Haiti’s post-quake food security show signs of improvement, which may get even better with the right mix of policy priorities. Although the Caribbean nation remains more food insecure than it was prior to the January 2009 earthquake, it is 13 percent more food secure than it was in the immediate aftermath of the earthquake.

In order for Haiti to meet the needs of its 2.5 to 3.3 million people thought to be food insecure, there ought to be a raft of bold nationally-led agricultural policies and projects. Haiti is in a prime position to chart this course due to its central position in the U.S initiated Feed the Future investment plan. This country-led initiative aims to foster food security and agricultural development in a truly endogenous manner. In other words, Haitians, like other Feed the Future countries, will have ownership over the process.

Although Haiti’s agricultural productivity hinges on a myriad of bold policy initiative, in my view, two things top the agenda: 1) The establishment of a national ICT policy with key focus on agriculture; and 2) The decentralization of agricultural management and educational facilities.

Despite demonstrable economic gains worldwide from ICTs in agriculture, Haiti still lacks a national ICT policy. A clear ICT policy will provide a guide for action for multilateral agencies, national action and NGO involvement in the ICT for agriculture sector. Haitian farmers are subjected to ad hoc marketing systems, a wide range of anthropogenic shocks, natural disasters, and limited information to make sound cost-benefit analysis. A solid national ICT policy will provide a basis for Haiti and its transnational donors to tackle these challenges in a coordinated manner—eliminating the well-entrenched culture of duplication.

It is imperative that the state take a lead on this to build its credibility and bring order to a development landscape dominated by NGOs—there is one NGO for every 3, 000 Haitian. Since the 1970s , NGOs have steadily gained a toehold in the country. This is largely because of the perception of endemic corruption within the Haitian government.

While I believe that ICTs ought to be used at all three major stages in the agriculture sector –pre-cultivation, crop cultivation and harvesting, and post harvest— it is most critically needed at the first juncture, pre-cultivation, crop selection, land selection, accessing credit and itemizing when to plant. If given the information for the proper selection of the best crops to plant according to their land type, access to input and generous credit, Haitian farmers will be well positioned to make proper cost-benefit analysis and thrive.

To achieve this, the ICT policy must emphasize the use of GIS and remote sensing. GIS and remote sensing technologies may be used to gather information on soil quality and available water resources. This will aid irrigation strategies in Haiti where water management is poor. Further more, the ubiquitous nature of cellphones in Haiti means that this information may be easily disseminated. Farmers may also be alerted about where to get seeds/other inputs and access credit.

To this end, Haiti ought to decentralize its agricultural framework. Haiti has evaded decentralization proposals for decades, but as the post-quake scenario shows, new life ought to be bred into this initiative with urgency. One third of newborn babies are born underweight. Acute under nutrition among children under five years old is five percent and a third of them suffer from chronic under-nutrition.

The collaborative work being done by the Les Cayes campus of the University of Notre Dame d’Haiti (UNDH), an innovative agronomy school, attests to the importance of decentralization. “The University uses its 40 acre farm as a catalyst for outreach, to assist poor farmers in building sustainable livelihoods, to map and protect biodiversity, and to expand civic participation among the rural poor.” Through these interventions, UNDH seeks to contribute to sustainable development and governance, important factors in rebuilding Haiti after the earthquake.

 

The emergence of IBM’s Spoken Web, a mobile innovation that eliminates literacy as a precursor to access the internet, is a game-changer in the ICT for Agriculture sector.

Unlike other efforts to bridge the global information divide, even people with limited to no functional literacy skills will find Spoken Web user-friendly. With nearly 800 million functional illiterates around the world, the inability to read remains a major impediment to the use of ICT4D. This is most acute in the most remote parts of the developing world where livelihoods and agriculture are inextricably linked.

The mobile innovation is essentially a world wide network of VoiceSites joined to make the Spoken Web. Its most essential hardware is a telephone, which people use to browse VoiceSites by saying keywords, also known as VoiLinks.

