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 Eleonor Jimenez Diza on September 14, 2008 at 12:51pm: Poverty in some parts of asia is far worst than you could imagine the situation is lack of governance and unsolved corruption...crime is everywhere how can asian people help each other if the country leaders itself is responsible for this.

Comment by Monika Macken on September 14, 2008 at 12:37pm: I wish everyone to live in a peaceful, bright world, where poverty is just a bad memory...Here in Belgium I gave one of my paintings to be sold for this World Poverty Day.

Comment by Eleonor Jimenez Diza on September 14, 2008 at 12:35pm

Comment by Monika Macken on September 14, 2008 at 12:35pm

Comment by Ana Felix Deva Garjan on September 14, 2008 at 6:35am: In Peace, In love universal,
Ana Garjan

Comment by Dr. Amy Eisenberg on September 13, 2008 at 11:07pm: Dear Partners in International Poverty Alleviation,

May this message find you very well. As World Care Project Manager for Tibetan Projects, I am dedicated to assisting Tibetan communities of Tibet and Tibetan exiles communities worldwide. We are prepared to provide emergency relief within 24 hours if granted permission. We have developed a collaborative partnership with the Trace Foundation and attempted to bring aid to Tibetan earthquake victims of Szechuan Province however our assistance was declined by Chinese authorities who stated that they did not need our help when the reality is that thousands have tremendous need.

Please urge China to open the borders of Tibet to the international community. We love Tibet and the Tibetan people and are deeply committed to developing productive and lasting partnerships with Tibetan communities. We would like to conduct participatory research with Tibetan experts in order to protect and preserve the fragile Himalayan ecosystems on the Tibetan Plateau.

Thank you very much for your consideration. We are presenting on Tibet at Sonoma State University's Student Union with the Tibetan Association of Northern California to raise awareness and to cultivate understanding about what is befalling Tibet behind the Sino-Curtain. We are raising funds for Tibetan communities in need. We welcome you to our presentation on September 17th at 7:00 pm in the Sonoma State University Student Union. All are welcome. Tibetan performers will share their beautiful and endangered culture with the interested audience.

It has been an honor to conduct participatory UNESCO-LINKS and UNDESA project research with the Kam people of China through the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. www.pbase.com/jamato8
Thank you very much.

Best wishes with your extraordinary work that makes our world a better place.

Sincerely,

Dr. Amy Eisenberg
World Care Project Manager for Tibetan Projects

"We cannot rewrite history but together we can determine the future."
-Dalai Lama

Comment by Rogerio Quintão on September 13, 2008 at 10:42pm: We are united!! thats the big power from the world. LOVE AND PEACE,

Comment by Ghers Zonensain ( Noah's ArK - International peace project) on September 13, 2008 at 10:25pm: Hi David Califa :

Certainly A very important and encouraging Day - WORLD POVERTY DAY = What can we do in order to help to cure this desease that deeply hurts the HUMANI KIND ?????

May I have your private E-mail ????

We Have an IDEA and I would like firstly to present to you and afterwards when we have some conclusions we can publish into the web .

Best regards

Ghers Zonensain
E-mail ; zonhal@bezeqint.net ---- noearca14@gmail.com
Noah's arK - International peace project

Comment by elizabeth flores on September 13, 2008 at 9:12pm: Gracias David por tu invitacion,yo siento que no es un sueño la libertad,la paz y erradicar la pobreza de nuestro planeta...mucho amor para todos

Comment by manuela on September 13, 2008 at 9:01pm: I am from Mozambique, one of the poorest countries in the world - NOW!! not till 1975 - where the leaders lack nothing and the people everything. How can the former be made to share with the latter, that which, by right, belongs to them (the people)??? and this happens everywhere. My heart aches for all those who go to bed without a crumb of bread in their stomachs, while the others feast. How can corruption be ended? Only then could we hope for a more just world. But that, I'm afraid, falls in the realm of utopia.