Millions in Pakistan need clean water, sanitary food, housing and medical care. Organizations are now on the ground helping those displaced by the worst floods in 80 years.

In Pakistan, an estimated 15 million (number increasing every minute) victims of the worst floods in 80 years are searching for hope. Hundreds of thousands have lost their homes, drinking water is filthy and contaminated, and food is scarce.

One look at the devastating images of men and women walking through brown water up to their chests makes all of us feel grateful for our comfortable — and dry — homes.

Here’s how you can support their efforts.

1.Hillary Clinton announced Wednesday that Americans could text the word “SWAT” to the number 50555 to donate $10 per SMS message to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees to provide tents, clothing, food, clean water and medicine to Pakistan. You can watch a video of her statement here .

2.American Red Cross seeks to raise $100,000 to aid its Pakistan equivalent — Pakistan Red Crescent — with teams on the ground providing food, other relief items and medical care. To donate, go to their website.

3.UNICEF is providing help with water, sanitation, health and nutrition for displaced children and families. To donate, please click here.

4.Stamford, Conn.-based AmeriCares is sending medical and other aid to the hardest-hit areas of the flood. Readers can donate through the AmeriCares website.

5.CARE needs donations for its health teams, mobile clinics and distribution of food, which will help 100,000 flood victims. To donate, go to their website.

6.Doctors Without Borders/Medecins Sans Frontieres is providing water, sanitation help, hygiene kits, cooking utensils and other items to Pakistanis. Doctors Without Borders has also prepared itself to care for patients in case of cholera outbreaks. To donate to Doctors Without Borders, give to its emergency fund.

7.The International Rescue Committee , founded by Albert Einstein in 1933, is on the ground assessing the disaster, planning to make clean water accessible and to provide shelter to people who have lost their homes. To donate to the IRC’s efforts in Pakistan, click here.

8.The International Medical Corps (IMC) has sent mobile medical teams of doctors and paramedics to assist victims in the hardest hit areas of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province in the northwest. To make a donation to the Santa Monica, Calif. based organization, founded by a UCLA doctor, go to the IMC website. The organization is also seeking doctors, nurses and trained professionals from a wide variety of fields. For more information and to volunteer, visit the Corps’ website.

9.Westport, Conn.-based Save the Children, dedicated to helping children worldwide, is already providing medical care, food and shelter kits. To donate to its Pakistan efforts,click here.

10. Mercy Corps’ Pakistan Emergency Fund supports Mercy Corps workers with their efforts in helping displaced families in the hard-hit Swat Valley. Visit the Mercy Corps website to donate to the Pakistan Emergency Fund.

11.Oxfam hopes to reach 400,000 people affected by the devastating floods, supplying clean water and preventing the spread of waterborne disease. To support Oxfam’s efforts, go to the Oxfam America website. Those outside the US can donate to its UK emergency relief fund for Pakistan.

12.The World Food Programme, the world’s largest humanitarian agency fighting hunger, is supplying food to the tens of thousands affected by the floods. To donate, visit the WFP website.

13.Islamic Relief Worldwide, a relief organization based in Birmingham, England, has launched a £2 million (or $3.2 million USD) appeal to deliver clean water, food and health care. You can donate here.

14. BRAC has temporarily halted its normal operations in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa to provide relief work. Due to the acute food shortage, BRAC Pakisan has begun to deliver food packets containing such items at rice, lentils, flour and water purification tables. In the immediate future, the team will also be distributing Oral Rehydration Salts (ORS) and sending out a medical team to begin assessing health needs. To donate, click here.

Courtesy: Tonic Staff

The American Red Cross is contributing an initial $1 million from its International Response Fund to support the relief operation in Haiti following Tuesday’s massive earthquake measuring 7.3 on the Richter scale.

The earthquake struck near the capital of Port au Prince where government offices and hospitals have sustained major damage. Many areas remain inaccessible as roads are covered with debris and bridges have collapsed. Telephone lines and electricity are still out in many places. The next 48 hours are critical for life-saving operations such as search and rescue and first aid.

People who want to help those affected by the Haitian earthquake can make a donation to the American Red Cross International Response Fund at Redcross.org or by calling 1-800-RED-CROSS. Alternatively you may also make your donation at the Heart of Tennessee Red Cross Chapter located at 836 Commercial Ct, Murfreesboro, TN 37129.

The Red Cross is also receiving money through a third party mobile fundraising effort sponsored by Mobile Accord. Mobile donors can text “Haiti” to 90999 to send a ten dollar donation to the Red Cross. The funds will go to support the Red Cross relief efforts in Haiti.

The American Red Cross has a 15-person office in Haiti focused year-round on HIV/AIDS education and disaster preparedness. We have had limited contact with our staff in Haiti, but do know that they are safe and responding to the survivors’ needs.

In addition to the staff already on the ground, the American Red Cross is also deploying six disaster management specialists to the disaster zone to help coordinate relief.

