What Povery really means

my books from amazon finally arrived today!

1) The Life You can Save by Peter Singer

2) A Long Way Gone - memoirs of a boy soldier by Ishmael Beah

3) Allah is not obliged by Ahmadou Kourouma

My first read is The Life You Can Save, and so far, every page is mind-gripping, appalling, and truly challenging.

one excerpt jumped out at me - and it's the definition of the word Poverty by the 60,000 poor women and men in 73 countries - it is summed up like this:

-You are short of food for all or part of the year, often eating only one meal per day, sometimes having to choose between stilling your child's hunger or your own, and sometimes being able to do neither.

-You can't save money. If a family member falls ill and you need money to see a doctor, or if the crop fails and you have nothing to eat, you have to borrow from a local moneylender and he will charge you so much interest as the debt continues to mount and you may never be free of it.

-You can't afford to send your children to school, or if they do start school, you have to take them out again if the harvest is poor.

-You live in an unstable house, made with mud or thatch that you need to rebuild every two or three years, or after severe weather.

-You have no nearby source of safe drinking water. You have to carry your water a long way, and even then, it can make you ill unless you boil it.

...

http://www.stwr.org/globalization/world-bank-poverty-figures-what-do-they-mean.html