The Law of the Jungle - Journal Product Fighting with The Poor Program

The Law of the Jungle Poverty's impact on the lives of people in developing countries

Anna Gudarowska Foreword: David Kerkhofs

August 2015

The Law of the Jungle. Poverty's impact on the lives of people in developing countries.

Text and cover: Anna Gudarowska Foreword: David Kerkhofs

August 2015

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank the following people, without whom this publication would never be possible: People of Richmond Vale Academy – for training and support before and during my volunteering period, and during writing of this book.

Alessia Calato – for being my supportive team mate for 18 months.

Staff of Humana People to People Belize, project Child Aid Toledo – for ensuring that I had the best possible experience.

The wonderfully open people of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines – for all the actions that we did together, for allowing me to be immersed in their culture for a year.

The friendly and hard-working people of Belize for welcoming me in their country and letting me share their lives; for the 6 months of working shoulder to shoulder on many different projects.

And last but not least, my wonderful family and friends who have stayed behind in Poland – for constant support and good wishes during my crazy adventures. I couldn't have done it without you.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements.............................................................................4 Table of Contents.................................................................................5 Foreword..............................................................................................6 Introduction.........................................................................................9 Part I: Poverty & Gender...................................................................10 Part II: Poverty & Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights........15 Part III: Poverty & Education.............................................................19 Part IV: Poverty & Religion...............................................................23 Part V: Poverty & Trash Management..............................................28 Part VI: Poverty & Tourism...............................................................32 Part VII: Poverty & Food...................................................................37 Part VIII: Poverty & Volunteering......................................................41 References........................................................................................46

Foreword To say that the concept of poverty is a multi-dimensional and complex issue is an understatement. There is a multitude of factors affecting and creating the great inequality that we observe in the world around us. When we look at poverty today, we see the Sub Saharan Africa, Latin America and Asia as the main regions where great numbers of people live in a day-to-day fight for survival. To deeply understand why the world is the way it is today and specifically focusing on those regions, it is important to start from an understanding that the colonial and imperial destruction from the European powers has had an immense impact on the countries at hand.

The domination of Western culture and the loss of indigenous cultures and wisdom in various parts of the world can raise the question whether we are actually living in a postcolonial age. A deep analysis and understanding of today’s world actually demonstrates that we are living in a neo-colonial rather than a post-colonial era.

Huge monster corporations are dominant forces in all geographical areas and in all layers of society. Massive Oil and Gas companies, Big Food corporations, the Military Industrial Complex, Big Pharma and huge technology giants are continuously looking for more resources and new markets to exploit. The luxuries and so-called freedom in the North do not go without an impact in other sectors and regions.

As a result, wars are started to gain resources, people are removed from their land, indigenous cultures have a hard time not to be influenced by the media and by marketing schemes, the planet’s resources are over-exploited and the atmosphere is heavily polluted, with disastrous effect mainly for the poor.

National and international banks and economical plots are heavily affecting developing nations, as they clearly are driven by the same players and the same interests. The World Bank, IMF and the WTO are governed by the same people leading today's corporate power imposing a neo-liberal and free-market mindset on the poorest of the poor.

Summing up all of the above, it becomes crystal clear that there are obvious forces at hand, and clear reasons why some countries are not reaching their full potential.

Despite the above numerous efforts have been put in place and been carried out to assist in the developing regions in order to assist people in climbing out of poverty. For many 6

decennia, a Top-Down approach has been the dominant way of thinking in the field, unfortunately leaning on the (neo-liberal) theory that predicts that when the economy of a country grows, the population will benefit from it. In other words, a projection of a trickle-down effect has been used as the model.

We know now that this was a false projection, influenced by the dollar signs in the eyes of the wealthy, and without empathy or social responsibility towards developing regions, and especially towards the people of those regions. Results today do not only show the lack of human development, but also clear correlations between economic growth and a widening inequality. The rich are getting richer and the poor stay poor.

Anna Gudarowska – the author of The law of the Jungle – has chosen, by joining the “Fighting with The Poor” program and by writing this book, to gain a deeper understanding about the biggest issue of our time, global poverty. Anna writes to us from her experiences as a Development Instructor in a poor rural community in Belize. By doing so, Anna enters into a long tradition of Development Instructors who have traveled to the South to work with people, and who have returned to share their experiences with the world.

At the Richmond Vale Academy, international participants – such as Anna

– join the

program in which they learn about the full complexity of poverty, through a combination of theoretical and practical studies and by working and living alongside the poor in rural communities in Latin America with the international movement www.humana.org.

Humana People to People takes on a very different approach in the fight against poverty.

As the name defines, the approach is the Bottom-Up reaching out to the poor face-to-face, shoulder-to-shoulder and people to people. This stems from the realization that only the people can emancipate themselves and lift themselves, their families and communities out of poverty.

The role of the Development Instructor in this philosophy is to assist in mobilizing and inspiring people, working shoulder to shoulder so they find the hope, strength and inspiration to build their communities and create change and true development.

In this book, Anna shares with us not only her own experiences in rural Belize, but also her vision and understanding of the complexity of poverty. Not going into every aspect of the global issue, Anna has chosen to work under eight topics that influence the poor; topics that are close at heart and play a center role in the plight of the poor.

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By reading this book, you will get to understand some layers of what poverty really means for the people in the village who are living by the “Law of the Jungle�.

David Kerkhofs Fighting with the Poor Teacher Richmond Vale Academy

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Introduction

My Belizean story I have spent 6 months as a Development Instructor living and volunteering in a small jungle village in rural Belize. Our village has 300 inhabitants living in 52 households; 2 primary schools, 4 churches and 2 buses passing by on market days to bring people to the nearby town for errands.

Before going to live and work in a community, me and my team mate , Alessia, had taken part in a 6-month training in Richmond Vale Academy, St. Vincent and the Grenadines. This training included theoretical knowledge about poverty, its causes and possible solutions, health, hygiene and nutrition, farming for food, and other subjects. We were doing practical actions: organic gardening 3 times a week, experimenting with food preservation, organizing events, giving lectures and presentations to different age groups while living in a small community.

Our job in Belize has not been easy, even if our organisation – Humana People to People Belize – and supervisors – Project Leader Pantaleon Escobar and Program Officer Rejinia Hun – have been very helpful along the way. Culture shock, gender-related issues, lack of privacy, different work ethics… The lack of trust from the villagers was the worst of all.

We've had our times of doubt, caused by issues that we could never have imagined happening, but we persevered. Despite some challenges in our relationship with the villagers at first, we have made a lasting impact, working hard and creating projects for people, with people.

Living in the village I kept noticing some issues related to poverty that I knew were universal in developing countries. After finishing my volunteering period I decided to follow up on the observations. Inspired by my life in the Belizean jungle I've done some research and decided to write a series of essays on different topics, but always with poverty influencing people's lives on my mind. I've discovered that the world is ruled by the law of the jungle, with the “fittest” (in this context, the richest) ruling the world. Finally I have chosen 8 topics: gender, sexual and reproductive health and rights, education, religion, trash management, tourism, food and volunteering itself. Those essays can be read alone or together, under a common title: The Law of the Jungle. Poverty's impact on the lives of people in developing countries.

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Part I:

Poverty & Gender

Gender issues in Belize Despite the fact that about half of our village's population is female, you will not see many women around. Most of the time, while men go to farm, women stay behind to take care of the house. They get up around 4 am, go to the river to wash themselves and bring water for cooking – only the lucky ones have pipe water in their compounds. They put firewood under the comal and prepare breakfast, usually including corn tortillas, black beans and sometimes eggs. Since most women have big families – anywhere from 2 to 13 children – only preparing and baking tortillas takes a lot of time. Everything has to be ready before 6 am, around which time the men usually leave for their farms;. Then it's making sure the kids are off to school and... the work starts!

During a typical day a woman – mother and wife – prepares all meals unless she has daughters old enough to help (old enough often means as young as 8 years); she cleans, washes the clothes, shells corn, fixes the clothing and creates hand craft to sell to the tourists.

Younger girls almost always help at the house: they go to the shop, help with baking and cooking, as well as cleaning, washing, making hand craft and taking care of younger siblings. Depending on the family, boys might get some chores, like chopping bush around the house, taking corn to the mill, helping dad at the farm, etc.

Young people who have finished their education – often as young at 16 – will most likely assume the same jobs their parents do: boys will go to farm while girls stay at home and help with household chores. Some of them will leave for the cities or tourist resorts to look for employment options.

Almost everyone in the village works; everyone has their tasks that they perform in order to make the family life easier. Everyone works hard and to the best of their abilities, and yet, the gender differences are clear.

The differences start when the time for rest comes. Around 4 pm the men return from the farms, high school buses drop off teenagers around the village, and it's finally getting cool 10

enough to spend time outside of the nice and cold thatch-roofed houses. At this time the village seems to come alive, full of happy and relaxing... men.

Yes, men. At the time when the volleyball court starts to fill with men of all ages: some playing, some watching, others just gathering to spend time together - the women and girls stay in. Some of them still have chores to do: prepare dinner, wash, clean ‌ others are simply not allowed to go out of the house on their own or to participate in activities with boys. The only time the women seem to gather and talk is when washing in the river and, during the tourist season, when they set up their blankets on the ground by the river to sell hand craft. In the evenings some men will secretly visit a nearby bar, while women stay at home. For those reasons one of our projects: Library Renovation and Modernization, was discretely directed towards girls and women, who would now get an opportunity to spend their time in an interesting way, even if they stay at home.

