2As a child, I lived in Calcutta, India for three years. I know first hand of the thousands of families living - or should I say starving - on the overpopulated streets. People were dying outside my front door! The lady, who cleaned my families' house, lived with her 5 daughters in a 2m-squared slum. It had newspaper covering the walls, for warmth and protection. They had one bed, and took turns sleeping in it - the rest slept on the concrete floor. They shared a toilet and a pump with 50 other families. In India, many people work 12-hour days and 7-day weeks, but barely earn enough to survive. Many children are forced into bonded labour in exchange for a loan. Here is a quote from a young Indian boy:
"My sister is ten years old. Every morning at seven she goes to the bonded labour man, and every night at nine she comes home. He treats her badly; he hits her if he thinks she is working slowly or if she talks to the other children, he yells at her, he comes looking for her if she is sick and cannot go to work. I feel this is very difficult for her. "I don't care about school or playing. I don't care about any of that. All I want is to bring my sister home from the bonded labour man. For 600 rupees I can bring her home that is our only chance to get her back. We don't have 600 rupees . . . we will never have 600 rupees."
600 rupees is about 30 NZ dollars. This girl works 14 hours a day, 365 days of the year - the 10 hours she has left will be needed to sleep - absolutely no time for talking or playing. Typically, this bonded labour will continue until she is married, and a younger sibling takes over.
You have the power to make a real difference in your world! There are 125 million children in the world today who have hopes and dreams just like you, but don't have the opportunity to go to school and better their life. They live in oppressing poverty -waking up to an empty stomach every single day, working long hours, no education, and no health care - think how much we have compared to them! When we have a headache we can take Panadol, when we are sick we can go to a doctor, and we go to a dentist if we have a tooth problem - for so many people, the closest they will ever get to healthcare, is to have their teeth pulled out by a roadside dentist -no hygiene, no painkillers. Although it is completely curable, Leprosy is still a big problem in India - its considered normal to walk past deformed near-dead bodies on the way to work every day. Mother Theresa's sisters can't reach all the millions of people in India with the limited resources they receive . they need our help!
Listen to this quote form a slum resident: "Sometimes I think, if I die I won't have to see my children I even think of killing myself. So often I see them crying, hungry, and there I am without a cent to buy them some bread. I think 'My God, I can't face it! I'll end my life. I don't want to look anymore!"
The $3 we spend at the tuckshop everyday can feed 30 starving Indian children! The $40 we spend on our 3rd pair of jeans can free a child from bonded labour. Imagine what the hundreds of dollars that we spend on CD's, bikes, TV's can do? In New Zealand we are taught that more is better - we need to earn more money - for a bigger TV, a boat, extra clothes - many people feel like they can't really be happy until they have all that they want. Most people think that if they have money, they should spend it. But knowing of the billions of people in poverty around the world, and us living in luxury, I would be incredibly selfish to keep all my money to myself. I have heard many people in NZ claim that they were poor - but how can they be? They have never seen, and don't understand, the gruelling, killing poverty that so many people are living in around the world! Many people think that world vision and similar organizations will solve poverty - they think that there can't really be people starving and living on the streets, or, if there is, that there is nothing they can really do about it. But this is one of the biggest and most destructive lies I've heard! The world spends more annually on cosmetics, then it does on relieving world poverty. Millions of people are in these seemingly unendurable situations - many people commit suicide, or die of sickness or starvation as a result of poverty, and if us wealthy people ignore it, we will be killing them! It's wrong for some people to be so rich, and others to be so poor. The average New Zealander has 72 times as much as the average Indian. We in NZ have so much power, money, and opportunities that most people in the world don't have - we need to use what we have, to help our neighbours!