I agree with Thabile Masuku, who says of child poverty and labour, “give them education, not work.” Masuku says:
The challenge seems to be bigger for Swaziland, a country ravaged by poverty and unemployment – the major reasons children are on the streets selling some wares late into the evening, instead of studying.
The situation is so bad that so many children, as young as seven-years-old, are heading families. What else can a child do but go out to work in order to be able to take care of his or her siblings, in the process sacrificing school. I doubt if it ever crosses a child’s mind that without education, labour would be in vain.
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The biggest disappointment was perhaps the fact that people do not report child labour issues to the police, even though such are very common in Swaziland.
As observed by Dr. Christensen, it would seem we live in a world which possesses wealth on a scale undreamed of by the pharaohs and potentates of old.
“In the golden age of ancient Greece it took seven slaves to support one Athenian citizen. Today, for the first time in human history, our planet yields enough resources to meet the basic needs of every human being. Still, the vast majority of the earth’s population lives in poverty,” said the good doctor.
Now, the question is why this is so why does 20 percent of the world’s population have to subsist on less than one dollar a day? Statistics show that 800 million people go to bed hungry every night and between 30 000 and 60 0000 die each day from hunger alone.
I agree with Thabile Masuku and Dr. Christensen. Often I point to education as the main ingredient in the solution to hunger and poverty. What unfortunate irony that the poor children, who need the wonderful gift of education the most, have to give up education to work for low pay. Even worse, like trying to ice skate up a hill, these children’s attempts to sustain themselves through child-labor can never alleviate the plague of hunger and poverty. What a terrible Catch 22! Only education can provide these children and their communities the resources to change the poor conditions in which they suffer, but those same poor conditions force them to give up education for child-labor.
As communities, both locally and globally, we can solve this problem by investing in education. Not only do we need to invest in our own education, both about this issue and just in general, but more importantly we need to invest in the education of the children, namely the poor and hungry children who would otherwise never receive opportunity. By offering education, we can help these children help themselves. If we include food, clothes, and shelter with tuition costs, then these children can go to school and still sustain themselves. As a net value, if we invest in their education with student loans, then we can essentially solve this problem for free.
What do you think?
I agree that education is one of, if not, the most important piece of solving the problem of hunger and poverty. I also feel though that action and learning how to take action is the next step. Children not only need an education on how to better provide for themselves, but also and education on how they can help to take action in this situation.
The true irony of the whole situation is that there is enough food in the world so that not one person has to go hungry. The problem is that distrabution of these goods are politically driven. If more people were aware of how they could change that in there community or on a global level, this may help to elevate the problem that much faster.