For families living in extreme poverty, figuring out how to feed your kids can be the ultimate challenge. From this perspective, sending your child into the capital to beg for food might become the rational option. In the chaos and hardship that comes along with a life wherein a mother sees a great chance for her child to survive begging in the streets as opposed to living at home, a religious institution that may as well abuse children becomes a more secure, orderly, and structured option.

“TV Cultura, a Peruvian NGO, produces television programs using contents from different parts of the country. They started in the 1990s with the main objective to introduce local contents in national television. Carlos Cárdenas, President TV Cultura, knocked the doors of the main broadcasters with the idea to disseminate the local audiovisual production they were producing, but there were no responses.

“A sentence of the Corte Provincial of Sucumbios (Provincial Court of Sucumbios) in Nueva Loja orders ChevronTexaco, an American oil company, to pay US$9.5 billion to the Frente de Defensa de la Amazonía (Organization for the Defense of the Amazonia; or double that amount if the company fails to publicly apologize for ‘26 years of social and environmental destruction of the Ecuadorian jungle.’ The sentence argues that Chevron-Texaco failed to apply existing and available technologies to reduce the impact of its operations, deciding to reduce the cost of its operations instead.

Despite positive economic growth within Latin America and a relatively smooth transition through the 2008 crisis, there are concerns about how this trend will continue.

“The Inter-American Development Bank, Foreign Policy magazine, FEMSA (A leading beverage company in the LAC region) and the Corporación Andina de Formento (CAF) organized the Latin Social Forum entitled ‘The Democratization of philanthropy’ in June 2010. The main purpose of the event was to recognize the profound changes in philanthropic and charitable donating in Latin America. As is happening around the world, the regional trend in philanthropy is toward decentralization, with a growing number of individuals and companies donating through private foundations to social causes.

The use of national cultural goods as sources of revenue is an intriguing area, with benefits ranging from increased income to the preservation of national identities and different cultures. FORO further explains the importance of "cultural industries."

“The Biotechnology Program of the United Nations University (UNU) has called for applications to its short-term scholarship program and several academic initiatives for 2011. The application process is from June 1st to September 30th. The program includes: (i) climate change and biotechnology, (ii) control of vectors and biotechnology; (iii) biotechnology in human health; (iv) industrial biotechnology, agricultural biotechnology, and biotechnology applied to art conservation; and (v) copyright and technology transfers in biotechnology.

“UNESCO has introduced ‘water-box’, a conceptual scheme for water management that integrates political, managerial and socials actors, and is aimed at coordinating goals and strategic decisions for sustainable development and the preservation of water resources. The study analyzes a future with more water-related emergencies because climate change is transforming the natural cycle of water.

One of the many ideas behind carbon credits is that it can be a source of revenue for poorer countries who do not max out their carbon emission allowances. ACET however illustrates how the poorest countries do not have the capacity to make use of these new tools.

Although remittances take up large share of foreign investment into any developing countries, barriers such as the high cost (up to 25% in some countries) and the long distances receivers have to travel, still keep remittance levels lower than could be. This is especially the case within Africa when compared to Latin America and Asia, places that have largely lowered the costs of cash transfers.