Once you've seen poverty, you can't unsee it.

Mar 12 poverty

Every night we are at sea, there is an interesting discussion or informational session at 8 pm in the “union” on the sixth deck of he ship. Last night here was a conversation about poverty. Since we saw a lot of poverty both India and Burma, there was an effort to define what poverty is.

One of the panelists cited the United Nations 1948 Declaration of Human Rights which states that every person is entitled to an adequate standard of living that provides food, fresh water, sanitation, shelter, clothing and health care. Education should be added to that. In both Burma and India, we saw people who do not have access to those things, but in many cases, families live together to try to make a life by sharing with one another. Sanitation—getting rid of human waste is at a crisis point and that affects the issue of fresh water.

In the US, our way of life is based on a meritocracy—those who are worthy and work hard are rewarded. Sometimes we think that those who are not rewarded, must not be worthy—and lazy people. Much of what we have is due to being born in a place where effort can equal reward.

My mother's family lived in St. Johns, Michigan, was extremely poor, and her father was a day laborer to feed the family. Mom had a few clothes to wear to school, one dress for Sunday, and one pair of shoes. Often her mother made butter, salt, and pepper soup for supper.  She went barefoot all summer. Because her parents valued music, all seven children took piano lessons. But, they did have a house, clean water for a bath once a week, and enough food, time and encouragement to get an education. Mom went on to college and became a teacher, but had to quite when she married my dad.  Women teachers could teacher if they were married.

But, when people are born in places where there are not enough jobs and lack of access to resources, their view of their possibilities becomes limited. They can't figure out a way to exit from this daily struggle for food and shelter and have hopes for the future because their daily lives are linked to just survival.

Today, if we imagined that the world had a population of 100 people, 57 people are Asian, 8 of them African, 52 are female, 70 are nonwhite, 70 are unable to read, 6 people have the entire wealth of the world, 1 has a college education, and 1 owns a computer.

Sometimes we see people who are not making it, and we think, “Why can't these people get it together?” We are unaware of the advantage of place of birth has on the outcome of our lives. But, in many of the poor are fortunate in other ways that we are not It is true that money does not buy happiness, but the vision of the “happy poor” is an illusion. Clean water is a big issue, because they have to walk miles in the morning to get it. There are people who live in poverty who haven't seen anything else.

Do we in “the west” need poverty? Do we rely on the backs of others? We need others to do the work we don't want to do. We need them to harvest our food. We need them to work in shops so that we can buy cheap clothes and products.

What good does education do if you don't have basic necessities? Only when people have basic necessities in place, can education allow them to expand their hopes and a strategy to fulfill their capacity.

One women who directs a homeless shelter said that a donor gave a large TV screen to the shelter, and people driving by got angry. Don't people in a homeless shelter get to watch TV? People who are poor have the same needs. People in the homeless shelter didn't necessarily get there by making bad choices.

Sometimes choices are cultural. For instance, Hispanics have the biggest drop-out rate from high school, because they decide to get a job instead of going to school. People in the US are angry about welfare (supporting needy), because we think they're taking money away from us. In fact, over 82% of people on welfare, are on for less than two years, and it's an important safety net.

Poverty deprives people of developing their capability. We can help by building capacity institutions in poor places—even in the US. Once you see poverty, you can't unsee it.  We all need to see it, and do something about it.