Monday, 27 June 2005

Poverty


We will all have seen the original TV report that started Live Aid. Since then there have been many further reports that show just what being abjectly poor can mean. I suppose my own experience of this was the Star of the Sea orphanage in Korea. The durability of kids there was amazing. The place relied on charity - in my case, rations and basic comforts cadged, scrounged, bartered and sometimes just plain stolen. Maybe it is because of this that the sight of kids starving is just about the worst for me. These kids in the picture above are living on rubbish thrown out by others who have a much better life style just a few miles away. It does not require the sort of suffering seen country-wide in Dafur or the tsunami for poverty to exist - it can live cheek by jowl almost anywhere. What is really needed is not such money as filters down through the corruption filters but just for someone to care and decide that this is not acceptable.

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