Gender inequality in education accessibility is still visible in Belize. While everyone is obliged to finish primary school, high school with its high fees is often just a dream for some. If there is some money, parents will probably prefer to invest it in sons, who are more likely to stay close to the family, than in daughters who will get married and move away.

However, money isn't the only issue here. Even the girls who finish high school will often stay at home, waiting to get married. A lot of them don't try to get higher education or a job; instead they become housewives at the age of 17, 18, 19... and they never get o ut of the cycle.

Because of very conservative mindsets and subsequent lack of contraception, women get pregnant every 2 years, which has negative effects on their health and well-being. They are also the ones to take care of all the children. I've seen women in their 9th month of pregnancy go to the river and wash clothes, women going shopping to town, taking along several babies and toddlers, women walk around with babies in makeshift carriers worn on their foreheads...

The mindsets are at this time undergoing a slow change. Young couples are more likely to use family planning methods and stop at 2 children. Girls are encouraged, for example by scholarship programs, to continue their education. Young women start following in their brothers' footsteps and looking for employment options outside of the village – or inside, for example by opening a new business. However, those examples are still few and far

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between. Women in the developing world are still suffering from many issues that western feminists have already forgotten.

Poverty and gender worldwide In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, women achieved significant progress in the economically progressive areas dominated by Western culture, including North America, Europe, and Australia. In developing areas dominated by non-Western culture, however, women remain more or less subjugated, and in some countries they are stripped of any human rights.

The above is an introductory statement from Michelle Fram Cohen's The Conditions of Women in Developing and Developed Countries [3] and it summarizes the issue perfectly.

In her article, Cohen underlines that in many developing countries women themselves assume that violence against them is acceptable, as is their inferior status to the husband.

Those values are passed on from generation to generation, leaving less chance for the things to change. Young girls in India as well as many African countries, are being given away to be married to much older men, all with their mothers' agreement – because „it's always been like that”. Women in those countries, especially in rural areas, are missing the diversity, the outside influence, which – while in many cases harmful – would show them that there is, in fact, a different way of living.

In many African countries women cannot – by custom, which is still stronger than actual civil law – own land. They own the products, i.e. if the husband owns farm the woman owns the crops, if the husband owns cows the woman owns the milk, etc. This makes women very vulnerable and their situations uncertain. A widow can lose everything if male relatives challenge her to the inheritance. Being a single mother, even a widow, is in those areas especially difficult, while divorced women often have no rights at all.

One of the customary women's jobs is to bring water from whatever source is nearby („nearby” can mean several kilometres away). While we know that water is essential for all life, an almost miraculous and certainly necessary substance, the women who carry water in some African countries are considered to be on the same status as cattle! Men wouldn't even help, because this job is considered below them [3].

Because of strong traditional and religious laws – de facto stronger than civil laws – women in developing countries are often victims of so-called honour killings. Citing the UNIFEM report (United Nations Development Fund for Women), Cohen notes that, 12

for example, 47% of all women killed in Alexandria, Egypt, in 2002 had been rape victims killed for „dishonouring their families” by their own family members, while in Pakistan more than 1,000 women are killed every year for the same reason. The following is a statement from a Jordanian man who had killed his 16-year-old sister – a rape victim: I shouldn’t have been in prison for a minute. If she had stayed alive, everyone in our family would have hung his head in shame. A girl is like a glass plate. Take a glass plate and throw it on the floor and it breaks. Would it be any use anymore or not? A girl is just like that. If she has been violated, she’s finished [3].

Women in poor countries are far more likely to be influenced by economic crises than men.

When fewer jobs are available, men are thought to have more rights to those jobs than women. On the other hand, during a crisis, women, who traditionally have many household chores, are expected to contribute to the household economy on top of doing those chores. When there is less income, girls are the first ones to be pulled out of school in order to save on school fees – something that is plainly visible in Belize.

The UN's Beijing Platform for Action cites after the World Health Organization that life expectancy for women in poor countries is almost 19 years lower than of those in highincome countries, measuring respectively 63.1 and 82 years [2]. 19 years!

Poor women in developing countries are also often victims of human trafficking. They are lured by promises of decent jobs, like selling fruits, and end up being sold to brothels, where they are enslaved for life. Those places often enslave also children that those women will eventually have, using the boys for labour and grooming little girls to become prostitutes at a very young age. As the authors of Half the Sky [5] describe, the situation can be very tragic because often, even after being rescued, the women from brothels go back to – this time voluntarily – sell their bodies to men. That is because they have no education, no other ways of making money, and in their home towns and villages they are the ones considered dirty, not their captors.

What can be done?

There are many reports and statistics showing the situation of women in poor countries.

UN, WHO, EU and others, all have compiled and published records on the subject. Those studies have been going on for decades now, with more and more agencies and conventions, and yet, while western women enjoy more and more liberties, their sisters in the developing world continue to be severely discriminated. Why is that?

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An important obstacle is tradition. A responsible aid worker will not enter a conservative village and demand that people lose their roots and adapt to the western standards. This was one of the more difficult things to do, or rather, not to do, in Belize. Adapting the mindsets of people to include gender equality is a long process and – it seems – can only be started from within. As long as women themselves don't rebel against the laws of tradition, not much can be done. As long as mothers continue to bring up their daughters the same way they were taught, things will not change.

However, the inspiration for that could come from outside. And the most important outside driving force of development is, of course, education. Education is the key to understanding the world. It also leads to better employment, which in turn makes women independent. Independent women can visit other places, meet other women, and get out of symbolic male domination, as well as the economic one. Educated women will be more confident, less likely to allow household violence, and more likely to use family planning methods.

Several organizations hold entrepreneurship projects directed towards women. In Belize, Humana People to People supports village Women's Groups in establishing various income-generating projects. Grameen Bank in Bangladesh provides loans without collateral to help poor people establish small businesses and work their way out of poverty. 97% out of 8.4 million borrowers are women! The Barefoot College in India gives away scholarships to women from poor, remote areas all over the world, often illiterate, to come to India and in 6 months learn how to construct solar lamps. The women are then supposed to go back to their villages and become community leaders, bringing light to areas without electricity and teaching others. The inspiring documentary titled Solar Mamas explains the process while following one of the students, Rafea, on her difficult journey to independence, along which she had to fight her husband and parents [4].

While there are many successful stories and the situation in some parts of the world – like Belize – seems to be getting better, I believe that there is still a lot to be done. However, any project meant to help women out of poverty should be realized with sensitivity and care, and take into account the local customs and traditions so that the women who manage to emancipate themselves don't end up being ostracised from their families and communities.

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Part II:

Poverty & Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights

Familiar chaos in rural Belize The surveys that my team mate and I have conducted in our small village in southern Belize have shown that most out of 52 families had 6 or more children, some up to 13.

Moreover, almost always children are being born every 2 years, like clockwork. That means that in a family with 7 children, the mother would have been either pregnant or nursing continuously for ... 14 years! That brings many health problems, fatigue, anaemia, high blood pressure, not to mention stress. And each pregnancy brings a higher risk than the last one. Pregnant women in rural areas aren't being treated lightly, either. I have seen a woman in the last weeks of pregnancy going to wash clothes in the river while also taking care of her 4 year old daughter – and that was not an unusual sight in the village.

Big families are more difficult to feed and dress for small-hold farmers who eat what they produce and only sell a minor part of their products. Some cannot afford to pay school fees for all the children and the girls drop out, often to take care of smaller siblings, while parents choose to invest in their sons who are considered the parents' insurance for the future. But even the boys don't have it easy in big families, where the oldest ones take on a lot of chores and the youngest wear the clothes that have been passed on several times.

I have witnessed a 12 year old boy – the oldest of the siblings – taking care of his 5 brothers and sisters several days a week for almost a month when their mother was in the hospital due to labor-related complications with her 7th child, and the father went to visit her every week. The situation had a happy ending, both the mother and the baby came back home healthy, but the parents decided to stop having more children after this.

I know from talks with both villagers and local health workers that contraception is considered something shameful in those areas. This is because villages are very small (with potential for gossip), very traditional and religious. Women don't talk to each other about contraception and only approach health practitioners in confidence. A mother of 8 told me that she supports her daughter using contraception, but would never say it aloud. Some don't have reliable access to doctors because of transport issues – to get to the nearest 15

health center takes 40 minutes and 2 buses (which pass only 4 times a week); not to mention the cost. While thankfully maternal mortality has almost been eliminated from Belize in the pastyears (due to 100% of births being given in professional facilities [7]), family planning is still underdeveloped.

According to the United Nations, the contraceptive prevalence in Belize is 55% [7] (while Europe and United States vary anywhere between 70-80%). This already low national average includes cities and regions that have higher rates, while rural areas of the south surely have even smaller numbers [6]. There is also still a high rate of pregnancies among adolescents and teenagers. Abortion is only legal under some conditions, like healthrelated risks to the mother or the baby.

The mother of pains The mothers' situation in Belize is dire, but it's still not as bad as in some other places. In the world almost 800 women die daily for causes related to pregnancy and childbirth. The difference in maternal mortality between developing and industrialized countries is scandalously big: while in Europe the rate of maternal deaths is 1:3,300 women, in Africa it's only 1:39 women! [8] 99% of maternal deaths occur in low-income countries. In subSaharan Africa only half of the births are given in the presence of a skilled professional.

