World Hunger and Poverty

I want to make sure that you all know that this blog has an RSS feed. Here is the URL of this blog’s RSS feed:

http://millionsofmouths.com/blog/nfblog/wp-rss2.php

If you do not know what an RSS feed is, let me tell you. It is a form of internet syndication. Users can subscribe to RSS feeds, and then they can see the newest posts from these feeds through an RSS feed reader. This allows them to conveniently keep up with new posts from many different websites.

I personally use Google Reader to read RSS subscriptions. For those of you new to RSS, I found a simple service that will allow you to read an RSS feed as an email newsletter. Simply go to Rssfwd.com and enter the RSS URL into the form. (That is the URL from above.) Then, you can put in your email address and choose how often to receive updates.

Please subscribe to this blog’s RSS feed. Thank you!

New studies show that child abuse can lead to poverty. Victims of child abuse have an increased chance of ending up in poverty than children from non-abusive homes.

“You can come from a family that has money but if they don’t treat you well, you can end up in a lot of trouble,” said Senior Research Fellow Dr. John Frederick.

Of course, many factors in people’s lives put them at more risk of poverty. Many aspects of our society unfairly hold some people down, which in turn can make them poor. Especially when denied equal opportunity at childhood, the average person cannot catch up.

We can try to fight some of the preventable factors that hold a child back, such as being abused or being born poor. However, we can only end poverty by finding a way to provide everyone with sufficient opportunity to succeed, instead of just leaving that opportunity to those people lucky enough to not face too many obstacles such as child abuse, illness, or a poor childhood.

In my opinion, we can best provide that universal opportunity by providing universal education, which we can do in the form of student loans. The education must include food, clothes, shelter and healthcare. A person cannot get a sufficient education while hungry, homeless or sick. The education must also include job-training and job-placement services. With a high-quality education including all those services, people can get a job (or start their own business) that will pay them enough to support themselves and pay off their student loans.

Remember, to truly escape poverty, a person needs to earn enough to not only pay for their current needs, but also to pay for their student loans (which include all the costs-of-living while getting educated), to pay for their retirement, and to pay for unemployment insurance. Some nations and states may have socialized some of those needs, which means a person may not need to pay for them in such places. For example, unemployment insurance is at least partially covered by most governments.

A recent AFP article reports that Nobel Peace Prize laureate Muhammad Yunus criticized the World Bank for its failure to cut poverty.

On Sunday, Yunus told Bank President Robert Zoellick that the bank’s failure to modernize anti-poverty lending programs has made its work ineffective. Additionally, Yunus says that the bank needs to include input from the people that need help.

I have posted blogs about Muhammad Yunus for over a year, and before he won the Nobel Peace Prize. The man strikes me as a genius, and impresses me over and over again. His successful method for fighting poverty consists of giving micro-loans to poor people to help them start their own businesses. Muhammad Yunus has successfully empowered poor people and helped them get back on their own two feet.

Personally, I doubt the World Bank really wants to fight poverty. It seems to me like a corrupt organization that, if anything, works to help the rich and not the poor. The poor and oppressed of the world just do not have enough resources to lobby and gain the favor of powerful organizations like the World Bank.