If I say Poverty, what does come up to your mind?
If you are a smart person – at least that’s what I thought – you will think about people who live under $2 per day. Therefore you tend to link poverty to economic poverty. You will probably start thinking about Africa, about that article you read where they were saying that overall we are reducing poverty around the world, etc.
Well, as you are smart, that is happening to be true, but it is a partial truth of a wider subject.
The lesson I learnt last Wednesday (8/11/2017 at Kings Place in London) after having attended a TEDx about “Talking Poverty: Challenging Inequality” has been:
Poverty means missing something or having something in a quantity which is not sufficient to satisfy basic human needs. Therefore, it can be economic, of education, social and of the soul. But it can also be on many other things.
My key learnings from this evening are:
- If you want to improve the world, you have to understand what is the kind of poverty which is affecting people around you, yourself, and develop meaningful relationships to win them.
- We are a connected world and we must be responsible for every person who lives in it: the effect of the sperm lottery must be reduced if not eliminated.
- People can smile and have a positive impact on others even after having witnessed the homicide of their own husband. We should reconsider the “bad things” in our lives and smile more.
