Poverty. Poverty has many definitions depending on the type of different people in this society. It can range anywhere from not being able to pay bills to not being able to feed a family and not having a place to live. Although, according to the definition found on dictionary. com, it articulates that poverty means the state or condition of having little or no money, goods, or means of support; condition of being poor.
Two motivated authors, Muhammad Yunus and Lucy Lameck, wrote two different short stories in the book “Reading the World: Ideas that Matter” that have inspired me to write this essay on the poverty and social class in third world countries. The first story is “Africans Are Not Poor” by Lucy Lameck. The reason I chose this particular story is because she goes into detail about how these people live and struggle to survive. Lameck chose to write about the Tanzanians because as a young adult she was an activist in the Tanganyika African National Union (TANU).
Her mom was also TANU activist and they were close to the party’s leader. Lameck studied economics and sociology at Oxford and then international relations at WMU. Lameck wrote “Africans Are Not Poor’ in order to persuade a particular audience about the assumptions of poverty and provide a less stigmatizing definition. The second story I chose to use as a source is “The Stool Makers of Jobra Village” by Muhammad Yunus. This individual story was quite moving to me; to read that just one person who cared so much could make a difference is truly remarkable.
The Essay on Poverty What Makes People Poor
The rich, the middle class, and the poor; are described by the way we live and the amount of money one has. There are many different ways of describing what poverty is, whether it is by how you live, how much money you have, or in statistical terms. Poverty isnt always a bad thing it is just another way of living, another way of life. There are different kinds of poverty that you can measure. ...
Muhammad Yunus was born in British India in 1940. Yunus received his Ph. D. in economics from Vanderbilt University. After theorizing that small loans given directly to the poor could play a huge role in eliminating poverty, he wrote “The Stool Maker of Jobra Village” on behalf of his personal experience with the banking system and how against they are with helping the poor out of poverty. In this world, us Americans have dealt with several economic issues over the past decades.
However, none of them have been quite as severe as how some people live their daily lives in other countries. Most of us don’t realize how well off we are compared to people in third world countries. We complain when there isn’t any food in our fridges that we don’t like when some people don’t even have a place to store cold food of the little food they do have. Americans in today’s society should be grateful for what they have and in order for them to truly understand how privileged they are, they would have to look at life from a point of view of someone who is underprivileged.
Americans fail to realize how fortunate we truly are by living in this country and having the essentials we need to get by in life, unlike many other countries that are struggling to survive on a daily basis; if we as individuals were more educated on what is happening in our world, we would be able to make a difference in peoples’ lives, such as the villagers in Jobra and Tanzania. This generation of people have no idea what struggling to survive even looks like; with this era being consumed by technology one would think we would know how to fix the poverty issues around the world, but sadly we haven’t found a solution yet.
In the short story “The Stool Makers of Jobra Village” by Muhammad Yunus he expresses in detail the journey he went on to Jobra in order to see if he could make a difference in these villagers lives. When he arrived he met a women who made stools for a living and was only making two cents a day. Almost anywhere else in the world two cents would be an absolutely absurd amount to be living off of but for the Jobra villagers it is their reality. Many of the villagers had to borrow from money lenders when selling their goods in order to get the supplies they needed.
The Term Paper on Pulled Hundreds of Millions of People Out of Poverty
In 2009, when the world economy shrank, sub-Saharan Africa continued to expand. The IMFprojects that the region will grow at 5% or more in 2010 and 2011. good decade. Rapid growth in China and India has pulled hundreds of millions of people out of poverty, sustained expansion has spread from Asia, where rapid catch-up has a long history, to South America, where halting growth and economic ...
Yunus discovered that the villagers of Jobra only needed 23 cents each for them to not have to go through the money lenders anymore (Yunus, 371).
Poverty this out of hand is completely awful and there needs to be more people like Yunus who are willing to help out and make a difference. Society sees the less unfortunate as lazy and low life’s, people who have given up on trying to make something for themselves; however, this is definitely not the case for the villagers of Jobra. Yunus witnessed how hard working and sincere these people were.
They were far from lazy and they were trying their hardest to keep their families from starving. Yunus fought with the banks in order to receive loans for the struggling villagers, and he was finally successful because he cared about the lives of total strangers, something most of us are incapable of doing. Muhammad Yunus expressed his opinion when he wrote, “The poor know this credit is their only opportunity to break out of poverty” (Yunus, 379).
Education is one of the key points needed when helping out a cause in order to make a difference.
Adults are always saying that children are the future; well we won’t be having a beneficial future if the children of this generation aren’t properly educated on important topics such as poverty in other countries. Lameck makes an excellent point in her short story, “Africans Are Not Poor” when she wrote, “In our present circumstances, the government is directing it’s efforts towards attaining expertise in different fields, so that we may disentangle ourselves from this problematic situation, and use our new knowledge to explore the minerals, exploit our resources and expand our industries” (Lameck, 353).
Lameck understands what needs to be done for people to have a better perspective on poverty. Her argument throughout her story is even though Africa may have limited materials and resources, they are constantly growing as a country and with time will be prosperous instead of poor. More people need to understand this because some of us assume that people who are poor in resources are also poor in caring about their families and themselves, but according to both Yunus and Lameck that is false. Like the new developing country of Tanzania, not all counties are just needing money, but resources and supplies as well.
The Essay on People In Poverty Lower Class
There is a very wide range of income for individuals and families in California. In our society today, we have 3 types of classifications of people. The wealthiest of people are called the upper class, then there is a middle class which is the average income, and lastly there is the lower class. The lower class is considered to be in poverty. Poverty is a condition in which a person or family does ...
If they are given the chance to receive the products they need, they will be on their way to becoming an expanding country in no time. Lameck makes a valid point when she stated, “Our country today has value, it has riches, it has culture, it has people…” (Lameck, 353).
Third world countries will always be less unfortunate than the country we live in, but they have stronger values and a better sense of culture than we ever will experience. Poverty will always be a growing issue whether we make the effort to help or not, but by at least trying to create a change, we could easily see a difference in several lives of the people who suffer daily.
Both Lameck and Yunus are the type of people who were willing to put others before themselves in order to make a positive transformation in a society. However, both are highly educated and ensured plenty of research before acting on the alterations they were going to make on the countries they visited. Education, knowledge and will power are all involved in the steps to creating a better future where poverty will be a lesser known word in this society.
Just the same as how everyone has their own definition of poverty, they also have their own ideas on how to improve this world they live in and how they want to make their mark, whether it be positive or negative. America, like the countries of Tanzania and Jobra is still new and constantly growing every day. Even though we may be better off as a whole nation, we should still be able to empathize with third world countries and try to give them as much aid as possible for hope of one day in the near future, these poor and struggling countries will no longer have to witness poverty. Bibliography
