My friends at the Global Poverty Project have put together this great campaign calling for the end polio.

Polio is a disease which has disabled millions and pulled people further into poverty – has been reduced by 99% over the past 30 years.

Global efforts have delivered incredible progress: immunising more than 2 billion children and saving more than 5 million children from life-long paralysis or death.

But right now the critical work of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative is constrained by a US$590 million funding gap.

Ending polio is the right thing to do – we should take steps to reduce and eliminate debilitating diseases wherever they are.

But beyond that, we need to end polio because:

• It’s a generation defining achievement.
• It’s part of a global movement for justice, and the end of extreme poverty.
• Polio anywhere is a threat everywhere.
• Eradication is cheaper than containment.

Check out this great animation they have put together and sign your name to rid polio off the face of the earth at www.theendofpolio.com

How is this for some Living Proof – MORE THAN 500 MILLION PEOPLE HAVE BEEN REACHED WITH ANTIMALARIAL BEDNETS IN THE PAST 2 YEARS ALONE.

It’s easy to read, but here is a nice little interactive map by the Bill and Malinda Gates Foundation that visually represents the statistics. It shows how far the international community has come, for example saving 580,547 lives in Nigeria, and how much work we still need to do to completely eradicate this deadly yet preventable disease.

There are 3 main components to this infographic: you can view the progress of individual countries, an explanation of the life saving methods that are used, and a comparison of the number of global lives saved with and without increased interventions such as bed nets, case management and anti-malarial drugs.

You can find the interactive infographic here. Please take a look and pass it on to everyone you know..

This Blog can also be found one the ONE website

Facebook recently changed the way profile pages look, usually the whole web goes in uproar on facebook changes and demands it to go back. Facebook never does. This time I actually like the new changes.

Now Facebook users are coming up with some seriously creative ways on pimping out their facebook profile pages.

French Artist Alexandre Oudin  has been credited as the creater of the craze. Check out some very cool examples on Mashable.com

So what does this mean for campaigning? I created in my very limited graphic design knowledge a simple message on Malaria

My Facebook Profile

This is a very creative way of grabbing attention on a cause that you care about to your facebook friends. Why not give it a try and send me the links and I will post them up here on the blog.

Every year I attritbute a year to something.

2009 was my year of the adventurer.

2010 was the year of inspirer.

2011 is going to be the year of believer.

Talent Award Winner

On November 23rd 2010 it was a great honour for me to win the Mosaic Talent award 2010 for the interfaith category.

Mosaic is one of Prince Charles charities to empower young people and and harness the power of positive thinking.

The Mosaic Talent Awards 2010 were held at the iconic Battersea Power Station, to recognise, celebrate and nurture the amazing talent of young Muslims, from all over the country and beyond.  Over 550 guests attended the event in the presence of Guest of Honour, HRH Prince El Hassan bin Talal of Jordan.

To be win such an award was a complete honour, I couldn’t have won such an award without the Faith Act Fellows who shared this journey with me and the staff who trained me and planted the seeds into the interfaith leader I am today. 12 months ago I didn’t have a clue about interfaith and accepting the award tonight made me pause and reflect on how far I have grown. It is because of this I dedicate the award to you all for teaching and inspiring me, for me it is the fellowship that won the award and I was just the name on paper that went up to accept it I hope you all feel as proud of your yourselves as I do.

Former Prime Minister Tony Blair of the Tony Blair Faith Foundation said

“I am delighted that Nadeem, an alumni of the Foundation’s Faiths Act Fellowship programme has won the Mosaic Interfaith award. This award celebrates his achievement as an interfaith leader during the fellowship where he encouraged young people in London to come together in multi-faith action against extreme poverty. This is well deserved recognition for a tireless proponent of interfaith harmony who puts his faith into action every day in local and national campaigns around the Millennium Development Goals and I know Nadeem will continue to be an inspirational interfaith leader in the years to come”

My journey into interfaith work started as a Faith Act Fellow in a brilliant program that brings together young people to fight global poverty. The next round of fellows are currently being recruited applications close Dec 31 2010 you can apply here.

Matt and I with the rest of the Copenhagen delegation from the CMYF

I met Matt last year as we took an ‘environmental pilgrimage’ to Copenhagen for the UN Climate Change summit as part of the Christian Muslim Youth Forum. Matt is a catholic and a real interfaith hero for me on a real grass roots level, every time I meet him he inspires me in a new way.

