Our planet contains about forty tons of bugs for every human, says Helena Goodrich, offering and “ongoing ‘all you can eat” insect buffet.” While snacking on cicadas probably won’t catch on in the U.S. anytime soon, could eating more bugs help solve world hunger?

According to a recent U.N. report, insects could indeed be part of the solution to some of the world’s food security and health problems. More than 1,900 species have reportedly been used as food and insects form part of the traditional diets of at least 2 billion people. So why isn’t entomophagy (consumption of insects as food) more popular among Westerners?

The main reason, of course, is that cows and chickens taste better than crickets and cockroaches. But that shouldn’t stop us from promoting insects as an edible alternative:
Read more on Should We Be Eating More Bugs?…

Private schools are for the privileged and those willing to pay high costs for education; everyone else attends public school or seeks alternate options: this is the accepted wisdom. In the United States, the vast majority of students at the primary and secondary level attend public school, funded by the government.

When considering education in the developing world, we may hold fast to this thinking, believing that for those in severely impoverished areas, private education is an unrealistic and scarce option, leaving the poor with public school or no education at all.

Indeed, this was the opinion held by James Tooley, a Professor of Education Policy at Newcastle University, until he experienced the landscape firsthand, traveling throughout the developing world, conducting research on educational systems in poor and prosperous areas, documenting numerous case studies, and reporting findings that prove the prevalence of low-cost private schools in poor areas.

In an Education Next article, Tooley discusses his observations and unmasks two common myths associated with education for the poor.

Myth #1: Private Education for the Poor Does Not Exist

We sometimes treat “the poor” as if they were somehow uniquely incapable of rising out of poverty without our assistance. We often assume, if we don’t provide them with everything they need, including education, that no one will. Yet if we look closely (and with a bit more humility), we see indigenous solutions everywhere. Read more on Free primary education is a fundamental good. Isn’t it?…

If anyone tells you that people have been moving to the suburbs in the past ten years or so to pursue a life of comfort, ease, and safety you can know for a fact that they are stuck in a 1980s vision of American life.

What has been trending in America in the past 10 years or so is that people are moving to major cities for a life of comfort, ease, convenience, excitement, and the pursuit of the “New Urbanism American Dream” that displaces minorities and the poor to the suburbs as urban market conditions change to meet demand. In fact, according to a Brookings Institute report, by 2008 large suburbs became home to 1.5 million more poor than their primary cities and housed almost one-third of the nation’s poor overall. According to the report, “between 2000 and 2008, suburbs in the country’s metro areas in cities of all sizes saw their poor population grow by 25 percent—almost five times faster than primary cities and well ahead of the growth seen in smaller metro areas and non-metropolitan communities.”

This change is making the suburbs home to a more diverse population in terms of age, ethnicity, household size, and poverty status. Today there is very little difference between racial and cultural diversity in major cities versus the suburbs. We are living in a new era where blacks and Latinos make up a disproportionate share of the poor in both cities and suburbs. To preach against living in the suburbs in 2013 is to preach against opportunities to be in solidarity with those who are suffering.

The suburbanization of racial diversity and poverty cuts across the country. In San Francisco, for example, a UC-Berkeley report explains, “the number of people living in poverty in the Bay Area rose 16 percent in the suburbs, compared with 7 percent in urban areas, this analysis finds. And the greatest percentage of growth in suburban poverty was among blacks and Latinos. The percentage of the poor living in the suburbs has increased across all racial groups, but the change is highest among blacks, increasing by more than 7 percentage points from 2000 to 2009.”
Read more on 21st-Century Suburbanism: Poverty And Racial Diversity…

In the summer of 2005 hundreds of thousands of people gathered in ten spots around the globe for a series of free concerts meant to persuade world leaders to give more money to fight poverty in Africa. The idea for the concerts was conceived in May and hastily organized by Bob Geldof. Within two months the former Boomtown Rat was able to convince dozens of actors, musicians, and politicians to join in forming LIVE8, “the largest mandate for action in history.”

