In August of this year, we hosted Mandaza, a buntu shaman from Zimbabwe at our nature retreat. On the first evening as guests sat around the table, all were acutely aware of the challenges Mandaza and his family face on a daily basis back home. At the dinner table, a deep appreciation for the bounty we enjoy on a daily basis was highlighted by Mandaza’s remark to a guest enjoying so simple a pleasure as a breakfast banana.
“In my country, that would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, if you could even find one.”
Indeed, a significant portion of the world’s population wakes up in the morning unsure of where their next meal will come from. In many ways we are insulated from a deep understanding of what poverty really means. Perhaps Blog Action Day will raise awareness of our global connectedness and restore our own impoverished spirit of compassion for the global community. This post, addresses two topics that have recently been front and centre in my life: Relief Work and Climate Change. I hope it inspires one small action to promote awareness or action of the issue of poverty within each reader.
Relief Work
Earlier this year, we hosted Doctors without Borders – MÉDECINS SANS FRONTIÈRES administration and human resources staff for a team building retreat at Northern Edge Algonquin. These people put themselves into the world’s hotspots for poverty, offering assistance to refugees in war torn countries or areas ravaged by famine, earthquakes, hurricane relief and other disasters. MSF Offers medical assistance under the harshest of conditions. I am currently reading An Imperfect Offering, Humanitarian Action in the 21st Century by James Orbinski, M.D. . This book truly opened my eyes to what in some ways could be described as hell-on-earth conditions. In addition to providing medical attention for what are essentially preventable diseases, MSF and other aid agencies provide care for desperate people who walk hundreds of miles for that care. They pay-off armed bandits who steal food and demand protection money from aid agencies in exchange for protection. Poverty and despair are revealed for what they are, a crisis of the human spirit for feeling compassion for others.
Death, dying, starvation and grief. It is a world we are insulated from. It is the blinders we wear in the West that allow us to indulge in our indulgencies, feeding our wants, while outside of our self-consciousness, others toil to meet basic human needs.
What can one person do?
- support organizations like MSF, CARE, and other national NGO’s that go into poverty-stricken areas and offer aid.
- support people like ultramarathoner Ray Zahab who raise awareness for poverty and cross cultural awareness as well as raise funds for bug nets to prevent insect-borne disease in Africa.
- learn about the challenges faced by other cultures by reading books and watching informative documentaries, then share your learning with others.
Climate Change
Are you an accidental contributer to the pain and suffering of others? Climate Change is perhaps the most pervasive abuse that first world countries impose on third world people.
- Hundreds of millions of coastal dwelling third world people in just one city (Bangladesh, India) are threatened by being displaced by rising oceans.
- hundreds-of-thousands of people are displaced by drought across Africa.
- Mosquito-born diseases are migrating to many areas that have never had these disease pathogens.
- Global food costs are skyrocketing because we have deemed it wise to put corn into our gas tanks in the form of ethanol.
By paying little attention to our own contributions to climate change, we have little regret for the hardships we bring upon other people who endure poverty at our expense. Each bit of carbon dioxide we put into the atmosphere contributes to the problem.
What Can One Person Do?
- Educate yourself about the impact of climate change and lifestyle behaviours that contribute to it. Inform yourself and inform those around you, enabling people in your community to make better choices in daily life. Choices that don’t cause unnecessary suffering.
- Share this pdf – highlighting actions one person can take to lower their contributions to climate change.
Please consider taking one small action today, to raise awareness or help reduce global poverty.
Comments on this blog post are welcome.
http://blogactionday.org/js/e9e94ecf10f432d9f7f7953fd692112e10d81532
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