This rapidly progressing network of voice recordings is predicated on a system called VoiGem, which simplifies the process of creating voice-based applications. VoiGem is unique compared to existing interactive voice response technology because it allows users to create their own VoiceSites that consists of voice pages (VoiceXML files) that may be linked. Each page is identified by the user’s phone number. This identification mode allows the user to easily edit VoiceSites and pages from their phone.

The mobile-centric nature of this development reflects a global trend and complements a development need, particularly for agriculture. Although small scale farmers, scattered across some of the most far-flung places around the globe, make up a large portion of the 5 billion people without access to the internet and computers, a growing number of these people own cellphones. In fact, farmers constitute a strong contingent among the 3 in 4 people worldwide who own mobiles. Although only a fifth of those with mobile subscriptions worldwide have access to mobile broadband services, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) “predicts that within the next five years, more people will hop onto the Web from laptops and mobile gadgets than from desktop computers”.

As more farmers join the growing legion of wired folks, they will have faster and more reliable opportunities to access and share information. This development will reduce information asymmetries, structure and strengthen agricultural markets by bringing the internet to parts of the world where small scale farmers, consumers, middlemen and traders have limited knowledge about where to access and trade food.

The technology is also culturally appropriate given the oral nature of many cultures in the developing world. Farmers will also have the opportunity to efficaciously share valuable indigenous farming retentions.

As with most things, the Spoken Web also comes with challenges. Chief among the challenges is that though voice-recognition technology can match search terms against a previously processed index of recorded voice sites, it presents cumbersome results. However, the technology is being refined to be more precise. Precision is especially important because farmers and other end-users will not be able to retain all the information found on lengthy voice pages/sites, and they may not have the literacy skills to jot down points. Interestingly though, the Spoken Web comes with a fast-forward feature that enables the user to listen as if they were skim-reading.

Despite these challenges, the technology has been successfully piloted in eight Indian villages. It is now a central part of farming and health-care delivery in four Indian states, parts of Thailand and Brazil.

 

 

The global movement to improve agriculture and natural resources management through ICT takes center stage this week at the fourth InfoDev Global Forum in Helsinki.

Though in its nascent stage, the forum attracts a wide cross-section of attendees (business incubator managers, policy-makers, SMEs, financiers and development agencies)  from around the globe “for a unique South-South and North-South networking and knowledge-sharing experience”.

The four day forum, which ends on June 3, zeros in on mobile applications for agri-businesses and clean technologies. Yesterday, a  high level panel discussion featuring experts from the World Bank, FAO, AgriCord, Uganda and Kenya examined the varied use of mobile technology in agriculture and the management of natural resources, namely forestry. The discussion was a prelude to the launch of a new virtual resource that the experts believe will function as a “living updatable document”.

The e-Sourcebook “Information and Communication Technologies for Agriculture” will be released in October. The resource will feature a plethora of ICT innovations and examine their potential to improve agricultural development.

This year marks the fourth staging of the bi-annual event, which is functioning within the framework of a joint program with the Government of Finland and Nokia to create sustainable businesses for a knowledge economy. The $17 million program seeks to enhance the competitiveness of the information and communication technologies (ICT) and agribusiness sectors in small and medium sized emerging markets.

A key feature of the two year initiative is the use of mobile technologies to provide content, services and applications for developing countries. This development comes less than a year after global mobile subscriptions topped five billion, according to the International Telecommunication Union (ITU).

Despite improvement in mobile subscriptions, access to fixed phone lines and internet usage, the ITU says one billion people worldwide still lack connection to any kind of ICT. This is particularly problematic for the drive to improve agriculture as  most  people without access to any form of ICT depend on agriculture to some extent  for their livelihoods.

The Global Forum was last held by Brazil in 2009.

 

U.S leadership on global food security will get a major boost for the fiscal year 2011. This follows strong bipartisan support from Congress for a $1.15 billion budget to tackle food security issues around the world. Last week, USAID Administrator Dr. Raj Shah announced that nearly $1 billion will go towards Feed the Future, a global initiative launched by President Obama in 2009 to tackle hunger through sustained and endogenous multi-stakeholder partnerships.

