Poverty Journal

Dec. 2nd 2007:

On Friday we were looking at what an NGO is. One NGO we talked about was Free The Children; it was started by a twelve year old to help kids in slavery. I think that this is inspiring because it shows what someone our age can do. This reminds me of when Simon came in to talk to us and explained that we are not the leaders of tomorrow; we are the leaders of today. Another NGO that we were studying was Oxfam.

I’m not all that sure if I’d rather be aware of poverty or not. If no one was aware then no one could know there was anything better and his or her life could be more enjoyable. But on the other hand, we wouldn’t be able to help them if we didn’t even know about their problem. I think that The Giver tries to take away the “memory” of poverty because it makes the people who are wealthy have better, guilt-free lives, but I’m not so sure about how it would impact the people in poverty if there was no one to help them.

When Lorne Jakes came to talk to us earlier in the week, he explained what countries ate what in a week and how much money they spent on it. I think that this is a great way of looking at how poor some countries are. He called this “Food for a Week.” Some countries spent a lot of money on their food in just a week. One of these countries was Japan; this family spent $317.25 on their food. America had a lot of packaged foods, while the poorer countries didn’t; this family spent $341.98 on their food. One of the really poor countries was Chad; this family spent $1.23 on their food. Obviously, something is wrong here. I think that this comparison tells us that we need to do something because this is not right.