New Year greetings! The Population Institute’s Popline newsletter is now online. The December 2009 issue can be found at http://www.populationinstitute.org/resources/populationonline/issue/1/. At that site, you can enter your email address in the blue sign-up box to receive future issues electronically.

Here is the summary version from which you can link to each article.

December 2009′s Edition of
POPULATION ONLINE
Brings you stories on…

• Cairo at 15 – Much Remains to be Done
Fifteen years ago after the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) held in Cairo, Egypt, the ICPD’s 20-year Programme of Action is far from fulfilled. While many governments have embraced reproductive health as an essential component of poverty reduction, access to family planning information and services is far from universal and maternal mortality remains stubbornly high.
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Bill Ryerson, President of PMC, appeared on Vermont Public Radio (VPR) today to discuss the recent Drucker Award and the work of PMC. Below is a write up frmo VPR’s website along with a link to listen to the interview.
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A non-profit located in Vermont has been honored for its work making a difference in some two dozen countries around the world.

The Shelburne-based Population Media Center recently received a Peter F. Drucker Award granted to social organizations that demonstrate innovation and positive change in peoples’ lives.

PMC achieves that goal through internationally broadcast entertainment serial dramas in which characters evolve into role models for the audiences they reach.
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Violence against women usually occurs when it is considered socially acceptable. People are attempting to use the radio soap operas in developing nations to model positive social change.

Violence against women is a global problem, but its incidence varies widely. It tends to be much higher where it is regarded as a socially acceptable. Though violence against women is considered wrong in the United States, this was not always the case. Moreover, there are still places where abuse of women is socially accepted. In order to ensure that people see domestic violence as wrong, developing nations like Ethiopia and the Philippines are using soap operas transmitted via the radio to show people more appropriate standards of behavior.

For full article, visit:
http://www.conversationsforabetterworld.com/2009/12

Congratulations to Alleyne Regis for being named an eco-warrior by Razoo.
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Alleyne Regis uses a unique method to raise awareness of environmental and social issues in the Caribbean: radio soap operas. For three years, Regis produced a radio show for residents of the island of St. Lucia called Changing Tides, a serial drama that used gripping plotlines to spotlight issues like AIDS and the South Pacific ecosystem. The show, which was sponsored by a conservation group called RARE, had more than 200,000 listeners, and they paid attention to the social messages: 32 percent said that they had stopped littering because of what they’d learned on the program. Now, Regis is building up an even bigger audience: he’s working with the nonprofit group Population Media Center (http://www.razoo.com/story/Population-Media-Center) on a new socially-conscious radio program that airs in nine Caribbean countries. Who knew soap operas could be such a good influence?

For full article, visit:
http://www.razoo.com/articles/Six_Eco-Warriors

Many thanks to Stanford psychologist Albert Bandura for this article from The Psychologist. The article describes the work of Population Media Center. Dr. Bandura is a member of PMC’s Program Advisory Board.

“Social cognitive theory goes global”
The Psychologist
June 2009
http://www.thepsychologist.org.uk

Thanks to Jim Carter for this article from Foreign Policy.
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It’s not Twitter or Facebook that’s reinventing the planet. Eighty years after the first commercial broadcast crackled to life, television still rules our world. And let’s hear it for the growing legions of couch potatoes: All those soap operas might be the ticket to a better future after all.

“The television,” science-fiction writer Ray Bradbury lamented in 1953, is “that insidious beast, that Medusa which freezes a billion people to stone every night, staring fixedly, that Siren which called and sang and promised so much and gave, after all, so little.” Bradbury wasn’t alone in his angst: Television has been as reviled as it has been welcomed since the first broadcasts began in 1928. Critics of television, from disgusted defenders of the politically correct to outraged conservative culture warriors, blame it for poor health, ignorance, and moral decline, among other assorted ills. Some go further: According to a recent fatwa in India, television is “nearly impossible to use … without a sin.” Last year, a top Saudi cleric declared it permissible to kill the executives of television stations for spreading sedition and immorality.

For full article, visit:
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles

Thanks to Alexandra Paul for this story from NPR News.
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Much of the discussion of television in the United States involves talk about falling ratings and cultural damage, but writer and economist Charles Kenny sees many positive benefits of television in the developing world.

It’s not just that television sets are popping up in living rooms and cafes from New Delhi to the most remote locations in Saudi Arabia, it’s that now those TVs tend to come with many more choices through satellite and cable.

Citing research by scholars Robert Jensen and Emily Oster, Kenny says that a village getting satellite or cable TV “goes along with higher girls’ school enrollment rates and increased female autonomy. Within two years of getting cable or satellite, between 45 and 70 percent of the difference between urban and rural areas on these measures disappears.”

For full article, visit:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=113870313

Holiday greetings to you. Below is a document summarizing Population Media Center’s programs by country and the measured effects of these programs.

PMC Progress Report December 2009 (Word doc., 118 KB)

Thanks to Fred Stanback for this article. We know that having access to mass media is effective in lowering fertility rates, probably not because it results in people not having sex, as the Indian Family Welfare Minister suggests in the article below, but because of people being educated by the information contained in TV shows and observing role models for use of family planning and smaller family size.
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Earlier this month the United Nations warned that the world population–at least 6.7 billion–would double in the next 40 years if growth rates remain unchecked. The UN specifically singled out India, where the number of people–1.17 billion–is increasing by 1.6 a year, and said that population explosion could exacerbate problems such as famine, disease and struggles over resources.

Television: Is it a form of birth control?

“We are looking at tens of millions more mouths to feed, children to school and people to house in the countries that are least able to accommodate that,” a UN spokesman said.

For full article, visit:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/sfmoms/detail?entry_id=43897

Thanks to Mark O’Connor for this article from the Canberra times.
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Journalists are a fairly innumerate lot. Many are, bizarrely, quite proud for it.

It is a dangerous state of affairs because it means they swallow virtually any set of figures without question.

Perhaps the only thing more dangerous is when someone in power does the same thing. And so it was a couple of weeks ago when Treasurer Wayne Swan launched the Australian Institute for Population Ageing Research.

He said, “The Intergenerational Report projects Australia’s population will grow by 65 per cent to reach over 35 million people in 2049, up from around 21 and a half million people now.

For full article, visit:
http://www.crispinhull.com.au