If your loved one has citizenship in Haiti, please be patient and continue to call or contact other family members who live nearby. If you’re trying to reach a U.S. citizen living or traveling in Haiti, you should contact the U.S. Department of State, Office of Overseas Citizens Services, at 1- 888-407-4747.

You can help the victims of countless crises, like the recent earthquake in Haiti, around the world each year by making a financial gift to the American Red Cross International Response Fund, which will provide immediate relief and long-term support through supplies, technical assistance and other support to help those in need. The American Red Cross honors donor intent. If you wish to designate your donation to a specific disaster, please do so at the time of your donation by mailing your donation with the designation to the American Red Cross, P.O. Box 37243, Washington, D.C. 20013 or to your local American Red Cross chapter. Donations to the International Response Fund can be made by phone at 1-800-REDCROSS or 1-800-257-7575 (Spanish) or online at www.redcross.org.

According to UNICEF, there are an estimated 158 million children aged 5 to 14 in child labour worldwide, excluding child domestic labour.

Here are some images ..

Poor families often rely on the labours of their children for survival, and sometimes it is their only source of income. This type of work is often hidden away because it is not always in the industrial sector. Child labour is employed in subsistence agriculture and in the urban informal sector; child domestic work is also important. In order to benefit children, child labour prohibition has to address the dual challenge of providing them with both short-term income and long-term prospects.

According to the ILO’s latest estimates (2006), the number of child labourers fell by 11 percent globally over the past four years and the number of children in hazardous work has decreased by 26 percent. While this is encouraging, there are still 218 million child labourers worldwide, 126 million of which are engaged in hazardous work.

Unfortunately, I am unable to find the latest statistics on Child labour, however here are some statistics from “Global Child Labour Trends (2000-2004) published by International Labour Organization.(According to ILO there are 165 Million children(Age 5- 15) involved in Child Labour in year 2008)

CHILD LABOUR BY REGION

Children aged 5–14 engaged in child labour (%), by region (1999-2008)

What can you, a teenager who doesn’t have a lot of money or resources, do to help the poor and needy?

More than you think. Most young adults are blessed with the creativity and intelligence to find ways to help others despite limited resources. Here are some tips that can perhaps start the creative process:

1. Give a portion of your allowance each week to a poor and needy person or a cause in support of them

How much is your allowance or your salary from your part-time job? Not much, you might say. The great thing about giving though is that in about 99 percent of cases, you are not restricted to how much you can give to help the poor and needy.

That means for instance, instead of dishing out a dollar a day for a can of soda from the vending machine at school or work, maybe you can save this money two days of the week. Then give this money to the Zakat and Sadaqa committee of your mosque, a poor person you know in your neighborhood, a local soup kitchen or to a worthy cause abroad.

2. Encourage your parents to pay Zakat(Giving charity and supporting the community.)

Zakat is something too many Muslims neglect. If you are eligible to give Zakat, you must pay. If you aren’t eligible, ask your parents about Zakat and if they pay, how and to whom. If they do not give Zakat, respectfully and politely emphasize to them the importance of this necessary pillar of Islam and encourage them to start paying it. Use wisdom and beautiful preaching.

3. Encourage a family Sadaqa (charity) project

Get the whole family to pitch in at least once a month to a worthy cause by organizing a family Sadaqa project. Call a family meeting (if you’ve never had one of these, this is a great time to start) and discuss your idea. Then come to an agreement on how everyone can help the poor. Whether it’s contributing a set amount a week as a group with Dad giving the money to the Masjid after Friday prayers or setting up a box somewhere in the house where family members can privately donate, you all decide.

4. Talk about it in your youth group

What are the first steps in finding solutions to problems? Dua (supplication) then brainstorming and discussion.

At your next youth group meeting, put the difficulties of the poor and needy in your community on the agenda. Simply discuss and brainstorm. You don’t have to come up with a plan all at once. But discussing this will start the process and keep it in people’s minds.

If you don’t have a youth group, get your friends together. Instead of having the usual hang out time one day, substitute this with a formal meeting. Now you have a youth group that can do this exercise.

5. Visit a poor part of town

How many big cities have “poor quarters”? Almost every single one. Sometimes, we need to see the reality of poverty right in front of us to really believe it’s there, especially if we live in a financially well-off part of a city.

Go with your youth group to visit these areas. You don’t have to necessarily bring money or food for them (although that wouldn’t be a bad idea). Talk to the people, if they are willing to be approached, about living conditions and how they ended up there. Prepare yourself for an eye-opening experience.

6. Do a class presentation on poverty

Stumped about what to do for a school assignment? Why not talk about the plight of the poor in your community. Do your research thoroughly. Get statistics on poverty, real stories from books and perhaps even video- or audiotaped interviews of the poor and homeless. Show the human face of poverty. Follow the presentation up with a class collection for the poor.

7. Don’t just collect money

There are plenty of basic necessities that people have to meet. Some people can’t afford new shoes. So hold a shoe drive (some teens have already done this – read this link about it). Others cannot afford clothing. Hold a clothing drive. Collect the material, arrange for cars, vans or trucks to transport it to where it’s needed, then make sure the material is properly distributed.

