If you’ve visited Kiva.org recently, you may have gotten this message “Thanks Kiva Lenders!…You’ve funded EVERY business on the site!!” It’s hard to remember a time (if ever?) that a charitable organization has said that to an enthusiastic donor.

Kiva.org is a way for a donor to make a small loan (microcredit) to an entrepreneur in a developing country. Kiva’s popularity sometimes makes it hard to keep up with the demand. But why? Kiva goes through a process of vetting their potential entrepreneurs from developing countries, and sometimes logistics (like getting a digital camera to the area that the loan applicant is in) is to blame.

It’s great to see that there are so many philanthropists out there interested in giving business people from developing countries a boost.

However, global development is a complicated issue—and microcredit is only one way to help those in poverty. The way we craft our policies has a huge impact—which is why it’s so important to tell our candidates that global development is important to us.

Watch this video to see Maria’s story and how microcredit may help her:

Read the article from NY Times Magazine here.

At an early morning session today at Davos, Bono and Al Gore spoke about a “Unified Earth Theory” that attempts to combine the agendas of both global poverty and climate change. Each year at the World Economic Forum, the biggest names in politics and business turn the chilly Swiss resort town of Davos into a week-long think tank.

According to a BBC journalist blogging directly from the conference, the Bono/Gore team was short on answers, but brought up some great questions that we do need to consider. And soon. The link between global poverty and climate change is critical—and it works both ways. Helping developing countries increase their wealth may also affect their consumption levels. But developing countries are also going to be the hardest hit when it comes to global warming. So how can we help developing countries in a way that doesn’t increase global consumption levels to a dangerous extent?

Bono noted that the G-8 isn’t doing all it can. They haven’t met their pledge to contribute $50 billion annually to help stamp out poverty. Bono continued, however, that they have been making progress—both France and Germany said that they would make a better effort. In addition to talking about a plan that would incorporate the negative effects of carbon into its price tag, Gore said that global compacts could solve both problems of poverty and climate change.

Read more about Bono and Gore’s session at CNN.com.

Yale University will be hosting a conference of interest to the global development community in April—the Unite For Sight Fifth Annual International Health & Development Conference: Building Global Health For Today and Tomorrow. The keynote speakers will be: Susan Blumenthal, Jim Yong Kim, Jeffrey Sachs, and Sonia Ehrlich Sachs. Find out more about the conference speakers here.

There will be over 180 speakers on topics such as: “Addressing Vitamin and Mineral Deficiencies is a Key Building Block to Achieve the Millennium Development Goals”, “Global Health and the Internet Panel”, and”Youth Engagement in Development Stategies.”

Early bird registration ends January 30th. You can learn more at Unite For Site’s conference page.

This post originally appeared in the Center for Global Development’s blog, Views from the Center.

*This is a joint post with Sheila Herrling

The announcement Wednesday that House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Tom Lantos (D-CA) will not seek reelection in 2008 following a diagnosis of esophageal cancer is another loss for what is becoming a slim group of congressional champions for development and responsible U.S. global engagement. In a press release from his office, Lantos said:

It is only in the United States that a penniless survivor of the Holocaust and a fighter in the anti-Nazi underground could have received an education, raised a family, and had the privilege of serving the last three decades of his life as a Member of Congress. I will never be able to express fully my profoundly felt gratitude to this great country.

Throughout my adult life I have sought to be a voice for human rights, civil liberties and social justice, both at home and around the world. My wife, Annette, and I look forward to continuing this vital work with purpose and verve every day for the remainder of my term.

Our community is grateful for the tireless work and attention Chairman Lantos and his dedicated staff have brought to global development during his nearly 28 years of service in the House. A patriot, internationalist and multilateralist, Lantos cared deeply about America’s credibility and stature in the world. He has been a leader in raising awareness and promoting an active U.S. response to global warming, and is the author of the international portions of the Energy Independence and Security Act. He has pushed for accountable U.S. foreign assistance that reduces poverty and provides opportunities for the world’s poor. At times, he has been an outspoken critic of the administration’s foreign assistance reform efforts for not adequately informing Congress (see We Are Not A Potted Plant: Congress Responds to U.S. Foreign Aid Reform). Lantos also worked across the partisan divide with the late Congressman Henry Hyde (R-IL), then chairman of the House International Relations Committee, to craft the Millennium Challenge Account legislation, with support from his staff members Paul Oostburg Sanz and later Robin Roizman. He continues to play a key role in authorizing (and reauthorizing) legislation for the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) with support from staff member Pearl-Alice Marsh. And he is well known for his work on human rights for all.

Congressman Lantos, much like Congressman Kolbe who stepped down in 2006 (see Kolbe’s Decision to Leave Congress a Loss for Development) seemed to understand that America’s prosperity and security have become inextricably linked to the prosperity and security of other nations and their people. And that America had a special responsibility to be a moral and economic leader in ensuring that our policies help us while also helping responsible states around the world.

