Endless Cycle

The Fundamentals: In my eyes, poverty is defined by the lack of political, social, and economic support that a community needs to ensure health and development.  In other words, the lack of financial and governmental assistance is what helps spark the prevalence of poverty.  The formation of poverty-infested communities then prevents the ability for individuals to foster appropriate physical, mental, and spiritual health.  Finally, an unhealthy population cannot take part in bettering policies, the economy, or the role of government interventions.  This vicious cycle continues to repeat itself, confounding the negative consequences with each cycle, and diminishing any positive consequences until they no longer exist. 

 

Enter: Technology…Today’s availability of information through technology has caused a hyperawareness about issues worldwide.  Regardless of where you are, a person can obtain instantaneous (and mostly accurate) information about any single subject from anywhere in the world.  This constant feed of information at our fingertips has induced a possibly unintended, but much needed, consciousness about less known areas.  Thus, more and more people are now opening their eyes to an aspect of our population that has not changed much in hundreds of years; places that have not evolved at the same pace as developed nations, and are economically and developmentally stagnant.  Issues of extreme poverty have always existed, but they were more easily ignored 100 years ago, when the ability to obtain information from such places was lengthy and convoluted. 

 

Our Current Funk.  So, we have existing poverty-stricken aggregations that don’t know how to fix their problems.  We have nations that are entirely too eager to enter and change, without guiding the people in self-discovery and full internalization of why and how change is needed.  Lastly, there is a body attempting to standardize the global needs and govern these attempts to help.  The true necessity and responsible role of global outreach is not to change communities.  Instead, the focus must be to assess the needs of each individual community.  This does not mean, “give them potable water”.  This means to teach the people of a community to study proper irrigation, plumbing, and sewage systems that will eventually lead to sustainability, increased job opportunities, educational opportunities, and improved overall health from clean water.  Thus, reducing the issues within poverty will improve the larger-scale issues of policy, government, and economy.  I feel that we are currently too focused on saving those in need and as a global community, we are ignoring the fact that each community needs to slowly develop at its own pace to result in the development of sustainability.  We should assist in this process, without interfering in it.  This will truly be what helps our global community reduce poverty and its effects to improve economics, and vice versa.