Category Archives: Poverty

Motivated by Outrage?

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It is time to Stand Up and Take Action against Poverty!

When setting up Find Your Feet, Carol Martin declared: “I am motivated by outrage – that we, who live in plenty, do so little.” 

Ten years have passed since world leaders agreed on the Millennium Development Goals. Ten years with some successes, but also several setbacks. If we are to reach the goals – eradicate extreme poverty and hunger, achieve universal primary education & ensure environmental sustainability within five years – we, who live in plenty, need to speed things up!

On September 20-22, world leaders will meet in New York to review the progress on the MDGs. This is probably the last realistic chance of delivering a plan to make good on the promises made ten years ago.

Therefore – Stand Up and Take Action

Our world leaders’ willingness to pledge money and efforts are dependent on us, the public and tax payers showing that this is something we’d like to prioritize.

To make our voices heard before the MDG summit, there are a number of events you can take part in. One of them is stand up and make a noise in Westminster.

On 18 September, millions of people across the world will ‘Make a Noise for the Millennium Development Goals’.  This mobilization takes place just two days before world leaders meet at the UN MDG Review Summit

At 1 pm in the Old Palace Yard, outside the Palace of Westminster  we will record a message for the delegates at the UN: Keep your promises – deliver a funded, timetabled breakthrough plan to meet the MDGs!

Join with drums, bells, whistles, pots and pans and show your solidarity, whether you are motivated by outrage, compassion or a desire for fairness.

Stand Up and Make a Noise in Westminster is organised by UK campaign groups, as part of Stand Up and Take Action, a global mobilisation from 17-19 September, facilitated by the Global Call to Action against Poverty (of which Make Poverty History was the UK platform in 2005) and the UN Millennium Campaign. 

Find more information here: www.standagainstpoverty.org.uk

Join the event on Facebook - http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=135844296460745&ref=ts


This post was written by Communications Intern Hilde Faugli

CSR – mere window dressing or worth the effort?

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This entry was posted by Communications Intern Hilde Faugli

Support from companies like Innocent have helped Find Your Feet develop new projects and expand on existing work in India.

If you, like me, enjoy a good smoothie, you probably know about Innocent Drinks. My weakness for Innocent smoothies is of course boosted by the fact that their drinks are made from all natural ingredients. But, there is also more.  Did you watch BBC News’ On the Road With… An Entrepreneur last weekend? It was featuring a day in the life of Richard Reed, one of the founders of Innocent, and that brought them to Find Your Feet’s offices. This is because not only are they making delicious drinks and other stuff, the company has been supporting Find Your Feet’s work in India since 2004.   

There’s a lot of debate about CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility), and sometimes it is not easy to know whether a company uses CSR for pure branding reasons, or if they really want their support to matter. In the Innocent case, 10% of their profit goes to charity, most of it through an independent foundation called the Innocent Foundation.  

Innocent drinks set up the Innocent Foundation to offer long-term support to the places where they source their ingredients. India is one of these places, and also one of the countries Find Your Feet works in. Amongst other things, Innocent Foundation has supported our work with the organization Pepus, in rural Allahabad that works with improving livelihoods for Dalits through sustainable agriculture. For every £1 the foundation has donated, it has unlocked £3 from the EU. This way the project has grown from working in 10 to 63 villages, benefiting a total of 26,800 people.  Over the years the foundation’s funding of our start-up projects has enabled us to successfully apply for almost £1million in grants from the Big Lottery Fund and DFID.

What is more important is what these figures mean on the ground. The support from Innocent Foundation has been vital in enabling FYF to develop innovative new projects, expand on existing work and improve the long-term impact of our work so thousands more families have the opportunity to build the skills and confidence to lift themselves out of poverty.

One of the reasons why the partnership with Innocent foundation has such an impact, is that we share some important principles and values. Both Find Your Feet and Innocent Foundation believe that sustainability and working with local communities is imperative to both fight poverty and conserve our natural resources. Moreover, getting funding for three years at a time means that we are able to plan ahead, and focus more long-term than we would be able to if the funding was for shorter periods.

Also important is the flexibility the foundation has shown. Initially the support from Innocent went to a project called Sabla in Uttar Pradesh. However, when this project was on its feet and we secured alternative long term funding for it, we suggested to move the funding to another project where it was needed more strongly. Being able to discuss different options and having a dialogue on where the money can best be used, is beneficial for the local communities we work with. 

Clearly, CSR does not always have the same outcomes as in this case, but this goes to show that with the right intentions, and good collaboration, it can really go a long way. 

Read more about Innocent foundation here.
Read more about our work in India here.

Watch On the Road With… An Entrepreneur here (only available a few more days, so hurry!)

A better way of counting the poor?

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The MPI might help the international community target its aid efforts more effectively.

This blog piece was posted by Communications Intern Hilde Faugli.

The UNDP has just released a new indicator for measuring poverty – will it make any difference?

The Multidimensional Poverty Indicator, or MPI for short, was launched earlier this month, and promises to be better suited as a tool for allocating funding for development programs etc. The MPI assesses a range of deprivations at the household level, from sanitation and nutrition, child mortality and schooling, to cooking fuel and drinking water.

“The MPI provides a fuller measure of poverty than the traditional dollar-a-day formulas. It is a valuable addition to the family of instruments we use to examine broader aspects of well-being, including UNDP’s Human Development Index and other measures of inequality across the population and between genders,” Jeni Klugman, Director of the UNDP Human Development Report Office and the principal author of this year’s report, said.

The MPI can be broken down into different population subgroups and by dimension to see what type of deprivation is affecting different regions or groups.

So what?

Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI), which has developed the indicator with UNDP support, has analyzed poverty levels in 104 countries using the new indicator. The result is a pretty staggering number of 1.7 billion people living in poverty. Using the more common extreme poverty measure, “1$/day“ (which has actually now been put up to 1.25$/day), the figure would be ‘only’ 1.3 billion.

Looking at India, one of the countries we are working in, the MPI poverty rate is 55%, compared with 42% counted as poor according to the 1.25$/day measure. The MPI also reveals that the rural areas are more affected than the urban, and that nutrition, child enrollment, child mortality and schooling are the prime contributors to deprivation in the country.

Whilst the findings are depressing, I don’t think that anybody working in international development would be surprised that taking on a more multidimensional view of poverty gives higher figures. People are deprived in a multitude of ways, and one single indicator will never be able to cover everything. This measure, as the HDI before it, sheds light on the fact that poverty is not just about income. Whether or not this will translate into a more targeted approach to tackling poverty remains to be seen.

The HDI has been criticized for being redundant, that it actually does not reveal much more than an income measure and that it ranks countries in a pretty similar order. Nevertheless there are interesting exceptions. Sri Lanka, for example, is ranked low in terms of its GDP, but moves up the ranks for HDI because of its good results in education and health.

Ms. Alkire stresses that the MPI “identifies the most vulnerable households and groups and enables us to understand exactly which deprivations afflict their lives.”

It will be interesting to see if the MPI will have an impact on the way countries, aid agencies and organizations allocate their money.

Explore the new index through an interactive world map on OPHI’s website.