Friday, April 18, 2008

What is wrong with the world?

Every morning when I get to work I have a ritual. I sign onto my computer, check my voicemail, check my work e-mail, check my gmail and then I read CNN. I was making my way through the top 10 most popular articles and I see this quote, "I just couldn't cross my arms and turn away."

Turns out this woman, who lives in El Paso, has been going across the border to Mexico for the past 12 years to feed starving school children. More recently she has started to bring clothes, furniture and toys in addition to food. I thought to myself, wow, this woman is a great example of how one person really can change the world and make it a better place.

So I continue on with my reading and I see an article about an orphan who lives in a garbage dump in Thailand.



He scavenges for food in the dump and gathers bottles to recycle for money. These kinds of stories make me so sad. And this little boy's story is not unique...I saw kids like this when I was Thailand and India. Kids who are starving, being taken advantage of, working in sweat shops, not allowed to go to school. It's so disheartening and I wish I could help somehow.

The last article I read was the most disturbing and not because it was full of suffering or people just trying to survive. No, it was about parents who spend $10,000 on a freaking birthday party.



How many starving people can we feed with $10,000 in Mexico or Thailand or even Utah?? What kind of values are these people teaching their children? It just makes me want to cry.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I am from India.I 've seen kids in garbage dumps,collecting plastic bottles and stuff that are used for recycling factories.They are paid a very meagre amount.At first sight,you will be shocked to see little kids doing this when they are supposed to be playing outside and having fun.Your first reaction would be to do something to change that.But then the number of kids in this industry are huge that after sometimes one might get used to seeing this and it may become part of life to see these kids living in the garbage dumps.

And even these kids , they know nothing else other than garbage collecting.So whatever help you do,they go back to the same conditions.I am not sure how they system works where these kids are put in schools /homes where they can get good care & education.Need to find out this time.