The Obama Administrations Feed the Future (FTF) Initiative is a U.S. international development program launched in 2010 that invests in food security and agricultural development activities in a select group of developing countries in an effort to reduce hunger, malnutrition, poverty, and food insecurity. This book provides an overview of the program, as well as issues and progress of the foreign assistance initiative.

Hurricane Katrina blasted the Gulf Coast in 2005, leaving an unparalleled trail of physical destruction. In addition to that damage, the storm wrought massive psychological and cultural trauma on Gulf Coast residents and on America as a whole. Details of the devastation were quickly reported-and misreported-by media outlets, and a slew of articles and books followed, offering a spectrum of socio-political commentaries and analyses. But beyond the reportage and the commentary, a series of fictional and creative accounts of the Katrina-experience have emerged in various mediums: novels, plays, films, television shows, songs, graphic novels, collections of photographs, and works of creative non-fiction that blur the lines between reportage, memoir, and poetry. The creative outpouring brings to mind Salman Rushdie's observation that, "Man is the storytelling animal, the only creature on earth that tells itself stories to understand what kind of creature it is." This book accepts the urge behind Rushdie's formula: humans tell stories in order to understand ourselves, our world, and our place in it. Indeed, the creative output on Katrina represents efforts to construct a cohesive narrative out of the wreckage of a cataclysmic event. However, this book goes further than merely cataloguing the ways that Katrina narratives support Rushdie's rich claim. This collection represents a concentrated attempt to chart the effects of Katrina on our cultural identity; it seeks to not merely catalogue the trauma of the event but to explore the ways that such an event functions in and on the literature that represents it. The body of work that sprung out of Katrina offers a unique critical opportunity to better understand the genres that structure our stories and the ways stories reflect and produce culture and identity. These essays raise new questions about the representative genres themselves. The stories are efforts to represent and understand the human condition, but so are the organizing principles that communicate the stories. That is, Katrina-narratives present an opportunity to interrogate the ways that specific narrative structures inform our understanding and develop our cultural identity. This book offers a critical processing of the newly emerging and diverse canon of Katrina texts.

Current foreign aid programs are failing because they are based upon flawed assumptions about how countries develop. They attempt to achieve development without first achieving good governance and security, which are essential prerequisites for sustainable development. In focusing on the poorer members of society, they neglect the elites upon whose leadership the quality of governance and security depends. By downplaying the relevance of cultural factors to development, they avoid altering cultural characteristics that account for most of the weaknesses of elites in poor nations. Drawing on a wealth of examples from around the world, the author shows that foreign aid can be made much more effective by focusing it on human capital development. Training, education, and other forms of assistance can confer both skills and cultural attributes on current and future leaders, especially those responsible for security and governance.

A COMPLETE, STEP-BY-STEP GUIDE TO PREPARING YOURSELF AND YOUR COMMUNITY TO AID FIRST RESPONDERS DURING A DISASTER SITUATION Nothing brings out the best in neighbors more than facing a catastrophe together. But don't wait till the disaster is upon you. This book shows how you can work together today to protect the lives and homes of all the families in your neighborhood tomorrow. With guidance on how you can take a leadership role, this helpful handbook details everything your community needs to be fully prepared for any natural disaster. * Creating event-specific disaster kits for yourself and your family * Learning about basic fire safety and fire fighting * Establishing triage centers in the event that first responders can't reach you * Stabilizing disaster victims through need-to-know first aid * Creating your own neighborhood emergency response team to keep your neighborhood safe and save lives should the worst occur

It was almost November 2012 when Hurricane Sandy, a late arrival in an otherwise quiet tropical season, slammed into the Mid-Atlantic US coastline. Millions of residents were plunged into darkness and billions of dollars in property and infrastructure were flooded or washed away in surging waters. Blizzard conditions struck the Appalachians as the hybrid Halloween monster moved inland. Savage Sand and Surf: The Hurricane Sandy Disaster is multi-faceted examination into one of the most recent natural disasters in the United States. Scholars from multiple disciplines address a wide range of important aspects of this event, including unique meteorological and social impacts of Sandy, Sandy's intersection with vulnerable social groups in society, and social institutions' adaptations to the disaster. Also, different theoretical models of disasters are explored and applied to better understand and prepare for similar events in the future.

