Why make them queue for bread?
Posted Jul 5, 2006 4:14 UTC (Wed) by
xoddam (subscriber, #2322)
In reply to:
Let them eat Cake by botsie
Parent article:
Interview: Jim Gettys (Part II)
'The poor you will always have with you'. Crisis relief is one thing;
development is another.
When kids who could be in school are on the streets begging at the
windows of taxis because it earns money for sweets, how do you persuade
them to invest in their own futures? Hint: it's not a bread queue.
OLPC laptops will not compete with bread, drinking water and healthcare
for funds, but with textbooks in established school systems. Nor are
they intended for people who are presently starving. This is not
charity, this is investment. The way to reduce poverty in general is to
invest in the poor and in their neighbourhoods. Education is investment.
The OLPC project is an *enabling* one, not a handout.
Child labour is a fractious issue indeed. Many poor families are
dependent on the income of their working children, some of which (such as
carpet-weaving on domestic looms or agricultural work alongside their
parents) is traditional and reinforces family life. Not all child labour
is in garbage tips and airless sweatshops. The way to lift these
families from poverty and the children from the need to work is not to
deprive kids of their incomes but to police their working relationships
and conditions so that they are neither chained to nor crippled by their
paid work, and most importantly to show them that there are better
futures.
(
Log in to post comments)
