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
Location: Global
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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 Marica on November 25, 2008 at 10:35pm

Comment by anna on November 25, 2008 at 3:06pm: thank you for to be here, we can to do it

Comment by Jurgen Brul on November 25, 2008 at 11:58am: Dear Sire, Madam ,

Due to our Fertile Life
I would like your attention for
Sexual Transmitted Disease (Hiv and Aids)!

Advise
Let us make People Aware about how they are Safe from
Sexual Transmitted Diseases!

Hopefully, the world becomes a Better World for You and for Me!
Take Care,
Jurgen R. Brul

Comment by Gael on November 25, 2008 at 11:25am: Helping those living in poverty to help themselves towards a sustainable future....
With great compassion and caring, our organisation currently supports over 11,000 beneficiaries ( a drop in the ocean, I know) in the poorest communities of South Africa.....MaAfrika Tikkun is a Not for Profit organisation founded in 1994 - with Nelson Mandela as Chief Patron (how cool's that?!) - to offer resources, training and sustainable support to South Africa’s poorest communities.

MaAfrika Tikkun runs and reports on a variety of sustainable projects including agricultural/ food programmes, basic needs for orphans & vulnerable children left parentless/ homeless through the HIV/AIDS pandemic, AIDS education and life skills development for young people as well as care for the elderly and dying. MaAfrika Tikkun works with a variety of government and NGO agencies and is unique in its ability to penetrate deep into the poorest communities.

The organisation trains and equips volunteer Caregivers to rebuild their communities with dignity and to give hope for the future. MaAfrika Tikkun is able to do this, uniquely among charities operating in South Africa’s townships, because all Project Leaders, Caregivers and Volunteers are from the local communities. MaAfrika Tikkun delivers aid directly to those in need and because the organisation works with the communities - empowering them to find the strength to rebuild - the programmes are sustainable and deeply embedded in the community’s upliftment process .... we need to be able to help more and more people in the same way... one at a time. Check us out:
http://www.maafrikatikkun.org.za/
:-)

Comment by Lucero Sandoval on November 25, 2008 at 6:49am: I practice not giving money on the streets as a way to erradicate poverty. Giving money makes you promote the slavery of children, women, and old men, because most of times there are people behind them pushing them to ask for money, with the promise of giving them back a little piece of what they collect. I rather giving my economic support to organizations that promote education for the children who don't have the opportunities to attend school, since I believe Education is the best way we can return or give back to society what we have been lucky to receive in our lifes... it's the way we can support a child and lead him to a better tomorrow . Greetings,Lucero

Comment by Kuesta on November 24, 2008 at 11:54pm: Thank you for the invitation.
I´m moved for this sad reality.
A greeting

Comment by Davy King on November 24, 2008 at 7:26pm: Imagine an alternative to the capitalist economic system! Take steps to become money-free, both locally & globally...

http://money-free.ning.com/

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