the drop » Children & Youth Issues

The Most Polluted Places on Planet Earth

The international non-profit environmental action group, the Blacksmith Institute, last week released its rankings of the world’s most polluted places. Out of over 300 sites nominated by NGOs and local communities, 35 were identified by an advisory board of international environment and health experts as meriting special emphasis. Of these, ten locations were singled out for tragic infamy, ranked together as the Top 10 worst polluted places on the planet:

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Global Hunger Index/World Food Day

To coincide with World Food Day, the International Food Policy Research Institute published the 2006 Global Hunger Index. The index combines three measurements on child mortality, child malnutrition, and calorie deficiencies to provide a progress report dating back to 1981. In addition to noting improvements or a decline, the index looks at how well countries are allocating resources to solving hunger issues in comparison with the level of development.
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One Laptop per Child: Is Criticism Welcome?

Untouchable? OLPC, the Church, and the Red Cross

News of a tentative agreement between Libya and One Laptop per Child made headlines earlier this week. The 2B1 Children’s Machine is designed to be a low-cost, low-power laptop, targeted at developing nations. While agreements with Brazil, Argentina, Nigeria and Thailand have also been reached, India rejected participation in July. Economist Atanu Dey writes about his skepticism of OLPC and the Indian government’s reasoning in his blog.
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Ban on Child Labour in India Comes Into Force Today

Thousands of children work in roadside food stalls (bbc)

A new law that bans the employment of children under 14 in residences and the hospitality sectors comes into force today in India. It also prevents children from working in teashops, restaurants, spas, hotels, resorts and other recreational centres. Officials say the ban on employing children in homes and roadside food stalls will affect 255,000 children. But activists say these numbers could be as high as 20 million and point out that the most widespread forms of child labour in India continue to be allowed.
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Regulating What We Eat

NYC Board of Health proposes regulating trans fats in restaurants

As obesity and diabetes statistics are climbing steadily in the U.S., health experts are caught in between public policy makers and the food industry. The numbers have been debated and revised without any viable public health strategies developing. Yesterday, the New York City Board of Health voted to propose regulating the maximum amount of trans fats used in NYC restaurants. Stepping out of the obesity debate, the regulation is focused on reducing heart disease.

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Olympic Development and Social Costs

Is gentrification part and parcel of the Olympics?

Many cities look forward to Olympic bids as a chance to provide a burst of development into ailing downtowns. Local residents are often less enthusiastic, watching neighborhoods turn into Potemkin villages as low-income housing and homeless people are relocated. With the Summer Games in 2008 slowly approaching, Human Rights Watch announced the closing of many Beijing schools for migrant workers’ children in China.
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Branding for a Good Cause

Co-branding football and children's rights © UNICEF/HQ06-1220/Markisz

According to mediafamily.org, children are able to recognize brand logos as young as three years old, while brand loyalty influence can start at age two. Branding is effective and ubiquitous, especially at sporting events, where it’s difficult to find a square inch of non-sponsored space. Breaking the spell of sponsoring trends, FC-Barcelona recently decided to donate 1.9 million USD over the next five years to UNICEF, displaying the NGO’s logo on its 2006-7 jersey.
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The Nemesis of Nike?

America's new

New sports shoes tend to arrive on the scene with high-profile celebrity endorsement, a dodgy manufacturing background and a killer price tag. New York Knick player Stephon Marbury is setting out to change that. His Starbury shoes have become a word of mouth phenomenon.
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ASK YOURSELF:”When does a child’s mind stop being innocent?”

This question was donated to dropping knowledge by Zak Golovin, 22, of Litchfield, Connecticut. The idea of childhood as we know it may have its origins in the late Victorian Era, when ideas of the sanctity of the child came of age. Broadly speaking, this attitude has remained dominant in Western societies since then. But the sanctity of childhood is being violated in societies all over the world.
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04 September 2006 | 08.32pm (CEST) | posted by Hili | 2 comments |
TAGS Children & Youth Issues

Reinventing School Lunch

Let's get the grease out of school lunches

In relation to my ASK YOURSELF Blog Post from August 28, ‘Where can I find open-source food?’ I came across an article by Micheal Ableman from the Center for EcoLiteracy on the Alternet site: “Imagine a world where students could plant, harvest and cultivate the foods they eat in their school cafeterias.” Here are some highlights from the article:
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ASK YOURSELF: “Is it irresponsible for somebody like me, who isn’t really educated in matters of politics, to vote?”

This question was donated to us on the World Question Tour and is available on our website in video format. Jordan Copeland from London, who is asking the question, regards himself as politically uninformed due to lack of interest. What do you think? Should people be able to answer certain criteria before they go to the polls? what can be done to better educate people about politics? Please leave your thoughts and comments in the field below.

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Single-Sex Ed: Policy, Research and Charity

The debate on single-sex schooling continues (Photo:Photocase)

The recent PR blitz around Oprah Winfrey’s Leadership Academy for Girls is characteristically uncritical, after the announcement of the first 75 South African girls selected for enrollment. Despite general praise, single-sex schooling remains hotly debated in the educational field, a discussion touching on elitism, faltering public education, segregation and discrimination.
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Making Moves under 30: Youth Activism

Entering “youth” into a mainstream media site’s search engine is bound to produce a list of results revealing the myriad of problems facing youth worldwide. Youth activism, however, is often missing or hidden as “extra-curriculars” for the university bound. Our Time is Now: Young People Changing the World highlights thirty young men and women working for social change.
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Mind the Gap

