Author: Yvie Yao

REDWOOD CITY, California — On June 2, 2016, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) hosted the Low-Cost Sensors for Agriculture workshop at the Omidyar Network in Redwood City, California. The workshop assembled participants from the private sector, NGOs and the government who work at the intersection of technology and agriculture. These participants identified obstacles and potential opportunities for collaboration to accelerate the impact of sensors on improving agriculture and food security in developing contexts. Their meeting sent a powerful message to the public: USAID is looking to Silicon Valley for partners to tackle global food insecurity. Thanks to the…

NORTHAMPTON, Massachusetts–A cooperative is an autonomous, democratic association of women and men, seeking to strike a balance between pursuing profit and meeting their economic, social and cultural needs. Over 800 million people are members of cooperatives which generate more than 100 million jobs worldwide, especially for smallholder farmers. Cooperatives are important for global food security for the following reasons: 1. President Barack Obama signed the Global Food Security Act into law on July 21, 2016. The act aims to eliminate global hunger, malnutrition and poverty. Cooperatives are mentioned in the act as cornerstones to promote global food security as well as…

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Senator Dick Durbin (D. IL) is committed to eradicating global poverty. He has lamented that “extreme poverty is one of humanity’s grave injustices.” Following are some facts about the senator and his views on global poverty. Since his first trip to Africa, Durbin has led the fight in the Senate to increase the U.S.’s commitment to combat extreme global poverty. He recognizes the U.S.’s global leadership on numerous issues related to extreme poverty and believes that it is necessary to maximize the U.S.’s impact worldwide. “Although U.S. federal spending on foreign assistance amounts to less than one…

OAKLAND, California — “Captricity has helped transform the way Innovations for Poverty Action approaches data entry,” Niall Keleher, former director of research methods and knowledge management for Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA) told The Borgen Project. As a nonprofit organization, IPA implements economic development research projects and evaluations designed by academics and non-governmental organizations to illuminate policy and philanthropic responses to combating global poverty. In more than 50 countries, 500 IPA staff manage data collection. Most of these studies involve personal interviews with upwards of 1,000 participants and thousands or millions of survey pages. “I was the country director in Malawi…

WASHINGTON, DC — Since joining the U.S. Senate in 2010, Jerry Moran (R-K) has actively worked to support agriculture development as a means of fighting hunger and poverty in developing countries. In August, Moran called on the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Secretary Thomas Vilsack and U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) Administrator Gayle Smith to prioritize donations of wheat in U.S. food aid. This prioritization will hopefully reduce the impact of the food crisis on vulnerable populations worldwide and the surplus of wheat resulting low prices. According to Moran, the U.S. donated approximately 600,000 metric tons of wheat to the world’s…

SEATTLE — Andy and Wally Kocemba, the father-and-son owners of Calhoun Companies in Minneapolis, flew to Washington, D.C. recently, carrying out their lobbying efforts from the bottom up for more aggressive foreign investment policies. “My dad and I wanted to go there to express our business reasons to support foreign investment,” Andy Kocemba said. The Kocembas believed that developing strong international markets would expand the U.S. exports, create American jobs and drive domestic economic development. By law, nearly all U.S. assistance must be spent on American-produced items. Actually, U.S. jobs that produce U.S. exports pay much more: an estimated 13 percent…

MARAKECH — Fusia Turkartoum comes from a small village 60 kilometers from Marrakech, Morocco. After finishing her primary school, she had to go to another village which was seven kilometers away from home for her secondary school. Like many other people in Morocco, Fusia’s parents felt that girls should not be educated in the first place and therefore, asked her to drop out. Nevertheless, Fusia’s perseverance kept her going. She finished her secondary school with excellent grades and graduated from high school with an honor degree. Dar Taliba made everything better, she said. Founded in 2005, Dar Taliba (an Arabic…

While most young people hang out in bars and relax in beaches, Katherine Motyka, Karla Castro and Castillo Lusitania have reimagined the notion of having fun, all the while raising money for the most impoverished in the Dominican Republic and other Latin American countries. This led them to creating Jompeame. “Our mission initially was to change the lives of at least five people in [poverty] every week, in every country we are expanding,” said Katherine, the co-founder and CEO of Jompeame. In 2013, Katherine attended the Startup Weekend in Santo Domingo and met her partners-to-be, Karla and Castillo. Bonded with…

DHAKA, Bangladesh — “We should work toward creating an impression of the United States as a country that is willing and able to partner effectively with entrepreneurs around the world.” — USAID Nisita, a community health worker, visits almost 300 households a month in Korail, a major Dhaka slum in Bangladesh. From day one, she became frustrated with identification challenges when many of her patients have similar names or names with multiple spellings. Some of them might not know their exact date of birth, and most have no formal address. Gradually, she finds the massive migration within the slum a more…

WASHINGTON, D.C. — On July 12, a U.S. congressional panel, “Pakistan: Friend or Foe in the Fight Against Terrorism,” called for cutting off all U.S. foreign aid to Pakistan — both military and economic. This demand immediately gained support in the House and the Senate, although the Obama administration consistently recognizes Pakistan as a crucial ally in U.S.-led counterterrorism and counterinsurgency efforts. Many senior congressional leaders doubted Pakistan’s commitment to vital U.S. interests and remarked that Pakistan should be treated as a foe. “Fifteen years have passed since September 11, billions of dollars have been spent and far too little…