transforming the lives of global youth
YouthHOPE will be training in various locations this year. You can find us at the Chilean National Youth Workers Conference as well as in Zambia. Check out this video of Miguel Faundez, YouthHOPE's Director of Global Youth Ministry Training discussing our work in 2011 conferences. …
[Read more...]
I did my graduate work at Johns Hopkins University at the School of Public Health in 2003/4. It was the only school I had applied for, mostly because I had my sights set on going to the mission field, and also because I had decided that the only reason I would delay going overseas was to get my Masters in Public Health at the #1 school in the world. ha. Surprisingly, at the best school in the world for public health, among the top achievers in the field, I found the bottom line of all my coursework was this: It is hopeless, we can do everything we can to try to save lives, but people are people, and they will not just change to make healthy choices. Many many of our programs will never make a difference and will fail. People will always eat unhealthy diets, they will always smoke, they will always have sex outside of marriage. We can't change people. It is the fallenness of the world without the salvation and …
[Read more...]
I found Irrawady’s article on Burma’s Education Crisis very accurate to what I’ve seen In Myanmar on my travels there the past few years. I’ve spent 8 months in Myanmar over the last year and a half working on projects focused on youth ministry leadership and researching the viability of the entrepreneurship school we plan to launch in the spring of 2012. We have taken great length to understand the situation of education in Myanmar. Below are some excerpts from the article that stood out to me.
“We used to have the best education in Asia,” a high school teacher told The Irrawaddy. “If we continue at this rate, our public education will forever be ruined, and I can’t see how the next generation will manage the country.”
“Everyone just buys books in the market, which you can copy the assignments from. During the lessons we just sit there and listen to the teachers. There is no discussion.”
“The …
[Read more...]
I just read this article called “African Girls Getting World Bank Cash Deters Sugar Daddies.”
In case the term sugar daddy is only vaguely familiar: it officially describes a rich, older man who gives gifts or money to a young woman in exchange for sexual favors or companionship. In the realm of HIV/AIDS, it gives a partial explanation as to why young women aged 15 to 24 (in sub-saharan Africa) have infection rates that are three times higher than young men in the same age group.
The article presents the results from a couple of randomized studies that gave cash incentives to female youth and measured the impact on their sexual behaviors and rates of infection. In Malawi, about 3,800 young women aged 13 to 22 were enrolled. Here is what they found:
One group got an average of $10 a month and payment for school fees if they regularly attended class. The others got nothing. A year and a half after the program began, …
[Read more...]
