E-participation: A New Approach To Participatory Action

An interesting argument that I encountered when researching different approaches to increasing participation in urban slum community development is the idea of e-participation. E-participation is an interesting tool set up by the UN–Habitat’s Participatory Slum Upgrading Programme (PSUP) in collaboration with several other actors and organizations. This approach has the aim of developing innovative social-media tools for policy modeling and citizen participation.

The goal is to create an online tool for slum dwellers to voice their opinions of upgrading plans, prioritizing interventions, and monitoring as well as evaluating projects. This tool will allow community-based organizations and NGOs to better and more directly address the needs and concerns of community members. This would make community development much more transparent and increase the degree of accountability from organizations that work in slum development. E-participation thus allows for a better partnership between organizations and the people to create direct change that will greatly improve living conditions of many slum dwellers.

The organization I am working with, TECHO - Chile, does a lot of interactive work with the communities they partner with in order to address the specific needs of people living in slums. A major debate related to my organization that I have discovered is: What the most efficient way is to encourage and incorporate participation in community development programs, thus more efficiently benefiting communities that the organization works with. This leads me to ask, is e-participation a possibility of increasing participation in Chile?

The approach of e-participation, launched in Mtwapa, Kenya a few months ago trained participants to use social media tools such as Facebook, weblogs and email. This training allowed them the ability to share their opinions in order to ensure that upgrading projects are inclusive and address relevant problems. The approach was implemented but thus far the degree of success has not yet been reported. It was stated by UN-Habitat that the initial intervention workshop was received well by community members living in Mtwapa. For many who participated it was their first time working on a computer. Their responses were overwhelmingly positive toward the e-participation tool. Members of the slums recognized that this approach has the potential to allow for a higher level of participation while also exposing the poor to technology they never dreamed of being exposed to. It ultimately is a tool for empowerment.

This new form of participation is very interesting because it utilizes the development of technology in today’s society. By allowing people in poverty to access the Internet in order to voice their opinions, we are sharing the wealth of knowledge and technology with a population that otherwise would not be exposed to it. As technology continues to advance, I think that this form of participation may expand into more opportunities for the poor to share in the vast possibilities that technology and the Internet create.

E-participation has the potential for a great impact on the level of participation and collaboration between stakeholders in slums around the world. It also allows for greater documentation of progress communities are making. While there are many benefits that it may bring, there are also a large number of restrictions to this approach.

E-participation’s potential for success falls short when we consider the availability of this technology for most developing countries. How do we provide these communities with the computers necessary to voice their opinions? Is internet even available in many of these areas? In the future it may be possible that we increase the exposure of new technologies, but in our current society these resources aren’t nearly as plentiful as it would be necessary for this approach to be universal. This is an approach we should keep in mind for the future but as of now it may be more efficient to rely on direct interviews and surveys to assess the needs of community members and encourage participatory action. This method is much more feasible and cost effective.

Another limitation embedded in this approach is the time that it takes to teach individuals how to operate a computer. Our generation spends years learning how to type and spends many hours learning how to maneuver the Internet world. The time it would take to teach the impoverish how to operate this foreign technology would heavily outweigh the time it would take to simply verbally ask the people what they would like to be improved in their communities. Additionally, in order for people to type their opinions, we are making the major assumption that people are literate enough to do so.

While e-participation may be empowering to many people around the world, the restraints for effectiveness are rather high. This approach is an interesting advancement in participatory action that I think may potentially be very useful. Time will only tell if this is the new form of participation slum dwellers will be utilizing.

In Response to Vivian's Rethinking Abortion Debates

Reading Vivian's post about abortion debates really stood out to me.

For someone who is going to do their Practice Experience in a family planning non-profit organization, the talks of abortions and its casualties are very sound.

When doing my research for my literature review, I ran into a few statistics and some are kind of outrageous. 

In the Philippines, at least 500,000 women die yearly due to unsafe abortions. Another 300,000 women suffer from the repercussions of having unsafe abortions. That is a total of 800,000 women who are consistently affected by policies of the government. That is almost a million people.

 The Philippines is a very conservative country in which abortion laws are out of the question due to through the dominance of Catholicism. 

