This is the VOA Special English Education Report.

Getting a job can be especially difficult for someone with a prison record. So a prison training program in the American Northwest prepares women to start their own businesses.

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The program is called Lifelong Information for Entrepreneurs, or LIFE. The training combines business and social skills. The women learn how to manage their time, set goals and settle conflicts peacefully.

Saresa Whitley is serving five years for assault at the Coffee Creek Correctional Facility, a women’s prison in Oregon. She has a job waiting for her when she is released in January. But she also plans to start a small business with the knowledge gained from the months of class.

SARESA WHITLEY: “When I was talking about knowing if my business is viable or not, through a profit-and-loss model, I was like ‘Wow, I didn’t even know the word viable before, and now I do.’ I’ve learned a lot, I’ve learned a lot about how to write a business plan, about effective communications skills, how to listen, something I didn’t know how to do before.”

Cynthia Thompson is serving time for stealing someone’s identity. She says the lessons learned in the program are important not just for the inmates, but also the communities they will re-enter.

CYNTHIA THOMPSON: “I think the goal of it is to produce people that are being part of the community, paying their taxes and being volunteers. Not just necessarily successful small businesses, but just successful, accountable people in the community.”

MercyCorps Northwest started the training program four years ago. MercyCorps is an international development organization. Doug Cooper is assistant director of MercyCorps Northwest.

DOUG COOPER: “We were looking for ways that we could apply our expertise around economic development and small business management to populations that could use it. It’s identical to what we do internationally, except we apply it here in Oregon and Washington.”

MercyCorps Northwest has just started a LIFE program at a women’s prison inWashington state. Doug Cooper says he hopes the idea will spread to prisons throughout the country.

The group says just three of the one hundred graduates of its training programhave returned to prison. Graduates of the LIFE program have started businesses like cutting hair and selling goods at farmers markets.

One woman who served time for theft now runs an automobile repair business. Lori does not want her last name used. She says she worries what people might think if they knew she had been in prison. Lori stayed in contact with a MercyCorps mentor after she left prison. Together they found answers to questions about running a small business.

LORI: “What works, what doesn’t? And is it worth having a website of your own, and what avenues of advertising can you exploit for free? Those are the type of things that I found invaluable.”

And that’s the VOA Special English Education Report. I’m Christopher Cruise.

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Authors of Medical Studies Not Always Who They Seem

February 12th, 2010 at 08:49am Under Education report

”Ghost authors” and ”honorary authors” present a problem for journals. First of two parts. Transcript of radio broadcast:

01 October 2009

This is the VOA Special English Education Report.

Medical journals are an important part of continuing education for doctors and other health providers. Journals say they do their best to publish high quality studies by trusted authors.

The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors says: “An ‘author’ is generally considered to be someone who has made substantive intellectual contributions to a published study … ”

In other words, someone who did much of the work.

Credit is to be based on three conditions. The first involves designing the study and gathering and analyzing the data. The second involves preparing the article. And the third involves final approval of the version to be published.

Readers may have no way to know who did what when studies list several authors. And not all studies list all their authors.

The Public Library of Science, or PLoS, is a nonprofit organization based in California. Its journals are available free online. The editors of PLoS Medicine ask authors if anyone from a company or public relations agency suggested or paid for their article.

They also ask if a professional writer helped with the article and to what extent. And they ask if the article is similar to articles published in other journals.

By asking these questions, the editors try to guard against the use of ghost authors. A ghost author is someone who had a lot to do with an article but is not given credit.

Drug companies have been known to pay researchers to place articles in journals to support their products.

Not all ghost authors, though, are paid. And there may be nothing scientifically wrong with a study involving paid authors who are not identified. But journal editors say everyone who worked on a study needs to take responsibility.

Another issue is the honorary author. Unlike a ghost author, an honorary author gets credit in the article but had little if anything to do with it. Authors sometimes add a well-known name to increase the chances that an article will be published. For example, the person may be the head of the university department that did the study.

The chief editor of PLoS Medicine says honorary authors are a more common problem than ghost authors. Virginia Barbour says the pressure in higher education to get published may be responsible for some of this. But she says any kind of dishonesty can shake people’s faith in the medical profession.

We’ll have more on this subject next week. And that’s the VOA Special English Education Report, written by Nancy Steinbach. I’m Steve Ember.

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Investing in the Arab Spring

July 22nd, 2011 at 07:42am Under Economy Report

This is the VOA Special English Economics Report.

The “Arab Spring” in the Middle East and North Africa has raised hopes and dreams. But can it raise money to invest in a better future?

How to respond to the Arab uprisings was a major question for world leaders this week at the Group of Eight meeting in France. Earlier in the week, the head of the World Bank said international support can speed progress — “but only if coupled with real reform.”

World Bank President Robert Zoellick offered loans to Egypt and Tunisia. Tunisians and Egyptians led democracy protests that overthrew their presidents early this year.

President Obama discussed American development plans in his Middle East policy speech last week at the State Department.

BARACK OBAMA: “The goal must be a model in which protectionism gives way to openness, the reins of commerce pass from the few to the many and the economy generates jobs for the young. America’s support for democracy will therefore be based on ensuring financial stability, promoting reform and integrating competitive markets with each other and the global economy. And we are going to start with Tunisia and Egypt.”

The World Bank will offer Egypt four and a half billion dollars in loans over the next two years. The money would be part of a plan with the International Monetary Fund to help control Egypt’s budget deficit.

The goal is to improve the country’s credit rating in order to ease the concerns of investors and reduce borrowing costs. About two billion dollars in loans would be linked to progress in government reforms.

The World Bank also promised at least one billion dollars for Tunisia.

Twenty years ago, the European Bank of Reconstruction and Development was created to help former communist countries after the fall of the Soviet Union. Now, that bank could invest up to three and a half billion dollars in the Middle East and North Africa.

About four hundred million people live in those two areas. A majority are under the age of thirty. The anger of the many educated but unemployed young people has been a driving force in the Arab Spring movement.

Oil is the main export for many of the countries. Yet a recent World Bank study showed that oil has not done much to raise wages. Income growth continues to fall behind East Asia and South America.

Over the years, private investment has been limited largely to the oil industry. But there are some efforts to change that. In March, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton promised two billion dollars through a government agency known as OPIC.

OPIC is the Overseas Private Investment Corporation. It works with Americans businesses to invest in projects in developing countries.

And that’s the VOA Special English Economics Report, written by Mario Ritter. I’m Steve Ember