Oakland Tribune

April 24 Letters to the editor

© Copyright 2011, Bay Area News Group

April 24, 2012

Water the seeds of life with action, donations

The April 4 globalist quiz "How Poverty Shrinks" reported that the percentage of people living in absolute poverty defined as $1.25 per day or less has declined since 1981 to about one-fifth of the world population.

The number of infants 5 years and under who died was about 40,000 a day then. Currently, the figure is around 23,000 per day. Still a tragic amount of loss for families.

What has produced this reduction in poverty? Some of the causes include more effective development aid in the areas of basic health care, basic education and access to credit for very poor people.

More than 100 million families have access to small loans that enable them to start and expand small businesses to lift themselves and their families out of poverty.

The global fund to fight AIDS, TB and malaria is a multinational program that is incredibly effective in controlling and treating these major killers of adults in the developing world. Many poor countries in Africa and Asia have become serious about providing education to their citizens with targeted and strategic programs.

Yet this progress is threatened by environmental degradation, global warming, water pollution and desertification as well as corruption and misguided shifts of funding to armaments and war.

Let us water the seeds of life, learn about poverty and what is working to end it. Protect and expand those programs through political action and personal donations.

Susan Oehser
Oakland