Our warmest thoughts and thanks go out to Chairman Lantos, his family, and staff. And as we look towards the next elections, here’s hoping that a new generation of congressmen and women will fill the void left by Lantos, Kolbe and others to become the new congressional champions for global development.

As you’ve probably heard, Obama and Huckabee were the winners of last night’s Iowa Caucus.

In Obama’s victory speech, he gave a nod to climate change and poverty as some of the topics he would address as president. In December, Obama committed to strengthen our security through a global development strategy.

Watch his speech:

Huckabee also mentioned some global development issues when he appeared on the “Early Show” the morning of the caucus. He said people “in the Republican establishment think I’m a little too liberal for them because I actually care about hunger, poverty, disease and the environment.”

Watch the segment:

The race for nomination is far from over—make sure to check out the rest of the candidates’ stands on global development issues on our candidate page and on One.org’s On the Record page.

The World Bank said mid-December that they raised a record $25.1 billion for developing countries. Why is this significant? First of all, The United States ceded its spot as the top contributor to Britain. This is caused in part by the slipping value of the dollar against European currencies, but it also points to our commitment to global development. We currently only pledge .19% net aid as a portion of our economy. More importantly, the large increases in both Britain and Germany’s pledges indicate that relations between the World Bank and Europe are strengthening.

Nancy Birdsall, president of the Center for Global Development, said, “The Europeans were looking for a sense of direction and some confidence in where the bank was going. This shows there is a renewed confidence.”

On another hopeful note, several countries that were once recipients of this money, such as Egypt and China, are now contributors.

Of course, as you know by now, there’s much more to global development than aid–other factors such as trade, investment, security, migration, and the environment are essential when considering our policy. Take a look at the Commitment to Global Development Index (CDI).

Read the New York Times article for more about this topic.

Public Radio International (PRI) just received a 3-year, $5 million grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to produce and distribute content on global development and health topics. This is good news for people who care about global development—the more we talk about it (and our media talks about it), the more our future leaders will know that Global Development Matters to us, and will be able to shape US policy accordingly. PRI’s programming currently reaches around 11 million listeners each week.

PRI President and CEO Alisa Miller said, “This transformational grant will enable PRI to increase Americans’ understanding of the impact that global health and development issues have in today’s world….People and nations of the world are more interdependent than ever before, yet many media outlets continue to withdraw from international news. PRI is uniquely capable of aggressively developing compelling content, global reporting and interactive strategies to fill this urgent need.”

Stories on global development and health might focus on trade policy and how it affects developing countries’ food supplies, the effectiveness of development assistance, or personal stories of those with HIV/AIDS.

In addition to radio broadcast, coverage will also include online engagement tools through PRI’s website and other partner websites: blogs, podcasts, searchable transcripts, and mobile phone segments.

Read the press release to learn more.

Over the next 10 years, competition for jobs in developing countries will be tough—it is estimated that a billion young people in developing countries will be competing for 300 million jobs. In this recent interview in Motley Fool, Mercy Corps’s President Nancy Lindborg talks about their Silent Disasters program, which addresses the crises that fall through the cracks of public attention. One of the ways Silent Disasters seeks to improve youth unemployment is through job training kits. These kits fund training programs specific to different regions, such as Kyrgyzstan and Lebanon. Kids learn to participate in the global economy, thrive in a steady job, and become financially literate. Teaching young people about finance can benefit their entire community.

UNICEF released a report that shows our progress towards the UN’s Millennium Development Goals, which seek to unite countries’ efforts to improve education, halt the spread of AIDS, alleviate poverty, and more. We are making some advances–more than 1.2 billion people gained access to safe drinking water between 1990 and 2004, and since 2000, the use of insecticide-treated nets among children has tripled in many cases in Malaria-affected countries. However, there is much more to be done, and we are not on track to achieving many of the goals. If we are going to reach these goals by the target date of 2015, we must improve rich country policy.

Here’s a good video that gives you an overview of the Millennium Development Goals:

You can also read this article in the Guardian to learn more.

As you may know, developing countries are the most at risk when it comes to the effects of global warming. They depend quite a bit on agriculture and are also more closely located to the equator. At the Bali Conference, there has been talk of a new environmental policy deal that would create a fund for developing countries. The fund is a completely new item from the 1997 Kyoto treaty.

Saleemul Huq, a climate specialist at the International Institute for Environment and Development in London, has some ideas about how this fund might work. A country that can’t meet its carbon emissions caps can currently invest in projects in developing countries. Huq’s idea is to take a percentage of those investments and put them in the fund to the countries that need it most. He said, “This is not development assistance. This is the polluter paying the victim of pollution.” There will have to be other methods that contribute to the fund as well, since much more money is needed than Huq’s solution could provide. But it’s good that some great minds in environment and policy are working on it.

The new deal is hoped to close in 2009.

Read NPR’s article to learn more.