This book examines the local and regional procurement for U.S. international emergency food aid. Using federally appropriated funds to procure commodities for international food aid in countries with emergency needs or in nearby countries is a controversial issue. In budget submissions for 2006-2009, the Bush Administration proposed allocating up to 25% of the funds available for U.S. food aid to local or regional procurement (LRP) of food aid commodities. However, each time Congress rejected the proposal. The Administration argued that LRP would increase the timeliness and effectiveness of the U.S. response to overseas food emergencies by eliminating the need to transport commodities by ocean carriers. Congressional and other critics of the local procurement proposal maintain that allowing non-U.S. commodities to be purchased would undermine the coalition of commodity groups, agribusinesses, private voluntary organisations, and shippers that participate in and support the U.S. food aid program and would reduce the volume of U.S. commodities provided as aid.

In Gender, Heterosexuality, and Youth Violence, James W. Messerschmidt unravels some of the mysteries of teenage violence. Written by one of the most respected scholars on the subject of gendered crime, this book provides a fascinating account of the connections among adolescent masculinities and femininities, bullying in schools, the body, heterosexuality, and violence and nonviolence. After an introduction that lays out key concepts, including a revised structured action theory, Messerschmidt shares six compelling life-histories of white working-class boys and girls who have all been victims of severe forms of bullying at school. The book is unique in its comparative approach between violent and nonviolent youth, between boys and girls as offenders and non-offenders, between assaultive and sexual violence, and among a variety of masculinities and femininities. It also addresses how heterosexuality is related to sex, gender, and certain forms of violence or non-violence. The penetrating life histories are partially drawn from Messerschmid's previous books Nine Lives and Flesh and Blood, as well as several completely new life-history interviews. The book's cutting-edge conceptualization of these life histories provides novel insight into the vexing question of youth violence.

Natural and human-made disasters appear to be increasing in frequency and scope, commanding extensive media attention. Growing sensitivity to issues of preparedness and community response has created a greater interest among academics and practitioners. The Asian Tsunami, Hurricane Katrina, mudslides in Brazil, earthquakes in Haiti, Chile, Japan, Turkey, China, and other countries have garnered worldwide notice. Human-made disasters, such as terrorist attacks on New York's World Trade Center or in Oklahoma City, Spain, England, Sri Lanka, Iraq, Afghanistan, and various other countries, or attacks on schoolchildren in places such as Columbine and various communities in China, send shockwaves throughout societies. This book addresses the development of long-term interventions following disasters, emphasizing disadvantaged communities. Attention is given to the role of change agents, such as local and international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and psychosocial professionals, to ensure that the window of opportunity is realized, generating immediate help and sustained community development.

The September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005 exposed the severe consequences of breakdowns in emergency communications used by first responders. Failures in emergency communications resulted in numerous lost lives and exacerbated already challenging situations. These past events have increased focus on the need to enhance emergency communications to respond more effectively to future catastrophic disasters. Effective response to catastrophic disasters will require that first responders - law enforcement personnel, fire-fighters, and others first on the scene - have reliable communication systems, including supporting infrastructure, facilities and staff. This book focuses on the issues and vulnerabilities to emergency communications systems, the federal assistance available and other challenges with these efforts.

Federal agencies provide a range of assistance to individual victims; state, territorial, and local governments; and non-governmental entities after major disasters, including certain terrorist attacks. Types of aid include, technical assistance, loans and loan guarantees, grants, temporary housing, access to counselling professionals, and medical assistance. This book identifies programs pertinent to the recovery process and provides brief descriptive information to help congressional offices determine which programs bear further consideration in the planning, organisation, or implementation of recovery operations.

As millions continue to face a future of food poverty, lessons can be learned by considering how farmer cooperatives succeeded in improving India's food security. "Operation Flood," which revitalized the Indian dairy industry between 1970 and 1996, was the world's largest development program, however critics accused it of luring India to neocolonial dependence on European surpluses. Eventually the perils of reliance on food aid were managed by proper pricing policies that both benefited rural farming families and wiped out urban "milk famines." In 2008 the World Bank hailed the program's success and now promotes similar schemes in Africa. A detailed understanding of India's White Revolution is therefore imperative in the context of its future use in the developing world.

The second edition of The Sociology of Katrina brings together the nation's top sociological researchers in an effort to deepen our understanding of the modern catastrophe that is Hurricane Katrina. Five years after the storm, its profound impact continues to be felt. This new edition explores emerging themes, as well as ongoing issues that continue to besiege survivors. The book has been updated and revised throughout from data about recovery efforts and environmental conditions, to discussions of major social issues in education, health care, the economy, and crime. The authors thoroughly review the important topic of recovery, both in New Orleans and in the wider area of the Mississippi Gulf Coast. This new edition features a new chapter focused on the Katrina experience for people in the primary impact area, or "ground zero," five years after the storm. This chapter uncovers many challenges in overcoming the critical problems caused by the storm of the century. From this important update of the acclaimed first edition, it is apparent that "the storm is not over," as Katrina continues to generate political, economic, community, and personal controversy.

