Running on Empty

admin — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 17:09:00 +0000

Directed by Emily Marlow, Charles Stewart

When I was perhaps ten years old or younger, I used to sit in front of the television on weekend mornings, and flip around until I found a Save the Children show. I’d then proceed to watch the entire episode, sitting cross-legged on the floor, and cry. For years afterwards I was always furious when my mother would flip past the standard image of a young child of color, starving and attracting flies, with a sound of disgust.

Running on Empty is part of the sixth season of _Life, an educational series put out by Television Trust for the Environment, which delves into globalization’s myriad of affects on poverty. This particular episode shows the effects, mostly ineffective, of the Millennium Development Goals, a plan signed by 192 United Nations members to halve poverty and hunger by the year 2015.

The film contrasts the lives of Dawn, a mother of three living in one of the poorest areas in Europe, and Asemu, a mother of two living in northern Ethiopia. Dawn and Asemu, both only twenty-two years old, depend on cash payments to buy food, clothing, and other basic necessities. The film deals with the question of whether it is more effective to give cash or food aid to families in need. The fear is that adults will spend the money on more frivolous items instead of necessities.

While Running on Empty logically decides that cash is the best form of aid, it also shows the women spending a large part of their meager resources on events described as “social obligations.” Dawn ends up borrowing six hundred and fifty pounds (over nine hundred dollars to us) for her children’s Christmas presents, and struggles to pay back the loans. Asemu doesn’t receive regular cash payments until five months after the harvest; and she must spend a large part of their harvest on a women’s gathering, at which the women take turns supplying the food.

The film ends agreeing that the Millennium Development Goals are not working. Dawn receives just enough money to survive on after she splits her cash between food, diapers, laundry, gas, and electric bills. While her children are not underfed, and she knows what kind of diet is best for them, she lacks the money to buy healthy food. Therefore, Dawn falls back on fries and other high-fat, high-calorie solutions.

Asemu, who receives one pound for every one hundred and thirty of Dawn’s, explains that the cash aid she receives hasn’t increased to keep up with inflation rates. Her youngest child is developing well, but her older son, born before the family began receiving aid, only started to walk at age four due to malnutrition. The damage done by lack of nutrition in his first two years will never be undone, and the family’s diet is still extremely poor in protein, with no money for fish or meat.

The show is well filmed, with segments in Ethiopia and South Wales, and does a striking job at drawing parallels between the different types of poverty the two families live in. In the end, neither can afford to give their children the nutrition they desperately need for proper development, despite all of the rich promises of our “world leaders.”

Written by: Ilinca Popescu, June 1st 2009

Water First: Reaching the Millennium Development Goals

admin — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 23:25:00 +0000

Directed by Amy Hart

Bullfrog Films

Four thousand children die every day as a result of the lack of access to clean water. Water First opens with this unbelievable figure, along with a montage of poverty-stricken African children. Luckily, the film moves beyond voyeuristic sentimentalism and goes on to make the case that access to clean water should be recognized as one of the most important global issues.

The country of Malawi is used as a case study, along with the nonprofit organization Fresh Water Malawi, run by retired firefighter Charles Banda. Fresh Water Malawi drills wells for communities throughout Malawi, usually with little support from the government or outside donors. Banda argues that the success of the eight official United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) is dependent on whether or not people have access to clean water. The MDGs are goals to reduce poverty that the UN members adopted in the year 2000, with the target of having made progress toward them by 2015. The goals include eradicating extreme poverty and hunger, promoting gender equality, and achieving universal primary education.

The film successfully argues that water is intimately tied to all of these goals. For example, women and girls are the ones who bear the burden of fetching water, oftentimes miles away from their homes, and usually from unclean sources. Girls often drop out of school once they hit puberty because of lack of sanitation. Drinking water from unprotected sources causes cholera, malaria, dysentery and other diseases, which are especially devastating to young children and women who have recently given birth.

Water First lets the people of Malawi speak for themselves as viewers are invited to watch the daily struggle of life without access to clean water. The viewer can choose to watch a twenty-eight minute or a forty-five minute version of the film, which is helpful for teachers who want to screen Water First during class. Overall, the film is informative and cogently makes the case that water is a fundamentally important issue in advancing human rights and community development in impoverished countries around the world.

Written by: Liz Simmons, March 4th 2009