Reflection-Week 12

It was unseasonably hot in DC. While I like to start my reflection for the week generally discussing the topic of the week, I must comment on the unseasonable and moody weather we experienced. After a week of 50s, it climbed back up to 65. Needless to say I was disappointed in the changes because it was too cold for shorts in the morning but too hot for jeans in the afternoon, and I come from the moodiest climate in the country, the South.
Our discussion this week on poverty left me a bit confused. While I applaud the efforts of the many organizations around the world that are attempting to alleviate the problem of poverty, I think that aid organizations can only do so much. One of the most important shifts, I feel, that needs to occur among the aid organizations is an increased focus on helping people become self-sustaining.
The Oxfam group is one of the organizations that seem to do this the best. They believe in “capacity building” or helping people become self-sufficient so that they could maintain and improve their individual standard of living over the course of time instead of relying on handouts from wealthier countries. One of the largest problems, I feel, is the handouts that wealthy, developed countries give to poorer countries. This only fuels the negative cycle that is the world of poverty today. In an attempt to alleviate this poverty, shouldn’t people be more concerned about rehabilitating the poverty-stricken.
The work of Oxfam Australia has greatly improved the quality of life in Mozambique, among other places. Oxfam’s efforts in this region have helped provide the infrastructure to improve the legal rights of women. In 2003, after more than 10 years of Oxfam support, the Mozambican parliament passed legislature increasing the legal marriage age to 18 (up from 14) and granting women equal property rights after a year of marriage. The significance of this is that women are now able to function more equally in society, increasing the potential output of the country.
We discussed the importance of this at the World Bank lab as well, specifically the lack of clean water around the world. The presenter talked a lot about the Millennium Development Goals and how many of them had been reached but one of the goals that is still far from being completed was the eradication of simple disease like diarrhea. While it seems like a large amount to one person, if a village of 10,000 all pitched in a single US dollar (while it may seem to be a significant amount of money to them, if they pitch in any amount they are more inclined to be intrinsically attached to it and continue to use it) a well could be built locally. This convenience allows young children to stop walking a 3 hour round trip to the local well or river (that may be contaminated) to fetch water. The extra time allowed here means that children have more time to attend school and learn to be more productive members of society.
While nothing is perfect when it comes to fixing the world, I feel there is a lot that still needs to be done. Many people are spread too thin when it comes to their own goals in “helping the world”, but as people manage to diversify their stock portfolios I think it’s important that there be a diversification of the way people look at saving the world, a large majority of the world’s problems could be massively reduced and people could become more self-sufficient at the same time. The self-sufficiency would then allow these people to focus on new problems, and that’s all we’re going to see in the future. So it really becomes an evolutionary cycle and all we need to do is evolve.