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Super Tuesday is Australia’s biggest visual bike count that provides reliable annual figures about bicycle commuting. On Tuesday 6th March volunteers across Australia will collect data that helps participating councils make good decisions about where to invest their funds in bike infrastructure.The best part is each person who successfully volunteers and completes the bike count can nominate a group or club to receive $50 as a reward for their work.One of People and Planet’s partners, Engineers Without Borders Australia (EWB), is campaigning to get counters involved and nominate EWB as the recipient of the $50.
Super Tuesday is on 6th March from 7am – 9am, across Australia. Registrations Open on Tuesday 17th Jan. Get in early to claim your preferred count site! To register visit https://www.bv.com.au/general/bike-futures/91079/
EWB works with disadvantaged communities to improve their quality of life through education and the implementation of sustainable engineering projects. Common issues in the communities they work in include access to drinking water, sanitation, energy and waste systems. Super Tuesday aims to answer two questions: How many riders are there? Which routes are riders using? Super Tuesday 2010 was the largest commuter rider count ever and we anticipate that this year’s count will be the biggest ever. “Counting for Super Tuesday is so worthwhile, it combines two fantastic causes into one activity. Not only does it help us get better informed about bike usage and sustainable transport, it raises money for EWB, an organisation that is leading long term change in developing communities,” said Ian Cunningham, EWB staff member and past Super Tuesday Counter. Let’s start counting!
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| More about Engineers Without Borders Australia: www.ewb.org.au |
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COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT AND MARKETING OF THE DISPENSARY SERVICES AT MATUMBO VILLAGE
Health Ausralia & Tanzania is negotiating a new project in Singida Region, Tanzania which will run in 2012. The project will work in one village, Matumbo, and aims to increase usage of a new health centre (nurse-led clinic) by the Matumbo and surrounding communities. HAT visited this clinic in September 2011 and observed that the community were not using this important new facility.Our NGO partner in Tanzania has researched the problems and concluded that the clinic is currently underutilised due to (a) lack of community awareness of what it offers (b) lack of knowledge of the importance of various services offered by the health centre, such as malaria and HIV testing (c) lack of knowledge that the centre has the equipment to offer good services. The project will establish a village health committee and train them in health service governance. It will also provide refresher training and mobilisation of community health outreach workers. The community will be mobilised to contribute to health insurance arrangemnets, which will increase the clinic’s capacity to order more drugs and offer more community outreach services. A pre- and post-project evaluation will be conducted, measuring changes in community use of clinic services.
For more information about this project, or how to get involved with Health Australia Tanzania, please contact Peter Larter on peter.larter@hat.org.au |
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Children play on the beach on Narkel Jinjira, St. Martin’s Island, in the North East of the Bay of Bengal. With a population of just 10,000 people, St. Martin’s Island – Bangladesh’s only coral island – has recently become one of the country’s most popular tourist destinations. However the United Nations Development Project has warned that unless those involved in the island’s unregulated tourism industry “quickly adopt ecologically responsible behaviour”, the island, which is home to “several species of globally threatened marine turtles as well as being a flyway and wintering site for migratory birds of the East Asian and Australasian region” will become further and irreparably damaged.
Support People & Planet and buy your copy of the 2012 People & Planet Diary or Calendar today! People & Planet supports the work of 49 not-for-profit, Australian social justice and environment organisations that are working for a more just, more sustainable world. |
| Photographer: Yousuf Tushar (Bangladesh) |
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Migrant workers toil in Xiapu County, Fujian Province. China’s migrant workforce emerged in the 1980s partly because of China’s Hukou or household registration system and partly as a result of its 1970s economic reforms. By the end of 2006 there were an estimated 131.8 million migrant workers in the country, comprising 23 percent of the rural workforce.Migrant workers are paid low wages and often forced to work punishingly long days. Since housing subsidies, healthcare and welfare benefits are related to one’s residence status within China’s Hukou system, migrant workers are also largely excluded from the country’s social security system.
Support People & Planet and buy your copy of the 2012 People & Planet Diary or Calendar today! People & Planet supports the work of 49 not-for-profit, Australian social justice and environment organisations that are working for a more just, more sustainable world. |
| Photographer: Xiaoyun Zheng (China) |
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A mosaic effect is created each April in the flooded rice paddies of Yangshuo, Guangxi, which is famed for its unique juxtaposition of verdant mountains, clear waters, colourful paddy fields and exquisiterocks. While providing food for billions, rice paddy fields are estimated to produce around 20 percent of human-related methane emissions each year, with China’s rice fields producing roughly 5.1 million tonnes of methane annually. Although high, this figure represents an almost 70 percent reduction in China’s paddy related methane emissions since the 1980s when new agricultural techniques such as mid-season paddy draining were widely implemented.
