Training Opportunity: The Tribal Emergency Management Association

iTEMA
The Tribal Emergency Management Association
October 23, 2012 -- 12:00 Noon Eastern

EMForum.org is pleased to host a one hour presentation and interactive discussion Wednesday, October 23, 2013, beginning at 12:00 Noon Eastern time (please convert to your local time). Our topic will be the recently founded Tribal Emergency Management Association (iTEMA). Among its activities, the association supports education and training, and earlier this month announced a partnership with the University of Nebraska at Omaha for a certificate program in tribal emergency management.

Our guest will be Jake Heflin, President and Interim-Chief Executive Officer of iTEMA. An enrolled member of the Osage Nation, Mr. Heflin has been involved with emergency services for over 22 years and serves as an adjunct instructor for FEMA/EMI  teaching tribal emergency management, CERT Train-the-Trainer, and CERT Program Manager throughout the country.

Please make plans to join us, and see the Background Page for links to related resources and participant Instructions. On the day of the program, use the Webinar Login link not more than 30 minutes before the scheduled time. 

As always, please feel free to extend this invitation to your colleagues. 

In partnership with Jacksonville State University, EIIP offers CEUs for attending EMForum.org Webinars.  See http://www.emforum.org/CEUs.htm for details.

Is your organization interested in becoming an EIIP Partner? Click here to review our Mission, Vision, and Guiding Principles and access the Memorandum of Partnership.

Date and time:	Wednesday, October 23, 2013 12:00 pm Eastern Daylight Time (Indiana, GMT-04:00) Change time zone
Panelist(s) Info:	Our guest will be Jake Heflin, President and Interim-Chief Executive Officer of iTEMA.
Duration:	1 hour
Description:	You may login at the right 30 minutes in advance of the scheduled time. The Tribal Emergency Management Association Our topic will be the recently founded Tribal Emergency Management Association (iTEMA). Among its activities, the association supports education and training, and earlier this month announced a partnership with the University of Nebraska at Omaha for a certificate program in tribal emergency management.

International Food Policy Research Institute

As an emergency manager within your EOC (Emergency Operations Center) consideration for your Emergency Support Function (ESF) that handles water, and food should think 'outside of the box' that each of these areas may become a natural disaster within itself that will require coordination and our expertise in planning, and long-term recovery efforts for our communities.

http://us1.campaign-archive2.com/?u=93ac90ba409f6d49d0e4ba408&id=07bf029f20&e=78ad2d805a



NEW@IFPRI

Upcoming Events
		Policy seminar—2013 Global Hunger Index The Challenge of Hunger: Building Resilience to Achieve Food & Nutrition Security. Speakers: Connell Foley (Concern Worldwide), Derek Headey (IFPRI), Wolfgang Jamann (Welthungerhilfe) - event/webcast Friday, Oct 18, 12:15 pm.
		Strengthening Resilience of Smallholder Farmers 2020 roundtable discussion with Tom Arnold, Kathy Spahn, and Shenggen Fan - event/webcast Monday, Oct 21, 4:00pm.
		Cash, Food, or Vouchers? IFPRI-WFP Policy Seminar “Cash, Food or Vouchers? Evidence from a Four-Country Experimental Study” with John Hoddinott (IFPRI) and Annalisa Conte (WFP) - event/webcast Wednesday, Oct 23, 12:15pm.

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Books
		Biosafety and GM Crops Book on methodology for including socioeconomic considerations in regulatory decisionmaking.
		Genetically Modified Crops in Africa Book on the benefits, costs, and risks for African countries of adopting GM crops.

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Annual Report
		A4NH's First Year CGIAR Program on Agriculture for Nutrition and Health Annual Report.

CNN: Where does aid money really go....

 http://edition.cnn.com/2013/10/09/opinion/where-does-aid-money-really-go/index.html?hpt=iaf_t3  

Where does aid money really go -- and what is it spent on?

By Charles Lwanga Ntale, Special to CNN

October 9, 2013 -- Updated 1239 GMT (2039 HKT)                                          

People in Jonglei state, South Sudan, unload aid from the U.N. World Food Program in January 2012.

