Eradication of Poverty

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Poverty is one of the major obstacles to peace. Here we fight poverty.

Website: http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/social/intldays/IntlDay/index.html
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Latest Activity: Apr 16, 2013

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International Day for the Eradication of Poverty

Poverty is not just a matter of subsistence. Poverty encompasses the absence of opportunity to partake of the very things we take for granted: food, housing, education, training, work opportunities, and most severely, it denies the right to a fruitful life. Poverty drives individuals to extremes just so as to survive.Others lose hope, faith and will.

Despair drives parents to sell children, teenagers sell their bodies for a pittance and societies crumble incrementally under the pressure of living on nothing.

Values and norms lose meaning as the fight to live through hunger and a spot in a drain pipe for sleep out of the rain, fighting over that extra sniff of glue are all that some children learn about being disposable and invisible to the greater world

And what do we lose in the process? Human potential. We lose a child’s discovery of their own mind, a child who through play and exploration would otherwise uncover the wealth of their own talent and what they could possibly contribute to the world

As you brush off a child who begs to wash your car windows as you wait for a red light, or a kid asks to take your shopping trolley, don’t just imagine it being your own child, but see the scientist, the musician, the economist, the community leader, the teacher, whose potential dies in your looking the other way……

The choice is yours… and yours…and yours And mine! We can make poverty history if we want it to be.

There is this idea that poverty is something that born and bred in developing nations: media and commerce have created the illusion of a great divide… and it is often relegated to a developmental one.

Truth is Poverty is spawned in your own home. It starts in the mind. It grows roots in the soil of apathy and it spreads like a cancer among the backstreets of everything you and I pretend not to see. It flourishes among the garbage bags of everything we take for granted: running water, a bed, warmth, family, holidays, birthday wishes, even a simple smile which lets you know someone has SEEN you, acknowledge your existence…

Poverty is not just a matter of money. Poverty is what comes from living beyond the realm of those in need of a helping hand.

Give, so a girl can development her self confidence and become self-reliant.

Give, so a young man need not prostitute himself to foreign holiday makers,

Give, so that a man need not traffic his child for 50dollars.

Give a Damn… it goes farther than just a Dime …. And BE the difference in their lives and your own.

Poverty like illness knows no boundaries. Wealth does not protect one from it and poverty itself does not make you immune to its impact.

With the current tumbling of the world’s financial markets, the loss of billions around the world offers all of us an opportune moment of reflection. The first Wall Street Crash sent the world into an economic nightmare. These days governments rally together at the speed of light in a financial rescue mission….

And it still does not change one aspect of the status quo…

Those stuck in poverty remain stuck in the mud or rambling knee deep in disease infected refuse landfills, which is home to seagulls and homeless children: it feeds a pittance to some anonymous stricken family in the back streets of Bogota, children scramble bottles together for enough small change to kill the cold off their skin for a night.

Walk around your own city without stepping over some homeless anonymous entity and ask yourself how difficult is it to care…

Poverty Day: Take part! Care enough so there does not have to be one next year!

Create opportunities for Trade rather than Aid.

It's in our hands and hearts... if we choose to have a mind to.....

some pictures courtesy of flickr.com

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Comment by Debabrata Chakrabarti on October 23, 2009 at 11:59am: Beautiful picture. I could not understand the language.
Schoene Bilder. Aber ich kann Ihre Sprache nicht verstehen.
Best

Comment by SILVANA on October 23, 2009 at 11:29am

Comment by SILVANA on October 23, 2009 at 11:25am: RECOMEÇAR

Recomece
Como faz o sol todas as manhãs
como faz a rosa ao desabrochar.
Como faz a brisa que o som da vida leva
num lindo bailar.
A água da cachoeira que vai e vem sem trégua
num som de dar inveja ao ilustre maestro
que a tenta imitar.
Recomece!
Como faz a onda que balança o mar
Como faz a areia que vive a rolar
Recomece!
Porque a vida é agora
e ela te convida:
Vem recomeçar!

(Sirlei L. Passolongo)

Debabrata amigo,vim desejar-te um fim de semana pleno de Paz!
Beijos e Bençãos!

Comment by Debabrata Chakrabarti on October 23, 2009 at 11:01am: I could not understand the language, but the word "Brahmakumaris" spoke something to me. Best.

Comment by SILVANA on October 23, 2009 at 3:36am: Virtude

Temos a tendência de nos deixar influenciar pela
atmosfera e humor dos outros.
Se o ambiente é bom nos sentimos super bem.
Se a companhia é ruim, perdemos o brilho.
Mas pense numa rosa fragrante.
Será que ela deixa de ser fragrante a depender
do local em que está? Não, absolutamente.
Uma rosa fragrante é sempre fragrante.
Esta é a natureza dela. Da mesma forma,
não importa onde nem com quem você esteja,
nunca deixe de expressar sua virtude.
Virtude é a fragrância da alma.

(Brahma Kumaris)

Comment by Debabrata Chakrabarti on October 21, 2009 at 5:36pm: The following is a Bengali poem (translated by this writer) on a pregnant adolescent whom the poet saw on a footpath slum just in front of the Howrah Station (Kolkata, India). Parents or Guardins (of orphans) earn money by way of exploiting adolescent gorls, which is nothing but a reflection of poverty:

Let Kolkata shed tears
Sanatkumar Ghosh

You have a lot of things to pay for
But a little more you must add

A soldier has promised
To gift her a Sâri, an earring
A little cash can be earned
If you go to Zaffar’s room

A little more she must have to play
With the suckling doll
To have fun around
With milk, lollipop
She has her milk in plenty on top

Still a little more you must add
Let some words stand around her
Some grief
Some outburst
Let kolkata shed tears
For the child mother just this once.

Comment by Clicia Pavan on October 17, 2009 at 7:02pm

Comment by Clicia Pavan on October 17, 2009 at 7:00pm: Eradication of Poverty, Saturday 17 October
Ipeace come here to leave your recadinho
Let us unite our forces in a positive energy to help children, refugees
Hunger is the worst violence against humans
----------------
IPeace venido aquí a dejar su recadinho
Unamos nuestras fuerzas en una energía positiva para ayudar a los niños, los refugiados
El hambre es la peor de la violencia contra los seres humanos
Namaste

Comment by Clicia Pavan on October 17, 2009 at 6:57pm: Eradication of Poverty, Saturday 17 October
If the exclusion has been misery, the Union will destroy the production of misery, will produce full citizenship
Hunger and extreme poverty is a form of violence against human beings -
Stop
Namaste