As 2008 writes its final chapter, I can’t help but reflect on the amazing movement of determination the year has seen. It’s all too easy to recognize the pitfalls of a year, the shortcomings of our government, the collapse of the global economy, and the struggles that still plague mankind. Instead, let’s celebrate the incredible success that 2008 has brought, and use it as a platform to inspire even greater things in 2009.

Success has sprawled itself across a variety of platforms this past year in the non-profit and global developmental world, and we celebrate each victory. Among the hundreds of successful new programs and millions of dollars raised around the world is Global Potential, Globalhood’s largest project. Global Potential launched in 2008 with an innovative approach to international development and social change. The program was so successful that in 2009, Global Potential hopes to double the amount of participants (for more information on Global Potential or to donate, click here).

On behalf of Globalhood I thank all the volunteers, consultants, philanthropists, blog readers, and everyday citizens who spent any part of 2008 eagerly and ambitiously forging ahead resiliently with the sole mission of making the world a better place to live. Despite our crippled times, the power to change and influence and inspire is all the more important. Happy 2009.

Visit OneWorld’s People of 2008 for profiles of some of the year’s most inspirational people.

In Part I of this ”On the Homeless Front” series, I introduced Shawnee, a homeless woman in Los Angeles that I met several years ago while doing research work at a homeless newspaper. Because most of the attention (what little there is) that is given to issues of homelessness are discussed by politicians, city officials, and homeless “experts” it’s often difficult to get a clear picture of the state of homelessness in this country and around the world.

I asked Shawnee to answer some questions in her most honest words about her experience being homeless and the obstacles to “solving” it.

How did you become homeless?

Shawnee: “I have been homeless all my life. I was born in Arizona and my parents were homeless off and on. When I was born they were moving to another state and didn’t have a place to live. I stayed in Arizona for a while and went in and out of foster care. Eventually, I moved to Los Angeles to start a new life and since I’m disabled, I was unable to get a job and have been homeless since the day I moved here.”

What do you think are the main causes of homelessness?

Shawnee: “The economy, mental and physical problems, our government not caring, and domestic violence. Many people think that people are homeless by choice, or because they have a substance abuse problem. I don’t have a substance abuse problem, I am physically disabled and the government does not have the proper housing for low income people like me who need to survive on a disability check. I can’t afford housing on my own and Los Angeles is so overcrowded with homeless people with no where to go.”

How can homelessness be ended?

Shawnee: “By people working together as one and starting to care and fix the problem at home before worrying about people in other countries and these stupid wars. The amount of money we’ve spent on the wars is so outrageous, they could have housed thousands of needy homeless people in our own country with all that money. The government just doesn’t think of us as a priority.”

What steps can everyday citizens take to help end homelessness?

Shawnee: “Get to know a homeless person and understand them. Focus on them and offer them jobs, housing, blankets, food, whatever. We are not all sitting here by choice.”

What is your biggest obstacle to getting housing?

Shawnee: “Because I have a wheelchair, it makes it very hard. I also have a service dog. Also the housing prices.”

What is the biggest obstacle to ending homelessness?

Shawnee: “People’s own self centered-ness and only being concerned about themselves. Sometimes other people need help too.”

Stewart Botting is currently in Andhra Pradesh, India, as his Right Now Foundation helps C.P. Kumar of HEARTS India to build new homes for children orphaned by AIDS. At the epi-center of the Indian AIDS epidemic, Andhra Pradesh has the highest prevalence of HIV in the country.

Here is an excerpt from a letter Stewart sent to us supporters back home:

Everyone is waiting for water!  What comes out of the taps at sporadic times of the day is brown.  There are power cuts in the morning and evening – though how that relates to the water I am not sure.  I hoard buckets of water to wash everything in from myself to pots and pans!  I plan my life around available buckets – is there enough to have a rinse after some exercise?  Is there water to slush the toilet in the morning, have a shower and wash the dishes?  Washing clothes becomes an art form in water preservation.  Water becomes a preoccupation for me, but nothing new to the village women who have always queued by the pump in the morning, who know about scarcity of every kind.   

I am moved in these villages by the hardship of life and by the dignity of the people who have to endure it.  They do not complain of their lot but they do at times ask for help if the conditions of their life have become overwhelming.  I am in the places to hear these stories when they happens.  I hear stories from grandmothers who in the course of the telling become tearful, such is their despair – these women never cry!  Their children are dead from AIDS. They have been left with the grandchildren but they have no money – they are barely capable of going to work in the fields as labourers, all the work available to them in these rural areas.  They had expected to be looked after by their children in their old age but now must try and be the providers.  Some battle on – but some simply can’t cope.

