A Worthy Blog

Oxfam Video

Ξ December 5th, 2008 | → 1 Comments | ∇ video |

Oxfam

Ξ December 5th, 2008 | → 0 Comments | ∇ Philanthropy |

“Give a man a fish and he eats for a day, teach a man to fish and he eats for a lifetime.”  Everyone’s heard this old adage before and it’s pretty self-explanatory.  The question most people don’t ask is, “Why did one man know how to fish and the other didn’t?”  I know that this little nugget of wisdom is supposed to be a lesson on education and self-sufficiency, but it does create a bit of a chicken and the egg situtation.  Who teaches first?  And what if no one is there to teach at all?  I suppose this is why we built the first cities that grew into civilizations - because it increased our ability to share wealth and knowledge, precisely so that everyone would have an opportunity to know how to fish so to speak.  The only problem is that these days the global society is a lot more complex and we still have major problems making sure everyone has opportunities to access wealth and knowledge.

If someone is struggling everyday to feed their family, how can they possibly focus on building their career?  If there’s no time to start a career, how can trade thrive?  If trade can’t thrive, how can a society become prosperous and if a society is poor how can it take care of its disadvantaged people?  It’s a sad feedback loop that seems built into the poor societies of the world.  Poverty is not just a matter of not knowing how to fish (although that would help),  but a symptom of poor structural integrity in the poorest societies.  For too long we thought the solution to poverty was just more food (I guess we ignored the proverb) and then we realized teaching agriculture is even better.  The best thing of all, however, is to create a society where outsiders don’t need to come in to do either of those things.  The ultimate solution to poverty, though, is to create societal structures which prevent or lessen poverty in the first place.

Enter Oxfam.  They recognize that poverty is more than just lack of resources, it is a structual problem; a system of inequality and access denial.  As their website states, they understand that:

1. Poverty is a state of powerlessness in which people are unable to exercise their basic human rights or control virtually any aspect of their lives. Poverty manifests itself in the inadequacy of material goods and lack of access to basic services and opportunities leading to a condition of insecurity.


2. All poverty is almost always rooted in human action or inaction. It can be made worse by natural calamities, and human violence, oppression and environmental destruction. It is maintained by entrenched inequalities and institutional and economic mechanisms.

On a human level, they understand that lack of resources can lead to a sense of powerlessness and inaction.  But, helping these same people find a sense of power helps them take action and claim the resources that they need.  Lack of resources is not just a physical problem, it’s a mental setback.

What really sets Oxfam apart for me, however, is their understanding that just because some nations are rich does not necessarily mean others must suffer.  Prosperity is not a zero-sum issue.  Everyone’s basic needs and liberties can be achieved all over the world.  Our failure to provide this is not for lack of resources, but for lack of action.

The reason they do the work they do is because they understand that poverty is not just physical lack, but lack of freedom and control over one’s own life.  By helping the poorest peoples find good health and education, their chances of overcoming poverty are substantially increased because of the fact that they have the strength and the means to overcome the barriers to prosperity.

This deep understanding of the root causes of these problems is why we think Oxfam is a worthy cause.