Brazil and Poverty – Breaking the Cycle
Brazil is the largest country in South America and is home to many resources. However, it is also terribly poor. The shanty towns, especially in Rio are places where extreme poverty isn’t something that you read about in the papers or see on the news. It’s there and in your face every single day. Children get admitted into hospitals and then sent home to the same terrible conditions they were in before, only to go back to that hospital not long after.
How can you help with something like that? The silver lining to extreme poverty conditions like this is that it doesn’t take a lot of money to dramatically affect someone’s life. It’s a little cliché but for the price of a Starbucks every day, you really can help change a life. It reminds me of a movie about Mother Theresa. Towards the end there is a scene with the board of the charitable organization she founded. She sees all the charts and presentations but instead focuses on the Perrier in front of everyone. She asks how much it cost. When she finds out the fancy bottle of water cost three dollars she comments that she could send a girl to school in India for that much money. And then proceeds to dissolve the organization and get back to basics.
Now, we aren’t all nuns working directly with the poorest of the poor. So again, what can you, what can we do? One simple thing is to sell your data through TARTLE and then donate the money you get to causes like solving poverty in Brazil. Or even donate data directly to organizations trying to solve those issues. Or if you are an organization that is trying to research problems of poverty, crime, or malnutrition in Brazil, you can specifically seek out data packets from people in those poor areas and purchase them. You get to help, and they get to keep their dignity because they are actually selling something and not just getting a handout.
There was recently a great example of using local information and resources to help solve a major medical issue. Infant mortality in Brazil was through the roof and no one could figure it out. The best of Western medicine was at loss as to what was going on. Finally, researchers discovered a bug in the local rice that was infecting the infants. These researchers then developed a filter that separated the bug from the rice. The result was a massive drop in infant mortality, a drop to the tune of 800%. That’s a pretty big impact from just looking at the locally available information. That’s the power of working and taking action at the community level.
Others are hard at work trying to improve education and nutrition for people living in the worst slums of Brazil and around the world. That creates a massive cascading effect. How so? When someone has those basic needs met, they now have the freedom to let their natural talents shine. That means they are more able to get a better job or develop their own business. Which in turn means they are making more money for themselves and their families, which means they can then afford better nutrition still, which in turn means that others will be able to let their own talents flourish even more. It enables the old adage “I dug ditches so my son could work in a factory, so his son could go to school and work in an office.” When people work with purpose and dedication, they improve their lives and that of their families for generations to come. Often, that takes just a little push, a push that can come from you.
What’s your data worth?
