Poverty. Can you define this seven letter word? Many individuals can define it, and most would say that poverty is the state of being extremely poor. Yet, how many of these individuals would know the facts behind global poverty and would know what it took to prevent or fight against such a global epidemic? Many individuals are so focused on their own personal lives that they do not notice what lies beyond their own every day life. Yet, global poverty effects everyone and reducing this epidemic could benefit everyone as well.

A dollar and twenty five cents. This is the amount of money in which 1.3 billion individuals live off of every day and possibly even less than this amount, states The World Bank. This is a staggering amount of people living off of less than a dollar a day! Yet as The Global Citizen organization has stated “ In the last 30 years, the proportion of the world’s population that live below this line has halved-from 52% in 1980, to 25% today. That’s a decline from 1.9 billion people down to 1.3 billion people”. There is a notable difference seen today with this decline in global poverty, yet if individuals do not keep putting their efforts towards this cause, the percentage could once again rise to staggering levels.

So how can an individual make a difference, one may question. There are three key responsibilities to help fight against global poverty. The first is through charitable donations. A single individual can make a large difference on numerous lives through charitable donations, states Columbia University. By donating funds towards global poverty, The Millennium Promise explains, an individual can help numerous others obtain food, clean water and power, a healthy living environment, technology and the seeds for innovation, education, gender equality, the proper health care for women and their children, and finally can help plant the seeds for businesses and entrepreneurship to create future stability. These may seem easy to obtain, but without help from numerous donors, it would not be nearly impossible to accomplish these goals.

The second key responsibility to help prevent global poverty is to follow through on the government’s promise to help aid millions who are suffering from global poverty. By following through on their existing commitments to help aid these struggling individuals, it proves that there are individuals who care about fighting to eliminate global poverty, states The Borgen Project. There are many ways in which to contact your government leaders such as writing to your political leaders, organizing letter writing campaigns, writing to your local newspapers and magazines, by calling your political representatives stating your wish in that they support the fight against global poverty, and finally by joining existing networks such as The Borgen Project, The Millennium Campaign, or The Global Citizens Organization.

Finally the third key responsibility is education. By educating yourself on the subject of Global Poverty, you can also educate others. Educating the public may seen like a difficult task, yet it has proven to be a highly successful global poverty prevention tactic. By educating the public, you can help spread the word of prevention and can help lead the fight against global poverty. By educating others, you can help lead to numerous donations against the spread of global poverty, and can also help spread the word of prevention even further. When you educate an individual on this topic, another individual can continue to spread the word, and it leads to the creation of a chain reaction. By doing so, you can lead numerous individuals to make donations, contact their leaders, and to continue the chain of educating others on this crucial subject.

Overall, by making donations to global poverty prevention organizations, contacting your political leaders, and by educating others, you are helping to end poverty. By taking on these three key responsibilities, an individual has started their own personal fight against global poverty and has joined in the movement with numerous others to end this global epidemic.

– Grace Beal

Sources: World Bank, Global Citizen, Columbia University, The Borgen Project
Photo: The Guardian