The One Campaign just posted the results of their “On the Record” project that compares the presidential candidates’ plans on global poverty and disease.

One Campaign members sent a petition in November urging the candidates to respond to issues that One members cared about. Most of the candidates participated, mainly in the form of video responses. The website is a great resource—and an especially cool feature is that you can compare several candidates side by side and then send the results to your friends.

See how the candidates responded “On the Record.”

Today, students from Swarthmore College participated in a Hunger Banquet, an interactive event hosted by Amnesty International. Tim Burke, associate professor of history, moderated a discussion about world hunger and global inequality. Students also gave short presentations encouraging others to take action. They spoke about efforts–such as microcredit–that have made strides in advancing global development. The main goal of the Hunger Banquet was to offer students an interactive lesson and encourage the students to experience an emotional connection with the global poor, without the usual roster of starving children imagery. Representatives from Oxfam, an international relief group that works towards solving hunger, poverty and injustice, also attended the event.

Amnesty campus chapter president Linda Wang said, “I got involved with Oxfam in high school…and organized a successful hunger banquet at my high school, and have wanted to see it done on campus.”

Sound like a great idea for your community? Visit Oxfam’s website to find out how you can host your own Hunger Banquet.

Read more about Swarthmore’s event in their online newspaper.

A new report found that poor countries are more likely to experience health problems due to climate change than rich countries.

Kevin Watkins, from the UN Development Program and author of this new report, spoke briefly on NPR this morning. His report concentrates on the immediate effects of climate change on poor countries. The report found that developing countries will be hit particularly hard by health problems, since they don’t have the resources to deal with environmental disasters, such as droughts and floods.

For example, people in Northern Ethiopia living in drought zones have no protection should one occur. This study looks at two groups of Ethiopian children, some born in an area experiencing a drought and others that weren’t. Guess what? Five years later, those who were born in the drought-affected area were far more malnourished—by 36% percent.

This drought also led to long-term malnourishment to over 2 million children in the country. This backed their parents into a corner. They had to sell their farming equipment to take care of the immediate needs of their children—but this left them no way to feed their families when the draught was over. Desmond Tutu refers to this as “Adaptation Apartheid,” which means that when something bad happens, rich countries are able to use their resources to withstand it, but poor countries are left high and dry.

Watkins’ solution to this problem is that rich countries should change the way they give aid, for example, giving more money to improve flood control and early warning systems. We should keep in mind the effects of climate change whenever we give aid money.

Want to listen to full story? Check it out on NPR.

Are you an exceptional high school student? Do you know one? NetAid is hosting the Global Action Awards, which honors high school students who have led an initiative that has had a direct impact on people in developing countries or raised global poverty awareness.

The deadline to enter is January 31st, 2008.

Find out more about NetAid at their website. You can apply online, too.

ABC news and the Brookings Institution, a Washington-based think tank, hosted a panel of political analysts and foreign policy experts at UNLV on November 16th. They explored the tough issues the next candidate will have to face, especially concerning national security and foreign policy. Here’s an excerpt from Carlos Pascual, a vice president and director of Foreign Policy at Brookings, speaking about the importance of fostering partnerships with other countries:

“I think for the next U.S. president the biggest central challenge is going to be to restore American credibility and leadership in order to establish effective global and international partners. And that is going to be fundamental to securing American national security interests overseas….

Whoever the next president is is going to face a series of crises….They’re going to face a whole series of geopolitical challenges….Then there is a series of wider, almost existential structural systemic questions that we face in the world that we live in today, issues of energy security and climate change, non-proliferation, proliferation of nuclear weapons in particular, transnational terrorism, global poverty. And there is no way the United States alone can deal with these issues.

The only way we can do this is to effectively establish the kinds of partnerships with an international community that trusts one another and works by a rule-based system….
I think that whoever that president is, they’re going to have an aggressive agenda that demonstrates a change in American behavior…Because it is by acting in a way that starts to demonstrate that the United States, one, has values, and two, is committed to a rule-based international system that we’ll start to convince the international community that we are not unilateralists.”

Read the article for more transcripts from the panel.

According to an article on CNNMoney.com, a survey conducted in 11 countries found that respondents believe that corporations should bear more responsibility when it comes to societal problems—despite the respondents’ high levels of distrust for those same corporations and institutions in general. The people surveyed were “influential citizens,” defined as the 10-15% percent of the population who initiate change, not including elected officials.

Those surveyed from America, the UK, Canada, and Germany believe that corporations should play as much of a role as their governments in preserving the environment and acting to reduce poverty.

Read the article to find out more about the study.

Here’s what John Edwards had to say when a One Campaign member asked about his plans to combat global and domestic poverty:

This post in World Bank’s “Private Sector Development Blog” says that the percentage of people in poverty (from 1990-2004) has dropped from 29% of the world’s population to 18%. This sounds like good news–but we should remember to keep in mind that there are many ways of measuring poverty. These poverty maps referenced in the blog post are worth a look, too.

Senator Barack Obama spoke at a community event in Las Vegas last month. This video highlights what he had to say about issues pertaining to global poverty.