What are you going to do to stand up against poverty in 2008?

Almost nine years ago, 189 governments pledged to end poverty by 2015. It takes time to achieve such a lofty goal but still 50 000 people die every day because of poverty. 35 000 are women.

Lousy maternal care, inequality, sexual exploitation, domestic violence and global gag rules that ignore reality, are some of the reasons why women suffer disproportionately.

It's time to stand up and order our governments to fulfill their promises. Governments are supposed to work for the people. Well it's time for a change. Order your politicians to end poverty now.

The Stand up against poverty 2008 campaign is in one month. What have you planned to do for it?

The campaign is very simple - we all demand our governments to fulfill the promises that they have made towards achieving the Millennium Development Goals. The ground has been set. There are projects in place but there is a lack of political will and/or finances to eradicate poverty. So what are you going to do?

One simple way is to participate in Blog action day. Register and plan a post. Profbwoman has resources and more. All we are asking is for our governments to honour their promises - there's nothing too political about that eh!


Blog Action Day 2008 Poverty from Blog Action Day on Vimeo.

There are other activities and ideas so go ahead and stand up against poverty.

IV Day

Happy International Volunteers' Day 2007.

This is all

The future

Is this the future for aid/ development workers?

Cambodia Atlas

Check this out. It brings GIS data layers from Save Cambodia's Wildlife's superb atlas. Here's just some of what it does.

• View and pint of geographical maps (GIS layers) of Cambodia at incremental scales
• View and print of geographical maps and social, economic and natural resource data by provinces, districts and communes
• The "Search" tool provide a quick way of finding the location of a specific commune (in future also district)
• The "Identifier" tool provide an overview of the basic data of the selected commune
• The "Query" tool is a innovative data analytical search tool in which the user can:

1. Search 140 data set of all communes and print related maps and data
2. Export selected maps and data for reporting purposes and/or further analysis.

Very useful methinks!

Going going ...

OK so the briefing is done - thank God. The questions asked by certain other volunteers were awful. Some obviously got in on pull - in fact one of the Italians admitted as much to me. It was honest stupidity and lack of common sense.

Anyways I´m ready to go and excited about it! The Irish group have really bonded now and we´re all planning a trip to Zanzibar for R & R. My luggage is well overweight and I´ve more papers than ever but I am looking forward to hours of airplane food. One of the girls is offering Valium for those who desire or require - haven´t decided whether to partake or not.

Got to go repack my suitcase, eat, and try the minibar - such cute baby bottles!

Next stop Cambodia :-)