John Green and Bill Gates Are Teaming Up to Bring Clean Water to Ethiopia

Gates has said he'll match $100,000 if Green can raise it

 

Author John Green has gotten a lot of attention for his heart-wrenching novel The Fault in Our Stars, the bestselling young-adult-novel-turned-blockbuster-movie about two young cancer patients who meet in a support group. But most fans who only know of Green for this reason aren’t aware of his philanthropic efforts, in which he leverages his large social media following and YouTube fan base. His charitable fundraisers have been geared at everything from cancer to censorship to malaria, but now he’s tackling clean water with the help of Bill Gates.
Green’s biggest fans call themselves “Nerdfighters,” those whose goal in life is to, in Green’s words, “decrease world suck,” and Gates seems to have joined the bandwagon, pledging to match the $100,000 Green hopes to raise through “nerdfighteria.”

Green traveled to Ethiopia with the Gates Foundation earlier this year and documented the trip in his weekly YouTube video, saying that “with 80% of people living in rural areas,” the need for clean water in health care centers was vital. He also raved about the impression that Gates and his foundation’s CEO Susan Desmond-Hellmann left on him.
“To be honest… I kind of assumed that Bill and Sue were visiting Ethiopia for, like, a photo op,” he says in one of his videos. “But they were there to ask questions, and lots of them…and watching Bill and Sue gravitate away from cameras and toward health workers, it became clear to me that the Gates Foundation fundamental principle that all human lives have equal value isn’t just rhetoric.”
Green and Gates seem to be quite the power duo, with Green writing on Gates’ blog: “My visit to Ethiopia wasn’t sad—at least not merely so. It was invigorating and encouraging. And sad. … But we shouldn’t look away or feel discouraged. We should get to work.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohrqJZcn0iU#action=share

UN fears repeat of Somalia food shortages when thousands died

More than a million lives could be lost three years after last disaster as country suffers poor rains and internal strife

Rukia Nur feeds her child outside her makeshift dwelling after fleeing famine in the Marka Lower Shebbele regions to Mogadishu. Photograph: Feisal Omar/Reuters

Famine is stalking Somalia after a year of poor rains and heavy fighting, with more than a million lives at risk and little sense of urgency from the international community, the top UN envoy to the country warned.
Three years ago food shortages killed 260,000 people.
Many of the warning signs ahead of that disaster have appeared again this year, including poor rainfall, large numbers of people fleeing their homes, and roads blocked by the extremist al-Shabaab group.

Mali's Police Restructuring Will Take Years.

A Malian gendarme at a checkpoint in Gao in March 2013. Mali has three separate internal security forces. REUTERS

BRUSSELS—The ambassador who heads a nascent European Union mission charged with training Mali's police forces depicted a security apparatus in the African country that is almost entirely dysfunctional and will take years to repair.

Albrecht Conze, the German diplomat whose team will ultimately total 75 people, said Monday that members of Mali's police, gendarmerie and National Guard have for years been selected for reasons other than merit, leaving the forces badly crippled.

"These three forces are not in good shape right now," Mr. Conze said. The officers have little knowledge of police work, he said, and "training is lacking everywhere."

He added that "the gangrene of other considerations has been creeping in over a long period of time."

The specialists now trying to determine what the Mali police need most, Mr. Conze said, have "come to the conclusion that in fact they need everything."

The police training mission is separate from an EU operation aimed at training Mali's military. The police training mission was launched in April, when European leaders concluded that even if the country's army were modernized, it would suffer major security problems if its police agencies remained unprofessional.

The Malian government invited the mission.

It isn't clear whether Mali needs three separate internal security forces—the police, gendarmerie and National Guard—each of which numbers roughly 5,000 members. The organizations' responsibilities have changed over the years, often based on favoritism under various regimes, so that the forces' current duties aren't clearly defined.