GNP Show 05 (One Hour) Afghan Orphans

Piece Description

On this week’s World Vision Report…

An orphanage in Afghanistan for descendants of Genghis Khan…a different kind of daycare in India…when helping hurts in Mexico…there’re more killers out there than AIDS…a shelter for sex workers in Indonesia…teenage refugees sing peace but get death threats…being hijacked by a desperate woman… and music from Africa.  All that and more this week on the World Vision Report.

Bamiyan Orphanage (3:41)

The descendants of Genghis Khan and his warriors, known as Hazaras, make up one-fifth of the population of Afghanistan.  The Taliban murdered tens of thousands of Hazaras in the late 1990s, creating a large population of orphans.  More than 200 of those orphans are now cared for in an orphanage outside the city of Bamiyan.  But it appears to be a victim of discrimination.  Government checks are persistently late and teacher pay is so low they have to have second jobs just to make ends meet.  Will Everett reports.

Mobile Creches (5:12)

In the U.S., probably no one would think of taking a baby onto a construction site.  But in India, some parents have no choice.  They live on the construction sites where they work.  And that often means their children are left to fend for themselves.  Some of the luckier ones have a better option -- a mobile nursery right at the job site.  Peter Aronson reports from city of Mumbai.

When Helping Hurts (3:57)

Give a dollar to the little kid washing your windows at a stoplight in Mexico?  Sure.  People do it all the time.  But government officials say that only exploits young children who should be in school.  The welfare department in Boca del Rio offers parents $50 a month and job training if they will put their kids in school and not on the street.  But the World Vision Report’s Conrad Fox says the program so far has no takers.

Glass Castle Author

Jeannette Walls is a journalist with MSNBC.com who tried to hide her past for years. She didn't want anyone to know she grew up in stark poverty — sleeping in cardboard boxes and cars and eating from garbage cans.

Then she wrote a book about her childhood called "The Glass Castle." It made the New York Times' bestseller list. She tells host Peggy Wehmeyer her readers helped her overcome self-imposed fears of rejection and ridicule because many of them said they, too, grew up poor.

Hotline Surabaya (4:42)

Surabaya is the hotbed of the sex trade in Indonesia.  Prostitution is illegal in Indonesia, but the law is rarely enforced in the red light districts and an estimated 230,000 women sell their bodies on the streets every day.  Trish Anderton takes listeners to Hotline Surabaya -- a charitable organization that works to get women out of the sex trade and provides care for their children.

Waayah Cusub (5:41)

Some teenage refugees from Somalia’s long civil war have formed a rap group in a suburb of Nairobi, Kenya and their songs are shaking things up.  Waayah Cusub’s songs convey a message of peace and reconciliation, but that’s generated death threats for the group.  Somali warlords have a vested interest in continuing the fighting and radical Islamists don’t like songs that deal with taboo subjects.  Richard Lough reports.

Hijacker (3:15)

One of the worst places in the world to be a woman is the Democratic Republic of Congo.  That’s where reporter Michael Kavanagh tells us in a Reporter’s Notebook about meeting a woman under rather strange circumstances.  She jumped in his car to save herself from a fire and her fears from a life of rape, ruin, and constant war.

African Music (5:15)

Music and social protest have been linked for years in America. Now, there’s an entire label devoted to African music and social protest. Two U.S. college students launched the label after going to Africa where they fell in love with the music and were touched by the overwhelming need for social justice. Their first CD already has raised $140,000 to feed refugees from the Darfur region of Sudan.  Host Peggy Wehmeyer talks with one of the producers.

:30 PROMO FOR THIS SHOW:

            Stop at a red light in Mexico and chances are young children will approach your car selling food, trinkets, or offering to wash your windows.  The government in one Mexican town says that exploits the children and it wants to put a stop to it.

            That story, caring for prostitutes in Indonesia, orphans in Afghanistan, and on-the-job daycare in India -- plus the music of protest.

            It’s all coming up this week’s show from the Global News Partnership.

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