Tag: Millennium Cities Initiative4
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MCI’s MDG Heroes Series: Physicians for Peace’s Ron Sconyers Helps Millennium Cities Attain Health-Related MDGs
Since 2006, Physicians for Peace (PfP), a U.S. based non-profit focused on providing health care training and education to developing countries, has been working with the Millennium Cities Initiative to help the Millennium Cities in their efforts to attain the Millennium Development Goals. Under the leadership of Brigadier General Ron Sconyers, PfP has shipped containers…
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MCI’s MDG Heroes Series: Kumasi Metropolitan Health Director Reduces Maternal Mortality
In the Millennium City of Kumasi, Ghana, the Maternal Mortality Ratio was on the rise until 2009. But a sustained and dedicated effort on the part of the Kumasi Metropolitan Health Directorate and its director, Dr. Kwasi Yeboah-Awudzi, has resulted in dramatically reduced maternal deaths over the last 18 months. Dr. Yeboah-Awudzi’s direction included upgrading…
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Promises, Promises: The Clock is Ticking in Africa’s Cities
Back in the flush days of 2005, a confident, wealthy G8 promised sub-Saharan Africa $25 billion more per year to help the region achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by the target date of 2015, then 10 years hence.
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Practice and Persevere: Neonatal Survival Workshops Aim to Reduce Infant Mortality in Ghana
With only five years left until the 2015 deadline to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon has called on world leaders to attend a summit in New York on 20-22 September 2010 to accelerate progress towards the MDGs, aimed at slashing poverty, hunger, disease, maternal and child deaths and other…
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Restoring Sight: My Work With the Himalayan Cataract Project in Ethiopia
A guest blog from Dr. Matt Oliva, an MD with the Himalayan Cataract Project. Blindness exerts an incredible toll in the Tigray region of Ethiopia, in terms of both human suffering and adverse economic impact. Due to environmental conditions, malnutrition and vitamin deficiency, ocular infections, trauma and lack of access to care, some of the…
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Reusable, Homemade Feminine Pads: A Simple Intervention to Help Keep Girls in School
In many areas of sub-Saharan Africa, gender parity tends to decline at higher levels of schooling. While girls’ enrollment and completion rates for primary school are typically high, these rates decrease with secondary and tertiary education. Girls may discontinue their studies to devote more time to household chores, to earn extra income by engaging in…
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Notes from a Gender Needs Assessment: Kisumu’s Greatest Resource
The following is a guest blog, authored by Sarah Jaffe, an MCI researcher who is carrying out a Gender Needs Assessment for Kisumu, Kenya. My mobile buzzed in my pocket, and I shifted the crate of Fanta my seatmate had rested on my lap to one side. It was my colleague, Ben: “Madame Grace is…
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An Inspirational Conversation with Two School2School "Alums"
I met this weekend with two beautiful Kumasi teens who participated in MCI’s School2School (S2S) exchange 16 months ago, when they were 14. Back then, in March 2009, 7th-graders from Washington DC’s Sidwell Friends School came to Kumasi, Ghana’s second largest city and a Millennium City since 2006, to teach some of their peers about…
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Fostering 21st Century Learning in sub-Saharan Africa
The following is a guest blog, authored by Jim Teicher, Executive Director, CyberSmart! Africa. Disclaimer: The views expressed by the author in this blog do not represent the opinion of the Millennium Cities Initiative, the Earth Institute at Columbia University or any of its professional consultants. How can every school in Africa deliver a 21st-century…
