Who Knew?...

Poverty Awareness Week
"Making Poverty History"
-Scott M. Lacy, PhD; Exec. Director, African Sky

I went to the lecture given by Dr. Lacy with Chelsee and it was really interesting. He started off the night by asking everyone in the audience, "why are you here?" We pondered and the answer he gave that I thought was true was that to some level we all care about the matter of poverty and want to become more aware of it. Fighting poverty is the biggest social movement in the world.

Millennium Development Goals were developed to create an end to (extreme) world poverty within our lifetime. Some dollar values were shown on the screen as to what would be spent by 2015...
-halving poverty and hunger $20 billion
-universal primary education $ 9 billion
-gender equality in education $ 3 billion
-halving HIV/AIDS $10 billion
=$42 billion total
This really isn't that much to spend based on the next value he gave us. Can you believe that $1.3 trillion is spent on the global military per year? It just boggles my mind! $42 billion in the next few years isn't hardly anything in comparison and just think about the potential impact it would have... An interesting point was made that I'd really never thought about before as well. Third world countries are really the majority of the world. Because of the fortune we're blessed to have here, it makes it that much more important to share it with others. We need to be careful though because even the best of intentions can lead to misfortune.

Often development can lead to underdevelopment. What works for us here in our society may not necessarily work for others. It can lead to pockets of development, but some are being left behind still. An example he gave was introducing cotton as a cash crop in southern Africa. It worked for the first few years but then the soil became depleted. Other crops that had previously been grown hadn't been grown to allow for the cotton but then couldn't grow with the poor soil. Productivity was lost and the nation was actually made more dependent rather than independent.

Dr.Lacy spent several years in the Peace Corps. and doing other work over in Mali. He learned three important lessons that he shared with us. We need to...
1)Endure cycles of debt
2)Follow the momentum
3)Learn to take
The first has to do with no matter what you do for others, you will always get something out of it making you in debt to them, but you need to learn to deal with it. It was from this that he established the nonprofit organization African Sky. The second is as it sounds. Take something you have and build on it, and if an opportunity presents itself make the most of it. In the case of the last one it's for the self esteem of the host, to learn humility yourself, and to gain perspective and establish priorities.

To wrap up the presentation Dr.Lacy left us with a couple thoughts to ponder. To make poverty history, it can't be all about us. What we consume others aren't able to. It's just another way to think about how fortunate we are here in the U.S.