Fighting Poverty and Spreading Awareness

A while back I mentioned that there are 2.7 billion people living on less than 2 dollars a day. That is almost unbelievable to most Americans and really puts the relative poverty, that we face in America, in perspective compared to the absolute poverty that nearly half the world faces. Since first reading about this and other health issues, I have become increasingly interested in the global fight to end poverty and preventable health issues that so many face.

After reading many articles and a few books on this subject I have found a few easy things that everyone can do as a normal American consumer to help the billions in poverty. Kiva.org, (Product)Red, and the ONE campaign are all things that can potentially make a huge difference.

Kiva.org is a group that allows anyone with a credit card to make personal loans from their own credit to others in poverty stricken countries all over the world. It is based on an idea called micro credit, which is the idea of giving small loans to entrepreneurs in developing countries that do not have access to collateral in order to establish their own business and raise themselves out of poverty. This is not charity, but simply a way of providing financing options to those who can not go to traditional banks. To learn more about the idea of micro credit you can read the book Banker To The Poor, by Muhammad Yunus who recently won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006.

(Product)Red is a new kind of business platform that essentially provides a certain percentage of profits from consumer goods to the Global Fund to fight AIDS, TB, and malaria. Those happen to be the three most fatal diseases in the world, take millions of lives each year, and are easily preventable by prescription drugs that are not available to poor people. Many of these drugs cost under a dollar for each dose and for the people making under a dollar a day this is still too high. So far, Motorola, American Express, GAP, Armani, Converse, and Apple have all made Red products that you can buy, with some of them contributing up to 50 percent of the product purchased to the Global Fund. It has already raised over 35 million dollars since its inception in March of 2006.

The ONE campaign is mostly about awareness and advocacy for the fight against poverty. As of now it has 2.5 million members. You can get a white ONE wristband to wear and spread the awareness, as well as, signing the declaration on the website saying that you are committed to hold your government representatives responsible for legislation to promote the elimination of poverty from our world. Poverty is definitely a social construction and it can be made into a thing of the past if the world is willing to believe that everyone has a right to basic necessities such as food, water, shelter, and their health from infectious diseases.