After months of coding away during the Sanitation Hack@Home challenge, 10 teams of hackers were selected as finalists. The Hack@Home challenge is part of the Sanitation Hackathon, a yearlong process that included a global event in December where dedicated programmers worked on apps geared at addressing the global sanitation crisis, namely the 2.5 billion people who lack access to adequate sanitation.
Given that World Water Day, March 22, is not even underway in a large part of the world, at the time of this writing, the amount of World Water Day coverage is no small thing. Here is how World Water Day (eve) has unfolded across the World Bank’s social media and websites.
Join an online discussion with Sri Lankan youth entrepreneurs on Friday, 22nd March at 3-5pm on the World Bank's Sri Lanka Facebook page and learn from their experiences in the online field.
The internet is now an indispensible part of our lives for most of us. Whether it be checking email or Facebook or looking up something on Google or Wikipedia, we just can’t live without it (or at least, we feel that way!). However, it’s the way in which the Internet, by converging audio-visual, telecom, and computer networks into what we now call Information and Communications Technology (ICT), has made it easier for anyone with an idea or a dream to go out there and use these tools to create solutions, services, and products and create value, that makes it so powerful and empowering.
This year’s World Water Day (March 22) focuses on cooperation around water, so it’s a good time to reflect on lessons that those of us working on cooperation in international waters can learn from the experiences and accomplishments in water cooperation in the Nile Basin.
In a new study on gender equality, researchers asked 4,000 people in 20 countries to describe the gender norms in their communities and the influence those norms have on their lives and their every-day decisions. The researchers spoke with men and women, youth and adults, living in villages and cities in developing countries, as well as higher income countries.
Here, three of the researchers describe their most memorable experiences from the interviews and the findings that surprised them the most.
Looking at the financial status of your water utility, would you classify it as a struggling service provider, a developing utility, or a performing service provider? And then, once you decide where it falls on the financial sustainability ladder, what are the best actions to move it up?
The poor are nameless, faceless, and therefore, powerless. Throughout history, the act of naming is linked to power. In 2010, the poor of India were named. Aadhaar is a unique 12 digit identification number that can used to get social benefits from the Central Government and the State Government by Indian citizens.
Most importantly, perhaps, direct cash benefits are supported. The ability of the poor to withdraw their direct cash not only empowers them, but also minimizes corruption-based leakages of entitlements from the system. Moreover, the delays in receiving the money they are entitled to will also be reduced through the use of micro ATMs. A micro ATM is basically a mobile phone with a fingerprint device for real time authentication.
At the 9th South Asia Economics Students' Meet on Green Growth, participants shared their vision about South Asian cities of the future. These are their innovative ideas.
Without taking care of the environment we are shaving digits off GDP and, therefore, limiting our very potential for the future.
Economic growth in South Asia is driven primarily by exports which has led to expanded production requirements needed to fuel an ever increasing amount of trade. This has accelerated the environmental degradation of many countries in the region. Gradual environmental degradation, climate change and diminishing natural resources create extra pressure to adopt different approaches in supporting the export-driven economic activities. The past axiom of “grow first, clean up later” cannot run more in a region which has limited natural resources and a rapidly growing population directly dependent on natural resources. These countries are now shouldering an increasingly greater share of regional and global environmental production-related burdens.
It was heartening to attend the recent Partnership for Market Readiness (PMR) forum at the World Bank, where countries renewed their commitments to testing and piloting market-based instruments for greenhouse gas emission reduction. The PMR is country-led and builds on countries’ own mitigation priorities. Focus is placed on improving a country's technical and institutional capacity for using market instruments to scale up climate change mitigation efforts.
The world has become relatively less poor in the last few decades. People under conditions of extreme poverty -- that is, living on less than $1.25 per day -- have declined as a proportion of the world population, from 52 percent in 1981 to 22 percent in 2008. Thirty years ago almost 75 percent of the developing world lived with $2 a day or less, this number is down to 43 percent today.
Local boys look on during the visit of World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim to the low income suburb of Gwaltoli on his tour of Kanpur in Uttar Pradesh state, India.
"India must take advantage of having a young population. Never doubt the possibilities for this country,” said World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim to youth in India. During an hour-long NDTV program, President Kim answered questions that ranged from reducing poverty to tackling water crises in the country.
Friday, March 15 is the deadline to join the World Bank in a call against gender-based violence. Participate in a text message contest for South Asian youth (18-25) – we want to hear your best ideas in response to the question, “What Will It Take to End Gender-Based Violence in South Asia?”
Get details of the competition here.
I grew up in Delhi, and it has always been unsafe for women and girls. In recent years I lived in Washington, D.C, which was a different world altogether. It was a welcome relief to travel on public transport without having men constantly staring at your body.
Then in December, just before I was to move back to Delhi, I heard about the brutal gang rape in my hometown. I felt outrage and deep anguish watching the news unfold the horrific story leading to the painful death of the victim.
The great artist Pablo Picasso once said, "The purpose of art is washing the dust of daily life off our souls." It was with a similar vision that the South Asia region of the World Bank organized the art exhibition, 'Imagining Our Future Together' last month. The purpose was to unite South Asian artists from all countries to highlight the lack of unity that hinders progress in the region and to create a vision of a more cooperative and prosperous future.
As someone who joined the South Asia region fairly recently, the art brought to life for me the development challenges the region faces in terms of identity, conflict, and gender inequality. As I listened to Guest Joint Curator, Elena Grant, explain the stories depicted in the art work, I couldn’t help but marvel at the beauty of the art and the depth of the themes communicated: from the symbolism of the four animals represented on the Indian national emblem to the hopes and dreams of a single young woman dashed by the dark realities of an early marriage.
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Elephant ivory is on the march. Not elephants, but their ivory. The elephants are left bloodied and dead on the range. So are many rangers who work to protect a country’s natural capital. In the past 10 years, over 1,000 rangers have been murdered in 35 countries alone; the International Ranger Federation tell us that as many as 5,000 may have been murdered worldwide in that time.
At the CITES COP – the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species – the halls in Bangkok ring loud with concern for the elephants and other charismatic species, particularly rhinos, that are being exterminated across Africa in pursuit of private profit, at the expense of communities that rely on nature for their food, shelter, start-up capital, and safety net in a warming world.
So why should the World Bank care? Our concern is to build strong economies and healthy communities by revving the engine of inclusive green growth as we prepare countries and communities for the impacts of climate change.
What does this have to do with elephant ivory you ask? Simply put, we cannot achieve our dream of a world without poverty without taking account of the rise in wildlife crime.
One in every three women in the world will be physically or sexually abused at some point in her life. This could include the woman sitting next to you on the bus, your little niece playing in the garden, or even a friend you have known all your life.
For years, Rumana Manzur, assistant professor at Dhaka University, had been silent about the abuse she suffered at the hands of her husband. But on June 5, 2011, Manzur was brutally attacked at home. Her husband beat her mercilessly, tried to gouge out her eyes, and bit off part of her nose in a fit of rage. Their 5-year-old daughter was in the room and witnessed this inhuman act. Manzur is now blind, her daughter traumatized for life.