Women in low-income countries are also less likely to receive sufficient pre-natal care – while in the Western countries, practically 100% of pregnant women get specialized care [8]. Women in remote areas are in the worst situation worldwide. Due to the lack of infrastructure, insufficient number of qualified health workers, social stigma (some women are afraid of losing the intimacy of child birth when in clinic) or traditions, most of those women give births only in the presence of a traditional attendant – an untrained midwife or a shaman. In case of complications, there is very little to be done in time to save both the mother and the baby. And they could be saved! As indicated by the statistics from highincome countries, most of maternal deaths could easily be prevented.

Another cause of death related to the pregnancy are unsafe abortions. Many African countries where abortion is illegal struggle with high rate of deaths due to unsafe procedures. The number of unsafe abortions is estimated to be 22 million per year worldwide! Of those, almost a quarter leads to complications, and approximately 47,000 end up in the woman's death. Those could be avoided by access to safe abortion or in many cases even modern contraception [8].

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Satvika Chalasani from Sexual and Reproductive Health Branch of UNFPA indicates in a video lecture "Why access to modern contraception is public health priority" [9] that there are 225 million women who need contraception but have no access to it; most of them live in the poorest countries of the world. Young and unmarried women have especially difficult access to modern contraceptive methods due to tradition, religion and social stigma. And there are clear economic gains, too! Chalasani estimates that for every US$1 spent on contraception, $1,47 is saved on pregnancy-related care costs.

In the developing world female methods of contraception prevail, with the most popular (22%) being (married) female sterilization, far above male sterilization (4%), condoms (3%) or hormonal pills (6%) [9].

What can be done?

Chalasani estimates that it would only take $25 per year per woman of reproductive health to keep all pregnant women in the world healthy. Currently the spending is about half of that number. WHO underlines medical needs for preventing maternal mortality: those include high quality care before and after birth, safe blood supplies, as well as contraception and access to safe abortion [7].

Education is almost always brought up in this context. It has been proven time and again that women who study, get married later and therefore theystart families later. A 28 year old woman who has been married for 10 years can be a mother of 4, while her friend can still be unmarried, investing in education and personal or professional development.

Educated people are more likely to use contraception and have less children – usually 1 or 2 – for they want to secure the best possible opportunities for their children; Sexual education of youth is a must. Comprehensible and age-appropriate sexual education can prevent many unwanted pregnancies, as well as spreading of sexually transmitted infections. It can also teach the youth about social context of sexual behaviour and teach to fight against sexual coercion.

Legalizing abortion is another important step to be taken. Many deaths could be prevented if safe abortion was accessible for all women.

Of course, abortion could be prevented by modern contraceptive methods. Not only do they need to be accessible, but family planning should also be considered a part of staying

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healthy, instead of something shameful. Women and men of all ages should have access to high quality contraceptive methods without fear of discrimination.

Men, as well as women, should be schooled about the risks that frequent pregnancies carry. Husbands often don't even realize the potential risks for their wives, thinking that a healthy woman can give births to any number of children without health repercussions.

Men should also – or maybe above all – be made aware of the fact that contraception is not solely the woman's responsibility.

There are some initiatives taken in rural Belize. Health practitioners organize free clinics in villages once a month. They promote both condoms and long-term hormonal implants for free and more and more families decide to use this help, though it seems that the small villages all over the world take the longest to embrace the opportunities that modern contraception brings.

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Part III:

Poverty & Education

Belizean education Every morning around 8 am the road in our village would fill with children of different ages: the youngest ones on their parents' bikes, older in groups of 2, 3, 6, 10… All (about 100 students) going to the village school. Well, two schools.

Government-managed schools are a rarity in Belize. More often you would see catholic schools of many kinds. The bigger school of the village, with 90% of the children, is – like almost 40% of Belizean primary schools – Roman Catholic. The other, smaller one is Mennonite. Since education is obligatory in Belize, all of the school-aged children go to either one of those two schools. Until standard 6, which is when the primary school ends (usually at 12-13 years of age). Then it becomes tricky.

Everyone in Belize talks about school fees so I was surprised when I did some research and found out that there is no tuition, for primary school at least. I then realized that while there is no official tuition, the schools are allowed by the Ministry of Education to set up annual fees – and they all do. The fees might not be big for people living – and earning – in the city, but for small-scale farmers with big families, US $20 per child per year is no small amount. And that is only the annual fee, not including the uniforms, schoolbooks and materials, or additional small fees during the school year. All that for obligatory education.

And yet, Belize actually spends 6.6% of its GDP on education, placing the country on 29th position in the world, at the same place as Belgium and before, among others, United Kingdom (6.2%), France and Netherlands (5.9%) or the United States (5.4%) [16].

Secondary schools have much higher fees (approximately US $200 per year), so it's not a surprise that only a handful of youth from our community go to one of Toledo district's 5 high schools. Thankfully this number is growing bigger with every year. But not everyone who wants to, gets to go to school. An oldest son in a family of 9 would love to become a policeman, but they barely have money for food and his younger siblings still have to finish, or even start, primary school. A teenager dropped out of high school when the governmental scholarship ended after his second year, and the boy had to start helping

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his father at the farm to support the rest of the family. He watched his friends, whose parents had more money, finish school and leave to find employment as tour guides all over Belize. A 16-year-old girl would love to learn but her parents don't see the point in educating a daughter so she struggles to find a babysitting job in a nearby town. Countless children can be seen doing homework outside, trying to catch the last rays of sunshine, because there is no electricity in their homes.

Doing surveys in the community we came to realize that even the 6 th grade for today's youth hasn't been a norm for a long time. People in their 30's often haven't even finished primary school, and the older the generation, the lower the education level. Within families the amount of school years finished varies according to gender; if the husband has 2 grades of secondary school, the wife has only primary, if the husband has primary, the wife only has 3 grades and so on… That is not to say that there are no people with higher education in the community, though most of them leave to find employment in the towns.

Young men with secondary education often leave to find jobs in the tourist sector, while young women with the same level usually stay at home and help to take care of the family until they get married themselves.

Despite the authorities giving high fines for anyone employing school-aged children, 40% of them (aged 5-14) are working [16]. Some manage to combine their jobs with school.

Most eventually drop out.

To achieve universal primary education – Second Millennium Development Goal “Ensure that, by 2015, children everywhere, boys and girls alike, will be able to complete a full course of primary schooling” was the aim of the second of the 8 Millennium Development Goals, projected in 2000 by the United Nations [17]. Let's take a closer look.

United Nations boasts that in 2010 the enrolment in primary schools worldwide reached 90%, more than ever before. Though the number of school-aged children who weren't attending school has dropped by 42% since 2000, today there are still 58 million children not attending school (that is 1 in 10 primary-school-aged children in the world). While the initiative was good, the goal proved more difficult to attain than anyone had realized. The Sustainable Development Goals, which are proposed to be reached before 2030, underline the importance of education worldwide, suggesting that further attempts will be made to attain the second MDG.

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Education is so important because not only does it raise the literacy levels, it brings development in almost every area of life. Approximately half of literate mothers in Nepal or Cameroon have a skilled attendant at birth, compared to less than 20% for illiterate mothers. Improving girls' education level is estimated to have saved the lives of 2.1 million children under 5 in the time between 1990 and 2009 and literate women in Pakistan earn 95 times more money than those with poor literacy skills [14].

While almost all children in high-income countries finish primary education, the situation in poor countries is incomparably worse. Only 53% of children in the Sudan attend primary school, and as few as 31% in Ethiopia and 30% in Niger. While the US invests $6,800 per child per year on primary education, India puts $64, Laos $30 and Rwanda $19 [12].

However, those $19 in Rwanda constitute 5.1% of the country's GDP – which is the same proportion that is allocated to education in … Germany (although India and Laos are actually far down on the list).

Many of the poorest countries in the world are being controlled by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank which give big loans, with even bigger interest rates, and a set of conditions and policies known as Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs).

While loans from the World Bank are supposed to alleviate the poverty, they, in fact, put the countries that take them in a vicious cycle of debt and social problems. Not only do the states struggle to pay off the interest while their industries and resources are forcefully privatized and bought up by transnational companies, they also struggle with keeping their citizens healthy and productive since healthcare costs are drastically cut. Another governmental spending that is cut? Yes, education. So while the governments try to find financing sources after their goods are sold, the new generations – generations that should grow to pick up their state from poverty – are being lost due to lack of access to education. This puts the country in a downward spiral and makes it even more dependent on the international community as well as preventing it from rebuilding its economy. This can be seen all over the world, including South-East Asia, sub-Saharan Africa and former Soviet republics. This had been seen in Latin America as well, until the trends started to change [11].

What can be done?

In postwar Korea in the 1950s, when the average annual income was only $890, Korean families and the government, with help from the U.S., tripled spending on education. Investments in teachers and basic schools contributed 21

to a more productive labor force, which became one of the country’s engines of growth. Today Korea boasts almost 100% primary school enrolment and an average income of $17,000 a year. [12] Investing in education is one of the best ways to bring the country out of poverty.

Mexican Oportunidades and Brazilian Bolsa Familia – programs for conditional cash transfer – have noted huge successes. The programs, in short, give monthly support to poor families, on the condition that the children attend school (among others, like getting children vaccinated, having regular health check-ups, etc.). Both programs have been proven successful not only in alleviating poverty short-term – by giving monetary support to those who need it the most – but also in ensuring further development of the countries by investing in future generations and reducing inequality levels.

