Augustine observes that humans are constituted in large part by their sociality. As he puts it in the City of God, “For there is nothing so social by nature as this race, no matter how discordant it has become through its fault.”

Read more on Happy Smothers, I Mean, Mother’s Day…

Africans unite to save Norwegians from dying of frostbite. By joining Radi-Aid, you too can donate your radiator and spread some warmth in the frozen wasteland of Norway.

Why Africa for Norway?
Read more on Africans Join Together to Aid Frozen Norwegians…

In The American Spectator, Acton Institute’s Michael Matheson Miller throws his hat into the ring as he launches a tongue-in-cheek candidacy for World Bank president, but also raises serious questions about the institution’s poverty fighting programs. Miller is a research fellow at Acton, where he directs PovertyCure, an initiative that promotes enterprise solutions to poverty. Jeffrey Sachs — are you listening?

Read more on Miller: Here I Come to Save the World Bank…

Last summer, Acton’s PovertyCure team traveled to Ghana to meet with its economists and entrepreneurs — the men and women who are helping the country develop. It just so happens that they also met briefly with Peter Cardinal Turkson, president of the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Peace and Justice and co-author of the note released yesterday that has stirred up a global controversy.

Read more on ‘Central World Bank’ Would Hurt Cardinal Turkson’s Native Ghana…

Coverage of the drought in the Horn of Africa has fixated on the amount of aid going into the region and humanitarians’ estimates of how much more will be needed. According to the U.N. Coordination of Human Affairs office, the $1 billion already committed to assistance is less than half of what will be needed—but who knows whether the final figure will be anywhere near the stated $2.3 billion.

Read more on Humanitarian Aid Is Encouraging Famine, Not Ending It…

Bread for the World CEO David Beckmann once said, “We can’t food-bank our way to the end of hunger.” As I said then, if “changing the politics of hunger” means that more people are getting food assistance from the government rather than food banks and community efforts, count me out.

Read more on Fighting Hunger Together…

Last week in Rome the Acton Institute presented a promotional video for the PovertyCure initiative before an international audience of businessmen, scholars, journalists, graduate students and missionaries in attendance at the Institute’s May 18 development economics conference: “Family-Enterprise, Market Economies, and Poverty: The Asian Transformation.” The Acton Institute is one of many partners in this new initiative made up of a network of individuals and organizations looking for free-enterprise solutions to poverty.

Read more on Rev. Sirico: Change thinking on poverty…

International aid has come in for a lot of criticism recently and with the debate on the federal budget just beginning, U.S. funding for aid is on the chopping block.  With a rising deficit, and a struggling economy, many are asking why the United States chooses to continue funding international, or foreign, aid. People of faith are often caught in the middle of the debate on whether international aid should or shouldn’t be cut, along with the role the state should play.

Read more on International Aid and Integral Human Development…

Bill Easterly has a brief reflection on the role of religion in global societies, a role that must be taken into account by development ‘experts.’ Speaking of his experience at an Anglican worship service in Ghana:

Read more on Religious Development…

Some of the assumptions built into the mainstream international aid and development movement are puzzling. Among them is the faulty assumption that the comparison that matters most is how the developing world is doing in relation to the developed. Not surprisingly, this kind of comparison tends to make the gains in developing countries seem small, inscrutable, or nonexistent, and end up reinforcing the myth that progress is never achieved.

Read more on Walk, Pedal, Drive…