We live in a new reality of aid. Gone is the traditional bilateral relationship, the old-fashioned mode of delivering aid, and the perception of the third world as a homogenous block of poor countries in the south. Delivering Aid Differently describes the new realities of a $200 billion aid industry that has overtaken this traditional model of development assistance. As the title suggests, aid must now be delivered differently. Here, case study authors consider the results of aid in their own countries, highlighting field-based lessons on how aid works on the ground, while focusing on problems in current aid delivery and on promising approaches to resolving these problems. Contributors include Cut Dian Agustina (World Bank), Getnet Alemu (College of Development Studies, Addis Ababa University), Rustam Aminjanov (NAMO Consulting), Ek Chanboreth and Sok Hach (Economic Institute of Cambodia), Firuz Kataev and Matin Kholmatov (NAMO Consulting), Johannes F. Linn (Wolfensohn Center for Development at Brookings), Abdul Malik (World Bank, South Asia), Harry Masyrafah and Jock M. J. A. McKeon (World Bank, Aceh), Francis M. Mwega (Department of Economics, University of Nairobi), Rebecca Winthrop (Center for Universal Education at Brookings), Ahmad Zaki Fahmi (World Bank)

"The Aid Triangle" focuses on the human dynamics of international aid and illustrates how the aid system incorporates power relationships, and therefore relationships of dominance. Using the concept of a triangle of dominance, injustice and identity this timely work explains how the experience of injustice is both a challenge to, and a stimulus to, personal, community and national identity, and how such identities underlie the human potential that international aid should seek to enrich. This insightful new critique provides for the reader an innovative and constructive framework for producing more empowering and more effective aid.

Food aid is hard to summarise succinctly due to many related issues, but in general it is about providing food and related assistance to tackle hunger, either in emergency situations, or to help with deeper, longer term hunger alleviation and achieve food security (where people do not have to live in hunger or in fear of starvation). International concessional flows in the form of food or of cash to purchase food in support of food assistance programs. The tying of food aid with conditions that benefit the donor has been one of the reasons food aid has not been effective, and criticised for benefiting multinational food companies and donor nations more than recipients. Food aid constituted over 20% of global aid flows in the 1960s, but is now less than 5%. Yet, it is still important because of the prevalence of world hunger and the increase in food emergencies in the past decade. The decline of food aid, as well as the way in which it is delivered and used, are therefore of importance.

The World Bank approaches malaria not only as a major public health issue but also as a broader development problem that costs Africa US$12 billion a year and helps keep families and communities in poverty. In 2005, the World Bank reaffirmed its commitment to malaria control by launching the Booster Program for Malaria Control in Africa, a 10-year initiative that in its first three years committed over US$470 million to malaria control on the continent. Focusing on a two-pronged approach of combining disease control interventions and health systems strengthening, the program has contributed significantly to the global effort to fight the disease. As Phase II (2008-2011) of the program begins, the World Bank will intensify its efforts to enable more countries in Africa to achieve and sustain large-scale impact on malaria. On September 25, 2008 World Bank President Robert B. Zoellick announced a US$1.1 billion expansion of the program at the United Nations Special Session on the Millennium Development Goals. The Phase II strategy establishes the rationale and basis for this doubling commitment. Whereas Phase I took advantage of relatively facile opportunities to support countries malaria control goals, Phase II is more strategic and builds on the successes of and lessons learned from Phase I. It is designed in a way that enables the World Bank to use its comparative advantages to contribute to the elimination of malaria as a major public health problem in parts of Africa by 2015, a goal set by the Roll Back Malaria Partnership and the United Nations Secretary General. Major reductions in malaria deaths and illness are possible within the next five to seven years. Attacking the disease full-force with a front-loaded effort will have tremendous impact on health and economic outcomes. African nations and the global community are gearing up to meet this goal. As one of the top three funders of malaria control, the World Bank is called to play a lead role in this effort. Phase II of the Booster Program for Malaria Control in Africa is the Bank s affirmative and emphatic response to this call."

