Daniel Ho’s Musings

Clean drinking water in sub-Saharan Africa is sometimes available only about a hundred feet underground. Even if someone drilled a hole, the rural communities often cannot afford the fuel to run the pumps to bring up the water.

So, the idea here is to install a pump disguised as a merry-go-round. The more children play on the merry-go-round, the more water is brought up to the surface. This invention especially benefits young girls who are often sent to fetch a day’s water from iffy sources at great distances.

For people that say this won’t work…they obviously haven’t spent an afternoon at a playground watching kids play.

This is the 2nd part of a commencement speech that Bill Gates gave at Harvard. How can MILLIONS of children die of preventable diseases today without anyone doing anything about it? Why this requires “creative capitalism.”

Part 3 talks about complexity and why people don’t act. Worth taking a look.

Kiva.org is billed as “Loans that change lives…”

I love the idea of being able to loan small sums (microloans/microcredit) as an individually, or as a collective, to specific entrepreneurs in developing countries. This empowers individuals and sometimes entire villages in some of the poorest areas of the world to run businesses and lift themselves out of poverty.

Here’s something that you can do as an individual to help. Will you?

Kiva.org — check it out!

Although fairly widely reported, one of the biggest stories of 2007 in terms of its affect on the world is the revision of the estimate of China’s economy based on “Purchasing Power Parity” or PPP.

The surprising news from the World Bank is that based on less of a difference in domestic prices in China vs countries such as the US, the size of China’s economy is 40% smaller than previously thought. This change means that instead of having an estimated economy of $10-trillion, China now has an economy of $6-trillion.

With what amounts to an “accounting change”, $4 Trillion of GDP was vaporized! India didn’t fare any better as their economy was downgraded by 40%, and Sub-Saharan Africa was downgraded by 25%

Why does this matter? Well, this change in estimating GDP can be world changing.

- For entrepreneurs and companies marketing to China and India’s middle class, well um…that slice of the pie has become MUCH smaller. This could mean bad news in terms of attracting foreign investment into these countries.
- The fears of the Chinese economy overrunning the US economy by 2012 seem severely overblown now.
- Billions of people being poorer than previously thought means that the richer countries have even a larger responsibility to help than before.
- China’s political stability may be even more fragile with an aging population and no social support system in place, this spells trouble when the available resources are even scarcer than once thought.
- With Sub-Saharan Africa being poorer than previously thought, a 25% downgrade likely means that the already tenuous UN Millennium Development Goals have even less of a chance of succeeding.

Buckle up boys and girls…this is going to be one hell of a ride!

I’m really interested in checking out this charity a bit more. It looks like a cause worth supporting. Great idea…The Motorcycle Doctors.

Via Good Magazine

What good is a hospital if you can’t get to it? And what good are vaccines if they never reach the people who need them? For millions of Africans living in rural villages far from medical facilities and inaccessible to four-wheeled vehicles, isolation can lead to disease and death. Riders for Health, a U.K.-based organization with roots in the world of high-speed motorcycle racing, is determined to change that. The organization equips local health workers with motorcycles, trains them in extreme off-road riding, and supplies the parts, maintenance, and fuel.

Riders for Health operates national programs in Nigeria, Zimbabwe, and The Gambia, and advises NGOs in Kenya and Tanzania. They are so effective—each rider can serve up to 20,000 people—that The Gambia has given RFH responsibility for all its health vehicles.

Sulayman Suso, a health worker in The Gambia’s Central River Region, refers to his cherry-red Yamaha AG100 motorbike as his second wife. When “she” is not feeling well, he says, his patients suffer. By keeping Suso’s second wife healthy, and by outfitting dozens of others like Suso, RFH hopes to extend health care beyond hospitals and clinics to the doorsteps of every Gambian—or any other African—in need.