Since 1975, the number of people living below the poverty line in the United States has been steadily rising, according to statistics from the US Census Bureau. And while the percentage of our population living in poverty hit a low in 2000 of 11.3 percent (about equal to the low seen in the early 1970s), it has been rising fairly steadily ever since.
In 2014, the poverty rate was 15 percent, which means 50 million people in our country were living in poverty.
We’ve described in recent posts the inspiring work of Dr. Aruna Uprety, keeping girls and young women in Nepal informed and protected from traffickers for nearly 25 years, while partnering with our many passionate donors in STOP Girl Trafficking to support their education.
We’d like to introduce now you to Rekha (left photo, above) and Rukmani (right photo, first row, pointing to classmate in second row). We believe their stories show how girls from the poorest, most isolated communities can charge ahead and contribute to their society when given the chance. We hope you agree.
We’ve been delighted to read more commentaries in U.S. news media recently about fabulous progress in reducing extreme poverty. Every day, according to the World Bank, roughly a quarter-million people are escaping extreme poverty, reducing the number of people living on less than $1.90 a day to 770 million in 2013 from 1.85 billion in 1990.
A physician and activist for women’s rights in Nepal, she has protected 20,000 girls from the threat of trafficking. How? By keeping them in school and partnering with our many passionate donors to give them an education through high school. This video, from 2010, has commentary by Aruna, best-selling author Jon Krakauer, and our foundation president Erica Stone.
We know that the success of anything worth doing rides on the vision, courage, and commitment of exceptional leaders. Exceptional leaders are the cornerstone for building businesses and for broad humanitarian impact.
Aruna Uprety is a classic exceptional leader. We’ve mentioned her briefly in previous posts. She created a program in her homeland, Nepal, that across more than twenty years has helped educate and protect 20,000 girls from human traffickers. (That’s Aruna with some of her charges in the photo above.)
Richard notes in this seven-minute interview that U.S. foreign aid for humanitarian projects such as food security, water, and health care amounts to only $11 billion a year – less than 1/3rd of 1 percent of the government’s $4 trillion budget. Quoting John F. Kennedy, Richard adds: “We have a moral obligation” as a nation to help people in poor countries improve their lives.
A few months ago I offered some favorite quotations on patience, persistence, and thinking big. They came from Nelson Mandela, His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Sir Edmund Hillary, and other personal heroes.
Altruism is another quality they and other great leaders share. And Matthieu Ricard a wonderful teacher of its essence and deep benefits. A best-selling author and prominent speaker, his talks on happiness and altruism at the World Economic Forum in Davos and at TED have been viewed by more than seven million people.
You can’t fathom how deeply endemic superstition and ignorance are to poor, isolated communities until you walk the villages and hear the stories. The worst of them can leave you stunned, heart-broken, and angry.
Our foundation’s field director in Nepal, Bruce Moore, once met a man in a remote village three hours north of Kathmandu who expressed delight at having seven daughters. Surprised given the setting, but brightening, Bruce asked: why? “You know, girls are worth money,” was the reply.
Jivan was born with clubfoot so severe that one foot and connecting shin bone resembled a paper clip. Even worse, a series of plaster casts ineptly administered in a rural Nepal hospital not only failed to correct the birth defect, those operations crippled him further with severe tendon damage – all before his first birthday.
Nepal is the second poorest country in Asia, a beautiful but mountainous land of subsistence farming on steep inclines—and a place where having a physical disability can be a life sentence.
When day-to-day survival is a struggle, poor children with disabilities are often left behind. Not because parents don’t care, but because they have few options. Doctors are expensive and scarce in rural areas, and health posts are often understaffed and undersupplied.
