A new website from the World Development Movement (WDM) ranks all the teams playing in the 2010 World Cup to find the most "supportable" on the basis of their efforts to eradicate poverty and social injustice.
They've based their rankings on a variety of indicators such as: Life Expectancy, Maternal Mortality, Carbon Emissions, National Income per person, Spending on Aid / the Military, Women in Government, and so on. These are taken mainly from the UN Human Development Report but they've also included Number of people without enough to eat from the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation and Happiness, from the New Economics Foundation's Happy Planet Index.
Who Should I Cheer For is a great source of information to prompt classroom discussion during the World Cup. In the "How We Did It" section of the site WDM explain how they came up with the rankings, in terms of which issues they felt were 'good' and 'bad'.
Do you or your students agree with their perspective? What other criteria would you use - and which country team will you be cheering for?