Last week at MADE in Europe we has our Politics of Poverty Event with Platform2 (Christian Aid) and Tzedek (Jewish Faith based NGO). Matt was in attendace and below his blog of the event. As always this blog can also be found on the MADE in Europe website.

It is good to live in a country where there are plenty of opportunities to engage with important issues and causes in a meaningful way. It is even better that our democratic society affords us the freedom to engage in deep debate about the core issues that matter within the very chambers that policies and laws are discussed and written, policies and laws that can have a great impact on those issues we hold dear.

Such issues are international development and – tied up within that – climate change. It was, then, a good opportunity for me to attend a debate at the Houses of Parliament on these topics. Under the gaze of the portraits and busts of legislators of old, reformers and radicals amongst them, we gathered in a committee room; students, activists, politicians, young people from different faith backgrounds, representatives of volunteering, international development and enterprise, all united for justice and equality.

I was invited to attend by MADE in Europe, an organisation I have known for a while now (they gave me the opportunity last year to go to the Climate Change Summit in Copenhagen). This is, I like to think, a perfect vignette of the sort of partnerships and levels of cooperation the world really needs to secure in order to trigger real and lasting positive change; I am a Christian, MADE in Europe is a Muslim organisation and yet I always feel that I am a member of their network of young people.

The speakers at the debate were Mark Lazarowicz, Labour MP and part of the Shadow Team for International Development, Deborah Doane from the World Development Movement and Daniel Vockins from the 10:10 Initiative. It was a great shame that the confirmed representative from the Government was not able to attend as this would have been a good opportunity to air passionate but informed opinions on these issues to someone with the power to implement them. As it happened, the debate functioned more as a cafe of ideas, which is to say that it was still highly interesting and very useful.

We discussed the Millennium Development Goals, the International Development Budget and the potential for a “Green Recovery” for the UK’s economy. Of particular urgency was the message that funding for preventing and mitigating climate change should not be sucked out of the development budget. While the two issues are interconnected, climate change is an issue that also significantly affects developed countries and should thus receive additional investment, especially if the strategy might focus on developing a green economy for our country, enabling truly beneficial technology transfer to developing countries and complimenting the effects of the development budget.

These are not new arguments, but the international community has been dragging its heels on this issue for a while now. The sense of impatience and frustration in the room was very evident. Whether it is the spectre of climate change, which has been eclipsed by the economic meltdown, or funding development and poverty reduction, which has been refocused on securing the volatile countries that foster terrorist movements, World governments have slipped in their adherence to the moral principles that are supposed to underlie the purposes of international cooperation. Perhaps, as was discussed at this debate, the culture that produced the number crunching Millennium Development Goals needs to be reconsidered. Perhaps we need to look at the underlying causes of the problems our world faces, causes such as a bloated and unjust global economic system, rather than set targets. Development cannot be measured by numbers alone. A culture needs to shift to allow progress to occur.

So the question is left hanging; how can we begin to change that culture? It seems a rather hefty burden to bear and as a young person I am mindful that it is the responsibility of my generation to come up with an answer. A suggestion was teased out of the meeting, that we should never underestimate the influence society has on government and that our continued and increased participation in the processes that invite dialogue between government and society is one way to keep these issues on the agenda and demand a change in approach, if that is what is deemed as required.

So the meeting marked not the end of the road, but the beginning of one. We have a long way to go, but there are a lot of people who care and a lot of people who do great work towards creating a fairer and more just world. Many of these people were in this meeting. I think that as long as such opportunities for dialogue and cooperation exist, there is hope.

Matthew Youde is 22, lives in London and is the Youth Coordinator for the United Religions Initiative, a global network of interfaith groups working for daily and enduring interfaith cooperation and understanding. He is also the Treasurer for the Young Christian Workers, a Catholic Movement that aims to train young people in the UK to be the agents of change in their lives, the lives of others and in their communities.

This week leaders of the world are gathering to discuss progress on the Millenium Development Goals On Saturday 18th September 2010 we gathered together outside of Parliament in Westminster London to stand up and make noise for the MDGs – No longer will we sit in silence. World leaders hear our call and keep to your promises on fighting global poverty. Check out the video below

Big shout out to Bond for organising the protest and much love to MADE in Europe who are awesome is every single way.

