Help the world's poorest

01 December 2004

The Independent

Help the world's poorest people to take their destiny into their own hands

At last, some good news out of those parts of the world where news is so often bad. Green Shoots, The Independent's Christmas charity appeal, starts from the premise that, even in troubled lands, there are positive developments that are all too frequently overlooked and all too rarely helped. We wanted this year's appeal to have a feel-good quality.

Over the next five weeks we will be highlighting how simple solutions are helping the world's poorest people to take their destiny into their own hands. The three charities we have chosen all have a "green" tinge. They are encouraging sustainable development in impoverished countries. They are all trying to extract maximum fertility from the land at minimum cost in resources. And they are all helping communities to help themselves.

In some cases, such as Mozambique and Rwanda, the charity projects have brought about reconciliation between warring groups after bitter civil wars. WaterAid, the biggest charity of our three, funds projects to provide clean water, sanitation and hygiene to the poorest people in 15 countries - most of them in Africa. It digs wells, installs pumps and lobbies governments on behalf of citizens who are in thrall to the tyranny of the water vendor.

The introduction of a modest water pump in an African village, or a walled communal latrine in a Bangladeshi slum, can transform lives. Clean water can foster the empowerment of rural women, who may have to walk miles every day to find a well - and when they find it, it may be polluted. Clean water can also help to eradicate the waterborne diseases that claim so many of their children's lives.

Send a Cow, our second, smaller charity, does exactly what it so charmingly says. Its simple winning formula is to donate livestock to communities in seven African countries, enabling those with nothing to call their own an opportunity to work their way out of poverty. A cow, or three goats, produces enough milk to sustain a family and what is left over can be sold. The manure fertilises kitchen gardens, increasing yields and producing vegetables for market. In countries where the incidence of HIV-Aids is the highest in the world, Send a Cow has transformed the lives of families who have lost their breadwinners to the disease.

The third charity is the Namibia-based Integrated Rural Development and Nature Conservation, which aims to convince governments that local communities - rather than national leaders - are the front line in conserving wildlife. In Namibia, which is home to some of the world's most spectacular wildlife, it has shown the ineffectiveness of the "fences and fines" theory - that wildlife should be contained and those who breach the fences should be punished. The charity has given Namibians a stake in their own future helping them conserve the animals that compete with them for scarce natural resources. Its grassroots movement is now flourishing nationwide.

In today's Independent, the BBC journalist Fergal Keane tells of his experience in Sudan, where he witnessed the horror of police terrorising refugees.

We know that Independent readers care deeply about Africa and the suffering of so many of its people. Testimony to this was the extraordinarily generous response to our Darfur appeal this year, which we launched to help mitigate the consequences of the violence and ethnic cleansing that was, and still is, going on in that part of Sudan. Disgracefully, the international community has shown itself powerless, or reluctant, to act.

All our three charities defy this dispiriting backdrop with their messages of hope. As Fergal Keane says, they start out by recognising the fundamental dignity of those they seek to help. They do not offer hand-outs; they do not create any culture of dependency. They were set up to accomplish precisely the reverse. At a time when the future of the planet is threatened by climate change, we will show that in small but determined ways, the greening of even the poorest countries is not only possible, but is already taking place.