Dr. Raj said, “$90 million will be spent on strengthening our nutrition programming”. Since the world food crisis in 2008, which caused riots in several countries and toppled governments, food security and agriculture grew in prominence on the international agenda.

He says, pending congressional approval, the agency will contribute $100 million to the Global Agriculture and Food Security Program, a joint multilateral trust fund established in partnership with the World Bank, to address food security and agriculture globally. Since its conception in 2009, the fund attracted nearly $1 billion  from donors, and allocated over $330 million to eight countries.

Conflict, natural disasters and the slow integration of ICT into agricultural policy remains a major impediment to food security and  the improvement of livelihoods. Nearly 2 billion people worldwide are unable to grow or get enough food to eat. Most of those affected by chronic food security problems live in rustic areas, where they have limited information about where to access and trade food, in the least developed countries.

The World Bank has warned that the problem is likely to become even more intractable in the next two decades. According to the Bank’s report, Reengaging in Agricultural Water Management: Challenges and Options, “by 2030 food demand will double as world population increases by an additional two billion people. The increase in food demand will come mostly from developing countries.” The publication says improved food security depends on increased agricultural productivity and improved water management across the developing world.

 

Having observed the negative comments, misreading of and threats issued on the life of my friend and colleague Marc Ramsay recently, I haggled over advancing publicly my comments on Jamaica’s political life. I presume that the risks associated with such in the three decades preceeding the dawn of the new millennium are still with us in this supposedly new political dispensation. After all, a young activist with much to offer, despite his colourful personality and penchant for publicity, was forced to flee this country for safer grounds because he voiced his widely held and well-placed opinion on a subject of national importance.

Unlike these two young men, too many of us neglect our civic duties to the detriment of our society… it smacks of a lack of patriotism and contradicts our romanticized view of our forefathers who sacrificed their own security for the advancement of this nation. I don’t claim to be in their league, but having reflected on that fact, I offer this brief, unsolicited advice to the Prime Minister with lessons for the opposition leader: Sir, you vacillate unnecessarily... This is another low-risk opportunity for you to restore your credibility and renew your people’s sense of hope. In accordance with many of our female journalists, I call on you to nominate a candidate for the April 4, 2011 by-election in South West St Catherine that doesn't disregard due process, the constitution, the hallowed halls of our parliament, the media, the people and in particular our women on International Women's Day. PM Golding, not even people of Warmington's own ilk like him! The man is more dispensable than you think.

Mr. Golding, I’m not ignorant of your party’s parliamentary constraints and the extent to which the pending electoral test exacerbates that, but your legacy is in danger and this is a grand opportunity to salvage a bit of it. Take a principled position; do not subject a nation and its most important elements to the whims of an election cycle. Your chances of losing are limited, even if the opposition awakes from its slumber and nominate an equally respectable candidate.

You and your counterpart’s failure to act accordingly will cement my generation’s lack of faith, trust and interest in politics. A failure to oust Mr. Warmington and hold a COMPETITIVE by-election will typify many of the rationales for some of our unfulfilled expectations and aspirations as a nation. Chief among those reasons is a LACK OF APPRECIATION FOR PRINCIPLES and principled positions with the nation’s interests at heart.

 

It’s exciting to see and hear young people from diverse backgrounds speak with authority and a strong sense of realism about key developmental issues.  The ARDYIS - Youth Exchange and Training Workshop on Web 2.0 for Agricultural and Rural Development which is being held in Accra, Ghana from March 7 to 11 typifies this. Nearly 30 young people representing 17 African, Caribbean and Pacific countries have been engaged in robust debates about agricultural policies, as well as learning and sharing their knowledge about how to use various new media tools to enhance their work in the field of agriculture. Yesterday, I facilitated a vibrant, multilingual debate (thanks to Ken Lohento’s linguistic skills). The session unearthed a range of policy recommendations and workable solutions that will form the basis of the communiqué to be issued on Friday, the last day of the workshop.

Justin Chisenga, Knowledge and Information Officer, FAO Regional Office for Africa continued his wide ranging and inter-active session which  covers: web 2.0 for development, RSS tools, collaborating remotely using wikis and Google Docs, producing content on Wikipedia, online mapping and advanced social networking tools.

