As a small aside to the usual energy debate, today I am giving you my 13 year old daughters comments on global poverty. She presented this as a speech last week in school. Hope you find it interesting - your comments welcome as always.
Global Poverty
The definition of poverty is either the state of being extremely poor or the state of being inferior in quality or insufficient in amount.
When you think about poverty people generally think about third world countries. Many people think poverty only occurs in foreign countries. But although it does it also occurs in countries like England. I am going to talk about both these types of poverty.
In Africa,there are thousands of staving, thirsty and poor people. In fact 800 million go hungry every day. 80% of people living in Chad and Liberian Congo are in poverty. In countries like these being poverty means having no food, no clean water, a small hut or no shelter and ill with no way to be cured. They may not have all of these things but they certainly have some of them.
When I visited Kenya two years ago I saw the harsh conditions of which these people
live under. We went to a village where all these issues were present. One of the family we visited shared a one roomed hut (if you can call it that) that was shared by seven family members. They had no clean water miles around. You can't even begin to imagine the appalling states they lived in. And there are many more like this
On the other hand, in United Kingdom 1in 5 live under the poverty line. But the idea of poverty in the Uk is a lot different then the idea of it in Africa. In Uk being in poverty is if the household income is below 60% of the average. In severe cases they can't replace broken electrical goods or furniture, afford their children’s school uniforms, or the cost of school trips, have no spare money for holidays, hobbies or leisure activities and afford to keep their homes warms. All things we take for granted.
So why is this still going on?
Well, there is no really reason why poverty is still a major problem in the world. The world has enough food to provide at least 4.3 pounds of food per person a day worldwide. We grow a enough food to feed 10 billion people and still people are hungry. Also have enough water to free the world from thirst yet people are thirsty.
Although all of this may seem like something you can't help with it is. There are many things you can do. You could volunteer, give money to charity and encourage other people to do the same.
Thank you for listening - Anna Williams
