Part I Most Important Issues
1
Team 1
Dr. Van Arsdall
POLS 2070
Final Essay
August 10, 2011
Part I – Most Important Issues
Team Member 1 - Educating Girls is a Crucial
Empowerment can be interpreted as the freedom of choice and action to shape one’s life, including the control over resources, decisions, and institutions necessary to do so (Narayan 2005). Female education and labor force participation have been identified asimportant catalysts for enhancing women’s empowerment (World Bank 2001). The2000, UNESCO and the global community including Africa have been striving to attain the Education for All (EFA) Goals. Considering the fact that education for girls and women is an urgent priority, the African Framework for Action contained a time-bound goal (Goal 5) devoted specifically to gender parity and equality in education. Moreover, special attention has been paid to women and girls in other goals: for example, Goal 2 stipulates that we must “ensure that by 2015 all children, particularly girls, children in difficult circumstances and those belonging to ethnic minorities have access to acomplete free and compulsory primary education of good quality”.
Given the social and cultural complexities relating to this most deprived group, our activity was focused on community mobilization and gaining “people’s will” on girls’ education. In order to achieve EFA, particularly for such a challenging target group, access to education provided through political and administrative commitments does not suffice. Parents and the community must be fully convinced of the importance of education and motivated to send their children, particularly their daughters to school, or our commitment to universal primary education will not be fulfilled.
The international organization that help address girl issues isUN Girls' Education Initiative (UNGEI), the EFA flagship for girls' education, is a partnership that embraces the United Nations system, governments, donor countries, non-governmental organizations, civil society, the private sector, and communities and families. UNGEI provides stakeholders with a platform for action and galvanizes their efforts to get girls in school.Evidence shows that investing in adolescent girls' economic opportunities has a large development impact on their families and their future children, with long term benefits for poverty reduction and potentially for growth.
Over 500 million adolescent girls and young women live in the developing world, but they do not have the same opportunities as young men. Helping girls and young women stay in school, avoid early pregnancy and marriage, build capital assets, and find jobs are critical therefore to help them gain financial independence and become productive members of society.
Rights and responsibilities citizens have is to educate girls, which is part of globalization that affects the world market, communities working hand in hand, the exchange of goods along with service, and new ideas of technology in producing more. Here is where responsibilities begin:
1) Education awareness and sensitizing of local people and all stakeholders to ensure they understand the advantages and benefits of women’s education
2) Relationship building through a continuous process of dialogue to create trust between and among the various groups of stakeholders 3) Participation of all stakeholders, including empowerment of communities, to take responsibilityto educate girl children 4) A flexible and adaptable process in the face of theprevailing social perception of the education of girls education and disadvantaged communities 5) Monitoring of successfully enrolled/re-enrolledchildren in school.
My position is clearly educating as many women in third world countries to build better global economics and productivity,while the progress on meeting targets for gender equality in education is laudable, in many countries it is not being followed up by successful school to-work transitions. Sub-Saharan Africa is one of those countries that put the rights and responsibilities in educating women last. Women and girls functions and capabilities can go very far with more intense nourishment. We watched PTK honors presentation video, which proved educations advantages with Ayaan Hirsi Ali from Somalia (Democratization of Information and Human Rights). Ali stated in the video eloquently how education is powerful because what she is able to do or be it will be.
Education or economic participation for girls and women can help overcome material, social, and cultural barriers to economic gains in adulthood. The welfare gains may accrue not only to these girls and women, but also to their families and children. The ability to produce and use knowledge has become a major factor in development. In fact, this ability is critical to a nation’s comparative advantage. Surging demand for secondary education in many parts of the world offers developing countries an invaluable opportunity to prepare a well-trained workforce can generate growth in a knowledge-driven economy. The global economic participation of young women helps shrink poverty and less aid from the United States is needed because those countries will feel great prospering on their own.
Work Cited
Tribhuvan University, Research Centre for Educational Development (CERID) (1999), Social Assessment of Educationally Disadvantaged Groups:
A Study conducted for Basic and Primary Education Project (BPEP).
World Bank. 2001. Engendering Development: Through Gender Equality in Rights,
Resources and Voice. World Bank Policy Research Report. Washington, DC: World Bank.
