Picking the right cause

Hi, I am a person high up in the UNICEF organization and recently, I have been given a task. My task is to pick one global problem and delegate five million dollars to it. I have chosen a few causes and I will present them in this text, ending with my final decision on what cause to pick. My selected causes are; poverty in India, global warming and hunger in Africa.

I will start by debating poverty in India and why I think they should have the money. India has more people living under the poverty limit than any other country in the world. Out of the total one billion people that live in India, 350 – 400 millions live below the limitation, and over 40 percent of the population is illiterate, meaning they have never learned to write or read. Out of these, most are women, tribal people or people from the lower casts. I think that this is really serious and should be done something with. The five millions could contribute with building schools for poor people, which again could give them an education that lasts for the rest of their lives and can grant them jobs and a descent economy. I do take into consideration that five millions is really little money and will help less than one percent of the Indian population to a better life, but everything counts, right?

The reason for why I have chosen school out of all the things one can do to reduce poverty is that in my opinion schools are the most efficient mean when trying to reduce poverty. Firstly, the education you have gotten will follow you for the rest of your life, unless you focus really hard on forgetting it. Therefore it is a good way to reduce poverty not only today, but for the generations to come as well. “If you give a man a fish, he will not be hungry today. If you teach a man how to fish, he will never be hungry". I have heard this quote and what you read is probably a respelling of it that I have made up in my mind but the concept is the same and I think it is a really good example to underline my previous statement about how schools last longer than instant help. My second reason for choosing schools is that it gives the children a safe environment where they can spend the day, instead of being dragged into all kinds of bad environments. Examples of bad environments can be child soldiers or the drug business.

My second cause of choice is global warming. I know it is very different from my first cause, but I think that this one is as important as the first, if not even more important. This is because global warming is an issue concerning the entire world and it will not only have consequences for this generation, it is also going to affect future generations. Many of you might think that this is a bit outside the box, as it is not directly directed towards children, but fact is this is directed to the children's future, which is just as important as their today's situation. This link will show you a graph displaying the northern globe's temperature during the last thousand years and the tendency is brutal and quite easy to spot. The heat levels are escalating way above usual standards and if this tendency continues over the next two or three hundred years I think the globe is going to look a lot different. The problem with giving the money to this cause is deciding on which organization or movement I want to entrust my money with. As it is a global problem, countless organizations must be fighting to reduce it. My best thought is to give it to some sort of research facility, where they experiment on how to reduce global warming and what must be done to stop this negative development.

My third and final cause of choice is “the hunger project”, focusing on hunger in Africa. Food is and has always been one of the most basic needs and when hunger strikes, it often strikes the weakest ones, children. In sub-Saharan Africa, 41 percent of the population lives under the poverty limit, 1 dollar a day, which means that they live so-called from hand to mouth. This means that they can barely make enough money for food, putting them in a tricky situation if they ever should need money for anything else. As a result of this, 32 percent of the population is under-nourished, meaning they get either too little food or the wrong food (Which one is most likely?). Here, five million dollars can do a lot. Either if you spend it all on food sent directly down to Africa, a lot of people will be fed for some time, or you can invest it “in the future”. This can be done by building food producing facilities like farms. This is sort of the same thinking as in the first cause and the quote from that paragraph can just as easily be used in this one. Either way, the five million dollars can hopefully give a handful of people a better life.

So, to my conclusion and picking a cause. I must say it is tough deciding between these but I have chosen the first one, fighting poverty in India. I have done this because I believe that this is where the money can do the most good. Building schools is relatively inexpensive if one consider the outcome. The children will both be able to get an education, and they will also have something to do during the day and have a future to look forward to. I do not say that the two other causes are any less important, but this is the one that made the most sense to me!

Håvard of the UNICEF

Sources:

http://www.indiaonestop.com/povertyindia.htm

http://www.grinningplanet.com/2004/01-27/global-warming-1000-v3-copyright1.gif

http://www.thp.org/where_we_work/africa