8. Write about poverty in your school paper

Have you got a knack for writing? Then write about poverty in your school newspaper. Educate your student body not just with words, but photos too, if possible. If you’ve visited a poor part of the city (see tips above), then you have plenty of material and personal material to write about.

9. Write about Zakat and Sadaqa in your Masjid(mosque) newsletter

Does your Masjid have a newsletter? If so, dedicate the next issue to the topic of Zakat and Sadaqa and how they help the poor and the needy. You can interview an Imam to get the basics straight. You can also include various charitable causes readers can give their money to locally to help the poor and needy.

If you don’t have a Muslim youth newsletter, maybe this can be your premiere edition.

10. Put the information on a website

If you put the above-mentioned newsletter or at least some of the articles online, you ‘ll probably have more young people reading it than if you limited the information to print only.

11. Collect money in your group

After your next group meeting, pass around a box to collect donations for the poor and needy. Better yet, make this a weekly practice. Make one person responsible for collecting the money and sending it off after consulting everyone on which cause it should be sent for.

12. Organize a youth seminar on poverty

Get a youth-friendly Imam or speaker to come and talk about how Islam has successfully fought against poverty in the past and can continue to do so in the present. Then, after his lecture, hold a workshop with participants and come up with 21 ideas of how the audience and Muslim teens in general can help fight poverty in America and abroad Islamically.

Article Source: Soundvision

to 405M

UNICEF asks Pakistan, India to spend more on health, education

Wednesday, June 03, 2009

NEW DELHI: More than 100 million people have joined the ranks of the chronically hungry in South Asia in the fallout from the global financial crisis, bringing the figure to a 40-year high, a UN official said on Tuesday.

The region’s poor, who have borne the brunt of the economic trouble, desperately need governments to spend more money on food, health care and education to alleviate the crisis, said Daniel Toole, a regional director for the UN Children’s Fund, or UNICEF.

At least 405 million people in South Asia suffered from chronic hunger in 2007-2008, up from 300 million in 20004-2006, according to a UNICEF report on Tuesday.

“Without urgent, inclusive government response, the poor of South Asia, nearly 20 per cent of the world’s population, will sink further into poverty and malnutrition with long-term negative consequences for growth and development in the region and globally,” the report said.

The report focused on the economic crisis’s impact on women and children in eight South Asian nations —Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.

Nearly 33 per cent of South Asia’s 1.8 billion people eat less than the minimum recommended daily requirements. Three-quarters live in households earning less than $2 a day, the report said.

The poor spend more than half of their income on food, which has become more expensive and made life even more difficult for them, it said. Nearly half of the region’s children are malnourished.

Toole called on India and Pakistan, longtime rivals in the region, to urgently reduce their defence spending and increase their social investments.

The two nations have long spent relatively little on education and health while spending billions on their militaries, which have fought three wars against each another.

Defence accounted for 18 per cent of government spending in Pakistan and 14 per cent in India between 1997 and 2006, UNICEF said.

Education accounted for less than 4 per cent and health care received 2 per cent in the same period, the agency said.

The agency called on India and Pakistan to emulate China, which spent 8-10 per cent of government money on education and health over the past three decades, allowing rural and impoverished communities access to hospitals and schools, Toole said.

Nearly half of the region’s children under five are malnourished, the worst level in the world including Sub-Saharan Africa.

Countries such as India did not make use of the good years to tackle poverty and hunger, UNICEF said.

“We are in the midst of a recession,” a UNICEF official said.

“When you had growth rates of eight, nine and in some cases 15, 16 per cent, we made no progress on malnutrition, on hunger, on including women and children in the society. How are we going to do it now?”
Source: The News, Karachi Edition, Wednesday, June 3,2009

• More than 25 million people have died of AIDS since 1981.
• Africa has 11.6 million AIDS orphans.
• At the end of 2007, women accounted for 50% of all adults living with HIV worldwide, and for 59% in sub-Saharan Africa.
• Young people (under 25 years old) account for half of all new HIV infections worldwide.
• In developing and transitional countries, 9.7 million people are in immediate need of life-saving AIDS drugs; of these, only 2.99 million (31%) are receiving the drugs.

Global HIV/AIDS estimates, end of 2007

Global HIV/AIDS estimates, end of 2007

Global trends

The number of people living with HIV has risen from around 8 million in 1990 to 33 million today, and is still growing. Around 67% of people living with HIV are in sub-Saharan Africa.

Global trends

Regional statistics for HIV & AIDS, end of 2007

During 2007 more than two and a half million adults and children became infected with HIV (Human Immunodeficiency Virus), the virus that causes AIDS. By the end of the year, an estimated 33 million people worldwide were living with HIV/AIDS. The year also saw two million deaths from AIDS, despite recent improvements in access to antiretroviral treatment.

Regional statistics for HIV & AIDS, end of 2007

Source:UNAIDS 2008 Report of the global AIDS epidemic