Global Poverty
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A) What is global poverty?
Poverty is when people don't have the right education, no job, no food to eat or water to drink, no home to sleep in, no money to go to a doctor when they are sick and when they don't have proper hygiene.
B) The spreading of poverty and its influences:
Poverty is spreading because we don't understand the development of poverty properly.
Generally it is observed that the world population is continuously growing. With that, a big problem comes up, finding food and jobs for all the people in the world.
To know more statistics visit this site: (http://www.worldometers.info/)
Growth of world population: Dramatic increase in recent past:
How many people are living below the poverty line:
Example: Assuming the poverty line is defined if somebody earns less than $1 per day, the table tells that more than 10% of the world population is living in poverty. That means almost 1 billion people.
Where do we find the biggest number of poor people?
Key Question: How to feed all these people?
Quotation of a statement made at the World Food Summit (WFS) in 1996:
"At 923 million people, the number of undernourished in 2007 was more than 80 million higher than in 1990–92, making the task of bringing the number of undernourished to 420 million by 2015 more difficult, especially in an environment of high food prices and uncertain global economic prospects."
An excellent summary of the problem is also provided by a movie clip made by the World Bank to be found under:
C) What are the causes of poverty?
Often poverty starts because people don't find a job and then they don't get money to buy food. Very often the reason is that they don't have the right education to get a job.
When parents have too many children but not enough money to feed them all, poverty is the consequence.
Another cause of poverty is when wars happen and people lose their homes and everything they had. That is another way how poverty can occur.
Poverty can also happen when, due to climate change, basic crops get lost. This happens to farmers when not enough rain falls to grow their goods.
All of the reasons that are mentioned here are found in developing countries (Africa, Asia, and Latin America). Therefore we are confronted with the problem of "global poverty".
Some pictures for demonstration of the multi-dimensional problem:
Home and hygiene
Waiting for food
Primitive schooling.
D) Consequences following from poverty:
1. People in poverty are living under inhuman conditions. They have no power and no political network to change the circumstances.
2. As people in poverty have nothing to lose, criminal acts, theft, even murder are going along with it, endangering the whole society of a country.
3. Global poverty - if whole regions are affected by starvation and/or lack of natural resources - this may lead to armed conflicts or even wars (see Africa).
In summary, global poverty is a dangerous phenomena which affects everybody of us. Therfore it must be everybody's interest to fight global poverty.
Fight for survival!
Some interesting interrelationships.
E) Measures already undertaken to stop poverty:
Problem: Growth of world population.
In China the government has introduced birth control.
Problem: Education.
In some countries certain number of seats have been reserved in schools, colleges, and universities for underprivileged students to gain better access to advanced education (example India).
Problem: Creation of jobs.
Building up of training centers for unskilled workers to improve their performance in various trades like welding and assembling (initiative of global companies in third world countries like Mercedes).
These are some actives but not sufficient to stop growing poverty. It is just a drop of water on a hot stone.
F) My advice and proposal (a summary)
1. Each country should have a special service of professionals and volunteers taking care for people falling in poverty by whatever the reason may be. They should provide support to the poor to get sufficient food, medical care and other things for granting a reasonable living standard. This service should also take care that these people find back to normal living conditions on a sustainable basis.
2. All kids living in poverty should get a chance to visit schools and to get a profound education. For that the governments of the affected countries must found much more schools especially in remote areas and employ much more teachers. The countries have to provide a fixed share of their budget and rich nations should support these efforts by regular donations (books, money, and other teaching tools).
3. As global poverty often is connected with starvation in rural areas it is important to support irrigation projects. This requires drilling wells and installing water pumps and to convert deserts into agricultural land. The authorities should also install storages so that the harvest can be saved for a longer period. With these basic provisions people can escape poverty and can make a good living by themselves.
4. Slum areas should form communities with help from the government. Each member should take over a certain task for administration, services, and manufacturing. With the structured society automatically new jobs are created. Over-production of goods will be sold in outside markets to make the new formed society sustainable. Important is that the poor people come out of poverty by their own initiative. Only for the starts help and support is required.
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