Poverty vs. Amusement

Have you ever thought, while you were sitting in front of the television watching the Olympics or Eurovision or any sort of popular TV-programs, eating a bunch of unhealthy things, what this little starving and poor child in Africa was doing at that precise moment? People in the Western world are lucky; they can spend a fortune on useless things. While others, in different settings just have to hold their breaths. Fight for their survival, fight for the meal they were supposed to get. I want to fight; I want to fight for their cause. I want to bring awareness to all the clueless souls living as nothing is, or will ever be wrong.


Every forth year, people gather to watch athletes compete at probably the biggest event ever created; the Olympic Games. Every forth year the hosting country is ready to create the biggest happening ever seen. Something bigger, better, more beautiful than ever, that will outdo all the other Olympics seen yet. The citizens are willing to change the totality of the city, from head to toe, just for the Olympics sake; new undergrounds, new stadium, new roads, new everything. With that way of thinking, money goes along, a lot of money. Did you know that the Olympic Games budget for London in 2012 is as high as almost 10 billion pounds? You wouldn’t be able to even count half of all that money in your own lifetime. Do you know of something else you never would be able to count? The number of people living in absolute poverty in this world at this exact moment. All over the internet, pages are showing terrifying high numbers just increasing each day. There are about 1.7 billion human beings living in absolute poverty. Among them, 923 million people are strongly undernourished and starving. The starvation leads often to death. As you read this text, the number of deaths has grown and will continue to grow even more. Sadly, the people most affected are the innocent children. Undernourishment is the leading cause of death in developing countries. There are approximately 22 000 children dying of hunger every day. Witch makes 15 children every minute, and one every forth second. In 2000, the United Nations set up the Millennium Development Goal. Those Goals where created to help poor and needy people in the world. The first goal, of all the eight most important goals, was the intention of eradicate hunger and extreme poverty. According to the UN, this problem is a vast and the most spread issue on earth and it would be the biggest concern to both, the Western and the Eastern world. Today, in a world where problems just piles, there is no time and resources for such expensive distraction as the Olympics or any other costing amusement. With all the money invested in the Olympic Games just for one season (10 000 000 000 £), we could actually afford to give every starving people on the planet 10 £. It would mean two weeks of work to the poorest.

How can as rich countries as England or Norway for that matter, leave this problem without any solution? How can they care to get more unnecessary many fireworks to the gathering, without thinking that this money could help creating a future to one of the kids in Africa? Is it really that difficult to care? Personally, I think it is insane how we, in the Western world, could or would spend as much money on such distraction. It would be okay if the Olympic Games were not that expensive. I think it is unnecessary to build new roads to get access to the new stadium. Why couldn’t the buses or the tubes pass more frequently to the already built stadium? Is it that necessary to give sky high salary to the athletes? Money that will never be spent. Why can’t some of the money be sent to the good cause, to the starving people? These are just some of the questions that I, with all the access to the net and other information, didn’t find the answers that I wanted or will never find either. Probably not in my lifetime, and especially not in theirs either. (Theirs being all the 1.7 billion people living in absolute poverty as I write)


I’ve got to admit that I am a big fan of the Olympics. In comparison to all the famine and poverty in the world, I could easily pass out on this event after seeing how much it really costs. Unfortunately, almost nothing benefiting comes out to fulfill the first goal in the Millennium Goals set by the UN. People are still starving and still living in absolute misery. Therefore it is time to react now, it is not the moment to get distracted, it is primordial, both for the Eastern and the Western world to make a change, now. By the way, did you actually know it took you around 60 children dying for you to read this text?