August 2009

The other day I was studying with a couple of friends and, while we were on a break, one of them offered me a beer that had entered the Colombian market a couple of years ago. This beer’s marketing strategy is based on the idea of it being “the beer for women.” I said that I wasn’t going to try it, because I think that products that are promoted using ideas of a “macho” culture are not compatible with my way of thinking. And hence we started a very interesting debate that motivated me to write this post.

I don’t quite see what took them so long to take this seriously. But it’s only now that the president of the Philippines signed the Magna Carta for Women. Thank heavens this little piece of paper will not just be some other piece of paper that’s debated upon over and over again in congress.

According to the National Commission on the Role of Filipino Women (NCRFW), “The Magna Carta of Women is a comprehensive women's human rights law that seeks to eliminate discrimination against women by recognizing, protecting, fulfilling and promoting the rights of Filipino women, especially those in the marginalized sectors.”

Young people from across Brazil spark a movement to bring change and empower communities.

All those who criticize online social networks and the time young people spend on them, will have to reconsider their arguments now. Especially after the example given by a group of young people from Brazil last month!

The simple idea of bringing people together to make a difference was enough to fire up a group of committed young people who decided to use Internet to respond the needs of Santa Catarina, a region in the South of Brazil that was affected by heavy floods last November.

After the floods, over 70,000 people were evacuated from their houses and infrastructure in the region was heavily impacted. After months, still many families are displaced, living with relatives or in provisory shelters and the prospects of development in the region were not looking at all promising until now.

It seems a bit of a non-argument, but an intriguing one, nevertheless: Which MDG is the most important to achieve?

At the recent UN Youth Assembly, experts butted heads (jokingly) over this. One argued that Child Health is the most important, because it's a prerequisite for studying and contributing to society. Another argued that Education takes priority because people cannot practice healthy behaviors until they have the knowledge they need to do so. Someone else appealed for MDG #1: End Poverty and Hunger, saying until we accomplish that, people can be neither healthy, nor educated.