Economic Growth and Trade Ethan tsomides
The current state of global poverty is harsh. Only 7 countries are home to 58% of the worlds hungry people. Ethiopia, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Tanzania, India, China and Pakistan. Over 2.5 billion people worldwide lack the access to improved sanitation. That is over double the population of the United States that don't have access to sanitation. 3 billion people don't have access to a toilet. 22 million infants are not protected from diseases by routine immunization. In the USA disease protection is very easy to get, But in countries that have extreme poverty it is very hard to get vaccines. In 2008, 8.8 million children died before their 5th birthday. In the USA a 5th birthday is just another birthday, in some countries with extreme poverty, it doesn't happen to every family.
There are 5 major problems faced by people living in global poverty: water, food/nutrition, jobs, education and natural disasters. Over 1.1 billion people live on under $1 a day worldwide. Up to 1/10 of people don't have access to fresh clean water in their homes. When people don't have access to clean water they are forced to drink bad water and risk a disease. 3.5 million people die from water based illnesses every year. Malnutrition is a big factor in countries with poverty, in Guatemala 50% of children are malnourished. Some families living on a dollar a day don't have enough money for their families to eat so they become acutley malnourished. Or with less money you don't have access to healthy food and they become chronically malnourished. Jobs are very hard to have and maintain in countries in poverty. Most people are day laborors and farmers. These are both informal jobs, with an informal job comes an inconsistent pay, your kids have to work instead of going to school, and you have no ability to save money because you spend it all on food. 2% of the wealthiest people own 70% of all land in Guatemala, so that leaves all the picked over, un-even and bad soiled land for the poor people to farm on. With bad soil their crops don't grow as fast or as well and they make less money. Most poor families take their kids out of school and make them work so they can raise extra money for food and necessities for their family. Even if school is free they have to make money for their families by working.
US foreign assistance is aid given by the US to other countries to support global peace, security an developmental efforts, and to provide humanitarian relief during times of crisis. The first US foreign aid was shortly after World War 2. George Marshall acted to giving lots of aid to Europe to assist in rebuilding its infrastructure. The US has proposed to spend $34 billion for spending on foreign aid in 2017. The US assists over 100 countries with foreign aid. The major categories of foreign aid spending are: peace and security, democracy, human rights and governance, education and social services, health, economic development, humanitarian assistance, and environment. Peace and security, health and humanitarian assistance are what we spend most of our money on as those are some of the more important matters.
Economic growth creates opportunities impoverished households need to raise their living standards, and also provides countries to expand access to basic services. Even though poverty levels have been reduced in every region of the world and helped accelerate growth in Sub-Saharan Africa, worldwide growth has slowed because of the global economic crisis. The Economic Growth and Trade sector is trying to work on community development in Afghanistan. This program promotes stability and supports the government of Islamic republic of Afghanistan through part time employment and income generation in 29 provinces to reduce the chances that food-insecure and unemployed afghans will join the insurgency. This is an important issue the US should continue solving because if less people are joining the insurgency then the smoother our operations will go. One operation we are working on is rehabilitating infrastructures related to basic services such as flood prevention and drainage systems. The results we are hoping for are designed to support the stabilization and transition to long term development. The results we achieved from this program are: we reduced the gap between local afghan government institutions and their constituents. We put infrastructure projects in some of the most insecure and undeserved communities in Afghanistan. We also implemented more than 3,550 community stabilization projects in Afghanistan.
A USAID program designed to help economic growth and trade is kosovos apperal industry. This new accosciation helps create jobs. In November of 2016 Metush and Nadira Zymberi the couple team behind the scenes of menakon fashion house in the eastern city of Gjilan trained and hired 15 new employees due to a USAID grant. The USAID grant helped the Zymberi's create more job offerings and the economy will grow. Many young fashion designers like Yllka brada are joining up with the team thanks to a fashion show put on by brada in a neighboring town. This company is creating jobs and clothes for many people. Before the startup of this business the economy was struggling with lots of unemployed people. The five year USAID private sector project which is funded by the sweedish international development cooperation agency, has been in full effect since July of 2014 to increase the number of job creations by increasing competitiveness of the Kosovo firms in the growth-ready sectors of apperal. This was extremely effective as many more jobs were created such as the 15 in the Zymberi's store as well as other clothing stores. The apperal industry has added 109 jobs and plans to add 205 more by 2019.
ForeignAssistance.gov. Retrieved from: foreignassistance.gov
"Economic Growth and trade." usaid.gov. Retrieved from https://www.usaid.gov/what-we-do/economic-growth-and-trade
Living on one dollar change series. https://www.usaid.gov/what-we-do/economic-growth-and-trade
Images
http://borgenproject.org/global-poverty/ (two kids talking in a poor town)
https://www.usaid.gov/results-data/success-stories/kosovo’s-apparel-industry-works-together-explore-new-markets (a women on a sewing machine)