Introduction
When the goal of a charity is to help people living in poverty, it is worth examining exactly how help is being provided. Is the help being offered simply a quick fix, or is it providing a more sustainable form of help? Nobody would wish for poverty to persist, so help that promotes self-sustenance is favourable. But in dire situations, a quick fix can be vitally important. This article will go over what poverty is, why it is so difficult to solve and examples of the kind of help charities provide to people living in poverty.
What is Poverty?
A person experiences poverty when they cannot afford to meet their basic needs, and its severity can vary. To live in poverty could mean that a person’s income is too low for them to meet the living standards of their society, but their basic survival needs are met. This is relative poverty and it tends to be experienced by people living in developed societies. The other extreme is absolute poverty. This is where a person is unable to afford what they need to survive, such as food, clothes and shelter.
Some of the consequences of this are that people living in poverty are more likely to have:
- Nutritional deficiencies: Being unable to afford food means that there may be periods where people may have to go without food or survive on very little. Less nutritious food also tends to cost less, so relying on these foods can still lead to deficiencies. This results in a higher prevalence of disease in these populations.
- Lower than average life expectancy: Infant mortality is higher and people’s health is poorer. This leads to a greater chance of death.
- Lower academic achievement: Children living in poverty are less likely to attend school or be able to afford educational resources, leading to lower academic achievement.
- Greater stress and mental health issues: Poor living conditions and insecurity surrounding finances, food and shelter mean that those living in poverty are consistently under stress, leading to higher levels of anxiety, depression and stress-related illnesses.
Poor health and lack of education mean that poverty is difficult to break out of and can persist over generations.
The Difficulty in Breaking the Cycle of Poverty
The problems caused by poverty also contribute to its continuation. If families are unable to invest in education for their children, these children will be unlikely to find good work opportunities. In places such as rural Uganda, where The Anonymous Project is actively working, people must subsist off the land and whatever low wages they can earn. Quite often, this is not enough to live a healthy life, and they end up malnourished and in poor health. Poor health leads to illness and an inability to work to farm food or earn sufficient wages, lowering prospects for a better future.
In addition to this, there are environmental factors that can make life difficult. Floods and landslides can destroy farmland, wiping out sources of income and sustenance overnight. Poor infrastructure in some areas means that people may have difficulty travelling to reach water and healthcare.
As you can imagine, the root cause of poverty is not a problem that can be solved overnight. It most often involves far more factors than the ones mentioned above. Charities such as The Anonymous Project, which help people living in poverty, can offer two main types of aid: sustainable and non-sustainable.
What Does Non-Sustainable Help do?
Help that solves immediate problems but does not address the root cause is non-sustainable. This type of help is most important for those in urgent need of help. But when delivered as the only source of aid, it can be considered dependency-inducing.
Gaza gives us an example of where this type of help is vitally important. Decades of conflict and the more recent escalation in attacks have left the majority of people living in poverty. The Anonymous Project is currently collecting donations to help provide the people of Gaza with much-needed food, shelter and healthcare. Although this cannot stop the war, it can help the victims get through these difficult times and reassure them that they are not alone.
Food parcels are another form of non-sustainable help that The Anonymous Project offers. This provides families with immediate relief from hunger and prevents malnutrition. We can deliver this kind of help cheaply, but by investing a little more in the future of these communities, we can provide more sustainable ways to meet their food needs.
The Long-Term Impact of Sustainable Projects
The Anonymous Project has several projects that we hope will help people to escape the cycle of poverty:
- Sponsor a child: By providing a child with care and education, we improve their future prospects. The children featured on The Anonymous Project’s website are all orphans, so their options for support are even more limited. With sponsorship, these children will receive a level of education that will enable them to earn higher wages and a comfortable standard of living.
- Building wells: The inconvenience and difficulty in the task of fetching water can rob people of valuable time in the day. People may have to trek for hours just to bring water back for their community each day. Children involved in this miss out on schooling, and adults cannot help with work. Water sources may dry up during certain times of the year or may become contaminated. Having a nearby source of water can drastically improve the quality of life of the people it provides for, giving them a secure source of clean water.
- Promoting sustainable farming: Although donating food packages is very helpful to people living in poverty, an even greater gift is the tools and seeds to grow their own food. With the help of our donors, The Anonymous Project can deliver sustainability packages to communities. This enables them to reliably grow food for themselves.
- Preserving mosques: The assault on Gaza has resulted in the destruction of mosques. These serve as important communal areas, shelters for the homeless, places of education and, of course, a religious centre. By preserving these structures, people living in poverty can continue to rely on them as a source of help.
There are many different ways to help people living in poverty. Sustainable projects may require greater initial investment but can provide people and communities with long-lasting benefits that extend across generations.
Conclusion
Solving the problem of poverty is quite often about breaking a cycle. There are plenty of factors that are out of people’s control, which make escaping poverty much more difficult, such as war, corruption and environmental disaster. In situations such as these, non-sustainable help is still valuable and can save lives. But when it comes to creating lasting changes, The Anonymous Project wants to focus on providing people with the tools they need to make those changes, whether it is helping to raise future generations so that they are better equipped to sustain themselves, building a water well for a community or starting a farm. Helping people to escape poverty is a task that takes time and care. Here at The Anonymous Project, we are doing everything we can to create those lasting changes that help these people create a better future for themselves.