with a small group of Portland State University students and faculty, visiting several grassroots NGOs working with women's microfinance groups in Maharashtra. In this part of the world, Self Help Groups (SHGs) go beyond lending, they also are tackling issues like domestic violence, health care and politics.

Sitting in matching blue Saris with gold trim, about ten women are seated inside a small room passing chai and biscuits to their foreign guests. They discuss their business ventures, their children, and ask our small group of American students questions about our lives in the United States. One mother is beaming with pride as she coaches her small daughter to recite a poem, "Airplane, Airplane" in perfect English.

With the growing popularity of Kiva.org and the heightened awareness of the Grameen bank, many of us Westerners are just now discovering the impact of microfinance programs as a tool of poverty alleviation and women's empowerment. But for hundreds of women in the village of Karauli in Maharashtra, India, this is old news. Women here have been active in Self Help Groups (SHGs) for close to a decade or more, and in this time their participation has extended far beyond the collective savings, loans, that are the most basic elements of microfinance schemes. Self Help Groups are groups of women who come together to save money collectively, and from their collective savings they can take individual loans in order to make repairs on their house, buy goods for their microenterprises, send their children to school, or for whatever purpose they need it for. In addition the SHGs act as a social support network through which the women can come together to address individual and broader social issues such as domestic violence, women's health, and sanitation issues in their communities. SHGs differ from Joint Liability Groups (as used by the Grameen Bank), in that they usually have about 10-20 members whose loans come directly from the group's own savings instead of from a bank or Microfinance Institution. In order to mobilize more credit for larger loans, groups of SHGs often come together to form a Federation.

While visiting two of thirty or so SHGs that are active in Karauli, a village with a population of around 7,000, women spoke about taking out loans to send their children to the university in the nearby city of Pune, large entrepreneurial ventures such as opening a hotel, and accumulating a collective group savings of Rs 8.5 lakhs (equivalent to about 17,000 US dollars). Yet beyond the financial benefit that these women enjoy through their participation in the SHGs (as well as the pride and confidence that goes along with it), the women also spoke about other changes that extend beyond their individual and family levels, and to their greater communities. This ranges from launching village clean-ups to rid their communities of litter, participating in village politics (panchayats). The women who have adopted the blue sari uniform to wear to their monthly meetings organized a 100 Woman March to the Office of the Minister of Irrigation of Maharastra to raise their concerns over water availability and sanitation. This group has been together for over eight years, and during that time every women in the room — about half of their 20 members — has served a term as SHG leader. They explain that before joining the SHG they had little to no interaction and involvement in public spaces, yet with the leadership skills they have now developed as well as the mutual trust and social capital that has been built through the group, they now feel less inhibited to be active in the public domain.

These SHGs have been organized and facilitated by the NGO Chaitanya, based in the nearby town of Rajgurunagar. Chaitanya came into existence in 1993, and began by incorporating microfinance programs using SHGs in rural areas. Today they have expanded to include many other programs that address issues of livelihood and agriculture, legal needs, education, and health of the rural poor.

Thomas Benke (center) works with Sichuan Research Institute of Environmental Protection chemists and OFSSA staff to set-up the Gas Chromatograph. Photo: Courtesy of Thomas Benke.

Four years ago, a petrochemical plant on the border of China and Russia spilled 100 metric tons of the toxic chemicals into a tributary of the Amur River. The river is the main drinking supply for a town in Russia named Khabarovsk, and it put hundreds of thousands of lives at risk.

Naturally, Khabarovsk turned to Moscow for help. But they also contacted a group of friends in Portland — including my dad.

My dad, Thomas Benke, has been involved in the Portland-Khabarovsk Sister-City Association, or PKSCA, for many years. And his actions after the toxic spill showed me that sister-city associations can be a means for not only cultural exchange but also serious global cooperation.

PKSCA implements a wide reach of humanitarian programs in Khabarovsk that include solid-waste management, emergency services, educational exchanges, hospitals, orphanages, and village schools. And it, along with Oregon Fujian Sister State Association (OFSSA), has responded to disasters such as chemical spills and earthquakes. My dad has volunteered for both. One of his main motivators has been to help preserve the environment. (He holds degrees in chemical engineering and environmental law.)

There is an undeniable synergy between a clean environment and economic development. The old idea that there must be some trade-off between economic development and environmental protection in developing economies is gradually being replaced by the realization that the foundation of economic development — a healthy workforce — thrives on clean air, clean water and an unpolluted landscape.