The participants are absolutely energized and have been providing up to date summaries of the proceedings on Facebook and Twitter. The Caribbean is  being represented by a five member youth delegation that excelled in an international essay contest last year that focused on agricultural issues in ACP countries. They are Samantha-Kaye Christie (finalist), Tyrone Hall (Caribbean and Overall Winner), and Gaynelle Menzies are from Jamaica; Marcus George from Trinidad and Tobago and Jason Haynes of St. Vincent and the Grenadines.

Learn more about each day’s proceedings by going here http://www.facebook.com/ardyis

Look out for the communiqué on Friday.

Tyrone Hall is a graduate student and Comption Environmental and Sustainable Development Fellow at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts.

 'Baby Blowhards’

Throughout my brief academic life and activism I have had a peculiar phobia: becoming a talking head. That is a person who presumes to know the causes of society’s ills and often touts the likely solutions, but we know only too well how this pans out. This act of beguilement, unfortunately, isn’t limited to some academics, business leaders and politicians with a dearth of inactive brain cells. It seems to have engulfed the minds of many of Jamaica’s youth leaders as well. I sensed this from my tenure at the University of the West Indies, Mona.

I also read with a sense of disappointment, the comments of a slew of youth activists regarding the ills with the administration of the youth portfolio held by Hon. Olivia Grange (http://jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20110123/lead/lead1.html). I am led to believe that the hysterics of those “youth leaders” is an indication of their limited maturation during their tenure. They have failed to effectively and efficiently explain to the nation’s youth, their constituents, the nature of the “concerns raised”. 

 

They are guilty of the same leadership crisis among older politicians in this country. Clearly they believe that leadership is more of an emotive art than it is cognitive. I am yet to see them enumerate any evidence that substantiate the assertions they made. Why have these 'Baby Blowhards' absolved themselves of critical self-assessment? What have they achieved during their tenure with the limited resources available, the perks and profile that they have been granted? There is a crisis of accountability that these youth leaders must also respond to. What have you achieved and how have you communicated with your stakeholders? Tell us the five most significant achievements of the NCYD in the last two years. 

Given that leadership within the ministry is so absurd, let us know, what have you done to indicate displeasure with the policy directives. Let us know the proposed alternatives. Let us know how to better spend the meagre resources available. There is a huge difference between being a leader and a manager, the former, unlike the latter, requires that you take principled positions despite the risks. So, do not tell us about the likelihood of being muzzled, there are ways of voicing your views forcefully and responsibly. Clearly you have no faith in the system you are exploiting for the beauty of your CVs.

 

Tyrone Hall,

Concerned Jamaican Youth!

 'Baby Blowhards’

Throughout my brief academic life and activism I have had a peculiar phobia: becoming a talking head. That is a person who presumes to know the causes of society’s ills and often touts the likely solutions, but we know only too well how this pans out. This act of beguilement, unfortunately, isn’t limited to some academics, business leaders and politicians with a dearth of inactive brain cells. It seems to have engulfed the minds of many of Jamaica’s youth leaders as well. I sensed this from my tenure at the University of the West Indies, Mona.

I also read with a sense of disappointment, the comments of a slew of youth activists regarding the ills with the administration of the youth portfolio held by Hon. Olivia Grange (http://jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20110123/lead/lead1.html). I am led to believe that the hysterics of those “youth leaders” is an indication of their limited maturation during their tenure. They have failed to effectively and efficiently explain to the nation’s youth, their constituents, the nature of the “concerns raised”. 

 

They are guilty of the same leadership crisis among older politicians in this country. Clearly they believe that leadership is more of an emotive art than it is cognitive. I am yet to see them enumerate any evidence that substantiate the assertions they made. Why have these 'Baby Blowhards' absolved themselves of critical self-assessment? What have they achieved during their tenure with the limited resources available, the perks and profile that they have been granted? There is a crisis of accountability that these youth leaders must also respond to. What have you achieved and how have you communicated with your stakeholders? Tell us the five most significant achievements of the NCYD in the last two years. 

