This following text is a summary of three sites I’ve got to read during the search of my topic. They tell about poverty situations of some specific places over the world. If you want more information, I will post here the sites from where I based this summary on.
http://resourcecentre.savethechildren.se/content/country/india/childrens-situation
India : example of how children have to deal with harsh living and working conditions, and how they are injustices in their OWN country.
Even with India’s good economic growth, poverty is still
a cruel problems to children. In the whole country, almost
half the number of children suffer from malnutrition.
Due to this poverty, these children do not have access to
clean water, hiegene, and good house conditions. The education
and the health care there is limited and sometimes, inexistent.
In India, the number of children is the largest in the world, and about 18 million children
live and/or work on urban streets. Due to the harsh working conditions,
children are exposed to dangerous machines or are even sexually exploited.
The worst problem of all of this, is trying to get a good recovery from children who suffered from sexual abuses and make them try to forget it all.
Child labor is another major problem in India. More than 2 million children work with hazardous situations. There is a law due to the correct age in which children are able to work, but it is no enforced correctly. Child soldiers is another example of harsh conditions in India. There are many groups which recruit children all over the area and teach them how to perform armed operations. Some times, discrimination against women or girls is a factor of why some girls don’t receive the adequate education as they should have, and can result also in forced marriages. In a research, the Save the Children program reported that 69% of all children that were part of the research, suffered from sexual abuse or child labor.
http://www.poverties.org/child-poverty.html
Child poverty, it starts at home: Along with all my summaries, I am connecting to major problems: the poverty that leads to bad housing, poor or no education, lack of food and clothes.
Sometimes, what makes children grow up with difficult situations, is the way they live at home. Parents may often use violence to deal with children because their patience is lost as well as their hope. The problem of any kind of abuses is that it is passed from generation to generation; conclusion, it will never stop, without a significant help. of course the middle and upper classes may suffer as well, however it happens more often in poor families who’s parents have already lost their hope to struggle for a good live for their families.
It is common, the physical punishment which parents describe as a way to educate their children. However, this doesn’t work as expected. Some of these parents think and affirm that it is a way to make them respect them, however, they wont respect them. They will futurity follow their example and actually put FEAR instead of respect in the home. Some children suffer from emotional abuse. Some parents fail to make their children believe that they actually can have a better life. Instead, they just give up of that, which makes the children scared of life. What scares the children the most is that their parents, who should have the role to protect them and help them, really are the one beating them which results in the child’s emotional trauma. In the lack of money, this will stimulate the children to forget about the studies and try a more simple life (aka, drug abuse or alcohol).
http://www.freethechildren.com/getinvolved/geteducated/childpoverty.htm
Countries are often failing in trying to reduce poverty. Today, almost half of the world lives with less than two dollars a day. It really is an extreme living condition for these people, which should actually make us worry.
“Every child deserves a chance. A kid who is living in poverty does not get a fair chance” – Free The Children.
Poverty has the capacity of immobilizing the society’s development by locking the continuous cycle of the new generations. It can lead to vulnerable changes in the economy, lack of basic products of daily life, as well as health conditions and a good education for both girls and boys.
According to this site, the right definition of poverty is: “Child poverty is a significant lack of the basic needs required for healthy physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual development. Child poverty is also defined as a lack of opportunities (capability deprivation), a lack of control over one’s life, as social isolation and as discriminatory treatment at the hands of others.” The characteristics of poverty are: a non-healthy diet, no basic education, and no adequate health care.
Example: Canada and USA
Canada is one of the richest countries of the world, but over 1,400,000 of the children live in extreme poverty. Mostly because of their disadvantaged families and they are usually children of single parents.
In the USA, almost 15 million children live in poverty. Most families, due to their lack of house, food, money, clothes, and others, tend to become homeless.