In Vivian's post, a line stood out that said " Women are dying because society has yet to decide that their lives are worth saving." That line is so relevant in every day society. Everyone gets so caught up in the policies coming from each end of the different realms that nobody actual considers the well-being of the women who have to resort to physically hurting themselves in order to fit into this society that consistently opposes them. In the Philippines, what bothers me the most, is that a lot of the policies that are getting established in regards to women are made by men. I'm sure that this is common in a lot of developing countries that lack proper policies for the safety of women. 

Women do end up getting abortions regardless of who agrees and disagrees. This is what is troublesome about the issue, that women have to resort to being unsafe because everyone believes they have a say in what happens to their body. There are so many casualties in regards to this issue world wide, and even though it has been decades and decades of talks; everyone remains in a stand-still. For example, the Reproductive Health Bill in the Philippines just passed in regards to making contraceptives more available and sexual education in the school system be implemented. There was a subsection in the bill in regards to abortion that had to be taken out because nobody could come to terms with the agreement. The reproductive health bill has had multiple drafts for the past 14 years. It's crazy to think that even after that many years, abortion is still an issue. 

Abortion debates do not only resonate within the developing countries, but still very apparent in the US as well. Even though the US is known to be a "melting pot" and have a diversity of different ethnicities and religions, the government still cannot come up with a policy that would be in regards to the safety of women. 

People of higher power have a lot of control over this issue, I only hope that they begin to truly recognize how their work affects these women and people in general.

Laws do not control whether women will continue with their abortions, laws only control HOW women can do it safely/unsafely

Who said politics couldn't kill?: rethinking abortion debates

By Vivian Nguyen

Pro-life versus pro-choice. 

I'm sure we've all heard the abortion debate framed like this many times. But after watching a TedxAmazonia Talk given by documentary film director Diana Whitten, I was inspired to see the issue in a different light.

Whitten begins her Talk with this powerful statement: "An Egyptian doctor named Mahmoud Fathalla once said, 'Women are not dying because of illnesses we cannot treat. Women are dying because society has yet to decide that their lives are worth saving'."

According to Whitten, millions of women from the world's poorest communities undergo illegal and risky abortions every year. And many of these women suffer from complications or in many cases, death, due to infections from botched operations. Their individual stories become clumped together into statistics and it becomes easy to assume that abortion itself must be a risky procedure. 

However, this assumption is incorrect. Due to the invention of vacuum aspiration in the 1960's, abortion is a clinically safe procedure today - if done by the right physician under the correct circumstances. Unfortunately, powerful bodies, such as government and religion, have rendered abortion illegal. And it is this illegality that pushes abortion underground where the lack of proper regulation results in the deaths of millions.

Contrary to the beliefs of many policy-makers, anti-abortion laws do not actually stop abortions from happening. As Whitten points out, "laws cannot control whether or not abortions happen. They can only control whether or not they happen safely."    

We have the scientific knowledge and medical tools to save these women, which means they aren't dying due to the 'risky' nature of abortions. These women are dying because of politics.

The complexities surrounding an issue such as this one highlight something that Professor Roy stressed in GPP 115 - what the world's most vulnerable individuals need is not charity but rather policy. By pushing for safe abortion laws, such as Ethiopia's 2005 progressive abortion law reform, one of the most disenfranchised groups can have access to the safe procedures they need and deserve. 

While the contentious debates around abortion will continue, they need to be imagined in a different way. They should not be framed around the questions of 'should women have control over their bodies?' and 'when does 'life' truly begin?.' While valid, these frames represent moral judgements. And although abortion is a very morally controversial, at its core, the debates encapsulate a value judgement. 

The real question that should be asked is this: do we, as a global society, value women enough to give them access to the tools that can save their lives and promote their health and well-being?

Until we can answer that, millions of mothers, girls, and daughters will continue to die. 

