Slums // Current TV

Voice in the Wilderness: Amenities in Poor Households - America vs. India

AMERICA POOR IS HIGH CLASS COMPARED TO OTHER NATIONS

charkeseharvey
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Dharavi: Reaching for the sky

Welcome to Dharavi where residents are reaching for the sky. They want Dharavi to... more

worldwrite
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3 months ago
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"Marathon Boy" Shown by HBO

This is my first post, but anyways I wanted to share the word about the documentary... more

suziequzie1025
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"We are not dirt": Forced evictions in Egypt's informal settlements

More than 12 million people live in Egypt's sprawling informal settlements... more

AmnestyInternational
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In 2010 the United Nations calculated that there were about 827m people living in slums—almost as many people as were living on the planet in Marx and Engels’s time—and predicted that the number might double by 2030.

Last year Vijay Govindarajan, of Dartmouth College’s Tuck School of Business, along with Christian Sarkar, a marketing expert, issued a challenge in a Harvard Business Review blog: why not apply the world’s best business thinking to housing the poor? Why not replace the shacks that blight the lives of so many poor people, thrown together out of cardboard and mud, and prone to collapsing or catching fire, with more durable structures? They laid down a few simple guidelines. The houses should be built of mass-produced materials tough enough to protect their inhabitants from a hostile world. They should be equipped with the basics of civilised life, including water filters and solar panels. They should be “improvable”, so that families can adapt them to their needs. And they should cost no more than $300.

Mr Govindarajan admits that the $300 figure was partly an attention-grabbing device. But he also argues that it has a certain logic. Muhammad Yunus, the founder of Grameen Bank, has calculated that the average value of the houses of people who have just escaped from poverty is $370. Tata Motors has also demonstrated the value of having a fixed figure to aim at: the company would have found it more difficult to produce the Tata Nano if it had simply been trying to produce a “cheap” car rather than a “one lakh” car (about $2,200).
The attention-grabbing certainly worked. The blog was so inundated with positive responses that a dedicated website, 300house.com, was set up, which has attracted more than 900 enthusiasts and advisers from all over the world. On April 20th Mr Govindarajan launched a competition inviting people to submit designs for a prototype of the house.

Why has a simple blog post led to such an explosion of creativity? The obvious reason is that “frugal innovation”—the art of radically reducing the cost of products while also delivering first-class value—is all the rage at the moment. General Electric has reduced the cost of an electrocardiogram machine from $2,000 to $400. Tata Chemicals has produced a $24 purifier that can provide a family with pure water for a year. Girish Bharadwaj, an engineer, has perfected a technique for producing cheap footbridges that are transforming life in rural India.
http://www.economist.com/node/18618271?story_id=18618271&fsrc=nlw|hig|04-28-2011|editors_highlightsIn 2010 the United Nations calculated that there were about 827m people living in... more

ampersand
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Gogol Bordello - Roma punks rise at the right time + free Discography

Made up of migrants from various countries, including Russia, China and Uruguay, Gogol... more

worrg
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Salil Shetty interviewed by Riz Khan

An interview with Salil Shetty, Secretary General of Amnesty International on Riz... more

AmnestyInternational
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Trainset Ghetto: Ultra Realistic Miniature Slum Landscapes

“Trainset Ghetto” is a series of photographs by Peter Feigenbaum that... more

disembedded
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TEDTalks: Charles Leadbeater: Education Innovation in the Slums [video]

Charles Leadbeater went looking for radical new forms of education -- and found them... more

GrrlScientist
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Bamako, Mali: Bright Young People & The Trash Brick

In Bamako we meet and document the work of the Mali Health Project (MHOP), a... more

WhatTookYouSoLong
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1 year ago
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Save Mumbai from an ecological disaster - Petitions

http://www.petitiononline.com/mangomum/ http://www.petitiononline.com/mumbai07/... more

indian1
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around the blogs: insurgents blowing themselves up, new york film festival, punk rock docs, flickr's app, copenhagen, and patrick swayze

Current News Holy cow. If you haven't been reading Andrew Fitzgerald's... more

mario_a
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2 years ago
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Kenya begins to dismantle Kibera slums

The BBC reports that Kenya began it's first efforts to clear the Kibera slums... more

afitzgerald
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Worlds longest toilet queue - video

