An Urban World

For the first time in the history of the world, 2008 will see more people living in cities than not.

This trend shows no sign of stopping or slowing down, and there are many implications to this shift that remain to play themselves out. What impact will this have on economics, social interactions, food supplies, disease control, and energy resources? Will the changes be for the better or the worse?

The authors of Freakonomics posed the following question on their blog, and asked a number of experts to give their opinion:

This year marked the first time in human history that more people lived in cities than in rural areas. What problems and opportunities does this present? What effects has it had on our local and global culture? Economy? Health?

What do you think?

Millenium Villages

The continent of Africa has the greatest proportion of people living in extreme poverty. 40% of the population, or 300 million people, live on less than $1 a day. A number of geographic and environmental problems create a situation where African countries are very vulnerable to poverty.

In order to fight this epidemic, an organization called Millenium Promise is trying to help poor villages raise themselves out of abject poverty, and create self-sustaining micro-economies. In 10 different countries, they have established 79 Millenium Villages under their innovative model.

By investing in health, food production, education, access to clean water, and essential infrastructure, these community-led interventions enable impoverished villages to escape extreme poverty once and for all.

Through eight different objectives, they work to transform a village into a thriving community. First they work on Nutrition, followed by Agriculture, Gender Equality,  Education,  Health, Environment, Water, and Infrastructure.

Through these villages, they plan to reach the Millenium Development Goals established by the UN in 2002 to address the lack of basic human rights for people around the world.

To learn what you can do to help, check out this website which provides educational material you can use in your school.

A great read on the subject of solving world poverty is “The End of Poverty” by Jeffrey D. Sachs.

See what you can do today to help the poorest people in the world.