Given that leadership within the ministry is so absurd, let us know, what have you done to indicate displeasure with the policy directives. Let us know the proposed alternatives. Let us know how to better spend the meagre resources available. There is a huge difference between being a leader and a manager, the former, unlike the latter, requires that you take principled positions despite the risks. So, do not tell us about the likelihood of being muzzled, there are ways of voicing your views forcefully and responsibly. Clearly you have no faith in the system you are exploiting for the beauty of your CVs.

 

Tyrone Hall,

Concerned Jamaican Youth!

Youth unemployment is one of the most acute problems affecting developing countries. A lack of basic education ranks high among the reasons for this problem. However, youth unemployment is compounded by the fact that a large portion of the population in developing countries tend to be youth. The formal economy is unable to create enough employment opportunities to absorb this constant supply of young labor seekers. Whatever the solution[s] to this multilevel problem, a great deal of coordination and deft thinking will be required to attract gadget loving and efficiency prone young people into the agricultural sector.

Among the most trendy and perhaps viable ‘solutions’ being touted today is greater youth involvement in rural development through agriculture. However, youth participation in the agriculture sector in many developing countries is very low, largely because the sector is highly unattractive—due to risks, costs, inefficiency and its labor intensive nature. As such, motivating the youth to view agriculture as a career opportunity will require a multi level intervention. In the first instance, those within the school system must be targeted and in the second instance, those outside of the school system must be lured and sensitized. How should this be done? Simple! Teach them by delivering age appropriate information inside and outside of the formal school system and ‘dangle the carrot’.

The absence of agriculture from the curriculum, particularly at the compulsory levels of education should be addressed. The current mode of education in most developing countries is geared towards educating white collar workers, which doesn’t reflect the economic and social context for which they are being trained. This is not to suggest that developing countries shouldn’t plan for economic expansion, however those plans should not negate the existing needs of the economy. One response is to encourage partnerships with the education sector to integrate agriculture into the primary and secondary school curriculum. In many instances, agriculture is incorporated as an optional component that is taught with minimal enthusiasm; its broad based and compulsory inclusion with the appropriate resources will help to motivate youth towards having a more favorable view of employment opportunities in the agricultural sector.

Similarly, those youth outside of the formal education system must also be targeted and wooed towards agriculture. Young people are often turned off by the many plagues affecting the agricultural sector, such as praedial larceny-- an organized criminal activity geared at perpetuating the theft of agricultural stocks-- and information asymmetries which cause ineffective marketing. There ought to be the creation of ongoing initiatives to support youth in agricultural enterprises and opportunities to showcase their success in order to attract more young people. As well as, the incorporation of information communication technologies (ICTs) such as the internet, mobile phones, computers, and Global Positioning Systems, associated or not with traditional communication technologies such as radio, television, written press, and video.

With this in mind, the emerging Youth in Agriculture Strategy must demonstrate a clear understanding of the youth’s infinity for technology, efficiency and a strong voice in decision making processes. The strategy must also emphasize the need for the incorporation of agriculture in the regularly curriculum.

For more information about the use of ICTs in agriculture and rural development, join me on December 2, at Conference Room D, Clark University, for a presentation called “Tackling Jamaica’s Two Main Agricultural Plagues with ICTs: Praedial Larceny and Information Asymmetries/Poor Marketing.”

Housing for PLWAs……

By Tyrone Hall, a Vienna Youth Force Youth Journalist, a Graduate Student at Clark University, USA

The discussion about HIV and AIDS often surrounds prevention despite the acute need for the provision of social services etcetera for those infected and affected by the disease.
Housing Works Inc, the largest non-profit AIDS advocacy organization is changing that pattern. Housing Works Inc which is based in New York seeks to provide comfortable and affordable housing solutions and medical care to PLWAs. The entity reaches more than 1 700 new clients each year and is poised to expand its services by dialoging here at the AIDS 2010 conference in Vienna, Austria.

