The Loud Project?

I've got a new blog called " The Loud Project". This will be a short lived blog. It will only go for 60 days. 4 me its a bit of fun and an experiment. We can all get loud about different things, usually unimportant things. But i wonder how often do we get loud about things that truly make a difference? So here's the challenge. Over the next 60 days educate yourself about the issues around poverty and the environment and get LOUD about them!

http://theloudproject.blogspot.com/

Eight Millennium Goals

Hi EVERYONE!

It's been a while since I last blogged. I have been a bit lazy with it...

However I have been reading lots, and I have a lot to talk about.

This week I'm going to be sharing the 8 Millennium goals with you. Where do we stand with them? What has worked? and what needs to be done?

I can't wait

If you think that something that I write this week is worth sharing then why don't you twitter or face book it.

Cheers
Pete

Just How rich are you?

We obviously think that we are far from rich. I certainly don't think I am rich. My 8 year old son Samuel I'm sure will be rich. You can ask him at any time how much money he has and will give you a detailed account of his money and both his brother and sister in dollars and cents. He seems to notice even when I borrow a dollar off him.

I did some calculations earlier to work out just how rich you are. Did you know that if you only earn just $10,000 a year you are amongst the 13.72% richest in the world, $20,000 a year 11.97% richest, $30,000 a year %10.22 richest, $40,000 5.73% richest, $50,000 3% richest, $60,000 top 0.99% richest. Wow! (At the current Australian exchange rate)

The world bank now draws extreme poverty at $1.25 a day as being extreme poor. That is not a little poor, that is a lot poor. That is not having any food, not having a roof over your head, unsure where you will find clean water to drink next and worrying if you will live the year through.

At the moment in the world there are 1.4 Billion people who live on less then $1.25 a day. That is an incredible number, a shocking number and a statistic that surely couldn't be true. But it is. To me it seems so far removed form real life.

What can you buy for a $1.25? Not much! Certainly not enough to live on.

So the question is just how rich are you? What can you do now to make a difference for one. You may not be able to feed 100 people. But can you feed one?

Buy a gift for a child. Click here

http://trans.worldvision.com.au/Smiles/GiftCatalogue/Gift.aspx?GiftID=79

I just bought a present for my Dad's birthday from this site.....shhhhh! Don't tell him.

With a few clicks you have a bought a present that changes lives.

Counting Down 10 Actions You Can Take....No 8

No......8.....Shopping 4 Effect

You don't need to feel guilty about spending your ca$h. Just don't spend it on products that were manufactured in a sweatshop in a developing country. Do your research find out were products are made and who made them. Choose fair trade if its on offer. Make sure your office or school offers fair trade coffee or tea.

Check out this post I wrote a while ago. It lists all the fair trade Chocolate I could find in Australia http://idreamichoose.blogspot.com/2009/03/fair-trade-chocolate-shopping-guide.html

Also check out http://www.fairtrade.com.au/

Fri Night Xtreme Person - PAUL RUSESABAGINA

PAUL RUSESABAGINA REAL-LIFE HERO, HOTEL RWANDA

I just finished a very moving book called “An ordinary man, The true story behind ‘Hotel Rwanda’”. Wow! As I read this book I was shocked with disbelief of the events that unfolded in Rwanda. I’m sure most of you have seen the movie, “Hotel Rwanda”. It’s moving story, it delves into Paul’s personal journey while explaining the history behind Rwanda’s Hutu and Tutsis tribes within the historical context of the conflict.



Fiftteen years ago on a Thursday, a single attack on a plane triggered a 100-day orgy of slaughter in the central African nation of Rwanda that left at least 800,000 people dead.

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The international community did little to stop the bloodshed, and it ended only when a Tutsi rebel group defeated the Hutu-backed government.

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Amid the stories of unthinkable, pitiless bloodshed, there were faint voices of hope. Paul Rusesabagina, dubbed by some the "Oskar Schindler of Africa," resisted the madness that surrounded him and quietly sheltered more than 1,200 Tutsis and moderate Hutus within the walls of the luxury hotel he managed. Outside those hotel walls, mobs hunted down their victims and hacked them to death with machetes.

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It’s a little hard to talk about the book in the context of a blog as there is so much involved in telling the story.

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In the Genocide in Rwanda the UN and the West did nothing to stop the Genocide amoungst pleas and requests when it was in their power to intervene.

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As I reflected on the book i thought about how there are so many things happening today in third world nations that are in our power to make a difference. It makes me think of one of Bono’s quotes, “The fact is that this generation -- yours, my generation ... we're the first generation that can look at poverty and disease, look across the ocean to Africa and say with a straight face, we can be the first to end this sort of stupid extreme poverty, where in the world of plenty, a child can die for lack of food in it's belly.”

We have the opportunity right now to sponsor children, stand against child slavery and use our money to lift people out of the cycle of poverty. I hope we are not the generation that stands by and does nothing.

Counting down "Ten Most Exciting Stories of Change" ....No 8

No 8....Small-scale Banking

Sounds boring doesn't it? Well, its actually quite an exciting idea and concept.

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In the wake of the 1974 famine in Bangladesh, US educated Bangladeshi economist, Muhummad Yunus, was inspired to do something about the poverty in his own country. He saw a need for the poor in Bangladesh to be given loans with reasonable terms to help them recover from the devastation.

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Yunus founded the Grameen Bank in 1976, which provides a chance for millions of the world's poorest people to work their way out of poverty. It's a small-scale banking system based on mutual trust, accountability, participation and creativity. The bank focuses on lifting people out of poverty and they lend to beggars, home buyers and students to name a few.

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The bank provides credit to the poorest of the poor in rural Bangladesh who don't have access to traditional banks, and it's clients are mostly women. As of May 2007, the bank had 7.16 million borrowers and 2,422 branches, covering more than 93 per cent of the villages in Bangladesh. Grameen Bank members have a household income 50% higher than those in villages who aren't involved with the bank.

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The founder Muhammed Yanus won the Nobel Peace Prize for life changing work in 2006.

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I'm going to be writing more about Muhammed Yanus. What I love about him is that he could have used his talents to become filthy rich instead he has used his gifts and talents to change the world.

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For the thinkers http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kW-4gJmXy5M

The Inconvenient Truth? - Part 3

This blog has been a quest and a journey for me to discover more about Extreme Poverty and find ways that I can make a difference. The more I read and understand, the more I am becoming passionate about the environment. To be honest my usual response to environmental issues in the past has been, "who cares!".... Well maybe not quite who cares, but you know what I mean......so I guess my attitude has changed quite a bit. One thing I do know is that we can make a huge difference if we all do small things, like looking after the environment, sponsoring children (I have 2 at the moment, thinking of getting another) and speaking out against extreme poverty just to name a few.

Disappearing Forests

The forest that get all the press are the rainforest's - the lush, tropical forests of the Amazon, equatorial Africa and South East Asia. Rainforest's are home to over two-thirds of all species on the planet. There are many different kinds of forests. They all help regulate the earth's temperature and are home to more plant and animal species than any other ecosystem.

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About 45 % of all earth's original forests are gone, mostly cleared during the last century. Invasive species damage the health of the forests, and drier conditions associated with global warming and the resultant fires damage them beyond repair. The destruction of these forests releases immense stores of carbon into the atmosphere - every hectare stores about 500 tonnes of carbon, which the forest would normally convert into oxygen.

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The Indigenous people in those forests join the world's poor at the back of the queue.