Voices of the Poor

Ronald Mazune, me, and Joseph Wanda

Over a period of several years in the 1990s, the World Bank interviewed some 60,000 poor in order to better understand their perspective. The idea was that it would shape WB policy, such as who to loan money too, etc.

The perspective of the poor is necessary - if a project with the poor is to be sustainable, they must have a voice.

I personally learned a lot working with people like Ronald Mazune, a friendly guy who I became close friends with in the short 2 months I was in Uganda last summer. Ronald had a rough childhood, living on one meal a day until an NGO took him in, fed him, and introduced him to Christ. Ronald has a huge heart for other people, is graduating from the University soon, and plans to work full time with MMM.

For his thesis, he is writing about the connection between health and poverty, and the other day he sent me the rough draft of his paper, I was super excited! Here is a bit of it to share with you all!

"Health is by far the most important thing in people's lives; it does not matter whether we are poor or rich. Good health is vital to make our life happy. Health and poverty are mutually reinforcing and can generate a vicious cycle of deterioration and suffering."

"Due to poverty and unemployment, [households in Bukhalu Sub County] have resorted to deforestation as a source of income, and this has left the area so dry and open to the Ozone layer....[it is] dangerous to human health" (Mazune, 2011)

Also said by Ronald,

"A hungry man does not think about development"

Great perspective - I love it! He is now doing a survey and further research in this area of Uganda, close to his hometown. When he gets the results, I'll let you all know!

Habits of consumption - thinking about the next generation

Our culture is so bent on consumption it makes me sick. Of course, I am part of it! I often find myself thinking about how I can upgrade to something better - new clothes, better quality electronics, many things that work just fine that I look for reasons to replace.

In a sociology class this semester, we studied the "insatiable appetite" for consumption that Europeans brought to the new world, and the wastefulness that followed. We are still stuck in that grind. A great example is ethanol, we want to justify using millions of barrels of oil a day, so we exploit the earth and say it's "green" so we feel better!

How to get the US to consume less? There are really 3 primary options:

1) Market - if we let the market determine consumption, we are basically handing the reins over to cartels like OPEC, who can change supply, mess with prices, and destroy any long term trends that will reduce oil dependency (such as electric cars)

2) Energy taxes - policy #1 - these reduce consumption among the poorest class, who spend the greatest percentage of their income on energy (food, gas, electricity). Basically, the poor would be without the little they had, the rich would be unaffected

3) Ration - policy #2 - my new favorite! Each person would receive a voucher each week to consume, say 10 gallons of gas. If people didn't want to use gas, they could sell it to someone else. This could directly control US consumption, but would potentially create a black market/smother private enterprises.

Dr. Schaeffer (my prof) suggests that policy such as these is needed to curb our consumption, but since most politicians are relatively wealthy, policy #1 and #2 are quite unpopular.