There are stories of suicide and murder, of men just leaving home one day and never returning, abandoning their wives who must fend for their children on her own.  Alcoholism is rampant and often part of the tale of woe. The men die young, poisoned by the local liquor, exhausted from a life of hard labour – they die in their forties and fifties – men in their sixties look like octogenarians, stooped and addled.  Seventy is a grand old age to be celebrated for reaching. There are suicides and many a tale of despair, especially among those with HIV.  Life is so precarious that any calamity can tip ones sanity over the edge.  Hundreds of millions of lives are lived in this precarious manner – eight hundred million in fact – more than the whole population of sub Saharan Africa.

And yet still the kids run and laugh and wave!  I am opening five children’s homes in the Nellore District of Andhra Pradesh in South East India,  small, intimate homes, not big unwieldy institutions.  I am trying to do the right thing by the children. I am trying to put them front and centre of the work.  I am being careful to ensure the children remain firmly rooted in their local context.  The homes are in small towns neighbouring the villages where the children come from – they are not removed from their environment and the extended family remain key in their lives.  In our homes, we can ensure they are literate and numerate, we can encourage abilities and channel them toward higher learning – they can be encouraged and nurtured in a way that makes them recognise that education is a way out of the cycle of poverty in which their relatives are trapped.

The other day I heard that an HIV woman, who was losing weight by the day and  whose HIV positive children we support on an HIV nutrition programme we run, committed suicide.  Had she done it, I wondered, so that her children would be taken into care?  No. Surely not?  And yet her dying wish was that her children should be taken to “Sir’s house.”

This all sounds overwhelming – and I paint a grim picture – but it does not feel like this – not least, because the kids are great and inject life with a simple unquestioning vitality – they just have energy and curiosity!  They are just themselves, little people, who muck in and get on with it and who seem as aware as the rest of us that life needs to be taken one step at a time, for no one knows what tomorrow brings.

And still, we are all waiting for water.

Go to the Right Now Foundation if you’d like more information or to help.

It’s sometimes hard to find compassion and faith in a world where people hate each other without even knowing one another, and innocent people die because plasma televisions are on sale. It’s often terribly discouraging, hard to comprehend, and disheartening. Organizations like Globalhood work tirelessly to ensure and acknowledge that wonderful, hopeful progress is being made around the world on so many levels even as bombs fly, and homes get foreclosed, and children become innocent victims of violence and intolerance.

When Barack Obama was elected last month, he released a list of ten commitments to better the world that bring desperately deprived issues to the forefront of the world’s attention. His ten promises include:

1. Reduce the U.S.’s carbon emissions 80% by 2050 and play a strong positive role in negotiating a binding global treaty to replace the expiring Kyoto Protocol.

2. Withdraw all combat troops from Iraq within 16 months and keep no permanent bases in the country.

3. Establish a clear goal of eliminating all nuclear weapons across the globe.

4. Close Guantanamo Bay.

5. Double the U.S. aid to cut extreme poverty in half by 2015 and accelerate the fight against AIDS, TB, and Malaria.

6. Open diplomatic talks with countries like Iran and Syria, to puruse peaceful resolution of tensions.

7. De-politicize military intelligence to avoid repeating the kind of manipulation that led us into the Iraq War.

8. Launch a major diplomatic effort to stop the killings in Darfur.

9. Only negotiate trade agreements that contain labor and environmental protections.

10. Invest $150 billion over ten years to support renewable energy and get 1 million plug-in electric cars on the road by 2015.

Challenging promises, sure, but Barack Obama’s ten commitments are the light at the end of the tunnel we’ve been seeking for 8 long years. Things like poverty, alternate energy, environmental conservatism, and global warming are back in the focus of the government, and we are perhaps one step closer to becoming the country we really are, and really want to be.

On a similar note, this shift in the country’s vision and direction has highlighted the impressive movement of the young generations of our time. It seems that for the first time in decades young people, and I’m talking as young as 8, 9, and 10 years old, are taking back their democratic right to improve their environment, to voice their opinions, to make the world better. In a recent New York Times article, Nicholas Kristof highlights the inspiring story of one little girl who made big waves by one simple act of kindness. The article also touches on Youth Venture, an organization that encourages young people to lead social change, with whom Globalhood works closely. Get inspired here!