Poverty is far more complex than a number. Poverty has a face and a name.
11 Oct, 2020
When we think about poverty, we usually think about economics. In reality, poverty has a face. It's a girl forced to marry because her family canât support her. A mum who canât buy medicine to save her babyâs life. A boy sent to work on the rubbish heap, rather than the classroom.
The World Bank's poverty definition says, "A person is considered poor if his or her income level fall below some minimum level necessary to meet basic needs.â It sets this minimum level, or international poverty line, as living on less than $1.90 a day.
While both definitions are valuable, they view poverty through a single lens of income and consumption. In reality, poverty is far more complex and involves other social, cultural and political aspects.
For certain members of society, mainly women and children, they may already lack political, social or economic rights meaning poverty places a double burden on them, making them even more vulnerable. Globally, 1 in 5 girls are married before age 18, ending their chances of an education.
If a personâs income is âbelow the poverty lineâ in their country, it means they donât have enough money to meet their minimum needs for nutrition, clothing and shelter. Poverty lines are different in each country, higher in richer countries and lower in poorer countries.
Each country has a different poverty line. To make easier comparisons, the World Bank calculated a global poverty line of $1.90 per day in 2011, using the poverty lines of the worldâs 15 poorest countries in 2005 and 2015.
The Joseph Rowntree Foundation defines the poverty line in the UK as households earning less than 60% of the median income, which was ÂŁ425 a week after housing costs in 2016-2017 (ÂŁ22,100 a year).
There have been great successes in the fight against poverty in the past 20 years:
But there's still a long way to go:
The Sustainable Development Goals were adopted by world leaders in September 2015 at an historic UN summit. The SDGs build on the success of the Millennium Development Goals, and aim to go further in ending poverty while protecting the planet for the future.
Each goal must be achieved by 2030.
Could you imagine feeding your family of seven on ÂŁ4.50 a day? What would you do on the days there was no money for food? For Lance and his family, this is their daily reality of living below the poverty line.
Lanceâs father, a fisherman, paddles to sea in a tiny canoe very early every morning to fish for 10 hours, but he must fish close to the shore since his boat is not motorised. âItâs too risky for him to go further out,â Lanceâs mum, Joan, says. âHe doesnât catch many big fish but I do my best to sell them in the afternoon so we have money to buy food and send our older children to school.â
The most money Lanceâs hard-working parents can make is 300 Philippine Pesos per day (ÂŁ4.50), but sometimes they earn nothing. âOn such days, we just eat the fish before it goes rotten as we donât have electricity or a cooler to store it,â says Joan.
When families are caught in crippling poverty like this, growing children miss out on important nutrients, leading to malnutrition and stunted growth.
For years, Lance was too weak to lift himself up and walk. Lance was eight years old at the time, but he was the size of a four-year-old.
This changed for Lance when he was registered at a Compassion project and found a child sponsor. The project staff helped Lance to get immediate medical attention where he was diagnosed with acute malnutrition.
After a consultation with specialists, Lance was given a meal and vitamin schedule and the project staff went to extraordinary lengths to ensure the young boy remained on his meal schedule.
Collins and his grandmother, Nachi, live in the Solai District in northwest Kenya. Together, theyâve endured unimaginable grief and hardship because of poverty. Despite being in her sixties Nachi still does intense manual labour to provide for Collins. But back pain, swollen hands and feet donât support her long enough to earn a decent wage.
âWe face a lot of hardship because we donât always have enough to eat. But then I remembered Compassion projects help children.â
âBefore I took Collins to the project, all I felt was despair. I was sure we would both die of starvation. But Because of Compassion I can see he will have a brighter future. If I was to meet his sponsor one day, I wouldnât have the words to express [how I feel]. But if she looked into my heart, the sponsor would see only joy,â says Nachi.
The great news is extreme poverty has declined by more than half, from 1.9 billion people in 1990 to 836 million in 2015. Thatâs almost half in 25 years meaning eradicating extreme poverty is within our reach. When we take the attitude that poverty will always exist weâre less likely to take action.
But by taking a stand against poverty together we can make a difference.
Poverty can often feel overwhelming. When we hear that nearly 400 million children still live in extreme poverty we can wonder what difference we can really make.
That's why we're offering you the chance to sponsor a child - a highly strategic way of ending poverty, one child at a time. You can meets the real-life needs of a child living in poverty by tackling the root causes of poverty that hold them back.
Compassion connects one child born into the vulnerability of poverty with one sponsor, like you. You can give a child the opportunities they deserve by sending them to school, providing them with nutritious meals and protecting their health with regular medical check-ups.
Sources: UNICEF, Ending Extreme Poverty, UNICEF, The State of The World's Children, Millennium Development Goals Report
WORDS : Emily Laramy
PHOTOS : Compassion International