Unlike most non-profits, Housing Works’ agenda isn’t dictated by grant providers, it is a progressive and self-sufficient entity. Housing Works Inc. owns a range of highly profitable businesses- thrift stores, building management and maintenance stores, medical facilities, as well as, a catering company and a book store. Amazingly too, ALL profits go towards Housing Works’ projects…so patrons who keep the multi-million dollar thrift stores abuzz should feel a sense of pride.

Housing Works’ has a young and vibrant staff too. Tree Alexander, a 24 year old Therapy Specialist, is one such staff member. Tree is excited about the work he does with Housing Works. He says “ I’m a nurturer by nature …I get to work with people and see things change…it is outside of the prevention side where you give people information and never see them again…you get to see people actually reach their goals.”

The enigmatic Tree Alexander works with individuals who are living with HIV and other disabilities (cancer, TB etc.). The youngster helps his clients to build a relationship with medical providers and to deal with their condition mentally, emotionally and physically. Tree says many of his clients have little to no access to care; many are positive and are also new residents in the areas where the organization operates.

Housing Works Inc. also operate in Washington DC, Mississippi, Puerto Rico and Haiti.

Knowledge is Key...Know Your Rights!

By Tyrone Hall, a Vienna Youth Force Youth Journalist and Graduate Student at Clark University, USA


The HIV and AIDS issue is a Human Rights issue. And with every right, there is a responsibility.

Know your universal human rights and demand that they are respected!

You have the right to:
-Life
-Privacy
-Information
-Education
-Work
-Non-Discrimination
-Political and Civil Rights

These are your rights even if you are a member of a vulnerable population or happen to be a migrant, refugee or an internally displaced person.

The battle for a representative, potent and sustainable youth agenda must have these rights at its core. That battle will only be won if we educate ourselves and refrain from being patronized. Get involved, peruse the international instruments and internalize them, demand action now.


Here are the main instruments:

The United Nations Charter, 1945

The Universal Declaration on Human Rights, 1948

The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, 1976

The Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women, 1981

The Convention on the Rights of the Child, 1989

The International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of their Families, 2003

The African Charter of Human and Peoples’ Rights, 1981

The World Conference on Human Rights, 1993

The International Conference on Population and Development and the Cairo Plan of Action, 1994

He Who Pays the Piper Calls the Tune!

By Tyrone Hall, a Vienna Youth Force Youth Journalist and Graduate Student at Clark University, USA.

Suzette Moses-Burton, Head of CRN Plus, a Caribbean network led by people living with HIV, says the strings attached to funding are hampering a comprehensive and representative response in the Caribbean.

The activist says “funders have asked the organization to change its leadership for the purse strings to be released.” However, Mrs. Moses-Burton is defiant. She says “people living with HIV have the right to self-governance…giving up the right to self-governance will open up a Pandora’s Box.”
She says as far as CRN plus is concerned “there is not much to celebrate. This once vibrant organization of PLW-HIV lays an organizational shamble. Its members worn because of the inability to access funding from the regional organizational mechanism.”

The experience of CRN Plus offers many lessons to the global youth movement geared at amplifying the perspectives of young people about HIV and AIDS. The movement is in danger of being co-opted and must avert such a path to ensure its potency.

ART Treatment Delayed, Deferred and Denied….Why quit when things were just taking OFF?

By Tyrone Hall, a Vienna Youth Force Youth Journalist and Graduate Student at Clark University, USA.

Access to treatment is one of the main issues being discussed at the AIDS 2010 Conference here in Vienna, Austria. Access to treatment continues to be an issue because treatment has been “delayed, deferred and denied” in many places around the world. This is problematic because the introduction of ART treatment in resource poor countries is a proven tool which has dramatically improved millions of lives and communities.

To capitalize on the progress made to date, particularly among the youth, greater resources must be put towards the global fight against HIV and AIDS. Otherwise, our collective failure will have dire consequences.

Here are ten consequences of delaying, deferring or denying AIDS Treatment according to MEDCINS SANS FRONTIERES:

1.Limiting Treatment Slots Means Choosing Who Lives and Who Dies.

2.Delaying or Deferring Treatment Leads to Transmission, Illness and Death.

3.Failing to Ensure a Stable Drug Supply Means Viral Load Shoots Through the Roof.