Pros And Cons Of Globalization, Retrieved August 03, 2011 from iloveindia.com
Team Member 2 - Technology that Creates Thinkers
During the course of this class, we have spent a great deal of time studying the economy, and learning to understand how our policymakers have, for the last 100 years or so, shaped our daily lives. The most important issue that has been brought to my attention through the course of this time is the need for a leader who is willing to put their reputation and life on the line for innovative change.
When Obama ran for office, he teased us with this boldness. “Change” was the campaign slogan, and people bought it, and wanted it. In our coursework, we have learned that the most successful nations were founded in radical, but well calculated and highly planned change. We are in need of such leaders again, as the global economy approaches a an apex like we've never seen before. The old ways of economic thinking served their purposes, but we need another Keynes. In 1919, following the end of World War I, John Maynard Keynes published, The Economic Consequences of Peace. This publication would give him international acclaim. Keynes would go on to release more writings, and his new way of thinking intrigued the minds of the most powerful people in the world. Keynes understood that heavy war reparation penalties against Germany after World War I would lead to conflict. He understood that high deficit spending would ultimately lead to high inflation. When he published his most notable writing, General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, the world would begin to undertake the magnitude of change we need today. Kenyes believed that a mixed economy was the measure of success. He maintained that a major proportion of the economy needed to be controlled by the private sector, but that regulation should come from the government in order to help stabilize the markets.
Freidrich von Hayek also displayed the kind of economic foresight that lead to reform and change. His ideas, however, were much different from that of Keynes. Hayek was critical of centralization, and maintained that a truly free market economy would be the best long term solution to global economic growth and stability issues. He, too, was very influential in the policy making of many nations, and was recognized by the worlds elite powers to one degree or another.
The common denominator between these two men is not their ideologies. They were almost polar opposites in their lines of thinking. What they did both bring to the world was developed though. New ideas, and new theories of economic structure that were founded in the educated minds of their generation. This is what our world needs, and the way that we achieve it is through education.
I feel like the biggest problem that we have in our world today is a education stagnation. We focus our resources and efforts on the status quo. Our goal is never to change the things that are in place, but rather to improve on the things we already have. We encourage our young people to endure on paths that will make them successful in the fields that currently exist. The field that current exist are dominated by corporations and large governmental bodies that are positions of power. Very few people are contempt with relinquishing power, even in the name of progress. So, as they control the money, they control the way we think. And, the way we think is to support what is currently in place.
I am not a proponent of civil disobedience, unless it is in the most dire of circumstances. I feel that we are in a world where we are not necessarily told what we should learn, but merely encouraged. It will be the younger generations, my generations, responsibility to choose to challenge the status quo, and choose to challenge the current way of doing things. As our global economy grows closer to itself, the tensions will rise. Never before have so many people occupied such a small space. Out market economies, to this point, have been built with the mindset that our allies and enemies are oceans and deserts away. With the advent of computer technology and the internet, they are a click away. We need radical thought.
The one hope that I have for this new world is the same thing that will force its change. The invention of the internet has revolutionized the way that the world shares information. I believe that the single most important thing that we can do as a species is to promote the free, unregulated spread of the internet to all people in the world. Giving every person the ability to read, learn, and communicated with and from each other will mean that we can develop minds like never before. The most intellectually capable person can be of no value to the world if he is subjected to an uneducated, radical community that doesn't encourage free thought and education. The internet allows us to get knowledge to people instantly, and for little cost.
In 2009, a group of engineering students, financially back by Google, began an experiment to bring the internet to remote areas of Ethiopia. The satellite connection is much more secure and reliable than the mobile phones that had become so popular in the region over the last 5 years. The satellite connection was installed to create a small hub for a couple computers in the area to give the village access to the rest of the world. This connection, though expensive, saves the people there money. Normally, any wireless communication or transaction would cost a great deal more, since information travels over a cell phone much more slowly, and requires connections that can take over a day to send important information. Google has since launched a program called O3b, the goal of which is to spread these satellite hubs until larger infrastructures are naturally put in place.
The next Keynes is out there. This sort of connection to world is important, because there are intelligent and capable people who are held back due to a lack of education and exposure to the world. Our world is becoming more closely knit than ever before. In order to understand how we can grow together, we must make sure that we collaborate together. Communicating with each other, and helping to nurture the next great mind is what will take our world to the next Commanding Heights.
