World Hunger and Poverty Blog

I have added a page to this blog with a list of local volunteer groups. The list will contain the names and contact information of the organizers of local volunteer groups. Since I just made it, it currently only lists me and my group.

If you already have a volunteer group, please send me the information for it so that I can add it to the list. Otherwise, please consider organizing a local volunteer group. If you have any questions about organizing a local volunteer group, I made a thread to discuss it: Organizing A Local Volunteer Group

Each one of us only lives in one local community. The success of the war on poverty depends on local organizers. Please consider organizing a local volunteer group. You could probably do it easier than you think. And us organizers can all use the internet to share information, tips, and ideas.

I simply want to say that I hope all of you have had a great holiday season so far whether you celebrate Christmas or not. Also, I hope you have many more happy holidays in the future.

We can relax for now, but after this holiday season I want to expand this blog’s purpose to organize more direct, hands-on activism. I want to both create a very active local group in my local community and I want to use this blog to help organize a network with other local organizers. However, I will talk about that more in the beginning of the New Year.

Speaking of the New Year, if you want to read something, check out the blog post I made last New Year’s Day: We Need a New Era

Thanks!

I just read an interesting blog post by Philip Brewer about the fatness of poor people. In the post, Brewer points out the seeming irony of poor people’s tendency for fatness and obesity. He cites some of the common explanations given for that phenomenon, but he ultimately blames it on hunger. He explains that poor people overeat because the human body still feels hungry until it gets the nutrition it needs, and poor people tend to eat unhealthily because unhealthy food tends to cost less than healthier food.

Brewer offers the solution of eating healthy on a budget by cooking “real food” at home. To paraphrase, he says that people need to stop buying things that have a list of ingredients and instead buy actual ingredients.

Unfortunately, many poor people probably do not have the time or knowledge to cook healthy food. Instead they will succumb to the likes of the dollar menu at McDonald’s. Also, poor children have to rely on their parents who may not cook for them.

I recommend that anti-poverty organizations take steps to help poor people eat healthier. They can even do this simply by distributing helpful information to poor people. Also, I think as a society we can use the schools to ensure that children have access to healthy food. I would like to see schools offer more healthy choices to children. I would also like to see the schools create more breakfast programs. In fact, the schools could also open their cafeterias after-school for an early dinner.

I just read a great article by Michael Chu about the relationship of profit and poverty. In the article, he specifies four criteria that any poverty-intervention-method must fulfill.

Firstly, he mentions scale. This means that a method must work on a global scale. We obviously cannot use methods that can only work on small scales to end poverty. I think, when small, local groups try to think up new ways and systems for fighting poverty, they need to consider the scalability of the method. In other words, they need to ask themselves if the method would work as effectively on larger scales.

Secondly, Chu mentions the need for permanence in any attempts at poverty relief. As I often say on this blog, we need to not only provide temporary relief for the symptoms of poverty, but we also need to help poor people permanently escape poverty, and we need to counter the causes of poverty.

Thirdly, Chu says that poverty relief methods need continuous efficacy, meaning that they must get better and better as time goes on. While that would obviously help, I do not think of it as necessary, since a fully effective method needs no more improvement.

Finally, Chu points out the need for continuous efficiency in poverty relief methods. This means that the method will continually become cheaper and cheaper in terms of money and/or labor. Chu also seems to point out that a profitable method will lead to more and more organizations joining the industry to compete for the profit. That competition and variety will lead to more efficiency.

In my mind, efficiency works hand-in-hand with scalability. As the anti-poverty method becomes cheaper, we can get more done with the same amount of money and labor. The more profitable the method becomes, the more money we can reinvest in the method. Thus, by making an efficient and profitable method of relieving poverty, we can continue to increase the scale of the method.

I think many anti-poverty organizations make the mistake of not utilizing profitable ways to relieve poverty. As a result, their funding limits how much they can help. However, by using a profitable method, they would not run out of funds, and they would actually gain more funding both from their profits and from profit-seeking investors.

Loans have greatly worked to help people escape and avoid poverty. Microfinance loans have helped millions of poor people in the third-world escape poverty. In developed nations, I personally think student loans can work the best because they enable people to obtain quality education and job training, which those people can then use to get a quality job that pays them enough to pay off the student loans while also supporting themselves.

You can post your comments about this blog post and discuss the general topic in this thread at the World Hunger and Poverty Forums.