Support People & Planet and buy your copy of the 2012 People & Planet Diary or Calendar today! People & Planet supports the work of 49 not-for-profit, Australian social justice and environment organisations that are working for a more just, more sustainable world. |
| Photographer: Wong Chi Keung (Hong Kong) |
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Little Musha glances back during prayer at the Tonjimul Muslemin Yatimkhana orphanage in Chittagong where roughly 70 – 80 orphans live and study. Full adoption is proscribed in Bangladesh, where children comprise 41 percent of its 159 million people and where orphanages provide a vital lifeline to vulnerable children orphaned or abandoned by their parents. There are an estimated 400,000 Bangladeshi children living on the country’s streets, an extremely high number that is partly attributable to Bangladesh’s years of political strife and the disproportionate number of natural disasters endured by the country.
Support People & Planet and buy your copy of the 2012 People & Planet Diary or Calendar today! People & Planet supports the work of 49 not-for-profit, Australian social justice and environment organisations that are working for a more just, more sustainable world. |
| Photographer: Wahid Adnan (Bangladesh) |
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Two women perch precariously between train coaches in an effort to conceal themselves from ticket inspectors on the Nazirhat to Chittagong train route in Bangladesh. Those who cannot afford a railway ticket are forced to travel on the rooftops of – or in junctions between – train coaches, a method of travel that results in many casualties each year. Yet in Bangladesh, where Oxfam Australia reports that 49.8 percent of people live below the poverty line, many passengers take this risk because they have no other choice.
Support People & Planet and buy your copy of the 2012 People & Planet Diary or Calendar today! People & Planet supports the work of 49 not-for-profit, Australian social justice and environment organisations that are working for a more just, more sustainable world. |
| Photographer: Wahid Adnan (Bangladesh) |
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Khmer Monks transport materials to repair the Wat Kompong Chray temple, or pagoda, in Trà Vinh Province in Vietnam’s Mekong River Delta. Wat Kompong Chray is one of 141 Theravada Buddhist temples in the province and was built in 1637 but almost completely destroyed during the Vietnam/ American War. After 40 years of rebuilding, the temple is now a tourist attraction. Many parts of Vietnam are still rebuilding after the widespread bombing during the war – 7 million tonnes of bombs were dropped on Vietnam during the decade of war from 1964 to 1973 – more than twice the total bombs dropped on Europe and Asia together during World War II.
Support People & Planet and buy your copy of the 2012 People & Planet Diary or Calendar today! People & Planet supports the work of 49 not-for-profit, Australian social justice and environment organisations that are working for a more just, more sustainable world. |
| Photographer: Tran Viet Van (Vietnam) |
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A child is smothered with kisses at the Freedom Centre, City of Refuge Ministries in Doryumu, Ghana. The centre was opened in 2007 to raise awareness of issues of child slavery, trafficking, and abandonment; to care for the region’s orphaned and abandoned children; and to liberate Ghana’s children from slavery and human trafficking. Child trafficking and slavery are particularly prevalent within the fishing trade in Ghana’s remote Lake Volta region, where an estimated several thousand children are kept in slavery having been sold by their impoverished parents to make ends meet. A reported 20 – 40 percent of Ghanaian children aged 5 – 14 either work through necessity or are enslaved.
Support People & Planet and buy your copy of the 2012 People & Planet Diary or Calendar today! People & Planet supports the work of 49 not-for-profit, Australian social justice and environment organisations that are working for a more just, more sustainable world. |
| Photographer: Thomas Goldner (Australia) |
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With increasing world temperatures attributable to global warming, the changing shape of rivers and beaches such as this in Kattali, Chittagong, expose the harsh reality of the effects of climate change on Bangladesh, one of the world’s poorest nations. Dubbed “climate change ground zero” by NGO The Asia Foundation, Bangladesh is already the country most affected by climate change and most vulnerable to further sea level rises which threaten to displace a significant proportion of the nation’s 162 million people. In Bangladesh’s capital, Dhaka, flooding is so frequent that rents for ground floor apartments are roughly a third cheaper than those for their first floor counterparts. Support People & Planet and buy your copy of the 2012 People & Planet Diary or Calendar today! People & Planet supports the work of 49 not-for-profit, Australian social justice and environment organisations that are working for a more just, more sustainable world. |
| Photographer: Shantanu Biswas (Bangladesh) |