Africa is poor. If we send it money it will be less poor. It seems perfectly logical, doesn't it? Millions of people in the rich world, moved by images on television and appalled by the miserable conditions endured by so many in other countries, have joined campaigns to persuade their governments to double aid to Africa and help put an end to such shameful inequality. It seems simple. But it isn't. In this book, Jonathan Glennie argues that, along with its many benefits, government aid to Africa has often meant more poverty, more hungry people, worse basic services and damage to already precarious democratic institutions. Moreover, calls for more aid are drowning out pressure for action that would really make a difference for Africa's poor. Rather than doubling aid to Africa, it is time to reduce aid dependency. Through an honest assessment of both the positive and negative consequences of aid, this book will show you why.

Global poverty is falling rapidly, but in around fifty failing states, the world's poorest people face a tragedy that is growing inexorably worse. This bottom billion live on less than a dollar a day and while the rest of the world moves steadily forward, this forgotten billion is left further and further behind with potentially serious consequences not only for them but for the stability of the rest of the world. Why do the states these people live in defy all the attempts of the international aid community to help them? Why does nothing seem to make a difference? In The Bottom Billion, Paul Collier pinpoints the issues of corruption, political instability and resource management that lie at the root of the problem. He describes the battle raging in these countries between corrupt leaders and would-be reformers and the factors such as civil war, dependence on the export of natural resources and lack of good governance that trap them into a downward spiral of economic and social decline. Collier addresses the fact that conventional aid has been unable to tackle these problems and puts forward a radical new plan of action including a new agenda for the G8 which includes more effective anti-corruption measures, preferential trade policies and where necessary direct military intervention. All of these initiatives are carefully designed to help the forgotten bottom billion, one of the key challenges facing the world in the twenty first century.

Conflict is a major cause of suffering for millions of people throughout the world. Conflict inhibits development and fosters displacement, destruction of infrastructure, loss of food and economic security, abuse of human rights, dislocation of families and communities and loss of cultural identity. In the past, provision of aid was unusual in areas conflict. However, recognition of the immediate human needs within periods of conflict has seen an increased provision and role the provision of aid now plays. Aid in conflict is an emerging area interest that has lacked attention and reflection within the aid and development literature. This edited volume will be an opportunity for development practitioners, community members and theorists to address this situation.

Arguing forcefully that changing times are a clarion call for new thinking, this book convincingly shows that if humanitarian organizations continue to operate as they have in the past, they will fail to help the very victims whom they try to save. Focusing especially on the emergence of 'new wars, ' Hoffman and Weiss insist that humanitarian organizations must recognize that they live in a political world and that their actions and goals are invariably affected by military action. The brand of warfare that erupted in the 1990s-marked by civil or transnational armed conflicts featuring potent non-state actors, altered political economies, a high proportion of civilian casualties, and a globalized media-produced horrors that shocked consciences and led humanitarian agencies to question their unyielding stance of neutrality and impartiality. Indeed, in a departure from earlier norms and practices, some have reinvented their policies and tools and created 'new humanitarianisms.' This authoritative book traces the evolution of the international humanitarian system from its inception in the 1860s, parses the dynamics of war and emergency response from the 1980s through the current disasters in Afghanistan and Iraq, and provides a strategic roadmap for practitioners. By bringing historical perspective to bear, this volume provides an invaluable analytical framework for grasping the nature of humanitarian crises and how agencies can respond strategically rather than reactively to change. Students will find its blend of clearly presented theory and case studies a powerful tool for understanding the roles of state and non-state actors in international relations. By charting the tides of continuity and change, this book will prepare agencies to dodge both figurative and actual bullets that threaten humanitarian action at the outset of the millennium.

Today there is a preoccupation among development agencies and researchers with getting policy right; with exerting influence over policy, linking research to policy and with implementing policy around the world. But what if development practice is not driven by policy at all? Suppose that the things that make for 'good policy' - policy which legitimises and mobilises political support - in reality make it impractical and impossible to implement? By focusing in detail on the activities of a development project in tribal western India over more than ten years as it falls under different policy regimes, this book takes a close look at the relationship between policy and practice in development. David Mosse shows how the actions of development workers are shaped by the exigencies of organisations and the need to maintain relationships rather than by policy. Raising unfamiliar questions, Mosse provides a rare self-critical reflection on practice, while refusing to endorse current post-modern dismissal of development.

This book collects and examines information on federal policies that would be implemented in the event that terrorist attacks occur again. It then asks about each of these policies: Based on experiences gained thus far, should Congress consider changes in federal consequence management policies to address the effects of possible future attacks? The book explores two types of issues-selected administrative issues pertinent to delivery of assistance, and selected policy issues about the assistance provided. The 12 section in the book follow a common format: an issue statement, background information, and analysis (including information specific to terrorist attacks) and policy options.