Well, it's Wednesday October 15th, which means it's blog action day and I should be writing something about poverty. The problem here is that I don't know a great deal about it. I know that Cornwall consistently has the lowest average level of earnings compared to any other county in England, but I get paid pretty well so I don't experience it. And as for the rest of the world? I know the situation's really bad, but how bad? I try to give to charity regularly, to do my bit, but I'm busy (or lazy) and never really look into the reasons behind these charities. Why should I give money? Who is it really going to help? I'm going to have to do some research if I'm to come out of this post without sounding like I'm still an ignorant prick...
So where do I start? Well, right now I'm on teh intarwebs so that seems as good a place as any. globalissues.org is my first port of call, particularly this page about the causes of poverty. And fuck me, those are some depressing statistics.
Over 3 billion people live on less than £1.50 a day.
My fucking
sandwiches cost more than that if I don't make them myself in the morning.
The GDP of the 41 most heavily indebted poor countries is less than the wealth of the 7 richest people combined.
Now I'm not going to start slagging off Gates because he does a lot of charity stuff through the Gates foundation. He's recently stuck $168 million into the pot to help develop a next-gen malaria vaccine. Awesome stuff. And I'm sure the other rich twunts do their bit too. McCartney is a patron of Adopt-a-minefield, and there was Live 8. Although I'm sure they could all do a little more. A lot of us can.
1 billion children live in poverty
That's around 50%. For those of you not blessed with the awesome power of Maths, it's 1 in 2 children. In 2003, 10.6 million kids died before they reached 5 years old. Roughly 29,000 per day. That's fucked up.
Next up is
End Poverty 2015. Now I had no idea this even existed! In 2000, 189 world leaders got together and pledged to help end poverty by achieving 8 measurable Millenium Development Goals (MDGs) by 2015. These goals include ending hunger, improving healthcare and providing education for the worlds poorest countries.
Then there's the
World Food Programme which is the United Nations agency, set up to combat hunger around the world and help meet the MDG set out by End Poverty 2015.
I could carry on copying stats and linking other websites, but you're all clever enough to go look for yourselves. Even I managed it.
The point here is, I've spent just 30 minutes looking through these different sites and I already know way more than I did before I started writing this post. And this is exactly the reason I decided to sign up for blog action day.
I live quite a blinkered existence. I don't watch the news very often and I almost never come face to face with poverty. I see the occasional homeless person, I hear about how deprived parts of Cornwall and Devon are, but I don't
experience it.
Before signing up to Blog Action Day, I was a pretty ignorant when it came to the subject of poverty. I'm also a lazy fucker. If I hadn't signed up for BAD I wouldn't have learned any of this stuff. Joining in has forced me to look further into it, to raise my awareness of the world's problems and to hopefully spur me on to do more about it.
So, how can I help? What can I do to aid in ending poverty?
Of course, one of the easiest ways for me to help is to donate money to the right charities. Organisations like
Oxfam and campaigns such as
Make Poverty History and
End Poverty 2015. But donating money is just the start of it.
At the moment, I'm trying to furnish my flat. Why buy new shit when I can go to charity shops to get stuff cheaper, while also helping those charities out? Fuck, it's not all second hand anyway. Some famous clothing brands have teamed up with charities like Oxfam to help shift that second-hand-tat image they used to have.
Xmas is coming. Like me & many colleagues have done in previous years, I won't be giving out cards, I'll be giving some cash to charity and buying stuff from
Oxfam Unwrapped. Besides, it's cool to be able to say "last xmas, i bought a classroom and a goat. One day I hope to combine the two".
Ah dammit, I was never any good at writing. I've spent an hour and a half on this post and all I've really done is point you at other websites and point out how uneducated I am. In fact, if this post wasn't for blog action day I probably wouldn't hit the publish button. But the main thing is I've raised my own awareness, made myself see how ignorant I was, and hopefully I have given you a little inspiration to go and find out more for yourself too.
I recommend you start here
http://www.blogactionday.org/ and give as much as you can.