Last Year Joey Shapiro lead a group of Faiths Act Fellows to Ifakara in Tanzania. We spent a lot of time at the St Francis Hospital meeting patients and hearing their stories.

Joey has just recently become a father – he writes on Maternal health in the USA and in Africa and reflects on his faith as a Jew on being thankful to what we have. This blog can also be found on the MADE in Europe website

My son Simon came early. Over a month, in fact. Born on the 21st of August 2010, we had not finished preparing for his arrival, emotionally or logistically.

He came on a Friday night, quite unexpectedly. My wife woke me at 1.30am and knew something wasn’t right. In the back of our heads, we knew Simon was on his way, but a month early? It was frightening. Though I did not say it out loud, I knew a premature birth could be a recipe for disaster and needed to steady myself for whatever potential pitfalls lay ahead for all of us.

St Francis Hospital Ifakara

The birth was easy (as easy as a natural birth can be…easy is not the right word; ask any labouring mother and she will assure you that labour is beyond difficult). My amazing wife laboured for less than seven hours, and out he came, beautiful and bellowing to announce to the world his arrival.

But he was early and he was small and the doctors didn’t want to take any chances. So he was put in the intensive care unit, just to make certain he was fully developed. Precautionary, they told us, but still. I was frightened the first time we entered the intensive care unit to see him. I had expected a morbid place, with the chill of parents expecting the worst for their underdeveloped neonates hooked up to blinking and beeping machines, tubes everywhere.

But it was the opposite. The unit in the hospital in which Simon was delivered was set up as a place of warmth and comfort. The hallways were clean and bright, the staff upbeat and optimistic and friendly. The environment was an entirely nurturing one, and not once did I ever doubt that Simon was receiving the best care possible and would come home with us at the soonest moment possible.

Simon spent six days in intensive care. Every day, we came in the morning to feed him at 8am and stayed into the evening. As we walked the halls in the intensive care unit (and the rest of the beautifully appointed, luxury hotel of a hospital) throughout the week, I often thought about how lucky we were to have such care and amenities at our disposal; that our son, though a month early, was receiving the best care possible and would no doubt survive; how privileged that made us and how lucky we were, as an accident of our births, to live where and when we did that we were able to provide for little Simon in this way.

And, immediately in those moments, I often thought about the time I had spent in Tanzania not one year earlier. In the towns of Ifakara and Bagamoyo, in decrepit maternity wards and makeshift hospital wings, I met new and expectant mothers not receiving even a fraction of the care that my wife and Simon had. How would Simon and his mother fare in such a setting, arriving a month early? Why did we deserve the care and support we received and the mothers and children in the wards in Tanzania not? Doesn’t every mother and child deserve a fighting chance to be born in safety?

Simon arrived in advance of the Jewish High Holidays. On Rosh HaShana, the Jewish New Year, we prayer together the prayer Una Tanetokef, which includes a line that asks, “who will be born this year and who will die?” My mother-in-law, over a festive family meal, observed how she was thinking that, in retrospect, she realised that very line a year before in fact referred to Simon who could not wait until after Rosh HaShana to be born. And though I found the thought heartwarming, my mind was drawn back to Ifakara and Bagamoyo. Who would die this year? And why can’t we live in a world where child and maternal health are enough of a priority that we don’t need to wonder if a baby born this year in the global south will also be one of the souls that dies, too?

As Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement begins this evening, I will be taking stock of my life and my year. I know I’ll be thinking about my son and praying thankfully for his early yet safe arrival. But I will also be thinking about all those mothers and children that don’t have the access to the same quality of care Simon received and praying for a world in which the birth of a child can be a happy occasion rather a traumatic event for everyone.

By Joey Shapiro

East London mosque celebrates it’s 100th anniversary on the weekend of Eid ul fitr 2010. It is also the weekend of the Jewish New Year. The East London Field St synagogue opened its doors to the Muslim community.

Sorry about the sound quality I was in the middle of a street party. Will add subtitles.

This is my video message I shot for the Tony Blair Faith Foundation for the day of Eid ul Fitr. Now more then ever as the word is divided there is a greater call for faith communities to unite to tackle the world biggest problems.