WE NEED ZERO PARCENT IN CHILD LABOUR

Every adult was once a child who was most likely shielded from maltreatment so that he or she could enjoy basic rights that was required at a particular stage of growing up.While trying to prohibit child labour we need to trace its root cause, apart from laws that lack a definite meaning of who is a child. There is the issue of street children who roam the streets in towns begging, as if they have no parents. This is where we need to investigate how parents relate to their children. Some parents are cruel to their children. They lack proper parental language that can promote mutual relations and harmony in the family.  Their children perceive them as foes and decide to flee from home.

We cannot curb child labour in our country without resolving the issue of ‘street’ children. If we are committed to dealing with all vices that impede the development of our children, we should have a common approach and be accountable altogether.We need first of all to find out why children get employed. They might be employed because they lack support from their parents. Children in school need soap, pens, food, and clothes. Some end up having to pay fees for themselves. Where should they get money without labour, Should they drop out of school and stay home?

I have been a victim of child labour since primary education. Now, I am finishing my undergraduate degree course and the same song continues. What a curse! My father had no money to support me and I had no way apart from begging and working for me agree wages to get soap and school uniform. I thank those who supported me as a child.Laws should be enacted to protect the rights of children. They should clearly define who a child is in terms of age and gender to avoid ambiguity. We cannot give a general definition to a child without considering family status and other attributes. A child from a well-to-do family cannot be like one from a middle income or poor family. The one from a higher income family at least has relief from child labour Tucta and ATE should determine what kind of work children can do or establish special fund for street children.

CORRUPTION, BRUTALITY BY POLICE FORCE BREED CRIMINALS

Tanzania’s Constitution sanctions the country to be a democratic and, therefore, a civilian country. In a democratic/civilian society, it is the executive arm of government that is responsible for enforcing the law.The police service as part of the executive arm of government is tasked with keeping internal security and peace, ensuring public order, safety and compliance of the law. The police service cannot achieve these set goals without public cooperation, support and above all partnership. The public holds a duty of giving the police the necessary support in the discharge of their duty since this is the only way the service can ensure an enabling and peaceful environment for the public to go about their daily transactions without fear of intimidation.However, these cannot be achieved if the police service is its own enemy, causing nemesis for itself. The attitude of some of our police personnel breeds mistrust, anger, apathy and sheer insult between the police service and the public. The effect is that it becomes difficult for the police to carry out any credible investigation since the public is not ready to volunteer any information to help the police.

This is a vital part of all investigations and if the public shows apathy and indignation there is not much the police can do to efficiently investigate crimes. In the UK police appeals for information in an incident receives many telephone calls as a result of the trust between the police and the public, but the converse is true in Tanzania.The mistrust stems from the police giving out the identities of informants and taking bribes from the accused persons; thus treating prosecution witnesses with contempt. The public therefore does not find it a constitutional duty to support the law enforcement agency in their duties.

An average Tanzanian policeman or woman is incredibly arrogant and a bully. They bully the very tax-payer whose sweat is used to provide their uniform, salaries, accommodation and the weapons they use. Paradoxically, these are the same equipment used to intimidate, bully and batter civilians. The mere sight of a police officer sends shivers down your spine. If you don’t remember that bully beast in your schooling days, police personnel in uniform reminds you of him/her. They are a law unto themselves; they are above reproach and above the law of the land.

The complicity with which the police service operates is mind-boggling. They cover up their wrong deeds expertly assisted by the law courts which will not support a civilian taking legal action against them. Suffice it to say that not all but some police personnel are unprofessional, semi-illiterates, semi-trained and above all criminals. If they are properly trained, the public will be their partners but not objects for bullying. They will scorn bribe taking, twisting of facts and harassing commercial drivers and other road users.

All commercial drivers set aside some amount of money which they call ‘road money’ for the police. These drivers may be blamed for abatement of immoral practice but the complex operations of the police and the courts makes it better if these drivers pay money to enable them continue their journeys or business. The same cannot be said of the police service which has legitimised bad conduct and encouraging extortion on an institutional basis. If indeed the police service wants Tanzanians to take it seriously and to see it as a partner it must shed this bad image and reinvent itself.

Terrorising civilians is not part of the police mandate and if this is not a human rights abuse, I don’t know what else is. Human rights campaigners and politicians should be part of the crusade against police brutalities against civilians.The police administration must, as a matter of urgency, take steps to conduct in-service training and also weed out the rotten nuts. Any brute force on the part of the police is an assault and criminal. If there is a civil disobedience of the police it can lead to a breakdown of law and order creating a chaotic situation for Tanzanians.There is a call for an improved remuneration and better conditions of service for the force but that will not impact greatly on the attitude of the personnel of the service since most of them have the wrong assumption that they hold the power to life. As a matter of fact some police officers do not know or understand the laws of the land and other international treaties and conventions. The lack of such knowledge is partly the reasons why the police believe they wield powers more than civilians.

A professional police will be well mannered, respectful, polite, neatly and properly dressed. This reminds me of the dress code of the police service. The psychological impact of smart and gentle dressing is much revealing. It is ridiculous to see our police officers in black uniforms in a tropical scorching sun sweating profusely which inadvertently stirs the anger hormones in their system.Tanzanians can stop police terrorism against them with a massive civil protest and legal actions against police personnel and the police administration. Human rights organisations and organised groups should register their disapproval of police conduct and our media must also help in this regard. We need the police service as much as they need us. A humble police service is better off than an arrogant and vindictive one. The lies, twisting of facts and criminal complicity by some members of the service must cease forthwith.

SOCIAL MOVEMENT AROUDN THE GLOBE

What is a social movement? What is a women’s movement? And what’s different for women in social movements? These are questions that are difficult to answer in more than provisional terms. One tends to speak of movements as actors in themselves--“the women’s movement,” “the peace movement,” “the environmental movement,” “the labor movement,” add your favorite here--giving them a unity of purpose and intention that they never really have. Movements are not themselves actors; movements are something that people create to press for social change. They are spaces that are made by people to allow relationships between them that can challenge power.

       Definitions of social movements by sociologists abound. Sociological definitions of movements stress qualities like collective and innovative behavior, extra-institutionality, their network character and multicenteredness, the shifting and fluid boundaries of movement membership, and the willingness of members to disrupt order a little or a lot (Gerlach and Hine 1970).  Social movements are generally seen as phenomena of the modern era and industrialized society, whether located in the “First” world or not (Hobsbawm 1959; Tilly 1986). Industrialization and urbanization, technological advancements, and ongoing democraticization allowed people to push for change collectively from the margins of the polity, from outside of less-than-open institutions. 

   Sociologists have tended to define and redefine “social movement” in response to the kind of protests they saw taking place around them. American sociologists in the early- to mid-twentieth century characterized movements as being on a continuum of innovative collective behavior, as the organized end of a spectrum whose opposite pole was crowds and riots (Blumer 1939; see also Turner and Killian 1987). For these scholars, known as collective behaviorists, social movements were highly organized but non-routine entities where people interacted to establish new meanings about politics (and other subjects), and where they challenged power based on the making of these new meanings. Some variations on collective behavior theory emphasized the disorderly side of movement activism, seeing actors in movements as problematic for democracy. Kornhauser’s (1959) “mass society” theory, for example, painted protesters as alienated and atomistic, the product of structurally abnormal nation-states; hence the mass movements of fascism and communism were both pathological manifestations of ill-channeled popular discontent. 

       It was a little difficult to describe the participants of 1950s and 1960s American social movements as alienated and atomistic; the largely middle class social base of those movements--the Black Civil Rights movement, the student movement, the peace and anti-Vietnam war movement, other racial/ethnic liberation movements, the environmental movement, the gay and lesbian liberation movement, and remobilized feminist movements--precluded scholars from seeing protestors as only malcontents. Instead, American sociologists analyzed movement participation as rational expressions of politics by other than institutional means. Influenced by organizational studies and economics, what came to be known as the “resource mobilization” paradigm arose, where, as the name suggests, questions of how movements came into being through the mobilization of resources were central. And resource mobilization paradigms coexisted with analyses of the political opportunity structure within which movements arose, seeing collective action not as a symptom of abnormal politics, but as the reasonable response of actors who took advantage of new institutional situations--elite splits, the formation of commissions and departments, new institutions, etc.--to push forward from outside when the time was right. 

       By the beginning of the 1990s, there was renewed emphasis among scholars of American social movements on the interactional processes involved in making social movements. This shift was fueled in part by European “new social movement” theory, developed by those attempting to make sense of social activism in the increasingly post-industrial, prosperous societies of Europe. In the U.S., scholars began to take more “social constructionist” views of movement politics, seeking to understand how the availability of resources and opportunities dovetailed with the use of cultural meanings by groups, and the creation of new collective identities (Morris and Mueller 1992). Most recently, some sociologists have argued for a much broader “contention” model of movements, which sees struggle as endemic to both institutional and extra-institutional settings, and just as likely to be about cultural issues as about classically political or economic matters (McAdam, Tarrow and Tilly 2001). 

       How were questions about women’s movements, and women’s participation in mixed-gender movements dealt with in all these theoretical shifts? We know that women’s movements, and women in movements, have changed history, but we have second wave feminism’s academic arm, women’s studies, to thank for uncovering women’s participation in movements and establishing that women’s movements changed political landscapes. The remobilized feminist movements of the 1960s and 1970s generated scholars who looked for evidence of women’s agency in the past, inspired by the present. And the remobilized second wave feminist movement itself was pivotal to new thinking about movements in sociology, as feminist sociologists contributed to new paradigms based on their research of women’s movements and women in movements (see, for example, Freeman’s 1975 resource mobilization assessment of second wave white feminism). In a very real way, theorizing about women in movements--particularly but not solely in feminist movements --contributed to new understandings about how movements came about. Feminist social movement scholars have continued to make sure that they make new theory with women’s activism in mind, and their work has remained central to the sociology of social movements. 

       How then do feminist scholars define women’s movements? Definitions have tended to be broad, with distinctions sometimes--and sometimes not--made between feminist movements, “non-feminist” women’s movements, and women’s participation in mixed-gender movements. For example, writing about women’s movements in the United States and Western Europe from a political opportunity perspective, Katzenstein and Mueller (1987) argued that women’s movements/feminist movements--these being one and the same in their analytical framework--were characterized by a variety of issues but a unity of purpose: that of the total transformation of societies’ public and private gender institutions. In this sense, then, a women’s/feminist movement existed worldwide (or at least, “First-world-wide”), characterized by a uniquely comprehensive agenda that was worked on by women with different emphases in different times and places. 

       Other feminist scholars established typologies to help understand women’s protest and resistance. Chafetz and Dworkin (1986; see Chapter One), made distinctions between pre-modern forms of women’s resistance--“individual-level revolt” and witchcraft--and women’s participation in different kinds of modern-era social movements, including nineteenth- and twentieth-century women’s movements, of which feminist movements were a subset. For Chaftetz and Dworkin, feminist movements were the women’s movements that manifested themselves only in the most highly industrialized and highly urbanized societies; other kinds of women’s protest action could be understood as driven by the structural lack of opportunity to create feminist movements. In a less teleological fashion, West and Blumberg (1990) made distinctions between the kinds of issues that drew women into social movement activism. In their introduction to Women and Social Protest, they worked from the assumption that women have always been present in protest, defined as “rational attempts to achieve desired ends,” and took the standpoint that women’s work on behalf of historically specific definitions of “women’s rights” was only the most visible of these attempts (1990:4). West and Blumberg argued that women’s rights movements could be defined succinctly as ones where “claims are based on the rights of women as women and citizens of society” (1990:19), but they clearly organized their typology of women’s social movement participation around "issues" in order to capture the ubiquity, complexity and variety of women’s agency in movements. 

       The efforts by feminist scholars to think about women’s movements and women in movements make clear that while self-consciously feminist movements are a relative rarity, women’s movements are numerous, and women’s participation in mixed-gender movements is and has been ever-present. Indeed, feminist sociologists do not seem to distinguish women’s movements theoretically from other kinds of social movements, using and contributing to existing theory in their research on women; what is seen as exceptional about women’s movements is that they are led by women and for women. However, this lack of theoretical distinction between women’s movements and other kinds of movements in the making of definitions masks very real differences in the experience of activism for women on the ground, especially (but not only) when they work together with men. 

       Women have made their own movements or have been part of mixed-gender social movements because women are never just women. They are members of social classes; they are workers; they belong to racial/ethnic/national/sexual communities seeking expression, seeking inclusion, and redress from authority. But it has also been the case that women have found both making their own movements and organizing within mixed-gender groups to be difficult because of their gender. The first problem, and the one common to women in their own movements or in mixed-gender movements, is the construction of the public sphere, and therefore the political sphere, as male. While the possibilities for social movement activism were generated by the changes brought about by industrialization and urbanization, those two processes also fueled the ideology of “separate spheres”--the identification of public life as the proper realm of the “male” and domestic life as the proper realm of the “female.” 

A woman in public political life transgressed her proper space, and transgressed her proper role. As such, separate spheres ideology raised the question of whether women could legitimately protest in public at all, instituting a burden on women’s political participation not shared by men, who were assumed to be acting properly as men in “doing” protest politics. The ideology of separate spheres, and the identification of public political space as male certainly still exists, even if it has less force with each female incursion into that space, and with each challenge to the ideology. One of the recurring and most moving themes that one sees in the stories of women’s public protest is how their very participation in movements changes their conception of themselves and their role in their communities, even when their protest is in defense of traditional values (Kaplan 1982; Kingsolver 1996 [1983]; Naples 1998). Social space is remade and women’s lives are remade by protest action, sometimes at great personal cost. Of course, participation in social activism by men can be life-changing--but such participation is a qualitatively different enterprise for women, who trangress not just the rules of politics as usual but the rules of gender as usual. And in many ways, it is women’s movements, women in autonomous organizations, who constitute the greatest threat to order, as they disrupt the political field, and societal expectations of how women should act in that field through men.

       In mixed-gender settings, social movement participation is different for women precisely because of gender role expectations, specifically the responsibilities that women have in reproducing daily life. Women have tended to be the ones running movement offices, typing reports, making flyers, walking neighborhoods with the flyers, staffing phone trees, taking minutes at late-night strategy sessions. Movement “housewifery”--cleaning up after meetings, cooking for the meetings, attending to whatever domestic needs the social movement community had--was part of what led women activists in left movements to organize as feminists in the 1960s and 1970s. Even this kind of “domestic” participation in movement settings can be liberating if one believes in the cause, and movements also have clearly given women the opportunity to do other things. They have been leaders, though often their greatest contributions have been as leaders behind the scenes (see McNair Barnett 1993, Payne 1990, and Robnett 1997 on this point regarding women in the Black Civil Rights movement). But in a manner analogous to the way that a working woman comes home to do a “second shift” (Hochschild, with Machung 1989) of domestic duties at home, women activists have been expected to be the ones making the coffee for the sake of the struggle. In short, the economy of social movement activism rests on women’s energies in a way that replicates gendered divisions of labor in the larger society. 

       Moreover, although social movement communities make boundaries between themselves and the rest of society, structural social inequality finds its way into oppositional communities (Roth 1998). Gender inequality does not go away just because women mobilize with men on behalf of interests they have in common, and this endemic inequality becomes all the more problematic when women, in the course of social movement activism with men, discover the interests they might have as women. Inadvertently or on purpose, women often find themselves working toward their own liberation as women as they extend meaningful categories of liberation to cover liberation from gender oppression. But they do not always bring their male comrades with them on the journey, and when women activists make noise about women’s issues, they are most often asked to “backburner” their demands--to put their concerns aside in the name of the greater cause, whether it be the strike, the revolution, ending the war, fighting AIDS, or overturning racial/ethnic discrimination. Issues constructed as common to men and women tend to be seen as simply “issues,” unmarked by gender; women’s issues are only that, specific to women and not seen as benefitting men. Backburnering works because women activists are invested in struggles that benefit men and women in communities; women often make the decision to sacrifice their “narrow” concerns for the good of the group. 

       Even if compatriot men accept women’s issues, gender inequality can cause those issues to become compartmentalized. Compartmentalization results from the identification, named above, of common gender interests as just plain “issues” and of women’s issues as “women’s issues.” When movements accept, in whole or in part, a women’s agenda for action, and make women responsible for it, these concerns are handed over to those in the organization who are most structurally disadvantaged, with the fewest resources available to work effectively on them. Compartmentalization occurs when organizations decide that the women will take care of all that women’s “stuff.” This can happen in movement settings and in mainstream institutions alike (Gelb 1989; Izraeli 1990; Kuumba 1999; Roth 1998). To take an example familiar to many of us in the university, women’s studies programs themselves are seen as symbols that our institutions are committed to women’s interests, even as these programs are often marginalized, underfunded, and otherwise ignored. 

       The challenges that women face in movements, whether they work with men or on their own, have not diminished their capacity for action, as this website certainly shows. Women in movement politics, in the public arena, and in the disruptive fields of activism face the burdens of gender expectations and transcend these expectations. Women in women’s movements, feminist, proto-feminist, or otherwise, are spared the problems engendered by mixed-gender activism, but it is women’s autonomous movement work that threatens the status quo the most, as it disrupts political and gender norms. Women, as activists in movements far and wide, have been and continue to be a problem for power and authority, and thank goodness for that.

POPE JOHN PAUL 11

The Venerable Servant of God Pope John Paul II (Latin: Ioannes Paulus PP. II, Italian: Giovanni Paolo II, Polish: Jan Paweł II) 18 May 1920 – 2 April 2005, born Karol Józef Wojtyła) reigned as Supreme Pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church and Sovereign of Vatican City from 16 October 1978 until his death on 2 April 2005. His was the second-longest documented pontificate; only Pope Pius IX served longer (St. Peter the Apostle is reputed to have served for more than thirty years as the first pontiff, but documentation is too sparse to definitively support this). He has been the only Slavic and Polish Pope to date, and was the first non-Italian Pope since Dutch Pope Adrian VI in 1522.

John Paul II has been acclaimed as one of the most influential leaders of the 20th century. It is widely held that he was instrumental in ending Communism in his native Poland and eventually all of Europe as well as significantly improving the Catholic Church's relations with Judaism, Islam, the Eastern Orthodox Church, and the Anglican Communion. Though criticised for his opposition to contraception and the ordination of women, as well as his support for the Second Vatican Council and its reform of the Liturgy, he has also been praised for his firm, orthodox Catholic stances in these areas.

He was one of the most-travelled world leaders in history, visiting 129 countries during his pontificate. He spoke the following languages: Italian, French, German, English, Spanish, Portuguese, Ukrainian, Russian, Croatian, Esperanto, Ancient Greek and Latin as well as his native Polish.^[15] As part of his special emphasis on the universal call to holiness, he beatified 1,340 people and canonised 483 saints, more than the combined tally of his predecessors during the last five centuries. On 19 December 2009, John Paul II was proclaimed "Venerable" by his papal successor Pope Benedict XVI

AFRICA CHALLNGES MUST BE DONE

When world leaders assemble for a United Nations conference in Johannesburg later this month, global attention will focus on Africa—its progress, ambitions, and needs. While the primary focus of the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) may be the environment, the gathering will also provide an excellent opportunity to discuss what is needed to bring truly sustainable development—in the fullest sense of that term—to Africa. The continent's needs are immense. Poverty is endemic, with nearly half the population in sub-Saharan Africa living on less than $1 per day, and almost four-fifths living on less than $2 per day. Life expectancy is less than 50 years, due in large part to armed conflicts, the AIDS epidemic, and inadequate health care and social services. The human suffering underlying these statistics is horrifying.

Encouragingly, important gains have been made across Africa in recent years. In 13 countries, real GDP growth has averaged in excess of 5 percent per year since 1997. Governments are striving to meet the needs of their poorest citizens, while still managing to check the need for deficit financing and reduce inflation—always the worst form of taxation on the poor. A generation ago it was fashionable to debate whether the state on the private sector should lead the way for economic development. Today, we know that development requires both an honest, well-functioning state and a dynamic private sector. Many African governments have embraced this, and are now carrying out the reforms needed to boost private savings and investment, growth, and employment.

There are many good examples of these successes. Mozambique and Uganda, once devastated by war, are now among the most rapidly growing countries in Africa. In Burkina Faso, policies to increase agricultural production and cotton exports have led to faster economic growth and higher incomes for the rural poor. In Botswana and Cameroon, revenues from the extraction of diamonds and oil are being used to develop stronger, more diversified economies. And efforts in Mauritius and Tanzania to strengthen their private sectors have already been rewarded with increased foreign investment. 

Yet, achieving a meaningful reduction in poverty requires that these accomplishments be repeated and enhanced, over time and across all countries on the continent. Africa needs sustained growth of at least 7 percent per year, and it needs job-creating growth, particularly in rural areas. This, in turn, calls for better roads and other basic infrastructure, improvements in financial intermediation and wider access to financial services, promotion of regional integration to enlarge markets and expand interregional trade, and better access to education, health and financial services. HIV/AIDS must be combated decisively. At the same time, every effort must be made to use resources efficiently and protect the environment. 

These needs were recognized by the United Nations Conference on Financing for Development in Monterey, Mexico. There, an unprecedented consensus emerged that fighting world poverty requires: (i) the recognition by developing nations that they themselves have the primary responsibility to tackle poverty—and that crucial for this is good governance; and (ii) stronger, faster, and more comprehensive support by the international community. Second, and even more important, is the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD)—an ambitious action program to redevelop the African continent launched by a new generation of African leaders and embraced by the newly formed African Union. NEPAD's long-term goal is an end to poverty in Africa, underpinned by peace, democracy, and the rule of law; development of social and physical infrastructure; and the full participation of African countries in international trade. 

What is most significant about this program—and what should help turn its vision into concrete action—is that it is an African agenda, designed and carried out by African leaders and people. It is now essential for the international community to respond with resources to help achieve its goals. There is a role for everyone.

What can the IMF do? At present, the centerpiece of IMF engagement with African countries is its assistance—in collaboration with the World Bank—in supporting poverty reduction strategies. Already, more than two-dozen countries in Africa are engaged in preparing such strategies. While it is still early days, we are encouraged by the progress to date: spending on education, health care, and other social services is rising. Governments are becoming more transparent and accountable, and listening more to the views of their citizens. 

The IMF provides financial support for countries' poverty reduction strategies through its Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility (PRGF). At present, US$3.5 billion in PRGF loans to Africa have been approved. In addition, the IMF and World Bank have helped 26 African countries qualify for $41.5 billion of debt relief under the enhanced Heavily-Indebted Poor Country (HIPC) initiative.But in our work on debt relief, we are reminded that the ability to borrow and to attract foreign direct investment is crucial for financing economic development. Therefore, the IMF and the World Bank are intensifying efforts to help African countries develop sound financial sectors and, over time, obtain access to international investment capital. This includes emphasis on banking sector reform and improvement in the regulatory environment—including the adoption of internationally recognized standards and codes the creation of diversified financial institutions to provide start-up and working capital, and the development of soundly managed microfinance institutions, in order to support the needs of small and medium-sized enterprises and the rural sector. 

Another critical area where the IMF can help is in capacity building. In close cooperation with the World Bank and other donors, we plan to establish five regional centers in Africa—the first two—in Dar es Salaam and Abidjan—are set to open later this year. These centers will provide locally based technical assistance and training in the Fund's core areas of expertise: macroeconomic policy, tax policy and revenue administration, public expenditure management, macroeconomic statistics, and building sound financial sectors.

There are two key areas where the rest of the donor community can help: aid and trade.

We welcome the action plan recently announced by the G8 countries in their latest summit in Canada to increase assistance to Africa. However, even stronger support should be possible as these countries demonstrate that they are putting the aid to good use. Meeting the UN's 0.7 percent of GNP target for annual development assistance from the industrial countries would enable both an adequate response to the AIDS epidemic (estimated to require some US$10 billion per year) and significant poverty alleviation. 

It is equally critical that African countries be accorded better opportunities to expand and diversify their exports. Industrial countries can help by opening markets and phasing out trade-distorting subsidies—beginning with agriculture, textiles, and labor-intensive manufactures. Industrial countries should also work to reduce duties on poor countries' processed products, as such tariff structures push African countries to concentrate on producing raw materials and increase their vulnerability to declines in world commodity prices.

Recently, there have been welcome initiatives in the European Union and U.S. to improve market access for low-income countries. But these clearly do not go far enough or fast enough, as industrial countries still spend more than $200 billion each year on agricultural subsidies alone. And the recent U.S. Farm Bill clearly could be damaging to some African economies. While subsidy reform will undoubtedly be politically difficult, this is one of the most effective ways of helping poor nations.Africa's needs are great. The ambitions of NEPAD and the recent economic progress of many countries are encouraging. But it will be up to the rest of us—the IMF, other international organizations, and developed countries—to work in partnership with African governments and provide the support they need to eradicate poverty and realize Africa's potential.

MASS MEDIA INFLUENCE

In the last 50 years the media influence has grown exponentially with the advance of technology, first there was the telegraph, then the radio, the newspaper, magazines, television and now the internet. We live in a society that depends on information and communication to keep moving in the right direction and do our daily activities like work, entertainment, health care, education, personal relationships, traveling and anything else that we have to do.

A common person in the city usually wakes up checks the tv news or newspaper, goes to work, makes a few phone calls, eats with their family when possible and makes his decisions based on the information that he has either from their co workers, news, tv, friends, family, financial reports, etc. What we need to be aware is that most of our decisions, beliefs and values are based on what we know for a fact, our assumptions and our own experience. In our work we usually know what we have to do base on our experience and studies, however on our daily lives we rely on the media to get the current news and facts about what is important and what we should be aware of. We have put our trust on the media as an authority to give us news, entertainment and education. However, the influence of mass media on our kids, teenagers and society is so big that we should know how it really works.

Gods of Entertainment: The Power of Mass Media to Influence

The media makes billions of dollars with the advertising they sell and that we are exposed to. We buy what we are told to be good, after seeing thousands of advertising we make our buying decisions based on what we saw on Tv, newspapers or magazines to be a product we can trust and also based on what everyone else that we know is buying and their decision are also base don the media.

These are the effects of mass media in teenagers, they buy what they see on Tv, what their favorite celebrity advertise and what is acceptable by society based on the fashion that the media has imposed them. There are some positive and negative influences in young people. Here is a positive influence example, if there is a sport that is getting a lot of attention by the media and gains popularity among your friends and society, you will more likely want to practice the sport and be cool with all your friends. The result is that you will have fun with your friends and be more healthy because of the exercise your are doing.However a negative influence in teenagers is the use of cigars by celebrity movie stars, the constant exposure of sex images, the excessive images of violence and exposure to thousands of junk food ads.

Young people are in a stage of life where they want to be accepted by their peers, they want to be loved and be successful. The media creates the ideal image of a beautiful men and women and tells you what the characteristics of a successful person are; you can see it in movies and tv. Its a subliminal way to tell you that if you are not like them you are not cool yet so its time to buy the stuff they buy and look like they look.

Another negative influence in teenagers that has grown over the last years are anorexia and obesity. There are millions of adolescents fighting obesity, but at the same time they are exposed to thousands of advertisements of junk food, while the ideas image of a successful person is told to be thin and wealthy. Also more women are obsessive with losing weight even when they are not obese, there are many thin women that want to look like the super models and thin celebrities so they engage in eating disorders which leads to severe health issues and even death.

Effects of violence in the Media

When we watch Tv or a movie we usually see many images of violence and people hurting others. The problem with this is that it can become traumatic especially in our children as we see it more and more. Our kids that are starting to grow and are shaping their personality values and beliefs can become aggressive or they can lose a sense of reality and fiction of what they are seeing.In the past years there have been some cases of kids carrying a gun at school and even hurting others with it. Those kids have been linked to excessive use of violent video games and war images. Another problem is that real war is used as a form of entertainment by the media, we should make our kids and teen aware that war is not a form of entertainment and that there is no win or lose like in video games, in real war everyone lose.

How media influence public opinion

As i have said above, the media has a huge impact on society and also in public opinion. They can shape the public opinion in different ways depending of what is the objective. For example, after the attacks of 911 the media gave a huge coverage of the event and exposed Osama guilty for the attack as they were told by the authorities. This shaped the public opinion to support the war on terrorism, the same happened with the war on Iraq. The problem is that if media received un accurate information then the public opinion supported a wrong cause, this is the power of public opinion influence. Other ways to influence are with polls and trends, especially in political campaigns. The candidates that can pay for more tv and media exposure have more influence on public opinion and thus can receive more votes.

ENTREPRENEURSHIP IN ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

Entrepreneur An enrepreneur can be regarded as a person who has the initiative skill and motivation to set up a business or enterprice of his own and who always look for high acheivements. He is the catalyst for social change and works for the common good. They looks for opportunities, identifies them and seizes them mainly for economic gains. An action oriented enrepreneur is a highly calculative individual who is always willing to to undertake risks inorder to achieve their goals.

Need for Entrepreneurship Development

Economic development essentially means a process of upward change whereby the real pr capita income of a country increases over a period of time .Entrepreneurship has an important role to play in the development of a country. It is one of the most important inputs in economic development. The number and competense of entrepreneurs affect the economic growth of the country.

The economic history of the presently advanced countries like USA, Russia and japan supports the fact that economic development is the outcome for which entrepreneurship is an inevitable cause. The crucial and significant role played by the entrepreneurs in the economic development of advanced countries has made the people of developing and under developed countries consious of the importance of entrepreneuship for economic development. It is now a widely accepted fact that active and enthusiastic entrepreneurs can only explore the potentials of the countries availability of resourses such as labour, capital and technology.

The role of entrepreneurs is not identical in the various economies. Depending on the material resources, industry climate and responsiveness of the political system, it varies from economy to economy. The contribution of entrepreneurs may be more in favourable opportunity conditions than in economies with relatively less favourable opportunity conditions.

Entrpreneurship and Economic Development

Entrepreneurship helps in the process of economic development in the following ways :

1) Employment Generation :

Growing unemployment particularly educated unemployment is the problem of the nation. The available employment opportunities can cater only 5 to 10 % of the unemployed. Entrepreneurs generate employment both directly and indirectly. Directly, self employment as an entrepreneur and indirectly by starting many industrial units they offer jobs to millions. Thus entrepreneurship is the best way to fight the evil of unemployment.

2) National Income :

National Income consits of the goods and services produced in the country and imported. The goods and services produced are for consumption within the country as well as to meet the demand of exports. The domestic demand increases with increase in population and increase in standard of living. The export demand also increases to meet the needs of growing imports due to various reasons. An increasing number of entrepreneurers are required to meet this increasing demand for goods and services. Thus entrepreneurship increases the national income.


3) Balanced Regional Development :

The growth of Industry and business leads to a lot of Public benefits like transport facilities, health, education, entertainment etc. When the industries are concentrated in selected cities, development gets limited to these cities. A rapid development . When the new entrepreneurers grow at a faster rate, in view of increasing competition in and around cities, they are forced to set up their enterprises in the smaller towns away from big cities. This helps in the development of backward regions.



4) Dispersal of economic power :

Industrial development normally may lesd to concentration of economic powers in a few hands. This concentration of power in a few hands has its own evils in the form of monopolies. Developing a large number of entrepreneurers helps in dispersing the economic power amongst the population. Thus it helps in weakening the harmful effects of monopoly.



5) Better standards of living :

Entrepreneurers play a vital role in achieving a higher rate of economic growth. Entrepreneurers are able to produce goods at lower cost and supply quality goods at lower price to the community according to their requirements.When the price of of the commodies decreases the consumers get the power to buy more goods for their satisfaction. In this way they can increase the standard of living of the people.


6) Creating innovation :

An entrepreneur is a person who always look for changes. apart from combining the factors of production, he also introduces new ideas and new combination of factors. He always try to introduce newer and newer technique of production of goods and services. An entrepreneur brings economic development through innovation.


Entrepreneurship also helps in increasing productivity and capital formation of a nation. In short, the development of the entrepreneurship is inevitable in the economic development of the country. The Role played by the entrepreneurship development can be expressed in the following

THE ROLE OF MEDIA IN TODAYS SOCIETY

In today’s world, media has made a very special place for itself in our lives. If I say that today, media has become as important as food and clothing, then I don t think so that I am over exaggerating anything. There is no denial that media is playing a very significant role in making the world smaller. Through various mediums of media whether it is radio, television, newspaper or internet, we are able to connect with large number of people around us.

Especially internet has truly become the need of every individual both for our work and to connect with our friends and well wishers. Facebook, Orkut and Twitter have occupied such special place in our lives that if we are not a part of it, then there is something really important that we are missing.Besides connecting with our friends, media also informs us about the world happenings. In one line I can say that media is like a mirror of the society which reflect each and everything about the society to us. Media people from television and print takes the risk of their lives to inform us about important news.

To some extent I can compare these brave journalists with our soldiers who do not bother about their lives and takes the responsibility to aware the general masses about the truth. I think it is almost impossible to imagine a life without media.But one also can not overlook this fact that slowly commercialization is also coming in media. Media has a huge responsibility of conveying the truth and relevant information to the common man. But somewhere this seems to be taking a back seat for media people as they are focusing more on commercialization. Now a days, hot news which can help in increasing the TRP rates of the channel becomes the priority for them. But there are still some ethical people in media who are struggling to maintain the real purpose of it.

But media is not just confine to informing us about the world happenings and serving a means to connect with people, in fact it also affects out thinking patterns as well. The way we think and perceive various issues about the world is also shaped up by media. Today everyone especially youth is growing so aware about his responsibilities towards society is because of media. Campaign such as Teach India and Jaago Grahak Jaago helps in spreading awareness about human rights and duties.

When it comes to media, how can one forget to talk about the entertainment industry? Entertainment is something that one can not live without. Be it movies, radio, internet etc., media is just everywhere in our life. Today entertainment is so easily available that every common person is able to afford it. Music and movies are so easily available to us through the internet that one does not have to spend loads of money on them. If we just look around then we would find that there is no aspect of our life which is not touched and affected by media. Be it our work, relationships, education or entertainment, media is seen everywhere. And there is no denial that we can not live without media.

THREATENS THE WOMEN POPULATION

Lack of comprehensive reproductive health services, economic disempowerment and migration of husbands in search of greener pastures impact heavily on Tanzanian women as they fall victims of the dreaded HIV/AIDS pandemic. Women constitute more than half of the country’s population of over 35 million people and form the major lab our force in rural areas where 85% Tanzanians live.

But because of lack girl-child education and stigma of HIV/AIDS victims, women have been hit hard by the incurable scourge according to figures from National Aids Control Program and the World Health Organization.

 In Tanzania, strengthening the national response to HIV/AIDS has now become the Major theme of self-less activism as the Fourth Phase Government Of President Jakaya Kikwete has demonstrated its commitment to curtailing the spread of HIV Infection in the country, To reduce the prevalence high rate of HIV/AIDS, President Kikwete flagged of an Awareness Campaign to know their health status and good time too, to avoid unnecessary suffering and Untimely death.

It is relevance to mention that there is no traditional cure for this problem of HIV/AIDS As some people claim because it is impossible to cure what you don’t even know its cause. HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and malaria are three major pandemics that ravage the African population, The disease, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), kill six million men, women and children  each year and have hit the African continent hardest with close to 70% of  all AIDS, In addition about 60% of malaria cases world wide and more than 80% of malaria death which occur in sub Sahara Africa.

Health experts say AIDS is a social disease as well as viral disease and that “if we don’t address the underpinning issues, we will never get to where we need to be” This means that Tanzania needs to do so much more than it is doing right now to prevent new HIV infection posing a threat to college students and to young men and women across the nation. HIV/AIDS the health experts contend, is an epidemic which could be effectively tackled through Proper information, a role which has effectively been done by the Tanzanian media towards awareness creation, Tanzania journalists have played a significant role in galvanizing the media to mitigating the AIDS Epidemic after being equipped with basic facts about the disease.

The government and other ant-HIV/AIDS non-governmental organizations have considered the media as a very strong partner in the fight against the pandemic and as such, they have been conducting workshops to sharpen the skills of the journalist, The recent revelation by WHO that there is a decline in the life expectancy in Tanzania is a worries-some to the extent that while life expectancy in some other countries is increasing Our is declining Health experts have also added communicable diseases to the factors contributing to decline in life expectancy in the country. The disease include Typhoid, Diarrhoea, vector-borne diseases(malaria) viral infections Sexually-transmitted infections (HIV, Syphilis) respiratory tract infections (Tuberculosis).

 Currently, high on the scale of these major causes of adult and child mortality in the country is the HIV/AIDS pandemic. In many countries of the world, HIV/AIDS represents the deadliest emergency and

The greatest social economic and health crisis of modern time, The impact of disease goes beyond the lives of infected people. It changes the community Dynamics, undermines the structure of the family and threatens the future of children. For Tanzania to meet up with the challenges of the millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by 2015,the nation has to invest heavily is the health sector to secure her  tomorrow.

Reversal of the factors, responsible for the decline in the life expectancy in the country. Population health in the country suffers levels. The most pressing perhaps is the lack of data. This might appear unrelated to health to the casual reader, but fundamentally, one cannot manage what we cannot measure.

 A priority for the government must be careful review of what data is currently available and further data is needed in the health sector and how best to collect this. The data we need to collect relate to both population health and also healthcare indices.

DO YOU UNDERSTYAND DEFARMATION FACTORS

Once a defamatory statement has been proven under one of the previous definitions of slander or libel, the victim must still prove the statement was both published and identified the victim. If the statement was made about a public figure, the victim must also prove malice. Similarly, if the victim was a private figure, but the subject matter of the allegedly defamatory statement was a matter of public concern, the victim would have to plead and prove at least negligence on the part of the alleged defamer.
(1) Publication. Publication simply means that the statement was understood by a third party in a communication that was not subject to one of the privileges discussed below. A single third party understanding the communication is sufficient to find liability. The statement, however, cannot have been relayed by the victim or the victim’s agent, unless the victim was under a strong external compunction to relay the information.
(2) Identification. To qualify as defamation, the statement must relate to a corporation, a partnership or a living person (deceased individuals do not qualify). The identification of the victim can either be a direct or indirect identification, such as through an inference, a general description of the victim, or in a roman a clef, where it is clear the publication relates to the victim.
(3) Damages. Although damages are presumed if the statement is libel per se, it is still advantageous to prove damages, not only to maintain the option of changing the cause of action to a claim for libel per quod, but also to increase the potential award. Damages in a defamation case can be shown through a detailed description of the victim’s prior reputation and the extent of the distribution of the defamatory statement. Associated damages may include loss of income, emotional distress, physical pain and suffering, medical bills for mental anguish, humiliation, and embarrassment.
(4) Malice. While proof of malice is not necessary in a case of libel per se, proof of malice is required for causes of action where the victim is a public figure. Additionally, malice must be shown if the victim is a private figure and the victim desires to obtain punitive damages. Actual malice typically means that the statement is made with knowledge that it is false, with reckless disregard for whether or not it is false.