Poverty and Wealth

Poverty
  What is it?

There is a family that was recently relocated from a shack on stilts
  to a new apartment with a bathroom and a kitchen.

But, they don't know how to use the toilet...
  and they don't have the income to pay for the new bills,
  water, electricity, mortgage...

And, they haven't figured out how to use the toilet...

Poverty

There is a woman that loads her bicycle with vegetables
  every day
  and rides the 3 kilometers to the city center
  where she lays her produce neatly on the ground
  and waits for passersby to purchase it.

At dusk, she once again boards her bicycle
  and rides the 3 kilometers home
  to tend the fields, feed the children,
  sweep the dirt floors,
  and prepare for tomorrow's journey.

Poverty

There is a woman who lost everything the day
  she learned of her breast cancer.
  Nightmares later, she found herself in a
  resettlement neighborhood,
  living as one of the 'poorest of the poor'.

Poverty

But that family who didn't know how to use a toilet

  shared their one room apartment with
  a homeless family.

And the woman on the bicycle shared her bicycle
  on weekends with a neighbor who had no other way
  to get to the city.

Wealth

And the woman who lost everything to cancer
  organized the 'poorest of the poor' to create a fund
  for a single mother who was starving.

She taught the neighborhood children to
  care for the cleanliness of the streets.

She inspired the neighbors to save what little cash they have
  and to invest in community development projects
  or to share with those less fortunate than themselves.

The little girl that learned to keep the streets clean
  taught a grown woman about environmental protection.

And the 'poorest of the poor' children saved their pennies
  to share with a child who had nothing...

Wealth

My God, we in the states have gotten so lost!

While children starve,
  we, daily, throw away food.

While people struggle to get their produce to town,
  we buy a second and a third car.

While people live on the streets or in shacks on stilts,
  we covet more square footage and a view.

Poverty

While children and elderly are swept away
  in flooding,
  we ignore how our actions create climate change.

Poverty

While families die in wars to extract yet more oil
  from an oil-depleted earth,
  we drive two blocks to the store.

This, my friends, is our poverty.

It is poverty of spirit.
  It creates wreckage in peoples' lives -
  people who we've never even seen!
  It kills and starves and maims and destroys.
  We only need to look and we will see.

We hold so much of the answer, you know.
  We, who by fortune of birth, find ourselves living
  in the richest country in the world.

Because of our relative wealth,
  we can make important changes to breath life
  into this planet and show compassion for all.

Creating wealth

The little girl from the 'poorest of the poor'
  could find a way
  to help her neighbor.

Creating Wealth

The woman who lost everything to breast cancer
  keeps finding ways to help.

Creating Wealth

We can join this movement of people who reach beyond themselves
  into the community of humankind.

We can contribute.
  We must contribute.
  And in breathing hope into life for others,
  we regain our own wealth of spirit
  and escape, ourselves, from poverty.

Create Wealth