What can I do to help end extreme poverty?
Today, 896 million people are living in extreme poverty. This means that they have to live on less than $1,90 per day. Even though this is shocking, it may not be new for you. How so you may ask? We see it everywhere: on the news and in documentaries. Maybe you remember the images of African children with swollen bellies. Personally, these images make me sick to my stomach. How is it possible that in the same world where we waste so much food (one third of all the produced food in the world gets wasted) people are dying from hunger? What can we do to make an end to extreme poverty, as soon as possible?
Screenshot from the documentary: “Living On One Dollar” – 2013.
A few weeks ago I saw the documentary “Living On One Dollar” on Netflix. If you didn’t see it: go check it out. In short it is about four American students who went to Guatemala for eight weeks to live on one dollar a day in order to experience extreme poverty. The documentary clearly shows the daily struggle of the locals to survive in extreme poverty conditions. Most of the inhabitants of Guatemala are poor farmers. Their life is hard and they all want a better future for their children by sending them to school. But it often happens that there isn’t enough money in the family to afford education. The kids end up helping their parents at the farm and remain uneducated. In their future they will have to perform low-paying work as well. This causes a cycle from generation to generation.
Is money the solution?
After watching the documentary I was, and I still am, really impressed by it. These people need help! And I really felt the urge to do something. I thought a lot about how I could contribute to ending this endless cycle of extreme poverty. Not only in Guatemala, but in the whole world. I wanted to know more on how I could do something, as an individual, to help ending extreme poverty. So I started to do some research on the internet. I discovered that rich Western governments spent almost 91,5 billion euro per year to development assistance. Over the past 50 years it sums up to a total amount of 4,8 trillion euro (which is, by the way, just about the same amount as the costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan). The good news is: there is progression. Although the number of people who are living in extreme poverty conditions is still really high, the amount is decreasing if you compare the numbers with a few years ago:
From: http://ourworldindata.org/extreme-poverty/
Priorities
The United Nations aims to end extreme poverty by 2030. Personally, I believe it is a realistic aim, but 2030 is way too far ahead. Chino, the Guatemalan boy from “Living On One Dollar” (left on the picture above), will be 29 years old by 2030. Is he just one of the 896 million unlucky people? Or do we need to accelerate the process? I’m starting to feel that ending extreme poverty doesn’t have a high priority in Western countries.
Why you might ask? This is why:
Did you know that every European country has to spent 0,7% gross national product (g.n.p.) to development assistance, according to the standard of the United Nations?
Did you know that just five countries (Norway, Sweden, Luxembourg, Denmark and The Netherlands) actually achieve to spend this required percentage to development assistance?
And did you know that 0,7% of the g.n.p. is not much. In 2015, 0.7% of the The Netherlands g.n.p. was just 3,7 billion euro. That is almost nothing, especially if you compare it to the money that The Netherlands spend on defence, which is 7,3 billion euro.
Make it a public debate again
The signs mentioned above are in my opinion signs of the decreasing perceived severity of the poverty problem in our society. But this is serious! We have to take action to make extreme poverty a public debate again, so that our governments will give this problem a higher priority on their agenda’s. Let’s create awareness of the problem, raise money with out of the box fundraising events to end extreme poverty right now! And we can do this. Because we have a powerful weapon: the internet. With all of its social platforms and communities where we can talk and encourage each other from all around the world to do something about extreme poverty. Remember what the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge did in over a year? They created worldwide awareness and raised a total amount of 220 million dollar in almost a year.
Let’s help Chino and the 896 million others.
