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If you are interested in eliminating extreme poverty in one country of your choice please join the Facebook group called The Council of 100 Champions
This blog will include a weekly post, usually every Monday afternoon at 4pm. Each post will include material needed to develop a program to eliminate extreme poverty in a country where you live or in any country where you want to see extreme poverty eliminated.
v4. The Denial of People’s Right to Pursue a Good Education and to Achieve Self Actualization. Nearly two billion people are today unable to read a newspaper, do basic math calculations or even sign their name. Ignorance breeds unemployment, extreme poverty, social instability. Over 100 million children of elementary school do not attend school, because their parents need them to work for their basic necessities. Education is the key to poverty alleviation, helping people to gain the knowledge, the skills, and competencies to meet their basic needs. They do not want a handout they want a hand up. 5. The Lack of Economic Opportunity for those at the Bottom of the Pyramid of Social Existence. The poor represent far more than a group that deserves our sympathy and charity. Helping the poor escape from poverty will also help raise the incomes of the whole world. Ending hunger and poverty in poor countries creates new markets for our products and provides more employment opportunities in western countries. The poor constitute a major untapped market opportunity for businesses that can imagine new ways to bring down the cost of products and services to the poor. C. K. Prahalad, in his book The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid, makes a compelling case for adapting products for the poor to make them affordable. Using Prahalad’s math, the extreme and moderate poor have buying power equal to $8 billion per day. 6. The Opportunity to Encourage Peace and Tranquility Among All Nations to help poor nations reduce their numbers in poverty One major reason that more advanced nations should worry about nations filled with poor people is because such nations often collapse into “failed states” that fall into conflicts and violence that necessitate military intervention by U.S. or NATO or UN forces. This happened with Honduras, Lebanon, Somalia, Iraq, Nigeria, and Syria—each violent outbreak within or between countries posing a threat to U.S. and European national security and cost taxpayers in America, millions if not billions of dollars. More dramatic is the cost of keeping illegal immigrants out, when all they need are jobs, health services, schools and access to economic opportunities in their own countries.
2. The tragedy of Desperation, Crime and Violence. We are living in a dangerous world. In the 1970s and early 1980s, American tourists and business people were accustomed to visiting most areas in Africa, Asia or Latin America with little or no concern. Today, most of us would think long and hard before venturing outside the boundaries of the United States. International terrorism has changed our world and most of us wonder what has caused this change and is there anything that we can do about this situation. What many people do not understand is that terrorism is a symptom, and not the cause of this problem. With the advent of television and western movies, the “have-nots of this world,” see what we have and how we live, and they ask why is this? For people who have no schools, no health facilities, no electricity, no potable water and no opportunities to improve themselves, their perceived unfairness of the situation can only stimulate frustration, resentment and anger. This poverty breeds a kind of desperation which often leads the poor and the destitute people into crime and terrorism, prostitution, and drug running. The hopelessness felt by the poor motivates many of them to follow any demagogue who promises them food, health care and a job. Too many dictators and fanatics are quick to stimulate these feelings of resentment, and from this pool of discontentment, are quick to recruit and train those who would cause us harm. We can end up fighting them or helping them to find a better life. This is a subtitle for your new post *****Please comment with your opinion as to why we need to eliminate extreme poverty
So Why Should We Care?? Here are Ten Good Reasons Why You Should be Involved in Eliminating Extreme Poverty in this World. By James B. Mayfield, PhD Co-Founder of CHOICE Humanitarian Poverty is a disgraceful and unjust condition that has always haunted mankind. Most people see the problem as insoluble. They see previous solutions that have failed. Some even think that previous remedies have worsened the condition of the poor. They claim that assisting the poor increases dependency and produces a “culture of poverty” that persists from generation to generation. Some go further and blame the poor for their problems. They think many of the poor are shiftless, lazy, unintelligent, or even parasitic. All that said, there is widespread pessimism about mankind’s ability to reduce the world’s level of poverty and wasted lives. The time has come to focus, with optimism, that the scourge of extreme poverty needs to be eliminated and can be eliminated 1. The Waste of Human Potential First, poverty leads to a terrible waste of human potential. Imagine the millions of wasted lives denied an opportunity to achieve their full potential because they lived in societies with no health care, no meaningful employment or educational opportunities. How many could have become doctors, scientists, professionals, teachers, merchants, engineers and entrepreneurs willing and able to improve the well-being of their families, neighborhoods, villages and towns, their countries and even the world. The very poor are not able to develop these skills, abilities and capacities because they are totally preoccupied with subsistence, remaining illiterate, malnourished, sickly, exploited, and excluded. This is one of the major tragedies in human history, and now is the time to remove the scourge of extreme poverty.