Rethinking Aid

David Moore — Sat, 24 Feb 2007 21:15:19 +0000

Why does so much emergency and food aid fail?

Our hearts and wallets open up when emergency strikes—whether natural or by the hand of man. Yet so much humanitarian aid fails the most basic standard: do no harm.

In the face of crisis, too often we abandon our principles of what we know makes for good community development and human rights work: Local, representative organizations with deep community roots. In crisis, understandably, we focus on the service-delivery—food rations, medicines, shelter—rather than on the service deliverers.

Haitians Deserve Nutritious Rice

Salena Tramel — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 22:05:10 +0000

Last August, just before Hurricane Fay smashed into Haiti, I spent the day with MOREPLA (Mouvman Revandikatif Peyizan Latibonit-Peasant Movement for Justice in the Artibonite), a local movement of rice producers that works with the coalition of Grassroots International's partner PAPDA (The Haitian Platform to Advocate Alternative Development). Leaders from MOREPLA explained to me that rice producers in the Artibonite potentially could have the capacity to provide livelihoods for more than 200,000 people in a department (state) that suffers a 78% unemployment rate.

Opposition Mounts as G-20 meets in Washington

Nikhil Aziz — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 16:13:57 +0000

The world's most powerful "leaders" meet today in Washington to debate what is to be done about the global financial crisis - a crisis they themselves were instrumental in causing. It is their blind devotion to a consistently failed ideology, outright greed, and a slavish willingness to be accountable only to their corporate backers (on the part of almost all that are gathering), and an ambition to get a seat at the table in the country club (on the part of the G-20 minus 7) that has created this toxic mix that we are all being forced to swallow.

Will Jatropha Invade Mozambique: Via Campesina Confronts The Global Agrofuel Industrial Complex

Maria Aguiar — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 14:07:03 +0000

Recently I returned from the Via Campeisna's Vth International Conference in Mozambique, followed by brief visit with social justice organizations in South Africa. Also in Mozambique, as delegate to the Via Campesina Conference, was Grassroots International colleague John Peck of the Family Farm Defenders and the National Family Farm Coalition. John wrote the article below just days after hearing the President of Mozambique, Armando Emilio Guebuza, address the Via Campesina Assembly. In his address, Guebuza unfortunately noted that his government would be supporting the expansion of jatropha plantations for agrofuels production.

Grassroots International Joins with U.S. Allies to Tell the Candidates: "Reform food policy and end the food crisis"

Fri, 31 Oct 2008 15:34:57 +0000

Global food prices have almost doubled in recent years, in large part due to U.S. policies, and now nearly 1 billion people worldwide - including 50 million here in the U.S. - are facing hunger. Keep reading to find out how you can take action for change.

The food crisis is not a crisis in the availability of food. In fact, there is more than enough food to feed everyone in the world. Over the last 20 years, world food production has risen steadily at over 2% a year, while the rate of global population growth has dropped to 1.14% a year.

Haiti is going from Catastrophe to Catastrophe

Salena Tramel — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 20:42:58 +0000

As Haitian waters recede - at least for now - aid and relief efforts are also diminishing for the nearly one million people who are in desperate need of emergency food. The wounds of this reality are particularly raw in the countryside where the majority is struggling to survive.

Movement Groups in Haiti Unite for Action Post-Hurricanes

Fri, 19 Sep 2008 02:18:50 +0000

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A Crisis of Empty Promises

Saulo Araujo — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 18:14:15 +0000

Our partners in Guatemala have told us: the current food crisis will continue unless we guarantee the land, water and seeds rights of communities necessary to grow food. The same message is being echoed in Brazil, Mexico and many neighborhoods in the U.S.

In two separate statements, Guatemala's National Peasant and Indigenous Coordination (CONIC) and Brazil's Small Producers Movement (MPA) put forth food sovereignty as a solution to the crisis: the right of communities to produce food for local markets and for consumers to have access to local healthy foods. Both organizations denounce the expansion of industrial agriculture and growing control of agribusinesses for contributing to the hunger of urban and rural communities.

Xenophobia Raises Ugly Head in South Africa

Nikhil Aziz — Fri, 30 May 2008 15:50:32 +0000

Dozens of people have been killed and tens of thousands displaced across South Africa in a wave of anti-immigrant violence over the past several weeks. This comes against a backdrop of growing impatience with the government's anemic efforts to overcome the chronic poverty and massive social inequality inherited from the apartheid era, now more than a decade and a half behind them, and in the face of rising political violence in neighboring Zimbabwe from where many of the 5-10 million "foreigners" come.

Grassroots International is a Finalist in the MySpace Impact Awards

Marty Wrin — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 15:52:12 +0000

Grassroots International was selected as a finalist for the MySpace Impact Awards. Grassroots is in the final 3, with the winner receiving a $10,000 donation and extensive promotion throughout the MySpace website. If you are a MySpace user, please vote for us right now, then each day until December 24th and forward this to others: http://www.myspace.com/impactawards.