Response To My Classmates Blog

The issue of world poverty is an extremely complex and difficult problem to solve, and it can take many forms. This is explained thoroughly in my classmate Alexa Bloomquist’s blog titled It’s Time to Rethink Poverty.

Alexa dives deep into the issue of global poverty both at home and abroad, offering up potential solutions and ways to achieve less poverty. She also discusses the several different forms poverty can take and how it affects each and every one of us.

Our Impact

A point Alexa makes at the beginning of her blog post is an interesting one that I find important. She says that she is “not one of those girls that post petitions on her Instagram story” (Bloomquist 2021) and that more needs to be done to help than impoverished than petitions that offer no real solution. While I agree that all talk and no action is not ideal, I do think it is important to spread awareness on these issues. Without the awareness of these issues, it will be nearly impossible to act and make a meaningful change. However, as Alexa points out, simply showing your superficial support for a cause does not help people in extreme poverty.

What Does Poverty Look Like?

Further on in the blog, Alexa does a great job of describing the different forms of poverty. Most importantly I think, is pointing out that poverty can also look like “a lack of education, jobs, community development, etc” (Bloomquist, 2021). Oftentimes, poverty can be attributed to areas where education is not good enough to employ people with meaningful jobs.

Poverty is also caused by businesses not opening up and poor infrastructure as Alexa points out. She continues this important discussion when she lists her goals on how to solve world poverty.

Our Goals

Alexa’s goals for zero poverty include “everyone has adequate water and sanitation systems”, “equal rights to economic resources”, and “ensuring all children have accessibility to school” (Bloomquist, 2021). These are incredibly important goals regarding zero poverty.

I particularly like Alexa’s point on education. Improving education in historically impoverished areas will result in those people getting lifted out of poverty as they get jobs in high demand. In doing this we would start to see areas that have been in poverty for years start to improve and benefit the quality of life for the people who reside there.

Why We Need Peace

In addition to Alexa’s ideas, I would like to add that achieving peace in both areas, in our country, and across the world will be enormously helpful to achieving less poverty. Without violence, we can focus on education, infrastructure, equality, and simply improving the lives of those in these impoverished areas. While peace is a difficult topic on its own, it would go a long way in solving the issue of world poverty.

References:

Bloomquist, A. (2021, March 3). It’s time to rethink poverty. Medium. https://medium.com/talkpoverty-realsolutions101/its-time-to-rethink-poverty-8f9824345322