Mirror Mirror on the wall, Show Me a Global Issue Regarding Poverty.

Words Behind Poverty

    Poverty, by definition from United Nation, is lack of basic capabilities to participate effectively in society. Poverty in this modern days is usually related closely to possession of money in order for a person to buy something such as clothes, house, food, transport and many more.

     We all have felt shortage of cash at times. This kind of experience is based on individual experience. However, the main topic to be discussed here is broader which is the poverty of a society or a country  in a certain place with different background when we compare to the other developed country such United States of America, The United Kingdom, Japan, and so on. Poverty, as many other problems, has it root of factors leading to it.

Factors of Poverty

  

Credit to cec.vcn.bc.ca

     Poverty on global scale has many historical stories behind it; colonialism, slavery, war and conquest are some of the examples. There is an important differences between causes and what we call factors that maintain conditions of poverty. It is well known that many nations in the world faced the aftermath of wars such as World War I and II. In fact, Malaysia was one of the country that had been taken over by Japan and  

British during the World War II. People were reduced to living on charity, barely surviving. We also know that many other nations remain in the same state and poorly developed till now. The question is, what is the problem with the countries that couldn't go on even after they have support from charity and aid?

     

     The factors of poverty as a social problem are listed as ignorance, disease, apathy, dishonesty and dependency. These five factors contribute to other additional causes lead to poverty such as lack of markets, poor infrastructure, poor management and leadership of a government, lack of skills, under-employment and many other. Each of these are social problems in a country, and each of them contribute to the longevity of a nation's poverty.

 Ignorance 

     Ignorance can be said as having a lack of information. It is different from stupidity which is lack of intelligence, and not even close to foolishness which is lack of wisdom. Unfortunately, some people try to keep knowledge to themselves as a strategy of obtaining an unfair advantage) and hinder other persons from obtaining it. You can't expect that information or skill will naturally leak into the rest of a community when you train someone in a particular knowledge or skill.

     Many planners and well minded people who want to improve and help society will come to education as solution to poverty problem. Here, it is important to gain information which is useful for a certain society or country rather than collecting general idea of solution only. Suppose it is not helping for a fisherman to know how to increase the production of an apple farm, given that the new idea obtained is not even suitable with the country economic. The training of community empowerment that include the transfer of information is vital, and the aim is to strengthening capacity but not for general enlightenment.

Disease

     When a community has a high rate of disease, absenteeism is high, causing the low productivity and wealth is less created. Discomfort and death resulting from disease is also a major factor in poverty as a community. As an example, people in African country are rated high with AIDS. The background of society with poverty condition prevent them from receiving proper aid for the disease and most of poor people suffer  

from the disease until they die. The affect of AIDS has been a major hindrance to African communities to improve their life and condition.

Kids in Africa depend on charity and aid in order to survive
 (pictures credit: world-poverty.org/povertyinafrica.html)

AIDS patient without a proper care and aid could lead to death.
(picture credit: jumpei-mitsui.com)

   

Apathy

     When a person feel so powerless, they do not try to change things, to right a wrong, to fix a mistake, or to improve conditions. The symptom is called apathy. Sometimes, one feels so unable to achieve something, they are jealous of others in a community who attempt to do so. Rather than trying, they choose to bring the attempting achiever down to their level of poverty. Apathy breeds apathy. We were created with many abilities: to choose, to cooperate, to organize in improving the quality of our lives.

Dependency

     Dependency results from being the receiving end of charity or aid from other sources. Charity may be so important for survival after a disaster. This is for short term run. However, for long term, charity can contribute to the possible demise of the recipient. Among the five major factors of poverty, dependency syndrome is the one closest to the concerns of the community mobilizer. 

     The urges to find a way to earn money is lesser than normal people who has an independent way of life. A person with someone who back up the spending tends to stay in comfort zone because he or she know they are going to get help regardless of the situation. Most Asian countries have the culture of parents support their children until they can graduate and get a job. this is quite differs to some western countries in which the dependency stop when they reach certain age defined as an adult, 21 years old in Holland as example. The parents expect their children to earn their own money while the children know the expectation themselves.

     Poverty is a broad issue and differ in term of each countries background of history as well as the way how to overcome it. We in Malaysia are grateful that although there are certain types of people experiencing poverty, they are not the majority parts of people dominating the economic representative of our nation.