The Poverty, The Progress, The Possibilities
By Craig Borlase
It's no secret that the world seems smaller these days: from pop stars to burgers, traditionally 'western' products are sold in the remotest regions of the world. There are reminders closer to home too: our clothing is often made in countries we have never visited and our fridges contain foods that have travelled tens of thousands of miles to reach us.
We call this the dawning of the world 'globalisation', and while it makes life pretty good for some, there are many others who haven't benefited at all from the shrinking of the planet.
A group of villagers in a remote part of Bangladesh get together to buy a mobile phone. Far more than receiving the latest texts about Big Brother, the mobile enables them to set up a small communications centre for communal use.
This gives access to the Internet, which means that they can sell the traditional furniture that they produce directly to traders in the West. This gives an income with which they can improve local education and health services.
On the flip side…
An African factory worker has been producing clothes all his working life. The income may never have been great, but he survived. Until now.
Suddenly the factory is no longer able to sell what it produces: its buyers are able to get what they want for a far cheaper price from the other side of the world. With no buyers there's no more factory and no more job.
This is the reality of globalisation: for some it can bring the promise of a far better life, for others it can threaten to end it.
Bizarre as it may be, globalisation does have the potential to be both these things, both good and bad.
And with the world's corners seeming closer than ever before more and more people are being affected.
The trouble is that the people who seem to get hit by the worst economic and environmental aspects tend to be the poorest.
Globalisation could certainly be a powerful force for good if it were managed by governments and international institutions for the good of all.
However, a huge load of change needs to take place before that can happen.
A closer look
The truth about the world today is that more than a billion people are living in extreme poverty, but their situation is no longer something that western societies have nothing to do with. Here are two ways in which the poor can be affected:
Education
According to the government's White Paper on International Development, an estimated 113 million children of primary school age have never gone to school.
A further 150 million have dropped out before achieving basic literacy and numeracy skills? That means that a lot of people are falling behind, and we're not talking about GCSE revision.
If a population does not receive a sound education then the work force in that particular country becomes less attractive to foreign investors.
The country has less earning potential and basic services suffer. The reverse of this is clear: if a country invests in basic primary education they can turn fortunes around by developing a workforce that will attract big companies with money to spend.
However, the goal is not simply to have countries make themselves appealing to international companies.
What is more important is that countries develop their own work forces so that their own small businesses take off.
There's also a tricky thing called the 'digital divide', and it's a gap that is widening at an alarming rate.
Simply put, it describes the difference between those who do have access to reliable telecommunications and those that don't. Did you know that there are more computers in New York than there are in the whole of Africa?
What's more, over half the people in Africa have never used a phone.
The bigger the divide between communities that do and those that don't have access, the bigger the divide in terms of wealth.
At the moment about 80% of the world's population are on the wrong side of the divide.
Health
Today we can cure more diseases, offer greater hope to those in pain and wipe out common killers with ease.
Medical advances have been marching at a phenomenal pace for decades and globalisation presents a fantastic set of opportunities to share knowledge with countries that don't have the resources to make the breakthroughs for themselves.
On the negative side it's often the case that developing countries are not allowed to experience these advances because they are too expensive.
It's also the case that as it becomes easier to travel around the world killer diseases such as HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis have crossed borders too.
World-wide there are 16,000 new HIV infections each day, with 70% of those alone in sub-Saharan Africa. In 1998 a 10 month period saw AIDS claim the lives of 1,300 teachers in Zambia.
It's not hard to imagine the impact their loss could have on future generations.
What about me?
Sitting in the middle of the UK somewhere it might be tempting to conclude that all this talk of globalisation doesn't really apply to us. The short answer to that is: yes, it does apply. Here's the slightly longer answer:
Choices, attitudes and action
What we buy here affects those who have made it elsewhere.
As you know the Fairtrade logo guarantees that workers have been given fair pay and decent working conditions, and Soul Action supporters Tearfund have there very own producer project Tearcraft which does a great job of giving poorer producers a British market in which to sell their goods.
Yet it is not just our wallets that can make a difference. It's all too easy to close our minds to the truth of what is going on in the world: that globalisation threatens to squash non-Western cultures.
In some ways it makes sense: most of our own culture - our football teams, our music, our language - seems to get exported around the world.
But we must be careful of buying into the idea that our culture is better than others. We need to not believe the hype.
So whether it's a project to explore the stories and the culture behind the musical influences we hear or an attempt at using the Internet to get in touch with groups of other young people around the world, the important thing is that we keep an open mind - as well as an open mouth.
We must use our voices to speak out about injustice and to encourage those in power to act as we would like them to.
The message of the cross
Whether it's the goods we buy or the message we preach, our faith has something to say.
Matthew 28 contains Jesus' final instructions to his disciples to "go and make disciples of all nations" (verse 19). Jesus showed the way by treating his disciples with dignity, care and respect.
I don't know about you, but these seem like a pretty good set of principles by which we should respond to our global family.
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