• Impact of international aid is hard to measure, says Charles Lwanga Ntale
• large amounts of aid money never actually leave rich countries, he adds
• But extreme poverty cannot be ended without international aid

Editor's note: Charles Lwanga Ntale is director for Africa forDevelopment Initiatives, a not-for profit organization that focuses on the role of information in ending poverty by 2030. Investments to End poverty can be downloaded at www.devinit.org

(CNN) -- What is the value and impact of international aid? In an era of global austerity, this is a question that is frequently posed by policymakers and the citizens they represent.

The truth is, it is actually quite hard to measure. But there are important questions about both the quantity and quality of aid that must be answered.

Charles Lwanga Ntale, director for Africa for Development Initiatives

Contrary to popular perception, aid is not one homogenous entity or a single transfer of money from donor to recipient countries. The term "international aid" actually covers a wide variety of things, including food and commodities, advice and training, and debt relief.

In 2011 -- the last year we have comprehensive data for -- total development aid from rich countries stood at nearly $150 billion, according to the Investments to End Poverty report. Only $59 billion identifiably involves the transfer of actual cash to, for example, recipient governments, NGOs operating on the ground or special project funds.

Aid in kind makes up another $25 billion. Most of this is food aid, which is used to tackle acute hunger -- but even this form of aid is not without controversy. Many donors avoid shipping actual food to developing countries, aware that it destroys local markets and harms local farmers.

Research demonstrates that food aid can be poor value for money, especially when food grown in donor countries is shipped to the developing world. Sorghum shipped from the United States is 200% more expensive than it is in Chad and almost 100% more than in Sudan, according to Development Initiatives calculations. Despite this, the United States and Japan continue to make extensive use of food shipments.

Read: Is your old t-shirt hurting African economies?

Large amounts of aid money never actually leave rich countries. 
Charles Lwanga Ntale, Development Initiatives

Perhaps even more surprising is the fact that large amounts of aid money never actually leave rich countries.

As much as $22 billion -- or 20% of bilateral aid spending -- is spent on activities in donor countries or put towards the cancellation of debt. This includes funds to cover housing, food and other services for the first 12 months of refugees' stay in the donor country. It also includes public spending on universities to cover the costs for students from developing countries. In 2011, $4.5 billion was spent on refugee costs, $3.5 billion on university costs and around $7.5 billion on debt relief.

As important as these expenditures may be, they do not result in any transfer of resources to developing nations. These schemes may of course be beneficial to recipient countries in the long term -- for example, contributing to capacity development if students return to their countries. But it is undeniable that these schemes are at odds with the common perception of aid as financial support transferred from donor to recipient countries to fight poverty.

These different elements of aid obviously have very different effects on economic development and growth. A dollar of cash will have a very different impact to a dollar's worth of food or a dollar's worth of a consultant's time. It is difficult to understand just how bundling all of these items into one lump sum can allow us to draw meaningful and reliable conclusions about the value of aid.

Read: Free water in Britain could help hydrate Africa

This lack of clarity was part of the motivation for Investments to End Poverty -- a major new report that analyzes aid in all of its complexity. AtDevelopment Initiatives we reviewed each individual record of foreign aid from OECD donors over the period 2006-2011 -- over a million rows of data. Now, for the first time ever, we can see just how much aid flows between specific countries and, crucially, what that aid consists of.

The results are striking. For example, according to our calculations, Italy and Denmark both gave very similar levels of bilateral aid, just above $2 billion, in 2011. But almost 70% of Italy's aid stayed in the country, spent on refugee costs and debt relief, whereas around 70% of Denmark's aid resulted in a transfer of resources to developing countries.

On the recipient side, some countries that appear to receive considerable funds in fact receive a lot less than advertised. Our research found that of the $7.5 billion in aid reported as given to the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2011, more than $5 billion was not transferred to that country, and consisted instead of debt relief.

All of this matters because we are at a crossroads in international development. In the last few decades, we have seen unprecedented progress in alleviating poverty, as recognised by world leaders meeting at the United Nations General Assembly in New York in September. There is a growing consensus that we can end extreme poverty by 2030.

Read: President Sirleaf on ending poverty

The truth is that we cannot meet this goal without international aid. While FDI and remittances undoubtedly contribute to economic growth in developing countries, aid is the only international resource flow which can be targeted explicitly to improve the lives of the poorest people around the world.

In sub-Saharan Africa alone, 400 million people live in extreme poverty and require interventions that are targeted and complementary to existing support to lift them out of it. Without the support of international aid, most poor people will be left behind.