The World Over 200 Years

This is a pretty interesting video showing the progression of every country in the world over the last 200 years, accounting for health and income. Overall, the video is very optimistic about the prospects for developing countries. Overall, I agree with what the narrator has to say. Over the last 200 years, living conditions have improved dramatically in most countries. People are living longer, and being more productive, than in the past. If the trend the video predicts is true, why does it seem many people are pessimistic about the prospects of development for many countries? Overall, do we have more reason to be optimistic or pessimistic about the future?
At the end of the video, the narrator touches on the subject of inequalities within regions, focusing on China. Although the topic is mentioned, the issue does not seem to be as important as the overall statistics for countries  Would it be true to argue that inequality within countries is actually a more critical part of overall well-being than the numbers for the whole of the population? I think it would be interesting to see a similar video made with one access representing the Gini value for each country; as GDP may increase overall, inequality may increase quicker, causing a region to become worse off.
One other interesting thing to keep in mind when watching this video is that the axis for wealth is on a logarithmic scale (with $4,000 being the midpoint between $400 and $40,000). At the end of the video, it appears the bulk of the countries sit somewhere in the middle of the chart in regards to wealth. However, most of these countries are much poorer than they appear on the graph.
Despite these few things, I think we have reason to be optimistic about the future of most countries. Overall, conditions are improving around the world, and I think this trend will continue to held true in the upcoming years.

http://www.gapminder.org/videos/200-years-that-changed-the-world-bbc/

In response to Lorraine's post: "Is it crazy to think we can eradicate poverty?"

I really enjoyed reading Lorraine’s post on the article “Is It Crazy To Think We Can Eradicate Poverty?” The comment on how this goal of everyone living above $1.25 per day is “too little a goal” was most interesting to me. I before never questioned whether that was a reasonable goal. Even if a family does live above $1.25 per day it does not mean they are in a living condition one would deem as not living in poverty. Or as Pritchett who was interviewed in for this article commented on that it just meant they are “ barely getting by”. Thinking back on the article I wondered if it is even fair to say that once everyone does achieve living on $1.25 or more per day, poverty has been eradicated. It makes me wonder if this standard was made just to make developed countries feel better about their efforts and also keep those efforts to a minimum while they attend to their other responsibilities? Was it more out of convenience and making this goal more manageable for developing countries. There is probably already much debate about this but these are just my own after-thoughts from reading the article and blog post. I guess I have become more skeptical about why this goal was created if it is known that living on that amount does not significantly improve one’s life. Of course little improvement is always better than no improvement but if living at or just above $1.25 per day is considered eradicating poverty then I am not so confident that poverty can really be eradicated when goals are set so low. Not to say this should not be a goal but that it should not be the mark of ending poverty. I would consider this goal to be more of a step in the process of eradicating poverty. I guess this is where the idea of romanticism of poverty from GPP 115 comes into play. To think that living above $1.25 a day is not living in poverty is like thinking that if you only smoke 2 cigarettes a day instead of a pack then you will not get lung cancer. Though we know that it may be that you have a lesser risk of developing cancer compared to someone who smokes a pack a day. In the end both are still at a very high risk of getting lung cancer because they are still smoking. The problem of lung cancer has not gone away and neither is poverty if living on $1.25 or more per day is considered not living in poverty.  It would only mean that the risk of an individual not able to getting three meals a day is less than for someone who is living on a lesser amount. And to add another point, once this WB goal is met what will happen next or will anything happen at all after that? So I guess my response to the article’s title would be, “yes”, if we keep handling poverty alleviation in this way and not making those drastic changes needed and if developing countries “don’t get their act together”.

Is It Crazy To Think We Can Eradicate Poverty?

Earlier this week, my phone updated me on an article from the New York Times with this title "Is it Crazy To Think We Can Eradicate Poverty?".

Being a GPP Minor, anything with poverty in an article is something I am deeply curious on reading about. So I read on...

The author of this article, Annie Lowery, explores the different dimensions of poverty eradication on both sides of the argument. In late April at the IMG & World Bank Conference, Jim Young Kim, the president of the World Bank writes "2030" on a piece of paper and claims that this is the global target to end poverty. This part of the article I thought was a reminder of GPP 115 with the Millennium Development Goals for 2015. As Lowery has her own reservations about eradicating poverty, she interviews Jeffery Sachs who has the utmost faith in the 2030 goal, and believes that it is absolutely feasible. Nany Birdsall, president of the Center of Global Development, also has the same sentiments as Sachs.

The World Bank aims for everyone to be above $1.25 each day, but there are many counter arguments to this aim. Stuies show that 1/2 or 3/4 of most families' income goes towards food. Other expenses become put in the back burner, and that's what categorizes people in the poverty pool; their lack of resources. Even though, the Millennium Development Goals achieved their goal "early" in 2010 when there was a 21% drop in poverty rates from the 43 % in 1990, there are still many factors to take into account. This statistic did not take into account the shift from labor intensive work to capital intensive work. This switch caused an uprising in the economics, but the shift resulted from rural movement to urban movement. These movements were caused by the time era and the eruption of technology. Each country has their own governmental and economical issues that expecting to eradicate poverty by 2030 is expecting all the countries to be in the same level of playing field. 