Unlike most benefit concerts, though, Live8 didn’t raise a dime to actually end poverty. As the web site noted at the time, “LIVE 8 is calling for people across the world to unite in one call—in 2005 it is your voice we are after, not your money.” Geldolf said the event was intended to raise consciousness and exert political pressure on the G8 summiteers.

The concerts included more than 200 musical acts scheduled to play more than 69 hours of music. Organizers said 5.5 billion people(!) would be able to watch or listen on the Internet and more than 182 television stations and 2,000 radio networks and stations. Coldplay’s Chris Martin called the concerts “the greatest thing that’s ever been organized, probably, in the history of the world.”

So what did the greatest thing that’s ever been organized (probably) in the history of the world accomplish?
Read more on Why Ben Affleck’s One-Day Diet Won’t Save Africa…

Or at least that is what some House Democrats claim. Despite the fact that scientists have yet to conclude that climate change due to human impact on the environment is a proven reality, these Democrats are convinced that it not only exists, it forces women into prostitution.

David Harsanyi at Human Events has this to say:

[N]othing causes more transactional sex than poverty, and few conditions bring more poverty to women around the world than limiting capitalism and free trade. One wonders if a poor woman in say, Bangladesh, would be happier and healthier with a car, an air conditioner and processed food rather than that light carbon footprint they now carry? I wish they had a choice.

It is difficult to imagine that driving rain, warmer weather or an ice storm would force a woman into prostitution. It is poverty that provokes women and families to make desperate choices. It is also the increase in human-trafficking, one of the most lucrative forms of criminal activity world-wide. The Guardian illustrates: Read more on Climate Change Causes Prostitution?…

Ronald Davis is homeless and living on the streets of Chicago. In this video clip he shares how he feels about the way other people treat him.

“No matter what people think about me, I know I’m a human first.”

Read more on ‘I’m Not a Bum, I’m a Human Being’…

There is such powerful interest in sports being a way out of poverty for many low-income males, especially black males, that we tend to forget about other things, like wisdom, that contribute to success. For many young men and women sports has given them and their families amazing new opportunities to quickly go from subsistence to wealth. However, for many athletes the lessons of stewardship, which are first modeled in the home, were never properly cultivated, resulting in them losing all of their earnings within a short time. Here are just a few recent ones from BusinessInsider.com:
Read more on Virtue Matters More Than Money…

Americans continue to be fed the false narrative that poverty causes crime rates to rise. While it is true that not having material needs met makes people vulnerable to do things like steal—even the Bible teaches that (Proverbs 30:8-9)—the ongoing reduction of morality and materiality is doing nothing but setting the stage for the failure of well-intended programs because we are missing core moral issues. One such idea is a New Haven, Connecticut plan to reduce crime rates by giving more welfare. The problems there were recently introduced in a New Haven News article:
Read more on Buying Our Way Out of Crime Will Not Work…

AEI’s Values and Capitalism just released a new book titled, Economic Growth: Unleashing the Potential for Human Flourishing. In support of the book, they’ve produced a video highlighting the great work of Tegu Toys, a wooden block manufacturer based in Honduras.

Read more on Fighting Poverty with Toy Blocks and Economic Growth…

Saint Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary and the Acton Institute are co-hosting a “Conference on Poverty,” May 31–June 1, on the seminary campus.

Conference speakers include Jay W. Richards, author of Money, Greed, and God, and Senior Fellow at the Discovery Institute; Susan R. Holman, senior writer at Harvard Global Health Institute, and author of The Hungry are Dying: Beggars in Roman Cappadocia and God Knows There’s Need: Christian Responses to Poverty; and Michael Matheson Miller, Acton Institute Research Fellow and Director and Host of the Poverty Cure DVD Series.

Read more on Conference on Poverty Co-Hosted by Acton Institute and Saint Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary…