This week, we had the opportunity to talk with Dr. Sharon Norton, Director of Development at the Mathile Institute for the Advancement of Human Nutrition. Link Media is collaborating with the Mathile Institute for the Advancement of Human Nutrition this year to raise awareness about global hunger and malnutrition through Revolution Hunger. Revolution Hunger is a unique campaign that harnesses the power of teens across the United States to take on the problems of hunger and malnutrition around the world.

Hi Sharon. Thanks for joining us to talk about your work. First and foremost, what is the mission of the Mathile Institute for the Advancement of Human Nutrition, and what type of work does it do?

Our mission is creating lasting solutions that enable nutritional well-being in children. Our work is focused on children under the age of five and particularly those under the age of two. The provision of proper nutrition to this difficult to reach and often overlooked age group can help prevent stunting, improve cognitive outcomes, and ensure more positive health consequences for life.

In terms of hunger and malnutrition, what are the major challenges happening globally?

Overall, the majority of our work is aimed at resolving hidden hunger. Hidden hunger is a chronic lack of vitamins and minerals that can lead to physical and cognitive afflictions. In Central America for example, there is a dire need for nutritional intervention to alleviate hidden hunger as evidenced by the average prevalence of 23.5% stunting regionally. Stunting is essentially where children do not grow to their potential in height and Guatemala and Honduras top the list with 54.5% and 30.1%, respectively, in stunted children under the age of 5. Moreover, anemia, iodine and/or vitamin deficiencies affect over 16 million young children and 5 million pregnant women in this region. This is a significant issue as those affected by micronutrient deficiency worldwide exceeds two billion. Dietary deficiencies are borne disproportionately by children, mothers, and those living in rural communities. Resolution of these deficiencies will result in improved health outcomes for children and mothers.

How did you find your way to the position you now hold? How do you feel personally connected to this cause?

I think it has been the combination of an open mind, a spirit of discovery and skills that had the potential for broad application. When I entered college, I was 100% sure I wanted to be a veterinarian, then I started taking nutrition classes and learned that I loved nutrition, ration formulation and working with large animals. That took me into an entirely different career, but my degree in nutrition has allowed me to work in a number of different nutrition related sectors. Today, at the Mathile Institute I am using my nutritional training to help resolve malnutrition in children. But I also get to apply other skills I picked up while working in the packaged goods sector such as technical communications and consumer understanding methodologies. My personal connection to my work stems from my belief in the "Golden Rule" -- treating others as we would wish to be treated. I believe in treating people with dignity and respect and, for children, I believe that includes their right to a healthy diet.

You have the amazing opportunity to learn about a lot of positive work happening in the field around this cause. What is one of the most inspiring stories you have come across recently?

I was incredibly inspired by an experience I had not long ago in El Salvador. We met with FUSAL, a private non-profit organization in El Salvador that channels the experience and social responsibility of a committed Salvadoran business family. This family has solidarity with the most vulnerable people in society and are dedicated to human development, which is why health and education are at the core of their non-profit organization's work. I had the opportunity to visit one of FUSAL's project sites in a rural community. The community workers were teaching the mothers about nutrition and health, demonstrating how to prepare more nutritious meals and ways to provide their babies stimulation to enhance cognitive development. I was so inspired by the sense of community, kindness and the care among these women and among those that were serving them. It was an example of the kind of humanity and action that we need to solve the problem of hunger in this world.

Another story that continually moves me the life and work of Dr. Norman Borlaug. This one, soft-spoken man, with humble, Midwestern roots, was able to change the world through his Green Revolution, an agricultural initiative, which increased crop yields so countries could feed their people.  He received the Nobel Peace Prize for his contributions to ending hunger. Norman Borlaug has been credited with saving over a billion people from starvation.  Knowing that one person can make that type of impact is personally inspiring.

What does "under-nutrition" mean to you? Where is this happening?

Many people may hear the word undernutrition and think this means not having enough food or calories.  While that is one form of undernutrition, hidden hunger that I described earlier is another and very prevalent form. But even in the developed world, we see undernutrition due to the inability to access nutritious food. While some of this is linked to poverty, many with the financial means and ability to access a healthy diet make poor food choices. They often do not consume enough of the foods they need to derive important nutrients needed for health. The bottom line is, undernutrition is a global epidemic and the first step in ending it is awareness of the issue and the causes.

Your organization has just launched a new initiative called "Revolution Hunger," what ignited your interest in an initiative that mobilizes teens?

I am really excited about this initiative and it was actually inspired by Norman Borlaug. He dedicated his life to fighting hunger around the world. His skill, passion and deep respect for communities in the developing world ignited a global movement that would feed billions worldwide. The spirit of Revolution Hunger was born out of his example and is a campaign that arms teens with information about hunger's causes and solutions and challenges them with calls to action to fight the issue. Everyone has a role and everyone can be a hunger fighter through Revolution Hunger.

What do you hope to see as a result of the work of your organization?

We hope that through our collaborative effort we will alleviate malnutrition and put an end, once and for all to the 25,000 daily deaths that result from hunger-related issues. We believe that capacity-building with initiatives like Revolution Hunger are part of the answer. We also are confident that our approach to establishing new nutritional innovations coupled with community awareness and education programs, relevant behavior change initiatives, and ongoing engagement of community leaders will produce scalable and sustainable solutions.

How can others get involved in what you do?

For teens go to revolutionhunger.org and learn what it takes to become a hunger fighter. Watch the video, take a personality quiz and begin the journey to face, fight and live the battle to fight hunger. Participate in activities to fight hunger in your local community and beyond. For adults, I would also suggest visiting revolutionhunger.org to not only learn more about hunger but also what you can do to become a teen advocate. If you are a teacher, we also have begun to develop case studies that can give students the opportunity to explore and tackle real issues in the classroom. I hope everyone will join the fight and join the revolution!

(Al Jazeera English: 0245 PST, February 5, 2011) The coverage of the Egyptian uprising on TV channels across the U.S. has been criticised for being both pessimistic and superficial. Since the pro-democracy protests began, the mainstream American media has focused sharply on what it all means for the U.S. and its allies in the region.

Click here for important background information on the unrest in Egypt.

Watch Al Jazeera English's live broadcast stream, online now.

I arrived in Tunis on January 1, only a few days after a wave of rallies had erupted due to the suicide of an unemployed college graduate, who torched himself after police confiscated his fruit cart, cutting off his only source of income. Mohammed Bouazizi, 26, sold fruit and vegetables without the necessary vendor's permit in the town of Sidi Bouzid, located 160 miles from the country's capital Tunis.

At the time, Tunisians had been protesting for a couple of weeks over poor living conditions, high unemployment, government corruption and repression. Three people had been killed in the protests by the time of my arrival. The atmosphere was tense, public protests were rare in Tunisia where dissent was usually repressed; however, no one I spoke to in Tunis believed then that these demonstrations would lead to the ouster of President Zein El Abidine Ben Ali who eventually fled the country to Saudi Arabia after ruling Tunisia for 23 years.

The Jasmine Revolution, as it is dubbed now, was not televised on Tunisia's main television station, Tunisie7, nor did it make headlines in the local press, but the news spread like wildfire on Facebook, YouTube, mobile phone, and to a lesser extent on Twitter (most of the tweets were from outside Tunisia).

Prior to my arrival to Tunis, I had spent the past five weeks in the UAE, Qatar, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, and the Palestinian Territories debating social media, its impact on youth, and its relationship with journalism in the Arab world with my interlocutors.

It is very easy, but over-simplistic and naive to decide on a social media interpretation for the Jasmine Revolution, as we have been witnessing by many bloggers and self-appointed Middle East experts, many of whom neither speak Arabic nor have spent an extended period of time in the Middle East. They desperately want to convince us that Tunisians needed an external technological Western invention in order to succeed. A Twitter revolution of some sorts, as they previously labeled the Iranian Velvet Revolution, as though Arab masses were not capable on their own of saying "enough is enough."

Certainly social media was used as a communication tool for Tunisians to air their frustrations with the economy, unemployment, censorship, and corruption. But many factors lead to its success, such as a well organized trade unions movement, and the most potent weapon in the Arab world, the youth.

Population ageing is widespread across the world, but most Arab countries have been experiencing a youth explosion. More than one third of them are now unemployed. Tunisia is a bit different since it is one of the few Arab countries that opted for a family planning policy initiated during the rule of its first president, Habib Bourguiba. Tunisia, however, has also adopted a development plan with a focus on higher education, leaving a large number of young college graduates unemployed.

When I was driving around in Tunis, posters of President Zein El Abidine Ben Ali were sprinkled throughout the city with the slogan, "Together We Meet Challenges," a slogan meant to tout his plan of development by focusing on job creation, increasing revenue and enhancing Tunisia's positioning and influence on the regional and international scales. This obviously has failed, leaving a country of over- educated youth, many of whom are unemployed or doing menial jobs. Mohammed Bouazizi was the catalyst for their revolution.

Today, millions of Arab youth are disenchanted with politics and live a dramatic rupture with the state. Restrictions on freedom of expression, though improving in several countries, dominate the mass media in the Arab world. Social media has in many instances opened the door for them not only to share ideas, but also to take action. We've seen a vivid example of this during the Jeddah floods when the Saudi government tried to suppress the news about the devastation caused by nature due to poor infrastructure in the Arab world's richest country, but the news quickly spread on Facebook and the internet by concerned young Saudis. We've witnessed a bread revolution in Egypt, also driven by high unemployment and poverty; again initially transmitted to the outside world by young bloggers before it became international headlines.

Throughout history, when social discontent can no longer be contained, people have taken to the street to demand change. Having the most rudimentary technology, or none at all have not prevented these movements, a case in point being hand printed pamphlets distributed prior to the French Revolution, Gandhi's ability to inspire and mobilize through the exponential power of word of mouth, and the leaflets and tape recordings of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini speeches that were smuggled into the country prior to the Iranian Revolution.

Mohammed Bouazizi's self immolation was the expression not only of his despair, but that of youth throughout Tunisia ready to explode. Although they are an educated tech-savvy generation who were able to use social media as a tool, the underlying force was not a byproduct of this and the current situation would have come to pass with or without it.

Crediting social media with these revolutions however, trivializes them and does a disservice to the deep rooted issues that cause them.

As I was leaving Tunis on January 4, news spread again like wildfire of Mohammed Bouazizi's death at a hospital in the town of Ben Arous. Today, Mohsen Bouterfif died. Mohsen doused himself in gasoline and set himself on fire on Thursday after a meeting with the mayor of the small city of Boukhadra who was unable to provide him with a job and housing. Boukhadra is in Algeria.

Article first published on the Huffington Post

For a number of Arab countries, including Bahrain, Jordan, and Egypt, 2010 witnessed yet another round of disappointing parliamentary elections.  

In all three countries, ruling parties faced serious competition from the opposition. However, as elections neared and campaigns heated up, the undermining of opposition parties intensified. The authoritarian regimes' methods ranged from media censorship and mass arrests to violent crackdowns.

On October 23, 2010, Bahrain, the only Gulf state that allows political organizations known as "societies," held its third parliamentary elections. The predominantly Shiite Gulf state, ruled by a Sunni government, managed to pull off a reasonably free but unfair election. Granted, no reports of direct electoral fraud emerged after the election but it was preceded by a crackdown on government critics, a clampdown on the media, the intimidation of opposition members, and arrest of prominent activists.

Undeterred, the Shiite-led Wefaq Party participated and swept 18 of the 40-seat Council of Representatives. But for Bahrain’s Shiite majority that has long complained of discrimination in accessing government jobs and housing, the election did not lead to a change in the political makeup of the government since the members of the upper house, Bahrain’s main legislative body, are directly appointed by the king.

Unlike Bahrain where main opposition group Al-Wefaq and Sunni Islamist groups Al-Asalah and Al-Menbar participated in the elections, Egypt and Jordan’s opposition parties chose to boycott theirs. The hope that elections in those two countries might provide a glimpse into democratization in the Middle East were quickly dashed as the rigging or manipulation of the vote was carefully crafted long before election day. 

On November 9, 2010, Jordan held parliamentary elections that were also perceived as free but unfair. The Jordanian government passed a new electoral law earlier that year that was viewed by the opposition as favoring tribal allegiances at the expense of political and social platforms. This led the Muslim Brotherhood and its political wing, the Islamic Action Front, to boycott the elections citing a “lack of genuine desire for reform” on the part of the government.

As a result, loyalists to Jordan's King Abdullah II and tribal-affiliated candidates won most of the upper and lower house seats. And although the boycott damaged the credibility of the elections, the royal family was able to cling on to power domestically while preserving its democratic image internationally.

On November 28, 2010, Egypt held its parliamentary elections after violently clamping down on the opposition. In the weeks and months leading up to the parliamentary election, the government carried out wide-scale sweeps, targeting members and supporters of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood. Despite the latter's participation in the first round, it failed to secure any seats, citing vote rigging, fraud and ballot stuffing. 

Both the liberal Wafd Party and the Muslim Brotherhood boycotted the run-off round on December 5, 2010 and with 97 percent control of the People's Assembly, President Hosni Mubarak’s ruling National Democratic Party managed to further tighten its grip on power in Egypt.

The electoral farce held in Bahrain, Jordan, and Egypt is part of what has become a familiar political game aimed at diffusing Arab anger and frustration with stagnating and unpopular regimes. Indeed, Arabs are growing tired of meaningless elections that merely offer a facade for change but leave them even more cynical about the possibility of a democratic transition of power.  

The Economist Intelligence Unit’s Democracy Index for 2010 classified all three countries as “authoritarian” and the Middle East and North Africa region as the most repressive globally. How much longer will these crumbling regimes be able to quell popular mobilization? And if boycotting campaigns keep on failing to delegitimize these regimes, one has to wonder what opposition parties will do next.

Share your thoughts below

Earlier this week, Jennifer Kirby, Link TV's COO, and I were invited to be guests on a show called Open at the local cable access channel BronxNet in the Bronx to talk about our organization and why we are partnered with so many PEG channels. Jennifer Kirby has been working with Link TV for many years, and she is as New York as you can get, having been born and raised in the city, with roots in every borough including her Italian side from the Bronx. It was very meaningful for her to be able to promote Link TV to this special community, and exciting for me to be a part of this incredible opportunity as well. You can watch our interview here (we come in at 27 minutes, but please, if you have time, enjoy the whole segment!):

Open is a weekly series on BronxNet that focuses on international news and gives voice to those who are marginalized in the diverse neighborhoods of the Bronx. The channel is received in 1.5 million households, 60% of which have been shown by independent marketing studies to be tuning in! Link TV is thrilled that BronxNet is airing explore three times a week, bringing Charlie Annenberg's global findings through his unique message of philanthropy, "Never Stop Learning", to the people of the Bronx. 

It was so much fun to meet the staff at BronxNet, to see their station, and witness the youth mentoring and media training program in action. BronxNet is the only public access station in the nation that operates six different channels, including one that is made by young people for young people! Now that Link TV has an engagement department that works with an active youth network of over 160,000 through YouthNoise, we are excited about all of the ways Link TV can engage the audiences and young media professionals who are trained through programs like this one at BronxNet. 

At the end of our interview, we were asked if BronxNet could put more Link TV programs on their channel... to which we gladly replied that they should take as much content as they possibly can! A special thank you goes out to their Executive Director, Michael Max Knobbe, who has kindly helped connect Link TV with the neighboring public access channels in both Queens and Brooklyn. Michael has been working at BronxNet for almost two decades, since before it was even BronxNet! This kind of dedication and longevity is not uncommon at public access stations. In fact, every single leader I've met in public access has been working for their channel for many, many years. The only other place I know of that retains employees to that extent is Link TV, which also is still run by the same people that started it over ten years ago. We could all probably get much higher paying jobs somewhere else in the media landscape, but the work that we do is so rewarding and important, I'm not sure any of us would feel like ourselves if we were to leave it behind.  And so we are proud to keep moving things forward, protecting independent media, alternative information, and freedom of expression. 

Thanks for checking in, and please come back soon for our next update on Public Access where Link TV is able to be a part of thinking globally, and acting locally!

One of the challenges here at Link TV when it comes to distributing our content to local cable channels is the need to prove that what we have shared has actually gotten on the air. Recently, we spent some time contacting channels to find out how they feel about the content they have taken from us to see if it has been well received and put to good use. Here are some of my favorite testimonials:

Old Rochester Community Television in Marion, MA, writes in:

"explore programs are an essential part of our programming philosophy here at ORCTV. On a personal note it was like a gift from the heavens the day I came across your programming as I feel the world can only become a more peaceful place when we as people come to understand that there is more commonality across cultures than we are often led to believe. At the end of the day most of us here on this planet simply want a roof over our heads, food for our families and education along with a better and safer life for our children... Your programs express these ideas to our viewership better than any other programs currently available to Public Access outlets."

And from Artesia, New Mexico:

"[I am] absolutly thrilled and happy...with PegMedia.org AND Link TV. I've been downloading a number of shows that have really increased the viewership of the station, and explore is one of our crowning jewels. The quality of the show is outstanding and a number of people have commented to me directly on how happy they were to see something so well-made, timely and interesting on the station. I couldn't be happier with the feedback. A HUGE thank you to you, PegMedia, Link TV, and (especially) Charlie. You've made my life much easier, my station viewed more, AND the viewers much more educated!"

If you haven't yet had a chance to check out explore, you can visit to www.linktv.org/explorespecials or www.explore.org. explore has served as our front-runner since the beginning of our distribution efforts, and thanks to the compelling and high-quality content, every channel that saw it, liked it, and became an official Link TV affiliate. So, many thanks to the explore Team, and Charlie Annenberg who has always believed in the importance of independent media and community media. There is no way Link TV would have had the resources to share our content with all of our new friends in Public Access without Charlie's vision for us to do so, and the support to make it happen. To date, there are 16 full episodes of explore on PegMedia.org!

If you want to bring this show or any other Link TV programs to your local cable channel, contact us and select "Request Link TV in Your Area" from the drop down subject menu. Lastly, if you have seen Link TV on a local cable channel in your community, please post a note below to let us know!

Welcome to Link TV's latest blog subject, Public Access, where we will be updating you on how you can watch Link TV on public access cable channels all around the country, and even around the world! In the past few years, Link TV has been sharing lots of its best content with local community cable stations (as reflected on Link TV's reception page) so that people who don't have the ability to watch us on DirecTV or Dish Network can also have access to the paradigm-shifting glimpses of the world that you only see on Link TV.

What started out as a DVD giveaway campaign has turned into a state-of-the-art online platform for broadcast-quality content sharing called PegMedia.org. Link TV encouraged the development and supported the funding of PegMedia.org, but this project reflects the passion, courage, and brilliance of a volunteer from Maine named Robert Nichols. Bob has donated his time, energy, and personal funds to get this incredibly exciting project up and running. Bob holds public access in high regard as the final shelter for freedom of speech and information. He also has an incredibly evolved concept of community–community is no longer a group of people who are tied by geographical proximity, but rather a group of people who are tied together by the same concerns, curiosities, and dreams. When a public access station located in a tiny town in New Mexico creates and uploads content about water scarcity, and that content is then downloaded and broadcast by a tiny channel in a dry desertified town in Colorado, the citizens of each of these towns are effectively communed.

Link TV's mission has always been to bring outside perspectives and marginalized voices into our homes in order to foster dialogue and create cross-cultural communication, so why not start tearing down fences right here in our own communities? If you are interested in bringing Link TV into your community, just send an email to us at www.linktv.org/contactus and select "Request Link TV in your area" from the drop-down menu under "Subject".

Recently, we just uploaded ColorLines to PegMedia.org for channels to download. It is an exciting new program about race and economic recovery in America today. Stay tuned for regular updates on Link TV's new distribution abilities - we want to be wherever you want us to be!