I-HEART | Poverty

Poverty

“People are the real wealth of nations”– United Nations Development Programme

…But due to poverty, people are dying from not having enough food… Why is there a lack of shelter? Why are there people dying from preventable disease? Why can’t everyone have safe drinking water? Why can’t everyone have an education that will open their future to the possibilities our world has to offer?

Why does where we’re born have to affect it all?

... If we stopped asking that question, we might miss the answer…

Across our world, the distribution of resources is grossly out of balance. Right now, nearly half of the world’s population (approximately 3 billion people) lives on USD$2.00 or less per day.

Just like malnourished mothers giving birth to underweight babies, poverty is transmitted between generations. Without access to sufficient food and clean water, chronic malnutrition and frequent illness can lead kids to drop out of school early. If these kids manage to avoid being abducted and trafficked, sold into slavery or forcibly recruited as a child soldier, while also overcoming the temptations of drugs, alcohol and even suicide... because they dropped out of school, the jobs they can access often pay well below the poverty line.

It’s all connected.... And the trend continues…

Poverty affects young people and children the most as they are our world’s most vulnerable, yet the future possibility of overcoming poverty remains in their hands…

But tragically… they don’t have enough food… there are almost 10 million deaths of children under 5 due to poverty and malnutrition every year.

They’re not being educated… 115 million children of primary school age aren’t in school.

They’re without clean water… more than 1 billion people don’t have access to water that’s good enough.

They’re without safety and security… 1.2 million children are trafficked every year, most of whom came out of poverty and into slavery.

So while poverty is something we all know about, and some of us have seen firsthand, why does it still exist? If we too believe that people are the real wealth of nations, how can we, out of what we have, intercept the inevitable…? Why be overwhelmed when we can work together? There is always something we can do…