Backgrounder
Who Cares?
Australians live in one of the
richest countries of the world. Sometimes it appears that we don't
care what happens in other parts of the world. We live on an
island and we are okay. We even turn the channels on our
television sets to avoid seeing or hearing yet another story about
poverty in the world.
When we are told that over a
billion people live on less than one dollar a day, (this figure
more than doubles for those who live on less than two dollars a
day) or that three billion people have no access to sanitation and
two billion people do not have access to electricity, some of us
might even say: Who cares?
Yet when something like the horrors
of Bali occur, Australians prove that we do care, and not just
about other Australians. Thousands of Australians contributed
money and medicine and goods to assist all those who had suffered
from the bomb blasts. It did not matter if the people were
Australian or Balinese. We cared because they were people whom we
knew, or who had known someone we knew, or who had cared for other
Aussies or there was a deep connectedness and we cared deeply, and
we showed that we cared.
It is harder to care about people
with whom we have only little contact. It is harder to care about
the millions of people who suffer the pain of horrifying poverty
every day. We do not know them. We cannot see their faces. Yet, in
fact, Australians do care. The response of Australians to people
in crisis is always one of generosity.
Social commentators tell us that
most Australians are concerned about poverty in developing
countries and not just in times of crisis. While Australians do
recognise that global poverty may well have an effect on their own
lives, they know too, that real poverty is unfair. Most
Australians want a just and fair world.
A just and fair world? Well, for a
start there are four hundred and ninety seven billionaires in the
world. Most of us would agree that it is unfair that such a small
number of people can be so wealthy when so many people are
desperately poor. The combined wealth of the four hundred and
ninety seven billionaires equals the amount of income shared by
the poorest HALF of the people of the world
The injustice does not only reside
with individuals. Australians were happy to spend $2 billion on
the Sydney Olympics a few years ago while $16 billion was spent in
the US on cosmetics in one year and $24 billion was spent in
Europe and the US on perfume.
Yet we would still agree that it is
an unfair world when twenty four thousand people die each day
because they do not have enough food to eat. We would also say
that it is awful that one billion people cannot drink clean water.
We would agree that it is unfair that two billion people have
never seen a telephone let alone used a computer. We would deplore
the fact that over eight hundred million people cannot read or
write through no fault of their own and that one hundred and
thirteen million children do not go to school and that thirty
thousand children die every day from preventable diseases.
Global poverty calls for a global
solution. Poverty, crushing and humiliating poverty can lead to
conflicts and war. The recent pain and suffering in the world has
touched us and we are beginning to understand that eradicating
global poverty is our concern.
We know that global poverty is not
only morally unacceptable, it has the capacity to affect us all.
We are beginning to understand 'interdependence', that the way we
live here has an impact on people in other parts of the world.
Who cares about global poverty?
We do? don't we?
LEARNING AND TEACHING ACTIVITIES
1. Discussion topics: · Rich
people are rich because they worked hard for the money. Poor
people have only themselves to blame. ·Australia is committed to
paying 0.7% of its GDP to overseas aid. In reality this is 0.25%.
Should Australia pay more?
2. For a list of the richest people
in the world, visit: http://www.forbes.com/2002/02/28/billionaires.html
Also visit: http://www.oneworld.org/news/reports/rich.html
3. Make a poster about global
poverty, using the figures presented in this article.
4. Iraq is experiencing the burden
of extreme poverty and many of its people are suffering. This has
not always been the case. Present the causes of poverty in Iraq to
your class. Visit: http://www.cafod.org.uk/iraq/background.shtml
5. Type this into Google and see
what comes up: 'If the world were 100 people'. Organise a class
around these figures. (You may have to divide the numbers by
three) or make a collage to represent these figures.
6. Listen to the People · What
kind of things do poor people worry about? · What kind of things
do poor people never have? · Do poor people know that they are
poor? · What do poor people want from their governments?
Most Australians will never know
the horrors of real poverty. If you want real answers to the above
questions, go to this website: http://www.worldbank.org/poverty/wdrpoverty/
Click on Listen to the Voices. Meet
real people who know and experience poverty. Make a list of the
many 'kinds' of poverty spoken about by these people.
7. Be Part of the Global Solution:
(a) Come to an evening forum on
31st October at NSW Parliament House at 6.15pm to discuss the
links between HIV/AIDS and debt, check out the international
photographic exhibition 'Positive Lives' and be a part of the
movement to drop the debts and eradicate HIV/AIDS.
(b) Commit yourself to finding out
more about an overseas aid and development agency such as Caritas
Australia. www.caritas.org.au
(Figures in Paragraph one are from
James Wolfenson, The Other Crisis, World Bank, October 1998)
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