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Joan Castro on Engaging Youth to Create Change in the Philippines
›“Exposing young people to information about PHE [population, health, and environment] and food security dynamics can be a powerful tool to steer their interests and commitment to care for the environment and become sexually responsible individuals,” says PATH Foundation Philippines, Inc. (PFPI)’s Joan Castro in this week’s podcast.
PFPI’s Youth EMPOWER project has trained close to 300 “youth peer educators” in the southern Philippines to promote environmentally sustainable livelihoods, clean up the environment, raise awareness of reproductive health, and encourage participation in local government.
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Facing the Future: Empowering Youth to Protect Their Health and Environment in Ghana and the Philippines
›In the Philippines, there are health and development programs that specifically target children, senior citizens, and adults, said Joan Castro, but adolescents are underserved. Nineteen percent of the population is between the ages of 15 and 19, but “they can’t even go to health centers to get the family planning commodities [they desire],” she said. [Video Below]
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Leslie Mwinnyaa: Young People Drive Integrated Development in Ghana’s Ellembelle District
›“I have been amazed and inspired by the youth that I’ve worked with, with their dedication and motivation to help their countrymen and to try to make their communities better places,” says Leslie Mwinnyaa in this week’s podcast.
When Mwinnyaa arrived in the Ellembelle district of coastal Ghana as a Peace Corps volunteer she found a multitude of development challenges. Fishermen routinely use illegal techniques like chemicals, lights, and dynamite that decimate fish stocks; “sand winning” and mangrove clearing increases erosion, leaving communities vulnerable to flooding and reducing breeding grounds for local fish; poor waste and refuse management contributes to disease and poor health; and teenage girls have twice the national rate of pregnancy.
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Combining Health and Food Security in Mozambique: Interview With Pathfinder International’s SCIP Project
›Pathfinder International’s Strengthening Communities Through Integrated Programming (SCIP) is part of a new push towards integrated development – looking at communities as a whole and addressing multiple, traditionally-siloed sectors at once. SCIP integrates both its activities and its funding to great effect in Mozambique.
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What Does It Take to Cooperate? Transboundary Water Management Around the World
›Water is the foundation of human society and will become even more critical as population growth, development, and climate change put pressure on already-shrinking water resources in the years ahead. But will this scarcity fuel conflict between countries with shared waters, as some have predicted, or will it create more impetus for cooperation?
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Clive Mutunga: Addressing Population Growth Can Build Resilience to Climate Change in Kenya and Malawi
›“We know that a number of these countries in Africa have the least to do with climate change in terms of emissions, but they are the most vulnerable, and they are the ones with the least capacity to deal with the effects of climate change,” says Clive Mutunga in this week’s podcast. Mutunga, a senior associate at Population Action International, discusses the results of a study PAI conducted looking at the entwined and related impacts of climate change and population growth, as well as other factors like water scarcity, on Kenya and Malawi.
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Addressing Urban Environmental Health and Maternal Mortality in Developing Countries
›Although climate change is a global phenomenon, developing countries – especially urban centers – are the most vulnerable to the negative health impacts of climate change. In “Urban Governance of Climate Change and Health,” a working paper for the Norwegian Institute for Urban and Regional Research, author Siri Bjerkreim Hellevik reviews the existing literature on governments’ responses to climate change and health in developing urban centers. Overall, Hellevik concludes that there is a substantial need for more research specifically linking the two. She offers several recommendations for urban policymakers to consider, including developing an integrated and multi-level approach, and recognizing that human health and urban development are issues of global justice.
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Cat Lazaroff, Resource Media
Infographic: Women, Reproductive Health at the Center of a Sustainable Future
›The original version of this article, by Cat Lazaroff, appeared on Resource Media.
What does family planning have to do with Earth Day? More than you might think. Family planning gives women and families the tools they need to decide whether and when to have children – and that, quite literally, can mean the world.
Showing posts from category environmental health.