Since September, in my class of humanities, we have been learning about poverty. We had a “Driving question” which was a question that we would ask ourselves everytime we would think about the topic of poverty. Our driving question was “How can we work together to achieve a more equal world for everyone?”
I think about that a lot now because after learning about poverty for 3 and a half months I now know that the world has many bad things going on and I for one would love to make a change.
At the end of the term, we had to write about the driving question and our final thoughts about it. This is what I thought… (with some new edits)
Poverty. Not my favourite word.
I think that people need to treat poverty like it’s a puzzle piece that we just can’t find but once we all get together and look around we can find it. What I mean by that is we can solve poverty, as long as some people chip in. Every single day people walk past others living on the streets and yet, we don’t do much about it. If society weren’t so busy with their time stealing jobs, maybe we could help these people. Spread it like a rumour. On the news, the radio, social apps, start a GoFundMe and raise money. Maybe even if it’s just for one person but it could also be for the whole 7.7 billion people on this earth that could possibly be living in poverty. If we all work together.
It’s not like we haven’t been trying to save poverty. I mean in Tanzania, girls and women would have to walk every single day to a waterhole and provide water for their family members. They would walk up to 10 hours a day fetching water. Crazy right? Thankfully people have stepped in and made a change. These people have put fresh water taps in the local villages so that the females don’t have to spend their days walking and carrying a big fat bucket over their heads. People like this have made life-changing differences for people around them.
I think that we can make more of a difference. Even if it takes 100 years to get at least 1/2 of the people in the world to help it would be amazing to just see people’s faces light up when they realize that they can live in a shelter purposely built for those in need or who don’t have money to buy basic needs or clean healthy water or even get vaccinated if they need to. I know from experience that if you put your mind to something you can achieve it.
-Cate Pontefract
cate pontefract 