"BBC NEWS | UK | Magazine | How to Kick-start a Faltering Economy the Keynes Way." BBC News - Home. Web. 10 Aug. 2011. <
Hayek, Friedrich A. Von. Prices and Production,. New York: A.M. Kelley, 1967. Print
Nicholson, Chris V. "Experiments Bring Internet to Remote African Villages - NYTimes.com." The New York Times - Breaking News, World News & Multimedia. 01 Feb. 2009. Web. 10 Aug. 2011. <
Team Member 3: Major Issue: Microfinance Movement
Microfinance in terms of globalization is a movement that provides financial services to low-income people. It also serves solidarity lending groups and the self-employed with access to banking services. Other areas included in the access to financial services include savings, insurance, and fund transfers. Micro credit is also used to help poor clients rise above their poverty level.
The issue of microfinance affects the “state of the world” in that; globalization marginalizes poor people because they cannot compete in an integrated world market. The products and services of poor people are not as attractive as those produced by huge multi-national corporations. All the time and energy involved in low production of poor self-employed clients cannot compete with the industrial, financial, and technological advantages of multi-national corporations.
The types of microfinance used by clients include costs of burials, health care, and providing for replacements of damages due to storms and floods. The issues of retirement, migration, farm equipment, wells, home upgrade, and irrigation are also addressed. Other areas include transportation, livestock, education, social obligations, and emergencies. Microfinance also helps with sending money to family members who are far away, family disasters like sudden illness and crop failure.
Small self-investments in radios, cell phones, bikes, sewing machines, and boats can make a big difference to someone who has no access to steady income or a fair loan at current market prices. The role of governments, international development agencies, and non-government organizations are implemented from the top down, and require much time and bureaucratic administration that does not solve immediate problems experienced by the average poor worker are farmer.
Immediate engagement of problems calls for emergency loans, as well as various insurance plans, pensions, short-term loans, longer term loans, fund transfers, as well as short, medium, and long time deposits.
The Pros and Cons of Microfinance:
Microfinance can be viewed from two different perspectives, one view seeks to address the microfinance client who makes a profit, generates employment, and creates added value, thereby contributing to the economic growth of the community. The other view focuses on those who use microfinance with developmental goals in mind. In the process of making a pro or con choice, some strategic factors for success must be addressed. There must first be an understanding of how microfinance works. An institutional framework must be developed; we must make microfinance an issue of microeconomic policy, and also make microfinance an issue of economics.
The Pros of Microfinance:
The position that shows the benefits of microfinance offers the examples of access to cash. In most developing nations access to cash is in the hands of local moneylenders. In rural communities, loan sharks charge interest rates as high as 300%. The end result of borrowing from a moneylender is usually heavy debt that only exacerbates the original problem of access to cash. The first loan from a microfinance organization is usually used to pay off a loan from a moneylender.
Microfinance also helps create choice. It allows clients to sometimes switch professions and develop new skills. For women in many rural communities, the local culture has obliged them to stay at home caring for several children. A loan from a microfinance organization gives them the opportunity to run a business out of their home. This not only gives them additional income, but affords women something new and different to experience in their lives.
Loans through microfinance also help pay for education in countries where tuition must be played by private citizens. Clients involved in microloan systems are an example of promoting solidarity. The program brings people together in a social setting and people soon become aware of their group interests, goals, and security. They also engage the issue of accountability by members pledging for each other in the event one person can’t make a payment. Other services drawn from benefits of microfinance include insurance, savings account, healthcare, and recreational activities.
The Cons of Microfinance:
Critics of microfinance have mostly focused on microcredit as an issue because of the absence of services such as, insurance, remittances, payments, and savings. Milford Bateman, the author of “Why Doesn’t Microfinance Work”? Argues, “Microcredit offers only an illusion of poverty reduction”, because the positives are isolated and temporary. Rates charged by microcredit institutions were 22.3% annually. Muhammad Yunus says any institution charging rates above 15% should be penalized.
There is also criticism for not taking more responsibility for the working conditions of poor households. There are few if any rules or standards governing work hours, holidays, working conditions, safety, or child labor. Microcredit has been blamed for many suicides by clients who fall behind on payments with aggressive lending microcredit companies. In Andra Pradesh, India, this resulted in over 80 deaths in 2010. A documentary showed on Norwegian National Television in 2010 shows problems in the microfinance system. Norwegian authorities discovered that 608 million kroner in aid from Norway and other countries to the Grameen Bank was being diverted by Muhammad Yunus and his closest associates to a company that was engaged in an entirely different sector.