latin america

Colombia: the cup of coffee that changed the life of a whole community

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Last Friday was International Women’s Day, but before adding to the general celebratory messages in cyberspace, I would like to tell you about a specific case that truly deserves to be celebrated.

If you are reading this blog while drinking coffee or after a coffee break, this story has to do with you.

After 20 years, Fundación Tzedaká is Still Changing Lives.

For 21 years, Fundación Tzedaká, who won an award at the 2010 Latin America Development Marketplace, has been developing social programs and actions to improve the living conditions of citizens who live in poverty in Argentina. Based on a model that works in partnerships, and with a comprehensive and multidisciplinary approach, they develop programs in areas such as health, education, housing, job training, food, seniors and children, taking family as the focal point of intervention. Transparency, efficient management of resources and consistent accountability are the organization’s pillars.

Some of their programs have been recognized for their contribution to society, as is the case of "Refuot", the largest Community Medicine Bank in the country and “Accion Joven”; a training program that helps young adults improve their development and employment performance and the program which won the LAC DM award. Over 750 young adults have been trained for different positions with a high opportunity rate in the job scenarios.

Nutrition in Latin America: a policy menu to improve emergency responses

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Women and children first! Sound familiar? The gentlemanly rule of Titanic-fame seems to have expanded in our collective minds to all emergency situations.

It seems, though, that in Latin America and the Caribbean this time-honored rule is not written in stone. As it turns out, women and children are generally not at the forefront of public efforts in crises and emergency situations.

Your World Needs You. Solutions for 2025.

The appetite for change at COP18 was heard loudly and clearly in the many informal gatherings at the conference center. Coalitions, climate finance, and scientific agreement came from the dynamic debate in Doha. To follow up those conversations, deals and dreams, and actionable projects, I have initiated a study to address the longer-term global challenges that we will face together in the decade ahead. Collective Solutions 2025 will present a strategy for how multilateral development institutions can achieve sustainable development and inclusive green growth to boost prosperity and end poverty.

Latin America 4 degrees warmer? Not cool!

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So you may be wondering if those scenes from the movie 2012 are not too much of a stretch after all, huh?

In the Hollywood blockbuster, apocalyptic images of rising oceans, erupting volcanoes and crumbling cities prelude the end of the world as we know it. Well, let me tell you that even though I’m not a great fan of end-of-days films –I think they oversimplify issues and de-sensitize the public-- I do believe that the world as we know it is on a path to dangerous climate change

Growing the middle class

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Shoppers in Chile

Since the Great Recession of 2008, there has been a widespread sense of malaise among the American middle class. Their incomes are close to stagnant, employment has not recovered, and the gap between them and the famously rich top 1% continues to grow. Look south of the Rio Grande, though, and it is quite a different picture. In the last decade, moderate poverty (under U$ 4 a day) in Latin America and the Caribbean fell from over 40% to 28%.

Jim Yong Kim: A Hopeful Look at Haiti’s Future

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti | World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim’s trip to Haiti on Nov. 6 and 7 included holding meetings with the country’s senior political leadership, attending the opening of a hospital, delivering a speech at a poverty conference, and visiting several Bank Group projects.

And it also was a journey back to a country where he had helped provide health care starting in 1988 through Partners in Health, a Boston-based NGO that he co-founded. In a short video below, Dr. Kim gives his assessment of the visit and explains why he feels hopeful about Haiti’s future.

Weekly Wire: the Global Forum

These are some of the views and reports relevant to our readers that caught our attention this week.

Mobile Media Toolkit
A Profound Media Shift in the Arab World

“A report from the Center for International Media Assistance analyzes the growth of digital media in the Arab region.

A new report from the Center for International Media Assistance (CIMA) highlights a profound media shift happening in the Arab world. Amidst continued repression and threats to free expression, both online and offline, this year saw tens of millions of individuals and news outlets using social and digital media tools to capture and share events. The full report is available here: Digital Media in the Arab World One Year After the Revolutions.” READ MORE

Weekly Wire: the Global Forum

These are some of the views and reports relevant to our readers that caught our attention this week.

CNN
10 African tech voices to follow on Twitter

“Africa is quietly undergoing a tech revolution that could transform the continent. CNN's African Voices has highlighted 10 leading tech voices from different African countries. Each one comments on the role technology plays in boosting entrepreneurship and empowering communities in Africa.” READ MORE

Open Society Foundations
How Open Society Grantees Are Advancing Access to Public Information in Latin America

“Since the landmark legal decision Marcel Claude Reyes and Others v. Chile of the Inter-American Human Rights Court in 2006, the right to access public information has increasingly been recognized by Latin America’s governments as a human right. Fourteen of the region’s nineteen countries have access to public information laws, more than any other developing region in the world. Most of these have been passed in the past decade with the support of the Open Society Foundations' Latin America Program and partner civil society organizations.” READ MORE

A New Mechanism for South-South Knowledge

In my previous blog entry, I mentioned the expected growing engagement between Brazil and Sub-Saharan African countries in 2012, to exchange knowledge and further economic and social development.