Reducing and abolishing school fees has shown to bring positive effects in African countries of Malawi, Uganda and Mozambique. Sometimes providing meals for children in schools also shows substantial increase in enrolment, while medical care at schools helps students graduate.

Non-formal education programs can be beneficial in schooling people to give them better futures. Second chance educational programs in Latin America have brought 42% of school drop-outs back to formal education. Those who don't return can learn skills needed to become better qualified for various jobs. Skills can also be acquired on Massive Open Online Course platforms, where universities from all over the world offer (usually free) online courses to anyone with an internet connection.

I believe that at this point a good stipend system would be beneficial for Belize. While there are some scholarships, they are few and seldom cover all the costs. On the other hand, another type of education might be needed: for parents, to have less children and therefore, less dependants to feed and educate.

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Part IV:

Poverty & Religion

Note The majority of the world practices one of the major religions: Christianity with its multiple denominations and Islam. This is due to past Christianization or Islamization, both of which often had a violent nature. Many lives have been lost in the name of religion and many colonies forcefully converted. Communities which practice their own religious traditions, without the influence of one or other major religion are few, mostly found in isolated areas such as the Amazon jungle or the Pacific islands. Maya people of Belize lost their beliefs when the Spanish Christianized them, the same counts for manyAfrican tribes.

In this part I don't write about traditional beliefs and rituals, instead focusing on the majority of the world.

The village of churches The rhythm of life in our village is measured by Sun and God. There are 4 churches (all Christian denominations) in a 300-people village (in comparison, there are 2 primary schools: Roman Catholic and Mennonite). The churches are: Catholic, Baptist, Mennonite and Fountain of Life, or, as it's called in Belize from Spanish, Fuente de Vida. As a result, almost every evening is dedicated to some kind of service, as most churches have sermons more than once a week. The record is held by Fuente de Vida, whose followers gather 5 times a week for 3-hour long sessions of – mostly – singing. This church is attended by 7 – admittedly large – families, but the sound system is worthy of at least a good urban dance club. But even the Catholic church is nothing like we know from Europe – somber and serious – instead it is almost as loud and informal as the more exotic Fuente de Vida church.

Having that many churches means having many ministers, pastors, preachers, deacons, and a whole lot of ladies performing various functions, from cleaning the churches to cooking for the baptisms.

From what I heard, there used to be only one church in the village and people would gather together every time there was a service, talk, arrange other activities. Since then, 23

3 more denominations came to the village, effectively dividing the community; now everyone has their own church evening and people rarely gather all together.

However, I noticed that for big events, such as baptisms, the community would still help each other out: when there was a baptism in Fuente de Vida, the women of both a Catholic and a Baptist churches helped bake corn tortillas and prepare tamales for the attendants. I have attended a funeral for an older lady, where members of the whole community were gathered, and both the Baptist pastor and the Catholic deacon were speaking. Despite a proportionally big number of denominations, there doesn't seem to be any animosity between the followers of different churches.

From personal observations, the daily life of the community seems to be heavily influenced by the church. Almost everyone attends one of the churches regularly – at least once a week. Many women and men have their functions within the church, and baptisms or weddings happen frequently.

There is no other mean of entertainment in the village, so going to church – getting ready, putting on nice earrings and a new dress, meeting with friends – seems to meet the demand for cultural activities. Going to church, even if it happens 3 times a week, is a little holiday, a reward for working hard all day. Each church has their own little rituals, songs, traditions that bring the sense of collectivity to people who otherwise only spend time with extended family. Coming back from church means a leisurely walk through the village with family and friends; looking at the stars, listening to the sounds of night life in the jungle.

Religion influences the people's morals and habits.

Religiosity of the Poor The situation described in the remote Belizean village is not uncommon in other parts of the world. The Poor seem to have a special affinity for religion, whereas high-income countries tend to have /smaller percentage of people declaring as believers [25]. That is a general rule, though it doesn't apply to every country.

Among the countries with per capita income of $2,000 and less, 95% of citizens say that religion is an important part of their lives – as opposed to only 47% of people earning more than $25,000 [25].

Some studies suggest that it's actually personal insecurity, and related to it income inequality, that cause higher religiosity [20, 23, 24]. This would explain the unique

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situation of the United States, which is one of the wealthiest countries in the world, and still the religiosity is on a very high level [24]. This is believed to be caused by the mentioned inequality – although national per capita income is high, the difference between the rich and poor is very high too. There are a few millionaires and many very poor people within the same country. Part of the explanation for high religiosity index of the US includes also a high immigrant rate [20] – a lot of immigrants bring their religions and cultivate them as a way to stay emotionally connected to their original cultures.

Thomas James Rees writes in the “Journal of Religion and Society” that “...secularization is greatest among those wealthy nations who chose to spend their wealth in alleviating personal insecurity, a major consequence of which is the transfer of wealth from rich to poor. Thus, in addition to mean wealth, the distribution of wealth is an important determinant of personal security and hence religiosity” [20].

Societies tend to lose religion as they get more educated, and secular institutions replace the religious ones. Churches used to be caretakers of the people in need, providing help, structures (clubs, unions, soup kitchens, advice). Nowadays their use has been lost with the development of the secular security nets for the citizens in need. One example: in industrial societies the psychological function of church has been,, replaced by science and medicine.

In poor countries churches used to – or still do – manage schools. In Belize only 54 out of 295 primary schools are run by the government, the rest are Catholic (115), Methodist, Anglican and Adventist, with a small number of secular private schools. The classes in the Catholic school in our village are led by trained secular teachers, but daily prayers are part of the school life. I didn't manage to find out if and how much the Catholic doctrine has influenced the school program. The situation is the same in many developing countries, where theschools run by the churches used to be the first ones to teach people to read and write, and are still a dominant education provider. In Western societies, religious schools are rather rare and expensive private schools; most of the children go to governmental public schools instead, because the governments can afford to manage schools and don't have to turn to churches for help.

Educated people are less likely to look for answers in spirituality when they can find them in science [20, 23].

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It is suggested that urbanization leads to lesser attendance in church because of the variety of alternative pastimes [20]. As mentioned before, in our village – and surely many remote villages around the world (even in high-income countries) – going to church seems to be the only entertainment, something to look forward to, since not much else is happening. It could be compared to going out to the theatre in a big city.

Stressful situations increase religiosity. Religion reduces stress by providing social and spiritual support; prayer is believed to reduce stress levels and even blood pressure [20].

Religious people often describe themselves as content with their lives, even if – objectively – their lives are worse than others'.

Most of the world's churches attract the followers by offering solutions to poverty. Some are in the form of prophecies, predicting better times to come, while most let people believe that their struggles will be rewarded in the afterlife. This brings people hope and contentment, but doesn't it also create stagnation? People who don't believe in the afterlife seem to have more reason to make the most of their current one, striving for a good earthly existence and not waiting for a divine reward.

African Initiated Churches are a big part of the sub-Saharan religious landscape. While most of them are Christian churches, they've been founded for very specific cultural reasons: to protest colonialism, fight poverty among the Black population, incorporate local cultures and find their own answers to modernity [18]. Those churches, which combine Christian or Muslim beliefs with old local traditions, are a big part of the cultural and social life. Their existence suggests not stagnation but struggle for the people's own identities.

The churches are guides of morality: they condemn violence, stealing, out-of-marriage sexual relations, to name a few popular sins. The fear of God's retribution often works better than laws which are established in capital cities, often with no way of enforcement in remote villages. Religious groups usually have sets of moral codes that the community will enforce. Sometimes, this may cause violence instead of preventing it: for example there are many known cases around the world of stoning women for adultery, in the name of whichever God the people believe in. Religious leaders have a lot of credibility and public trust and can easily influence the societies they lead. This kind of power comes with great responsibility and has been used for both good and bad throughout the ages.

Churches, unlike governments, survive wars, they also last for a long time after the international aid agencies have left. In times of war (or post-war), religion is sometimes the only constant in people's lives. For that reason, churches – the buildings – are often the 26

first rebuilt structures after conflicts. For example, Oxfam has rebuilt a mosque destroyed by an earthquake in Java as part of the organization's program of rebuilding the infrastructure to help the communities get back to their normal routines [19].

Consequences of religiosity The research shows that in the United States there is a high correlation between the rate of hate groups in a state and the church attendance /of the people living there as well as the declared importance of religion in people's lives [21]. Religious people can be more conservative and intolerant than those who don't consider religion important. Catholic church and Islam, for example, condemn homosexual relationships, often – consciously or not – teaching homophobia to their followers.

Religions often promote fertility and early marriage [23]. That can support the traditional societies' tendency for big families; though it's not only the cause but also a case of correlation, since traditional communities often tend to be more religious. There are many cases, both in the developing and the industrialized world, where people don't use modern contraceptive methods because of their beliefs.

The Catholic church's continued rejection of condoms has more consequences than fertility. In sub-Saharan Africa, many cases of HIV infections could have been prevented had the church not forbidden the use of condoms. It has to be said, though, that at the same time the Catholic church is one of the biggest providers of care for HIV positive people.

Religiosity (or religious attendance) is also often connected to generosity [26], especially in developed countries: people who attend services are more likely to volunteer, donate money or simply help strangers, than those who don't. Many charitable organizations are led by different religious groups, which continue to help the Poor around the globe.

In conclusion, religion cannot be said to have a clearly positive or negative influence.

