Journey in the World of Poverty

When do you say you are poor?  Economists defined it as –“an individual is considered as poor when income is below the official poverty line or poverty threshold”.  The poverty lines measures the income needed to obtain basic and non-basic needs for one year.  The most commonly used global definition of global poverty is the absolute poverty line set by the World Bank. Poverty is set at an income of 2 dollars a day, and extreme poverty is set at one dollar a day or less. This line was first created in 1990 when the World Bank published its World Development Report and found that most developing countries set their poverty lines at one dollar a day.

These Tanzanians earn at least more than USD 1 a day for selling their crafts

In the social context, during the UN's World Summit on Social Development, the ‘Copenhagen Declaration’ described poverty as “…a condition characterized by severe deprivation of basic human needs, including food, safe drinking water, sanitation facilities, health, shelter, education and information.”

Through the definition of World Bank, based on the statistics of 2005, the most stricken countries from poverty are in the South Asia; with 509 million poor people and Sub-Saharan Africa; with 387 million poor people .  Maybe, the figure is in billion of total together with all the developing countries in the world.

Will they experience a world without poverty?

The different kinds of foreign supports, reliefs and aid to developing countries never stop yet poverty still persists.  I wonder if it ever ends.

It’s my second time to do a volunteer work and to witness the reality of being a poor.   My organization (an international charity organization) sends volunteers to the different developing countries in the world to help fight and eradicate poverty.  These volunteers (which, I am one of those) share their skills to help empower the disadvantaged people (or the people who suffer from the adverse effects of poverty) by working with partners (usually local Non-Government Organizations).  The working areas are in different sectors such as livelihood, health, education, governance, etc. (mainstreaming HIV/AIDS and Gender Development to these sectors).

The Tanzanian women who wants to be empowered to alleviate poverty

This is only one of the approaches to alleviate poverty.  The impact maybe be seen in long term or maybe it contributes a little change in the lives of the poor people but the experience taught me so much and changed my perspective in life.  Well.  I am having an allowance of more than 2 dollars a day.  Do I have the right to complain?