Weekly Wire: the Global Forum

These are some of the views and reports relevant to our readers that caught our attention this week.

Space for Transparency
Latin American Elections: How to Use Social Media to Promote Transparency

“Several presidential, regional and municipal elections were held between October and November in Latin America: In Argentina, Cristina Kirchner won by an overwhelming majority; in Guatemala, for the first time after the dictatorship a former member of the military was elected; in Nicaragua, Ortega was re-elected amid accusations of irregularities; and in Colombia, voters endorsed the position of President Santos.

As part of these electoral processes, TI chapters have implemented various strategies based on the use of new technologies and social media to engage citizens and ensure fairness and greater transparency of campaigns and elections.In Argentina, Poder Ciudadano waged the campaign Quién te Banca (Who is supporting you?) to provide information to citizens on election campaign spending, such as how much funding is received by candidates, the origin of the funds, etc. Citizens were asked to send photos of election campaign posters via sms, Twitter or Facebook. Poder Ciudadano processed the data received and submitted requests for information regarding the origin and allocation of the funds.” READ MORE

Brazil and Africa: Bridging the Atlantic

Linked in the distant past through colonial-era trade enterprises, Brazil and Africa are becoming close partners again. More than two centuries after establishing a slave trade route across the Atlantic, both regions are again re-engaging, this time to exchange knowledge and further economic and social development.

Sub-Saharan African countries are looking to replicate Brazil’s successes in boosting agricultural production and exports, and private investments, which have made Brazil a key economic player in the international arena. This is no coincidence. The world is going though rapid changes, resulting in a new financial architecture, with emerging economies and countries in the South increasingly participating and influencing global decisions.

Latin America’s financial sector needs to prepare for new risks

Finances

In stark contrast with Latin America’s rich history of financial crises and turbulence, this time around the region’s financial systems have weathered the current global volatility and the Great Recession rather well.

Why should then one want to conduct an extensive study on financial issues in Latin America and the Caribbean? We think the study, Financial Development in Latin America & the Caribbean, the Road Ahead, is timely because the region still faces substantial developmental gaps and issues that require attention.

Bachelet: "Latin America has greater awareness of gender equality"

Being a woman in Latin America is no longer a synonym for scarce job and schooling opportunities. On the contrary, Latin American women have made remarkable progress over the recent decades in the labor -where 70 million additional women have got jobs— and in education, where they have outperform men, according to the World Bank’s study Work and Family: Latin America and the Caribbean Women in Search of a New Balance.

To discuss the report I interviewed UNWomen’s and former Chilean president Michelle Bachelet. She told me that these days “gender equality” is a notion widely accepted in the region.

Prospects Weekly: First trade data released for September are not promising

First trade data released for September are not promising, with most countries reporting lower import volumes, suggesting that the risk of a worldwide deceleration in demand is real. Meanwhile with all three major rating agencies downgrading Spain’s long-term sovereign debt rating in the past few days, the sovereign credit quality-gap between developing and developed countries continued to narrow. The risk of a Euro area banking crisis still lingers, exposing financial vulnerabilities for emerging markets with large exposures to Euro area banks.
First data releases on international trade for September are not promising. After the financial stress caused global contagion in August, the risk of worldwide deceleration in demand has increased. While import volumes increased in August over July in 45 of the 52 countries with available data, import volumes declined in September month-on-month in 6 of the 9 countries with available data. On the export side, all 11 countries that have reported data for September show declines in export volumes. The trade data are however very volatile and the weak September data could merely reflect a pay-back for relatively strong August data, but the first signs of the impact of financial turmoil are not good.
The credit quality gap between mature and emerging markets sovereigns is narrowing. The wave of sovereign rating downgrades across Europe, the United States, and Japan stands in sharp contrast with the improved creditworthiness in emerging market as measured by sovereign credit ratings. The ratio of EM rating upgrades to downgrades is 6 to 1 this year. Since the 2008 financial crisis 47 developing countries have received 117 upgrades by major rating agencies, while the last rating upgrade for developed country occurred in 2007, when Japan’s sovereign debt was upgraded. Many EM countries currently have a positive outlook assigned to their sovereign debt signaling that additional upgrades are possible.
Vulnerabilities to a banking crisis in the Euro area are concentrated in Emerging Europe and Latin America. In the event of a banking crisis in the Euro area European banks would most likely need to deleverage at home and reduce exposure to emerging markets. Foreign claims of Euro area banks have recovered and are now exceeding the pre-crisis levels, amounting to almost 40% of the Central and Eastern Europe’s GDP, and to more than 13% in the case of Latin America. Another important source of financial vulnerability is the rapid expansion of domestic credit in emerging markets since H1 2009, with the ratio of domestic credit to GDP exceeding pre-crisis levels in Europe and Central Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, and East Asia and Pacific.

Download the Prospects Weekly as PDF here.

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