Watching the news and reading the papers I am constantly slammed by headlines of the global economic crisis, the mass job cuts worldwide and the increase in trade barriers to protect economies. Yet, I can’t help but feel selfish. We are bickering constantly over money whilst more than half of the world’s people live below the internationally defined poverty line of less than U.S. $2 a day according to 2008 data from the World Bank.
Whilst for most of us this is a shocking figure, how many people reading this will actually try to do something about it?
Poverty in the world is tremendous, if you look at any statistics you will see it. Every day, nearly 7,500 people become infected with HIV and 5,500 die from AIDS, mostly due to a lack of HIV prevention and treatment services. (The Millennium Development Goals Report – 2008). I am not going to go through all the figures and stats because I know that you understand the severity of poverty in the world.
The reason for this blog was to inform and hopefully encourage people to get active. You need not head down to the soup kitchens or donate hundreds to charity (although these would obviously be great), instead I want to suggest a site called Kiva. Some of you may of heard of it before, it is basically a non-profit organization which aims to give entrepreneurs aid in achieving their goals in developing nations. 100% of loans made (which start at only US $25) are given to borrowers in areas such as Asia, Africa, South America etc. Over time, the entrepreneur repays their loan; the concept of “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime”. You then can choose to reinvest your money with another entrepreneur or simply put it back in your bank.
The recent bushfires in Victoria really made me think about alms giving. I thought if millions of money was raised in the span of a few weeks, what else could we do? I understand that money is tight in times like these for most of us, however if each person could donate even $10 to a worthy charity such as Kiva, WorldVision, Amnesty International etc. we could help millions of people stricken by poverty.
In fact I thought about big corporations such as Woolworths and McDonalds as well, what if these companies donated a percentage of their daily earnings to third world countries. How much better could the world potentially become?
I do not underestimate the sadness in the number of job losses around the world, family members of mine have lost jobs and are completely stumped as to what to do next. I simply believe that although the world may seem to be a bad place for many of us with a roof over our heads, access to clean water and a nice warm plate of food each day, their are people in much worse situations than us.
Please let me know if you are aware of any organisations like Kiva, as I am extremly impressed with their work.
Hi, I thought I drop by and see how you’re doing. So far so good. I’m not familiar with Kiva, but might give this site a look. You’re right, although we’re constantly having own daily problems, but we should be grateful since many are living in far worst conditions than ours. Keep up the good work to bring awareness to the public, and that’s one of the purpose of being a blogger — to be heard.
i like the idea of microfinance. its a very empowerment oriented type of program, and mutually beneficial for both parties
it is humbling to imagine the cumulative impact we could all have in a coordinate effort of kindness.
seriously, imagine if everyone who could, donated $10 to a single cause (say hunger)
then the next year just $10 to another cause.
the results would be amazing.
a thought i have: people always praise bill gates for his generosity, but i always wonder, yes its great, but how much more could he afford to give?