4.Breaking the Promise of ART Means People Won’t Come Forward to Get Tested

5.Slowing AIDS Efforts Means Kids With AIDS Become Even More of an Afterthought.

6.Limiting the Number of Facilities Offering ART Means it’s Harder to reach People in urgent Need.

7.Slowing Down the Integration of HIV and TB Care Means Patients Will Slip Through the Cracks.

8.Choosing Between Maternal &Child Health or AIDS Means Making a Fatal Choice.

9.Continuing to Use Drugs With Side Effects Means Relegating Patients to Second-Class Care.

10. Cutting Back on Funding for Treatment Means Sacrificing Long-term Survival.

By the year 2030, a half century after HIV was detected, more than 55 million people will be in need of ART. The world MUST NOT fail them and it must not break its promise to them. This is a global emergency and it requires a concerted global emergency response now more than ever! The world must keep its four year old promise to provide support to put all infected people on treatment.

This simply isn’t the time to question the affordability of universal access. No amount of money will ever be too much to stop two million people from dyeing each year… They have the right to life, do not defer the promise, the dream.

“What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
Like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore--
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over--
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?”
[Dream Deferred is by Langston Hughes]

Let us not even wait to see what will happen if and when the promise of universal access is deffered , delayed or denied, the consequences are clear…let us avert them NOW!!!

Why quit when things were just taking OFF?

INVITATION

SANTA SOUTH AFRICA AND ORPHAN BRACELET CAMPAIGN PARTNERSHIP

EMPOWERMENT AND SKILLS DEVELOPMENT CAMPAIGN LAUNCH
...
Date: Thursday, 22nd July

Time: 18h30 - 22h00

Venue: Hotel Steigenberger, Hofmannsthal Room, 1st Floor,
Herrengasse 10
Vienna

Dear Sir/Madam

We would appreciate your attendance at the launch of our Partnership Campaign to empower and develop communities within the rural parts of South Africa. The event takes place on Thursday, 22nd July 2010, and will be held during the XVII International Aids Conference 18 – 23 July, 2010 Vienna, Austria.

The campaign funds orphans who have lost their parents due to HIV/ Aids & Tuberculosis.
Your attendance will be appreciated therefore please RSVP to the following email address magongoam@santa.org.za; communications@santa.org.za. If you are unable to attend please forward this invitation to other interested parties which will support the Campaign.

Thanking you.

Ivan Anthony Cecillia Hogarth
Chairperson SANTA SA Board Member OBC

SANTA (South African National Tuberculosis Association)
TB is curable –On the Move against TB! Poverty is eradicated through Empowerment.

Tokenism, Youth and Human Rights
By Tyrone Hall

The involvement of young people in key policy making processes and programme development has been a central part of the discussions here in Vienna, Austria where a bi-annual AIDS Conference is being held. South Africa’s Deputy Health Minister noted that “reaching young people particularly those who live in rural areas has always been a challenge” for her government. However, it isn’t just a matter of representation that affects young people but the quality of such representation. Many young people who are drafted into policy circles tend to come from affluent segments of society-distant from the day to day concerns of the vast majority of youths who come from working class families.

This issue of representation is important as advancing the youth agenda cannot happen if tokenism remains the main means by which youth issues are dealt with. The youth agenda needs more than just voice because even with a voice a group may still be disempowered. The fact is that issues of power, equity, and gender are central to this discussion. For instance, Global Fund Executive Director, Michal Kazadchkina noted that a mere 48 of 140 countries have youth representatives. The problem here isn’t just that less than a third of all countries have youth representatives but who are these 48 representatives, how were they selected and how do we move to the point where youth leaders are transparently selected so that they reflect the varied perspectives and realities of the world’s youth?

People have a right to be involved in processes that will determine their lives particularly when it comes to issues such as HIV and AIDS. That involvement must be sustained and meaningful to have full effect. So, safeguarding the human rights of our youth must involve the meaningful and efficient involvement of young people at all levels.

Tyrone Hall is a Vienna Youth Force Youth Journalist and graduate student at Clark University,