There are 75 million more people living in poverty today compared with last year. Latest World Bank figures estimate 1 billion will not be able to get the minimum nutritional levels needed to sustain themselves. I just did a google of videos on poverty and came up with pages, many of them glossy professional videos. I started to think about how much these videos cost and what else could have been done with the money. But then I decided this was a wasted exercise as poverty isn’t about that. A video of a woman benefiting from microfinance in Haiti is uplifting as is one about shoes for sport in East Africa.
But neither of these or schemes like them will end poverty in any sustainable way because they do not in any way address the fundamental causes of poverty such as militarism. Invest in caring not killing. For example women produce 80% of Africa’s food. If the money used for killing was invested in paying women for their unwaged labour that would go a long way to ending poverty. Another example of investing in caring not killing is Haiti. If the money ($540 million) used to finance the UN occupation force was instead used for health care, education, building infrastructure, agriculture, homes – this would go a long way towards ending poverty in Haiti.
Tags:
Blogging
Poverty
Blog Action Day