Lowery interviews a developmental researcher, Pritchett who criticizes the WB's goal that $1.25 is too little. It is "penurious, charity like, and not development." Expecting people to live above $1.25 is not going to help their economic being. It is not development, he argues, but barely getting by. Pritchett argues that poverty cannot be eradicated if the goal is only to live above $1.25. There would need to be more changes, and the goal needs to be higher if we expect development. 

Poverty and development are two different worlds. Eradicating poverty cannot be done by simply hoping and expecting the impoverish population to live above $1.25. Poverty is a lifestyle, and within that lifestyle, the only way it could be lifted is if there was development. The development of a better infrastructure of the economy or government, or the living situations. It cannot be done by each individual. 

The last part of this article is what stood out to me, and what caused me to write about it.

“The developing world has gotten its act together,” Birdsall says. But poverty reduction “depends on the advanced economies getting their act together, too.”

There are so many factors as to how to "fight" poverty. I only hope that the world and those who have power, would be able to soon see that.

Read Article Here

Neglected Tropical Diseases

I am currently taking Public Health 112 - Global Health: A Multidisciplinary Examination. I highly recommend it to any GPP students who are interested in the intersections between poverty and health. (It's a GPP elective course so I was able to get a CEC from the minor!)

In any case, a topic came up that struck me - neglected tropical diseases or NTDs. These are non-fatal diseases - ones that do not have high mortality, yet they are extremely high in morbidity - the burden of disease. Other types of diseases or disorders that have high morbidity include diarrhea, heart disease, stroke, and neck pain. They are a group of arguably 33 diseases - 13 of which have the highest disease burdens include helminthic and protozoan infections such as ascariasis, schistosomiasis, and lymphatic filariasis. I would not be surprised if no one has heard of these terms before because I certainly did not. So why am I posting about this? NTDs disproportionately affects the bottom billion  - the individuals and families that are the poorest of the world. Hotez et al (article) suspect that almost every person in the bottom billion suffers from at least one of these diseases. NTDs feed into the cyclic nature of the poverty trap because those who suffer from NTDs are so burdened by the disease that they cannot work most of time, reducing their economic potential, and at the same time NTDs treatment is expensive. These two factors inadvertently affect a person's ability to escape from the poverty trap. But NTDs do not only affect the bottom billion; there are numerous cases of NTDs such as Chaga's disease right here in America (article). These diseases are detrimental and there is much work that needs to be done in this area.

Thus, the reason I feel the need to post about this is for the N in NTDs - neglected. There is an enormous lack of knowledge and awareness of these diseases, yet not much funding nor research has been done in this area. An incredible number of people are affected each year by these diseases and the general public does not know of them. Many people know malaria, HIV/AIDs, and tuberculosis. I am not advocating to stop research in those areas because that would be - to put it bluntly, stupid. What I am advocating for is increasing the awareness and support for research in other diseases that so dangerously affect those that are the most vulnerable in this world.

I have added a video here to watch. It's part of a campaign to reduce the prevalence and effects of 7 of the most burdening of NTDs. These diseases can be prevented by just one packet of pills that costs only $0.50. That's 50 cents. If enough people join in the effort, the world can see the end of all 7 of these diseases by 2020.

There are even some celebrities in it (Emily Blunt, Tom Felton, etc.) I hope you all watch it! It's incredibly moving though I must warn you, it can be disturbing!!

Debating the Ethics of Poverty

It's hard to say what the bound ethical constraints are when dealing with issues of solving poverty.  A huge issue or debate surrounding my practice experience is the ethical nature of making money off the poor.  But doesn't that question itself have a moral dilemma of treating the poor as the other and as one that should strictly be in the business of charity and donations.  Doesn't the BOP also have the right to be able to purchase items that can be made affordable to them that also happen to address some urgent or dire need that will not only improve their quality of life, but perhaps their health or circumstances?  This debate rages through much of the world and is similar or parallel to the emerging concept of voluntourism. The follies of voluntourism are numerous as laid out by the video linked here.  Many people assume they are doing good by paying money to agencies who go and volunteer but ends up having detrimental consequences on those it actually serves.  Many times it creates dependency and stress on communities and increases poverty in areas.  It also makes poverty a part of a tourism industry where you can volunteer as a tourist experience.  This change in thinking runs parallel to treating the poor as the other as opposed to the familiar with different circumstances.  This debate has no right answer as there are always situational issues involved.