Although statistics show close correlations between religiosity and poverty, there is no proof of causation. There are reasons for the Poor to be religious, just like there are ones for the wealthy to be sceptics. Religion might make people's difficult lives easier, but it can also be used against humankind – in religious wars, to promote hate, or make societies more docile. The power of religion should not be underestimated.

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Part V:

Poverty & Trash Management

Dumping or burning – the lesser evil Our remote Belizean village has no trash collection system – just like 50% of the whole of Belize and as much as 80% of the Toledo district. That doesn't mean, though, that 80% of the district's population doesn't produce waste. No, it just means that those people – 24,000 of them in Toledo, 150,000 in the whole of Belize – have to deal with waste management in another way. In Toledo about 25% of people use public or private dump sites and almost 50% burn the trash right there, in their backyards – and this is what our community does as well. Living there for 6 months, we were presented with a big dilemma: what is the lesser evil? Should we load our trash on a truck and drive 30 minutes, releasing even more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, to an improvised dump site that is not managed at all? Or should we routinely set our drum on fire, forcing ourselves and our neighbours to inhale the heavenly aromas of our trash? In the end we came to a decision that seemed marginally better than the other, that is – the dump site. But we also took great care to recycle, up-cycle and reuse everything we could: plastic bottles, food cans, toilet paper rolls, glass jars... We made compost from organic waste so it didn't decompose inside plastic trash bags, creating dangerous methane exhausts. We did everything we could to not leave too big a footprint on the local environment. But what about the locals?

A survey we took confirmed that most of the villagers would burn their trash and dump the rest (non-flammable) in the bush, just on the other side of the road. When asked if they could name some dangers to burning trash, most would say no, others would point to potential fires while some recalled a training course some time ago when they learned that burning chemicals can be really dangerous. Not a single person seemed to realize the effects that burning, for example, plastics had on the environment and people's health.

Most of the families would reuse whatever they could – mostly glass jars – but they had no idea about trash separation or recycling. The electronics would also go into the bush.

The grey water from showers, dish washing or the few washing machines in the village, went straight into the soil in the yard. I've seen chickens drink water polluted by chemicals used for washing or eat grass just next to those places. That made me realize that even grass-fed chickens might not make you eager to consume your “eco eggs”.

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Another one of our questions was about a trash collection system. Everyone said that they would like to have one, and most of the families said that they'd be willing to pay a small tax for the purpose. After our inquiries, the community leaders explained that a system had been in place, thanks to an agreement with neighbouring villages but it was long time ago and the politics have changed. There are new representatives in the villages now, and the system, set up by the previous party, stopped working after another election. It was especially difficult to hear, because that showed us that a working system for remote villages is possible, there's just not enough political willingness.

Managing the world's trash Trash management is a big challenge of the XXI century. High-income countries set up recycling systems – San Francisco, USA, for example, is well on its way to become a city that recycles 100% of its waste [28], while France is in the process of forcing supermarkets to donate their unsold food to charities instead of throwing it away [29].

European countries ban giving away plastic bags in stores for free and promote reusable bags instead. Easy? No. Possible? YES. However, the difference between developing and developed countries is, as usual, huge.

The low-income countries usually cannot afford similar systems, and if they could, they might not have been appropriate for them. Some Western systems are too expensive or require the use of additional resources. Big companies open shops in developing countries and pack every single product in plastic or Styrofoam, or both. This trend, that is seen as dated and wrong in developed countries, is still being promoted in the developing ones, many of which want to be exactly like they see the West on TV: artificial and full of plastic.

Before, the indigenous people used to “shop” in nature and produced no non-organic waste. Using traditional ecological knowledge systems, the indigenous people on all continents were taking care of the ecosystems and the Earth. When plastic came from the West, those countries suddenly found themselves full of waste with no systems in place to manage it [30].

The more people move to the cities, the more solid waste they produce. When farmers are forced out of their homes – be it by the government selling their land to transnational companies or buying subsidized food products from rich countries and rendering local production unprofitable – they usually go to cities where they join the growing numbers of citizens. They loose their contact with nature and become consumers, instead of producers. And the one thing that consumers do produce is waste.

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Another part of the issue is trash export, that is, the procedure of shipping trash from industrialized countries to the developing ones [31]. Yes, this is exactly what is sounds like: rich countries, having their own landfills overflowing, send their – often toxic and chemically-loaded – waste to the poor ones. Growing numbers of electronic waste are being shipped away illegally every year [32]. How could the people of poor nations, who cannot deal with their own trash, be expected to manage the waste that they didn't even produce? The waste that even highly industrialized countries cannot process?

Yet the people in developing countries, especially those in remote areas, often have good ideas about processing waste – though they don't come from the Western “enlightenment” but from poverty itself. As mentioned above, a lot of people reuse their potential waste. Instead of buying new plastic containers just to pack lunch for the auntie, they will use what they already have. They don't have cars, so they use public transport and bicycles. They are still closer to the Earth than many eco-conscious Europeans. They even go to local healers, shamans, or bush doctors, to treat ailments naturally.

Now what?

There are several ideas that can help with waste management in developing countries.

Composting is a very useful way to manage organic waste, especially in rural areas, where most of the people are farmers. Composting serves a double purpose of waste disposal method and fertilizing the ground for crops. However, many people, even those living in tropical climates – so good for composting – have no idea about the process or the benefits of it.

Not only can food be composted, but human waste as well! Dry, composting latrines are a perfect solution for the environment: they don't waste tons of water and again, the humanure (human manure) may be used in farming just like any other kind of manure (provided it is composted in the right way and for the right amount of time).

Most of the paper and cardboard waste can also be used in the garden, thus reducing the volume of trash that ends up in the dump site.

Of course, all of this is connected to proper education. Teaching people about dangers of burning trash, of throwing electronic waste into the forest just outside of their yard, of their animals drinking contaminated water. About refusing additional plastic bags when we can use our own.

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The Western governments need to own up to their mistakes and reduce the waste production as quickly as possible. Most of the products we buy are packaged excessively, something that could definitely be avoided.

But local governments need to take action, too. How is it that a trash management system can be operational one year and non-existent the next? Why couldn't policies be put in place that would oblige the districts to ensure properly working systems?

Waste management is a global problem these days. Shipping the trash to developing countries will only work for so long. Trying to sink it in the seas has disastrous consequences. What's next? Polluting the space? Well, apparently, we're doing that, too – says Huffington Post.

People are slowly starting to realize that the industrial revolution might not have been so great after all. There are small movements that promote going back to the roots: moving out of the cities, growing our own, organic, food, even refusing plastic bags in supermarkets. People in high-income countries have access to information about those issues and mobility to escape the industrialization. But can the developing countries realize that the “modernization� we are trying to sell them has not worked out so well for us after all? Stop this machine, go back to their roots? Hopefully, yes.

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Part VI:

Poverty & Tourism

Tourist traffic in remote areas The village we lived in is located about 30 minute drive from the highway. It is the first one, coming from the junction; after that there are several other communities, all of them approximately 30 minute drive from each other. But ours is special.

Our village is situated on the bank of a beautiful river, which is flowing out of the mountain – or so it seems. The river is really flowing out of a cave, which people can enter and swim in for about an hour until reaching a high waterfall that is impossible to conquer. The cave has been used by the Maya people as a ceremonial site, long, long ago. Nowadays it is serving as a tourist attraction. One of them. The other natural attraction is a small but challenging hill that can be climbed, rewarding the hiker with a beautiful view of the area.

An American university has built a lodge where researchers can stay and study the beautiful nature of the rainforest. To help the researchers – and, consequently, the tourists – observe the forest, they've also built a canopy tour with several platforms connected by zip-lines. Everyone can come and stay at the lodge, and local guides are happy to take them to their farms and houses and to show them how to make traditional corn tortilla or how cacao beans become chocolate.

The community lives mainly from small-scale farming. The second most popular occupation – if we don't count the stay-at-home moms, that is – is being a tour guide. Older men would only use the job to supplement their farming income, while the younger ones often choose tourism as their main occupation, only occasionally helping out at the family farms.

All of them are officially licensed tour guides.

The tourist traffic isn't big enough to support all of the guides, and one of our projects was to build a sign advertising the attractions and put it at the junction by the highway. Many young men would go away for months at a time and live in tourist destinations by the sea.

It isn't just out of necessity – a lot of them want to know another life and tourism is their chance to get out, especially if they have no money for university.

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Tourism in our village supports more than those guides. Local women, almost all of whom are making some kind of traditional hand craft, displaytheir merchandise every time tourists came to go to the cave, or the zip-line. Some of them would get jobs cooking or cleaning when tourists stay at the lodge, while men would become night guards or construction workers for expansion projects. Small local businesses would get more customers and the villagers are thinking about creating new places: a small ice-cream parlour with Wi-Fi or a restaurant with local food. Finally, there is the zip-line itself.

The manager of the canopy tour is an American university professor and entrepreneur. He is also a philanthropist, interested in the community that he works in. Aside from some strictly charitable work, he also created a small training program: he asked the village authorities to select 12 men and women who would get trained for free in using the zipline equipment and guiding the tourists. He knew that he couldn't give jobs to all of them, but since zip-lines are a big thing in Belize, the ones that couldn't get a job there would still have gained a professional skill.

Of course, not everyone is happy about the tourism in the village, and there is some jealousy. Generally though, most people are happy with new economical and development opportunities.

