Why? Motivation

Why am I doing this? The blog? The year in Bangladesh?

The blog

Apart from just keeping people up to date with my year, I (rather optimistically and uncertainly) hope this blog can, in some form, make people more aware of poverty and development and ultimately allow them to be more positively involved in it. Whilst admitting that not all people care about poverty and development, I believe most people do, in some way, want to try to help reduce the misery suffered by the millions around the world in poverty.

However, currently the options available to people do not seem to engage with them beyond a nod of agreement and a shrug ‘I’d like to do more, but seems the whole poverty situation is beyond my power to influence so I guess I just don’t see the point in going out of my way’. Unless this lack of genuine options for engagement with the problem of poverty can be tackled, that how they can contribute makes sense to them, ultimately, I feel the fight against poverty will be more one of coping with the consequences rather than the causes and long-term success. How my obscure little blog can help? Just by getting out to those who read it the realities of people’s lives in poor countries, how people’s activities in the UK affect people in Bangladesh and maybe ways that people in the UK could develop their own lifestyle and contribute to reducing poverty. How this may occur? I don’t know. But if just 5 people start to question where they buy their clothes and food, what ways they travel and how they engage in politics, this might cause 5 of their friends and family to also ask questions, hm? People in the UK can make a difference to poverty, they just need to be offered options how to do this (besides wearing wristbands, going to pop concerts, marching around carrying random slogans on a placard). Definitely a work in progress, but join me.

The year in Bangladesh

1 – The whole development, attempt to reduce poverty thing?          2 – Go all the way to Bangladesh for a year?

1. Without sounding like a leftist, hippy marxist, from the limited things I know, it seems the world is a rather unfair place. In countries like the US, UK, Australia etc. etc. we have a level of material comfort and wealth that is so far above that of other parts of the world it can become a joke.

The fact 30,000 children die a day in low income countries from diseases that are prevented in industrialised, that the gross domestic product of the poorest 48 nations is less than the wealth of the world’s three richest people combined, nearly a billion people entered the 21st century unable to read a book or sign their names and less than one per cent of what the world spent every year on weapons was needed to put every child into school by the year 2000 and yet it didn’t happen. In industrialised countries we call ourselves developed, advanced, progressive, but we live in a world where this happens, somewhere along the line our priorities and morality got lost. The desire is not to be seen as a good person, not to do what is seen as right, not to offer a hand out/charity, not to do something I that makes me feel good, but to live in solidarity with those people who have not been so lucky in life, to be able to look them in the eye and say that I’m living my life in such a way and I’m doing the best I can to try and make sure that together, your situation can be improved. How I’ll do that, not sure, see 2.

2. I’ve had a bit of insight into development and poverty – an MA International Development, 4 months in North Ghana as a evaluation officer for the water board and 8 months at Village AiD (www.villageaid.org) as a documentation and communication assistant. However, I feel I still do not understand the reality of people’s lives who live in poverty, who never had the chance to go to school, who cannot afford medical care, who are ignored or abused by the police, who can barely earn enough money to buy food, who cannot afford a decent safe, clean, livable house, who cannot find the time and resources to attend training courses – they are excluded from society, ignored, they cannot control their own futures. If I am to contribute, however small, to improving these people’s lives, I want/need to know how they see the world, what their hopes, opportunities, realities, needs, desires are, and not just assume that I can talk for them and sort out the problems from a comfy office in the UK. This year in Bangladesh will hopefully contribute to this process of learning.