Thursday, February 26, 2015

Taking Action to Change US Food Aid: February goodTALK

By: Katherine and Emily
Katherine and Emily are both Program Fellows at Allowance for Good and students at Northwestern University. Read their bios here.

On February 12th, we braved the cold to attend a goodTALK with Josh Meyer, a Lecturer at National Security Studies at Medill’s Washington program, where he teaches graduate level journalism classes on covering conflicts, terrorism and national security. At this event, Meyer discussed the investigation into the US food aid effort that he led with a group of graduate students in the Medill School of Journalism. In a report titled, Hunger Pains: A Problem-plagued US Food Aid Program Faces an Uncertain Future, his team explored the inefficiencies and pitfalls of the program.We joined Northwestern students, staff and other interested members of the public around a table to hear Meyer speak in an intimate setting. Meyer kept everyone engaged throughout the 90 minute presentation with a powerpoint full of potent and dismaying statistics about the US Food Aid program, a long Q&A portion, and even a clip from the Daily Show. After hearing his talk, we at AfG have been moved to act in order to improve this ineffective system.

Josh Meyer chooses to focus his research not on sensationalized current events, but global systemic issues that have repercussions now and for future generations. One large-scale issue that Meyer believes will only become worse with the future challenges presented by climate change is food insecurity. By narrowing in on US food aid, Meyer’s team investigated a subject that the US public can directly impact and hold their government accountable for. As the leading global power, the US has the resources to help people throughout the world who are in need, and in the past century it has been central to US foreign policy, and the American identity, to do so. This ideology has persisted into the 21st century; military action, aid and various disaster relief efforts have all been presented as sacrifices made by the US to protect human rights abroad. But what happens when these aid efforts are wasteful and unproductive?

U.S. food aid has been quoted by experts to be the most inefficient humanitarian aid program in the world. Interviews with U.S. officials and recipients of aid on three continents revealed that USAID, the agency in charge of the food aid effort, actively seeks to serve American economic interests over the interests of those in need. Congressional mandates force USAID to use American commodities sent on American ships through an extensive logistic transportation bureaucracy. As a result, food often arrives months too late, and spoiled from the overseas journey. Former USAID administrator Andrew Natsios claims that, “people have died waiting for food to arrive,” because of this long and slow process. 

Regardless of these problems, USAID remains the largest aid effort in the world. But the U.S. can do better. Despite criticism from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) and frustrated USAID workers fighting for reform, policy changes have not been made, due to vested interests in Congress. So what can we, as attentive and committed global citizens, do to help? One way could be encouraging our representatives in Congress to support reform efforts. The United Nations World Food Programme has already begun using food vouchers in place of food ration boxes in places like Jordan for the Syrian refugees there. These vouchers give the refugees the ability to choose where they shop, what they buy, and how much– restoring their sense of dignity and normalcy. If the U.S. adopted this approach to aid, the money would be going directly into the pockets of the recipients, rather than being wasted on transportation or food they don’t necessarily want. We can spur our local and state leaders to fight for this change– a change that will ensure effective aid for all of those in need.


If you would like to take action, sign the petitions at the links below, or share Josh Meyer’s piece with your friends! Advocacy and action begins with awareness.


Petitions:


Meyer’s Piece:


Support organizations that fight for food aid reform:
http://www.care.org/work/advocacy/food-aid

Monday, February 23, 2015

Teen Discovers Financial Literacy and Personal Philanthropy

By: Ella
Ella is a participant in Allowance for Good's Winter 2015 Emerging Leaders in Philanthropy: Explorers class.

When I signed up for the ELP Explorers class, one of the words that jumped out to me in the course description was “financial literacy”. I had heard it before: it’s a “buzzword” often used in news articles or on talk shows, but not everyone knows what it means (I didn’t). But people often claim that it is severely lacking from our education system, and that teaching it may be the secret to preventing a good amount of our financial troubles. It turns out that financial literacy can mean a myriad of different things to different people, but fundamentally, it is the ability to understand financial matters, and how money works in general. However, many people don’t possess this understanding, as a 2008 survey shows that only 34% of parents have taught their child how to balance a checkbook.

In the most recent ELP class, we began to learn financial literacy by tracking our weekly spending and comparing it to our weekly earning. Many of us were surprised, and realized how little we think about spending money as teenagers. Financial literacy ties into personal philanthropy because it teaches us how to properly allocate and transfer funds. Also, keeping in mind my own spending highlights how severe needs are in the areas where we are trying to direct our aid to, and provides a sense of urgency to our personal philanthropy. For example, I will usually spend 7 or 8 dollars on food when I go out with my friends without a second thought. However, 2.7 billion people worldwide are struggling to survive on less than $2 a day, or a fourth of that amount. We also learned about AFG’s global affiliates, many of which combat similar situations: There’s the Liger Learning Center, based in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, a progressive school that provides opportunities for bright children living in poverty. There’s the Adonai Child Development Centre in Uganda for kids living among AIDS, war, and poverty. Finally, there’s Spark Ventures, which is Chicago-based and had a representative come in and educate us about their partnerships, such as Hope Community School. This is located in Zambia and provides the impoverished children of Twapia with an education. In future ELP classes, I’d be interested to learn more about what we can do to get involved with our global affiliates and how we can fundraise for them.

Sources:
http://www.financialeducatorscouncil.org/financial-literacy-statistics/
http://www.unmillenniumproject.org/resources/fastfacts_e.htm

Ella writes, "I am a Catalyst for Good because no matter who you are or where you come from, you can make a difference."