Visiting the Poor of the world Tourism is a big industry, both in low- and high-income countries. However, as highincome countries have many other branches of successful industry, the developing ones often count on the visitors to support their economy. In 2012, one in 12 jobs worldwide was in tourism [34, 38], and it accounted for “either the number one or number two export earnings for 20 of the 48 least developed countries, including Tanzania and Samoa.”[34] But where does that money go? For many years there has been a trend for tourists to stay in big resorts, which look the same no matter if they're in Thailand or Mexico, or Egypt.

People – mostly Europeans and Americans – can go there and feel like home, with aircondition, continental breakfast and comfortable beds. Those resorts, though often situated in poor countries, are usually owned by foreign investors; local people are mostly hired as maids, security guards, cooks and if they're lucky – managers. Depending on the country they can make a relatively big amount of money from salary or tips, but still nothing compared to what the boss makes. More often than not, the taxes don't even stay in the country, because the enterprise is registered in another place. So the entrepreneurs, 33

whose business relies also on the local infrastructure, don't contribute in any significant way to the development of the country.

Many tourist activities destroy the local environment, and infrastructure can have disastrous effects on the ecosystems. Inconsiderable tourists often leave the place full of trash and the biodiversity disturbed. They can destroy the art and disturb the environment – all things that could be prevented by education. They often choose to buy souvenirs made in some factories in China or India, as opposed to locally handmade products, thus contributing to “slave labour” and directing their money to wealthy capitalists instead of supporting the workers themselves.

However, the trend is changing. Institutions like the Travel Foundation [35], based in the UK, make sure that the money from visitors goes directly to local communities. For example, the Maasai village tours in Kenya are now really supporting the development of those villages, instead of filling the pockets of foreign entrepreneurs.

There are some foreigners who decide to move to poor countries and set up some sort of tourist business – a lot of those are conscious of their surroundings and do want to be fair to the people who are now their neighbours – I've personally met such entrepreneurs in both Belize and St. Vincent and the Grenadines. Those people recognize that they're guests on this land and they try to use their knowledge and experience to genuinely help the local community.

It is not only the foreigners who get to develop the tourist industry. With help from small loans or grants, local people start to take the business into their own hands – they build their own restaurants, eco-retreats, tour-guide businesses. Lori Robertson brings the example of an Ecolodge in Bolivia, founded with the help of a US environmental organization. The lodge has been owned by a local community for more than 10 years and provides jobs and income for 70 families [34].

In turn, worldwide education has made tourists from high-income countries more conscious about the places they choose to vacation in. More and more people prefer the stay in a poor jungle village to big resorts, because they are more authentic, exotic, and support the locals. They want to meet the real people, not see a spectacle directed by foreign tour-operators. They want to taste the food that locals eat, even if it tastes strange and doesn't look like a restaurant meal. They want to sleep in a hammock, bake their own tortilla, eat cassava bread and milk the goat. They usually refer to themselves as travellers, not tourists. I've met an American family in Belize, the parents came with their 9-year-old 34

daughter to the primary school in the village and talked to the principal about the education system in Belize. Then they asked if their daughter could stay in the classroom for half a day and see how children from other parts of the world learn. It seemed like a really good idea to me, especially since the local students were also very curious about the girl, and soon they all seemed to be good old friends.

The internet is helping a lot, connecting travellers with potential hosts. There are numerous websites promoting responsible travelling, like Conscious.Travel [36]. There are also other ways, for example many platforms which connect travellers, who are willing to work in exchange for accommodation and food, with people and organizations who need some help. However, those are usually not well-known among the poor. In Belize, people can use the Maya Village Homestay Network [37] which has a database of families in rural areas who are willing to take in travellers and for a small fee let them stay with the family for 2-3 days, teaching them about their daily lives. The money would go to the families, who definitely could use the additional income, while travellers would learn a lot from such a stay.

Learning about the great new fashion for conscious travelling, even the big resorts try to cooperate with local people, buying local products for their kitchen, hiring local guides, etc. They will brag about this in their promotional materials, gaining the advantage over other hotels, who then have to “catch up� by involving the locals as well. Although most of the capital still stays in the foreign pocket, the trend for the better is there.

What does it mean?

Travelling is a great form of education; you will never learn from the books like you learn from experience. Conscious travelling is another level of experience, which can teach more than just the history and heritage sites of the country. It teaches culture and traditions, but more importantly, it teaches openness.

Campaigns about entrepreneurship opportunities for the people living in local communities could be very useful in some places. These people can be just as creative as westerners, just as hard working (usually more) – they just need the opportunity to leave behind the vicious cycle of poverty and they can thrive! Some people just need a little bit of confidence, someone to believe in them. Others, just some financial advice; yet others could use small loans for a start, or advertising ideas. Those are all things that can be provided relatively easily and should be encouraged. These are the tools which help the Poor to build their own path away from poverty, instead of just receiving money as charity.

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This is what most of them want – not a handout, but a way to make a sustainable living in dignity.

We need to encourage wealthy travellers to experience local life as much as they can, instead of staying behind the hotel wall. Even going to local restaurants, Robertson says [34], is a step in the right direction. And isn't it a great feeling, to know that just by sitting in a small wooden shack and enjoying freshly-caught fish, you are helping the Poor? That every dollar you spend on a local market, buying juicy, exotic fruits, not only gets you a healthy snack, but helps to put dinner on some family's table? I was very happy to see foreign tourists in Punta Gorda town, Belize, buying handmade bracelets from village women. Those bracelets, costing 5 USD each, would be given away as souvenirs, but it's not about the buying, it's about the intent. Most of the buyers clearly did it not for the need of bracelets, but for supporting the locals.

So next time you feel bad about spending lots of money on your travels– don't! Just make sure that the products you buy are locally made, and even if your friends don't like the souvenirs or the shrimps in coconut sauce don't taste the way you imagined, at least you can be sure that you have helped somebody.

So what's your next destination?

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Part VII:

Poverty & Food

Same food, different day...

Our village, just like most of Toledo, is populated mostly by small-scale farmers, who grow predominantly maize, beans and rice. The men work long hours under the sun, helping each other during especially demanding times of preparing the fields for seeds or harvest; women are shelling the corn or beans. Because of the lack of storage facilities, most of the yield would be sold, with only a small amount remaining for family consumption. After awhile, when the corn finishes, the family would have to go to the market and buy the same product, but for a much higher price than they'd previously sold it for.

A typical diet of a Belizean farmer's family includes corn tortillas, eggs, beans, corn tortillas, rice, corn tortillas, chicken, flour tortillas and plantain. Those are the staples, eaten practically every day. There are 3 small shops in the village, all of them selling mostly food with long shelf-life, including powdered milk, frozen imported chicken, canned sardines and a lot of candies, plus flour, sugar and rice. The big stores in town don't offer much more, and while fresh produce and fish markets are overflowing, most people don't buy much there. The families usually don't produce any fresh vegetables; if they ate any, they would usually be cooked. Despite the tropical climate, so perfect for growing sweet and juicy fruits, the local people don't favour those either.

No dairy (no fridge!), lots of sugar and same foods day by day‌ We have taken on a project of promoting backyard vegetable gardens, with educational presentations, free seeds distribution and, of course, giving an example by growing quite nice tomatoes, cucumbers and string beans in our little garden constructed wholly from local materials. We also tried promoting eating fresh vegetables, especially among the curious children, but also exchanging some dishes with the women.

Many people are overweight while being undernourished. According to the WHO [39], in 2011 over 19% of children under 5 were malnourished to the point of stunting, while almost 8% were overweight. Almost 52% of pregnant women suffer from anaemia; other food-related diseases include cardiovascular diseases and diabetes – which are numbers 1

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and 2 on a list of causes of death – high blood pressure and diarrhoea. The World Factbook shows adult obesity prevalence at over 20% in 2014 [40].

Food of the Poor There is enough food on Earth to feed all 7 billion of us – and yet, 1 in 8 people all over the world go hungry [41]. Millennium Development Goal 1, target C was aimed towards halving the rate of the population suffering from hunger between the years of 1990 and 2015.

While a significant change has been noted – for example, the stunted children percentage was lowered from 40 to 25 by 2012 – there are still children and adults suffering and dying from hunger [42]. Why? One of the reasons, cited by The World Food Programme (WFP) [41], is a vicious cycle.

Undernourished people will be less productive – physically and mentally – and therefore less likely to escape poverty.

Lack of agricultural investment is another reason for malnourishment [41]. Developing countries try to “catch up” to the developed ones, by investing in industries, getting conditional loans from the World Bank, buying cheap food from abroad – which, ultimately, destroys the local food production and a big part of the economy – like what happened in Haiti [43]. Investing in agriculture, according to the WFP citing UN Food and Agriculture Organization, “is five times more effective in reducing poverty and hunger than investment in any other sector” [41].

Small-scale farmers are usually unprepared to deal with the climate change consequences [41]. In Belize, more and more people have problems due to unpredictable weather patterns. While before a lot of people had had small vegetable gardens, they were all destroyed in a flooding. Lack of education on organic farming causes the same farmers to contribute to environmental degradation, for example by using (costly) chemical fertilizers and pesticides which cause soil erosion and biodiversity loss among others, instead of very effective and cheap local fertilizing plants, home-made organic pesticides, manure, etc.

Worst of all, 1/3 of the food produced in the world is wasted [41]. That means that at least 33% more people could easily be fed, not to mention the environmental impact of producing so much food for nothing – it takes, for example, 40 litres of water to produce 1 slice of bread, and more than 15,000 for every kilogram of beef meat [44].

