.... poverty

"Poverty doesn't exist, sir, or at least it does not exist unto itself. Poverty is simply the absence of justice. It is like evil, a word that man has created to describe the absence of God. God did not create poverty. Poverty is the result of what happens when man does not have any love left in his heart for fellow human beings. It is like the cold that comes when there is no heat, or the darkness that comes when there is no light"  (Francis W. Mulwa 2008 Demystifying Participatory Community Development: 10)

When I first read this quote-LOVED IT! (I wish I heard more of it).  Instead I am surrounded by a sea of :
 
   "Well, we just don't have the time to do this or that...."

                                                                                            "Well, what about America?"         

              
                "Well, it's hard to get the funding....."                           

 The LDS Church loves saying "L-O-V-E is really spelled T-I-M-E" when talking about family... why should it be any different for our WORLD FAMILY?? Quite frankly, it shouldn't.  In Paul Collier's book I quote below, he said that the bottom billion people who are stuck in poverty-- not to be confused with the four billion developing and growing out of poverty-- lack attention because it's not "glamorous" or honestly, because the solutions seem "too hard".  Well...... how are we supposed to tell them that?  Oh, I got it: "So.... people of Chad, Laos, Burma, DRC, and many others..... We just don't think you can make it so..... good luck?" I don't know about you but somehow that doesn't quite sit right with me.

"Development is about giving hope to ordinary people that their children will live in a society that has caught up with the rest of the world. Take that hope away and the smart people will use their energies not to develop their society but to escape from it."   (Paul Collier 2006. The Bottom Billion: 12)

So let us take action!  Let us not take the easy road, isn't that what people encourage you to do? (after all, that Robert Frost poem is SO over-quoted and yet... are we taking his advice?). As I study more about development, as I study more about politics, as I spend more time in other countries, it becomes more and more clear to me that knowledge is the door leading people out  of poverty.  And if knowledge is the door, anthropology is the key. Because, quite frankly, studying development hasn't gotten us anywhere closer to helping the bottom billion out of poverty- we need a change.  That change will come from actually studying the real issues-- conflicts, ethnic identity versus national identity, poverty and its affects on people, distribution of power, and even something as simple as daily life, relationships to place, to people, to languages, etc.... 

So that is why I am applying for graduate schools right now.  My hope is to be able to study poverty and its causes..... NOT study development as a discipline but rather, study poverty as a discipline. (I will be going into Anthropology with an emphasis in Development.... just so you know the technical terms).  And what will I do with this knowledge?  Hopefully help policy makers make better policies......

"The US Department of Defense is not going to take advice from that country's Agency for International Development. The British Department of Trade and Industry is not going to listen to the Department for International Development.  To make development policy coherent will require what is termed a 'whole of government' approach. To get this degree of coordination requires heads of government to focus on the problem."  (Paul Collier 2006. The Bottom Billion: 13)

So, I should be able to get them to listen to me right?

..... but ultimately, I hope to help lift EVERYONE out of that poverty that is like the cold with no heat, the darkness without light.  

  

Anyone who wants to join me, feel free.  In fact, I encourage it.