World hunger and homelessness are arguably the two biggest issues that society faces today. With all the food, money, housing and resources at our disposal, and it being the year 2016, it is hard to believe how any individual could be left without a roof over their head or food in their stomach. The overarching question to think about though is how do we end it? How do we provide every single living individual with food and shelter?
Organisations such as World Hunger provide an in-depth analysis of the factors that cause people to go hungry, and these people tend to fall into the same category as people without homes. Reasons such as ‘poverty’ and ‘climate change’ are a couple of the many reasons they’ve stated. Well, I think that’s a load of rubbish. I must continue to emphasise that we are in the year TWO-THOUSAND-SIXTEEN, where most countries have billions of dollars in expenditure each and every year from the taxes that we pay. Money for education, for entertainment, for hospitals and even for food, but NOT for those stuck in poverty. Now, i’m not saying that government expenditure on education, hospitals and entertainment is bad at all, but when you have that money at your disposal, surely you have a ‘little more’ money to help out those in need.
Every year on new years day, when all TV news outlets talk about how magnificent the fireworks were across the globe, and how this country spent this much on fireworks, and how that country spent that much on fireworks, it just hits me….. And I think to myself that minutes of entertainment costs billions of dollars world-wide, and that same money spent only on ONE YEARS worth of fireworks could feed the hungry and house the homeless for a lifetime.
Wow, those bright lights sure are pretty, they take my breath away. But think about every child that takes their last breath every time those lights are thrown into the air. The minutes of enjoyment and entertainment for us may last a few minutes, but every 3.6 seconds of that fireworks masterpiece you watch, a child somewhere in some country has just died of hunger.
It’s just hard to believe that this is happening in 2016, a time where there is no world wars, no lack of knowledge, no lack of educated individuals, and no lack of money and resources. The human race has never been smarter, never been wiser, but to an extent never been dumber. We don’t HAVE to have world hunger, we don’t HAVE to have homeless people, we don’t HAVE to have people living in poverty, we CHOOSE to have people living in poverty.
“We gotta make a change. It’s time for us as a people to start making some changes. Let’s change the way we eat, let’s change the way we live, and let’s change the way we treat each other. You see the old way wasn’t working so it’s on us to do what we gotta do, to survive.” — Tupac Amaru Shakur.
Tupac, who I believe is the most realist individual to walk this planet has set the tone. He may not be alive to witness it, but his words could ignite a global social change. Collectively, the human race is one of the most powerful and influential forces on the planet. We are not limited to change than what we limit ourselves to. We had the power to start this world, we now have enough nuclear weaponry to end it, but we also have the same power to change it; Through words, through petitions, social media, money, protests and first-hand action.
We can no longer be sheep and follow shepherd, we all have the be shepherds and lead ourselves. Every individual has to make a change, we all have to stand up and make it happen. There has never been a follower who’s made a change, but there have been plenty of leaders who have. Martin Luther King, Albert Einstein, Nelson Mandela, these are some of the people we should look to for inspiration and that sense of leadership.
So to sum things up, I will leave you with a few questions to answer. How will you help make a change? Will you make a change? Why am I asking you these questions? You need to make a change, it’s not questionable. You need to do it and you need to do it now.
“Be the change you want to see in the world” — Mahatma Gandhi.
