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Making Poverty History - Begins At Home
Poverty is the buzzword of the moment. No-one can have failed to see and hear Bob Gelfof over the past months and weeks demand that the world wake up to the unacceptable poverty in Africa, asking you and I to take to the streets and shame our governments into doing whatever it takes, to do the right thing.
Live 8
Live 8 was the most watched broadcast ever. Never before have so many people been joined in one world event. Never before has one subject been of such interest to so many people at the one time. Never before has one subject touched the hearts of so many people at one time. Poverty is the subject of our generation.
I believe the reason that we are so touched by the poverty in Africa, the reason we identify with the despair and defeat of those we see on our television screens, the reason we are ready to march to help them is because we know what they are living through.
Poverty At Home
We may not have to scrape for food in the dust or walk miles for water. We may be better clothed, we may have supermarkets stocked with food, our experience may even be “self-inflicted” through the abuse of credit, but poverty is poverty and when I have a client on the phone who tells me she has £30 to last for three weeks, I hear the universal pain of a mother who fears she will not be able to feed her children.
We have become used to headlines such as:
Debt secret led to suicide
Daily Mail
24 June 2005
That particular article ends: “Mr. McDonald's death was the fifth known suicide due to debt in the past two years. Others who died included a 21-year-old farm worker with debts of £10,500 and a 65-yearold grandfather who owed £130,000. Yesterday, the Consumer Credit Counselling Service charity said the number of people calling for debt advice has almost doubled in a year to 25,000 a month”
Deadly Secret
It’s not the debt that kills. It’s the secret of the debt. It’s the shame of the debt. Buried in the text under the headlines you read about how they couldn’t bear anyone to know what was going on, they couldn’t bear to ask for help.
The only thing between the innocent looking store card and these 5 people is time.
The only difference between the outstanding credit card balance and ending up on the register of the Citizens Advice Counselling Service is time.
Small debt neglected trickles along innocently for a while and then when you least expect it, it begins to grow relentlessly until it is no longer manageable.
There is a saying in the arena of personal development…”Kill the monster while it is small.” Don’t wait until it is so huge it could kill you. Debt uncontrolled is a small monster waiting to grow up and steal your future. Maybe it is already stealing your present. It doesn’t have to. Don’t let it happen. Do something and do it now.