Prince Harry spent part of his gap year helping out in Lesotho © BBC 2004

How are you planning to spend your ‘gap year’ between school and university? Building solar cookers in Tanzania or teaching English to five year-olds in a remote corner of Nepal? What are you hoping to get out of it, and what good do you really think you’ll do? Maybe the Tanzanian locals prefer to cook over a traditional dung fire, and maybe those Nepali kids will never need to know how to spell the colors of the rainbow. The UK-based organisation Voluntary Service Overseas is trying to shake up the concept, calling gap years “colonial and outdated”.
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So You Think You Can Do Better? Computer Games Get Serious

A screengrab from Peacemaker, © www.peacemakergame.com

Do you think you could sort out the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? Now’s your chance to find out. Developers at Carnegie Mellon University in the USA have come up with Peacemaker, an interactive game based on the conflict in Gaza.
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Prosperity, Poverty and Personal Responsibility: The Causes of Obesity

Obesity in babies and children is becoming a global problem © www.fitnessworld.ca 2006

Scientists at Harvard have published the results of a study which shows that the percentage of babies suffering from obesity in the USA has gone up by nearly 2/3 since the early 1980s. They suggest that the increase is a result of poor eating habits in pregnant women and gestational diabetes. Breast feeding can help – babies who are breastfed are leaner on average than those who were fed formula milk from an earlier age. In Australia, researchers are looking for pregnant women with a Body Mass Index (BMI) of 30 or more to participate in a project to determine how maternal nutrition affects newborns.
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NGO ACTION: Amnesty International Launches Global Action for Lebanese Civilians

Lebanese refugee © Red Crescent International, 2006

Amnesty International are asking their 1.8 million members to write to the Israeli Defence Minister, Amir Peretz, to insist that Lebanese civilians are allowed to escape from villages in the zones worst affected by fighting between Hezbollah and the Israeli Defence Forces. Not only are those who have not been able to flee trapped, but aid agencies have been unable to reach them to provide urgent supplies and medical attention.
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Gay Rights and the War in Iraq

The bodies of three men suspected of being gay and subsequently killed, March 20 in the Iraqi city of Ramadi (Photo by Bilal Hussein/AP)

There have been a wave of vicious attacks against gay Iraqi men and women by Shia militants who believe that homosexuality is against their faith. Men are the main targets, and several have been found “executed” or beaten to death – worse still, their murder has been recorded on camera. The Observer trailed a Channel 4 documentary on the escalating homophobia in an article last Sunday, noting, most shockingly of all, that the attacks are permissable under current Iraqi law:

Homosexuality is seen as so immoral that it qualifies as an ‘honour killing’ to murder someone who is gay - and the perpetrator can escape punishment. Section 111 of Iraq’s penal code lays out protections for murder when people are acting against Islam.

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Children´s Drawings of War-Torn Darfur Color Copyleft Question Film

Making of: drawings of Darfur refugees became part of a video on child soldiers.

Bukeni Tete Waruzi Beck directs the AJEDI-Ka Project, an NGO that rehabilitates former child soldiers in the war-torn Democratic Republic of the Congo. The dropping knowledge film crew spoke with Beck on a recent trip to New York, but when they brought the footage of the interview back to the cutting room in Berlin, something was missing.
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112 Free Voices: Nadja Halilbegovich inspires a generation

“I am honored to be a part of The Table of Free Voices. I believe that to share and learn from hundreds of different people with different experiences and perspectives is a thrilling process and a first step towards creating a deeper understanding, wider awareness and, ultimately, peace and harmony.

Born in Sarajevo, singer, author and peace advocate Nadja Halilbegovich was just 12 when her home city was placed under military seige. Six months later, she was almost killed when a bomb exploded seven feet from her. In the tradition of Anne Frank, Nadia Halilbegovich confided her thoughts and feelings to her diary.
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Romanian HIV-Positive Teens Abused and Excluded

Romania has over 7,000 HIV+ children and teenagers

“My mother doesn’t treat me right. She beats me with a poker, and she hit my head against a stove… I spent two weeks living with a neighbor, and then my mother went to the police to tell them I ran away to hang out with boys and the police told me that I couldn’t leave home because I was sick. They said I couldn’t have a boyfriend or get married, I had to stay inside.”

This testimony of an 18 year-old HIV positive Romanian girl is one of many cited in a new report by Human Rights Watch.

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features

Upgrading International Development, Part II

Upgrading International Development

Fighting Corruption: Bribe Payers Index 2006

Recycle Your Cell-Phone, Save a Gorilla

A Look Behind the Prison Walls

The Homeless World Cup 2006

Reach Out and Finance Someone

Arundhati Roy asks herself: What form of resistance is effective and acceptable?

Iranian Bloggers Joined by President Ahmadinejad

Creating A New Universe

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Children & Youth Issues

The Most Polluted Places on Planet Earth

Global Hunger Index/World Food Day

One Laptop per Child: Is Criticism Welcome?

Ban on Child Labour in India Comes Into Force Today

Regulating What We Eat

Olympic Development and Social Costs

Branding for a Good Cause

The Nemesis of Nike?

ASK YOURSELF:”When does a child’s mind stop being innocent?”

Reinventing School Lunch

ASK YOURSELF: “Is it irresponsible for somebody like me, who isn’t really educated in matters of politics, to vote?”

Single-Sex Ed: Policy, Research and Charity

Making Moves under 30: Youth Activism

Mind the Gap

So You Think You Can Do Better? Computer Games Get Serious

Prosperity, Poverty and Personal Responsibility: The Causes of Obesity

NGO ACTION: Amnesty International Launches Global Action for Lebanese Civilians

Gay Rights and the War in Iraq

Children´s Drawings of War-Torn Darfur Color Copyleft Question Film

112 Free Voices: Nadja Halilbegovich inspires a generation

Romanian HIV-Positive Teens Abused and Excluded