Growing Awareness

finding her tune, making a difference, march 2007

Today, my daughter will be delivering a speech to her class; an assignment given every year. The thought of getting up in front of a group of people used to fill her with shaky dread until the day when she silently and conciously chose to come out of her shyness shell when she began middle school in Grade 6. She told her father and I after the fact that she didn't want to be looked upon as shy anymore. Since then, Martha has come full circle, from me having to carry her into Kindergarten with her head tucked into my neck, to joining a leadership group at school where she finds herself in front of the student body as the M.C. of "Albert St. School Idol." Amazing. So today, she left for school pumped.......determined to deliver a speech worthy of being selected to represent her class in front of the rest of the student body.

Over the course of the past couple of months, she and I have had many conversations about extreme poverty. Her awareness began last year after watching the Bono commercials on "Make Poverty History," and grew when the brochure from World Vision arrived just before Christmas. The brochure was practically set up in a way that described how a donation could be used to help individuals and families in developing countries. A 30 dollar donation, for example would buy two hens and a rooster for a family. It piqued her interest, and prompted many questions. It also motivated her to convince two of her friends to arrange an impromptu bake sale at the school to raise funds. In the course of a couple of days last December, Martha and her friends baked at night and sold the goods at lunchtime. They made enough to buy a few hens and roosters. Her awareness grew............and her speech topic was found.

Since then, she has gathered more and more information and asked many questions. She bought most of her Christmas presents through a fair trade sale sponsored by a local community group, and has learned more about the issues surrounding extreme poverty as well as the organizations and individuals who are trying to make a difference. Her desire to look beyond herself, to look beyond her neighbourhood is growing.

Here is Martha's speech......

Helen Keller once said: “I am one, but I still am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something. I will not refuse to do the something I CAN do."

Today, I am ONE person stepping forward to do something.

Half of the world, nearly 3 billion people live on less than 3 dollars a day. A person dies every second due to poverty. Unfortunately children, the most vulnerable, die most often…..one child every 3 seconds. According to Unicef, 30,000 children die due to their living conditions every single day. That means, over 200,000 die every week, and over 10 million children under the age of five every year. They all have names like us. They are all connected to families like us. Sadly, they live and die in the poorest countries in our global community.

One.....two....three......we just lost another child.

Extreme Poverty is living in a condition with little or no money, food or any way of getting out of the situation. Poverty is making the streets your home, looking for food in dumpsters, and drinking water from a sewage pipe. Poverty in our developing countries is a growing monster that is fed by the rest of the world, where food and shelter is taken for granted. As Canada grows and prospers, another country like Malawi in Africa gets poorer and poorer.

For a child living in extreme poverty, it means they may not have clean running water, they may not have a bed, and they may not have parents to care for them. Their days are spent searching for food, begging for money, and trying to stay safe………..they have so many obstacles blocking survival. They may get bitten by a disease carrying mosquito and contract malaria and die. They may catch a disease like tuberculosis or measles, which we don’t even worry about anymore in our country. We are immunized against them. These kids aren’t. These diseases kill them. If they get pneumonia, they don’t have the antibiotics to fight off the bacteria. If they get diarrhea due to contaminated water, they die. They can’t afford the medication, and they don’t even have access to it!

One.....two.....three......we just lost another child. I wonder what her name was?

You may be thinking.....Why should we care? We don’t know these people. We don’t know what their names are. They may not speak the same language as us. They don’t live in the same country. They may not believe in the same God as we do or even like the same sports or activities that we like. You may be thinking this issue to too big for us to make a difference.

These things don’t matter. What is important is that THEY matter, just like we do. We are all human beings. They need our help and we can give it. We are one community living on this planet and we are responsible for looking out for those in need. We all matter.

There are so many ways you can help these children who have done nothing to deserve the life that they have been given. Here is one idea. There are 30 kids in our class. If we each gave up 5 dollars of our lunch money for a week we would have 150 dollars. Through an organization called World Vision, we could buy 10 fruit trees for a family. They could sell the fruit to make money and could also eat the food for nutrition and vitamins. For 75 dollars you can send a child to a safe place where they will be looked after from disasters and crisis that were going on the there communities. For 100 dollars we could get Immunization for diseases such as Diphtheria, whooping cough, measles, polio, tetanus and tuberculosis. We could do all of that and more just by giving up 5 dollars.

One......two......Wait a second! Lets SAVE this one.

My daughter inspires me. Daily.