On March 8, the World Cocoa Foundation launched the Cocoa Livelihoods Program in Nigeria. State extension agencies and representatives of the respective cocoa-farming communities are learning how to facilitate farmer training sessions, work with farmer organizations, and manage these activities. Using interactive training, farmers will learn techniques to increase yields, reduce crop losses, and improve cocoa quality.
“We will also be working to improve farmers’ business skills, professionalize farmer organizations, improve access to inputs and services, and promote the diversification of income,” said Mbalo Ndiaye, the World Cocoa Foundation’s Cocoa Livelihoods program director.
The work in Nigeria is part of a larger five-country program targeting 200,000 cocoa-growing households across Nigeria, Cameroon, Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana, and Liberia and is funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and 14 chocolate industry companies.
Women ONE2ONE joins fight against poverty, preventable disease
Women ONE2ONE is a new campaign launched by the global women’s advocacy organization ONE, designed to save lives and increase opportunities for women who live in extreme poverty. The group aims to recruit 1 million people for awareness-raising and advocate events through online campaigns and social networks.
The campaign will target reducing the numbers of women dying in childbirth, educations for girls and giving women access to agricultural tools and training to help them feed their families, increase their yields and market their goods to earn extra income.
Every year, more than half a million mothers die from complications during child birth and 8.8 million children die before their fifth birthday. Women in sub-Saharan Africa have a one in 26 chance of dying in childbirth, compared to one in 4,800 for women in the U.S. due to a lack of health care workers, clinics and equipment.
For more information, visit www.one.org/women.
Immigrants with disabilities more frequently employed than U.S.-born persons with disabilities
A new study by the Center for Injury Research and Policy of The Research Institute at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio says out of an estimated 24 million U.S. working-age adults with disabilities in 2007, 8.5 million (35 percent) were employed. The study revealed that for each type of disability, including sensory, physical, mental and emotional conditions, both foreign-born citizens with disabilities and non-citizens with disabilities were more likely than their U.S.-born counterparts to be employed.
“The employment decisions of immigrants with disabilities may be impacted by eligibility for public assistance,” explained Huiyun Xiang, MD, PhD, the study’s lead author and principal investigator. The two most common occupations for foreign-born workers with disabilities were in production and cleaning/maintenance, while the two most common occupations for U.S.-born people with disabilities were in sales and office/administrative support.
The median income for foreign-born persons with disabilities was $20,000 compared to $22,000 for those U.S.-born.
Sanitary protection for girls in developing countries may help raise educational standards
Poor girls in developing countries often have no access to sanitary products and, as a result of feared embarrassment, attend irregularly, perform poorly, and then drop out.
Saïd Business School is leading a research project in Ghana to investigate whether providing sanitary products in developing countries may offer a faster, more direct, and less expensive means of raising school attendance and academic performance. Girls were missing school as many as five days each month due to inadequate menstrual care, particularly in areas where there were no, or inadequate, toilet or washing facilities, no privacy, and the girls had walks of two hours or more to attend school.
For the study, researchers provided sanitary pads and educated girls about menstruation and hygiene. After six months, the girls missed significantly less school, on average, from about 21 percent of school days to about nine percent of school days. In the village where education only was provided, there was also a reduction in absenteeism, but the effect was delayed.
The girls also reported an improved ability to concentrate in school, higher confidence levels, and increased participation in a range of everyday activities while menstruating.