by Lindy Abrahams

Created on: April 15, 2008

When it comes to poverty in the third world, everyone can agree that people have been giving from the beginning of time. It's fair to say that people with generous hearts have poured money into food Aids and programs that have helped the poor in the third world. Unfortunately year after year the same pleas are made again and again and we are still no where close to ending third world poverty.

Concrete action to help the third world can only begin when we realize that pouring water into a bucket with a hole in it, won't hold much water for very long. We're only solving problems in the short term. If we have a long term solution to get the third world out of poverty, then we will begin to see the effects of our giving. We need to take a closer look at the hole in the system.

Like the Chinese proverb says, Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a life time. So instead of just pouring money at the problem, the best solution to any type of poverty is education. When we invest in the minds of people, we free them into becoming the best people they can be. When we make people feel as though they can't fend for themselves we strip them of their power.

When it comes to long term solutions, education is the key. There was a time when South Africa was under the Apartheid system. It introduced the Bantu Education System. It was introduced to keep minds from flourishing beyond a certain point. It was introduced so that some human beings could remain slaves to a system that made them believe they couldn't achieve, that poverty was their destiny. It kept minds trapped and this has back fired. Some people believe that they were born to be poor and that somehow they can't take care of themselves, so someone else has to take care of them. This is not to say that you stop giving, it is to say that as human beings we have the power to free ourselves and the only way that this is done is through education.

Without a proper educational system in place, money will continue to be donated to poverty with the blind hope that it will simply get better. Throwing money at problems won't make them disappear. Education is the beginning to a world without poverty.

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