As the gap between rich and poor grows in this world, I can see articles like this becoming more common.
Girl’s suicide linked to Philippines poverty
MANILA (AFP) - A girl aged 11 hanged herself in a Philippines shanty after leaving a letter and diary depicting a life in rampant poverty, newspapers here reported Thursday.
The case put a human face to poverty blighting the nation, where nearly 14 percent of the 87 million population live on less than a dollar a day even as the government says the economy is on a roll.
“I suspect she did it because of our situation,” the girl’s father, Isabelo Amper, was quoted in the Philippine Daily Inquirer as saying.
In a letter found under her pillow after Mariannet Amper’s death, she said she only wished for a bicycle, bag, new shoes and jobs for her parents so she could finish primary school.
“I just want to finish studying and to buy a bicycle,” she wrote in the letter, which was addressed to a television programme that grants wishes to viewers.
An accompanying diary revealed the girl, whose family live in a shanty that has no running water or electricity, felt she had been absent from school for more than a month.
Full Story - Yahoo! Asia
This leads me to think about what actually is poverty? The items that we give value is unsettling. The world’s wealthiest societies give value to simple items. Items with names of people who are only famous because of the value a large corporation has told them they are worth something.
We see group popping up all over that are fighting poverty, the largest being One.org. Yet look at who are the spokes people for this group, all of which are celebrities that have millions because of the value we as a society has given to them. (Note:I support what One.org is trying to do).
The other thing that stands out in my mind about the fight against poverty is that is all seems to focus on feeding the poor. They focus on food and yes there are too many people starving in this world, but there is something fundamentally wrong with this. The reason that people can get food is not because of money they don’t have, it is because of the perceived cost involved with harvesting and producing the food so that it can be packaged and shipped with a nice big Dole Logo or a Hormel Stamp on it.
Come on, think about when you got to the grocery store. The nice air conditioned trap that all of us go to several times a week. Look at the shelves, listen to the people shopping. You can hear kids say this all the time, “I won’t eat that, it isn’t Kraft”. Remember cereal in a bag is gross, we all know that, right?
I think society needs to take as step out of the advertising programmed lives that we live and try and find what the problems really are. Is the problem that poor children have to be criminals? Is the problem that poor areas make drugs are too easy to get? Or is the problem that our society has lot touch with the idea that life is worth more that the opinions of their peers?
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