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More and more people from rural areas move to the cities in search of better lives. In highand middle-income countries being a farmer is considered a job for uneducated people without other perspectives, while the low-income countries sell their arable lands to foreign investors, displacing their own farmers [46].

In Belize, and many other parts of the world, corn, root crops and beans are often the only foods available to the Poor. Corn tortillas might not have a high nutritional value, but they make a person eating them feel full, cheating the hunger. On the other hand, imported, subsidized, usually genetically modified products push the fresh, local food aside. Healthy, grass-fed chickens often cannot economically compete with the frozen ones, though if we studied them closer, we would find much less nutrition per pound in the modified ones.

Deep-fried, over-salted or high-carb foods are being sold on the streets for low prices. If bought, unhealthy food is generally cheaper than the nutritious one, more filling and addictive. Fast food chains, appearing in more and more countries, promise cheap food and Western lifestyle. But at what price?

As mentioned above, food-related diseases can have very serious consequences.

Cardiovascular diseases, diabetes and high blood pressure are all increasingly common worldwide. People in low- and high-income countries eat less fresh food, loosing important micro-nutrients, while huge companies like Monsanto promote genetically modified foods which do more harm than good [45].

Undernourished, unhealthy people are less likely to gain education and secure a good income. Those farmers, who have been cultivating their lands for centuries, are now experimenting with the technologies of the so-called Green Revolution, trying to chase the West, which in turn is starting to wake up and understand that mass-production of food, based on fossil fuels and chemicals, is not good. What these farmers need is to be left undisturbed and allowed to go back to their roots [47].

What can be done?

The people in developing countries are not hungry because they are not capable of farmingfor food. Indeed, many of them are farmers, as opposed to a relatively small number of farmers in the developed world. However, most of them either cannot sell their products with sufficient profit, or they're forced to work for somebody else, often for slave-wages.

Colonialism is not finished as long as we, in the industrialized world, continue to enjoy the fruits of cheap labor of the people we don't know.

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All of us need food, but not many realize how much it actually takes to produce it. Most of the people in the developed world are consumers, not producers, while disproportionately more Poor are only producing – for the rest of us.

Broad education about the importance of eating local, fair-trade food is needed in the industrialized world. More and more conscious buyers are checking the nutritional values of the products, as well as where they come from. It's also important to teach the consumers about not wasting the food they're buying. But what can a poor person in a city do when canned tomatoes with additives are much cheaper than the fresh ones, which anyway come from 10,000 miles away?

A good campaign about nutrition would be the next step. It should among others, be the doctors' responsibility to teach people about preventing diseases by eating healthy. We need much less highly-nutritious products that we would of the artificially-produced ones.

There are healthy and cheap recipes that can be used by many – if only people would stop and look.

Of course, the best solution would be to cultivate our own vegetables. While for some this is simply impossible, many people, even in the cities, successfully turn their balconies into vegetable gardens.

Organic farming and, especially, the Permaculture movement, can bring more healthy food to the farmers in developing countries. Permaculture (permanent agriculture), is a style of farming that resembles nature's way of producing food and has been used by farmers all over the world before the monoculture took over. Nowadays, with companion planting, using organic fertilizers, owners of very small plots of land could produce enough highquality food to feed their families and sell the surplus, without using a lot of manpower.

In order to make that possible, the governments need to stop reducing tariffs for foreign products, supporting their local production instead. They should encourage people to stay in the countryside, helping them to make a good life for themselves, instead of joining the masses of consumers in the big cities. Banning GMOs from a country means supporting small-scale farmers, since big companies usually use modified seeds. Finally, helping to find markets for local farmers, for example by creating farmers' associations, has the benefit of lowering the production prices and ability to negotiate higher prices with export agencies, while allowing farmers to keep their land and independence.

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Part VIII:

Poverty & Volunteering

Volunteering shoulder to shoulder My own volunteering experience is a part of a bigger program. Before going to Belize, I've spent 6 months in a school for activists, where I was learning about poverty, inequality, possible causes and solutions, the reality of the country where I was going, health, nutrition, organic gardening, sustainable energy, recycling and much more. With a lot of theoretical knowledge gained, several investigations done, fundraising goals reached; after gardening three times a week and creating an organic backyard vegetable garden for a family in a nearby village; after preparing numerous materials for children and adults (about HIV/AIDS, nutrition, gardening, mosquito-borne diseases and others); after learning how to live in a community and how to solve conflicts and studying the history and goals of our organization, my team mate and I were finally ready to go for our exciting adventure!

While we were studying, our project leader in Belize was already looking for a community that could use our help. He talked with village authorities, organized housing and prepared our 6-month program guidelines.

After reaching Belize we were very eager to start working, but we had to wait. First, we spent about a week with a previous volunteer, who was just about to leave Belize. We lived with her, helped her to finish a project, listened to the presentation about her own volunteering experience, and of course learned about her everyday life and asked for advice. The following week was spent with the project leader – our boss – visiting the main office, meeting different people, studying and adjusting our guidelines, learning the rules and objectives. Finally, after 2 weeks, we were more than ready to move into the community where we would live and work for the next 6 months.

Still, our first month was spent getting to know the people, doing surveys with every family, having meetings with the village council, school principal and PTA and organizing our own work. This wasn't a fascinating time, but it was necessary for us to create the change that was needed and supported by the community.

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This is one of the reasons why I liked volunteering with this particular organization. We were working WITH the people, not for them. Every one of our projects was supported by the village (or the school), and all of them involved the community members' help in some ways. After all, we didn't know much about constructing new shelves for a library, but we could design the room, obtain new books and create a digital and printed database of all the books. Just like we didn't try to teach the people – who, after all, were farmers – how to make their own vegetable gardens, but we did make sure to promote organic farming, using local materials, cheap and eco-friendly. In our work we always combined the knowledge and skills that we brought with those of the local people to ensure the best results.

The community, initially wary and distrustful, ended up throwing us a touching goodbye party and already asking if they could get new volunteers soon. They were much more likely to cooperate with our organization after our stay than before and when we were leaving, there were already talks between our boss and the village council about their future projects together. We've worked hard to make a lasting impact in the community, not come and go.

Most of all, our project was called “Child Aid”, but, as much as we'd like to, we weren't playing with children all the time. That's because the organization assumes that in order to be happy, children first need to be well-fed, healthy, educated… That's why our main job was to secure the family economy, teach about nutrition, promote healthy lifestyles and work with the school. This is the approach that in the end helped me make a decision to choose this particular project.

What about other ways?

Volunteering abroad is more and more popular these days. A lot of young people like to spend their gap year this way, while older ones take the time away from work or combine volunteering with vacation. It is a perfect opportunity to give back to the society and share the skills and time with those who need it most. However, there are instances, quite a lot of them, in fact, when volunteers don't help, and sometimes even hurt the ones that they came to serve. It is not the fault of well-intentioned volunteers who usually really want to do good, but of the organizations that are trying to exploit them for money.

Many wealthy tourists extend their regular vacation with a short volunteering experience, often in orphanages [48, 49, 50]. Those trips, while emotionally touching for the

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volunteers, can actually do a lot of harm to the already vulnerable children. Professor Linda Richter says that ‘AIDS orphan tourism’ is one aspect of the global ‘voluntourism’ industry and an emotional connection with needy young children is at the core of what voluntourists want to experience. [48] That sentence alone says a lot about the negative impact voluntourism (from volunteering + tourism) can have on the children. Short-term visitors come to play with the kids, maybe help them with homework, but at what price? Those children get quickly attached to any adult that gives them some attention, an adult who will leave in a week, two, four… The volunteers will leave with a sense of fulfilment and heartbreaking pictures, but the kids will stay to be played with by the next batch of well-meaning but misguided wealthy adults.

But this is not even the biggest issue. Short-term volunteering in orphanages is widely discouraged by different organizations [51] which are concerned with children's safety and well-being. Apparently some caregivers are prone to keeping the children in bad conditions solely so that they can get more volunteers – who pay for the privilege of volunteering quite a lot of money. It is estimated that in Cambodia – a popular orphanage voluntourism destination – as many as 75% of children in orphanages are not, in fact, orphans [49].

Also, the children often skip school in order to entertain the rich newcomers; they are treated as a source of income, not unlike animals in zoos.

But what about other volunteering jobs?

They can be detrimental too. First of all, there is a qualifications issue. Sometimes the Western volunteers are allowed to do the jobs that they wouldn't be qualified for in their home countries [50, 52] – like medical students performing interventions that they shouldn't, or high school graduates with no pedagogical background teaching children.

These cause the lowering of standards, indirectly saying that it is acceptable to give the Poor lower quality services than the rich Another issue comes with employment. Often international volunteers have no skills to speak of (or, if they do, the organizations are unable to use them). So they do manual jobs, suitable for unqualified people. The problem? Those countries already have unskilled people and they need the jobs! If an organization can have a volunteer actually paying to do the job, they will often choose that option over providing a job for a local worker.

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The organizations often put more effort into making sure that the visitors are happy than into working for the community. Pippa Biddle describes an excursion she once took with her classmates to build a library in Tanzania. It turned out that the American students were so bad at laying bricks that every night the villagers were redoing their work, not saying anything to the well-meaning youth [53]. Basically, we failed at the sole purpose of our being there, she will write critically several years later.

Organizations loose time and money to introduce new volunteers all the time, and sometimes they lack transparency in where exactly the volunteering fees go. All in all it turns out that volunteering abroad is a much more complex issue than we previously expected.