My father explained to me that soon after the spill in Khabarovsk, he traveled there to deliver and introduce a Gas Chromatograph, a device for testing drinking water in disaster areas. The device was purchased by the City of Portland. In May 2007, PKSCA followed up by inviting two chemists from the Vodokanal (Khabarovsk Water Bureau) to work with the Portland Water Bureau and the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality. Most importantly, PKSCA set up a training session at SRI Instruments in Los Angeles — the company that built the Gas Chromatograph. SRI Instruments' contribution was substantial — they built a specialized device that could detect the contaminants in the Amur River and provided free repair for the device.

Not only did PKSCA quickly respond to the water crisis in Khabarovsk, but by providing further training sessions in the United States, they also sustained and fostered a stronger more informative relationship between Portland and Khabarovsk officials, as well as sister-city board members.

On May 12, 2008, an 7.9 magnitude earthquake struck China’s Sichuan Province, killing tens of thousands of people and displacing nearly five million. Immediately, Fujian Province requested assistance from its Sister State, Oregon, for whatever aid they could provide. Below, Thomas described the international and OFSSA response to the crisis.

The world responded with cash and supplies. The people of Oregon donated cash generously through several local and international non-profit organizations. The Oregon-Fujian Sister State Association, because of its unique relationship with Fujian Province, resolved to do more — to donate emergency response tools that would leverage Sichuan Province’s capacity to respond.

The pre-existing relationship of trust between the two jurisdictions allowed Fujian province to request help from Oregon. The Sister-Province relationship made all the difference — we were able to overcome the cultural issues of pride and face that might have otherwise required Fujian province to decline aid. It's all about overcoming the formidable cultural barriers, and I think that that's the key.

It's the difference between your neighbor, somebody in your community coming in and offering help as opposed to a stranger from someplace you know nothing about.

When my dad first explained sister city associations right after the toxic spill four years ago, I thought he was obsessed with his involvement in both organizations. Now about to graduate from college, I plan to follow his lead and hope to work internationally for an NGO.

Mexian fans celebrate a goal. In soccer-centric countries such as Mexico, winning a soccer match can represent more than just a victory on the field. Photo: ++Frank++ (flickr)

Mexico's finance secretary recently warned that falling oil prices and production may lead to the nation's worst recession in 30 years.

But on Wednesday, economic worries took a backseat to Mexico's World Cup qualifying match against the United States, which many Mexicans viewed as more than just a soccer match.

“This was life or death for the whole country,” Kurt Vogt, a Mexican supporter, told The New York Times, which headlined their article about Mexico's 2-1 victory, "Mexico Restores Order to Its Universe."

Not only did Mexico's World Cup 2010 hopes rest on the outcome of the match, as well as an impressive home unbeaten streak — they're 23-0-1 against the U.S. at Azteca Stadium — but the country's hard-hit ego and slumping economy stood to gain substantially as well.

“It's incredible how it effects our emotions and our economy — one game,” said Eliseo “Papo” Santos, a former professional player and coach told Mark Zeigler of The San Diego Union-Tribune. “Not qualifying for the World Cup, it would be devastating for us. It'll bring your country down big time.”

This isn't just a gut feeling — it's "soccernomics." The Union-Tribune's Zeigler points out that after Italy won the World Cup in 2006 its gross domestic product grew by 2 percent, after two years of zero growth.

No wonder both Mexico and the U.S. played their recent World Cup qualifier as if it was the championship match.

Plumpy’nut is frequently used by humanitarian agencies in emergency malnutrition situations. Photo: Thatcher Cook for Mercy Corps

Humanitarian agencies have long been using protein and energy bars filled with nutrients and vitamins when responding to food emergencies. Though these "ready-to-use foods" are seen everywhere on grocery shelves in the West, they're often viewed as lifesavers when food crises strike the developing world.

BBC News recently highlighted the efforts of two British doctors, Steve Collins and Alistair Hallam, who saw the great results these easily accessible foods can have on malnourished populations. The doctors have taken the idea of ready-to-use foods even further with their company, Valid Nutrition, which manufactures foods supplemented with important nutrients found in meat and vegetables — foods most Africans can’t afford. While majority of emergency food packets contain high sugar concentrations and supplements that help in emergency relief areas, Valid Nutrition's products contain nutrients that are important in a person's daily diet and are sold at an affordable price. The company has opened manufacturing factories in various African countries, creating jobs for locals and helping the economy by using local crops.

Instead of only using these foods during emergency relief situations, the doctors want to help treat severe acute malnutrition, where a person's weight for height measurement is 70 percent below the median range due to food shortage and/or illness, according to the World Health Organization.

"The idea is to target people suffering from a less acute, but more widespread form of malnutrition that affects a staggering two billion people worldwide," reports BBC News.

Fortification of food for the developing world is not a new idea. Other companies such as Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition, a Swiss nonprofit, has programs in various developing countries providing food for the poor. In fact, Gain is trying to put more market pressure on firms to “develop new, affordable nutritious foods by convincing business it is missing a vast untapped market.”