Author: Vanessa Avila M.S. In Sub-Saharan Africa 80 percent of the agrarian workers are women and similarly in South Asia 60 percent of the agrarian workers are women. According to the World Bank women farmers raise 90 percent of the food consumed by the poorest, but they only receive 10 percent of credit extended for agricultural loans. The World Bank also reports that women farmers have access to only 5 percent of...more
Author: Vanessa Avila M.S. On February of 2010, the Brazilian congress passed an amendment adding the ‘right to food’ to the country’s constitution. Subsequently, many initiatives were implemented to enforce this new legislative amendment. The right to food, however, did not specify the ‘quality’ or the ‘quantity’ hence the paradoxical relationship between hunger and obesity in countries like Brazil. In a country where food...more
Author: Vanessa Avila M.S. Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) programs are key to social development and have been implemented into many countries like Brazil, Indonesia, and Colombia with great success. The main social factors that are addressed in CCT programs are school attendance, nutrition, and health. The aftereffect of the implementation has been purely measured through the increase in the social developmental...more
Author: Vanessa Avila M.S. SIDS is a term that was coined at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, in June of 1992. Here we are almost two decades later and SIDS continue to be a growing problem in our global economy. The debt that has accumulated in small island developing states is no longer sustainable. The external economic shock is a result of a multitude of causal factors: limited natural...more
Author: Vanessa Avila M.S. The immigration debate took center stage on Sept. 20 as President Barack Obama participated in a forum broadcast live by the Spanish-language network Univision. The debate took place four years after President Obama pledged to push immigration reform during his first year in office — an empty pledge that toyed with the hopes of many Latino Americans living in this country...more
Author: Vanessa Avila M.S. 5,500 people died of AIDS today. These are mothers, fathers, daughters, brothers, sisters, and friends whose stories are often left in the shadows of oblivion. Their voices rendered silent from the ability to live full and productive lives —5,500 voices silenced by a preventable disease...more
