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Issue 00442 |
October 21 - 27, 2006 |
issn 0856 - 9135 |
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Features |
| Perceptions of Poverty By Calvin Laing The perception of poverty and its causes can often lead to an inefficient way of trying to alleviate the suffering of the poor. The causes of poverty are commonly perceived to originate where the symptoms of poverty arise. This is certainly true in some cases: lack of natural resources, bad governance and war, for example. However, little attention is paid to influence from distant sources, often not even originating in the same continent. The actions of the developed world reflect this fact. For example, large amounts of money are transferred in the form of loans and aid to developing nations, policies to restructure services are forced upon them and grand projects on infrastructure are undertaken. While oversees assistance is important and certainly shouldn't stop, these solutions are to a large extent, misguided. Firstly, throwing money at problem rarely works. Secondly, policies to run services, which are designed outside of the actual country they are intended for use in, are usually impractical. And thirdly, infrastructure programs often just benefit the wealthier proportion of a country, if not even further intensifying the poverty of the already poor. Even the actions of individuals in the developed nations are very telling when it comes to this paradigm. In Britain, where I come from, we are often very willing to give money to charity or perhaps volunteer in a charitable organisation and while this is very valuble, we do not pay attention to how we are living our lives in general. For example, it is not unknown in the developed world that cheap clothing and food, imported from developing nations are often produced in awful conditions, where even children are exploited in ways that we would not tolerate in our own country. Yet we continue to shop in the supermarkets, which wield their power over producers and force them to sell at unrealistically low prices. We continue to eat at the fast food restaurants, some of which destroy the rainforest in order to make space to grow their produce. We continue to drink soft drinks made by companies, which take water from areas where people once used to be able to grow crops and then sell their luxury product to the rich, or even market it to the poor, encouraging use of an unessential product. The list goes on and while we do not understand every twist and turn in which our lifestyle affects that of the poor, we know a few basic truths and these all the lead to the conclusion that our wealth and our comfortable lifestyle can be attributed to someone else’s lack of monetary and possessive wealth and their insecure lifestyle. It is of course, a much more “romantic” vision, that there are so many people in the world incapable of helping themselves and that the developed nations need to come running to their rescue. However, people in developing nations are able to help themselves and it’s often in difficult situations that people are at their most inventive and capable. It is the power of the developed nations and their people’s desire for more and more, which helps to keep the poor down and makes a difficult situation an impossible one. The saying “charity begins at home” rings truer than ever but with a different meaning to be conveyed. In order to help others we cannot just look outward at what we can give to them but we should search inwards to see what we could do within our own lives and what we can change about ourselves- in our own home. The act of giving to those less fortunate than ourselves is somewhat pointless if we are only taking more back. It is difficult for those of us, already well-off, to accept that we must change and to face up to the fact that if we want to help others, much worse off than ourselves, we must make reductions in our own quality of life. This reduction in quality of life though is only as we measure it now. Ultimately, what would most people prefer? To have more possessions than necessary, to live lavishly and to further the demand for exploitative labour or to lead a simpler, honest life, in which we can be satisfied that we have been fair to others. The former, I would suggest, is a higher quality of life. At LOHADA, in caring for disadvantaged children, we are trying to enable them to live a prosperous life but many of them will only be sucked into this cycle unless changes are made to the way people conduct their lives the world over, in every person's home. To see a real reduction in poverty, our perception of it must change, in order to free the poor from the rule of global economics and to allow future generations to govern themselves, in a way in which they may develop sustainably and adaptably and where by local democracy will be enabled to flourish. LOHADA, Loving Hand for the Disadvantaged and Aged, is a Tanzanian non-governmental organization serving children and aged persons in Arusha and Shinyanga regions. For more information please email: info@lohada.org or visit our website: www.lohada.org
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