UN Advice on Remittances and Migration Costs

This UN article emphasizes the importance of remittances and reducing migration costs to benefit home countries. Remittances are the largest source of foreign exchange in many countries. Governments can facilitate the flow of remittances by reducing the cost of sending money, and promote access to savings, loans and health insurance products linked to remittances. But first, they need to improve the quality of the data. Governments also need to reduce the migration costs if they are going to improve migrants’ earnings and savings. The UN discusses their advice to government's on how to change their system for the benefit of both them, and the home country.   

http://unchronicle.un.org/article/leveraging-migration-and-remittances-development/

Diaspora Foundations Making a Difference and Building Roots

Here at Building Roots we’ve had a particular interest in diaspora foundations.

According to Oxford Dictionary, Diaspora is “the dispersion or spread of any people from their original homeland.”

Check out these diaspora foundations that are helping people stay connected to their homelands:

http://www.ghanaiandiaspora.com/

http://www.indonesiandiasporafoundation.org/

http://www.foundationfortheafricandiaspora.org/

http://www.jamaicandiaspora.gov.jm/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=106&Itemid=544

Together, we can all make a difference building the roots of our home country.

Now Visualizing: World Bank Remittance Data

Fun fact: the World Bank makes gobs of data available on their website.  Want to know how many square kilometers of forest cover the earth? Check out the World Bank.  What about the proportion of seats held by women in parliaments?  Again, the World Bank.  Even more fun is sifting through that data trying to interpret and extrapolate relationships from it.  

Fortunately, davidbauer over at visualizing.org enjoy sifting through that data and go a step further to translate that information graphically.  The result: an interactive map showing a country's number of migrants abroad and the amount received from each country.  It also compares the amount of remittances with international aid money over time.  It's great for us here at the Building Roots Project because it gives us an idea of where a target country's population and migrant resources are located.  With the click of a mouse or swipe of a finger, we can look up data from the past 50 years on almost any country.  

Try it out! 

This incredible graphic was forwarded to me from Richard Reiss, cofounder of Artist As Citizen and City Atlas.  Richard was a speaker at a recent panel on non-profit leadership and is a wealth of knowledge about all things design, art, and non-profit-related.  

Global Remittances Top $500 Billion in 2012

The UK Guardian posted an interactive map in January of this year detailing the flow of remittances around the world.  This graphic representation of the World Bank's 2011 estimates illustrates the United States' key role as the world's largest remittance sender.  The Building Roots Project is searching for opportunities in all of these countries to turn those remittances into concrete community improvement projects.  

New York Times: Immigrants Find it Cheaper to Send Money Home

“Remittances may well be the best single way to foment development.”

— Nancy Birdsall, president of the Center for Global Development

 I found this great article the other day from the New York Times.  It advocates for the power of remittances and the role they play in global development.  The Building Roots Project is focused on channeling remittances as a way to further development overseas.  The reduction in fees for global money transfers is critical to helping reduce our project costs and use those funds to give back to the local community.

Click here to read the original article