Thoughts on Poverty

I just returned to the S-LC after spending a semester studying in Honduras. As a part of my studies there, I took a class on Poverty and Development, which was by far my most interesting class. Our professors, Kurt and Jo Ann, raised a lot of tough questions that really forced us to think about our lifestyles as Americans and the way our country affects the rest of the world. I’m still thinking through a lot of the things I learned in that class, and will probably be sharing more of those with you all in the near future. But first I’d like to share with you an excerpt from an e-mail that I sent to my mentor after my first class with Kurt. Here goes…

“For our first class, Kurt gave us some statistics on poverty, which can often times seem so scientific and hard to really picture, but one that struck me is that

50% of the population of the world lives on less than $2 a day,
and 22% lives on less than $1 a day.
On average, Americans have $120 a day.

A friend and I discussed how it's so easy to feel poor living in the U.S. as you compare yourself to everyone around you, but we're so rich compared to the rest of the world. Of course I knew that, but I think those numbers really surprised me. Especially since $1 a day is really the minimum that people can live on healthily, so that 22% who has less is malnourished, doesn't have clean water, and has no access to health care. It seems like we should just be able to spread out the wealth that we have, and according to Kurt, if we wanted everyone in the world to have food tomorrow, we could do it, we just don't want to. I guess I'm not completely convinced that it's that easy, but maybe it is. Isn't that exactly what people try to do with child sponsorship programs and the like? I'll give a little bit of my money to this other person, and thus spread out the wealth. Granted it's not much money, but it's the same basic idea. But I don't think any child sponsorship program will solve the problem of poverty in the world. Obviously a solution would have to be on a really big scale, thus the difference between charity and justice. I, personally, could feed a child in a third world country fairly easily, but I personally can't solve the problem of poverty in the world. But the whole country of the United States together with other wealthy countries could.

I guess I'm struggling with the whole "overwhelmingness" of the situation of our world. It's so broken that a solution seems impossible. And poverty, of course, isn't the only problem we're facing. The governments of the world are selfish, if not corrupt, so sometimes solutions seem far out of reach. We visited the American Embassy here last week and heard from a few of the employees. They told us about how their job is to pursue what's best for the U.S., even if it isn't in the best interest of the Hondurans. Well on the one hand, that makes sense. Of course their job is to get what's best for our country and our people. But on the other hand, that seems so selfish. We're never going to solve problems of poverty and hunger if we're not willing to sacrifice anything. We happened to be born in a very wealthy nation which gave us a lot of opportunities. We don't work any harder for our money than the people here in Honduras do for theirs, yet we have more of it. If we, as a nation, aren't willing to do anything that gives other countries more opportunities to be successful (without increasing our success as well), the gap between rich and poor will only continue to grow.”

Most of the things I realized in this e-mail are not revolutionary. They weren’t completely new to me and probably aren’t to you either. But they did strike me in a new way as I was living in Honduras, and they still warrant some thought from all of us.