Volunteer responsibly!

So does that mean that all volunteering abroad is bad? Or maybe only my own experience was good? Definitely not! You just need to follow some guidelines before choosing your project [54].

First of all, take your time. Volunteering abroad is often an adventure of a lifetime, it's worth it to ensure that your time and money will be well-spent and you will make a positive impact in the end. Talk with your organization on Skype, ask for contact to previous volunteers. Ask where the money goes to make sure that the organization is not simply making money on volunteers.

Ask about the preparation period. The longer it is, the better!

Make sure to utilize the skills you already have (though it's not wrong to assume you will gain new ones during your project). Ask yourself if with your work you will not steal/replace someone else's job, but truly bring something from outside that the local community couldn't achieve by themselves.

Check if your organization works with the people. It is relatively easy to come to a poor country and decide what you want to do. It's much harder – but ultimately better – to ask what people need and want, and how they can contribute to the project. This way you don't “save” them, you just push them a little bit. Try to make a lasting impact with sustainable projects and to empower the community instead of making them even more dependent on international help.

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Try to spend as much time as possible. It is easier for the organization, the community and the volunteer if the service period is longer, i.e. several months, or at least weeks.

Finally, enjoy the experience! Volunteering abroad, especially in remote parts of foreign countries, can be challenging, but it can be the best, most memorable and meaningful experience of your life. Choose a project that you feel passionate about and pack your bags!

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References Part I: Poverty & Gender 1. Asian Development Bank, Mandaluyong City, Philippines “Gender equality and food security—women’s empowerment as a tool against hunger”, 2013, Web. 10 July 2015.

2. Bejing Platform for Action: United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women. Web. 10 July 2015.

3. Fram Cohen, Michelle “The Conditions of Women in Developing and Developed Countries”, The Independent Review, v. XI, n. 2, Fall 2006, pp. 261– 274. Web. 10 July 2015.

4. ldaief, Mona, Noujaim Jehane, dir. Solar Mamas, 2012, Film. (Also known as: Rafea: Solar Mama).

5. Kristof, Nicholas D., Sheryl WuDunn. Half the Sky. Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide. New York, 2010. Print.

Part II: Poverty & Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights 6. “Belize.” UNFPA. Web. 10 July 2015.

7. “Maternal Health.” World Health Organization. Web. 10 July 2015.

8. Tumwine, Gilbert. “Global Overview of Maternal Health Statistics”. In: Agardh, Anette, Jerker Liljestrand. Global Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights (SRHR). Coursera. Lund University. Online video clip. 10 June, 2015 9.Chalasani, Satvika. “Why access to modern contraception is a public health priority”. In: Agardh, Anette, Jerker Liljestrand. Global Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights (SRHR). Coursera. Lund University. Online video clip. 10 June, 2015 10. Firth Murray, Anne. “The Maternity Death Road: Reproductive and Sexual Health." In: From Outrage to Courage. Women Taking Action for Health and Justice, Common Courage Press, 2008, pp.85-111. Print.

Part III: Poverty & Education 11. Shah, Anup. “Structural Adjustment—a Major Cause of Poverty.”, GlobalIssues.org. 24 Mar 2013. Web. 18 June 2015.

12. The Center for Global Development. “Rich World, Poor World: A Guide to Global Development.” PDF file.

13. White, Howard. “Educating the world: how to get pupils in developing countries to learn.” Guardian. 26 Sept 2013. Web. 18 June 2015.

14. Education for All Global Monitoring Report. “Education Transforms Lives”. UNESCO 2013. PDF file.

15. “Sustainable development begins with education: How education can contribute to the proposed post-2015 goals.” GlobalEducationFirst.org. PDF file.

16. “Belize”. The World Factbook. Web. 18 June 2015.

17. “Goal 2: Achieve universal primary education. Where do we stand?” United Nations Development Programme. Web. 18 June 2015.

Part IV: Poverty & Religion 18. Dodo, Obediah, Richard G. Banda, Gloria Dodo. “African Initiated Churches, Pivotal in Peace-Building A Case of the Johane Masowe Chishanu.” Journal of Religion & Society.

Vol. 16 (2014). The Kripke Center. PDF file.

19. Green, Duncan “Religion and Development: what are the links? Why should we care?”, Oxfam Blog. 27th Oct, 2011. Web. 30 June 2015.

20. Rees, Tomas James. “Is Personal Insecurity a Cause of Cross-National Differences in the Intensity of Religious Belief?” Journal of Religion and Society. Vol. 11 (2009). The Kripke Center. PDF file.

21. Delamontagne, R. Georges. “Religiosity and Hate Groups. An Exploratory and Descriptive Correlational Study.” Journal of Religion and Society. Vol. 12 (2010). The Kripke Center. PDF file.

22. “Research shows link between poverty gap and religious belief. British Humanist Association for the one life we have. Humanism.org.uk. 29th July 2009. Web. 30 June 2015.

23. Barber, Nigel. “Why Atheism Will Replace Religion. Why atheism grows faster than religion.” PsychologyToday.com. 18 May, 2010. Web. 30 June 2015.

24. Stasna, Kazi. “Do countries lose religion as they gain wealth?” CBC News, 14 Mar 2013. Web. 30 June 2015.

25. Crabtree, Steve. “Religiosity Highest in World's Poorest Nations”, Gallup Inc. Gallup.com. 31 Aug 2010. Web. 30 June 2015.

26. Smith, Buster G., Rodney Stark. “Religious Attendance Relates to Generosity Worldwide.” Gallup Inc. Gallup.com. 4 Sept 2009. Web. 30 June 2015.

27. “Global Index Of Religiosity And Atheism – 2012.” Gallup Inc. PDF file.

Part V: Poverty & Trash Management 28. Pouchard, Alexandre. “San Francisco closer to turning zero-waste ambition into reality.” Guardian.com. 17 June 2014. Web. 5 July 2015.

29. Chrisafis, Angelique. “France to force big supermarkets to give unsold food to charities”. Guardian.com. 22 May 2015. Web. 5 July 2015.

30. Büchner, Moritz. “3 Alternative Ideas for Waste Management in Developing Countries.” Knowtheflow.com. 9 Nov 2012. Web. 5 July 2015 31. Baird, Vanessa. “New Internationalist Magazine On Trash.” New Internationalist Magazine, issue 295. 1997. Web. 5 July 2015.

32. Vidal, John. “Toxic 'e-waste' dumped in poor nations, says United Nations.”

Guardian.com. 14 Dec 2013. Web. 5 July 2015.

33. Borenstein, Seth. “Space Pollution: Junk Needs Clean Up, Scientists Say.” HuffingtonPost.com. 9 Jan 2011. Web. 5 July 2015.

Part VI: Poverty & Tourism 34. Robertson, Lori. “How tourism can alleviate poverty.” BBC Travel. 21 Mar 2013. Web. 7 June 2015.

35. TheTravelFoundation.org.uk. Web. 7 June 2015.

36. Conscious.TravelI. Web. 7 June 2015.

37. “Maya Village Homestay Network.” SounthernBelize.com. Web. 7 June 2015.

38. “Tourism and Poverty Alleviation.” World Tourism Organization Network. Web. 7 June 2015.

Part VII: Poverty & Food 39. “Nutrition Landscape Information System Country Profile: Belize.” World Health Organization, who.int. Web. 12 June 2015.

40. “Belize.” The World Factbook. Web. 12 June 2015.

41. “What causes hunger?” World Food Programme, wfp.org. Web. 12 June 2015.

42. “Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger. Where do we stand?” United Nations Development Programme. Web. 12 June 2015.

43. “With cheap food imports, Haiti can't feed itself.” NBCNews.com. Web. 12 June 2015.

44. Maria H. “It's World Water Day.” SustainableTable.org.au. 22 Mar 2012. Web. 12 June 2015.

45. “GMO Dangers.”Institute for Responsible Technology. Web. 12 June 2015.

46. MacFarquhar, Neil. “African Farmers Displaced as Investors Move In.”NYTimes.com.

21 Dec 2010. Web. 12 June 2015.

47. Pfeiffer, Dale Allen. Eating Fossil Fuels: Oil, Food and the Coming Crisis in Agriculture.

New Society Publishers. Canada. 2006. Print.

Part VIII: Poverty & Volunteering 48. Richter, Linda. “Inside The Thriving Industry of AIDS Orphan Tourism”. VolunTourist Newsletter, Isssue 6. In: Voluntourism.org. Web. 10 July 2015.

49. Birrell, Ian. “Before you pay to volunteer abroad, think of the harm you might do”.

Guardian. 14 Nov 2010. Web. 10 July 2015.

50. Papi, Daniela. “Viewpoint: Is gap year volunteering a bad thing?”BBC News Magazine.

1 May 2013. Web. 10 July 2015.

51. “Children Are Not Tourist Attractions”. ThinkChildSafe.org. Web. 10 July 2015.

52. “Pitfalls in Volunteering Abroad.” Unite for Sight. Web. 10 July 2015.

53. Biddle, Pippa. “The Problem With Little White Girls, Boys and Voluntourism”, Huffington Post. 23 Feb 2014. Web. 10 July 2015.

54. Beck, Jessie. “10 Traits of a Responsible Volunteer Program.” GoOverseas. 18 Mar 2014. Web. 10 July 2015.

55. Stein, Natasha. “How to Find a Responsible Volunteering Project.” GapYear.com. Web. 10 July 2015.