Fan Power: Hunger Is Not a Game, Revisited
By Courtney E. Martin
“The Hunger Games” film, which debuted just over a week ago, has exceeded all box office expectations, taking in nearly $200 million to date and making Lionsgate, its distributor, very happy. But it isn’t just the on screen battle that has caught the attention of fans.
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Out of Jail, and Into a Job
By Tina Rosenberg
About two months ago, Angel Padilla was walking near Madison Square Garden when the driver of a linen service truck started shouting and waving at him. “Hey Angel! C.E.O.!” the driver said. “Look at me — I’m driving now!”
Padilla was surprised. He knew the driver — he was a guy named Jose whom he’d supervised six months before. Padilla works at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, but his real employer is the Center for Employment Opportunities, (C.E.O.) a New York organization that specializes in helping ex-offenders find and keep jobs. Padilla supervises a crew of from five to seven parolees as they do temporary, minimum-wage janitorial jobs at John Jay.
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From Young Adult Book Fans to Wizards of Change
By Courtney E. Martin
This week, Suzanne Collins’s “The Hunger Games” hits the big screen. As the latest wildly popular young adult (Y.A.) novel becomes a film franchise, it’s not just box office dollars that will be captured, but potentially nascent citizens. At least that’s the goal of the social campaign called “Hunger Is Not a Game” which aims to connect fans to the global food justice movement.
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In Africa’s Vanishing Forests, the Benefits of Bamboo
By Tina Rosenberg
In the district of Asosa, the land is thick with bamboo. People plant it and manage the forests. They rely on its soil-grabbing roots to stabilize steep slopes and riverbanks, cutting erosion. They harvest it to burn for fuel, to make into charcoal sticks to sell to city dwellers and to build furniture.
Asosa is not in China, not even in Asia. It is a district in the west of Ethiopia, on the Sudanese border. To many people, bamboo means China. But it’s not just panda food — mountain gorillas in Rwanda also live on bamboo. About 4 percent of Africa’s forest cover is bamboo.
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Africa’s Girl Power
By David Bornstein
Update: David Bornstein responded to readers in the comments below.
On Thursday, thousands of organizations around the world will celebrate International Women’s Day, acknowledging women’s achievements and drawing attention to their continuing struggles. (See some events here.)
Thinking about the day, I was reminded of a woman named Fiona Mavhinga, whom I met at a conference a few years ago and who works for a remarkable organization called Camfed, which supports girls’ education in Africa.
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