[Comment] Fighting global poverty in everyone's best interest

from the Calgary Herald

Half the world lives on less than $2 per day

Naheed Nenshi

Last week, I attended the opening of an exhibit at the U of C's Nickle Arts Museum, entitled Bridges that Unite (bridgesthatunite.ca). The exhibit itself was remarkable, and I highly recommend seeing it before it closes this weekend.

The show, sponsored by the Aga Khan Foundation Canada, highlights 25 years of Canadian participation with that organization in the developing world.

Without question, some of what has been accomplished is breathtaking.

For example, in the remote northern areas of Pakistan, in villages that could have been incubators of fundamentalism and intolerance, the Foundation and its partners engaged in a number of initiatives that tripled per capita income, took literacy from near-zero to almost universal levels for women and men, and cut infant mortality by 75 per cent.

About one million people are now leading lives that are unimaginably better than before.

What's most striking about this is not only the relatively small amounts of money required, but how uncomplicated the model can be.

One of the centrepieces of the exhibit is devastatingly simple -- just a circle of chairs with a flipchart on one end.

The point is that by getting people to talk to one another, they will create solutions that make sense for themselves, their families, and their communities.

The easy lesson to draw from this is about how to improve the quality of life here: If we spent more time sitting in circles with people who are different from us, who don't share our points of view, how much richer would we be as a society?

I'm not just singing Kumbaya; there are real lessons that we're ignoring.

One simple example -- how is it that immigrant communities have much poverty, but almost no homelessness? What could the shelter system learn from how the local Sikh and Chinese communities manage poverty?

The much more difficult conversation, though, is one about global poverty. Half the world lives on less than $2 per day.

Most of sub-Saharan Africa is worse off today than it was when my parents left 35 years ago.

It's easy for us to close our eyes and our hearts to this. After all, we think, it's their own fault.

They've had corrupt leaders. They don't know or care to help themselves. Plus, there are so many problems and issues here at home that we have to work on.

Calgary philanthropist Jim Gray -- one of my personal heroes -- found this out the hard way.

He's been raising money for good causes in this community for 30 years, and thought it would take six months, tops, to raise $5 million for the Aga Khan Development Network. Last I heard, he was still well short of his goal.

There are very good reasons for us to care: In a globalized world, poverty begets desperation begets violence. Stability is in all of our best interest.

I believe we also have a moral imperative. When I, a teacher, spend more on satellite TV each month than a Kenyan teacher earns, there's an imbalance that needs fixing.

Maybe the most important reason for us to care, though, is a self-interested one: making a difference in global poverty will make us feel good.

A recent study by UBC's Dr. Elizabeth Dunn shows that money can buy happiness -- but only if you spend it on other people.

If we think of Alberta's wealth as winning a lottery, the roadmap is pretty clear.

We should save the vast majority of the money and live off the interest, and spend some of the rest on fixing the roof. But it's also important to blow some of the money -- we won the lottery after all, so may as well do something we've always wanted to do.

For individuals, that could be splurging on a new car or a trip to Tahiti.

For our community, how about making a significant commitment to ending global poverty? For example, there are 1.1 billion people in the world without access to clean drinking water.

A Calgary-based organization, the Centre for Affordable Water and Sanitation Technology, can alleviate that problem using filters that cost about $20 each.

So, just imagine if we took half of one year's surplus, or roughly the same amount spent giving us those $400 cheques in 2005/06 -- do you remember what you did with your money? -- and bought water filters.

One-fifth of the world's population would see a little sticker that said "provided by the people of Alberta, grateful for what we have been given" every single time they took a drink.

Five thousand lives a day -- mostly kids under five -- would be saved. And wouldn't we feel fantastic?

Naheed Nenshi teaches nonprofit management at Mount Royal College's Bissett School of Business.