Getting to know international contacts

Getting to Know Your International Contacts: Grenada

My conversational partner was Mrs. Lucy George Felix, the teacher in charge of the pre-school program in a  small village  named Post Royal, in Grenada. I had the opportunity to  conversate with her on poverty because I am now in Grenada visiting my mother and other relatives. Mrs. George works in a village where children are deprived of the basic needs for survival. They live in dilapidated houses, they collect water from the streams, they have little or no food, and sometimes she has to provide food for the children using her own resources. The conversation was very emotional and at times her expression on the experiences were so daunting I myself had to take deep breaths trying to overcome those emotions. I gasped, "What a pity!" From the exchanges there were little differences in the what was stated and what was discussed by Dr. Grace. The same kind of poverty is exhibited in the community. The people lack energy to even get up from where they sat. "I have seen hunger, deprivation, homelessness and diseases." Mrs. George Felix concluded.

Poverty does not stem only from economic instability but social factors as well. First, the person may be poor because our capitalist system and our excessively conservative government allow firms to pay people a wage that cannot keep them out of poverty.
Individuals  may simply not have enough education or skills.  In our system, low paid jobs tend to go to those who have not gotten as much in the way of skills or education as those who get the higher paying jobs.  A lack of education or skills could be an individual factor, but it could also come from shortcomings in our educational system.
There may be discrimination that is holding individuals back. This argument is particularly made in the case of people who come from the well-to-do's. If your father is Mr. this then you can get the job. It is like whio has a more prominent name in the village or community. Then the poor will never stand a chance because they are not looked at or considered. Some people are deliberately 'shut off' from the opportunity to have access to a decent paying job, or having a job at all.

 Poverty is the state for the majority of the world’s people and nations. Why is this? Is it enough to blame poor people for their own predicament? Have they been lazy, made poor decisions, and been solely responsible for their plight? What about their governments? Have they pursued policies that actually harm successful development? Such causes of poverty and inequality are no doubt real. In the case of all the issues of poverty, we cannot just sit and act as if poverty does not exist. The government of many of the small islands/nations are powerless. There are too many negative influences the reason why as a result, in the global context, a few get wealthy while the majority struggle. In Grenada, few may not be as wealthy but they can go by with the little they have while others struggle daily to even put food on the table for their children.

We need to advocate for families living in poverty. The silent killers are poverty, easily preventable diseases and illnesses, and other related causes. Despite the scale of this daily/ongoing catastrophe, it rarely manages to achieve, much less sustain, prime-time, headline coverage.
Let us make the headlines on the newspaper, the radio, the magazine, the television, books, flyers, the internet, on the streets, billboards and make poverty our number one (1) priority. Let us act as if we were in the same boat as our neighbors. Poverty cannot be eradicated in one day but if we work consistently and collaboratively with our partners we will go a long way in helping to change the lives of many.

Resources

 Children’s Defense Fund. (2010). Ending childhood poverty. Retrieved from http://www.childrensdefense.org/policy-priorities/ending-child-poverty/

“The Effects of Poverty on the Early Childhood Community” (approximate length: 13 minutes). Conversation with Dr. Cathy Grace (Director of Early Childhood Development, Children’s Defense Fund).

Rural poverty in Grenada retrieved from http://www.ruralpovertyportal.org/web/guest/country/home/tags/grenada