Book Review: You're History!
Jun. 27th, 2009 01:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
livingdebThis book is supposed to tell me that I can make a real difference in reducing poverty. It starts off talking about the UN Millennium Project which I first learned about in the movie "The Girl in the Cafe" (which has a very fun-to-watch protagonist). The point is that we actually know how to reduce poverty; we just have to make it a priority.
Here are their suggestions:
1. Write to your political representatives.
2. Organize letter-writing campaigns.
3. Write letters to local newspapers.
4. Sponsor an awareness event (at which everyone writes letters).
5. Adopt a Quick Win.
6. Join existing networks such as One Campaign in the US, Make Poverty History in Canada and Fair Share Campaign (now also Make Poverty History) in Australia.
Bleh. Politics. The book chastises me for not realizing that some politicians will do good, especially if they get encouragement. I'm not so good with the letter writing stuff, but I may join or at least monitor the One Campaign.
The book is a compilation of essays all informing us of various kinds of economic and other inequities and philosophies on how to fix them. Here's a quote that struck me: "[O]nly humans take from nature far more than we need to survive, and in that process many millions of our fellow human beings are left without the basic means of survival, generating a non-sustainable social, economic and political world. At the same time, this irrational behaviour endangers our own living conditions because it threatens the ecological base on which we all depend." I don't normally tie poverty and ecology together in my head.
One article that really threw me explained how my favorite environmental charities may be making things worse. "[M]uch of what we perceive as 'virgin rainforest' may well have actually undergone significant modification by indigenous people, or indeed even be the product of their cultures." And when some charities buy up this land, they also kick out these peoples who have been caring so well for the land. Now I'll have to do more research on my favorites. The author of that article works with the UK's Rainforest Foundation. I'm going to check out the US chapter of that organization as well.
Another article that really threw me was the one explaining that religious organizations are some of the very best organizations at delivering help to the poor. Specific strengths are "their responsiveness to and respect of the poor, their trustworthiness, their honesty and fairness, and their attitudes of caring, loving, and listening." The fairness surprised me. And I'd always assumed they'd be moralistic and divisive because of my own experience with religions and in taking history classes. And in fact they "scored less well on the extent to which they empowered poor people to participate in decision-making and help themselves, and on their accountability to local communities, and they were often seen as a source of conflict rather than unity." So ha! Except that a World Bank study of twenty kinds of organizations ranked religious ones as second only to community organizations in which the poor themselves participated in their ability to deliver help to the poor. Scoring worse were "kin and family, local leaders, non-governmental organizations, shops and moneylenders, private enterprise and traders, banks, politicians, police, health services, schools, [and] various government agencies." So maybe I shouldn't dismiss religious organizations out of hand even though I really, really want to.
Here are their suggestions:
1. Write to your political representatives.
2. Organize letter-writing campaigns.
3. Write letters to local newspapers.
4. Sponsor an awareness event (at which everyone writes letters).
5. Adopt a Quick Win.
6. Join existing networks such as One Campaign in the US, Make Poverty History in Canada and Fair Share Campaign (now also Make Poverty History) in Australia.
Bleh. Politics. The book chastises me for not realizing that some politicians will do good, especially if they get encouragement. I'm not so good with the letter writing stuff, but I may join or at least monitor the One Campaign.
The book is a compilation of essays all informing us of various kinds of economic and other inequities and philosophies on how to fix them. Here's a quote that struck me: "[O]nly humans take from nature far more than we need to survive, and in that process many millions of our fellow human beings are left without the basic means of survival, generating a non-sustainable social, economic and political world. At the same time, this irrational behaviour endangers our own living conditions because it threatens the ecological base on which we all depend." I don't normally tie poverty and ecology together in my head.
One article that really threw me explained how my favorite environmental charities may be making things worse. "[M]uch of what we perceive as 'virgin rainforest' may well have actually undergone significant modification by indigenous people, or indeed even be the product of their cultures." And when some charities buy up this land, they also kick out these peoples who have been caring so well for the land. Now I'll have to do more research on my favorites. The author of that article works with the UK's Rainforest Foundation. I'm going to check out the US chapter of that organization as well.
Another article that really threw me was the one explaining that religious organizations are some of the very best organizations at delivering help to the poor. Specific strengths are "their responsiveness to and respect of the poor, their trustworthiness, their honesty and fairness, and their attitudes of caring, loving, and listening." The fairness surprised me. And I'd always assumed they'd be moralistic and divisive because of my own experience with religions and in taking history classes. And in fact they "scored less well on the extent to which they empowered poor people to participate in decision-making and help themselves, and on their accountability to local communities, and they were often seen as a source of conflict rather than unity." So ha! Except that a World Bank study of twenty kinds of organizations ranked religious ones as second only to community organizations in which the poor themselves participated in their ability to deliver help to the poor. Scoring worse were "kin and family, local leaders, non-governmental organizations, shops and moneylenders, private enterprise and traders, banks, politicians, police, health services, schools, [and] various government agencies." So maybe I shouldn't dismiss religious organizations out of hand even though I really, really want to.