This year in Kenya the day was marked in Soweto East where hundreds of Kibera... more

stupidy
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1 year ago
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Helping people in the Nairobi slums

The startling truth about how a small investment can go a long way in improving... more

SharedInterest
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Man made Mumbai

WORLDbytes first overseas report is from Mumbai in India – the largest city in... more

worldwrite
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1 year ago
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Kibera: Not a Drop to Drink

NAIROBI, Kenya--The long rainy season in Kenya has begun and sudden storms regularly... more

CLP
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2 years ago
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Shift to Small Farms Could Help Solve Social, Environmental Crises

The epic blow-up at Copenhagen was ultimately about something very simple. It was... more

fordlyn
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2 years ago
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Water for Slums: CSR in Practice

Kate Tighe heads into a slum in Angono, Rizal, in the Philippines, to witness first... more

NankinYP
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2 years ago
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How the Church can Save the State

As we walk out of Kibera, the world’s largest slum, we leave behind the burning smells of feces, dead animals and waste. The sound of the 400 children playing at the school slowly fades with each step, as we weave around “poop river.” We have made our way out of the slum and the group's psyche mirrors the slight incline of the terrain as we shift from grim to cheery. We stop on a one-acre plot, the hills peak. As we turn back we’re overlooking the endless sea of tin-roofed shacks that make up Kibera and the green, opulent land that lay around it.

I am not a particularly religious person, definitely not someone who goes to church every Sunday and never was. The only downfall to going on my lifelong dream trip to Africa was that the group leader, Sandy Baird, was “concerned it won’t be a trip you’d enjoy,” he emailed. I was introduced to MANNA Worldwide and chairman Sandy Baird through a high school friend via e-mail and at the time only read that it was a non-profit organization, which raises money to feed needy children. I later discovered the group traveling to Tanzania and Kenya consisted of my non-religious self, and 15 Baptists from Houston, TX, but that wasn’t going to stop me. Once I’d seen pictures of my friend’s experience, I too wanted to smell, taste and feel all things Africa. I too wanted to do my part.

MANNA Worldwide was created in 2001 with the help of Sandy Baird and his wife Karen, who continue to serve on the original board to this day. In 1992 the Baird’s took a trip with best friends Vernon and Mary Smith, each couple bringing along their two young children. The families started their trip in Arusha, Tanzania where the Smiths related so much to the people’s moral and spiritual beliefs, they later decided to call it home. They have lived in Arusha for nearly 17 years where they raised their two children and have worked religiously, both physically and mentally, to help build the “Bible Baptist Academy” church, school and MANNA Clinic. In a matter of 7 years, the Smiths significant presence in Arusha has helped create jobs for locals, medicine for the community, a belief system and hope for a better future for the children.

The families trip continued on to Nairobi, Kenya where Sandy and Karen Baird were anxious to visit a place they’d heard so much about, one of the world’s largest slums: Kibera. The second anyone enters Kibera you immediately notice the strong divide between Nairobi, the largest city in Kenya, and Kibera where 1.5 million slum dwellers live within a 1.5 mile radius. The Baird's knew they wanted to do something, but “what” and “how” are the most common questions organizations ask when faced with the daunting task of helping Kibera. Some people give up with helplessness, others find a quick fix, but over time the Baird's saw how their belief system was instilled in Arusha and decided to implement the same plan in Kibera.

Before the Baird’s came to town, the Baptist church and school children would not wear their uniforms, got into regular fights and wouldn’t take education seriously. The school had lost all faith and faced extinction when MANNA began to partner with the Baird’s and changed the name of the school, appropriately, to “New Hope.”

The “New Hope Baptist Church and School” is at its maximum capacity with 400 students caged in a 2,000 square foot radius surrounded by barbwire fence and a gate. With average salaries of 1 USD daily, most parents can’t afford the 5 USD annual tuition for their children to attend school five days a week and be fed three meals per day. MANNA Worldwide has recently began scholarship programs for passing students, helping some to reach a college level education.

Relying heavily on active members such as the Baird’s, MANNA Worldwide receives zero government funding and gives 97.4% of its income directly to the children. The Baird’s have raised money, purchased and are now contracting builders for the new church and school site to rest on theAs we walk out of Kibera, the world’s largest slum, we leave behind the burning... more

Jacey
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2 years ago
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