Today is the International Children’s Rights Day, a United Nations holiday that celebrates the creation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1989.  Unfortunately millions of children lack the most basic rights such as access to education,, food, water and lives free from war.  According to UNESCO, 77 million kids worldwide do not attend school. School is one of the best ways to improve all aspects of kids lives, including creating better economic opportunities, improved health outcomes and empowering girls.

In honor of this important holiday, I am highlighting the work of Jewish World Watch, an instrumental organization for the Social Action campaign for our film, Darfur Now.  While the organization is only three years old, it has quickly become a leader in humanitarian relief, advocacy and education for Darfur.  One of their critical programs–backpacks– extends well-beyond providing immediate humanitarian relief to millions of refugees. It helps to build long-term infrastructure and educational opportunities to thousands of Darfurian refugee children.  Their backpack program will provide school supplies to 14,000 children in  the Oure Cassoni refugee camp.  The contents of the backpacks provides more than just learning tools; these children will be given educational opportunties and safe-spaces in their otherwise chaotic, war-ridden lives.  As victims of war and violence, these children lack the most basic rights as children and human beings.  takepart today to support the backpack program which will give these Darfurian kids resources and hope for a better future.

(photo: vonbergen.net)

After a hurricane wiped out Blake Whisenant’s Florida tomato farm in 1992, he began designing the handy Earthbox, a self-contained organic gardening system that is now being used by the U.N. sustainable food program, The Growing Connection.   These funky little boxes allow gardeners and farmers to grow a variety of crops in certified organic soil just about anywhere, and they conveniently water and fertilize themselves, while keeping out weeds.   The Earthbox and The Growing Connection have helped bring much-needed fresh food and flowers to a wide-range of communities including at-risk youth in Chicago and New York, as well as schools and farms in Central America, Mexico, Ghana, and even Google Headquarters.

Listen to Vint Cerf, Google’s Vice-President explain the magic of the Earthbox, and watch him get his hands dirty:

takepart by helping The Growing Connection teach kids worldwide how to grow healthy, organic food.   And get growing yourself with your own Earthbox!

As Danny mentioned, today is World Food Day- one of the few international holidays that I know of that affects everyone worldwide. With nearly one billion people undernourished worldwide, juxtaposed against an increasingly overweight population in the US, World Food Day is an opportunity to reflect on the sources of your food, how your food choices affect the world food crisis and the implications of our agriculture policies on domestic and international issues (such as the opposite forces of malnutrition and obesity competing for our resources).

According to the United Nations, this year’s holiday is an opportunity to recognize the relationship between global warming and food. As their site says, Food is Energy. The relationship between your food choices and global warming cannot be ignored food production, especially from livestock, is one of the largest contributor’s to greenhouse gases, the main global warming culprit. Learn what you can do to reduce your carbon footprint with eco-friendly food choices at Take A Bite Out of Climate Change. These include simple things such as skipping meat one day a week, buying reducing the amount of processed food you consume and not wasting food. Cumulatively, everyone’s actions will make a significant difference in reducing global warming, helping to develop a sound agriculture policy at home and addressing the international food crisis.

takepart with Take A Bite out of Climate Change

Related:

New eco-friendly dress guidelines at the U.N. will probably skew slightly more conservative than the one pictured above.

The United Nations is urging its staffers to wear cooler clothes during the summer to cut air conditioning bills and lessen the building’s carbon footprint:

“I don’t want to get involved in the fashion police of determining exactly what people can wear,” the building’s renovating architect told the Associated Press, “but the encouragement of business casual is where we are going.”

The TakePart Top 10 Weekly Roundup is a compilation of the week’s most notable stories from our entertainment-meets-social-action blogging network. Check out some of our most popular stories of the week, as well as a few TakePart blogger favorites!

Nicole Hughes:

U.S. Media Ignores Link Between Midwest Floods and Global Warming

Top 10 Houseplants for Removing Indoor Air Pollution

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Andy Kondrat:

Dubai to Build Rotating Positive Energy Tower

Bioethicist Peter Singer Tackles World Food Shortage

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Jon Popham:

Americacorps Workers Assist Flood Ravaged Town

Australians “Out-Fat” Americans

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Giulia Rozzi:

Progressive Book Club

Oprah Recommends “A New Earth”

* * *

Gina Telaroli:

Human Rights Watch 2008 Film Festival Update

SilverDocs 2008 Update

Peter Singer, possibly the world’s most renowned bioethicist (I mean, how many others can you think of?), found himself on NPR’s Marketplace today to discuss this food crisis we’re in the midst of. Dr. Singer starts with a very simple question: “Why are we in the midst of a food crisis when world production of food per person has actually grown steadily since the 1960s?”

There are a few reasons according to Dr. Singer, not least of which is our new forays into ethanol production, which takes 100 million tons of corn off our tables. But it’s the meat people eat that’s really doing it. Dr. Singer breaks it down old skool:

But most corn isn’t eaten by humans; it’s eaten by animals and that’s the biggest part of the problem. According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, 756 million tons of grain plus most of the world’s soybean crop are fed to animals and that amount has increased sharply in recent years as Asian nations have become more prosperous and their populations have started eating more meat.

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John Coleman, the founder of the Weather Channel and meteorologist for one of my local news stations, spoke to the San Diego Chamber of Commerce (I believe) yesterday in order to discuss global warming.   Or, as far as he’s concerned, the lack thereof.   As Coleman states quite bluntly,

“There is no significant man made global warming.   There has not been any in the past, there is none now and there is no reason to fear any in the future.”

He can’t get much clearer than that.   The “silliness” of the global warming frenzy, as he calls it, is “an amazing fraud…a scam.” 

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World Day Against Child Labor is today. Long outlawed in the United States, child labor is still a major issue throughout the world, particularly in poverty stricken regions where the lure of cheap, easily exploited children is often taken advantage of by employers while at the same time many children living in poverty tragically feel forced to work in order to contribute to their family’s wellbeing. Currently the UN International Labor Organization estimates that 165 Million children between the ages of 5 and 14 are involved in child labor practices throughout the world.

This year the focus of the annual event is on education as a route to reduce child labor and on gender equality between boys and girls. Countries throughout the world from Africa to Asia to South America to the Middle East to Europe and beyond are staging events to reduce the unfair exploitation of children.

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Well, we finally missed one. After managing to post on Earth Day, Arbor Day, and even World Environment Day, it seems that World Ocean Day fell through the cracks this weekend. We are ashamed.

World Ocean Day, which to be fair is still an unofficial day (though I have no idea how the validity of something like Arbor Day is nationally or internationally accredited), passed us by yesterday, June 8. There was even a big party for the event of which ecorazzi got some pictures, with celebrities such as Ted Danson taking a break from drumming for R.E.M.’s tour for the occasion.

The day has been celebrated for 15 years, says Oceana, the ocean conservation organization that co-threw the party yesterday.

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Fareed Zakaria is bringing a new hour long program on foreign affairs and policy to CNN with GPS, an acronym for Global Public Square. The show, airing Sundays at 1PM, will feature Newsweek International Editor and Foreign Affairs expert Zakaria interviewing prominent figures from around the globe on current events and issues that affect the United States.

The purpose of the program is to fill the gap in US press coverage of international news and how it affects us here at home, which is obviously no small task given the enormous crater in American public knowledge about life outside the 50 states created by our infotainment news culture. But if anyone is up to the job, it’s Fareed Zakaria with his deep understanding of world affairs and vast experience covering international news around the globe.

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