HARRISBURG, PA (October 27, 2010) – Hundreds of thousands more Pennsylvanians would be out of work today had policymakers chosen to do nothing in the face of the worst economic recession in decades, according to a new report from the Keystone Research Center.
Poverty is above all a political problem; it results from the human and institutional indifference of policy makers towards the less powerful. Only a global social movement can influence politics radically enough to end world poverty, says a report by Christian Aid.
I like the quote below.
“People are the real wealth of a nation.” With these words the 1990 Human Development Report began a forceful case for a new approach to thinking about development. That the objective of development should be to create an enabling environment for people to enjoy long, healthy and creative lives may appear self-evident today. But that has not always been the case. A central objective of the Report for the past 20 years has been to emphasize that development is primarily and fundamentally about people
via Human Development Report 2010: The Real Wealth of Nations – STWR – Share The World’s Resources.
Few will have the greatness to bend history; but each of us can work to change a small portion of the events, and in the total of all these acts will be written the history of this generation. Thousands of Peace Corps volunteers are making a difference in the isolated villages and the city slums of dozens of countries. Thousands of unknown men and women in Europe resisted the occupation of the Nazis and many died, but all added to the ultimate strength and freedom of their countries. It is from numberless diverse acts of courage such as these that the belief that human history is thus shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.
Robert F. Kennedy, Day of Affirmation Speech, Capetown, South Africa 6 June 1966
“The test of our progress is not that we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.”
First is the danger of futility; the belief there is nothing one man or one woman cando against the enormous array of the world’s ills — against misery, against ignorance, or injustice and violence. Yet many of the world’s great movements, of thought and action, have flowed from the work of a single man. … It is from numberless diverse acts of courage such as these that the belief that human history is thus shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.
Robert F. Kennedy
Speech at the University of Capetown, South Africa, Day of Affirmation, 6 June 1966
http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/speech/rfksa.htm
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