by Lee Ann Doskocil

Created on: April 16, 2008

Many of us provide our children with cell phones, iPods, and various other extravagant items forgetting that there are children around the world who go to bed hungry and lacking basic human needs. Many of these children live in Africa. One may wonder how we can possibly help African children who live in extreme poverty when we are so far away from them. One may wonder why we should even care when we have people in need here in our own country. I would ask you to consider the fact that even though there is poverty and even extreme poverty in the United States, the poverty experienced by children in Africa is extreme.

Perhaps the most important way that we can help children stricken by poverty in Africa is to work on ways to provide education to those children. Many children in Africa never attend school. Until more Africans are educated, there will continue to be a vicious cycle of poverty in that area. Providing teachers and teacher training to those adults who are educated in Africa can help ensure that African children get an education. However, this will require teaching the parents that education is a necessity and not a luxury. It is hard to explain to people who in some cases survive on mere cents per day that getting an education should be a priority.

Another way to help children in poverty in Africa is to provide better health care. When a child is sick or suffering from an illness or disease, they cannot learn or provide for themselves. Those of us who are more fortunate should work to find ways to ensure that Africans receive health care. Ways to accomplish this include contributing to various funds such as the United Nations World Food Program, and encouraging our leaders to send health assistance to these deprived children. A rather unique way to contribute to the United Nations World Food Program is through the freerice.com website. By going to www.freerice.com, you can answer vocabulary questions. For each word you answer correctly, 20 grains of rice are donated to the UN World Food Program by various advertisers for distribution throughout poverty stricken nations. Just think what a difference we could make if every person in the United States who has access to the internet spent even ten minutes a day at this site. We could increase knowledge and feed hungry people, and it wouldn't cost a cent.

An important contributing factor to children in poverty in Africa revolves around the interception of aid and corruption by African governments. One way we can help alleviate this situation is to work with the United Nations and other agencies to ensure that the aid is actually getting to the intended recipients. I propose that we use these agencies so that the African government does not feel that America is taking over their country. Until these corrupt governments are eliminated or changed, it is likely that no matter how much aid is sent, only a minimal amount of it will actually help the children.

As you can see, African children face a mountain of obstacles to rise from the effects of poverty. We cannot afford however, to give up on aiding these children as the cost to all of us in terms of basic human dignity and moral values are much higher than we can afford.

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