If we want to maximize the impact and reach of international aid, we need to ensure that every dollar is spent as efficiently as possible. We can only do this with better information and a clear understanding. Then policymakers in both donor and recipient countries can make better and more informed decisions, and civil society can better monitor progress and hold them to account.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Charles Lwanga Ntale.

MWCOG: Climate and Energy 2012 Progress Report

Check with your local government for similar reports.

http://ht.ly/pHpBx

Climate and Energy 2012 Progress Report Publication Date: 10/9/2013 Publication Number: 20137468  2012 Progress Report details the extensive work done by area governments in Metropolitan Washington to advance regional climate and energy goals. The report is issued by COG’s Climate, Energy and Environment Policy Committee (CEEPC), which works to ensure that the region meets the goals established in the 2008 National Capital Region Climate Change Report and Region Forward.

The Future of Democracy & Development in Africa and the Caribbean

Press Release

Contact: Don Rojas

Phone: 410-844-1031

Email: donjbrojas@gmail.com

African and Caribbean Leaders to Speak at IBW Symposium in Washington, DC

Democracy, Development, Reparations on the Agenda

Washington, DC, October 9, 2013 – Dr. Ralph Gonsalves, current Prime Minister of St. Vincent and the Grenadines and Hon. Pedro Pires, former President of the Republic of Cape Verde will deliver keynote addresses to an international symposium on The Future of Democracy & Development in Africa and the Caribbean at the Metropolitan AME Church, one of Washington DC’s most historic African-American institutions (1518 M Street, NW). 

Members of the US Congressional Black Caucus, ambassadors from the African and Caribbean diplomatic corps, along with prominent academics, policy experts, journalists and activists will participate in the October 17-18 symposium organized by the Institute of the Black World 21^st Century (IBW), a research, policy and advocacy group focused on issues that impact Black countries and Black communities around the world.

PM Gonsalves will speak at the Opening Session on October 17 at 7 pm and as a leading proponent of the growing reparations movement in the Caribbean region, he is expected to draw connections between future socio-economic development and the current demands of CARICOM (the 15-nation Caribbean community of states) for reparations from European countries.  This session is free and open to the public.

CARICOM leaders at their summit meeting in Trinidad & Tobago in July agreed to the formation of a region-wide Reparations Commission to seek compensation from Europe “for native genocide and enslavement of Africans” during 300-plus years of colonization.” Gonsalves will assume the chairmanship of CARICOM in January 2014.

On October 18, President Pires will speak on the historical experience, evolution and development of the Republic of Cape Verde emphasizing its successes in democratic governance and its unique model of including the diaspora in the country’s governing processes.  This session is By Invitation Only.

For his efforts in good governance when he was president from 1995-2006, Pires was named as the third man to receive the “Ibrahim Prize,” a $5 million award given by Sudanese-born telecommunications executive Mo Ibrahim to African leaders who “raise the bar for good governance and leadership.”

During the symposium, the Institute of the Black World 21^st Century (IBW) will present its Pan-African Service Award to Prime Minister Gonsalves and its Legacy Award to President Pires.

“We are deeply honored to have Prime Minister Gonsalves and President Pires, two esteemed statesmen from Africa and the Caribbean, speak at our symposium,” said Dr. Ron Daniels, President of the IBW. “Their speeches, along with contributions from our other distinguished panelists, will advance IBW’s international work in promoting a process of shaping a progressive 21^st Century vision and practice of non-exploitative, people-oriented, community building and nation building.”

Daniels hopes that the gathering will produce a consensus on a framework and process for on-going and in-depth deliberations on key issues addressed in the symposium, with IBW functioning as the deliberative vehicle. The Institute plans to publish the proceedings as a resource to inform and engage broader audiences in the conclusions and recommendations coming out of the symposium.

“We are delighted to be hosting this important international gathering,” said Rev. Ronald Braxton, senior pastor of the Metropolitan AME Church, which is celebrating its 175^th anniversary this year.

“It is fitting that these deliberations be held here given that several of our members are former US diplomats who have served in Africa and the Caribbean, that Presidents Obama and Clinton have worshiped in our sanctuary in the past and that the church hall where the symposium will be held is named in honor of the great 19^th Century abolitionist and orator Frederick Douglass, who often gave speeches at this church.”

The symposium’s opening session will be streamed live and later archived for on-demand retrieval on IBW’s Web site—http://www.ibw21.org.