The Roma

Most I've met in GPP are aware that I have a lot of interest in issues in Europe, as I will be doing my PE in Ukraine this summer. However, one issue of particular interest of mine is the issue of Roma communities in Europe. This is something I have not had the chance to talk to many people about. When I was initially looking into opportunities for my PE, I wanted to end up working with the Roma population in some way. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to find any organizations that were doing work in this field that interested me.

For those who aren't aware of Roma issues in Europe, here's some background. The Roma are the largest ethnic minority in Europe. Roma communities exist in just about every country in Europe, to varying degrees. This population is also one of the most impoverished in Europe and widely discriminated against. Many people also view the Roma as a self-segregating group, living in their own cities and villages and not assimilating with other European communities. Many Roma individuals speak Romani (their own language) in addition to the language of the country where they reside (French, Slovakian, Ukrainian, etc.)

This article tells the story of a photographer who traveled to the Roma village of Jarovnice, Slovakia, in order to document the experiences of the people he met. He depicts the community in a very positive light. According to the article, many of the problems Roma communities face come from institutionalized discrimination, and government deprivation of education, employment opportunities, and basic amenities and infrastructure.

Around a year ago, when I was in the Czech Republic, I met a photographer doing a similar study. This person was working in the city of Košice, Slovakia (around 60km south of Jarovnice). His opinion on the topic was completely different. He described to me how Roma communities are one of the most heavily subsidized groups in Europe. The governments of many countries were more than happy to provide basic services and infrastructure, however, the use of these services by the Roma were the real problem. He showed me pictures of apartment complexes in Košice that had been recently built by the Slovakian government, but had been torn apart by their inhabitants. Members of the community would tear plumbing out of the walls of these buildings in order to sell the metal, and then move to another apartment complex to do the same. According to many likeminded people throughout Europe, the Roma people have dug themselves into poverty, both by behavior like that which I've described with the apartment buildings and by self-segregating and not assimilating with other communities. Many attempts have been made to raise the standards of living of the Roma, but none of these attempts have worked because of the lack of cooperation of the Roma people.

This is a very important issue throughout Europe and I think the contrast in opinions is extremely interesting. I have not decided for myself which viewpoint I find more convincing. I'd love to talk to anybody that's interested in the issue about this, and I hope by reading this, you've learned something about the subject.

http://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/voices/looking-past-poverty-life-roma-ghettos

When is asylum a good idea?

A recent has event has come up within the realm of refugees and asylum seekers, a field that is arguably linked to poverty work in many ways, which I think is really interesting. This story has the potential to shape the way Americans view refugee law and set a new precedent to the granting of asylum in the future.

A German family, having moved to the United States in 2008, is seeking to gain asylum status in the United States and avoid deportation back to Germany. The family claims that they have been discriminated against as a social group in Germany because they have home-schooled their children. The family claims that education and the right to educate one's own children is a fundamental human right and claim the law against home-schooling in the country is a violation of international human rights. If the family returns to Germany, the parents face possible incarceration and loss of custody of their children.

In the most recent ruling, a judge decided asylum would not be granted because home-schoolers do not constitute a "social group." The family has been applying to appeal this decision. Although events in the US and Germany do not directly concern developing nations, there are many implications for impoverished communities worldwide. Suppose asylum were granted to the family. Would this lower the bar for other asylum seekers from developing countries attempting to enter the United States for more legitimate reasons (under the assumption that persecution of home schooling is not a legitimate reason)? J. Thomas Ordóñez describes many of the difficulties such individuals face in an article we read earlier this semester. Assuming the US grants the German family asylum but does not begin admitting a larger number of asylum seekers, would this imply a sort of systemic racism when it comes to the granting of asylum? And does such a thing already exist in US policies? I'm curious to hear the thoughts of others on this. Immigration and the status of refugees is a very important and contentious issue that deserves more discussion.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/home-schooling-german-family-fights-deportation/story?id=18842383#.UYGvS6KORMh