Everyone has a different definition of poverty. Here in the Scotland the generally accepted "threshold" is at half the national average income after housing costs. Anyone below this is "below the poverty line". According to a recent study by Barnados 430 000 children live below this line. But in the UK we have the safety net of social security to assist people in these situations.
Poverty can also be looked at in terms of necessities and luxuries. A Survey carried out by the PEW research Center in the USA in 2006 examined how Americans viewed certain conumer goods and compared the results with figures from a decade before.
The results are interesting to say the least. In every category except surprisingly that of the car the perception of these item as a necesssity has increased. 7 / 10 Americans consider home air con a necessity! What makes even more interesting reading is how these results are viewed by the different people in different income bands.
Again these results are interesting if only to show that you cannot make assumptions about what people consider necessary in their lives based on income.
These figures and assessments all relate to highly developed countries, but what of developing countries? The World Bank adopts a threshold that is equivalent to the purchasing power of US$1 per day, which quite obviously bears no comparison to our assessments of poverty here in the UK.
In actual fact there is a constant raging controversy about how to define poverty which has created huge tomes of academic literature, so there's not really much point in little old me contributing more to this, except to say that as teachers we have to find some way of raising awareness of issues relating to poverty not only on a global scale but at home.
Poverty here in Scotland often leads to very unhealthy lifestyles and shortened lifespan, and it is no coincidence that in areas such as Easterhouse where 98% of children live in or on the brink of poverty (Barnados study) life expectancy lower than that in more affluent areas of Scotland.
To look at these issues in my school we decided to organise a special wellie themed event to Give Poverty the Boot. We joined up with the 2 feeder primary schools who are part of our Welwitschia Partnership with schools in Namibia and Ethiopia and had the kids running about all over the school field in wellies taking part in activites aimed at analysing poverty issues both here and in the developing world. We are hoping that our partners in Africa will also carry out similar events, which would the enable us to make comparisons between how poverty is viewed here and in Namibia and Ethiopia.
Anyway i have said enough. Here's the film of how The Gordon Schools, Gordon Primary and Rhynie Primary, from a tiny corner of North East Scotland Gave Poverty the Boot.
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