Fighting Against Global Inequality

We have the awareness but what have we done with it?

World issues, global studies, politics, history, sociology, women studies. The list of courses available to students across Canada that spread the knowledge or at least touches base on the subject of global inequality is incredible. Further than courses, schools have programs such as Model United Nations, diversity councils, charity foundation groups that have thousands of members nationwide. Our generation (current students) are growing and developing in a time where the knowledge of global issues is so accessible, that I would even go as far as saying barely inaccessible on a daily basis.

Over the past few years, the message that most professors and group leaders were preaching to their students, was to spread awareness. Still very true, awareness is the first step in making a difference in solving global issues, even issues as vast as inequalities causing hunger, illness and death in developing nations. However, it has become clear that in academic environments such as universities or high schools, awareness is inevitable and our steps towards making a difference have stopped dead in their tracks. When our tutorial professor asked us “what can we do” the common answer and belief seemed to be, we are too young, too insignificant, and too unimportant to make a difference towards such a large issue- an answer that is complete and utter B.S. Why has our generation, who is supposed to be the future, hope, and entrepreneurs of the nation and Globe, demeaned themselves so much to the so-called realization that they, or we, can’t do anything? Is it time for our professors to re-write their lectures to enforce the great potential we do in fact have to make a difference? Or is it lack of will and want that is preventing the average teen from taking the time to donate, or vote, or even to care about what is happening to ,say, the seventeen year old in Mozambique who is taking care of her widowed mother, and six brothers and sisters. Selfishness perhaps, however I don’t believe that criticism will help, as noticed with most teens.

As redundant or clichéd as it may sound, we are the future, and we are the people who can make a difference. By receiving education or by educating ourselves about the global inequalities that prove to be the root cause of poverty, famines and unemployment preventing nations from developing, we have allowed ourselves to establish a certain mental state that enables us to make the right decisions that will and do make a difference. With the help of the internet it is impossible to justify a “oh, I didn’t know how to help answer”, as search engines such as Google, it takes perhaps three typed words to find hundreds upon hundreds of possible charities in which you can make a difference instantly. So what is stopping us? The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are failing to maintain their promises, and the inequalities that cause for example child immortality are both preventable and avoidable, yet children are still starving, still getting ill and are still dying by the second. Canada has put in place that their GNI towards developing nations should be at the 0.7% level, in order to reach MDGs. Several nations such as Sweden are attaining these goals, while powerful nations such as the States and Canada are not. Currently with a Prime Minister who won’t budge on increasing development aid, our GNI remains at a dismal and embarrassing 0.25%. This alone should be a fact that should get you out of bed and making different choices, or physically doing something individually to create change.

Take this analogy for example. You are a university student, who has had a great past couple of weeks with friends, and events and such and you find yourself one Monday morning realizing the five or so midterms you have quickly approaching along with an equal amount of final papers. If you’re anything like me, you freeze and think the world is over. You enter a state of paralysis, where you feel lost in a pile of countless tasks that seem so unattainable; you do not know where to start-so you don’t. This state of paralysis, seems to be where we are in taking the next step in making a difference towards helping developing nations. The task at hand seems too large, that we’ve hid under our covers to make it go away. It’s time to wake up, and realize that when we finally face the music, those papers, those midterms or the starving and unemployed people are all still going to be there. We need to take a breath, and focus on one thing at a time, rather than the normal approach of “looking at the big picture”. Take what you have, an education, a computer, and the knowledge you’ve gained and take that step, make a contribution, write a letter to your Member of Parliament. It is not that hard. Sure, perhaps you as an individual won’t solve world hunger, but what you can do is make a difference. Even if it is as small as sending milk cartons to be made into bed mats, you have made a difference in at least one person’s life, and that undeniably is better than none.

Our generation needs to know that while elements of life as we know it are changing as we approach 2009, the greater global world issues that are hurting millions of people, and killing twelve-hundred children per hour (U.N. report) are still there, and are increasing. It is time for the realization that awareness is no longer enough. More students, more citizens have to go beyond awareness and make a physical developing motion towards making that difference. Without a physical action and movement towards change, there is no hope; not for us, not for the struggling nations, not for our world.