Only if you have never been poor or broke will you find this article alien to you. In the real world, some things never change. Poverty and despair are alive and well. You will find this real life drama played out in homes across America, in huts in Africa, in India, China, Russia, the UK and all over in European nations.
No country is immune to this cancer like desperate life style. One of the illusions that well off people have is that you can just do something and the problem will go away.
Some people are so ill educated on the condition of poverty that they actually think that individuals can manage to climb out of this black whole without help.
Granted there are and will always be some miracle that lets a few isolated people escape the grip of this hellish life style. We applaud their success and ask them to remember us, the ones left behind.
Being poor in many countries is also being uneducated, not just stupid, but kept from knowledge on purpose. They live the way they know how to live and it is hard. This is a cruel way of life. Not only is being poor stealing the will to do better it creates the condition that allows the poor to become victims of crime; drug abuse, sexual abuse, political abuse and all other kinds of abuse there might be to inflict on them.
The poor are the ones feeling the cold, the heat, the lack of food and water. They endure sickness and suffering, death is almost a kindness in many places on this earth.
Being poor makes old people out of very young people. It takes away parents, it prevents opportunities for many children and adults who want to do better, yet if they go to school this leaves a void. Who will care for the family or feed them. Who will tend the meager crops and live stock that may be all they have between them and actual starvation.
With all that we know about the horrible conditions for third world people who live in total poverty and despair there is another breed of poverty in the developed nations. Once again it is a hopeless feeling of being imprisoned in a condition called poverty. It is a constant state for many working poor and elders who live on retirement funds.
In our world there are people who are earning billions of dollars in income. There are companies that fill their bank accounts with billions in profits, they have extravagant salaries for a few at the top and they pinch every penny for those at the bottom of the chain, the workers. Is this right?
There are a few people and a few organizations that donate money for food, shelter, medicine, and even education. But there are so many more needs for so many people. And yet instead of putting the money and expertise to work for the needy they carefully live and vacation in areas where they don't have to see or mix with abject poverty.
They prefer poverty be kept clean; it must be sanitized for many people to deal with it. There must be a value, a press opportunity, a photo op or some string attached for them to get involved.
In many countries they expect people to manage their money better. How can you manage what you don't have?
The margin between the haves and the have nots is getting bigger all the time. Poverty is a serious threat to the developed world too. Where will the answers come from? We can't trust governments they tax the poor more all the time in one form or another. It may be sales tax on items or gasoline tax but it is still tax, money that is needed for other things. The poor don't usually have medical insurance they don't have money for medications or therapy and often even for food.
Wake up people it is not just their problem. Poverty is a problem for all people in all nations. We need and want answers that help not hide or gloss over the issues that keep people in this condition. Please think about how this affects you or your family and remember the family should help each other, it isn't just the government's responsibility, or your neighbors.
No matter what color we are, we are all humans and as such we should respond to other humans with thoughtfulness and kindness, even those of us less fortunate and unable to afford soap and water!
